How do PCs and Macs differ? And which is best?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #14, I talk about the billions of switches that it takes to run those
computers sitting on our desks and look at how these differ in Macs
and PCs.

PC or Mac: Which is better?

I’m not going to touch the “inherently better” question with a ten-foot pole:
because that gets into (sometimes) fairly fanatically religious arguments.

They are both good computers. I have both; I’ve used both.

It really comes down (in my opinion) to personal taste:

• How you use your computer
• What you’re going to use the computer for
• What kind of tools are available on either of those computers that you
  intend to use

Programming ones and zeros

Calling it a “glorified switch” is (I think) doing it a gross
disservice.

A switch is a one or zero. If you had, I don’t know… several billion
switches, that would be a bit more accurate as to what the computer actually
is. But understand: even that may be understating the number of switches
actually involved.

The switch analogy comes from the fact that computers deal with ones and
zeroes and nothing more than ones and zeroes. That’s the definition of digital
data.

Everything – your photos, your music, your data, your operating system, your
programs, your everything – is all simply a matter of ones and zeroes arranged
in a particular way. That’s why the ‘switch’ analogy keeps coming up: because a
switch is a one or a zero.

The reason I say, “billions of switches,” is because every piece of data on
your computer is essentially a one or a zero.

Your hard disk may have three hundred gigabytes; three hundred billion! You
may have terabytes: trillions of these bits! Actually, trillions of bytes, which
you then multiply by eight. So, if you’ve got a one-terabyte disk, you have eight
trillion bits of ones and zeroes on that disk.

Mac and PC differences

So what’s the real difference? There are two things that come to mind.

• One is the hardware.

While they are both (now) based on the same family of CPUs and CPU
processors, Apple’s Macintosh has fundamentally always been what I would call
‘a closed system.’

You can’t go out and get add-on cards from random stores or random
manufacturers for Apple products. You won’t find home-built or kit-built Apple
Macintoshes. They are not supported from Apple; they’re not provided by Apple.
Apple actually retains extremely tight control on the hardware that’s available
not only in the Mac, but for use with the Mac.

That’s unlike the PC. The PC is (I hesitate to call it “open,” because it’s
not really open in the open source sense), but it’s an open standard that any
hardware manufacturer can go out and create hardware for.

If I go and buy a PC from Dell, I can get add-in cards from anywhere. I can
replace motherboards and home-build PCs. I can get RAM from half a dozen
different vendors. I can get disk drives and CD drives and all sorts of
different things from different places.

Apple has more control

So fundamentally, what you’re trading off there (by the way) is that because
Apple hardware is so tightly controlled, it tends to be more stable. You have
fewer combinations. You have fewer scenarios that can go wrong. And you have
fewer manufacturers and (typically) slightly-better-than-average quality.

PC has more variety

On the PC-side, you’ve got really good manufacturers and you’ve got really poor
manufacturers. There’s some bad stuff out there for PCs. That’s why you end up
with this wide range of hardware that’s available – and a wide range of quality.
That’s why you typically need to be careful when you’re picking out new
hardware to install in your PC or for that matter, in buying a new PC
itself.

A PC can come from half a dozen different manufacturers: a Mac you’re only
going to get from Apple.

So, on the hardware side, there’s a lot more variety on the PCs than there is
on the Mac.

• Two – user interface

When it comes to the software that’s actually driving all of those switches,
those ones and zeroes, fundamentally they don’t have to be different. There’s
nothing in the hardware that prevents Macs from running Windows (and in fact,
there are ways to make that happen.)

There’s nothing fundamental on a PC that would prevent it from running
Apple’s OSX (and in fact, there are some hacks to make that happen.)

The difference is in the way you interact with the computer.

The user interface for Windows and the user interface for Windows programs
tends to work a certain way. The user interface for Macs and the user interface
for Macintosh programs tend to work in a different way, a slightly different
way.

They are similar, but they’re different.

People find a lot of value in the difference. In other words, a lot of
people will feel more strongly that the Mac way of doing things is much better
than the PC way of doing things and vice versa.

There is so much more hardware available for PCs and quite
often, there’s a lot more software that’s available for PCs. It’s starting to
become a little bit more equal, but nonetheless, the difference is there.

Quite often, people will choose one over the other because there is specific
software that they want to run that only runs on one of the two classes of
machines. For example, my next computer may very well be a Mac because I intend
to run Final Cut Pro (the video-editing software), because it has some features
that I’m looking to take advantage of.

Software is essentially software…

At a very high level, at a very high, conceptual level, yes, they’re the
same:

• They’re both running X86 processors
• They’re both dealing with the same kind of data (all stored as ones and
  zeroes)

But the devil, as they say, is in the details and how you do things.

In Macs, the software is written to do things in a certain way. In PCs,
certain software is written to do things in other ways. Like I said,
people feel strongly often about the difference between the two. Personally,
I don’t really have that strong religious feeling.

They are different; it’s just a matter of getting used to the different user
interfaces and the different pieces of software available on one platform or
the other. I use them both; I use them both regularly and in fact, I also use
Linux!

What about Linux?

Linux perhaps could be considered a third alternative (but there too is an
example of software that runs most commonly and most freely on PCs.)

Even though Linux is a completely different software, it uses a completely
different interface. Linux can run on PCs much more easily and often more
frequently than you’ll ever find it on a Macintosh-based platform.

Which is better: PC or Mac?

So, that’s kind of a vague answer but, yes, like I said: at the bits level,
they are conceptually pushing bits. It’s how they do it that differs fairly
dramatically.