First posted on the 'Alex's Weblog' page

Apple is EU; Microsoft is USA

04-21-2006 11:15:44 AM

Posted by: Alex Marshall

As a longtime Apple Macintosh user, I’ve found that the merits and limitations of the Apple universe have started to serve as a general metaphor that I apply to other less computer-oriented fields. I’m going to give an example of this, but first I’m going to digress and tell a bit about my history with Apple.

I didn’t always use Apple. I switched back in about 1992, relatively late in the computer revolution. In retrospect, it was kind of dumb to switch, because as a writer, I had little need for the more graphically oriented universe that composed Macintosh. The MS-DOS, command-line language, sans mouse at that time, suited writers pretty well. It was or is a language, after all. You talk to the computer with words, rather than moving things around spatially. Windows had not come out yet, or at least it hadn’t affected my home computer, a Leading Edge (remember that company!), and the newspaper where I worked (The Virginian-Pilot), whose computer system, ATEX, was basically similar to MS-DOS. The home software I used, Xywrite, was basically a copy of ATEX. (ATEX would go bankrupt eventually. I think Xywrite is still published, because of its small hard-core base of professional writers that depend on it.) Trained at the newspaper, writing dozens of stories per week or month, I achieved a swiftness of editing that I still have yet to achieve on a mouse-based Macintosh or Windows environment. My hands would fly over the keyboard when I was editing a story. Using the F1, F2, etc buttons, with a thumb on the alt or option keys, I could eliminate a word or sentence with a key stroke, without my hands leaving the keyboards. When I wrote my first book, “How Cities Work”, on my little Macintosh Classic, I found I was having to sneak into the newspaper at night and edit chapters on the company’s computers, because I was so much faster on their system.

But all that is neither here nor there, because Windows, which is essentially a copy of the Macintosh universe, now dominates. There essentially is no MS-DOS based universe left, at least if you are, like me, not a computer geek. I know, or think I know, that MS-DOS is still buried underneath the Windows operating system, but we can’t see it much, at least I can’t, when I use Windows at the Regional Plan Association, where I have an office and Windows computer. We are all Macintosh users now, in a sense. Although a copy of Macintosh, the Windows system has inelegance and blunt, aggressiveness in its structure that reminds me of why I originally switched to Macintosh. There is this take it or leave it quality to it, an imperial back of the hand. I couldn’t see all that back in 1992 as clearly, but I did see that the Macintosh users were a group I wanted to be a part of. They were cooler, more progressive, freer thinking, and artier. Is it dumb to switch to a world you identify with, even if it’s actually less practical? Maybe not in the long run, in this case, because now the Mac system is easier to use, and less free of problems, than the Windows world. Perhaps the Linux world offers something better, but I haven’t ventured there.

Now let’s get back to my original purpose in starting this post. I was talking about how Macintosh, and in comparison Microsoft, have started to serve as a metaphor that my mind applies to other parts of the world.

The big example that I’ve been thinking about recently are the European Union and the United States of America. They are two capitalist systems. Both are democratic. Yet, like Apple and Microsoft, they are different. Different systems. So which is which? I’m sure most readers will see this coming. The European Union is Apple. It is more closed system, but because of that, the architecture of it is more elegant, and importantly, more equitable. It is a free trade system, but not just anybody can join it. To do so, you have to meet a set of standards, including being democratic and respecting human rights. Once a member, you are not just allowed to trade, you are given financial help in building infrastructure, and in getting your population up to speed economically. It is a different model of free trade. With a better-educated population, and one that is promised some degree of security and equity, it is no accident that Europe generally makes better stuff than we do, whether it be cars, kitchen scales or machine tools.

This all reminds me of Apple somehow. Like the European Union, it is a more closed system, almost completely closed. I don’t understand the specifics, but I generally hear that you can only make software or hardware for Apple with its approval. Because of that, software or hardware for Apple, even if made by a third party, generally works better, and is cleaner and more elegant.

America, and Microsoft, are different. They have the appearance at first, of openness. Okay, this post is getting too long. I'll come back soon -- maybe even next week! -- and say just how America, and Microsoft, are different.

Categories: americana | Architecture | Europe | Standard of Living