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Comparing Tiger and Vista Beta 1

UltimaGuy writes "This article is an excellent comparison between the features of Apple Tiger and Windows Vista Beta 1. The point it raises - 'Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt. For Mac OS X users, however, Windows Vista Beta 1 engenders a sense of déjà vu."

5 of 678 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by Dragoon412 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The point it raises - 'Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt.

    Really? I thought XP was fairly useful, if only an incremental upgrade to 2k.

    Meanwhile, Vista is panning out to be nothing but XP with alpha transparency and a lot more DRM. As a network admin, I see no reason at all to upgrade. As a gamer, I see no reason at all to upgrade; Avalon/WGF are being ported to XP. As a user, there's incentive not to upgrade, because it costs more, it's more of a hassle, and it doesn't allow me to do anything I can't do on XP, already.
  2. Inadvertant note about why OS X so nice to use by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Too, I'd like to remind you that Windows Vista is only in Beta 1. Lots of things are going to change, and many, many features will be added by Beta 2 and beyond. This stands in sharp contrast to Apple's approach with Tiger. If you go back and look at the WWDC 2004 keynote video, you'll see Steve Jobs demo virtually every single major new feature in Tiger. A year later, when the product actually shipped, little had changed and nothing major was added. This isn't how Microsoft works. Beta 1 is a minor subset of the overall functionality we're going to see in the final Windows Vista product.

    So what he's saying here is that Apple figured out what features they wanted, then took years to refine them.

    Vs. Microsoft, which has a beta out now but will cram a lot of stuff in over the next several months and let users test it in early releases.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  3. Re:Quick Notes... by FireFlie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    One thing that really caught me off guard (other than the bizarre inconsistencies in tiger that I havn't noticed) is the comment reguarding spotlight's searching as you type being counter-productive? I have a Powerbook G4 (so obviously not the most powerful mac available currently), and I have noticed absolutely no lag in performance when typing in a spotlight search. Actually you can often see the document you need in spotlight as you type, so by finding it before you even finish typing your search query wouldn't you actually be slightly (although unnoticably) more productive? Unless of course the moving text in the spotlight box is just so confusing and hypnotizing that he cannot continue typing.

    "It's not that hidden, it's right at the top of the Get Info window; and it's not just for documents, it's for *any* file or folder."

    I saw a few comments similar to the one you were answering here, and my take is that all of the features he considers hard to find may only be so if one has only ever used Windows, and cannot get out of the windows mindset. I have had my notebook for about a year (and I have used many oses including dos, every version of windows to date, linux, irix, etc), and I find most features and ways of organization in os x to be more intuitive than any other os I have used.

    Oh yea, I also agree about the origin of spotlight. He clearly says that he has no clue wether features like spotlight were originally intended, or came from microsoft? First of all, has apple historically ever worried about microsofts features validating their own ideas before including them? He certainly leaves the possibility open that apple somehow copied the idea for spotlight from microsoft, but it doesn't seem logical. For spotlight to work so well, and be so bug free (I have not noticed problems anyway) I doubt that they said "hey that sounds cool, we'll do it too".

    Perhaps in another article he will talk about microsoft adding a new dashboard-like feature, so apple must have stolen it from microsoft. Give me a break.

  4. Re:In bed with Microsoft by Ingolfke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Disregard the parent post. The author is a "known" Linux shill. She'll often post comments bashing MS and anything that paints Linux in a bad light. She'll frequently use ad hominem attacks to attempt to discredit articles posted by those who don't agree with her viewpoints.

    How can you debate a point when you must rely on ad hominem?

    Despite the fact that her posts are horribly inaccurate she whores for a lot of karma by pandering to the Linux zealots on /. And who is to blame her... after all her post was modded "Informative".

  5. Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... by FatherOfONe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I do agree with your main point. But I believe your math is a bit off.

    Windows owns around a 95% marketshare and Macintosh has around a 1.9%, and Linux has around a 2%. Please note that I am talking client not server OS.

    Now, I bet that way less than 10% of the Windows users will upgrade to Vista within the first month of release. So I do agree with your email in principle. The bad news for these users is that companies like Dell, HP and IBM will make Vista the default OS and that will drive Vista as the defacto standard within a couple of YEARS. Then after a year or so most large companies will standardize on it, and thus drive even more sales.

    Now, having said that, it is my belief that Linux will continue to chew in to Microsoft's client market year after year and this will in a weird way also help Apple. It is my belief that when Linux hits around 10-15% marketshare the game will be over for Microsoft. At around 12% ALL companies will be forced to provide drivers and support and thus the core reasons for not using Linux starts to fade away. It is also my belief that it will take Linux far longer to reach 8% desktop market share than it will take it to go from 8 to 12%. Once the ball starts rolling it will be hard to stop it.

    I say 10 to 12% because that is around the time management types start listening and reacting. A perfect example is Mozilla and Firefox. Quite a few companies around my area have started "fixing" their web applications because they didn't work with anything but IE. Well it took Mozilla to get enough traction for these companies to allocate resources to fix their applications. Trust me, NONE of those companies wanted to do this work. It took them time and time is money...

    --
    The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.