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Apple vs. Microsoft: An interminable tale of two
operating systems
- The potential result of Microsoft’s
tablet strategy: massive buyer confusion
by Alan Zisman (c) 2012
First
published in Business in
Vancouver June 26, 2012 Issue #1183 High Tech
Office column
While most of the buzz these days goes to mobile systems, smartphones
and tablets, most of the real work continues to get done on larger,
more traditional desktop and laptop computers, nearly all running (in
descending order of market share) Windows, Mac OS X or (some variety
of) Linux.
And whether you’re ready or not, new operating system versions are
coming your way, courtesy of both Microsoft and Apple. Apple’s next OS
X generation, 10.8 – code-named Mountain Lion – is promised for some
time this July. Pre-release versions are made available only to
registered Apple developers (so I haven’t tried it), but the company
publicly demonstrated it in early June.
Like the current OS X 10.7 Lion, it continues Apple’s desire to make
Macs work more like iPhones and iPads. With the new OS, Macs gain
iOS-like reminders, notes, messages and notifications, and using
Apple’s free iCloud service, these will be automatically synched
between a user’s Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Messages can be sent to other
Mac or iOS users – like text messages but without involving a cellphone
company – and these, too, will be synched between Apple-branded devices.
While Apple is adding iOS-like features to Macs, the systems remain
distinct: iPad apps won’t run on Macs; Mac apps won’t run on iPads.
While most of the buzz these days goes to mobile systems, smartphones
and tablets, most of the real work continues to get done on larger,
more traditional desktop and laptop computers, nearly all running (in
descending order of market share) Windows, Mac OS X or (some variety
of) Linux.
And whether you’re ready or not, new operating system versions are
coming your way, courtesy of both Microsoft and Apple. Apple’s next OS
X generation, 10.8 – code-named Mountain Lion – is promised for some
time this July. Pre-release versions are made available only to
registered Apple developers (so I haven’t tried it), but the company
publicly demonstrated it in early June.
Like the current OS X 10.7 Lion, it continues Apple’s desire to make
Macs work more like iPhones and iPads. With the new OS, Macs gain
iOS-like reminders, notes, messages and notifications, and using
Apple’s free iCloud service, these will be automatically synched
between a user’s Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Messages can be sent to other
Mac or iOS users – like text messages but without involving a cellphone
company – and these, too, will be synched between Apple-branded devices.
While Apple is adding iOS-like features to Macs, the systems remain
distinct: iPad apps won’t run on Macs; Mac apps won’t run on iPads.
But even on tablets, Windows 8 will face issues. Expect two families of
tablets running Win 8. Some will be based on the same sort of Intel or
AMD processors used in standard PCs; these will be able to run the huge
library of old-style Windows applications – but those applications
won’t be optimized for fingers and touchscreens. Other tablets will use
ARM-style processors like Apple’s iPad; while these offer much-improved
battery life, they won’t be backwards compatible with older Windows
software – only new applications specifically designed for Win 8’s
Metro will run. The potential result: massive buyer confusion. Many
home and business buyers skipped Windows Vista to stick with XP. My
suspicion: this time around large numbers are going to want to stick
with Windows 7.
Apple and Microsoft are not the only ones creating operating systems
for traditional personal computers. The various distributions of the
open-source Linux continue to evolve. Ubuntu may be the most popular
desktop Linux distribution – with new versions every six months. The
latest, version 12.04 is easy to install and use. It also boasts
long-term support and is free.
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