To which religious platform do you belong? Most likely, the Church of Microsoft. Fewer and fewer these days belong to that shrinking sect, the Cult of Macintosh. But it might now be time to consider a conversion.
Most people are aware that Apple had a key role in creating the home and business computer market in the 1980s. Indeed, many believe that, had Apple had the kind of marketing savvy and ruthless business determination possessed amply by Microsoft's chief executive, Bill Gates, the Mac would have the 90 per cent market dominance enjoyed by Microsoft.
That's because back when using a computer running an operating system from Microsoft (known as DOS, the developers' shorthand for Dirty Operating System), computer users were stuck with typing in long and eminently forgettable commands on a keyboard in order to get their machines to do anything (an operating system controls the basic functions of a computer).
Macintoshes, on the other hand, arrived with a strange new dangly bit a mouse and offered a screen that had images rather than just text. You could pick up the images and move them, react with them in intuitive ways. This made sense to people used to picking up papers and dropping them in files, and moving objects around on their real (as opposed to virtual) desktops.
Apple basically invented, in commercial form, the personal computer as we interact with it today an easily-understandable graphical user interface (GUI), a mouse, drag-and-drop handling of items, folders, trashcans, filenames that were just names and didn't need little three-letter tails like .exe or .txt. None of this was lost on Gates, the man who can turn his company on a dime if need be (as he so astonishingly demonstrated with Microsoft's approach to the Internet, which he at one time dismissed as faddishly unimportant). Along came Windows, which remained a pale imitation of the Mac until its Win95 incarnation. Windows on the PC was a much cheaper option than a Mac, and the punters voted with their pockets.
So why should you consider Apple? Because the argument most companies use for not using Apple unavailability of software just has no relevance for the majority of businesses, which primarily just use Microsoft Office (and the Mac was the first system to get Microsoft's excellent Office 98 suite). Macs, being in a minority, have had to gain the ability to read documents from other systems and indeed, can accept PC disks, reading and writing to them even formatting them.
And Macs are infinitely easier to use. Numerous independent studies have shown that employees are significantly more productive on Macs as opposed to PCs, primarily due to their intuitive design.
Most people don't access the Net from a Mac, but most pages you view on it were probably designed on one, as were many, if not most, CD-Roms you load into your PC. Of course, Macs have always even before the word was widely used been automatically able to network. The new $1,299 iMacs, due out in two weeks, have inbuilt networking and Internet capabilities. They might be the ideal office machine for your business inexpensive, high-performance, networked, Net-ready. Plus, with their clear blueish plastic casing, they look pretty sharp.
Sure, Apple has had some tough times, and it is not out of the woods. Apple users must tolerate a lack of games and often applications available to download off the Net are Windowsonly. But there are compelling reasons to rethink choosing the Mac, especially if you have a small office and primarily work with computer-generated documents. And with three profitable quarters behind them and predictions of a fourth and solid sales of the new G3 line of computers old Apple is showing it has staying power. Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie
