I’m a Mac and I’m a PC

Posted on: April 20th, 2010

I’m sure you’ve seen those Apple commercials with the young handsome guy playing the Mac and the older, chubbier guy playing the PC. I’m bringing this up because I’ve been asked more and more about whether one should switch to Mac.

As a computer repair man, I know that under the hood, a PC and a Mac are not that much different. They used to be. But then a couple of years ago Apple decided that it would build its computers on the Intel architecture which is the same architecture as most PCs. That means you can actually take a Mac, wipe it clean, and install Windows on it. Or, as many people do, install both Mac OS X and Windows on an Apple machine. Then you can choose which one to start the computer up with. It’s called dual booting.

Anyways, this was just a side note. The main point of this article is to give some pointers and facts to help people decide whether their next computer will be a PC or a Mac.

Similar to most choice one has to make, it’s not a black and white decision. There are Pros and Cons to both the PC and the Mac.

I just put this in a table format to make it easier for you:

	PC	Mac
Initial investment	Usually lower than Mac for the same power	Usually higher than a PC of same caliber
Cost of maintenance	Could be high, due to virus infections and lower quality parts used in PCs	Generally not much maintenance needs to be done. Parts are of higher quality and don’t break as often as PCs
Replacement parts	Easy to find and relatively inexpensive	Harder to find, and/or expensive
Compatibility	Because over 90% of people use PCs it’s not really an issue. However Windows does not give much support to Apple’s formats.	This could be an issue if you are dealing with files and software that is mainly PC based. Mac offers some support for connection to Windows based machines.
Software availability	Pretty much all software releases have a PC version. There are tons of free software available.	Most major software vendors have a Mac version, but there is a lot of software that is just not available for Mac. Freely available software is also much more scarce for Macs.
Security issues	Numerous and frequent. Lots of viruses, and other malicious software. PCs are prime targets for online scammers due to being the biggest “market”.	Hardly any issues. Macs are rarely targeted due to their small market share.
User Interface	There’s not much difference in the two systems’ user interfaces. Some things are located, or accessed differently; but, the basic operation is pretty much the same.

If you look over this table, then you’ll be able to rank in importance what are most important to you when considering a PC or a Mac.

Whether you become (or stay) a PC person, or become a Mac guy we can still help. Macs have less issues on average, but they are not trouble free. Fortunately, we are able to service Macintosh computers as well as PCs.

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