The Chicken or the Egg?
Faithful Macenstein reader and FileMaker wizard Jon Rosen pointed our radar towards a Gizmodo post we somehow missed, showing the evolution of both the Apple and Windows OS’s throughout the years.
We’re not going to say much about this, aside from that Microsoft are a bunch of no good, thieving, dirty, rotten, photocopying, scoundrels!
Of course, we’re just kidding. We love “our friends in Redmond”, and admire their work – kind of like how when your 5 year-old shows you a drawing they did of the Mona Lisa. You smile, pat them on the head, and say “Hey! Well, would you look at that! Very nice!”
Come on now, settle down. Consider the situation from a more objective point of view (mine), if you will.
Apple is in the business of making pretty designs. They happen to be pretty damn good at making an operating system too, but that’s secondary to their impeccable ability to design hot-looking, right-now electronics. Microsoft is in the business of making an unholy monster of an operating system. Up until Windows XP, they didn’t care much about how it looked or how well it worked as a home OS. If you don’t work in a big corporate IT environment, you would have no idea just how much Microsoft has to work with other software vendors and big business customers. While they’re unquestionably at odds with each other now, fighting over the home market segment, they’re relationship is more symbiotic than it may seem on the surface. Let Apple do the interface work; when MS copies it, we all benefit. Apple looks like a hero because MS copies them.
What I would like to see is a Linux x Mac x Windows comparison. About 3 to 5 years ago Linux was pretty ugly and non-usable. But now it`s much more like Mac and Windows.
Besides the fact Mac design and usability is far better than Windows, I think at some points Linux is far better than Windows.