Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist, medievalist, semiologist, and philosopher, compares Macs and PCs to the two main branches of the Christian faith: Catholics and Protestants.
The Mac is Catholic, he wrote in his back-page column of the Italian news weekly, Espresso, in September 1994. It is "cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach—if not the Kingdom of Heaven—the moment in which their document is printed."
The Windows PC, on the other hand, is Protestant. It demands "difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: A long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment."
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