Comments on: Mac vs PC and the Future of the Web

By: ryannj

ryannj — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:21:37 +0000

Here here, Ronnie. All good points.

I’d rather have a Mustang of a system and only drive it around town, than have a Volkswagen Bus and use 60% of its functionality. When I need the extra stuff, it’s there.

By: Ronnie

Ronnie — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:32:26 +0000

Honestly the fact that you use 60% of all the functionality of your mac might signify a big nothing to the rest of the world.
Moreover why should I use Safari when I can use Firefox on any platform?
And finally I might be the only one in the world but I find those enlarging and spinning around icons on the mac desktop REALLY horrible and confusing.
Mac zealotism is one the most annoying thing in the world.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:17:40 +0000

I use no more than 10% of the functionality of Windows Vista.

It’s true that most users use only 10% of the functionality of a software, the problem is that 10% is different for each user so developers have to include all of them :)

By: m0n5t3r

m0n5t3r — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:03:13 +0000

First of all, PC != Windows: Apple has been using the PC architecture for some time, and there are other OSes for the PC besides Mac Os X and Windows. Second, Vista is not really backwards-compatible, although they may claim it is: a lot of software needed major changes to run on it, the UI is very confusing for non-technical people who used to have XP (as a Beryl-running geek I liked the eye candy, although it’s less capable than its Linux counterpart, but my father, for instance, is struggling to find his way around the thing). So this may be the other major reason (besides piracy) a lot of people still stick to Windows XP/IE6.

P.S. the next article says “throw your mag out the window” :))

By: David Cloutman

David Cloutman — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:08:03 +0000

Well, I don’t know about that factualness of what you are saying. There are definitely Windows 95 apps that do not work on XP or Vista. You are probably correct in asserting that Apple’s management team is less interested in backwards compatibility than Microsoft. Of course Apple builds what is effectively a consumer electronic device in many ways, while Windows is clearly something that is built for business users, and personal computing has pretty much been an afterthought.

I would remind you that Safari isn’t entire an Apple creation, and is actually a fork of KHTML, which in my experience was never really fault tolerant in rendering poorly coded web pages. I also think you overlook the fact that there is a significant population of users on both systems that op-out of the OS default browser and use something else like Firefox or Opera. Personally, I always use Firefox, regardless of the OS, because I like it and I’m familiar with it.

Finally, one factor you need to consider when looking at those IE stats is the number of pirated Windows licenses out there. The last time I checked, you have to verify your Windows license before you could make the IE 7 upgrade. Perhaps people have found cracks for this, but I’m sure there are quite a few technically unsophisticated people out there using unlicensed copies of Windows that don’t get patched, so IE 6 will live on for a long time simply because of piracy; a sad reality considering that unpatched windows machines, legal or otherwise, can impact the computer world at large when they are victims of attack.