Even PC Magazine Mixes Up Mac OS X & Windows XP

by , 12:00 PM EDT, May 30th, 2001

Observer Mark dropped us a note that we thought was pretty darned funny. With all the confusion between Mac OS X's Aqua and Windows XP's Luna, it would seem that even the folks at PC Magazine are a bit confused when it comes to the differences between the two. According to Mark:

I've written to you before with various thoughts/sites and I found a beauty the other day. I was visiting my in-laws in Maine and they subscribe to PC Magazine. Fairly interesting publication, they do cover Macs, in a cursory manner, and they try to be somewhat unbiased. Well, in the May 8 issue, there is a column called "First Looks: Inside PC Labs." The focus of the story is the new Windows XP operating system... I know what you're thinking... hmmm... where's the payoff, what does this have to do with Macs? Well the lead-in photo for the article "Windows XP: Early Observations" is a technician seated at a work bench putting a computer through it's paces. Upon closer examination, one realizes the monitor is a Dell, the keyboard is clearly from a new G4, and the CPU is also a G4... but wait, it gets better... the operating system is OS X with the dock in plain view at the bottom!!!

Thought you'd like to know....
Mark

Thanks for the note Mark!

The Mac Observer Spin:

Sometimes life's real ironies are far funnier than anything we could ever hope to make up. Do we actually think that PC Magazine can't tell the difference between Mac OS X's Aqua and Windows XP's Luna? No, of course not. The two operating systems don't look alike at all, despite the fact that Microsoft was clearly inspired by the spirit of Aqua when "designing" Luna. That said, it is just way too funny to ignore the notion that an image of a G4 and OS X somehow found its way into an article about Windows XP.

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