“Hello I’m a Mac”
“and I’m a PC”
“and I’m a PC Too”
Oh how I miss the old Hodgman / Long double act. Those “Get a Mac” commercials from 2006 to 2010 had a smug charm, simplicity and effectiveness that played to both sides of the Mac / PC divide while spawning innumerable copycat internet spoofs. Love them or hate them, they worked and came just on the cusp of Microsoft’s launch of the debacle Vista and Apple’s ground breaking feature heavy Leopard operating systems. The mainstream Mac migration began in ernest around this time, with even yours truly finally biting the bullet and making the big switch from Dell to iMac. These commercials highlighted long standing and worsening flaws within Windows and further served to underline the sentiment that in this life, you get what you pay for. Its unlikely Apples new “The iPad is…” commercials will enjoy the same cult success the “Get a Mac” ads still claim.
After 4 years of bickering and back biting between the two characters it was time for change. The format simply became old and considering initial releases of Snow Leopard lacked the same level of stability enjoyed by its older feline sibling coupled with Windows 7’s marked improvement over Vista, the series was quietly shelved mid last year. Regrettably Apple’s marketing machine is yet to churn out any new Mac related successor, instead focus has steadily been shifting more and more to their mobile products. The potential negative impacts and discussion of spreading the Cupertino based organization too thin is fodder for another article.
Nevertheless the Mac / PC debate still rages on albeit in less of a schoolyard fashion these days. It’s become almost a semi religious crusade of some. Sad in my view but good competitive geeky fun to others. However there are those few of us who decided long ago that such childish arguments were rather redundant. Opting instead to see the productive side of both Operating Systems. I for one outlined this clearly in my Youtube Video entitled “Mac VS. PC: Windows 7 VS. Snow Leopard” found here:
An unbiased and logical approach is always best but rarely found with respect to this debate. It’s important to remind ourselves that at the end of the day, software and hardware are merely tools to get work done. Although the industry giants do enjoy rallying their followers around them and pitting their users aka “fans” against each other. All we can do is try and rise above the pettiness. Those Windows fanboys who claim they’d never so much as touch a Mac truly don’t know what their missing, although perhaps they do on some level but pride prevents a closer look. Same goes for the Mac fanatics who would rather run DOS than Windows on their shiny fruit bearing masterpieces. On a side note, it often puzzles me how so many Mac critics can slate the Apple ecosystem and describe it as “locked down” when the Mac can run Windows but a PC cannot run OS X. At least not without great difficulty.
So Todays question is Do you run Windows on your Mac?
I’m most interested to know why your running it also. Perhaps for business applications or gaming purposes. Via bootcamp or virtualization with Parallels or Fusion? Maybe its even just to feel you have the best of both worlds in one box. I’m using a 40GB Windows XP partition on my Macbook Pro as theres some graphics software and legacy applications I still need for business. On my iMac I’m running a 70GB partition of Windows 7 Enterprise for gaming. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that although Windows is installed on my Mac its rarely used. Still, I prefer the idea that I’m covered no matter what the eventuality. If someone hands me a disc that can only be read in Windows I’m glad I’m not limited to saying “Good luck with that, I’m running OS X, ever heard of it?” or “That won’t work in my computer”. Its nice to have a machine for every occasion.
Check out my related video: Do you run Windows on your Mac?
How to installing Windows on your Mac:
We need to work with a Tool called vSphere Client in Order to administrate a VMWare cluster. So we have set up a Windows machine that we use as a RDP-“relay” to start the tool from there. However, Microsoft’s RDP Client is not the best piece of software i have ever used. There is a bug which prevents us from letting uns enter our passwords in the server consoles. Nobody has a clue why it happens and why it sometimes doesn’t. Very annoying.
So i personally prefer having a local install of Win XP running on Parallels Destop on my MacBook Pro. Starting the vSphere client directly from there prevents the error from showing up and speeds up my work. Needless to say that the price is giving a Meg or two to the XP VM.
Besides of that, i only use the VM for testing purposes.
Regards
OJay
When I get a Macbook Pro I will install a small partition for Windows XP. I would use Windows XP on a Mac because my school requires Internet Explorer for certain class activities, and I might want to play a game that is not available on Steam for Mac.
Curious… what do you need IE for that firefox can’t do? I have never had problems with chrome on osX at school.
I have been taking some classes that require me to work on virtual machines. To use the virtual machines I would have to install a program that is only made for Windows XP, or pull it up in Internet Explorer. If I use another web browser like Firefox or Chrome it would not be compatible and require me to use IE.
Oh i see. Well I hate it when that happens for the sole reason that IE is a very bad browser by today’s standards. i haven’t tried IE9 but I did have the beta a while back and it gives me these annoying popups when i start it up. Maybe they have been changed in the current release.
Yeah i have a 20GB Win7 partition just because SoaSE cannot run on OS X yet. that’s about it because word comes on mac now.
I’ve been running Mac on my PC but it’s a little slow, actually pretty much gone over to Linux and Windows.
Yeah I’ve noticed this a lot from people I’ve met or know online. Mac is designed for macs so it’s not really the best on anything but a mac. I have 7 on my mac and its not too bad. I can still run games on full graphics on it and it doesn’t skip a single frame. Windows on a mac is fine, but mac on a PC is very bad idea.
Hi Dave,
First of all, thank you for creating such a great post about the Mac vs PC issues.
I’ve been a PC user my whole life and afraid to change to Mac because of the compatibility issues but like you said, I can have the best of both worlds in one box . So, I’m thinking to get the new macbook pro 15″ because I’d like to try the Mac OSX and what interests me the most is to try recording some music with Garageband. But then, Apple is announcing their OSX Lion due this summer. My question is, what do u think about Lion? Will it be unstable when it comes out (as what usually happens to new OS) ? So, I should just buy the macbook pro now and wait till Lion stable before upgrading to it?
I can run Mac (sort of) on my windows 7 thanks to hackintosh. Personally I prefer Windows but I also like Linux. I’m too poor to buy macs and I don’t like being told I can’t play with my toys. i believe everyone should be able to mess around with their computer and have a go at thinking outside the box whereas mac prevents you to do this due to hardware and software restrictions, But I will always admit that Mac always wins when it comes to video editing and design work (but always losses on games which is extremely important to me). But since I suck at anything creative I will stick to cheaper Windows or free Linux!
I hate fanboys make sure you base your decision on fact not fancy advertising and a pretty casing!
I run windows on Mac because Quickens hasn’t created a Mac version equal to that of the Windows version. Also I run a genealogy program TMG, that doesn’t run on Mac. My 2-year old Mac is slow when parallel is open. Very frustrating.