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How Vista Disappoints
MCSEBear writes "Writer Paul Thurrott has given Microsoft a verbal dressing down for what has become of Windows Vista. He details Microsoft's broken promises over the years since Longhorn/Vista was first previewed back in 2003. He demonstrates where current Vista builds fail to live up to Microsoft's current hype of the much reduced feature set. From the article: 'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'"
We tried out the live distro of GLX and most of us liked the new 3d accelerated Linux GUI better than Vista's Aeroglass. Since pretty is a big selling point that is very important. I have to admit I was shocked by how useful it was and how much Vista drove me nuts.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I lost all interest in Vista the second they dropped the idea of WinFS. You see they were finally going to catch up with everyone else in the world of the file system and instead have proven they couldn't handle it. I think I also got fed up with all those pesky delays. Two years late and really chopped down, Vista is not anything like what is was supposed to be.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The fact that a well known Microsoft apologist like Thurrott is even criticizing Vista (although in as kind words as possible) makes me think that it will be even worse than I had previously thought. If this is true, Microsoft is in deep deep trouble.
Microsoft's grand plans for Vista have turned into a warmed over version of MacOSX. The new graphics engine is definitely lifted right out of Apple's OS. The advanced WinFS filesystem has been reduced to nothing new with a copy of Apple's Spotlight bolted on. Microsoft's User Account Protection is so annoying as to be pretty much useless. It kicks in when you delete a shortcut to a program? Are they nuts? Paul Thurrott lets Microsoft have it with both guns in his review.
"Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.
Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth."
Microsoft has really fumbled the ball over and over with the development of this OS. It's nice to see them get called out for it.
A friend of mine said, when Windows 95 came out that "it'll knock the socks off Linux..." and it didn't. Then he said "This windows NT 4.0 will kill Linux" and it didn't. Then "XP is the Linux killer, mark my words. It's got built in security.." and look what happened. Need I go on? The MS buffs continually postition various MS OS releases as Linux killers, and they never are.
Why is this so?
Simply, it is because for a very large number of people, Linux just works damn well. It's flexiable, fast, secure and when things break, they usually get fixed pretty quick. It's the Un*x philosophy that makes it work so much better and that's a philosophy that no matter how much MS try to copy, will never quite be there in Windows. They may have a new swanky command line interface, but it'll simply not beat any Un*x shell or scripting language for getting stuff done.
Sure Vista will look pretty, but I bet itll still bork and need driver disks when you plug your USB thingy into a differant USB port..
In reality of course every OS sucks, but Linux sucks a lot less than any Windows release.
Oh and whilst you're at it, you can stick yer DRM up yer IPC$.
I can't speak for everybody, but I'm still on Windows 2000. I "upgrade" any XP machines I end up with to Win2K, and I've done this service for several friends and family.
I think XP is gross and from what I hear about Vista so far, count me out. Especially if it includes *any* DRM.
Actually, you are correct on this one. Win 95 was cobbled together from parts of the Cairo project that either fell apart. You can see exactly what cairo was supposed to be here Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs. Yes that's right winfs is over tweleve years late.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The funny thing here is that Apple is going to get OS X 10.5 out the door soon after Vista is out. So if Vista will be a "warmed-up version of OS X Tiger," Apple certainly isn't going to let Leopard be the same. This is a great opportunity for MS mockage by Apple marketing.
Also: http://tauquil.com/archives/2006/01/06/re-introduc ing-the-real-windows-vista
Who cares if it is EOL'd 4 years from now? That just means you cannot get support directly from MS. Anyone willing to make the decision to not shell out the dough in vendor lock-in hell (yet still run Windows) is probably capable/willing to keep the OS going on their own.
And who's to say in 2010 Vista will be "current" anyway?
Computational Chemistry products and services.
The two dialogues from User Account Protection that Thurrott illustrates are pretty extraordinary. It's hard to believe that MS could have produced anything so shabby. They look like examples from the Interface Hall of Shame!
5 342_rev5_00.jpg is really contradictory and confusing.
5 342_rev5_01.jpg - is even more bizarre. "Windows needs your permission to use this program" "File operation". WTF? I mean, that is REALLY confusing, and again COMPLETELY against good principles of IU design!
The first one - http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_
First of all - "File access denied" - you havent been denied access, you been denied the right to delete the file (or so it seems), THEN it says "You don't currently have permission to delete this file" - Okay, but THEN it says "CONTINUE" and allows you to delete it, but only through ANOTHER dialogue!
I mean that's bizarre! COMPLETELY against any principles of interface design that I was taught.
The second/next dialogue in the series - http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_
I though all this stuff about MS getting in a tangle was just exaggeration, but now I seriously think they must be. Wow!
Cutterman
Hardly.
Computers will still be sold with the latest Windows has to offer. Computers still sold when ME was available.
People can walk down the computer aisles and see 8 feet (16 feet on some stores) of Apple computer offerings, 4 feet of Linux preloaded offerings (in some stores), or 48 feet of Windows offerings.
If Vista is an abonimation like ME was, then MS will simply create a patch, call it Vista SE (Second Edition), and sell it.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.
The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.
"But there are still a lot of people looking forward optimistically to the new features in Vista."
True, if we just knew which version had which features. MS needs to take another page from Apple's book here. With Apple, there's OS X, and OS X Server.
But no, MS thinks we need the lite, medium, large, extra-large, huge, and super-sized versions, all at different price points, with the versions worth using being more expensive, of course.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Actually this was from win2k onwards. However the criticism is not so much that 2k/XP have a way to let a normal user run a program as an administrator, rather than the fact that mere users must actually run most applications (even games) as the Administrator. Whether this is achieved through actually login as the admin or through the "run as" feature is irrelevant.
"run as" and login as an Administrator should be reserved for administrative tasks like managing users and devices, not running standard applications.
I'm not really in the mood, but OK...
:|
The main issue I had with that review is that its essential purpose was to highlight two features - Spotlight and Dashboard - one which could be safely explained away as being in Longhorn and one which could be dismissed as relatively pointless eye-candy.* It ignored advances like Core Data (probably too technical for Thurrott, and not particularly interesting for his readership, but some developers have been literally wanking over it. OK, not literally, but...) and, more obviously - until he later edited it in response to criticism - things like Automator, which is a wonderful way to make scripting more accessible. At the same time, he found himself able to devote a whole page's worth of text to the most cursory of updates to DVD Player! There are other things, but I'm not going to review 10.4 here as it's not relevant. In any case, the effect is not to praise the product at hand, but to trivialise it. It's quite clever, I'll give him that.
It's the subtle digs that nark me, as I said in the grandparent. I know he loves Mac OS X - the design of his Internet Nexus blog demonstrated as much, as for a long time it was awash with graphics lifted from Tiger - but he cannot resist taking a poke at every possible opportunity. For example:
In the previous version of Mac OS X, version 10.3, Apple introduced a feature for power users called Exposé that seeks to help manage the multiple applications and windows one typically opens in the course of using a Mac.
It's the "power users" dismissal that irritates me. The bit that says "Macs are for elitists, rather than for you and me." In fact, power users use Command+H and Command+Tab. Exposé is for people like my sister who want/like a simple visual representation of all their windows. Thurrott gets it totally wrong, and I can't help but wonder whether the misunderstanding is deliberate. And although he doesn't on this occasion, he is wont to bemoan its lack of keyboard shortcuts - this one I always love, because it makes me think of Windows Explorer and how you have to press Alt, F, W, F (separately) to create a new folder because there is no shortcut key. But I digress...
As to a couple of your quotes:
"Windows Vista will still include pervasive index-based searching features modeled, apparently, after the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X."
I'm not sure where this came from, but it's highy amusing. It's well-known that Apple copied Microsoft over Spotlight.
"The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials"
And herein my point is illustrated beautifully. In the Tiger review - in fact, in the bit that you quote - he can't help but include a little dig at Apple's marketing, or smoke and mirrors, as I like to call it. It all adds to the negative perception of Apple one takes from the article. But when it's Vista we're talking about, "Apple's marketing materials" is the fount of all Microsoft's innovation, and the negative connotations simply aren't there. He's schizophrenic.
But I think that the most succinct way to sum it all up is with numbers. After thoroughly savaging the current Vista, he awards it 5 stars. And Mac OS X 10.4 which, whatever you want to say about Windows XP SP2, was a far more significant update**? 4 stars.
Piffle.
iqu
(* I was dismissive of it at first, but with sufficient RAM, the dictionary and weather widgets are remarkably useful.)
(** Remember, as I have noted above, Thurrott's review is not a useful review of Tiger. If your opinions on Mac OS X are based on his review, then I cannot blame you for your conclusion, because, as I said, his purpose is to trivialise rather than to provide objective comment. Otherwise, consider Spotlight, RSS, Automator, CoreData, CoreI
That's because Macs used to have California Scheduling: "hey man, i'm like, not using these cycles, so why don't you go ahead an run for a while..". Now they have New Jersey Sceduling: "YOU! Outta da way! NOW!" Wierdly enough, while the first sounds better in theory, the other works much more effectively in practice.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
I'm not a big GUI hacker (services and components are where I shine,) so the new chrome in Vista will have no impact on my code anyway.
Even once I do get into .NET development, the .NET 2.0 framework is going to continue to run on XP for a long time to come, as is Visual Studio. That's one of the positive aspects of .NET -- it's not bound to the OS.
That's why I'm not likely to switch my main home machine over to any of the flavors of Linux any time soon; although with mono approaching 98% feature completion it may become a possibility. I don't want to rule out any options, but at this point there is nothing in Vista to attract me and plenty to repel me.
John
Though this seems obviuous, it needs to be seconded ! - This is a perspective that has changed compared to earlier releases.
Worse (for MS): It has nothing to do with Debian or stuff. We are running XP on a Duron 800 with 256 MB of RAM just fine. Not even slow. No need here to upgrade.
Except, and this is the bad predicament of Microsoft, they add so-called great new features that require advanced hardware. But when they do so, the very same moment, the uptake of new hardware (and subsequently Vista) will be slow.
I don't envy them. But their karma is self-inflicted and so there is no need to pity them, neither.
The true victim of the Microsoft monopoly is Microsoft. I could see the writing on the wall with Windows ME. Microsoft was no longer the underdog but the standard, so there was little incentive to get features right. Windows XP was an improvement but fast forward 5 years later and we know it had (has) major issues. But again, it seemed that Microsoft was more interested in milking its monopoly than getting it right. Now Vista is on the horizon, will they finally get it right? I don't believe so. The broken promises section seems to illustrate that Microsoft bit off more than they could chew. They had to copy OSX but they had to completely outdo Apple. That was the problem beacause while Apple was improving the OS in little jumps, Microsoft engineers were throwing away months of coding to start over. Now, OSX will be pretty close to Vista when it comes and they may have to move Vista out to show something for their years of work (what is the bug-o-meter going to read for Vista). Also, I think the bloated system requirements was for the sake of OEMs selling more expensive PCs than providing the user with innovation. I am glad I move off of Windows when I did because this is silly. Apple, being the underdog, has good incentive to get it right.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one