Microsoft is Stupid, Apple is Not

By Jim on February 7th, 2008

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My boss Lance recently wrote a column about how Macs need security software too. In his column he pointed out that Mac users are no smarter than Windows users. I respect where Lance is coming from, we’re all human and quite capable of making mistakes. However, I think he got it wrong. It’s not necessarily just about the users, it’s also about the companies and people who create the operating systems that we use each day.

Frankly, there’s no other way to say this: Microsoft is stupid and Apple is not.

Security, Security, Security…
If you take a look at the history of OS design by each company, it’s pretty clear why this is so. Microsoft has historically made an unreliable, ugly, and highly insecure operating system based on its own spaghetti/Swiss cheese code. This is no secret to anyone who has followed the industry or even used Windows on a daily basis. If you are a Windows users you MUST have spyware/virus/malware prevention software or, sooner or later, your machine is going to get nailed.

It isn’t Microsoft bashing to say any of this, it’s just the truth for Windows users each day of their computing lives.

Apple, on the other hand, decided long ago to ditch their old operating system and build one that was Unix based. Why did this matter? Well as people have begun to notice, thanks to its Unix roots, Mac OS X is a hell of a lot more stable and secure than any version of Windows ever released. Apple didn’t make this choice by chance, they thought it through and knew exactly what they were doing and why.

Mac users simply don’t live in the same inherently insecure and fearful universe that Microsoft, through its stupidity and bad programming, has inflicted on Windows users. The difference is night and day, and anyone who has ever switched from Windows over to Mac OS X (or Linux for that matter) knows how liberating it is once you realize that are free and safe from debilitating viruses, spyware, and malware that plague the Windows operating system.

Microsoft is stupid and will never get security right, Apple already has.

Beauty: It’s Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder!
And, thanks to Apple’s skill at elegant design, Mac OS X is also much easier on the eyes and far more intuitive than Windows 2000, XP, or even the deeply flawed Windows Vista (which was supposed to be Microsoft’s best shot at catching up to Mac OS X). All Microsoft had to do, in terms of design, was to copy Mac OS X, but they couldn’t even do that right. So they ended up with an ugly imitation of Mac OS X Tiger and then promptly fell even further behind after Apple released Mac OS X Leopard.

I have Vista installed on my iMac and Macbook Pro again. I’d taken it off a while back but recently installed it using Parallels so I could have Windows available for testing, reviews, etc. I was struck how ugly it really is and how much it looks like it was designed by a committee. Instead of the simple elegance of Mac OS X, Vista looks like a Frankenstein OS…bolted together and looking more and more like a stumbling, walking corpse of an operating system.

Yuck! Who would want to stare at it every day?

Is it so difficult for Microsoft to hire some talented UI designers? They have all the money in the world so why don’t they just do it? Why must Windows remain a second-rate clone of Mac OS X?

Microsoft is stupid and can’t design its way out of a paper bag, Apple remains the king of industrial design.

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