Who made the spoon that you used to eat your breakfast cereal this morning?
Every once in a while I’ll hear people talking about how Microsoft and Apple are competitors. As someone who’s technology agnostic, I don’t see the world in such shades of black and white. Here’s my reasoning as an outsider comparing the two.
Apple is a hardware company, their goal is selling as many units of whatever as possible, whether it be computers or mp3 players. With a focus on design and user experience, backwards compatibility takes a back seat to form and functionality. They excel at elegance and minimalism. They aim sharply at the home user. Disposability is ok. The next big thing is the future.
Microsoft is an operating system and business application vendor, their goal is to put that software on to as many pieces of hardware as possible. They are an industry leader in office applications and software development environments. They aim sharply at business and government. Backwards compatibility is highly important. They’d run on toasters if they could.
Is there overlap between the two? Sure, some. Is it a make or break difference? Not really, much is a matter of preference and familiarity.
I twitch anytime I hear someone say OS X is more “intuitive” than Windows; the word they’re looking for is consistent. Coarse application design is more similar, meaning once you get over the learning curve, subsequent new challenges have a ring of familiarity.
But more importantly, are the two environments mutually exclusive? Not at all. That’s why platform agnostics run both systems. Some things are just easier to do in some environments than others.
The operating systems wars and the phone wars are about luring people toward purchasing something from that camp. But look closer. MS-Office runs on OS X, and quite nicely. Safari and QuickTime run on Windows, and quite nicely. Once you’ve made the purchase of their crown jewel, the fighting appears to stop.
Users, on the whole, don’t care (and often don’t understand) about the underlying system. They just have a problem they want to solve, learn how to do it once and without change, and any tool that gets the job done will do.
Just like my spoon.
Note, by the way, the high value obtained by acute study of one company by the other. Imagination and innovation stem from knowing how a different perspective approaches similar problems. Fan boy adoption or name brand exclusion hurts more in the long run.
Microsoft increases their potential to make money if their familiar operating system runs on whatever arbitrary purchased hardware. Apple inverts the problem by making an operating system with an enticing experience in order to get one to buy a specific piece of hardware.