Comparison between Windows 7 and Mac OS X - Essay Example

?Computer sciences and Information technology Comparison between Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.7 Lion) This is a comparison of two major operating systems, namely Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS in their current iterations, i.e. Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.7. Both are popular although Windows is dominant, but there are quite a few differences between the two systems, many of which can be traced to their origins, usability and their functions. After a brief overview of the history of the two operating systems and mentioning key differences (see also the table below), both are compared in terms of usability and security, and in terms of their support for multimedia. It is shown that despite having nowhere near as much malware as on Windows, the Mac remains vulnerable although its usability and multimedia support are much better. The Macintosh OS X series of systems introduced in 2002 is based on Unix, specifically the FreeBSD and NetBSD implementations that were contained in the NeXTSTEP object-oriented system. Mac OS X enabled Apple to move away from its previous Mac OS operating systems, which lacked pre-emptive multitasking support and memory protection (Abu Rumman, 30). Mac OS X is POSIX compliant that is built on an XNU kernel. Originally designed for the PowerPC architecture, it is now made for the x86 architecture, the same as for Windows. The current version of the Macintosh operating system, as of March 2012, is 10.7.3 named Lion and the next version 10.8 named Mountain Lion is due later this year. The Windows operating system is made available in a number of editions including Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. Windows 7 added support for a number of additional features such as virtual hard disks and handwriting recognition. It is considered to be a vast improvement over the previous Windows Vista, which was considered to be a disaster. The latest version of the Windows operating system, as of March 2012, is Windows 7, which was introduced for public use in July 2009. It has similarities to the line of operating systems beginning with Windows 95 but the next version named Windows 8 is expected to be a drastic redesign focusing on multi-touch support. Main comparisons between the two operating systems Windows 7 (32/64 bit) Mac OS 10.7 Company Microsoft Apple Minimum system requirements 1 GHz IA-32/x86-64 processor; 1 / 2 GB RAM; 16 / 20 GB free disk space Intel Core 2 Duo or higher processor; 2 GB RAM; 4 GB disk space for installation (OS X Daily, 2011) Retail price $119.99-219.99 $29.99 Variety of versions Six different versions including Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate A single all-in-one solution (with built-in server) Sources: Microsoft and OS X Daily Of the two systems, Windows enjoys the greatest market share. The main reasons for its dominance is the huge variety of hardware it can run on, the amount of developer support behind it and the amount of games that are available for the platform (Abu Rumman, 30). Apple instead enjoys a niche in the creative and educational markets. On the other hand, the Mac has the advantage of access to Apple's Mac App Store, it has a built-in browser that is better than Internet Explorer, it already has multi-touch support, suffers from much less malware than Windows, it has several features not present in Windows and it has better refinement overall (Reisinger). Examples of the special features are Resume, Air Drop, system-wide Auto Save, Expose, Spaces (virtual desktops), Mission Control, Time Machine and Remote Wipe. These make Lion well ahead of Windows 7 (Warne). With Lion, Apple also introduced a digital distribution method for greater convenience instead of the traditional physical selling method, which Windows is still following. In terms of usability, the Mac is renowned for being generally easier to use from being more intuitive and built on the principle of minimalism. Microsoft on the other hand, is generally more cumbersome and complicated with perhaps too many unnecessary elements that can cause confusion. As a simple example, if a setting is changed on the Mac, it is applied immediately whereas under Windows, the user needs to apply the changed settings. Windows has a lot more options for customisation in general than Mac, but this also makes it more complicated. The Mac's simplicity by offering fewer customisation options adds to its usability (Olson). The two systems are similar in that double clicking enables documents to be opened or applications to be launched. A potential problem with this though is that clicking on attachments could grant a worm control over a computer. This could be avoided if the act of viewing and executing is differentiated and the computer is aware of the choice. On a Mac, applications are installed by placing them in the Applications folder. Windows users on the other hand have to run a multi-step installer so they could benefit from the same drag-and drop style of the Mac OS to improve both usability and security (Yee, 48). Usability often conflicts with the need for security. However, this can usually be avoided if the two goals are considered together during an iterative design process in which users' expectations are addressed and authorisation is inferred. A more serious security issue is that of Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks in which computers are used to launch further attacks on other computers. Kumar & Surisetty evaluated the resilience of Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard (10.6) based on ARP flood, ping flood and TCP-SYN flood. It was found that for an ARP-based attack, an iMac running Snow Leopard crashed under low bandwidth. Also, Snow Leopard exhausted more computing resources than Windows 7 even when both were installed on the same iMac host computer. Under a ping flood attack, the processor exhaustion was 98% compared to 35% for Windows 7 and under a TCP-SYN flood attack, the processor exhaustion was 98% compared to 45% for Windows 7. In comparison, Windows 7 appears to be better designed to cope with DDoS attacks by limiting its adverse effects and is therefore more resilient than the Mac OS. This finding is surprising because Macs are often promoted in Apple's marketing campaigns as being more secure than Windows. As for multimedia support, like Microsoft's Office suite, Apple provides an iLife suite of multimedia applications. However, Apple still lacks support for Blu-Ray (Laptopmag). Windows also has feature-rich multimedia applications but they are not as well integrated as iLife. Abu Rumman (30) compared older versions of three operating systems in relation to a theoretical Optimal Multimedia Operating System designed according to the characteristics and requirements of multimedia. The two versions of the Windows and Mac operating systems examined were Vista and Leopard respectively. It was found that neither of these provided adequate support for multimedia. However, this assessment was made in comparison to an ideal that does not exist and not between the two operating systems themselves. Both systems offer a variety of multimedia support although Apple with its iLife appears to be better designed for multimedia. Both operating systems in their current form were briefly compared with respect to their history, usability and security, and multimedia support. An overview of the history and some general differences was provided at the beginning. In terms of usability, it was shown that the Mac excels relative to Windows, which is seen as more complex despite offering more customisability. Windows is also more prone to malware but Macs are no more secure either, as was shown to be the case for DDOS attacks. Macs also excelled with respect to multimedia support due to its iLife suite although neither was perfect for multimedia. Overall, the Mac appears to be superior to Windows but for historical reasons, Windows remains dominant. Acronyms ARP Address Resolution Protocol DDOS Distributed Denial of Service FreeBSD/NetBSD - Berkeley Software Distribution NeXTSTEP An OS developed by NeXT Computer POSIX Portable Operating System Interface TCP-SYN Transmission Control Protocol-SYN (A type of DoS attack) XNU The OS kernel acquired and developed by Apple for OS X Works Cited Abu Rumman, Nadine. “Operating system support for multimedia: survey.” 2009 International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology – Spring Conference. Pp. 30-34. 17-20 April 2009. IEEE Computer Society. Kumar, Sanjeev & Surisetty, Sirisha. “Microsoft's Windows 7 vs. Apple's Snow Leopard: An experimental evaluation of resilience against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.” IEEE Security and Privacy. 29 September 2011. IEEE Computer Society. Laptopmag. “Mac OS X Lion vs. Windows 7: Which OS is best?” Laptop magazine. 9 September 2011. February 2012 Microsoft. “Windows.” Microsoft. 2012. February 2012. O'Donnell, Adam J. “When malware attacks (anything but Windows).” Attack Trends, IEEE Security & Privacy. Vol. 6, Issue 3. May 2008. IEEE Computer Society. Olson, Brandy. “Differences between Macs and PCs.” Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Virtualization Blog. 2011. February 2012. . OS X Daily. “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion System Requirements.” OS X Daily. 7 June 2011. February 2012. . Reisinger, Don. “Enterprise applications: Apple Mac OS X 'Lion' bests Microsoft Windows 7: 10 reasons why.” Eweek.com. 2 August 2011. February 2012. . Warne, Dan. “10 reasons Mac OS X Lion eats Windows for breakfast.” Apc magazine. 7 September 2011. February 2012. . Yee, Ka-Ping. “Aligning security and usability.” IEEE Security & Privacy. Pp. 48-55. 8 October 2004. IEEE Computer Society. Read More