'Obama a Mac, Clinton a PC, but what is McCain?'

I found the title of this blog post so amusing, I had to repeat it.

The whole thing started in, of all places, the New York Times.

The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.

...

In contrast to barackobama.com, Mrs. Clinton’s site uses a more traditional color scheme of dark blue, has sharper lines dividing content and employs cookie-cutter icons next to its buttons for volunteering, and the like.

“Hillary’s is way more hectic, it’s got all these, what look like parody ads,” said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts, who is not a citizen and cannot vote in the election.

And from ZDNet's Richard Koman:

What does that make McCain? An IBM mainframe? Or a VAX? Romney was looking all IBM, but he’s increasingly relegated to a Sun workstation.