The Operating Systems War
Ask a Windows user if they like Macs, chances are they will say “No way!”; ask a Mac user if they like Windows and you will get the exact same reply. Why are people so narrow minded? It doesn’t make so much sense to be so attached to software. The situation is, essentially, one group is attached to one arrangement of 0s and 1s, the other group is attached to a different, but similar, group of 0s and 1s. Of course there is the third group who is loyal to Linux, but that is a completely different story. How can you be loyal to bits and bytes? Lets take a look at where the rift began.
First, you have to make the distinction between Apple computers and PCs. For our purposes, there will be two groups; Apple computers running Apple Software and PCs running Windows by Microsoft. Microsoft was the first company with a point and click operating system that included windows. Technically they weren’t the first, Xerox had devised an operating system with a mouse about 10 years prior with gasp a mouse. But since Xerox thought their idea would not succeed, they didn’t release their product and Microsoft is generally considered the first, if not the first people to market, a user friendly operating system. So, here is a quickly rising company with a ruthless president to lead it. In this free market economy, there had to be a challenger. Enter Apple computer, for a long time, the computer. Once they got there point and click operating system working, they were in a position to challenge Microsoft and all of the companies committed to using Windows software to run these new “personal computers”.
I believe the rift began to grow as each company fought to gain a user base and released version after version of their software, updating and improving with each new release. It seems that some people just can’t resist a rivalry, so one began between the Mac-Heads and the Windows users. The Internet helped strengthen this rivalry by giving loyal users the opportunity to set up homepages reflecting their strong views about their operating system.
I use a Windows PC. When I have used Macs, I haven’t minded them at all, they just take some getting used to. I think what happens is a person who is used to one operating system is forced to use the other once and a while and finds the features hard to find or hard to understand. So most people immediately deem the operating system a piece of junk and tell everyone they meet how much better and easier to use their operating system is. Perhaps it isn’t that Microsoft is inferior to Apple or Apple to Micrsoft, but the two programs are just different. Nevertheless, opinions are very strong on this topic; I think that the slight desire for a rivalry has been fueled by narrow minded people who don’t wish to adjust to changes. A little rivalry can’t hurt, though, and the only thing it can do is improve the software.