Now that users can run Windows on Macintosh computers using solutions such as Apple's Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, it obviously provides flexibility to users wishing to benefit from multiple operating systems. (It's possible to have a single Mac configured to triple-boot into the Mac OS, Windows and Linux - plus users can directly access the Unix OS which is the underlying system for OS X for a fourth operating system.)
But I think there's a good argument that a Macintosh makes the ideal Windows computer. Why? Because in the vast world of Windows "clones," there is immense diversity in the combinations of hardware that comprise any given "PC." And though these components are theoretically built to common "standards" for the Windows OS, there are potentially frustrating and expensive consequences of incompatibilities between Microsoft Windows, various hardware components, and the software "drivers" written by their manufacturers or third parties to control and communicate with those hardware components.
I spent an enormous amount of time diagnosing a problem with installing a higher-performance 3D graphics display in a Windows XP machine which was ultimately an incompatibility between a four-model series of 3D graphics card and a tiny chip on the computer's motherboard (the "southbridge," or I/O controller hub). The video card worked fine on other motherboards, and the motherboard worked with other video cards. Ultimately, changing the motherboard was the solution (the video card was more valuable, and had been purchased as a performance upgrade), but I'd spent over 100 hours in diagnostics and research before recognizing a clue in an online post about a similar, but different problem. This would have been an impossible problem to actually resolve professionally (any service department would have determined that one or the other component was faulty and informed the customer to buy a replacement graphics card, which would have also failed, after which they would have replaced the motherboard, which would have failed, etc.) at any reasonable cost. This was my own PC, and I am a determined diagnostician, so I was willing to put in a huge amount of time over a period of many months to find the actual solution - but this would be a horrific and probably unresolvable problem for most of the population.
That this kind of incompatibility problem might only affect a tiny part of the PC buying public (those who happen to have the particular combination of southbridge chip-equipped motherboard and graphics card) doesn't provide encouragement because of its rarity - on the contrary, it means that fewer diagnosticians will have ever encountered it, much less shared a solution in the online community.
Compared with the vast market of PC clones, there are a very limited number of Macintosh hardware models, which have tightly-controlled component sources known to Apple, Inc., who also provides nearly all the Windows drivers for this hardware. The Macintosh user community is a vigorous, active culture of sharing information. These factors create a "Windows on Mac" microcosm in which there are far fewer mysteries than in the "other" 96 per cent of the computer-using world.
So there you have it. A Mac may just be the ultimate Windows computer. Whouda thunk?
1 comment:
Nice point! I have encountered such component incompatibility problems in the past (though certainly not to the same extent as you!). And one of the things I have always liked about my mac experience is the fact that everything works together so seamlessly. This is the inevitable result of their being a computer company, who manufacture both the hardware (though obviously not all the components) and the operating system.
Definitely worth looking into for my next purchase.
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