I've recently been having some "Microsoft verses Apple" discussions with friends and colleagues. I don't hold strong opinions about either operating system, but I may have a slight preference for Apple as I have been using a MacBook/MacBook Pro for the past twenty-seven months at home, though I use Windows at work and also have a largely-neglected Windows computer at home as well.
I first became a user of a Mac computer in 1999 (not including using them when I was very young and we had a family Apple computer), as the School of Visual Communications used them. However, as my specialisation was in Web and Interactive Multimedia design and development, I made a conscious decision to build and design websites on my Windows computer and test on the Mac. The decision was made due to the fact that Windows computers owned the majority of users.
In those days, the Mac was a little more incompatible, and most of the software that I had bought was for Windows. Saving files was difficult, and files created on the Mac could not be opened and read on the Windows computer. These days, it's not such of an issue. Apple has come a long way, and I know many who have adopted Apple technology over Microsoft. These days, it seems that many have fallen out of love with Microsoft.
Microsoft is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. Microsoft brought computers to a wide audience. With this innovation and high levels of adoption, there were inevitable issues with some of its operating systems, particularly when new operating systems came on the market. Also, consider the popular browser, Internet Explorer (IE). In the early days, IE became the most popular browser and was superior to the likes of Netscape. With this popularity, IE has had a difficult time in disappearing. There was a time when IE6 was widely-used and respected, but those days are long gone, and the success of IE6 has made it difficult for this browser to go away, much to the dislike of developers. However, IE led the way for other browsers, better standards and automatic browser updates.
In conclusion, the world does owe much to Microsoft's beginnings and noting Microsoft's mistakes. Other companies are building upon the good of Microsoft and noting the mistakes of the company by setting and developing standards and producing usable software and applications. Microsoft should continue on trying to compete by developing high-level, usable, and standards-compliant software and applications. Failing this will allow other companies to take more of a market share.
Hopefully, these mistakes and less-than-popular operating systems and browsers can be forgotten to pave a new future.
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