93.6k Views • Upvoted by Alex Cherry, Systems Administrator with a decade experience integrating Apple and Windows
A decade ago, I was a developer at the Core OS Division at Microsoft and as Apple was rising, these were similar questions that were raised internally. How come Apple is suddenly able to kick-ass while PCs are still fraught with a variety of problems.
Some possible reasons:
Some possible reasons:
- Any software accumulates crap over time. It needs to be periodically refactored. OS X went through a major reset in 1999 and took the decision not to support earlier Mac OS. Given that Apple had so few users back then, it was no big deal. Using the Unix BSD, Apple was able to be much more agile in releasing new versions with better quality. Windows has been burdened with crap running to early 1980s. I have seen many of the code written in mid 1980s in my component and had very little idea of how it worked. I just treated it as a blackbox that just worked [until it didn't]. There have been numerous attempts to reset Windows and significantly refactor stuff but it never happened. Thus, you are running massive amounts of unwanted crap in your PC.
- When you buy a PC, it is very likely to be burdened with bloatware and crapware added by everyone in the supply chain that would reduce your battery life and cause your laptop to heat up [extra computing cycles and memory would cause both]. Apple has a tight control over the entire supply chain - basically no other company touches the Mac after it is manufactured. This means very little crapware to overburden your PC.
- Apple has a much more well defined customer segment - educated, rich and tolerant. Apple could afford to prioritize quality over everything.Dell's and Microsoft's customer could range from the kid in a slum in India to a trader in wall street to a CEO of a Fortune 500 firm. People are using Windows for everything from nuclear reactors to trading terminals to your grandma's desk. This puts a lot of stress on the developers and makes for a variety of complex tradeoffs. Quality is not always the top priority if you have to sell a $250 laptop to a school in subsaharan Africa.
- Apple doesn't have to deal with pesky business users. Enterprises are great - in that they are a stable source of $$. They are the biggest chunk of revenue providers for Microsoft & PC makers. Apple, on the other hand, is predominantly consumer. However, enterprise adds a lot of challenges - such as all the backward compatibility requirements. Business users can be very vocal [as it impacts their workflow and productivity] and that means Microsoft and PC manufacturers have lesser ability to innovate. [Although Apple adoption is fast growing the enterprise, Macbook+iPad new purchases don't even come up to 20% of the market in 2015 - leave alone the existing install base. ]
- Apple is the only major personal computer maker who doesn't have a vast explosion of models. Dell, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba all have a variety of random models and spread themselves too thin. The hardware explosion makes it very hard to test and makes for poor quality hardware running under not so-well tested software.