These are two articles from the October 2008 issue of PC Magazine.
Article #1: Macs Are PCs, Dammit!
By Lance Ulanoff (Lance_Ulanoff@ziffdavis.com)
"I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC." I've heard these phrases countless times no TV and the Web. Heck, the ad is even running on the PC Mag Web site right now.
This brilliant ad campaign from Apple, which manages to make PC users look like uptight boobs, is entertaining and impressively effective. It also helps foster one of the greatest misconceptions of our still relatively young digital age: that Windows based computers are PCs while Macs are, well, something else. Of course, that's wrong-dead wrong.
For the Apple ad to be accurate, when John Hodgman (the actor who plays the "PC") says, "I'm a PC," Justin long (the actor who plays the "Mac") would have to say, ''And I'm a PC, too." Why? Because a
Macintosh is a PC!
Pardon my frustration, but this artificial distinction has had a long and lasting impact on the venerable brand you're patronizing right now. Here's a typical conversation I have on an alarmingly frequent basis.
A few weeks ago, I attended my brother-in-Iaw's wedding in Virginia. He started teasing me, saying that even though I was the editor of PC Magazine he, and his extended family, still loved me. He felt the need to poke fun because his is a "Mac family." (In fact, while I was there, his wife was using iChat on her 15-inch MacBook to talk to friends in Europe). My brother-in-law couldn't understand why anyone
would use a PC. In any case, this ribbing continued throughout my visit, with his constantly making snide comments about how it was “okay that I was at the wedding even though ... " Then he'd trail off as if he were stating a widely known fact: "Lance is a PC guy; he doesn't care about the Mac."
Finally, after a few days of this, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I cut him off mid-jibe with: "Not for nothing, but PC Magazine has been covering the Mac since 1984. We regularly test Apple products, and many of them win our Editors' Choice award." I was talking fast, and while my brother-in-law seemed ready to offer some apology or joking reminder, I plowed ahead with what I thought was a zinger, ''And by the way, the PC in PC Magazine stands for 'personal computer,' and the Mac is a personal computer." My brother-in-law laughed, but he did look a bit startled by my intensity.
I'm sure I overreacted, but I think he ended up serving as a proxy for all the Macheads who somehow manage to forget that they're simply using a computer and not some otherworldly device that was born instead of built.
Back in 1984, PC Magazine, as well as the industry in general, typically referred to PCs as IBM PCs. Then Apple-after the collapse of the Apple III program and the dismal reception of the "Lisa"-launched its new system, the '·Macintosh." Virtually all IBM PCs (and non-IBM PCs, which we referred to as "clones") ran the text-based MS-DOS operating system. The Mac was the first to have a graphical interface; that and it’s OS made it unique at the time. Even so, it was still just a PC, with a keyboard, an integrated display, a floppy disk drive, a CPU, a hard drive, memory, and a file-system structure. The inclusion of a mouse made it special, too, but IBM PCs soon had mice of their own.
I'm not saying that Macs are not wonderful products. We almost always love them when we test them here at PC Magazine Labs. Apple is, without a doubt, the most consistent company in computerdom. But Steve Jobs is not God, and his products are not grown on trees and picked by loving workers who let them ripen on cotton sheets by the window sill. If you need further evidence that Macs arc not vastly different from Windows based PCs, remember that all Macs now use Intel CPUs-the same CPUs you find in Windows PCs. With Boot Camp, Macs can even run the Windows OS. I wonder if the folks who do this refer to their Macs as PCs.
Enough already. Put simply, we all use computers that run different operating systems. If the Apple ad campaign were really correct, Long would say, "I'm a Mac," and Hodgman would say, "And I'm a
Windows." Oh, wait, that sounds odd. How about this: Long says, "I'm a Mac PC," and Hodgman says, ''And I'm a Windows PC"? Of course, the ads would then be far less effective, because consumers might realize that the differences Apple is trying to tout aren't quite as huge as Apple would like them to believe.
I'm under no illusions that Apple will change, or even drop, the most effective ad campaign technology has ever seen. I also know that people will forever assume that PCMag.com and PC Magazine are Windows-only destinations. They'd be wrong. But who am I to argue with good old fashioned American marketing?
Article #2: Is Vista Fashionable?
From PC Magazine, October 2008
By John C. Dvorak (www.crankygeeks.com)
Despite all my complaining, I have no regrets about my recent move to Windows Vista. Vista feels and looks modern, and I now wonder - because of the Mac and the iPhone – if the success of any product is going to depend on its looking good.
An emphasis on things looking good has been a hallmark of Western civilization since at least the Renaissance. There's a never-ending need to decorate and paint and make one's environment contemporary. Thus operating systems, cell phones, user interfaces, and Web sites have to be up to snuff. They must look modern as well as implement the latest ideas. It may be the case that nothing tops the efficiency of a command-line interface controlled by a geek who types like a banshee, but that's beside the point. Design is more important than anything else. History seems to indicate this as a fact. It's all about fashion. Apple put everyone in the computer industry on the trendy and fashionable treadmill, but trendiness goes back 500 years to Florence, Italy, and 1,500 years more to Athens, Greece. You could also go farther back and blame the Egyptians, who were also into fashion.
It's amusing to rise above the fashion trends penetrating each square inch of our existence, from clothing to TV shows to the GUI du jour. Yes, you can say you are above it all and condemn the whole fashion notion. But just look in the mirror! All things being equal, you will choose the coolest, trendiest products. You always have and you always will. Take any two items of equal functionality, each priced the same with the exact same distribution and availability. One looks stupid and the other looks glamorous. Which do you choose to own?
Of course, some people protest fashion statements to such an extreme that they will choose horrid-looking products just to be different. That, too, is a fashion statement, but one that leads to eventual ridicule. Even if a large contingent of virtual protesters choose the junky-looking item, overall societal pressure pushes people to the more attractive (fashionable) item. Curiously, today's fashionable item can become the homely artifact of tomorrow, while that horrid-looking product mentioned above could become the newest trend. How did society develop these odd traits? It must be a function of an innate human exclusionary mechanism that tells us friend from foe. Since this behavior dates back thousands of years, one must assume that it serves some useful purpose other than to fill the coffers of fashion houses such as Armani. The fashion industry and Steve Jobs simply exploit the mechanism. Ack.
Thus Microsoft is hounded into taking Windows onto the fashion on-ramp, beginning with Windows 95 and continuing to this day with Vista and more experimental GUls for the Xbox 360. There's no reason for Vista to have stunning icons with shading and transparency and other pretty attributes other than aesthetics, which seems to be part of a deep-seated human need. Pure functionality is acceptable to people only during the introductory period of a new and fascinating invention. For example, the Wright brothers' aircraft that flew at Kitty Hawk was a clunker, but full-size reproductions of it are absolutely glamorous.
Design has overriding priority within the human psyche, and its influence is everywhere. So why should computers be any different? Can someone tell me exactly why it has taken an eternity for someone like Steve Jobs to come around and make it clear that design is an important element of marketing? I mean, these big computer companies have marketing and advertising people who know this, right?
I blame the engineers. The engineering subclass has evolved into a distinctly different milieu with its own aesthetic that they prefer to the mainstream artsy aesthetic. As far as an engineer is concerned, a beige box works fine and looks great."Look at the lines on that cube!"
The Windows PC has always opposed the artsy-fartsy Macintosh and all the other pretty-pretty designs out of Apple. The Windows camp is biased toward engineering, plain and simple. So when Vista, the most artsy-fartsy version of Windows ever, was released, there was bound to be protest. Anyone who uses a Mac knows that it's not just a matter of form over function. You can have both, and that is what is missing from Windows thinking. The fact is we have to change our attitudes. The command line is dead, and so are inartistic interfaces.
Bite the bullet. Quit complaining. Switch to Vista. Get a better-looking car, too. On to the next generation of gear!