Mac OS X vs. Windows XP vs. Linux

How does Apple's next-gen System software stack up against Microsoft's newest OS and Linux?

Introduction

In this article, we'll compare the capabilities of Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP and Linux. Would-be flamers, please note: yes, I am aware that you can add third-party software or hardware to almost any system to expand its capabilities. To be fair, we are primarily considering "vendor-supplied" capabilities, although we'll also note, where applicable, some freely downloadable utilities that can address or augment built-in capabilities. Any list of downloadable third-party add-ons is, of course, necessarily incomplete and is intended only as a guide to further exploration.

In the Aqua Square....

XApple's Mac OS X is a huge step forward for the Mac OS, to be sure. A slick, well-integrated graphical interface hides industrial-strength Unix underpinnings. It also provides compatibility with Mac OS 9.x applications via a "classic" compatibility environment. That's a good thing, as OS X requires all-new applications to take advantage of its memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking features. We are aware that the inclusion of version 10.0 is almost irrelevant, considering the huge advances made since its release. Still, it's interesting to compare.

In the Red/Green/Yellow/Blue Square....

Windows XPMicrosoft Windows XP is by no means as dramatic a change from previous Windows releases as is Mac OS X to previous Mac OS incarnations; still, it represents a major step forward for Microsoft's line of home-oriented operating systems, which have never before been based on the reliable Windows NT/Windows 2000 kernel. The vast majority of existing 32-bit Windows applications take full advantage of Windows XP's memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking features.

In the Yellow-and-black Square....

Mandrake Linux is one of the most feature rich Linux distributions, while still managing to be one of the easiest to configure. We installed the downloadable version, using a custom installation from CDs 1 and 2, to deliver a mix of multimedia, internet, networking and productivity-oriented features roughly comparable to the Mac and Windows. However, we recognize that there are a great number of Linux distributions ("distros") reflecting varied interests. The Linux section of the chart below, therefore, is necessarily generalized..

Into the Battle Box!

* = with limitations.

Mac OS X 10.1 is available at retail for US$129. Mac OS X 10.2 is available Aug. 24, 2002.

Microsoft Windows XP is US$99.95 (upgrade), US$199.95 (Home) or US$249.95 (Pro).

Mandrake Linux is freely available for download, as are most other Linux distros.

Key Differentiators

Removing Mac OSX applications

Mac OS X applications are usually installed into a single folder. The way this works is to install all of the components, fonts, libraries, icons, executables etc., into the one folder. But you don't know it is a folder (unless you open up a shell and have a look). This is because when you double click on it, you are running the application. This has two interesting effects, and the reason it was designed that way: 1) It allows you move applications to other hard disks or even other machines with no reinstall; 2) it means to delete an application you just delete that icon, which is the folder and all components.

Other than this feature, Apple remains curiously stubborn about uninstalling programs. Despite the fact that a Mac OS X package may contain thousands of components, Apple does not provide any standardized method for uninstalling applications. Users must drag files and folders (which are usually, but not always, in one place) to the trash manually. Windows XP, by contrast, uses a system-wide add/remove programs control panel to manage application uninstallation. The pros and cons of this are largely subjective, but there's no denying that the Windows method is more consistent.

File Systems Support

Linux supports more file systems than any of the others. There are few, if any, file systems available to Mac OS X or Windows users that are not supported by Linux.

SCSI Devices on Mac OS X

Mac OS X 10.1.3 and subsequent releases expand upon the Mac's support for SCSI devices. We've had success in mounting CD ROMs, CD burners, floptical drives, etc. and, with third-party drivers, some tape drives in Mac OS X.

Support for third-party wireless cards

Third-party drivers provided expanded support for third-party 802.11b cards in Mac OS X. For example, to use a Lucent Tech card in
OS X 10.1, you need to download the appropriate Lucent drivers. Unfortunately, changes in Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar rendered many drivers for third-party wireless cards incompatible. And, of course, being a newer operating system with a smaller market share, Mac OS X drivers for many devices supported by Windows and Linux are still unavailable.

Scripting

To be fair, notes Scott Penrose, it should be mentioned that Apple and many Linux vendors have financed various scripting languages and other development efforts. Apple's AppleScript is generally considered more advanced than anything available on the Windows platform; however, Microsoft's VBscript and Jscript are supported by many developers and applications.

Graphics

Apple's default graphics drivers provide support for OpenGL -- and OS X 10.1 speeds up OpenGL by about 20 percent. OS X 10.2's use of OpenGL to accelerate the GUI on Macs with  a supported AGP graphics card and 32MB or more video RAM further enhances graphics performance.

Microsoft's drivers do not support hardware acceleration of OpenGL at all; however, most third-party XP drivers do. Perhaps more important, however, is Windows XP's driver support of constant alpha blending (this improves the performance of fade effects) and support for per-pixel alpha blending, which is used to speed rendering of  XP's window shadows. This support is absent from Mac OS X, leading to noticeably sluggish performance in the GUI (again, this is improved somewhat in OS X 10.2, although window resizing is still noticeably slower than in Windows XP).

Another difference is found in support for FSAA (full scene anti-aliasing) modes. We've not seen FSAA support in any Mac driver released prior to July 2002; virtually all modern Windows drivers for the same graphics chips support this feature, which tangibly improves 3-D image quality on recent graphics cards from NVIDIA, ATI, 3dfx and other manufacturers.

Conversely, the Mac is significantly better at rendering text on screen, thanks to the system's Quartz rendering engine. Text, by default, is rendered with smooth anti-aliasing. Mac OS X 10.2 extends this even further, applying sub-pixel rendering to three of the system's four anti-aliasing modes for even better results on LCD screens.

It's worth mentioning a feature dubbed Quartz Extreme in Mac OS 10.2. This technology, which uses OpenGL to optimize the rendering pipeline, significantly increases the performance of Mac OS X's on-screen displays, by using hardware acceleration features of supported graphics cards (e.g., ATI or NVIDIA AGP cards with 32MB of onboard memory are recommended). Quartz Extreme goes a long way to address perceived performance problems with Mac OS X.

Performance

Although graphics performance is, of course, more strictly related to hardware than software, there is no doubt that the fancy 3-D shadows and alpha-blended eye candy of Mac OS X carries an impact. Indeed, a recent article in Wired News entitled "Why Do New iMacs Surf So Slowly?" notes that the sluggish graphical user interface of OS X makes an $1800 iMac surf the Web more slowly than an older $400 PC running Windows -- and this is tangibly obvious by even the most casual observer. Pages, noted Wired, on average took as least twice as long to be displayed, even on such unmatched platforms. Mac OS X is also slower than Linux at most server-related tasks. Acknowledging the problem, an Apple spokesperson euphemistically stated "We are merely at the beginning of the performance opportunities in Mac OS X."

Most modern graphics cards support 2D and 3D acceleration via X windows drivers under Linux.

Although Microsoft and Apple both attempt to limit the amount of revisions possible to their respective graphical user interfaces, third-party hacks are available for both platforms. XP is considerably ahead here, with a dramatic array of options, including StarDock's WindowBlinds, TGTSoft's Styles XP, and several others.

Networking

Although Mac OS X fares well in terms of network protocols supported, thanks to its Unix heritage, the absence of support for TCP/IP networking over the FireWire ports built into every recent Mac is a puzzling omission -- addressable via a third party product such as Unibrain's FireNet. Windows XP (along with other recent Windows releases) fully supports IP over 1394.

Mac OS X 10.2 includes support for automatic (serverless) network configuration via a technology Apple calls Rendezvous. with it, Macs and other ZeroConf-compatible devices on a local area network can automatically discover and configure themselves. Apple has released the spec to the community as an open standard; we expect to see ZeroConf catch on as an important standard in the years ahead.

Installation

This is a difficult area to quantify without consideration of the hardware on which an operating system runs. Since Apple's operating system runs only on Apple hardware, the installation tends to be more predictable and usually trouble-free. Most PCs, of course, come with Windows pre-installed, and almost every Linux installation has to be done from scratch. A discussion at Slashdot entitled Is Linux or Windows Easier To Install? tackles that question (bear in mind, however, that Slashdot, like the Linuxworld article it quotes, definitely leans in the pro-Linux direction), but I'd have to give the nod to Apple's OS for overall ease of installation. In short, none of the operating systems are particularly hard to install.

System Restore

The lack of some essential services such as a system-wide restore function (aside from the fairly oblique "ditto" command) is, at this writing, a serious limitation in Mac OS X. Dantz is one of several companies addressing this limitation with its Retrospect backup program(s) for OS X. Worth noting, however, is a FAQ posted on the company's website in Nov. 2001. It says "While Mac OS X v10.1 does include the level of device access and arbitration that Retrospect requires, it does not solve several issues that prevent Retrospect from successfully restoring a complete Mac OS X system to a functioning state." (The company subsequently released a version of Retrospect for OS X, anyway.) Some Mac users are using the comparatively rudimentary FWB Backup Toolkit for OS X or Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner as an alternative. (Read more on the topic of backing up/cloning a Mac OS X disk here.)

Windows XP provides a System Restore feature designed to undo harmful changes, while preserving the users' documents, email messages and other important data. It also provides a relatively rudimentary backup utility.

Security

In Apple's favour, security continues to be a sore spot for Microsoft. Michael G. Schabert, on the X EvangeList, observes that on OS X, the box is practically impervious to all attacks, as of a stock installation... as all Macs have always been. All services/ports are turned off by default, unless and until you specifically enable them. There have, however, been numerous security updates released for Mac OS X that address various vulnerabilities, the most serious of which exploits Apple's automatic software update system, potentially allowing hackers running any type of computer to impersonate the Apple servers and install unauthorized software.

Windows 95/98/NT/W2k are all vulnerable out of the box. (Within three weeks of the launch of Windows XP, at least three high risk security flaws were found, including one that allowed  hackers to circumvent Microsoft's Passport system in order to be able to steal anyone's ID. Read more on this particular security breach @ Wired.com, and see our Alerts page for information on other Windows vulnerabilities. - Ed.)

Additionally, Schabert notes that the "credential management" noted in our chart was invented by Microsoft, and is not yet a standard.

Compatibility

It's easy to take exception to the CNet "Death Match," which found OS X to offer superior software compatibility to that of Windows XP. In many ways, this is pure malarkey. The fact that OS X 10 didn't support ANY third-party CD authoring software out of the box, doesn't support the vast majority of scanner drivers, Photoshop plug-ins or VST plug-in filters already developed for Macintosh and supported NO DVD players until 10.1 (and still supports very few external third-party units) are just a few obvious examples of the inescapable fact that OS X requires all-new apps and all-new device drivers to take advantage of its memory protection and user-interface features. Simply put, Windows XP natively supports the vast majority of existing applications, plug-ins and drivers previously released for the Windows 2000 platform, and delivers full memory protection and feature support for virtually ALL legacy apps. OS X, despite its many merits, does not.

CNet's conclusion that both OSes are equal in Internet support appears equally absurd, when one considers the Internet-related features shipped with each platform. Try playing a Windows Media audio or video stream delivered using the MMS protocol on a Mac for a glaring example. Windows supports better instant messaging, an easier to configure firewall (on the other hand, as reader Scott Genevish note, Macs are historically much more secure from Internet attacks than Windows PCs and thus need such services less, anyway), remote assistance, remote control (built into Windows XP Pro), extensive graphical control over web server settings, and many other features missing from -- or excruciatingly difficult to achieve via the arcane Unix command line -- in OS X. Remote assistance and control are available from Apple only via the Unix telnet application, or via Apple's US$495 Remote Desktop application.

There are a number of areas in which Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems have subtle advantages over Linux, such as streaming video -- an area in which the MPEG4 codec in Apple's QuickTime excels -- and codec support. However, the Mac's lack of standard support for full-screen movie playback and limited looping functions in its default media player are serious limitations not shared by Windows. The updated version of Windows Media 9, code-named Corona, further strengthens Microsoft's growing dominance in the streaming media playing field, primarily due to the digital rights management features built into Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media codecs  --- features currently missing from the ISO-standard MPEG-4 used by QuickTime 6. Refer to our feature on Net Video Trends for details.

Development Tools

A full discussion of he pros and cons of each platform as a development environment is far beyond the scope of this document (and, indeed, of my own programming prowess -- I can count the number of commercially released software titles I have programmed on one hand!). However, a few examples may serve useful here. I recently went looking for a good quality FTP client for Mac OS X. I tested more than a dozen, and all were lacking in one form or another. Some suffered from serious bugs (iFTP deleted files on my server without warning!), others had annoying interface quirks (the free app CaptainFTP repeatedly selected a file two items higher in the remote files list than the one I wanted); RBrowser, the most promising title overall, was encumbered by mandatory registration and a US$29 fee, and it couldn't even preview a downloaded HTML file while editing in BBedit, our helper application of choice. Others were just dog slow or unacceptably clumsy. And Mac OS X 10.2's built-in FTP support hung my machine entirely when I attempted to upload.

By comparison, WS_FTP on the Windows platform, and any one of several FTP clients on the Linux side worked exactly as I expected them to -- fast and efficient.

A similar story plays out elsewhere in the realm of development tools. There are, it seems, simply fewer good tools available for the Mac. Says former Mac OS X user and programmer Maarten Hekkelman, "Windows is like heaven to a programmer. There are so many tools to chose from and the documentation is wonderful." Says Hekkelman, "Microsoft delivers a very, very good set of documentation and tools for developers. For free. It was a real eye opener to have such great documentation so easily available."

The opposing view is that open source equals good; closed source equals bad. In this regard, Linux becomes the preferred development environment. Here, too, there is an amazingly rich set of documentation and tools. And, of course, Mac OS X can take advantage of much of the richness of the largely Unix-centric pool of open source software. With a little interface tweaking and recompiling, many of these tools have already been ported to Mac OS X. More will follow. As always, the best platform is the one that most effectively meets your needs.

Conclusion

The features-oriented chart above does not take into account the ease of use of a particular solution. As Bruce Tognazzini notes in his discussion of Fitts's Law, it is important to look at the user's productivity, not the computer's. Generally, Mac OS X and Windows XP are far easier to configure than Linux-based systems. And, despite its limitations in a few areas, Mac OS X is arguably the most elegantly implemented and fundamentally usable operating system currently available, despite occasional user interface gaffes. See our Mac System Software Section for a closer look at Mac OS X 10.2.

It's also worth noting that, in the above chart, the comparison is primarily concerned with services provided by and supported by the primary OS provider. This situation is complicated a little by the fact that Apple makes a large number of files available to users via its iDisk section of mac.com. Thus, you can get a non-Apple instant messaging or enhanced third-party firewall solution from Apple, indirectly, but it is not integrated into the OS the way that, say, Windows Messenger is. Whether such integration is even desirable is also a topic best left to a different discussion.

Nevertheless, we've noted a few third-party system enhancements in our listings in the chart above. Typically, these provide a GUI alternative to  a more complicated command-line-based procedure supplied at the OS level. But, we feel, the mention of these items does not significantly add to -- and, it can be argued, detracts from -- the value of an integral feature comparison.

In many cases, we also provide links to third party sites, where you can find further information about these and other downloadable options for each of the platforms. See our OS X comparison chart for further details on the new features added in OS X 10.2.

Thanks to Scott Penrose of Digital Dimensions, M. Flinn and Michael G. Schabert for contributions to this report.

For Further Reading (external links are beyond our control)

• Smart Buyer's Guide: OS Shootout-2003
• MacWindows: Mac OS X Public Beta Cross-Platform Issues
• NK Guy: Mac OS X issues
• MacInTouch.com: Mac OS X reader reports
• Geeks R Us: Mac OS X Q & A
• CNet: Face-off: Mac OS X vs. Windows XP
• TechTV: Inside Windows XP- Visualizing XP's Interface
• Wired News: Why Do New iMacs Surf So Slowly?
• Byte: Comparing Apples and Penguins
• Apple: Switch to Mac OS X - A guide to key user experience differences between Windows and Mac OS X.
• Mac Buyer's Guide: OS X comparison chart
• http://www.xvsxp.com/ - A well-presented comparison, which the author freely admits is Mac-biased.
• WebmasterMac.com: Usability Shootout: Mac OS X vs. Windows XP

Editor's note: Large sections of this article were stolen verbatim by internet.com and used without permission in its Mar. 27, 2002 article entitled "Mac OS X vs. Windows XP."