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I can’t stand Windows Vista.

An example from today. I’m using Vista in Parallels to test a web site I’m working on. Okay, I go in, I make notes about rendering issues with IE 7 with the site (IE is the least standards compliant browser out there, including IE7). I want to shut down Vista and get on with my life.

I go to the Windows menu (yeah, the Start menu) and the default option for shutting down is “Shutdown and Install Updates). I skip that option and select “Shutdown” from the little side menu... and what does Vista do but it decides to install updates before shutting down without even asking me for permission.

Stupid Vista! Stupid Vista! Stupid Vista!

I’m tempted to just force quit parallels. Heck, I’m tempted to just nuke the hard disk file for the Vista soft-partition. Heck, point me toward a red button and I’ll nuke Redmond (not really, but darn me if an OS that does what it wants regardless of what I want is going to get the better of me).

Macs Are PCs, Dammit!

In the end, Apple's flagship product is nothing more than a really good PC.

by Lance Ulanoff Buzz up!on Yahoo!

"I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC." I've heard these phrases countless times on TV and the Web. Heck, the ad is even running on the PC Mag Web site right now.

This brilliant ad campaign from Apple, which manages to make PC users look like uptight boobs, is entertaining and impressively effective. It also helps foster one of the greatest misconceptions of our still relatively young digital age: that Windows-based computers are PCs while Macs are, well, something else. Of course, that's wrong—dead wrong.

If the ad were accurate, John Hodgman (the actor who plays the "PC") would say, "I'm a PC," and Justin Long (the actor who plays the "Mac") would say, "And I'm a PC, too." Why? Because a Macintosh is a PC!

Pardon my frustration, but this common misconception has had a long and lasting impact on the venerable brand you're patronizing right now. Here's a typical conversation I have on an alarmingly frequent basis.

A few weeks ago, I attended my brother-in-law's wedding in Virginia. He started teasing me, saying that even though I was the editor of PC Magazine he, and his extended family, still loved me. He felt the need to poke fun because his is a "Mac family." (In fact, while I was there, his wife was using iChat on her 15-inch MacBook to talk to friends in Europe.) My brother-in-law couldn't understand why anyone would use a PC. In any case, this ribbing continued throughout my visit, with his constantly making snide comments about how it was "okay that I was at the wedding even though…." Then he'd trail off as if he were stating a widely known fact: "Lance is a PC guy; he doesn't care about the Mac."

Finally, after a few days of this, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I cut him off mid-jibe with: "Not for nothing, but PC Magazine has been covering the Mac since 1984. We regularly test Apple products, and many of them win our Editors' Choice award." I was talking fast, and while my brother-in-law seemed ready to offer some apology or joking rejoinder, I plowed ahead with what I thought was a zinger, "And by the way, the PC in PC Magazine stands for "personal computer," and the Mac is a personal computer." My brother-in-law laughed, but he did look a bit startled by my intensity.

I'm sure I overreacted, but I think he ended up serving as a proxy for all the Macheads who somehow manage to forget that they're simply using a computer and not some other-worldly device that was born instead of built.

Back in 1984, PC Magazine, as well as the industry in general, typically referred to PCs as IBM PCs. Then Apple—after the collapse of the Apple III program and the dismal reception of the "Lisa"—launched its new system, the "Macintosh." Virtually all IBM PCs (and non–IBM PCs, which we referred to as "clones") ran the text-based MS-DOS operating system. The Mac was the first to have a graphical interface, making it even more unique at the time. Even so, it was still just a PC, with a keyboard, an integrated display, a floppy disk drive, a CPU, a hard drive, memory, and a file-system structure. The inclusion of a mouse made it special, too, but IBM PCs soon had mice of their own.

I'm not saying that Macs are not wonderful products. We almost always love them when we test them here at PC Magazine Labs. Apple is, without a doubt, the most consistent company in computerdom. But Steve Jobs is not God, and his products are not grown on trees and picked by loving workers who let them ripen on cotton sheets by the window sill. If you need further evidence that Macs are not vastly different from Windows-based PCs, remember that all Macs now use Intel CPUs─the same CPUs you find in Windows PCs. With Boot Camp, Macs can even run Windows. I wonder if the folks who do this refer to their Macs as PCs.

Enough already. Put simply, we all use computers that run different operating systems. If the Apple ad campaign were really correct, Long would say, "I'm a Mac," and Hodgman would say, "And I'm a Windows." Oh, wait, that sounds odd. How about this: Long says, "I'm a Mac PC," and Hodgman says, "And I'm a Windows PC"? Of course, the ads would then be far less effective, because consumers might realize that the differences Apple is trying to tout aren't quite as huge as Apple would like you to believe.

I'm under no illusions that Apple will change, or even drop, the most effective ad campaign technology has ever seen. I also know that people will forever assume that PCMag.com and PC Magazine are Windows-only destinations. They'd be wrong. But who am I to argue with good old-fashioned American marketing?