When was the last time you saw a "switch to the Mac commercial? You know, where people babble about how much they love their Macs. It must be one of Apple’s final efforts to get a firm grip in the computing industry. Now let’s examine the truth behind Apple’s Macintosh. Apple computers originated as another garage creation, but it rapidly ballooned into a large company supplying educational facilities with the immensely popular original Apple computers during the 80’s. Nowadays, things have changed greatly, and Apple is at a great disadvantage.

In today’s Microsoft dominated world, Macs are notably inferior compared to the IBM compatible PC class. Apple Macintoshes have some major drawbacks that are preventing them from becoming as usable as PCs. Even as I was doing research on this topic, I had to fight against an iMac in the library; it was a slow and clumsy machine which I had to hit "escape" for nearly 20 seconds just to get the browser to stop loading a webpage. Speed is the most serious drawback of the Mac. Today’s most expensive Macintosh home computers only have a top processor speed of 800MHz, but PCs, respectably, have reached the 2.8GHz plateau. That’s 3.5 times the clock-speed of the Mac. Secondly, most of the computer software written is for PCs, not Macs. Also, Macs are rather expensive, you can build a PC with the same specifications as the Mac for hundreds of dollars less, and get more bang for the buck. A more trivial, but annoying feature of Macs is their standard one button mouse. Only recently did Apple have an epiphany that two is better than one, and let’s not even mention the Microsoft made IntelliMouse Explorer Optical, which happens to have 6 buttons.

The quality of the operating system of the Macintosh does not exceed the system itself, just beneath the craptacularly elegant surface of Mac OS X is a wild wired world of UNIX, an early business oriented operating system designed for professional (often geeky) people only. Therefore, Apple has even little credit for the core of the software that all of their machines run. So many innocent people have fallen victim to the colorful mirage of the Mac, only to serve as a lifetime slave of Apple, never to return to the light of PC computing. So I hereby warn you, looks may be deceiving.

Though a major PC critic would just dismiss this topic completely and go on chanting "PCs rule, Macs drool, Macintosh lovers are complete fools", I have to say Apple is not entirely hopeless, they have several (one) product that deserves at least a review, such as the Apple iPod, an MP3 player capable of holding hundreds of hours of music, even I have a (remote) interest in. Apple seriously should give up on computers and work on those. I’m sure we all hate Microsoft, but in the meantime, buy a PC, so we can all live in the happy world of Bill Gates and friends.