Microsoft vs Apples vs Linux

We're going to approach this topic of do we choose Microsoft, do we go down the Linux route, do we choose Apple products. It can be a really contentious subject. There are some people who are just really adamant about the brands they chose and use, and they are really unwilling to entertain anything else. I have my own preferences as well, so there's certainly going to be an element of that, my opinion over these three, but I'm going to try to be somewhat unbiased with this and just give you my 25 years of experience of being in this industry, and even longer being a computer geek, and what my impression is of these three.

The first thing that I want to address is that I'm going to be mainly comparing operating systems. Linux is an operating system, but Microsoft and Apple are both companies, and we can't really just rule out everything but the operating system and compare that, because there are some other considerations. So we're going to look at this from a holistic viewpoint of what these brands look like and what's associated with them: what's associated with Microsoft, what's associated with Apple, and what's associated with Linux.

Another thing I will mention is that there are certain people who get really passionate about comparing these. There are people who are just really for Microsoft, or really die-hard Apple people, or really just love Linux. Or you find people who are really anti one of these, like maybe they're against Microsoft, or they really don't like Apple products, or perhaps they just feel really frustrated with Linux, so they might be really anti one or a couple of these. I will also tell you that I have a lot of experience with all three of these, and I love all three of them, but for different reasons and different purposes.

Hardware, operating systems and apps

To really understand the strengths and the weaknesses of all three of these, we really have to understand what it is that they are delivering to us and what products there are. What we're going to classify this as is: there's a hardware aspect to this, there's an operating system that goes on that hardware, and then there are apps that get put on top of that.

One thing we have to understand is that Apple is really a hardware company. They are selling you phones and laptops and iPads. They want to sell products to you, hardware to you, and they create an operating system to work with that hardware. That is their primary goal: sell that hardware.

Microsoft actually started out as an app company, but they created an OS to help deliver their apps, to make it easier to use their apps. Later on they figured out how much money they could actually make selling an operating system and essentially dominating that market, and so they started creating operating systems. Although they do sell some hardware, it's not really necessarily linked directly to the hardware that they're selling.

Linux came about because they wanted open source free software out there that you could run on your computer, so it really always was meant to be, and still is, just an operating system.

Open and closed architecture

To really fully understand the different products that we have, we have to understand a little bit about the architecture and how they architect things. There's something called closed architecture and there's something called open architecture. We're not going to get really in depth into the details of that, but open just means that things are a little more freely available, people can go and do some editing and be able to help contribute to it, and there's a lot more freedom with it. Closed architecture is just a lot more tight in how things are operated.

Apple

Apple is typically a very closed architecture. When you go out and buy a MacBook Pro, which is a laptop, you are buying it with macOS on it, so these two are tightly intertwined and linked together. You don't really take macOS and go install it on some other device, some other company's device, and you don't typically take a Microsoft operating system and install it on a MacBook Pro. I've seen it done before, but it's not something that typically happens. So you really have this tight bond between the hardware and the operating system.

Even the apps are developed that way. Anybody can develop an app for Mac products, however the restrictions on what they can develop, how they develop it and how it operates are all there, and it's all very detailed. So there's this loose link between the apps and the Apple products, where you have to really comply with how Apple wants you to create those apps.

Linux

Now let's take the opposite side of the spectrum and take a Linux machine. Linux, which once again is just the operating system, is a free open community that really shares a lot of stuff and helps develop things together. Because of that it really has a lot of flexibility. It's a very open architecture, and you can install it on a lot of different devices, a lot of hardware, a lot of machines that are out there. Anybody can develop apps for it, so there's really kind of this loose linking between this operating system and anything that you use it on.

Microsoft

Then you have Microsoft, which is somewhere in between. They have a loose connection with the hardware that they get installed on. It's very typical that you see Microsoft operating systems installed on a lot of different people's laptops and desktops, but it's not as common to see it installed on other types of devices, so we see a loose connection with the hardware. Then the apps: there are lots of different apps available for it, and there's a lot of freedom in how developers develop their apps for the Microsoft operating system.

Because of their different approaches, it really creates a very different feel to these different products that they have. Apple is very tightly controlled, and because of that there's a sense of ease of use and stability with their products. Linux has this really free open community that has a lot of adaptability. Microsoft is somewhere in between those two.

Where each one gets used

So where would we use each one of these products? I find that Apple is great for home users. It's really easy to use and it has a lot of interoperability between their different products. We also see that it's really popular amongst creative professionals, people who are doing graphic design or video editing or any of those more creative, artistic areas. One of the reasons for that is because they had graphics and user interfaces that were really awesome and way before their time compared to Microsoft systems. It took Microsoft a long time to catch up. At this point in time I would say Microsoft has caught up and they're just as good as Apple from this creative professional standpoint, but since Apple really had the market to begin with, creative professionals still like to use Apples. There are also a lot of programmers who like to use Apple over the Microsoft products or the Linux products.

Microsoft targeted businesses. What they did is they created operating systems that work really well with each other, that networked well with each other, that were able to share out resources together. Apple had an element of that, but they decided to go down their own proprietary way, which really didn't pan out for them, whereas Microsoft created these great systems where you could really manage the Microsoft products well. So IT support generally likes Microsoft better. That's not always the case, but IT support really likes Microsoft generally speaking, because they're much easier to manage from a business perspective, or organization-wide. And because we use them when we're at work, a lot of times that's a great option for home users too, because they can take the same skills that they use at work and use them on their home computing devices as well.

Then we have Linux. Linux can be very cool because it's open and we can really play around with it. There are lots of things that we can change and manipulate and really make it work for us. Because of that it can go on a lot of different types of devices, so we see it more on mobile devices. It's free and open, so companies can take it and use it for their devices and really get the environment exactly the way they want it for their end users. It can be put on a lot of custom hardware, but it can be a little more difficult to use because there are so many things that you can really control, so this tends to be more geared for techies, at least from an operating standpoint. Using it on a laptop or a desktop is where somebody who's a lot more technical would use a Linux machine.

Three words for each

I'm going to sum up these three products into some simple terms and tell you how I use these products, because I use all three of them.

If I were to sum up my Apple products into just three words, I would sum it up as "it just works." Is that always the case? No, it's not. I've had issues with my Apple products, but generally speaking I find them really solid and easy to use. It's one of the reasons why I switched quite a while ago from Android phones to Apple products and my Apple phone, and it's one of the reasons why, even though I'm not a huge Apple person, I end up finding myself with an Apple Watch. I have an iPad, I have an iPhone, I have AirPods, I have a MacBook Pro sitting here in the back. I've got these products because I find that they work well together. I have had issues with some of the connectivity and some of the interoperability between these devices, but mostly speaking they work well together and I've had a lot of good experiences with this over some of the other products that I've used.

If I were to sum up Microsoft's operating systems into three words, I would say "easier to support." They really have built their stuff for businesses, so that people can manage it organization-wide. We have things like Active Directory and a lot of different services to help manage those machines, making sure that they're safe and secure, and to be able to help the whole organization. So they're much easier to support, which is one reason why I actually switched in the 90s from using Apple on a regular basis to using Microsoft. Today even my desktops and my laptops, most of them are all Microsoft based, because I just find that it's the easiest for me to use.

I love Linux. I'm going to vote this as being most adaptable, because we can put it on all of our IoT devices. It's on my Synology drive, it's on my TVs, it's on a lot of the devices that I have, and it works great for those applications because it can be installed and utilized on all those devices. I really don't like it from a desktop or laptop perspective. I find it very difficult to support and to do certain things on those devices. I have to do a lot of research to figure out how to do certain things on those Linux machines. I do use it from a server perspective, and it works great from a server perspective. So that's where I would use Linux: on the server, or on those IoT devices, or on the things that are really set up with a different interface to make it easy to use.

I love all three of these. They all have a time and a place in my life and in how I utilize them, and I always find it a little funny when people get really passionate about one or the other and they start hating one of the other devices. They do have their time and place in an area where they shine. You're going to have to make the best decision for you.