PC vs. Mac -- Microsoft continues the war with a new website that compares Windows 7 to Mac OS X

You should really read some tech history before you comment. The reason PC has 80-90% market share is not because it's better than Linux and Mac OS X. It's because of Bill Gates and his genius way of doing business.

The deal he got with IBM in the childhood of M$ is the number one reason Microsoft has such a high market share, but that's just one of many reasons. But the market share does not necessary mean that it's because Windows is better than Linux and Mac OS.

If you ask an Mac user that's also a former MS user what's best, most of them will answer Mac - that doesnt mean Mac is better, but it tells a story ;)

Yeah, Windows is definitely better than Linux for the average user. Any OS that requires opening terminal for basic tasks is doomed to remain at 1% market share.

@ChronRiddik
You ever heard of Meego, Android, and WebOS? And no, Linux is A LOT more user friendly than it was a few years ago. There is almost always a gui based solution to a problem. Terminal just allows flexibility and speed to power users.

by that logic a Ford Taurus is better than a Ferrari.

@Chocko, And a former mac user who is now a windows user will tell you that windows is better. at the end of the day 80% of market has stuck with PCs and the rest has stuck with mac and linux.

I don't really buy the Ford Taurus and a Ferrari argument either. an intel Core2 is an intel Core2, doesn't matter if its installed in your mac or pc. the price gap and market gap between a Taurus and a Ferrari is WAY WAY wider than mac and PC. you can buy PCs that cost way more than anything apple will sell you.
just because a mac is more expensive doesn't make it better. it makes it more exclusive.

@Zinitio

That what everyone always says, but I've tried Linux several times and every time I end up having to do some command-line crap. One time in Ubuntu I accidentally deleted the top bar. Luckily I had Gnome-Do or something similar installed so I ctrl+space'd and opened a browser to look up a solution. "Easy fix!" the Linux blogs claimed. Great, I though, where do I right click to fix it? "It's so simple, just open up terminal..." Yeah. The average user would have checked out after being allowed to delete a menu bar.

And yeah Phone OSs run on Linux or Unix or whatever. And on THOSE you don't have to use the terminal. That's why they are so popular. You click an icon, it runs. Thats how it needs to be. I love the idea of Linux repositories but until you can double-click to install something not in one of the generic repositories (there's a good amount of stuff like that, or the repository is really old) you're not going to get anywhere with the average user.

This is coming from someone who administers a Debian VPS and runs Ubuntu 10 in a VM, by the way. I like the idea of Linux, but I couldn't recommend it to anyone who's not a power user. It would be like telling someone who wants to make a blog and has no experience to use notepad instead of Dreamweaver or Drupal instead of Blogger.

@Chocko I don't think you can say what you've said in all honestly. Without argument I believe it's fairly clear as to Why there are so many PC users as compared to Mac users. It's not quality, but rather availability.

This site is bias in retrospect but in all honestly, Microsoft is right in saying they provide choice while Mac doesn't. I won't lie in saying Mac wasn't first, but I will stand up in saying Microsoft is better. That can be said for a number of reasons, but when it comes down ultimately to the bare bones of the problem, it's because of 1) price 2) compatibility 3) availability and 4) Freedom.

Microsoft is cheaper in both maintenance costs, original purchase price, and even in costs to upgrade-- that goes without being said for both hardware and software. Mac cannot compare with price; you will simply get more bang for your buck if you choose PC, I don't care what anyone says, they know that a mediocre laptop (with the exact same specifications) will cost more on a Mac than a PC.

With that being said, one of the largest issues in hand, is the fact that PC is just compatible while Mac isn't. If I wanted to purchase say a printer, or some software, or even do so much as download something online, there is no worry whether it is or isn't microsoft compatible, that's because it always, ALWAYS is. I've never run into a situation where I finished downloading something, and it turned out that it wasn't PC compatible. Mac users will have this issue more than any other computer user (I believe Linux supports even more than Mac does, if not, then to similar levels). Software/Hardware is just hardly ever built for use on Mac. How many times have you seen Windows Only? Okay, what about Mac Only? There you go.

Availability is another, yet smaller issue with Mac. If someone wanted to purchase a PC, they could go practically anywhere, whether it was Best Buy, Circuit City, or hell, even Wal-Mart. But Macs are so rare to find, I wouldn't be able to find a place that sold them unless I drove an hour into downtown Houston, which is the only place close enough to where I live that actually sells Mac Computers.

Lastly, Freedom is the killing point. It's the one thing that separates PC Users from Mac Users. Option. Option is the one thing any PC User will miss dearly if they were to ever switch to Mac. With a PC, you are offered option. Choice-- Freedom. If I purchase a PC, the software, the setup, even the hardware can all be tailored to what I want. I can modify the way it boots up, logos, boot screens, the works. Anything and Everything can be modified on a PC to the users' desire. Software that directly modifies the regedistry can be used. I can make my PC look/feel/act however I desire. I could force it to imitate the feel of a Mac if I so desired. That option is never, and will never, be available for Mac Users. If, say, I were to purchase a PC, and decide to upgrade it, I have the option of purchasing RAM, a new internal hard drive, a CD/DVD Burner, or hell, even a new Video Card and take my out-dated PC and make it new again, without having to buy an entirely new computer. Microsoft Helps you with that. They allow their users the option to upgrade. If I were to choose Mac instead, I would Never be valued as a customer. Look what Mac has done to the 2G iPod Touch holders. They've left the carriers of the 3G iPhones in the dust. If you want to upgrade, you're forced to purchase an entirely new device. In No way does Apple support the option of 'Upgrading'. They overlook their own flaws, they lack ANY reasonable means of security, and they own the most mediocre and most exploitable software that forces users to use what they decide.

Apple is against the very thing they apparently stand for, and that is freedom. Take it from a previous Mac owner, never could I, and never will I choose Mac over a PC. It's apparent that PC is always and, until Apple chooses to be less nazi-controlling, will be always the better choice of the two.

ps I use both Win and Mac, but prefer Mac for almost everything.

@ChronRiddik: Depends on what you want to accomplish with Linux.
Generally it's just the lack of software for GNU/Linux which keeps it from progressing.

Now simple text processing, browsing, e-mailing, instant messaging, viewing PDF's are as easy on GNU/Linux as with Windows.
Keeping up to date, changing hardware setups (graphics card, Ethernet, WLAN, etc) is a tad more difficult but nothing spectacularly hard.

Usually it's just that most people know how to use Windows, Mac users are fully commited to learn to work with Apple stuff. The same goes for Linux users, although they usually are a bit more hardcore when it comes to computing knowledge and skills.

I have owned a Mac, and after it bit the dust, I decided never again. As far as I could tell, the Mac was designed to take money out of my pocket. Not only was the initial cost higher than an equivalent PC would have been, but almost everything I wanted to do with it had a cost. I found it difficult to connect with peripherals -- and after trying to find solutions, the answer was often to just buy a new peripheral.

I was surprised to discover that many utility software applications, the kind that would ordinarily be free on a PC, were almost always only available for a fee. True, they didn't always cost much, but they always came at some sort of cost. With the PC I can always find a wide variety of applications for anything I as looking to do, and with a wide variety of price points ranging from free to very expensive, but with the Mac there was usually only one or two choices, and rarely a free option. As for the highly touted software suite that came with the Mac, I personally felt they were overly complicated pieces of bloatware. They looked pretty, but were cumbersome to use, and more surprisingly, their user interfaces were neither particularly intuitive, nor did they match each other all that well -- requiring a separate learning curve for each one. The only software I liked to use was iMovie, but there, too, the Mac uses Quicktime, which was completely different than what all of my other friends had, and I always had to do bothersome format conversions.

In the four years that I owned the Mac, the operating system was updated three times, and by the end, my version was virtually obsolete. Newer software couldn't run on it. Had this been my only machine I would have been forced to keep upgrading the operating system. In the PC world, only now is Win98 to the same point where most new software won't work with it, and I expect to run my XP machines for several more years without having to upgrade.

Even more surprising was the discovery that my Mac would occasionally freeze and locked up. With the smug, condescending superiority exhibited my Mac fans ("it just works"), I would've expected the machine to be something markedly superior, but it wasn't. It didn't perform worse than my XP machines, but it certainly wasn't better.

I know there are people who love their Macs, and God bless 'em, but I love my PC all the more now that I've spent time with the Mac.

“I have owned a Mac, and after it bit the dust, I decided never again. As far as I could tell, the Mac was designed to take money out of my pocket. Not only was the initial cost higher than an equivalent PC would have been, but almost everything I wanted to do with it had a cost”

Hahahaha, THAT is such a planted comment. ‘Not only was the initial …’ blah blah blah. Also, everything they said is … yeah, that's one laughably generic, trollish piece of fiction.

“bothersome format conversions”?! They are a real pain … because no one has Quicktime, or iTunes … ph, that's right, and Quicktime uploads straight into YouTube.

This has to be written by a Dell executive. I respect Microsoft enough to know they're not this stupid. I mean it's become quite outdated. They are using the latest and greatest Windows XP? No mention of anything, but they do state XP has several more years in it … soooo …

Why do I bother? Because I didn't know it had gotten this bad. What could be some interesting debate, or hell, even fun arguing between real humans has to be sullied by losers paid to post outdated FUD and ruin this for everyone. When the debate is being waged by two armies of troll-drones spewing out recycled garbage, I know it's time to go. Go create something. To those of you who are real: respec'. and peace.

"Choice: is bunk. True that with a Mac, for the most part you get what you get. Of course, like any other computer you can add on options later. But in a side by side comparison with PC's of equal hardware, most Macs trump a PC counterpart in dollar value. I'm not touching set up simplicity or lack of viruses, either."

That statement just spoiled your whole post. I would like you to show me a comparison of a PC and a Mac with equal hardware and Apple trumping on the price factor.

One thing that I have always wondered... Why hasn't that supposed (because I see closer to 15% in my classes) %50 translated into post-school numbers? Seems like all those Mac users are buying Windows PCs once they graduate...

Bear in mind that laptops in wide use on campuses is a relatively new thing; students with portable machines is still in its first generation. Desktop PC's however, have been around for about 30 years, so when Microsoft dominated the OS market in the 90's, home computers were already ever-present. Portables, not so much. So as far as computer sales to college graduates owning laptops go, that has yet to be determined... and I think it's going to depend largely on personal criteria, like most other things

As far as the guesstimated 15% on your campus, bear in mind that the statistic I brought up came from a relatively small sampling, and that "statistic spin" is a regular marketing tactic. Statistics can be pretty hard to trust since they can be weighted heavily on so many different variables, but one thing you can trust is sales numbers. If you've seen Apple's - regardless of their market share, their overall sales is on a HUGE uptick now.

CMYK Jpeg: Incorrect. I just hunted one down, saved it to my desktop. Thumbnail generated correctly for the file's icon, and when opened in the default Windows Image Viewer, it displayed correctly. I'm using Windows 7. I submit that this is yet more evidence for the case made above that most Mac users have woefully out-of-date information about Windows when making their 'counter arguments'.