Quote:
Originally posted by DougHogg
Apple last year hired a market research group to conduct a survey at Melbourne University - which operates a mixed network with thousands of computers- to see how the costs of operating Mac's versus PC's worked out.
The Macs were found to be 36 percent less costly to operate.
Here is one link I found that gives the whole story:
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...e15309,00.html
So if Macs are cheaper to operate, why are there more Windows machines in use.
Years ago (in the beginning...), Apple had the majority of the PC market with the Apple II, but then IBM stepped into the market with the original IBM PC, and took over the market. (The Apple III was a big failure. Besides, people knew that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".)
Bill Gates made a deal with Apple to support the Mac (with Microsoft Word and Excel) in exchange for the rights to use aspects of the Mac OS, and he created Windows. (I recall reading somewhere, that Bill Gates originally wanted to help Apple to spread it's Mac OS to other platforms, but Apple didn't go for it. Too greedy I guess.)
So while Apple was still being very proprietory, new companies were starting up and whipping out PC clones left, right and center. IBM lost control of their own market. They tried to come out with a more proprietory version (with a patented Micro Channel Bus for plugging in perpherals) but it was too late. The PC world didn't need IBM any more. So here we are with a gazillion PC clones and only one Mac (although Apple did allow cloning agreements for a while.)
However now that all the new Macs use a version of Unix, it seems that Microsoft may become the odd man out. Of course only time will tell, but it appears that the Linux/Solaris crowd has much more in common with Mac OS X now than with Windows, and I suspect that we will see a lot of software being ported from the Unix world to the Mac. It's going to be interesting.
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Windows became the dominant OS in a very interesting way. It was half because of bad decisions of Apple executives, and half because of Microsoft winning the famous court case, saying the GUI didn't belong to anyone. Apple thought the they were the only GUI that could ever exist. So they made all of their hardware and software so different that Windows. They also didn't license their OS to other computer companies. They also charged developers for "the privilege to write Macintosh Software." Which were all really bad decisions. After Windows 3.1 came out and Steve Jobs was fired, the Mac was left to rot by 3 really bad CEO's that did nothing to stabilize the Mac. In mid-1997 with Apple almost facing certain bankruptcy, Steve Jobs returned as CEO and completely re-amped the company. He joined the partnership with Microsoft, introduced the iMac, and completely new computers, and whole lot of new software that brought the company back to profitability. Over the past 5 years Apple completely redid its entire company plan, by using PC standards like USB, PCI, and so on, that stabilized the company. Mac OS X introduced almost 2 years ago was an OS that was based on standards, in response to Microsoft moving away from open standards, and inventing their own standards. Anyways, its a really intrusting OS battle out their. With the 2 OS's being Windows XP, Unix(Mac OS X)/Linux. Since Microsoft had their anti-trust law suit, they actually trying to loose market share, and make software for Mac, so Microsoft can remain a whole company. Microsoft and Apple will be around for a long time, how long, who knows, depends on what happens to market. In conclusion, both companies are completely different now, than what they were 10 years ago.
Just a side note on game side. At the recent E3 conference a month ago, a company has a product in the works that using its own graphical type programming language specially deigned for 3d games, and can be converted to PC, Mac OS X, PS2, X-box, and the Cube very easily. Which will considerably cut cost and make their product more widely available.