One way to think of it is Mac/Apple is a well groomed apple orchard with one kind of fruit, and nothing unexpected. It almost destroyed their company before they fired Jobs. Steve Jobs ran a 'closed architecture' system, meaning Apple controlled everything that could be done on an Apple machine, their little apple orchard. Apple would occasionally purchase a company that did something awesome. When you bought a Mac originally, you bought a Macintosh/Apple computer to run Apple software developed for a higher price by Apple programmers, often with lower quality results. In addition, PC allowed anyone to develop software for their machines.

Allowing outside development let PCs benefit from companies who say, just wanted to focus on building a better video card instead of an entire better new machine. PCs led the charge in so many things, leaping from CGA to VGA to EGA while Mac basically had cheap Apple II, GS, CGA or incredibly expensive Mac color computers. What if we publish a set of standards that any computer hardware which meets can be installed on our computer, and then allow anyone to make products for our computer? This led to innovation, sound cards, video cards, etc. But, what we typically think of as a PC would have originally been titled an IBM compatible PC, or, 'International Business Machine' compatible Personal Computer. They now do have the Surface Pro and etc. Nor does it license people to build PCs, or at least until recently did not have their own line of PC's. They are a company that produces software for PCs. Just one thing: Microsoft is not the 'owner' of PCs. There is nothing you can do on a mac that you can't do on a PC, but the reverse is not true. Ipads are deployed for people who don't know how to use a computer and Macs are used by people who 'think' they are creative. In 20 years, I have never experienced a viable business reason to use a mac over a windows box. It may be useful but you will always have problems communicating with 99 percent of the world. Buying a mac is like learning Latin as a first language.

Are you a mac or a pc