Monday, March 10, 2008

Essay #3

My best friend John in High School had much wealthier parents than I did, so he always had the cool toys. He had a Commodore 128 and a new MacIntosh computer. The Commodore wasn't really very good for anything but video games unless you were a hacker, but the MacIntosh was so easy to use it invited even the most mechanically challenged person to sit and play. It had a one button mouse that the PC world had yet to embrace and a host of applications that were years ahead of their time. P.C. at this point had yet to evolve into anything impressive, monochromatic screens (That's one color for the non-geek) and only a keyboard with a boring interface that only accepted B.A.S.I.C. commands. If you don't know what B.A.S.I.C. is then count yourself fortunate. It was the nasty first langauge of PC that caused the untimely death of many PC's at the hands of too frustrated uber-geeks with baseball bats everywhere. Then D.O.S. was released and some really cool stuff started to happen with your computer, you could custom order the parts and have it designed to your own needs, unlike the MacIntosh which came simply as it came. Then Window's 3.1 came out giving P.C.s hardware compatibility with everything from a mouse to a printer with ease, and the age old debate between which was better, P.C. or Mac was born. Of course we all know which one is better, or do we?
Essentially there are two camps in computers. Those who use them for productivity and those who use them for fun. This discussion really only comes up when it is time to actually buy a computer since they are very expensive and you want to get the one you’ll get the most use out of. In definition Mac refers to all computers made by MacIntosh while P.C. typically refers to machines made by any number of computers that run Microsoft Operating Systems like Windows XP or Vista. Mac and P.C. are both strong and weak for different purposes. In general I have found that those who need productivity and need a computer to work with choose Mac and those who use a computer for fun tend to use P.C. The reasons for this range from technical to the feel of the interface. Cost and the availability of different kinds of software are also key issues to many professionals but not so much to gamers and those who just want to E-mail Grandma the pictures of little Stedman’s first potty.

If you are a graphic artist or a web designer you will probably choose Mac. Moviemakers and sound editors as a rule ALWAYS choose Mac. The graphics are better and the hardware is quite a bit more powerful in the higher ends. Since designing for the web and creating graphics requires a lot of horsepower and a lot of memory Mac is the choice of those who can really afford it. Movie making and sound editing actually require the computer equivalent of a Mack truck (no pun intended) and Mac specifically designs many machines for just those industries. If you are very knowledgeable in the building of a P.C. from individually purchased parts you can really trick one out, sort of like building a car from ordered parts, but this can be prohibitively expensive and there is only limited technical support. You have to know how to put it together right the first time (and I mean that, there is no lee way) or else you have a cool looking paper-weight. You could pay someone to do this for you but by that time and for that amount of money you might as well just buy a Mac.
If you are a techno-geek extraordinaire, someone who really just wants a cheap computer for E-mail, or a hardcore gamer chances are you want a P.C. Software for P.C. is a lot cheaper and there is vastly larger amount of it. Most games aren’t ported to Mac unless they are widely popular so as a gamer you have to choose P.C.. The downside of this is that to get great gameplay you have to purchase some expensive upgrades like more R.A.M., a nifty and costly Graphics Card, and possibly a better sound card. Most gamers are willing to make that expenditure and at the end of it all the cost is about equal to that of a lesser equipped Mac. You can get an E-Machine to use for E-mail that practically teaches you how to use it for less then four hundred dollars. That price tag is much less intimidating to Grandma and Grandpa who think the internet is around the goal on a soccer field. There is one exception to the productivity rule, though. In the case of companies with little Web Based business the usual choice is P.C. for their offices. Microsoft sells bulk amounts of software licenses to companies cheaper than Mac so that they can outfit a whole office with word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. This software can run on a computer that is much, much cheaper and much, much slower than a Mac with reliability and the networking of those machines is much easier too.

Many of the geeks I grew up with are totally devoted to one machine and one company yet this may be a nearsighted view when presented with the facts. When you choose a car you check out many different brands and models trying to find the best one for the purpose you intend to use it for. Buying a Corvette as a family car seems a little foolish as much as buying an E-Machine for your son who intends to be a film editing student. In the debate between Mac and P.C. you have to turn off the commercials and turn on the intelligence to make an educated and informed decision. It turns out in the end of this whole thing that the choice is not what MacIntosh would have you believe it is, the choice between stodgy old thinking or the choice of a new generation. It is the choice between to equally valuable pieces of technology suited for, and eventually used for, dramatically different things.

3 comments:

johngoldfine said...

The organization here is a little cocked up for a student essay: I usually advise that each support graf has to show both items being compared, each graf covering a different point (say cost, flexibility, power or whatever.)

What you have here is a double intro--grafs 1 & 2, your contrast material (graf 3 Mac, graf 4 PC) and the wrap....

Ordinarily I'd be beating on the student hard at this point: blah blah blah.

In this case, no. I'm going to accept this, with pleasure, because it's not a student essay and so doesn't have to jump through student essay hoops. The double intro and the outro are the tip-offs that this isn't a student type essay. Usually students rush through those grafs, assuming that the reader wants the meat in the middle. But essays are about leisurely excursions into a topic, not sprints, and when I see an essay that takes its time like this, I know the writer knew what he was doing and was doing what he wanted to be doing. My only job at that point is to ratify that he was doing it well.

And you did.

johngoldfine said...

I guess that's what they call 'giving you some lee-way.'

Matthew Lee said...

I actually wrote two versions of this essay, one is the one you saw and the other is a Frankenstein mishmosh of both. It was hard to make the second make sense without lapsing into indecipherable techno-babble and the explanations of the esoterica took way too much time and verbage, so I tried this version to strike a better balance. The lesson here and in many other pieces I have written here seems to be to try and put more effort into choosing better topics instead of hammering on one that may or may not work for hours.
I will try to incorporate you notes and that lesson into the next essay.