How to Make a Mac Killer

Software Continued

Vista doesn’t include any audio editing software that can match Garageband, but Audacity is a free, open-source audio editor that’s powerful enough for making podcasts and recording music. One piece of software you don’t need on a Mac is anti-virus: OS X’s Unix underpinnings, and the fact that there are so many more PCs than Macs mean that virus writers don’t bother targeting Apple’s machines. OS X is a popular platform with developers – Apple’s most recent developer conference, WWDC, sold out twice as quickly this year as last year, and there are some excellent apps for the system available from small developers.

Windows is far stronger than OS X in games. Some games are released for OS X (both EA and Activision dabble in it), but they tend to run via a Windows compatibility layer, so it isn’t native OS X code. For gaming on a computer, Windows and DirectX are the dominant forces. As Macs use standard Intel CPUs, they’re capable of running Windows, both inside a virtual machine running in OS X, and natively, which means you can access all the software you get on a PC, plus OS X software.

This isn’t a particularly valid argument for games, however; as we’ve seen, the vast majority of Macs have relatively poor graphics chips (only the Mac Pro towers, which start at £1,899, can house PCI-E graphics cards). While you can run games on a Mac, it’s a sub-standard experience. If you enjoy PC gaming, you’ll get a better experience and better-value hardware with a PC.


The fact that Macs are PCs inside means that you can hack OS X to run on a PC (turning it into a ‘Hackintosh’), – a process that’s legally dubious (according to Apple), but relatively easy if you’re a competent PC user. OS X vs Windows is a never ending debate (although it’s often more of a slanging match), and OS X has some quantifiable advantages over Vista. We’ve already mentioned security, and in our experience, it suffers less from the gradual slowdown and accretion of crap that blights Windows.

It’s less noisy than Windows – Vista’s UAC and fondness for pop-up notifications and bubbles make it severely irritating. Pop in a USB flash drive and in OS X, it simply appears on the desktop. Vista interrupts you with a massive auto-play menu. Exposé, OS X’s method of switching between multiple Windows, is also much better than Vista’s useless Flip3D. However, to some extent, it comes down to personal preference. OS X isn’t without its annoyances, one of which is that Apple tends to be less generous than Microsoft with its free updates.

Free patches for OS X are almost entirely limited to security and stability issues, whereas Microsoft has a long and admirable record of using free Service Pack releases to add new features to Windows. OS X is more secure and, on balance, a better OS than Vista, but with so much software available for both systems, and gaming being far better on Windows, there’s a lot in favour of the PC too. This round is a tie.