Lightning strikes twice

Just when I’d worked out my wrath on the incorrect use of podcasting, The Gadget Show manage to trump themselves this week with a piece on whether Macs or PCs were better.

First a bit of background – in a previous series TGS did a piece on Macs vs PCs, and came to the conclusion that PCs were basically better value for money – more choice of cheaper hardware, easier to upgrade and fix, and a better range of software (esp games). They were, of course, inundated with letters from the orange-shades-wearing section of the community, who demanded a recount. Hence the section this week.

There were some serious problems with this piece – I shall try and summarise:

• The Mac guy happily interchanged Windows and PC many times. Not only is this offensive to us x86-based Linux users, but it makes it very confusing as to what he’s actually defending – MacOS or Apple hardware.
• One of the basic tenets of the argument was that an Apple looks better than a PC. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and, personally, my computer sits in the corner of a room where nobody sees it anyway. And there are lots of cool-looking PCs out there anyway…..
• He then moved on to the fact that MacOS (shifting nicely from hardware to software arguments) is less susceptible to viruses and the like. But that’s only if you’re running Windows on your PC, and not Linux. Thus this argument is null and void.
• A large chunk of his argument was about iLife, and how it was great. I’m sure it is, and I know it’s bundled with MacOS these days. But I’m not entirely sure that it’s a good argument between Macs ‘n’ PCs
• He argued that MacOS looked nicer. I guess he might be right out of the box, but even Windows can be made to look good. It’s such a superfluous argument.
• Lastly, he argued that it would be easier for people to use a Mac, and that they’d look good doing it. Sorry – not convinced

Ultimately, his argument came down to 2 points – Macs are pretty, and MacOS > Windows.

Meh. Whatever.

They need to split up the argument between hardware and software. Once you do that, you get to these points:

Hardware:

• PC hardware is better value for money, pound for pound. There’s lots of choice, keeping the prices down, and it’s easier to repair and upgrade.
• Mac hardware looks better than the majority of commodity PC hardware. Although even that’s debatable

Software:

• MacOS (these days) comes with more software than Windows, and I suspect that the quality of that software is probably better too. (iLife > Windows MovieMaker (etc) from what I can gather) Neither come with nearly as much software as Linux.
• MacOS is more secure than Windows. But Linux is still probably better…..
• MacOS software is pretty. Whether it’s prettier than other software is highly debatable, although probably out of the box it is.

Conclusion: If you’re a poser, and like your orange sunglasses , then you might want to get a Mac. For certain niche markets, it might also be a good purchase. But most people are probably better off with a PC (running Linux ). Of course, Apple is moving to x86 hardware, so all this is null and void, isn’t it?

mrBen