Mac Vs Microsoft Users
There are often subtle differences in cross-platform applications, from the user interface to the categorization of menu items. Users will also have the learning curve of acclimatizing to the new operating system's user interface. Here you'll learn the most common differences between Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio for Windows. The usage share of operating systems is the percentage of computing devices that run each operating system at any particular time. All such figures are necessarily estimates because data about operating system share is difficult to obtain; there are few reliable primary sources – and no agreed methodologies for its collection. Mar 10, 2020 If you’re upgrading your tech, deciding between Windows vs. Chrome OS is a tricky choice. At the same time, it’s not comparing apples to. To sign in to Visual Studio for Mac on first launch, do the following steps: Click the Sign in with Microsoft button on the sign-in window. Enter your Microsoft Credentials: After you've logged in, you'll see an option to select keyboard shortcuts.
Oct 24, 2010 Microsoft vs. Apple: Who's winning? The numbers don't lie. Is Apple really making a dent in Microsoft's long-standing Windows monopoly? Are mobile devices taking over tasks that used to be done. These are the most used operating systems. Though all three are widely used there are significant differences between Linux vs MAC vs Windows. Windows is dominant over the other two as 90% of users prefer Windows. Linux is the least used operating system with users accounting for 1%. MAC is popular and has an overall user base of 7% over the world. Apr 04, 2017 In a briefing with TechCrunch, Apple revealed that there are now nearly 100 million active Mac users. Microsoft has traditionally dominated the desktop and laptop market so the small Mac numbers.
Operating System
The Mac operating system — earlier called OS X and now renamed macOS — has traditionally been viewed as more stable than Windows. The main reason for this was that Apple produces both the hardware (Mac computer) and the software (Mac operating system); so they have better control over the integration of the entire system. Apple is also known to use only the best parts for its computers.[1]
Since the Windows operating system can run on hundreds of different types of computers, variations in hardware configurations within those computers can cause stability problems. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of PC manufacturers and so there is a wide variety in hardware quality of PCs.
Another reason for Macs being traditionally more stable is that since PCs are the more popular choice in the desktop market, most hackers and computer virus makers target PCs. As the popularity for Mac computers increase, it can be expected that the incidence of hacker and virus attacks will increase.
It should be noted that you can run Windows on a Mac but cannot run macOS on a PC. Apple has also released a software kit called Bootcamp for running Windows on the Mac. Other software virtualization applications used to run Windows on Macs include Virtualbox and Parallels.
Another factor contributing to a better user experience on the Mac is that there is no software cruft i.e., there are no third-party applications that are pre-installed on your Mac. PCs usually come with several 3rd-party apps pre-installed. For example, antivirus software from McAfee or Symantec, or DVD reading/writing software. Some of this software can be downright dangerous for the security and privacy of the user; case in point: Lenovo's Superfish scandal. Interestingly, this feature of Apple devices also applies to the iOS vs Android debate; Android devices ship with 'crapware' (3rd party applications that many people don't ever use) while iPhones and iPads ship only with Apple software.
User Interface
The most noticeable difference between Macs and PCs is in the user interfaces. While many computer users will proclaim one or the other “superior” or “best,” this is ultimately a matter of personal preference. Highlights of the UI in Mac OS X include Launchpad (a screen full of app icons for easily launching your favorite apps), hot corners that can be customized for various types of views, a 'dock' that has icons for your favorite apps, full screen mode for apps, and 'spaces' that create as many desktops as you like so you can minimize clutter. With Windows 8 UI highlights include a touch-friendly 'metro' interface that contains 'live tiles', rectangular boxes of varying sizes on the screen that represent an app and get refreshed with the latest content from the app. Several apps utilizing the 'metro' interface are full screen apps like in tablet computers.
Security
Macs have a reputation of being more secure than Windows PCs. In the 90s and early to mid-2000s, Windows was plagued with adware, malware and viruses that were mostly a result of users downloading compromised software, opening malicious email attachments or other malicious files downloaded from the Internet. Macs had a lower market share so malware-makers and distributors focused on the Windows platform.
Today the situation is not so lopsided. Windows security and Microsoft's Defender anti-virus program have made great strides and made Windows a safe platform. Macs have had security problems of their own, like the admin login vulnerability discovered in November 2017. And because of the growing popularity of the Mac platform — especially among high-value targets like computer programmers — malware-makers are increasingly homing in on Macs as targets.
Irrespective of whether you're on a Mac or PC, it is not advisable to open files from unknown sources or any files downloaded via email or on the Internet that seem suspicious. If you're on Windows, it is further recommended to not use anti-virus programs other than Microsoft's Defender because they introduce security vulnerabilities of their own.[2]
Uses
Mac computers are most widely used in the creative professional market, including in journalism and desktop publishing, video editing and audio editing, but have also made inroads into the educative and scientific research sectors. Macs are also popular with computer programmers — a majority of web and app developers tend to use Macs.
PCs are also used with some of the video and audio editing and research purposes but are found largely as the Home or Office Computer. PCs are also widely used in gaming due to a wider variety of games available for the Windows platform.
Market share
Apple's share of the U.S. personal-computer market nearly tripled from 2004 to 2008 but hasn't gone up significantly since then, and stands at around 8.5 percent in August 2009, according to IDC. (Source: Associated Press)
In Q1 2008, worldwide PC shipments were around 70 million (up from 61 million in Q1 2007) whereas worldwide Mac shipments were around 2.3 million (up from 1.5 million in Q1 2007). Historical charts for PC vs. Mac shipments are available at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/137350.asp
The market share of Mac for the July-Sept 2007 quarter was estimated at 3.2% for worldwide sales. While of PCs ( including major companies like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba) was a total of around 56%.(Refer: http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html)
Interoperability
PCs and Macs can usually share peripherals if they connect via USB, FireWire, or Bluetooth, three industry standards available on every Mac. Most popular applications for Mac and PC use the same file formats, making it simple to exchange documents with friends and coworkers or move existing files from a PC to a Mac.
Applications
Macs major applications include Ilife and Time Machine while the PCs most widely used application includes MS Office. Some popular games provided on a Mac are Mac Crack Attack, 3D Klondike while on PC are Solitaire and Virtual Pool.
There is a variety of software available for PCs, which are better than a Mac machine for use as gaming machines since most high-end games are created for the general PC. PCs and Macs can usually share peripherals if they connect via USB, FireWire, or Bluetooth, three industry standards available on every Mac. Most popular applications for Mac and PC use the same file formats, making it simple to exchange documents with friends and coworkers or move existing files from a PC to a Mac.
Gaming
Traditionally PCs have had the upper hand when it comes to gaming because more publishers developed games for the PC platform. Dollar for dollar, PCs have also provided more powerful processors and speed is an important criterion when it comes to gaming. Some popular games that are available only on PCs are Age of Empires III and Crysis. Games that have both Mac and PC versions include Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, LegoStar Wars II, Starcraft and World of Warcraft.
Productivity Software
Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite & Cloud are available for both Windows and Mac platforms. Other productivity software like OpenOffice and StarOffice is also available for all platforms. Apple's iWork office suite, which includes Pages (word processor), Numbers (spreadsheets) and Keynote (presentation maker) are only available on the Mac and iOS platforms.
Mac vs. PC War
Macs were hugely popular when the Macintosh was introduced in the mid-80s. They pioneered the GUI and the mouse. With Windows 3.1 and the wildly popular Windows 95, Microsoft gained a large market share. In the 1990s, Windows grew by leaps and bounds and Apple went downhill. After Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple, he introduced the iMac and revived Mac sales. Microsoft bought a 5% stake in Apple with a $150mn investment in non-voting shares in 1997.
Apple's Macs have always had a small but passionate fan base. In 2007, Apple released Mac vs PC ads showcasing the “cool” factor of Macs. These have been parodied online, often with a 3rd character (a woman) for Linux.
The Mac vs. PC ads
In September 2008, Microsoft responded to the Apple campaign with a campaign of their own to break the PC stereotype.
A MAC into a PC (and vice versa)
By installing software like Boot Camp, or a virtualization solution, such as Parallels Desktop, a Mac can function like a PC machine. In other words, a MAC can run Windows on it.
Apple does not allow the use of its operating system on non-Apple hardware. So a Windows PC cannot run Mac OS X. However, the Hackintosh project allows users to run Mac OS on any supported Intel-based PC.
Price
The MacBook Air starts at $999, whereas the MacBook Pro costs $1,199 and up, depending on the model. See MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro and MacBook vs MacBook Pro.
Current prices of various models and accessories are available on Apple.com and on Amazon.com.
PCs usually cost significantly less than Macs with comparable hardware. This is mostly because PCs are manufactured by a large number of hardware manufacturers, resulting in increased competition and lower prices. A wide selection of PCs with varying costs is available on Amazon.com.
References
Microsoft Office remainsthe gold standard of productivity suites, but there are several different versions/editions of Office available for users of Apple hardware. Together with Parallels Desktop and Parallels Access, the Apple user can access just about any of these versions/editions on each of their hardware platforms.
While Microsoft produces all of these suites and the suites have a very high degree of similar functionality and visual fidelity, they are not identical, and no single suite has all the features of the entire group.
This blog post will enumerate most of the differences between the following suites and their apps:
- Office 2016 for Windows (“WinOffice 2016”)
- Office 2016 for Mac (“MacOffice 2016”)
- Office 2013 for Windows (“WinOffice 2013”)
- Office 2011 for Mac (“MacOffice 2011”)
- Office for iPad (“iPad Office”)
The vast bulk of the content in this post is in the following five tables, which list the differences I found. Note that because the tables lists differences, no row of the table will be all checkmarks (since this would mean that all the suites had this feature, and thus this wasn’t a difference) nor will any row be all “X”s (since this would mean that no suite had this feature, and thus it isn’t a difference either). I am listing the differences because listing the similarities would take much too much room—the suites are that identical.
Hopefully, this will assist you in choosing the best version/edition for your use. In addition, I will describe my personal Office setup.
Here are the five tables (click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view):
Table 1: Suite-wide differences
Table 2: Word differences
Table 2
Table 3: Excel differences
Table 4: PowerPoint differences
Table 4
Mac Vs Microsoft Surface
Table 5: Outlook differences
What differences surprised me the most? These two:
Right-to-left language support in iPad Office:
WinOffice has had support for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew for many years. While Mac users have been asking for such support, no version of MacOffice, even the latest MacOffice 2016, has had such support. Therefore, I was quite pleasantly surprised when iPad Office added support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai.(See Figure 1.)
Microsoft Mac Downloads
Figure 1: Arabic text in iPad Word on iPad Pro
No multiple selection support in iPad PowerPoint:
All Office programs provide some way to select content in a document (text, cells, or shapes, for example). This is needed so that the user can apply some operation on just that content (change the color, for example). The Windows or Mac Office applications also provide for “advanced” types of selections. In Word, this is non-contiguous text selections; in Excel this is non-contiguous cell selections; and in PowerPoint this is the simultaneous selection of multiple objects. In Word and Excel, these really are advanced types of selections that are rarely needed by even sophisticated users of Word or Excel. (See Figures 2 and 3.)
Figure 2: Non-contiguous cell selection in MacExcel 2011.
Figure 3: Non-contiguous text selection in MacWord 2011.
But in PowerPoint, the ability to select multiple objects is a pretty basic capability. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4: Multiple selections in MacPowerPoint 2011.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that non-contiguous selections were not supported in iPad Word or iPad Excel, but I was astonished and very disappointed to learn that multiple selections were not supported in iPad PowerPoint.
My Use of Office
So, which do I use? The short answer is that I use all of them.
I worked on the MacOffice team at Microsoft for several years, and at that time I also worked closely with colleagues on the WinOffice teams. Because of this background, I am often able to pick just the right Office app that will make a given task the easiest to do. One task might be particularly well suited to MacWord 2011 because Publishing Layout View—a feature only in that one Word version—will make this task easy. Another task might be suited to WinPPT because of the Animation Painter, which is not in any MacPPT version. Yet another task might be best suited to WinPPT 2013 because it needs an Office extension not available in other Office suites.
Having all the versions of Office at your fingertips used to be rather hard to setup, not to mention very expensive. Luckily, that is no longer the case.
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With a single Office 365 Home subscription, you get five installs of the Office suite and you can pick which versions make up this set of five. Since I have Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition on my Mac, I can run any version of Windows without rebooting. Because I have different versions of Windows running on my Mac, I can also run different versions of WinOffice on my Mac and have everything I need on one computer. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac here.) Here’s my setup:
- MacOffice 2011 is my main productivity suite and is installed on my El Capitan MacBook Pro. MacOutlook 2016 came out long before the entire MacOffice 2016 suite, and because of the vastly improved performance of MacOutlook 2016, I use it as my main email client, instead of MacOutlook 2011.
- WinOffice 2013 is installed in a Windows 7 virtual machine (VM) (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- iPad Office is installed on my iPad. As you saw in the tables above, iPad Office is lacking many of the features of WinOffice and MacOffice, so I also haveParallels Accesson my iPad which lets me access and run the full featured versions of any Office suite (or any other application) on my computers and use them with natural iPad gestures. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Access for iOS and Android to access your Mac and/or PC atwww.parallels.com/access).
- MacOffice 2016 is installed in an El Capitan VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- WinOffice 2016 is installed in a Windows 10 VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
So, why don’t I use MacOffice 2016 as my main productivity suite? Four reasons:
Mac Vs Microsoft
- Only MacWord 2011 has Publishing Layout View, a feature I depend on heavily and consider essential.
- To me, MacOffice 2016 has a kind of cartoon-like look to the user interface that just doesn’t appeal to me.
- There was no compelling feature pulling me to MacOffice 2016, and
- Inertia was keeping me in MacOffice 2011.
Those are my five installs, and with this setup, I have easy and immediate access to the best Office app for any particular task. I tend to store all my documents on Dropbox so that I have easy access to them from any of my Office suites or Apple platforms.
Which Office suite(s) do you use, and what’s your setup?
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Mac Vs Microsoft Surface
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