Windows Vista vs Apple Macintosh? Nah – Atari vs Amiga is the real question.

I spotted Mike had posted on Windows Vista and that we find ourselves in a strange place. We have a product that is way better than the perception amongst “those in the know”.

First up – I really was not a fan of Vista on day one of release. I had a lot of issues with drivers and application compatibility which in turn created problems with stability and reliability of my machines. It was a shame – as first impressions do indeed last. The good news was we were already hard at work on a numbers of fixes and on getting Service Pack 1 complete.  SP1 completely changed my view of Vista. I like it. I really do. It is way, way better than Windows XP. I can at last happily recommend it to people I like :-)

Which then leads me to Windows Vista vs the Mac.  Each has strengths and weaknesses and each is a great OS with a slightly different primary focus. Given Windows Vista is much more widely adopted (outselling 30 times Macs) it isn’t surprising that the much smaller community of Mac users is more vocal. This is pretty much identical to what I lived through during my early days of computing (post ZX80, post BBC Micro) when Atari ST vs Commodore Amiga was the big discussion. My recollection is that the Atari ST easily outsold the Amiga in the UK and hence Amiga users were much more vocal about why their machine was clearly better.

I can’t recall the term for this – but essentially a community that feels itself under siege will tend to be louder and more certain of its convictions. At an individual level it works something like

  • Wow – I have committed so much time to doing X, have felt so much pain whilst doing X, been laughed at by so many others for doing X that either
  • Option 1: X is absolutely awesome, all this pain is worth it and everybody else is stupid for not doing X or
  • Option 2: I was wrong to do X and I just wasted a lot of time and everybody else was right and I am stupid.

Interestingly Option 2 is not easy to accept. Therefore many individuals will go for Option 1.

Now the really important bit – which was best, Atari or Amiga?

P.S. I do not infer that you are stupid if you went for a Mac – but I do if you went for an Amiga ;-) Just kidding...