One of the charms of computer geeks is the pasionate way they defend or verbally destroy a particular system; fanatics are generally so polarised by competing platforms that very rarely can any kind of sensible middle ground ever exist.

I remember when I was younger, talk in the playground often turned to which console was best, your Sega Megadrive or your mates Super Nintendo - You can guarantee that if I were a fly on the wall in a school today, that the same kind of discussion would still be raging between the X-Box and Playstation gamers.

A similar kind of discussion, 'which is superior, the PC or the Apple Mac?' has been burning between adult computer users for several decades now. Personally I don't have the time to worry about the issue a great deal, nor do I feel the need to militantly argue my points in forums all over the Internet but clearly many enthusiasts do; a simple Google search for 'PC vs Mac' returns hundreds of thousands of matches.

This debate has been brought to the general publics eye by a series of adverts recently commisioned by Apple starring comedians Mitchell and Webb. In the Advert each comedian takes on the roll of the two systems; Mitchell acts as a PC and Webb as an Apple Mac.

In these adverts the two 'systems' compare their features and of course, PC comes off looking like a a boring, inefficient dinosaur while Apple Mac humiliates him and generally comes off looking a little too smug. I'm not certain that any of the adverts would tempt me to move over to the Apple Mac platform but I suppose the real question is, if you look behind the advertising, is the Mac really better?

In order to understand the two platforms a little better we should look in to they developed to see if this justifies Apples name calling and rationalise them insulting a system that most of us get along with and use on a daily basis.

What most users would come to term 'PC' refers to one of the many machines evolved from the original IBM Personal Computer which was introduced back in 1981. The success of this machine can be predominately attributed to the fact that IBM decided on an open architecture so that other manufactures could produce and sell peripherals and software for the machine. The rather loose copyrighting and availability of technical specifications meant that it didn't take long before other manufacturers reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own legal IBM PC 'clones'. This lead to the PC standard being adopted and developed by a number of competing companies which of course had a positive impact on the range of devices and software available for the machine as well as reducing prices.

Nowadays IBM, the original founders of the platform have relatively little influence on the development of the PC as it is continually evolved by the thousands of companies who manufacture the computers, peripherals and software which are compatible with this open standard.

On the opposite end of the scale is Apple who released their first Personal Computer, the 'Macintosh' in 1984. Apple are however the only company able to manufacture, sell and support the Mac which of course means that they have full control over the brand including the Hardware and Operating System.

Whilst retaining complete control over your platform would appear to be a good idea, especially when it comes to monopolising on sales, it has certainly hurt the popularity of the machine in the industry. With so many more companies supporting the PC it has certainly dominated sales over the past twenty years which has resulted in Apple Mac being regarded as very much a niche machine by many.

Fortunes may be about to change however; a partnership with Intel, a new Operating System on the horizon and compatibility with Windows means that many now consider Apple to be a viable option again. Join me again next week to hear my opinion on whether your next computer really should be a Mac.....