yah yah, except apple has to deal with ONLY ONE iteration of hardware set whereas Windows has to deal with billions of possible hardware combinations.
it's not windows's fault for manufacturers bundling craps with computers.
it's not windows's fault for crashing for badly written drivers, software or poor quality hardware.
thanks.
So… What were they doing the rest of the time?
Ensuring greater compatibility means MS are on a slower release schedule and may explain some 6/7 year gap between Xp and Vista, but not all of it.
Considering Apple changed from a proprietary internal OS to a UNIX based OS and then changed the processor architecture in less time than Microsoft took to transition from one OS (XP) to another (Vista) which both share the same kernel and run on the same architecture is quite impressive.
Microsoft play a clever game, you need to stop falling for it:
[1] They talk about the “eco-system” and broad device support and hardware choice as an advantage of Windows.
[2] Then when anything goes wrong they blame their partners.
A bit hypocritical by Microsoft don't you think? Not quite as hypocritical as blaming a lack of interesting hardware made by their partners for the failure of “Plays for Sure” and then introducing Zune which used… a reference design from Toshiba (who just so happened to be one of Microsoft's “Plays for Sure” partners!).
But that's another story.
It works both ways too. Let me demonstrate:
[1] Is it Sony's fault they still have to offer a 7 year old OS on their super cool TT Laptop beacuse Vista doesn't run as well and their customers demand it?
[2] Is it HPs fault their machines suffered from spyware, malware and viruses in the past?
Further to your impassioned defence of the biggest, richest software company in the world:
- Poor drivers and poor hardware is hard to handle at an OS level (although not impossible!).
- There is no way an OS should crash because of poor software.
- There is also no way an OS should slow down because it has a lot of software installed. period.
This is all to do with poor architectural decisions made in Windows (*cough* Registry *cough*). And since Microsoft make Windows they should take some of the blame. They should have taken responsibility for the security of their platform far earlier than they did.
Trying to undermine Apple's software engineering expertise with the age old “they support more hardware” argument will always fall flat on its face.
It's precisely the reason that Apple follows the integrated model they do and is able to deliver better products faster to market as a result. They avoid many of the pitfalls that Microsoft must handle.
The fact that Microsoft does a reasonable job (and getting better) of managing all these pitfalls and is able to be so successful is quite impressive.
But this is not a reason to belittle Apple's software engineering and expertise.
PS: Mac OS X runs on more processor architectures than Windows (3 — PowerPC, X86, ARM). Many PCs are built to a standard spec. Most PC Laptops have similar hardware following an intel platform. Sure there are quite a few custom rigs out there, but let's not over state the amount of configurations MS has to support — it's not like every single user in world has a unique PC!
