Apples' products vs Microsoft's products

[nguyenthao]

Anyone here can give me some comparison of Apples' products and Microsoft's products? Thanks for advance.

[pbmods]

Hooboy. Hot potato, here we go.

OS:

• I'm used to *n?x-like operating systems, so Mac OS X is the natural choice for me. It behaves in ways that I expect it to, whereas Windows does just about everything differently.
• I also compile and run a LOT of open-source software on my system, which I have found to be needlessly confounded by Windows' endless stream of 'wizards'.
• On a personal level, I like Apple's vision. The latest Leopard guided tour had me almost in tears. They challenge fundamental assumptions to engineer a superior User experience. Take the new QuickLook; every operating system has a 'Preview' pane (including Mac OS X Tiger and earlier). But Apple took it a step farther to let you view the entire contents of files without having to open the application that created them (including Microsoft Office and iWork documents and multi-page PDFs). Think about what you could do with all the time no longer spent waiting for applications to load.
  
  I just don't see that kind of innovation coming from Redmond, and when it's about to whom I'd rather give my money, I'd like to pay for advances, not 'catching up'.

Apps:

• Microsoft Office still looks like... well, Microsoft Office. You still have the toolbar at the top of the screen. iWork, on the other hand, gives you an inspector pallet and a sidebar. I personally like Apple's interface because I have a widescreen display, and vertical space is more valuable to me than horizontal. But this one's a personal choice.
• QuickTime can play AVI's, and for WMVs, there are free QuickTime components (the 'Pro' version costs money, but you can download the WMV playback component for free).
• I don't really do much "for fun" on a Windows system, so I don't know much else about Microsoft's other software offerings.
  
• Oh, games. Yeah. Games are still "a problem" for Mac Users... because you have to wait about 1-2 months extra. But just about all major games coming out for PC also have Mac releases planned. If not concurrently, the Mac versions are still coming out pretty close to the PC release dates.

Hardware:

• Ok, ok, Apple manufactures designer computers. Yes, it's a label. So it goes. But you know that if you get a Mac, you can run both Windows and Mac OS X on it, right? Just a thought, there....

[numberwhun]

Apps:

• Microsoft Office still looks like... well, Microsoft Office. You still have the toolbar at the top of the screen. iWork, on the other hand, gives you an inspector pallet and a sidebar. I personally like Apple's interface because I have a widescreen display, and vertical space is more valuable to me than horizontal.

Sure, M$ Office looks like M$ office, if you use anything before Office 2007. With the advent of Office 2007, they went to a tabbed approach and it is pretty nice. While I am not nor have I ever been a fan of M$, they have always done a good job by their Office product line. Open Office is a great equivelant, but they still have a number of features that are lacking in comparison. M$ Office is the defacto standard and that will be hard to get away from.

That said, thank goodness for CrossOver office, which allows you to install M$ Office on *nix Operating Systems.

Regards,

Jeff

[drhowarddrfine]

I don't play games so I always find it weird when someone says they have to have Windows vs another OS because the other OS won't play games, even though Windows may wind up costing them hundreds for the price of software and necessary processor and memory upgrades.

For examples, I have not bought a computer since 2001 because everyone keeps giving me their 'old' computer when they upgrade to the latest Windows version. I'm writing this on a 2-year old laptop (FreeBSD installed) I just got a couple of months ago. This year alone I've received three desktop computers. One older box I installed Windows only for testing web pages on IE. Another became my test computer for FreeBSD. The third became a server on my "server farm".