Swap Blog

BetaNews has a nice post up discussing Microsoft’s shift away from ads based on Seinfield and Gates and into a place where they take control of the “PC” brand and define it as they want it to be seen. Recently, Apple has been able to defined the “PC” as how they want it to be seen. That may not have lead to more Mac sells, but it has helped define what the Mac is seen as.

Apple,and their ads, have made their products the definition of what is cool, and not really dealt with defining what the product does well. That point leads me to what I think is the move important part of the Beta News post - that the entire PC vs Mac debate may be irrelevant as computers become more containment / holding devices and less about their distinctive nature.

Both Mac’s and PC’s run on the same hardware base now. Most Macs can and do run PC programs via emulation now. The number of Mac application software titles is still a fraction of the number of PC titles. There is virtually no Mac based game market. Almost any software title on the Mac can be found on the PC as well. Most PC’s are in semi sterile cases - be it beige or black - but are still used to produce the majority of data and code in the world. So the hardware is the same, the amount of software and code base leans heavily toward the PC, but the Mac comes out looking sweet due to it’s appearance and the perception of it’s coolness via proxy. Even with that though data and how is it is accessed / moved and used is the real future of computing. Bottom line, the real differences between Mac’s and PC’s at the moment is the case, the interface, and how that interface is perceived in the marketplace, not what is done with and on the computer. In the marketplace, Macs and OS X are pretty and nice vs PC’s and Vista which are boring ugly dogs.

Back to the Beta News post. This post is worth of a read and the move by the Redmond Gang to try to define the “PC” how they want it to be seen - as one used by people to produce things / information - is one that is worth watching in the future even if the argue is moot due to how data is handled today.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.