I was reading Chris Pirillo’s blog tonight, catching up on some stuff, and came across this: Five Ways Vista is better than OS X? where he gives his side of a blog article by Preston Galla’s article (by the same name)

Chris claims he is tired of the bickering between OS X and Windows users (as is just about everyone else) and tries to counter-argue the points brought up by Preston, and I couldn’t help but throw my hat in the ring of fire too! I’m going to throw my comments inline with Chris Pirillo’s commentary.

• Vista runs more software. You have to be kidding me? Vista may run more software, but try uninstalling it. How many protection programs do you need, as well? Is the software more stable than that of a Mac? Even if Vista has more software, you’d never be able to run or store it ALL, anyway. How is “more” even relevant?

This is a pretty weak argument on Chris’s part, as Preston points out, “An operating system by itself is a poor thing — it’s the applications that run on top of it that matter.” Chris concedes the point, however, goes off on this tangent about uninstalling. What does uninstalling software have to do with the availability of it? I suppose he could mean getting rid of malware, however that would more appropriately belong in the next section. I will give him it’s probably a good idea to have protection software, but as I said before, probably would be better suited to the next section. Stablilty is a funny point to bring up, because if I had a dollar for every time Firefox died on my Mac, I could probably hostilely take over Google. The idea that you’ll never be able to install ALL the software available for Vista is silly as well, of course you won’t, but you don’t need to either. The point Preston is trying to make is that the software is AVAILABLE for you to use if you need it. That’s how “more” is relevant.

• Vista is safer. WHAT? How many viruses, trojans, and rootkits are floating around for Windows? A bamboo plant is safer than Vista *AND* Mac OS X combined. What’s “safer” supposed to mean?

Well, Preston kinda screwed the pooch on this one, because he based his definition of “safe” on the outcome of the recent “Pwn to Own” challenge at the CanSecWes conference, Ignoring the number of flaws that have been found, even in Vista SP1. However, what’s with the bamboo plant? I don’t think a bamboo plant is *THAT* secure, I mean, if a ninja got a hold of it, he could lay the smack down pretty hard i bet.

• It’s the money, stupid. Uh. If you build a comparable Windows machine… with hardware that nearly the SAME… you’re going to probably spend the same amount of money.

Ahhh yes, the “Macs cost a gazillion dollars” complaint. Guess what? It’s true. Macs are expensive, relatively. My refurbished 1st generation MacBook Pro cost $1600, and I’ve seen them (even today) for as much as $1800. Understandably though, as it’s the nicest laptop I’ve ever owned. It’s great for just about everything I do, and has pretty much replaced my Dell Precision 650, except for gaming. However, for my grandmother, she doesn’t need anywhere near the processing power I do. She looks at email, instant messages my uncle, and…well that’s about it. And on AOL, 2.5g of ram isn’t going to make that youtube video of a farting panda load any faster. The thing that i believe would have made more since for Preston to push, instead of deciding that all people who own macs are a) rich and b) love to waste money, is that the Windows-based machines give you more choice to decide how much to invest in a computer that you may or may not use everyday. My grandmother has an HP something or other, and the Celron inside that sucker is slow as molasses, but it does for her what she needs it to do, and she didn’t have to spend her entire social security check on it.

• The Mac is closed; Vista is open. If you would have said “Linux is open,” I’d have given you a point. Apple controls the software and the hardware - the entire experience. That actually works well in the consumer space, and I like it. I like it when things just WORK together.

Preston probably could have chosen his opening words differently, methinks, and came out better for it. While I agree with his sentiment, the wording is misleading. In terms of openness, software wise, OS X wins, because it is Darwin, based on FreeBSD, and, from what I understand, Apple has contributed heavily back into Darwin, helping the open source community grow. However, the point I believe Preston is trying to drive is that you can install Vista on anything (whether or not it will run is another argument entirely) while you have to be using Apple hardware to run OS X. Chris says this works better for the consumer, by allowing Apple to control the entire experience, however, I’d love nothing more than to be able to illegitimately triple boot my Dell with Vista, Slackware, and OS X. I’m able to take things not ‘just working’ all the time, for a little more freedom with the software I buy.

• Two words - Steve Jobs. Let’s go back to the first video I recorded about the iPhone (a while ago). I understand this point - I truly do. But buying a Mac has nothing to do with helping Steve Jobs, or even Apple themselves. It comes down to the fact that, once again… the entire experience is seamless for users.

Now Preston, I’m assuming you’ve worked with computers long enough to know that EVERY computer company has a guy named Steve at some head position…and that guy named Steve is usually a douchebag for the most part. This argument is childish and something I’d more expect to see on a Blogger blog or Youtube comment, not on the website of one of the most widely distributed computing magazines.

The final answer is, there is no answer. I use 4 operating systems weekly, if not daily: (in order) FreeBSD, OS X, Vista, and Slackware. They all have their strong points: FreeBSD is the best server operating system, HANDS DOWN. I don’t care what you say and I won’t listen to reason. OS X is great for lots of things, and is pretty much my general purpose os, used mostly for Rails development. Vista is used for games, and to keep the wife off my laptop. Slackware, well, Slack4Life!

Point is, if you’re going to argue over os’s, don’t. You’re wasting your time, because someone is going to come up and tell you you’re dumb for not thinking like they do, and then you’ll be wrong on the Internet, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?