“Color us shocked, but our panel of seven judges delivered a solid victory to the revolutionary Mac OS,” wrote CNET. The site recently compared Mac OS X to Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system, and writers John Rizzo and Matt Lake said that the judges were bowled over by Mac OS X’s installation ease and smooth hardware integration — especially for FireWire-compatible digital camcorders. The results have been published a new feature entitled OS Death Match: Windows 2000 vs. OS X.
The judges based their votes on five criteria — Installation, Interface, Software Compatibility, Hardware Compatibility, and Internet Support. Of these, only two categories were awarded to Microsoft’s business-strength Windows 2000 operating system — Software Compatibility and Interface.
“For all OS X’s promise, its biggest weakness lies in its current software. The Classic/Carbon/Cocoa compatibility triumvirate is baffling, older apps run slowly and are buggy under the Classic environment, and there just isn’t enough OS X-ready software out there yet,” wrote Rizzo and Lake.
The writers also said the judges found OS X’s interface “has too steep a learning curve” compared with the tried-and-true familiarity of Windows 2000.
In the other three categories, Mac OS X won, sometimes sweeping the judge’s votes.
“No Windows version can compare” to Mac OS X when it comes to ease of installation, for example.
The writers also said that Mac OS X “simply guarantees that attached hardware will work,” unlike Windows 2000, which has a vast morass of PC configurations and oddball hardware to keep up with. CNET’s analysis of Mac OS X’s hardware compatibility may be challenged by Mac users who have had trouble getting their external tape backup drives, third-party CD-RWs, game controllers and other various devices to work with the new operating system. (These problems should all be addressed by future updates to Mac OS X.)
CNET’s judges also find Mac OS X’s Internet connectivity to be superlative. “Apple stepped ahead way back at OS 9. OS X simply maximizes the convenience of the Internet,” they write. Mac OS X’s UNIX underpinnings and its inclusion of the popular Apache Web server help to deliver “the killing blow.”
Noting that the death match was done “all in good fun,” CNET advises readers to check out reviews of Windows 2000 and Mac OS X to decide for themselves. If you’re interested in the death match, though, pay a visit to CNET and have a read.