Mac versus PC.

My first experiences on computers date back to the fall of 1980 at the Calhoun School on the upper West side. I was a 7th grader and the "systems" back then were basically fancy calculators. There was no graphic user interface, (GUI) being that innovations like soft windows were years away from being an industry standard. In fact, up until the early 90s you had to know a little bit of programming to use any computer effectively. At the least, you had to know some basic DOS commands in order to run an application off of a CD ROM.

Anyone who had to install their own CD ROM drive before 1994 remembers the nightmare of aligning IRCs or physically configuring "jumpers" on a sound card in order to play music on their personal computer.
Yes, it was the stone age of the future age, but like all those pikers back in the middle ages, none of us knew just how early in the beginning we were living. My first IBM in 1993 had a hard drive memory totalling 256MB. It's enough to make you cry with laughter.
I think it was 1983 when I first heard the PC (then pretty much IBM) versus Mac arguments among my peers (9th graders) who were attached to their operating systems and branded computers with an almost cultish devotion.
I couldn't afford my own computer at the time. I used whatever systems where available in our lab, which wasn't easy because there was a program called "Dungeon" that every D&D fanatic was trying to either play or mod on any available computer. It was a pretty sad game, kind of like Exidy's "Venture" with only monochrome green graphics and "x"s for monsters while you were represented by a zero. It had no music or sound affects, just beeps.
I will tell you that in all the years, I'm talking 28 years now, of working on Apples and PCs, there is no substantial difference in processing speed, performance, etc. The interfaces are markedly different in their organization and interrelation (and even this has averaged out), but the truth is, and has always been: the fastest computer, the best computer... is the one that is coming out next fall. Period.

I once had an editor in the video department at a dot com company try to explain to me that Apple computers were faster because they "stacked information more neatly." He couldn't tell me how or why he knew this, but that I had to believe him because it was true. "Microsoft builds computers that run slower." He said smugly. When I pointed out to him that Microsoft didn't, and never had manufactured computers, he told me that was beside the point.
The performance fantasy surrounding Apple's computers is a myth that I have heard perpetuated time and time again. It has no technological basis. Computer power and processing speed is determined by the processing power of the chip sets, the hard drive's read and write speeds and the amount of RAM available. Those aforementioned hardware elements have historically varied from machine to machine and can be upgraded according to a user's budget. They are ultimately not a reflection of Apple's or the myriad of PC builders' product lines and design capability but of a user's disposable income.
This is not to say that Apple does not make great computers, and technological products, just that not buying Apple products doesn't make you work slower than everybody else no matter what someone who owns an Apple tells you.
These days consumers are bombarded by ads in TV and print in which a younger idiot says he's a Mac while an older idiot cowers and stutters because he's a PC. The Apple sponsored ads are clearly referencing a younger Steve Jobs and an older bloated Bill Gates to try and create anthropomorphic symbols of these rival product lines but also addressable totems for a culture of users. Neither characterization is accurate as Steve Jobs hasn't been a kid for decades and Bill Gates has never been overweight... what's more they are contemporaries who have crossed paths, collaborated and sparred in the world of business.
They are hardly a generation apart as the commercials suggest.

For my part, I have worked on Macs and I have worked on PCs and don't really see the difference in either except the fact that Apple computers have less software choices available which has more to do with their proprietary business posture than any flaw in design or manufacture. I use a PC in my home studio for the simple reason that my colleagues use PC computers. It's a file sharing, project work flow and compatibility issue, not one of perceived superiority over the "Macs".
One of my instructors once said of Apple computers,
"if the Mac were a car, it would be the fastest car, it would be the best looking, it would get the greatest mileage... but it would only drive on 5% of the roads."
that's cute, but entirely inaccurate. The Macs certainly boast some of the most objectively pleasing design of just about any product line, but to imply that they are so incompatible as to make them closed systems 95% of the time is just ridiculous and could only be believed by someone who doesn't work on one.

The bottom line is this:
if the computer you buy today does what you ask of it right now and for at least a couple of years, then you bought the right computer. Buying a product solely on its looks before looking at what it can do (Or because people say it looks cool) makes about as much sense as buying a car for the same reasons. The computer as status symbol is one of the more idiotic detours in our cultural evolution. Somehow we've managed to transfer the juvenile and emotional fixations exploited by automotive marketers that have kept people the world over buying low mileage, low quality, over priced pieces of impracticality on four wheels.

The computer you can afford, is the computer you should buy.

On a final note, I hope Steve Jobs recovers quickly and completely. I hope he lives to be 150. He's an enabler of creativity and ease of communication and deserves many more years in which to innovate for us all.

-SJ