As someone who uses both platforms for work and personal entertainment, I've been wanting to do a performance comparison between Windows 7 and Mac OS X since I first got my hands on the Windows 7 RTM (the final build of the OS) more than two months ago, but decided to wait until I could compare the two apples to apples. (No pun intended.)
The right time seems to be now, as Snow Leopard has been out for a while and has even been updated to 10.6.1, and Windows 7 has been at the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) vendors for almost three months and has also had a few updates. Furthermore, Boot Camp 3.0 seemed to make Windows run better than ever on a Mac.
Just to clarify, Boot Camp is not a virtual environment but simply a bundle of native Windows drivers--software that makes the OS work properly with hardware components. These drivers include chipset, video, networking, and so on. As a matter of fact, you can get most of these drivers from the components' manufacturers (or via Windows update). However, Boot Camp also contains drivers for Apple's proprietary hardware including the iSight Webcam, keyboard backlight, and multitouch mouse pad, and therefore it's best to get this bundle instead of looking for drivers individually.
For the sake of transparency (I know a lot of you feel passionately about one operating system or the other), I will disclose how I conducted my testing so you can duplicate it if you want. There's no rocket science involved here; all you need is a good stopwatch, a MacBook Pro, and a lot of time.
It's important, however, to note two things. First, the testing described in this article is somewhat anecdotal as it was performed on only one computer and, to some extent, was conducted differently from how we generally test computers for CNET reviews. (Read CNET's official reviews of Windows 7 and Snow Leopard.) Second, by talking about all this in such detail, I will seem much nerdier than I actually am. (Editors' note: This jury is still out on this one.)First off, the test machine is a 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT video card. This is the 2008 model of the computer that comes with a removable battery and doesn't have the SD card slot. (This is not the latest 2009 model that comes with a nonremovable battery, which packs a lot more juice.)
Mac OS X Snow Leopard is installed on the stock 320GB hard drive (a Hitachi model HTS543232L9SA0). Windows 7 64-bit is installed on a 320GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (model WD3200BEVT). I chose Windows 7 64-bit as Apple claims Snow Leopard is now a pure 64-bit OS with most of its built-in applications being constructed with 64-bit code.
These two hard drives have virtually the same specs, supporting a SATA 3Gbps interface, having 8MB of cache memory, and spinning at 5,400rpm. I got a new hard drive so each operating system would have a hard drive of its own, with only one partition. The computer can be transformed from a Mac to a PC and the other way around just by swapping out the hard drives. Alternately, in real life, you can have both operating systems on one hard drive by running Boot Camp Assistant from within Snow Leopard to create a new partition for Windows.
(By the way, thanks to the laptop's nice design, it was very easy to swap out the hard drives with the help of a small Phillips-head screwdriver and a tiny torx wrench. The installation of Windows 7 64-bit was then done just like with any PC: I booted the computer with the installer DVD and followed the onscreen installation instructions. I was able to get the Windows OS up and running with Boot Camp 3.0 installed after less than an hour without any hiccups. Boot Camp 3.0 provided all the latest drivers for Windows 7 and no driver update was necessary.)
For each OS, during the tests, the computer had the following software installed: iTunes 9, QuickTime, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and Cinebench R10. All are 64-bit except Call of Duty and QuickTime. Windows 7 was tested with QuickTime 7 (version 7.6.4), which is 32-bit, and Snow Leopard was tested with QuickTime X, which comes with the OS. The reason is that QuickTime X is not currently available for Windows and you can't install QuickTime 7 on Snow Leopard.
Both computers were set up for high performance in power management. No other settings were changed. Windows 7's Visual Effects was left at "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer," which, in this case, equaled all items being checked except "Save taskbar thumbnail previews." Snow Leopard's graphic setting was set to "Hi-performance mode."
Except for Cinebench and Call of Duty 4, which have a scoring system of their own, all other tests are time-based. I personally performed all the time-based tests and the Cinebench test, while my colleague Joseph Kaminiski, who has tested hundreds of computers for CNET reviews, took care of benchmarking the operating systems using Call of Duty 4. Nonetheless, we cross-checked our results.
The last time-based test was the multimedia multitasking test, where I measured how long it took QuickTime to convert a movie file from the MP4 format into the iPod format, while having iTunes converting songs in the background. This is sort of an unfair test as I had to use QuickTime 7 for Windows 7 and QuickTime X (which Apple claims to have much improved performance over the previous version) for Snow Leopard. The result: Snow Leopard beat Windows big time, taking just 444.3 seconds to do the job while Windows 7 dragged with 723 seconds.
So Snow Leopard took the lead in booting up, shutting down, and running Apple's software.
The last test--which took the most time and probably will prove the most controversial--measured battery life. In ablog a while ago, I said that Windows 7 offered about the same battery life on the MacBook Pro as Snow Leopard. Well, I was wrong. While it was indeed better compared with what it was with Boot Camp 2.1, Windows 7 on the MacBook Pro still has a significantly shorter battery life than Snow Leopard.
As I needed to fully charge the battery before each test to make the tests go faster, I decided to test the battery life with the same settings as the performance tests, which drain the battery much more quickly than in normal usage. These settings include the computer's screen, as well as the keyboard illumination, being set at their brightest; the speakers being turned all the way up; and the Wi-Fi connection being turned on. After that, I made the computer play a high-def movie clip on loop and in full-screen mode until the computer died.
The results? Windows 7 lasted 78 minutes, while Snow Leopard managed to stay on for 111 minutes. These numbers are, of course, the worst case scenario--in real life, you'll get much longer battery life for each OS with regular usage. Personally, I could easily get about 3 hours with Windows 7 when running the MacBook Pro using the operating system's recommended "Balanced" power management scheme. Nonetheless, it's obvious that Windows 7's battery life is just about two-thirds of Snow Leopard's on the MacBook Pro.
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Operating system name
OK, let's get this issue out of the way quickly. Which operating system would you rather run: one with the cool name Snow Leopard, or one with the unimaginative moniker Windows 7?
Enough said.
The Winner: Snow Leopard. Wild animals are inherently more exciting than panes of glass.
Price
For anyone buying a new computer, a price comparison between the two operating systems is meaningless, because the operating system will come pre-installed on whatever hardware they buy. But for upgraders, it can be a very big deal.
Apple upgraders will certainly be happier than those who make the move to Windows 7 from earlier versions. Snow Leopard is a $29 upgrade (unless you're still using Tiger, in which case you have to buy the Mac Box Set -- which includes iLife '09 and iWork '09 -- for $169). The Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade costs a whopping $220 on Amazon, Windows 7 Professional goes for $200, and Windows 7 Home Premium weighs in at $120.
Windows users also have to face the confusing decision about which of the versions of Windows 7 to purchase -- given the price points, are you better off with Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Home Premium? With Snow Leopard, there's no confusion; there's only one version of the operating system.
The Winner: Snow Leopard. At $29, it's practically an impulse buy.
Installation
Here's what you need to do in order to install Snow Leopard: Insert the installation disc and then go through a simple setup routine. You won't have to decide between a clean install and an upgrade. You won't have to mull over which version of Snow Leopard is best for you. You won't have to type in a lengthy registration code.
In Windows, you'll have to choose between a clean install and an upgrade. In addition, depending on your hardware configuration and version of Windows, it may take you some time to figure out which version of Windows 7 you can upgrade to.
Once you do all that, though, there are no real major differences between installing the operating systems. Snow Leopard took a little less time to install on my system, but apart from that, the installation process itself was quite similar.
Snow Leopard did do a better job of recognizing the hardware -- it did it without a hitch. Windows 7 at first didn't recognize my video card and so I had problems with screen resolution. However, Windows 7 quickly resolved the problem without any intervention on my part via Windows Update.
The Winner: Snow Leopard. It wins by a hair because of Windows 7's slight glitch with my hardware and the configuration choices you need to make. Aside from that, though, installation wasn't significantly different.
Launching applications
What do you do all day with an operating system? You primarily launch programs, and then switch among running programs and windows. To a certain extent, everything else is just window dressing.
So it's probably no surprise that some of the biggest changes to both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 have to do with the way you launch applications and switch among them. Snow Leopard's Dock was tweaked by integrating it with Exposé (a window-management feature); while Windows 7's taskbar was significantly reworked.
The Dock and the taskbar both do double-duty as application launchers and task switchers. The Dock is more aesthetically pleasing, with its application icons cut out in profile and highlighted against the Mac desktop, while the taskbar runs like a flat ribbon across the bottom of the Windows 7 screen.
Both added a nearly identical feature -- the ability to see thumbnails of all the windows open in an application. In Windows 7, when an application has multiple windows open, you'll see a stack of icons in the taskbar that match the number of windows open. Hover your mouse over the application's icon, and you'll see thumbnails of them all, spread out across the bottom of the screen. Similarly, in Snow Leopard, when you click on an application's icon in the Dock and hold it, you see thumbnails as well.
ease of use and elegance
Windows has come a long way since its humble -- and let's face it, just plain ugly -- beginnings. With each iteration of the operating system, it gets a little slicker, a little smoother, a little easier to use. Windows 7 continues this tradition, particularly with the new taskbar.
All that being said, Snow Leopard, like earlier versions of Mac OS X, is just plain beautiful. The word "seamless" is overused when describing an elegant, simple-to-use product, but in the case of Snow Leopard it's absolutely true. It's as intuitive and as aesthetically pleasing an operating system as you can find.
In addition, because Apple controls the hardware as well as the software, the integration between machine and software is unparalleled. Windows users have become used to strange behavior and odd error messages that appear from time to time -- it's the background radiation of Windows. To a certain extent, there's no way around it. Windows has to work with countless different combinations of CPUs, RAM, hard disks, video cards and other main system hardware. Because of that, these kinds of problems are almost inevitable with Windows-based hardware. They don't happen on Macs.
The Winner: Snow Leopard. No one beats Apple when it comes to design. As with previous versions of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard is flat-out beautiful. Windows may be improving, but it still has a way to go if it wants to catch the Mac.
Extras
Snow Leopard is more than just an operating system -- it comes with a full suite of applications, notably iLife with iMovie for making movies, GarageBand for recording and editing music, iWeb for making Web pages and more. There's also the excellent Time Machine backup and restore utility, QuickTime X for capturing movies, and the PDF reader and utility Preview.
Click to view larger image
Click to view larger image
By way of contrast, Microsoft has made the decision in Windows 7 to strip out many of the extras in Windows. For example, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Mail -- both very good programs -- shipped with Windows Vista, but will not ship with Windows 7. Windows 7 does include a usable backup program -- finally -- but it's not up to the standards of Time Machine.
The Winner: Snow Leopard. There's no real competition here; it wins hands down.
OS X 10.6 includes Boot Camp 3.0, a new collection of software drivers that make Windows run much better on Mac hardware.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)Every time I see the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads on TV, I can't help but wonder, "Why not both?" And it has never been a better time for that.
Overall, personally, I found that while the new Mac OS doesn't warrant a "wow," it's still definitely worth the $29 upgrade price. Snow Leopard offers an even more streamlined Mac experience than Leopard and noticeably faster interface responsiveness. The application performance, however, is slightly slower than it is with Leopard, at least on the MacBook Pro we used as our test machine. As the OS is now a pure 64-bit operating system, expect the application performance to improve over Leopard as you add RAM or use it with a high-end desktop.
Mac users can read more about Snow Leopard in my colleague Jason Parker's full review. On the other hand, for Windows users, especially Windows 7, the release of Snow Leopard is straight-on great news.
Boot Camp 3.0 enables Windows to read files from OS X's partition.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)I recently blogged about running Windows 7 on a 15-inch Unibody Macbook Pro, which required some tweaking with Boot Camp 2.1. Snow Leopard comes with Boot Camp 3.0, which makes installing and running Windows on a laptop a much more pleasant experience.
First of all, the new Boot Camp includes all the drivers necessary to run both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 smoothly on the Mac hardware.
(Note that you only need to run the Boot Camp Assistant, BCA, if you want to dual-boot OS X and Windows on the same machine. The utility will then create a new partition for the installation of Windows. In this case, make sure you run the BCA first when the computer boots up to avoid file errors. If you want to run just Windows and skip OS X altogether, you can boot from the Windows 7 install DVD and start the installation the way you would install the OS on any PC from scratch.)
After the installation is done, Boot Camp 3.0 can be installed from the Snow Leopard DVD. Then, without further ado, you got yourself a great Windows computer.
The second really nice thing about Boot Camp 3.0 is the fact that it includes a software driver to make Windows able to read the Mac partition (somewhat like MacDrive minus the ability to write). This means that when you dual-boot OS X and Windows, Windows now can browse and read files that reside on OS X's partition without any extra software install.
The last major improvement of Boot Camp 3.0 that I am very happy about is the battery life. Windows 7 now has much improved battery life compared with what it had with Boot Camp 2.1. I haven't tried Windows Vista or Windows XP, but Windows 7 now has about the same battery life as Snow Leopard.
Other little things have also been improved. The double-tab right-click works right away and the multitouch pad is now less sensitive (though still a little too sensitive). With Boot Camp 2.1, it was so sensitive you just couldn't use the "tab to click" feature because of the extremely high risk of making accidental clicks. The sound and video chat are also much more stable now than before.
Apart from Boot Camp 3.0, Snow Leopard comes with tools that make a PC become part of a MacBook Air.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)If you want to nitpick, there are two little odd things Windows users will find on Mac hardware. First, the MacBook's keyboard doesn't have two separate "Backspace" and "Delete" keys, which come in handy when you want to remove text. Second, the Boot Camp control panel doesn't include an option to change the sensitivity of the multitouch pad and there's no separate "tab to click" options for the right and left clicks, either.
Other than Boot Camp 3.0, Snow Leopard comes with two other tools that make a Windows computer work better with a MacBook Air. The first is called Remote Install Mac OS X and it allows for installing the new OS remotely onto a MacBook Air. The other is the DVD or CD sharing that allows the MacBook Air, which doesn't come with an optical drive, to use the PC's DVD or CD drive as one of its own.
Overall, I have to say Boot Camp 3.0 takes the Windows experience to a new high on Mac hardware. To me, this is about as exciting as the release of Windows 7 itself.
So there you go, Windows fanboys, don't say Apple never does anything for you. And Apple fanboys: the truth is that inside every new Mac there's a PC just waiting to jump out.
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