Guide to Mac

Welcome to the first of what will be a regular(ish) column about the other computing platform - the Apple Macintosh. The Mac is becoming increasingly popular, and the ability to use one is now a desirable skill, even an employment requirement. Therefore, you may enjoy learning more about the shiny white computers!

We will look at many different topics regarding the Mac, such as the Operating System’s features, core technologies, and built-in hardware and software abilities. I don’t claim to know everything about the Mac, and will probably get things a bit wrong sometimes, but together we can hopefully get a better insight into the workings of the iPod’s bigger brother!

This week, I think we should get one thing out of the way, something that many people have major misconceptions about - what actually is a Mac?

A Mac is a computer that runs the Apple Macintosh Operating System rather than Microsoft’s Windows. That’s it. Simple eh? So what misconceptions am I talking about?

1. A Mac isn’t a PC, it is a toy, made from obscure un-upgradable technology invented by Apple purely for the Mac.

The Truth: Macs are actually made from Industry standard technologies, and use normal things like DDR2 RAM, ATI or Nvidia graphics chips, and now even Intel x86 processors (they used to use IBM processors similar to, but obviously more powerful than, the processor in your XBox 360). They are fully upgradable to the extent allowed by the individual machine’s form factor, taking all the same pieces your PC does. The only thing that’s not the same as on a PC is the firmware chip (similar to a BIOS), which is made by Intel. Microsoft was actually planning to support this technology in Vista, but eventually dropped it along with other features. You might also find it interesting to know that the only major hardware features actually Invented by Apple on its computers are things like the laptop Track-pad and Firewire data interface that other computer manufactures have since added to their own machines!

2. You can’t get any software for the Mac anyway. You can’t even get Office! The only programs you can get are ones made by Apple, like iTunes.

The Truth: Whilst there is defiantly more software available for Windows than for the Mac, there is a huge amount of software for Apple’s computers. In fact, most of the software that you can get for Windows is also available for the Mac, with mostly old or unpopular software unsupported (that’s without Bootcamp, but we’ll look at that in a few weeks!). Also, only a small percentage of software for the platform is made by Apple themselves, such as the iLife suite of applications that comes with every Mac. Microsoft Office is also made for the Mac, with such programs as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, MSN Messenger and more included. It may also surprise you to know that Many of the Office for Mac applications actually debuted for the Mac long before they were available for Windows!

3. Macs are only good for artists, they don’t do real computer stuff.

The Truth: This is the most common one. So why does everyone think Macs are only for Artists, and moreover, why do most artists use Macs? To find the answer we have to look back into the first days of the personal computer. Back when the Mac had just become available, it was completely revolutionary. The purpose of the Mac was, and always has been to be a powerful computer that could be used by mere mortals. Hence, it was adopted by everyone, including artists, graphical designers, etc.

Eventually Microsoft brought out its own Operating System, Windows. Borrowing heavily on the principles that made the Mac so successful, Windows was skilfully marketed and quickly stole market share from Apple. However, one feature crucial to the artistic community was missing from Windows for a long period: Proportional Font Typography. Simply put the Mac allowed proportionally spaced font characters (where each letter only used the space necessary for the character’s size), whilst Windows only supported monospaced fonts (where each character took the same amount of space). It wasn’t until Windows version 3.1 that proportional typography support was introduced, and by that time artists and software makers were happy with and thus stuck to using Apple Macs. Thus Apple over the years has catered more and more to the artistic functions of a mac with advanced colour synchronisation and more, however the Mac is not only for artists but is designed for everyone.

So there we go. We can see that Macs were never designed for just artists, but came to be used by artists because of it’s greater font support in comparison to Windows. Macs are powerful yet easy to use computers designed for everyone, and are fully fledged computers made from industry standard technologies (even if Apple did invent a couple of them!)

Well, that’s the hard work over! In the coming weeks we will look at more interesting things to discover what makes a Mac a Mac! Next week, a brief overview of the Mac Operating System, OS X. See you then!!!