He marched in the animals, two by two

…And he called out as they came through
Hey Lord,
I’ve got green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees
Some cats and rats and elephants, but Lord, I’m so forlorn
I just can’t find no unicorns.

Ah, the Irish Rovers and The Unicorn Song. Brings back fond memories of rainy days at my grandparent’s house in Connecticut listening to record albums on a fancy turntable. It’s a cold, rainy spring day here in the burbs, but what got me thinking of Noah and his animal pairs was the current moment in Mac software. We seem to face a bounty of riches in pairs.

I’m talking about Parallels and Fusion for virtual machine management. I’m talking about Aperture and Lightroom for prosumer photography. I’m talking about Mozy and Crashplan for online backup. In hardware, I’m talking about the Griffin iTalk Pro and XtremeMac Micromemo and my recent post on Sprint versus Verizon for mobile broadband. Maybe I’m even talking about Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard.

Avoid the trap!

I’m going to be posting comparative reviews of some of this stuff in coming weeks, starting with Aperture and Lightroom (actually all of it except Vista/Leopard, since I have no plans to get Vista anytime soon). Having two products aiming for the same space makes it easier to compare and write a review, that’s for sure. On the other hand, comparative reviews too often fall into the “Spy vs Spy” trap of declaring a winner and a loser for every feature distinction. I find that many differences reflect different philosophies or preferences that may vary from customer to customer.

So I’m endeavoring to compare the product pairs without falling into that trap. Some differences obviously matter to everybody, like how fast a program churns through mundane tasks. Other stuff is less clear cut, like whether a program offers menu bars or floating menu pallets. We’ll see how it goes…