We all know that Macintosh has a new operating system, billed as the most modern in the world. It's the Mac OS X, based upon Unix, that rock-solid stuff used to run mainframes and super-computers. That's great for Mac users at home, school and in creative industries, but it also gives Apple a new window (pardon the pun) of opportunity in business big and small. Companies with Unix on their mainframes can hook desktop Macs into their networks and it all should run like well-warmed oil.
But there is another new operating system on the horizon - Windows XP from Microsoft. It's different, reportedly better than Win95 and 98, with a new user interface, not as pretty as Mac's Aqua, but better than previous Windows. The software has a fancy new interface, with snazzier colours and all kinds of ingenious shortcuts and bundled software for playing movies and streaming audio and video - in a flagrant repetition of the aggressive software-bundling behaviour that landed the company with an anti-trust suit.
Windows XP is not what everyone think it is:
1. XP is also a Trojan horse that enables Mr Gates and a horde of even less welcome folks to invade your privacy, exploit your computer and empty your wallet.
2. Windows XP is a monstrous, bloated brute that requires a state-of-the-art PC and 2 gigabytes of hard disk space before it will even say 'hello' (this means any consumer foolish enough to want to run XP will probably have to buy a new PC).
3. During installation, XP surveys the PC's hardware and creates a 44-key code, which is a unique 'fingerprint' of your system. This effectively locks the copy of XP to your hardware and has a number of interesting implications.
If you upgrade your hardware, for example, XP may 'deactivate' and require you to call Mr Gates for permission to reinstall. The same applies if you buy a new machine and desire to move your copy of XP to it. And so on.
4. XP also comes with ingenious licensing options, all of which have the effect of locking you into upgrading not when you want to but when Microsoft decides you ought to.
This is bad news, of course, for small companies; but it also scares the pants off industry giants such as BP, Argos, Cadbury Schweppes, Dixons, Marks & Spencer, GlaxoSmithKline and Shell. They have collectively written to DTI Minister Patricia Hewitt complaining that Microsoft's new tariff will generate a 94 per cent increase in the cost of software licences. They estimate that their licensing costs will rise by �880 million a year as a result, and want Hewitt to refer Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading.
Fat chance. New Labour is hooked on Microsoft. Last Thursday, trade journal Computer Weekly reported that hospital IT managers were appalled to discover that the NHS had signed a three-year licence with Microsoft without consulting them. And where the NHS goes, so too will the DfEE, the MoD, the DSS and even Hewitt's Department of Torpor and Indolence.
5. Windows XP requires users to "activate" their computers within 14 days or the computer will stop working. Activation allows Microsoft to check whether you have changed your computer or upgraded it too much. If you have, XP may pull the plug on you. You can't sell your computer with the operating system in place.
And there are more advantages for you, if you buy Mac OS X:
1. Mac OS X is free with your computer. You pay for Windows, just as you pay for the other software you need to make the PC work.
2. On a Mac, while there are now about 1500 individual third-party applications available for Mac OS X, you start with a bundle of free software: an office suite (AppleWorks) compatible with Windows versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and you get audio and video players, a music editing and CD-burning package (iTunes2), a video editing package (iMovie2) regarded as the best in its class, a DVD player and a pack of games and other stuff.
3. As a Macintosh customer you also get to use .Mac, an Internet community run by Apple, with a iDisk, which is 100MB of space on Apple's Internet servers. Apple will also host your personal website.
Membership in .Mac includes a backup system and virus protection software.
4. Mac OS X and its features, plus the bundled software, are free with the computer and you are at all times free to load them on to another computer.
5. For Mac users there is a bit of a learning curve; mostly changing habits developed with the original Mac system, but OS X is intuitive, friendly and lovely to look at. Windows XP is an improvement on its predecessors but remains more intrusive and less intuitive.
6. When you install an application in XP, you go through a slightly weird series of steps with a wizard nagging at your fingers, a bit like the offensive Paperclip that Microsoft eventually killed out of Windows 95. In Mac OS X, an installation is just a drag-and-drop; the rest happens automatically.
7. Suppose you have several computers in your house or business and want to network them so they all use the same Internet link. Windows XP gives you a 12-step set of instructions requiring you to specify the hubs, modems and adapters connecting your PCs. Most people would have to hire a professional. Mac OS X does it pretty much by drag-and-drop.
8. Windows XP does not play DVD movies. You must buy third-party software. Nor is there anything in the Windows consumer market to match iDVD, Apple's DVD-burning software, or, at the price, DVD Studio Pro, the "prosumer'' authoring program. They, like iTunes and iMovie are Macintosh only.
9. Other small but significant innovations in Mac OS X include the mail icon in the Dock (the animated band of icons on the Mac's screen that gives you access to the applications, folders and documents you are running) that tells you how many new e-mails have come in. In XP there's just an icon.
10. If you're into graphics, music or video there is, in my view, no contest. From 128 x 128 pixel icons to semi-transparency and filtering, OS X looks well ahead. OS X has iMovie 2, which still blows my mind. XP's Windows Movie Maker is not in the same ballpark, according to reviewers in the US.
11. Windows XP is a closed system, which does not support MP3 encoding, nor MPEG 2, required to play DVD movies. It does not support Adobe's PDF formats, the industry standard for document transfer, and it does not have Apache, the benchmark webserver application.
12. Mac OS is more secure than other operating systems (it is so much more secure, in fact, that different branches of the military are making plans to add Macs to their arsenal). And while there are hundreds of thousands of PC viruses there are only 40 Mac-specific viruses.
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