“In the struggle between Apple and Microsoft for the minds and hearts of computer users, clearly Microsoft has come out ahead. Despite its second-place finish in the operating-system race, however, Apple continues to fight and win key popularity battles on the secondary hardware and music fronts,” Walaika K. Haskins writes for Sci-Tech Today. “To its credit, Apple continues to defy certain ‘expert’ predictions that it will fail, particularly with the company setting the industry standard for music downloads and portable music players. In addition, with analysts estimating that as many as 500,000 Windows users have switched to Mac under what observers call the ‘iPod halo effect,’ the reports of Apple’s demise clearly have been overstated.”
“What lessons can we all learn from the company’s success? According to technology experts, the differences between Apple and other manufacturers can be summed up in one phrase: Keep it simple and innovate,” Haskins writes. “One major difference between Apple and Microsoft might be the type of person that each company perceives its users to be. ‘It’s almost like Microsoft is designing for geeks and Apple is designing for real people,’ said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. Wilcox said that, in terms of functionality, Microsoft’s approach produces interfaces that are too complicated. You have to plug in something that launches a wizard, he explained. Then you have to go through several steps to get a device to complete a first-time configuration. ‘Whereas Apple’s common-man approach is ‘you plug it in and it works,” said Wilcox.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Macintosh. It just works. The vast majority of personal computer users would be far better off, happier, and more productive with their personal computing experience if they dumped their Windows PCs today and got themselves Apple Macs instead. As we’ve written before: “Apple teaches computers about people. Microsoft teaches people about computers. Apple’s way is better for people.”
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