MAC vs PC, the “unlevel playing field”

Well, as you know, I frequent the ZDNet blogs from time to time, especially the Ed Bott and Ryan Naraine ones.  Because of that, I also come across some other blogs on ZDNet that, for my money, are far too opinionated with far too little objectivity and/or factual basis or knowledge for those opinions – one of those is the Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ blog, Hardware 2.0, which is theoretically supposed to be focused on hardware, but he seems to digress a lot and talk about Windows OS, and most of the time it’s a pretty negative spin.  But recently, I was attracted to this one post:

Snow Leopard and Windows 7: Two flavors of the same GUI?

As usual, within the first few paragraphs he showed his normal bent toward denigrating Microsoft technology, but then, much to my (pleasant) surprise, he came up with the following observation.

“But there’s another, far more important reason why Windows and Mac OS will never be on a level playing field. It’s because Apple tightly controls the hardware that Mac OS runs on, while Microsoft is at the whim of every OEM out there. While the Mac OS runs on a selection of systems, and can accept a small selection of hardware upgrades, people expect Windows to run on anything and everything, and then to be able to add any and all hardware they can find to the system. While it’s true that the Mac OS is more stable than Windows, much of this stability is down to a smaller, more controlled hardware and software ecosystem. People complain that Windows crashes, but more often than now it’s not Windows that’s responsible for the crash, but a driver or some dodgy bit of hardware. But Windows gets the blame.”

Wow, except for one slight phraseology issue (that I’ll speak to later), this is one of the best expositions of the basis for one of the key pillars of the MAC vs PC perception issue that I have ever run across – wish that I had come up with it myself, so I’ll do the next best thing and call out Adrian’s observation here.  I suspect that vast majority of my partner audience is already very familiar with the point made above, so I’m pointing this out, not so much for the “aha” factor as for the fact that he has done such a good job of addressing this issue in such a succinct, yet clear and comprehensive manner.  

So, why is this important to you, my partner friend?  Well, in the coming days (months/years?) as Apple continues to make inroads with its mobile technologies, it’s certainly possible that your customers will come to you with ideas about using the MAC platform for their business computing.  There’s (currently) 2 major reasons why a business would be drawn to the MAC platform, the perception (and I mean perception, again, we’ll get to that shortly) of better stability and the perception of better security. 

If you ever need to have the stability perception discussion with a customer, then I highly recommend you cut/paste the K-H blurb above into OneNote and save it for future reference.  It’s all the better because it would come, not from you or me, but from a professional technology blogger syndicated by ZDNet, which gives him (sometimes undue) credibility.  The small but crucial clarification point, regarding the perception of stability, that I’ve been threatening to get to is this: Windows actually can be as stable as MAC when it’s run within the context of the same hardware and software control as the MAC platform routinely enjoys.  So I take issue with Adrian “while it’s true that the MAC OS is more stable than Windows”.   Take DataCenter, or any of the 2003 or later Server products -- DataCenter with its tightly controlled hardware and software requirements is capable of, and even certified for, 5-9’s level of stability and reliability (and this is the SAME essential kernel code and architecture that runs the desktop OS).  By the same token, you’ve seldom heard about stability problems with 2003 or later Windows server products, and again, I point out, since the 2003 code base, the kernel for server and client are the same.  So, my point here is that, the apparent difference in the platform stability between MAC and PC, is largely based on perception supported by the fact that MAC OS can ONLY be run in a highly controlled hardware/software paradigm.  If the customer is willing to accept those same kinds of hardware and software limitations (e.g. using only signed drivers, and/or logo’d software) for their PC platform, there’s ample evidence to show that they should expect the same level of stability as the MAC platform.  And, even though I obviously can’t guarantee every case, most of you already know this is, by and large, the case from your own experience.

Before I sign off here, I know this is already long, I did want to quickly address the other major pillar, security.  If you haven’t already, I would ask you to peruse some of my recent posts around this pillar, specifically the post I did yesterday and the one on May 31st around how MAC maintains most of its security “halo” by virtue of security by obscurity.  In pure fact, the MAC OS X has had significantly more vulnerabilities reported than Vista and the PWN2OWN stuff that I related in the 5/31 is pretty compelling in my opinion since it comes right from the “hacker’s mouth”.  Here’s an except of that: “…the Mac is easier to exploit.  The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do.  Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.”   The real point to make with this is that the Windows platform is the best security bet going forward.  Thanks to our SDL programming Initiative, we are constantly getting better around security (again, lots of evidence for that).  On the other hand, as we see by PWN2OWN results and comments, as well as things like the 50+ Safari patches; Apple lacks the formal, predictable, and successful security approach that Microsoft brings to the table with AutoUpdates, Patch Tuesday, and the SDL and our world-class Security Response system.  All of this would point to more risk, from a security standpoint, on the MAC platform going forward as their security by obscurity protection starts to wane in the face of potential increasing market share.  So even though MAC currently has the benefit of the perception of being more secure at this juncture, if someone is making a strategic platform decision in the near future, they need to understand the whole story and the ramifications of relying on that perception moving forward into an increasingly sophisticated and worsening security environment.

Hopefully you’ve stuck with me through this lengthy post and picked up some useful messaging for having the “MAC” discussion with your customers or others.