MICROSOFT AND APPLE

Microsoft and Apple



Microsoft and Apple

Introduction

Microsoft has been making the PC for about 20 years now. Macintosh Apple computers have been around longer, and were very popular before the PC, in the late 80's and early 90's. However, by the mid-90's, Macs had fallen out of style, because they were not compatible with any software or hardware used on the PC. Today, that is changing again, as Macs and PCs become more compatible with each other, but still retain their own unique features.

Discussion

On July 21, 1999, PC Data released a report stating the iMac, Apple's entry level personal computer, was the best selling retail and mail order computer in the month of June. There are a number of different reasons why this computer beat out all other Pac's on the market. One reason is the new and exciting colors the iMac is being offered in. Instead of the traditional color, beige, being offered by Dell or Gateway, the iMac comes in strawberry, blueberry, grape, tangerine and lime. Another feature for the iMac is the speed of the computer compared to the computers in its class. According to the BYTE mark integer test, the 333-MHz G3 processor in the iMac is almost twice as fast as the 500-MHz Intel Pentium III found in professional computers found today. The iMac is not the only computer offered by Apple. They have a line of professional personal computers called the G3 series. These computers are the fastest personal computers on the market today, beating other computers such as the Gateway 550-MHz Pentium III PC. Another main reason the iMac is such a big success and Apple in general is coming back is their operating system called the MacOS. Its number one feature is its user-friendliness. Apple computers such as the iMac are called plug-and-play computers. This means you plug a device into your computer, like a zip drive, and it works. No installing drivers like the Window-based computers are made to do (Leavitt, 2007).

The Windows operating system has no feature to compare to the Sherlock search engine. Finally the new MacOS is equipped with one feature that no other operating system has, and that is speech recognition. A person can ask the computer, “What time is it?” and will receive it. The most popular operating system, Windows, has no comparable feature to speak of. There are several reasons attributing to the Apple ...