Reading Response 1 - Tommy Hinkebein

When I first started reading this essay, I detected what I thought to be a small sort of favoritism towards Microsoft and the Windows system, opposed to Apple and their Mac’s.  However, as I read on, I realized that the writer was merely heading towards the direction of pointing out benefits and flaws of each system.  The metaphors he used comparing the companies to car dealerships really helped me to get a better understanding of each company for some background knowledge.  It also supported the concept that I had been hearing my whole life: that Macs are more expensive, and arguably nicer systems (cars) than the mainstream Microsoft systems.  I have been using an Apple MacBook Pro since my freshman year of high school.  After using this for four consecutive years, I cannot stand when I have to go home and use a Microsoft PC as my home computer.  To me, my Mac was pretty easy to figure out and understand right off the bat.  It has also had way less functional problems than my PC at home. These combined factors and the use of a Mac for so long have made me into the Mac person I am today.  However, a lot has changed since this article was written.  Since 1999, Apple and Microsoft have worked more closely together and helped each other out in ways in order to make their systems more compatible.  For example, I have Microsoft Office 2011 on my MacBook.  This is Microsoft software, which works on my Mac.  This sharing of software allows me to do things that this article claims I couldn’t, such as write up Word documents on my Mac, and then re-open them on my Windows PC.  Overall, I really liked the essay, and it opened me up to a lot of information that I probably would have never known without reading it.  The author’s writing style was very unique with a very witty intellectual humor, which sometimes made it hard to comprehend what point he was getting across, due to the fact that I have never been the techiest of people.  All in all, this was a very informative essay about how Apple and Microsoft came began, how they have grown, what they are doing now to get ahead, and what they will each need to do in the future if they want to continue to thrive.