After reading "In the Beginning was the Command Line", I was looking at the whole Mac vs PC war in a new light. To get this out of the way, I have always been a PC person because their product had always been lower priced, as mentioned by Neal Stephenson. But what I found interesting in this reading was Stephenson's experience with punchcard readers and the long and grueling task of communicating with mainframes that would take up entire rooms. His style of writing made the read much more personal for me and much more humorous and really illustrated the frustration that came with communicating the giant machines.
When looking at PC vs Mac war, I was fairly well versed on pros and cons of both sides, but I believe that Stephenson put the debate into clearer words. Him providing his personal experience with the computer giants helped me understand what they actually provide for the user/customer. What Apple provides the public and why they are seen as so as more innovative is that they strictly sell hardware. In other words, what you buy in the store is exactly what you get. They don't sell you parts that the user has to fiddle with in order to make the product work. There is no need to open up your command bar messing with files because Mac doesn't sell you that. They have made the bridge between man and computer more accessible and wiped the fear of buying an expensive piece of metalwork.
Having been a PC user for as long as I've had a computer, I like the imperfections that come with Windows. Apple has done such a great job of creating a user friendly machine by closing the doors of imperfect that Windows has left open. I believe this is where Windows has appealed to different audience that wants to explore these open doors and thus creating something that couldn't have been created by a Mac.
No comments:
Post a Comment