While it is difficult to generalize when it comes to people and their computers, it is worthwhile to consider how the different systems in computers are related from the standpoint of the designer. Doing this will help us to avoid buying disappointments. |
Consider a designer, who, for the sake of this discussion, wishes to design a computer. Rather than predetermine all of its final details right from the start (which he could do), he decides to design a piece of hardware, consisting of a CPU, memory, and of course all the standard input and output ports. He is free to innovate in his design, provided that he can be assured someone will write (or already has written) an operating system for that piece of hardware.
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Just as the hardware was designed with the operating system in mind, so the operating system is designed to suit the running of a particular set of applications, which may or may not have been written yet. With all of this uncertainty it is a remarkable thing that you or I can, at our own discretion, choose a platform consisting of a hardware configuration and operating system, but keeping in mind which applications (real or imagined) we will then choose to run on it.
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