I ‘have been a PC’ since my first PC/AT Compatible in 1987, and I have witness its progress from DOS to Windows and from Windows running on DOS to Windows 7 today. Back then, installing a new peripheral is a nightmare a it may require one to have some understanding of what are interrupts (IRQ) and I/O address, while manually configuring the peripheral with jumpers. It was a far cry from the true plug and play systems we have today where the BIOS and the OS does everything for you. Few would remember the horror days of ISA and VESA bus before the PCI bus standard was introduced.

I also witness how we progress from slow analog modems connecting to a jumble of BBS, to the broadband modems connecting to the Internet today. Not to mention how Microsoft’s NT server products and its descendants displaced Novell Netware from the corporate world to become the new standard in Local Area Networking.

As such, I have rarely been in touch of any Apple hardware, except in one instance back in 2000 when I had to support 2 companies (one into designing and the other into magazine publishing) as a system integrator. Even then, I had minimal contact with a Mac, as another vendor handles them and my job is simply to coordinate with that vendor. Since I don’t even use any of its products, I wouldn’t have been critical of Apple if not for all those Apple ‘evangelists’ and advertisements disparaging the PC. These people and ads annoy me to no end as they apparently have no touch whatsoever with reality.

FACT: PCs are the real workhorse in the world.

As far as I am concerned, when I stepped into the office, the only machines that is doing much of the real work, are PCs. In fact, in the bank I worked, 100% of the trading activities are done on PCs. There is no Mac in sight. It doesn’t matter the spin doctors in the advertisement firms are using Macs to create those nice ads you see on TV or the Internet, the fact remained that it is probably a PC running the CAD/CAM software designing the machines that produce the Macs, and the building that Apple, Inc is situated may even have been drawn by an architect using Autocad on a PC, while the employees of the bank which Apple does most of its transactions are also using PCs. All of which run on Windows!

FACT: The Mac is not superior in engineering to a PC

For those of you who might not be aware, the PCI-Bus was first introduced on the PC before Apple incorporated it on its Power Macintosh. So now who is disparaging PC as being inferior? Frankly, while Macs may have the allegedly more superior Firewire, it is the PC’s USB standard that dominates and even Macs have some USB ports built in. Meantime, Macs today use Intel processors and so do PCs – which have been using Intel CPUs all these while.

Some argues that it is true that a Mac is superior because the Mac version of the software runs faster and better on a Mac than on the PC. Well, that is a fallacy. Consider this, a game would probably run smoothly on the XBOX but a PC version will never provide the same experience. Consoles are thus superior than PCs since the same game runs faster on them? By no means is that true because the consoles have very specific range of hardware and are specifically designed for that purpose. While a Mac is not designed specifically for a particular purpose, the available range of Macs with limited variation in specifications makes it easy for Apple to optimise code of its OS for these machines. Now consider a PC which is a product of a Sim Lim Square Ah Beng Shop, with parts ordered by an enthusiast with ‘the best components’ he reads about on forums and magazines, or the myriad of so-called ‘state of the art’ PCs and laptops produced by a branded manufacturer. Need I elaborate further?

FACT: The Mac OS is not superior to Windows

Mac users often felt more superior than Windows users. I can still remember the term ‘Windows 95 = Mac 86’ when that version of Windows hit the market, and I have heard remarks as ridiculous as “I can code better with Java on my Mac than on my PC”. Doh!

I will concede that the Mac OS may have more user friendly features considering some of the reviews I have read. But I would disagree those makes it superior to Windows unless those features are something you use constantly, which translates into a remarkable improvement in productivity over time. However, other than the features, is there anything else a Mac User can boast about? In fact, this is my challenge to Apple, let Psystar or anyone put the Mac OS on any machine other than just those Apple make, let it go onto machines with configurations as diverse as those supported by Windows and let us then see how will it holds up!

Stability? I have seen Windows XP machines running for months on end without crashing. Now, take a moment to consider the easily available number of peripherals out there for the PC – display cards, sound cards etc – how of often do you change or add any of these things in a Mac? A bad driver from one of these, or a component with some inherent flaws in the process of manufacturing, can produce a remarkably bad experience for a user. And if you want to talk about Windows vulnerability to exploits, malware and virus, it is of no surprise malware writers worked overtime to exploit Windows when the PC is the real workhorse of the world. After all, that is where it make the most impact. I personally wouldn’t be surprise if Mac users would just double, they would also see an increase in such attacks on their systems.

FACT: The iPhone is nothing great

Yep, nothing great. It first came without an MMS feature, and only after several upgrades of the phone’s OS did Apple finally put that feature in grudgingly. In fact, in earlier versions of the phone you can’t delete individual SMS. You either leave them alone or you delete the entire thread of SMS you have exchanged with a friend. On top of that, for a long time, you can’t use it as a teethered modem. If I am not wrong, you can configure it as a modem over Bluetooth, but if you are using an old Bluetooth dongle then the transmission speed will be atrocious. That’s not mentioning you also can’t transfer a file directly over bluetooth. Yet, all of these features are built into the phone, but denied to the users. Users can gain access to these features only after they ‘jailbreak’ the phone and install third party software which might not be approved – all of which will nullify their warranty.

Can you imagine Toyota building a car that comes with an airbag that you can’t use? Or an anti-lock braking system that you must find an shady mechanical to enable before you can use it? That’s not mentioning that it comes with an internal battery that is not replaceable. Is it a surprise why some of those iPhones explode?

Now, talk about a phone that Apple claims the screen would shatter because the user exerts too much force on it. How preposterous! Remember this, while it only take a touch for one to type on the screen of an iPhone, one needs to actually press the Blackberry Storm’s screen down when typing a message. Now have you see any of Research In Motion’s Blackberry Storm with its SurePress touch screen exploding in the face of its users?

With all of the above, I am convinced that everything about Apple is nothing more than hype. Now, when I also consider also some of Apple’s anti-competition business practices, I continually find myself looking unfavorably on Apple. In fact, do you know you can’t play songs you buy on iTunes anywhere else other than on iTunes or an iPod? Whatever happened to choice? In fact, while I may frown on Palm’s method in impersonating its Palm Pre as an iPod, I find Palm’s intention in providing users with a choice admirable and noble. I could only pray for Palm to find a better method in doing so without bringing itself into conflict with the USB Implementers Forum, a standards group.

Surprisingly, you don’t see people complain about such monopolistic and anti-choice practices from Apple. I shudder to imagine what will happen if Microsoft does something like that. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised that the courts in Europe and the U.S. haul Microsoft in and slaps it with a hefty fine in a jiffy. Talk about double standards.