Today's WSJ Personal Technology section talks about how PCs, while becoming simpler to use with more intuitive graphical user interface, have also become more difficult to use because of viruses, spyware, and other security problems.
To cope with this assault from an international criminal class of virus and spyware writers, hackers and sleazy businesses, average users have had to buy and monitor an arsenal of add-on programs. They have been forced to learn far too much about the workings of their PCs. And too many users have had to take drastic steps, like wiping out their hard disks and starting all over.
So instead of being able to view their computers as tools for productivity, research, communication and entertainment, consumers have been forced to devote rising amounts of time and money just to keeping the machines safe. The PC has, in many cases, gone from being a solution to being, at least in part, a problem.
I was thinking about how little I saw those issues personally. My good friend, Dave, makes a living in PC maintenance. With the recent virulence of computer viruses, spyware, and adware, he gets a steady stream of customers. Many come back to him within months of having their computers sanitized, especially if they have teens in the house downloading bunches of free applications.
The WSJ article goes on:
Meanwhile, the company's historic rival, Apple Computer, has been making giant strides in ease of use. The Macintosh, with its OS X operating system, is rock solid. It is elegant, and -- when you do a feature-by-feature price comparison with Windows competitors -- it's surprisingly affordable.
[... omitting section about Mac bundled features ...]
Best of all, the current Mac operating system has never been attacked by a successful virus, and almost no spyware can run on it. This is largely because the Mac's small market share presents an unattractive target for digital criminals. But it's partly because the Mac operating system is harder to penetrate. I'm sure there will eventually be viruses that afflict Mac users, but nowhere near the 5,000 new Windows viruses that appeared in just the first six months of this year.
The same could be said of the Linux operating system which I ran on my last PC between 4-6 years ago. Unfortunately a lot of the commercial apps I wanted to run wouldn't run on Linux: the girls' edutainment CD-ROMs, Photoshop Elements, and others. Sometimes there were software alternatives, but they often lacked the same polish.
We made the switch to an iMac, augmented later with an iBook. I won't say that there hasn't been the occasional hiccup, but I have been able to spend a good deal of time focusing on the project at hand and not "what's infecting my computer now?" Over three years running and not a single virus. Whether or not it is due to the operating system's design or it's lack of market share, I don't care. I'm just glad that they work as well as they do.