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Apple vs Microsoft- Who's the Copycat?
torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott attacks the Apple Mac OS X Leopard Preview. He does have a few kind words for Apple and its leader Steve Jobs ("They do good work. It's too bad they feel the need to exaggerate so much.", but overall, he rips apart Apple for mimicking Vista, even going so far as to call the Apple fascination with Vista "childish."
Paul does include a healthy review of the latest Leopard features, but quickly returned to his bashing of Apple. "
I think the headline should say "mocking" instead of "mimicking"
I agree that Apple's fascination with Vista is childish. The posters claiming Leopard to be "Vista 2.0", and endless claims about MS copying them. Bah. Apple could really be very good; it's a shame they have to be such elitists.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
u expect?
Until Vista actually comes out, these comments amount to not much more than so many farts in a steady breeze.
Find your friends!
I don't give a damn who's copying who. If the features are useful and functional, then kudos to any developer of any system, (not even limiting myself to software here,) who adds those features to their system.
note: I am not a Mac user nor even a Windows user anymore.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I didn't see any bashing in here. All his points are well taken as he swats Microsoft or Apple appropriately. They both steal whatever they think is best - the huge difference being that Apple can actually deliver something on a reasonable time schedule.
Of course if you're one of Steve's Commandos type of Mac owners I can see where this article is Pearl Harbor all over again, especially where he alludes to the RDF.
Them is both copies of window managers for linux, period.
Ok, so which part of 'News for Nerds' does this come under?
from the does-it-really-matter dept.
(Really.)
Developers: We can use your help.
Sure, the features shown at WWDC were a bit underwhelming for us "ordinary folk." Although I do think that Time Machine looks amazing. There's going to be more, just be patient. Apple's not going to give away all the good stuff when there's still half a year until it's released.
It's stupid to ask if Microsoft or Apple is the one stealing from the other. Most ideas we see successfully implemented today are taken from somewhere else and (hopefully) improved. Take e.g. Spaces. Yes, there have been virtual desktops for Linux for years (and I've been using Desktop Manageron OS X for this purpose for some), but spaces is neatly integrated into Expose and viewing all virtual desktops in miniature versions the way Spaces does might even be new, at least I haven't seen it before.
So is it copied? Or is it invented? None of both, it is evolved. Yes, Windows can already make system snapshots like Time Machine. No, it cannot do it in a way that it can be easily managed by a normal user. Copied? Invented? If Vista brings a nicer interface similar to Time Machine, did they copy it back?
The originator of an idea is less important in a world where evolution is as important as with operating systems and GUIs. So these comparisons try to artificially generate a difference where none exists. My personal reference will be which implementation works best for me, not who came up with the inspiration.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Its hard not to copy features when according to Microsoft vista will do everything but slice bread. Until its released you really can't say its being copied.
I'd say that a company being focused intently on its competitors is a staple of business, isn't it? That having been said- I would imagine that a company who is so famous for their ~vision~ would need more than anything that the public accept their products as original and innovative.
...But not by Windows. Time Machine goes way beyond Windows' System Restore, and is more similar to VMS's versioning filesystem. Spaces is just virtual desktops, yes, but Windows never had them either [from Microsoft] except for a half-assed "PowerToy."
Spotlight is not like Windows Search. Spotlight uses metadata much more extensively, and is actually more similar in concept to the database filesystem that BeOS had 10 years ago and that Microsoft has been trying (and failing) to implement since about the same time. So yes, Apple "copied" it -- but from BeOS, not Windows.
In terms of actual new functionality, all those add up to less than the amount of new functionality Apple has added to Mac OS X in the same time frame. Yes, SP2 was major, Media Center was major, Tablet PC Edition was major, and I'll allow his assertion that x64 was major. But that's it. All those other editions only differed in which combination of preexisting features they included.
False. Apple has Front Row, which has much less functionality than Media Center, but is certainly not "nothing like" it. And Apple has something like "Tablet PC functionality" too. It's called Inkwell. The only reason nobody knows about it is that, since Apple doesn't sell a Tablet Mac, you've got to have a Wacom tablet to use it.
That's not true; they've been "trying" to ship the features that Vista was supposed to have since about 1995 (e.g. a metadata filesystem), and still haven't managed to do so. So really, they've used every codename from "Chicago" to "Blackcomb" to describe all the functionality that Vista is supposed to have.
As I said before, the idea originally came from BeOS. Aside from that, the shortcuts Apple took to make Spotlight (i.e. it isn't actually part of the filesystem) resemble the steps Microsoft took when going from WinFS to Windows Search.
And then the rest of the article consists of Paul listing the things that he admits Microsoft copied. I'll omit those since I have no argument with them.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
are you kidding me? vista is a direct rip of os x. how can anyone take THIS seriously?
..is KDE!
There, would that make him happy? Honestly, it's been said time and time again that the best features of one OS tend to bleed over into others, whether it involves the GUI, networking, or filesystems. Honestly, Apple only makes "photocopier" comments to differentiate themselves in the market from Windows. But I guess logic like that, marketing or otherwise, doesn't generate the page hits required.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
In the very first paragraph, he establishes what a horrible person Jobs is for competing with Microsoft. And I suppose David was an asshole for standing up to Goliath? Needless to say, he doesn't even mention Bill Gates throughout the entire article.
So then he goes on to attack the improvements over the past couple years:
He claimed that Apple shipped five "major" updates to OS X, including Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger, though I'd argue that virtually none of those were major updates at all. (Unless you count the cost. At $129 for each version, that's about $750 on Mac OS X upgrades since 2001. That kind of puts the cost of Windows in perspective.) But he counted Tiger on Intel as a sixth major release, because of the effort in porting the OS X code to a new platform (which, actually, had been in the works for a long time and wasn't the 210 day project Jobs claimed).
By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages
Am I missing something? XP, XP, XP, XP... the only differences between most being software bundles, hardware compatibility, and driver support. and he fails to mention that pretty much all of those also have a price tag well over $100.
Thanks to the 64-bit Xeon chip that will be shipping in the new Mac Pro systems, Leopard will be fully 64-bit enabled (unlike Tiger, which is only partially 64-bit and then only on certain Power PC systems). That means that OS X will finally do what Windows XP x64 Edition did last year: Run 32-bit and 64-bit applications natively, side-by-side. Good for them.
So Windows released a seperate 64-bit version (which you have to buy seperately as well) before Apple. Again, no big deal. Almost every product on the market is starting to move towards 64-bit support. Is Apple really "copying" Windows here?
It seems to me that all these arguments are really week and that this guy just wants to complain about Apple. I really think he could've used his time more productively.
It's important for you to understand, however, that I don't have Leopard. I'm basing this only on what Apple showed off at WWDC.
Maybe you should try it before you knock it.
--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He replies that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Meh... the only thing I have ever actualy used on his site was the slipstreaming guide (quite good compared to others I have seen). Paul's site seems to be getting less and less relivant to the working Microsoft product support technitian (Or at least this is true for me0.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Q: Sometimes I wonder how Apple CEO Steve Jobs can sleep at night.
A: Well, he have a machine that simulates the sound of the ocean.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0313737/quotes
Ruth Kelson: No offense, but I think it's *immoral* for one person to acquire that much wealth. How do you sleep at night?
George Wade: Well, I have a machine that simulates the sound of the ocean.
A site specialized on Windows and with a strong relationship with Micrsooft bashes a competitor OS to defend Vista and make it look like the one that is truly original... I'm shocked! SHOCKED!
(yeah, I got the karma to burn)
they're both being developed at the same time, with virtually the same goals of "increasing user-friendliness, increasing productivity, and building on what they've already learned from past experience". If there weren't some obvious similarities, I'd be quite surprised. In general, if someone comes up with a really great idea, and you're trying to compete with that person, it probably makes sense to try to copy them vs. trying to do something the opposite (read: less-intuitive) way.
I'd be pretty pissed if, after one car company decided to put a CD player in their car, the rest of the companies tried to pretend it was a crappy idea to do so themselves. Same goes for antilock brakes, better suspension, smarter engine design, etc. Even you linux zealots wouldn't mind some of these features I'm sure (as long as you had to download/configure/compile them, and then only if you wanted to).
Paul 'winsupersite' Thurrott doing a negative review of Apple on behalf of MickeySoft ?! I just can't believe it. That's like Christopher Hitchens saying that Saddam had those WMDs after all ! Oh wait.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I must totally agree with the article: Apple's fascination with Vista IS childish. I mean, why in the world would Apple be obsessed with Microsoft's new operating system? It's not like Vista won't have 90% of the desktop market within the next four years or anything. Oh, wait...
...that the Apple faithful doesn't want to tag as Apple, given the title?
I'd say he has a valid point on some things.
The one major thing I have a problem with is him touting XP64.
XP 64bit is the hugest piece of shit know to man.
Thats why it costs less than 32bit XP.
Little to no drivers for it, seperate paths for 32 and 64 executables, ontop of it just being buggy beta code level of stability.
It's worse quality wise than WindowsME.
...if you look properly, it looks a lot like Microsoft is copying Apple. In the latest beta of Vista, progress meters shimmer. Windows slide into the taskbar when minimised. And practically everything glows when hovered over. Sound familiar, anyone???
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Please, somebody tell Apple to put the Nuke button back where it belongs... on the other side of the window.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone beat me to the punch on this, but has this guy seen this video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-41344461 12378047444)?
Ok, here are a few things that show he's just blowing smoke up our collective skirts.
Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages. Heck, I might be missing some versions. No, they're not all major releases (The N Editions? Eh.) But XP x64, like Tiger on Intel, was a major engineering effort.
Ok, all of these are simply the same OS with different feature sets. Ok, so fine, the x86_64 was a "major engineering effort" (ya right). So lets count that as two major releases since 2001. Isn't that about on par with Apple's MacOS X? The initial releases (MacOS X.0, Windows XP), and then the major platform changes (MaxOS X86, Windows XP 64).
Time Machine is a truly good idea: It helps you automatically back up everything on your system and restore earlier versions of files at any time. But this was a great idea over three years ago when Microsoft first added it to Windows Server 2003 as Volume Shadow Copy (VSC, or "Previous Versions" to end users). In fact, VSC is such a good idea, Microsoft is adding it as a purely client-side service in Windows Vista as well.
You're right. It's a great idea. In fact, the innovative way they've implemented it makes it even better. Oh, whats that? Windows' interface to the same "feature" sucks? Thats right. Frankly the version in Windows 2003 Server is absolute crap.
Apple is integrating applications like Boot Camp, Photo Booth, and Front Row into Leopard. Previously, these applications were only available with new Macs, or in the case of Boot Camp, as a free public beta download. Sorry, but this is hardly impressive.
Its not the integration thats cool here, but instead the enhancements. Boot Camp is coming out of beta, Photo Booth has some awesome new effects/features, and Front Row has a lot of bugfixes and enhancements as well. Nobody once said "Hey look its being integrated," but instead said "Hey look, shiny (new features)!"
Apple's version of Windows Search will now search other Mac clients and workgroup servers, functionality that Microsoft will add to Windows Vista with the release of Vista SP1 and Longhorn Server in late 2007. It will also support advanced search features, like better search syntax, just like Windows Search. And, as with Windows Vista, you'll be able to launch applications and find recent items with Spotlight. Gee, Spotlight still seems an awful lot like Windows Search.
Thats right, a feature thats coming sooner, is being copied from software that will have it later. MacOS X had this tech before Microsoft even announced it in Vista, and really the new features are just a natural evolution of the technology.
You can find more of my response in my blog @ http://apple.krillrblog.com/ at about 1PM PDT (20h00 UTC).
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. While it's true that most features of either OS aren't completely new, there's a big difference between the way Microsoft and Apple incorporate them. Apple tends to create innovative new user interfaces (Time Machine) while Microsoft tends to copy features verbatim, even down to icon style and color schemes in some cases (some examples are given in the presentation).
Another key thing to note is WHEN each company incorporates new features. Apple tends to get things first (first in the sense of before Microsoft) and do cool new things with them while Microsoft tends to get them months or years later and does absolutely nothing new or innovative.
As for the Microsoft bashing during the WWDC it was well deserved. Microsoft deserves to be bashed for taking 5 years to develop a new OS and constantly delaying it while dropping many of its biggest features. And no matter how much you want to argue about Microsoft copying off Apple I hope you can at least agree that they're chasing after Apple's iPod and Google's web services like a little dog that got its bone stolen by a bigger one.
Most of the Mac kiddies like myself aren't really claiming that Microsoft is ripping off Apple in the biblical sense, just that Apple is the leader - the one daring to go where Microsoft probably would never have gone otherwise. If you want the latest and the greatest you have to love Apple and wait for Microsoft.
Haiku for you!
The summary is misleading... Yes, Paul is a big time Windows advocate (but he's still not afraid to bash Microsoft/Windows where appropriate). It's true that Apple steals stuff from MS just as they steal stuff from Apple (although it's debatable whether or not they steal equally as Paul claims). They also both steal from the OS community--heck Apple stole both their kernel and their browser from BSD and Konqueror projects respectively (they have contributed back to both of those projects, but more than likely not nearly as much as they've gained from them). Still, I agree with his assessment about the release cycle of Apple--adding a couple of new features every year and selling and upgrade doesn't really count as a major release; major releases/versions are whole number releases versions. And $750 (non-academic price) to keep your OS as the 'latest and greatest' over the past 5 years is quite costly. Also, out of the features (at least those announced) being added in Leopard, I also agree that Time Machine and Spaces are far and above the most interesting (Core Animations just makes things pretty--and while I use a Mac, I really don't care if things are pretty...). But out of those Spaces should have been in the FIRST version of OS X as it's just virtual desktops and has been part of *nix for years (and a very useful part of *nix that, frankly, is rearely used by none power users). Time Machine is pretty nice and it solves a common problem for users, so this one is really great (Paul, and other's, argue that there are similar products out there for other OSs and there sort of are, but from what I've read about Time Machine it's a little bit of a different approach and it sounds like a superior option). Right now though there's not enough there for me to even consider spending the $70 (academic price) for an upgrade to Leopard when it comes out as right now Tiger works for me (minus the fact that gcc doesn't work on the Intel Macs--other than version 4.0 because for some reason cc1 and cc1plus aren't included in XCode for the Intel Macs, which Apple tech support informed me about... and which is very annoying when trying to compile FOSS... but I guess I can always run those on my desktop which boots Linspire, Ubuntu, and XP; especially since my desktop is more of my development/media machine any way).
Read my blog posts on usability.
One Spotlight is not a rip off of windows search it is the natural progression from Sherlock released in os 8.0 in about 1998. Windows search is a less well implemented version of what Sherlock originally did for searching.
And what is up with his trashing of sherlock later as a tech destined for the trashheap... Windows and disabilty access to the OS... Ok Apple has been much more proactive through the years on this one, with text to speech support since at least OS7.
Overall I see alot of straw man attacks, yes there is a convergent evolution and you can make the point that Mac OSX has taken some ques from Vista, but How many more cues has Windows Vista taken from Mac OS, or how many things has Windows taken over the years? The start button is just a poorly implemented apple menu in os7 (after you could place the hd folder in the menu.)
read between the lines sure Apple took some things, but Microsost has taken more and after using both systems most people prefer the look, feel and use-ability of the MAC OS. For the record I own only PC's at this point.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Instead of a fair review, he takes every opportunity to bash Apple. Let's not mention the thousands of features Windows stole from Apple, no, that would be way too fair. What a putz.
Back at the CES, wasn't an MS exec hyping a slew of new features in Vista, all of which already existed in commercially available versions of OS X for several years? Someone has even made a video displaying OS X's features in sync with the audio of the supposed new features of Vista which wasn't publically released at the time.
I really don't want to humor the article by following the link because I suspect a Dvorak-ism going on here.
It's possible that they were MS ideas which Apple managed to beat MS to the market on those features by several years, but frankly, many of those ideas are likely from somewhere else.
The "spaces" feature is Apple catching up on the virtual desktop concept (was available as an XP PowerToy, but before then, was an X window feature), but none of the other introduced features seemed to be rips of Vista.
The features shown at WWDC were generally features developers want, and hints at the technology under them:
(I'm not saying all the features shown appeal only to developers, of course, just that Jobs and crew knew their audience. Many of these features appeal to other groups, too: iChat, Time Machine and Mail clearly appeal to other computer professionals who spend their job working on a Mac. WebClip will appeal to even casual users.)
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Well it's not so bad. He made some valid points, the keynote was relatively sparce in information. But that's largely because so much of the new stuff is only being revealed behind closed doors with NDAs being signed and whatnot. It's a developer conference, and Leopard is still a ways off from release.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Couldn't bashing someone else be considered childish? Just saying is all.
Please RTFA. Microsoft's EXISTING Volume Shadow Copy technology is being compared to Time Machine, NOT System Restore. Apple "copied" the same idea, they just put a prettier interface on top of it.
Another truly major new feature, Spaces lets you utilize multiple desktops, each of which can contain its own set of application. Multiple desktops have been around for decades, and even the earliest Linux versions had this feature. Microsoft even implemented it in NT-based versions of Windows, though the company curiously never made it easy to access this functionality until it shipped a free PowerToy for Windows, called Virtual Desktop Manager, in 2001. It works an awful lot like Spaces, frankly, though Apple's version is obviously more polished and, well, Apple-like.
Well obviously this guy is either so biased he can't help it or he has a really terrible picture of what virtual desktops actually are. I tried Virtual Desktop Manager and it's bloody awful, I honestly can't think of enough bad words to say about it. That is the difference between OSX and other OSs IME, the Apple stuff just works. Microsoft stuff especially you have to screw around with for 10 minutes first.
The author may have wanted to pay attention to the part of the keynote where Steve says there are many things they would not show about Leopard because they didn't want MS to copy them (complete with a "Top Secret" slide). To assume these are the only new features of Leopard is rather foolish. Why would Steve show his hand early if he doesn't have to? Apple has been burned enough by MS the way it is.
If he's going to compare features, wait until we get the full story of what's in Leopard.
He is dumb as a brick and has nothing good to say about anything. Are you posting this very poorly thought out article to mock him, is there someone actually listening to him and saying wow thats smart?
More than any other company I cover regularly, Apple plays light and loose with facts. [...] More to the point, Apple's explosion growth in 2005 did nothing to help the Mac's market share, which is still mired at 2 percent worldwide. In other words, Steve's claim is baloney: Apple hasn't really gained any appreciable market share at all--indeed, Apple has lost market share every year since Jobs took the CEO helm--but his comment is technically true: In the slice of time that is the second quarter of 2006, Apple gained--get this--about 1/10th of one percent of market share. And the WWDC crowd goes wild.
I despise Apple-the-company for a lot of reasons, but this is the biggest one. They LIE. From the "twice as fast" ads to the current ads about PCs crashing, they LIE LIE LIE and constantly LIE.
Whenever I bring this up, Apple fans always give me the ol' "yeah, but everyone does it." Everyone does NOT do it to the extent Apple does it. I can't think of any company that is even in the same ballpark as Apple when it comes to dishonesty.
And it's not just marketing dishonesty. It's things like, "The cracks in the cube are designed to be there". I still recall shaking my head at that.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I wonder about the 64 bit thing. Not being a Windows user, and especially not being a 64-bit Windows user, can you run the same version of XP on both 32 and 64 bit machines? My sources tell me: no.
Apple's breakthrough is that they're supporting 64bit AND 32bit in the same operating system. You have a G3 or G4? It runs PPC 32bit. Have a G5? It runs PPC 64bit. Have a Core Duo? It runs Intel 32bit. Have a Xeon? It runs Intel 64bit.
By Paul's counting of Microsoft OS's, there's actually four versions of Leopard. Just because Apple doesn't sell them all in a separate box doesn't mean they're not.
Well known Microsoft supporter has a few bad words to say about Apple.
Ok, so which part of 'News for Nerds' does this come under?
apple.slashdot.com, where all stories are either spiteful media bias by trolls who want to get their hit-count up by groundlessly bashing Apple, or slavish fanboy posts by "Reality Distortion Field" victims who are lining up to drink poisoned Flavorade.
If you try to write a balanced story or comment about Apple, you will be accused of being both.
The facts:
Microsoft has frequently bought, borrowed or stolen all kinds of UI concepts from Apple, but generally doesn't do as good a job at implementing them for some reason. They have some very bright programming minds at Microsoft, but for some reason they are (and pretty much always have been) famously weak on design concepts.
Apple has turned around and taken a few UI tools from Microsoft as well (most notably contextual "right-click" menus, and the schedule integration they are rolling into the next version of Mail.app), mainly for the sake of meeting the expectations of OS "switchers."
My broad generalization of the trend:
When Microsoft takes from Apple, it's because Apple came up with a great idea. When Apple takes from Microsoft, it's because Microsoft has pushed a new industry standard on the market.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
WMP for Mac is dead.
Office for Mac is neutered in the next iteration (no VB).
MS won't be necessary for Mac much longer, especially if iWork '07 has a good spreadsheet.
Apple technically asked for this. I really love Apple and I admire their innovations and their _superior_ implementation of other peoples good ideas, but I found the bashing of Microsoft appalling. Actually I was shocked, because usually, if you start bashing your better selling competitor this is a sign that your product sucks. Just look at all the iPod competitors!
Come on Apple, you have such great products and everyone who matters knows it. You won't convince the Microsoft fanbois in this way, anyways and it only leads to a "But I had it first" shouting-match. It almost felt they had to provide red meat for Apple zealots. May be I am the only one who feels like this, but if this had happened a year and a half ago when I was still contemplating whether to switch, this would have been a major turn off. Luckily at this point they presented Tiger and I could giggle over the _one_ joke Steve Jobs was doing on the Vista delay when he was presenting iCal.
Let's hope that Apple comes to its senses and next keynote they present the (actually great and amazing) stuff they have accomplished and stop the massive ridiculing of Microsoft. That really seems childish to me. It's World Wide Developers Conference and not the Windows Bashing Fest for Christ's sake.
As OSes get more advanced, we'll see them start to converge (as we always have) on features. The defining traits will be ease of use and security, but functionality will likely end up being very very similar. It's like complaining that the Honda Civic has four tires, JUST like the Toyota Corolla.
Funny how the World Wide Developers Conference was developer-heavy, huh?
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
This Microsoft pundit actually has slashdoter's at his fingertips? You're kidding right? You can't be serious. I read the article, except for a few instances, if you switch every instance of "Apple" and the closest "Windows" I would agree with most of his statements.
I downloaded the Vista preview, while installing I laughed a bit here, a little bit there. "Wow, somebody wants to be OSX." I said to myself while loging in for the first time. "Geez, they even built in OSX's Spotlight as 'Desktop Search', wow . . . who is going to believe this crap."
I seriously had more respect for slashdoter's neutrality 5 minutes ago
Let us forgive and forget, can we draw some huge HR tag and start the comments over?
"When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you." --leonstryker
''But by the same token, I have to admit to being a bit shocked by how childish Apple is about Vista.
Its not just Apple. Anybody who still thinks Vista is great is childish. I too share your shock
Internet Explorer
Outlook
Project
Visual Fox Pro
Maintining them for the Macintosh, well, that's another issue
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Apple copying Windows? Ha. If you've tried the Windows Vista beta, you'd notice that the resemblence to OS-X (and some of the popular linux GUIs, but that's off topic) is almost scary. Take a look at the history of both companies to really see who copies who.
Back in the early 80's, Apple was almost solely responsible for popularizing the home PC, if not inventing it, with the Apple II's, LISA's, etc. Microsoft responded with Windows 1.0, 2.0, and the popular 3.0 & 3.1, which weren't much more than a DOS shell that looked almost exactly like Apple's first GUIs, which came a couple years earlier. And Apple actually made their own machines. Steve Jobs had a lot to do with this, especially in the mid-80's when he merged his NeXT project with Apple. Ever since the beginning, Apple has been ahead of Microsoft (as far as I'm concerned) in every aspect, except perhaps with their hold on the market, and that's paritally because Apple chooses to spend their money and resources on R&D instead of marketing tactics.
Nowadays, it's getting harder not to copy each other, as well as other companies & OS's, because the seemingly main goal is to make it look "prettier" than the others. Reliability and functionality are already rather attainable (except with the remaining bugs in Vista...oops) so the focus now becomes what the consumer will consider more when shopping for a new PC.
Stable? Sure. Can I do what I want with it? More. But this one looks prettier!
Life freezes when the servers crash.
When someone criticizes Apple using solid arguments, that's bashing, but when someone says something against Microsoft, then it's telling the truth, it will be modded +5 Insightful, and argumentative rebuttal replies will be marked -1 Troll...
/., but so damn tired of the attitude...)
(Ubuntu user here. No, I'm not new on
I'm actually quite surprised that a slightly anti-apple article has been posted.
With that said, I think he is correct in calling their fascination with vista childish, I mean a coworker read that Jobs Comment about not wanting to reveal all the details about his new OS because Microsoft will copy them, and that is fairly childish in my opinion. Especially where MS has been very vocal about what Vista will be like, whereas Jobs hasn't said anything. Perhaps he's copying Vista features?
I mean, some of his statements are getting pretty crazy, like borderline Sony insanity!
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Nope. A third party created a QuickTime plugin that plays Windows Media files better than the Mac player. They just released an Intel version of this plugin.
Microsoft has released nothing to date that is a Universal Binary. They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client. There isn't a date set on the next version of Office. Virtual PC and Windows Media Player for Mac have been cancelled.
- oZ
// i am here.
I think Paul T. is showing his true colors as Bill Gates' personal 'lap dog'...
It's sad too, because I used to respect this guy... note: "Used to"
Lately he has tried to explain...(read: justify) WGA, and now the Apple/Jobs bashing... *I* think there's an awful lot of jealousy here, and worried that perhaps Apploe *does* make a better OS than Microsoft, and it's got them reduced to 'bashing'...
(BTW: FYI, I am not previously know as a Mac owner, only bought my first one in April, still have several Windows machines, so, I'm not a 'fan boy' so to speak)
Who says it's anything like System Restore? Even the article says it's "inspired" by Volume Shadow Copy, which is present in W2003 and will be in Vista. The powertoy was, unlike the next Apple release, a free addon, and was available soon after XP.
I don't have time to go over everything, but how does Spotlight use "metadata much more extensively"? Does it add several fields like "artist" and "comments" to the Indexing Service? Frontrow is itunes with huge fonts, and Inkwell is more like handwriting recognition that can be added as input services to xp/2003 (although I don't think it supports gestures), rather than a large modification.
"But he counted Tiger on Intel as a sixth major release, because of the effort in porting the OS X code to a new platform (which, actually, had been in the works for a long time and wasn't the 210 day project Jobs claimed)."
The 210 days was for the switch for the entire product line to Intel processors. Jobs NEVER said it took 210 days to port OS X to Intel, he had admitted previously they had OS X running on Intel for a few releases already.
Why blast Vista? It is going to full of technological
breakthroughs and really is not that far behind schedule.
I hear it's going to be shipped any day now.
Sincerely,
Duke Nukem Forever
I must not be on Slashdot. Even if it isn't true (I don't know), that was the best written, well-reasoned post I've ever read here. Kudos!
It's the components for QuickTime. I don't think they make the standalone player anymore.
Most Windows users are not familiar with the Vista features yet, unless of course they are beta testers.
As I look over the article and list, I wonder if Paul is just trolling for hits. Most of these can;t be calles MS innovation as most existed previously (1. 64bit support? An unforseeable "innovation". Should it get a patent too? Give me a break 4. Spaces, multiple desktops where he cites some archaic never released NT4.0 reference when this is obviously a widely known feature on Unix for year, may have existed elsewhere)
1. 64-bit application support
2. Time Machine
3. The Complete Package
4. Spaces
5. Spotlight
6. Core Animation
7. Accessibility improvements
8. Mail
9. Dashcode and Dashboard improvements
10. iChat
Look, the way I see it there are three major 'camps' computer users fall into: The Windows users, the *nix users, and the Mac users. (Yes, I'm over generalizing a bit, but so is Paul Thurrott. I'm merely playing on his turf.) If you're a member of one of these camps, you'll generally hear flak from the other two. It's the way of life. (My experience comes from the fact I've been 'in' each of these camps. In the order provided.)
/.?
So what makes this article worth
Well, I'll admit Thurrott makes some good points. I, for one, didn't see too many features in Leopard that made me want to plunk down $70 for it. The time machine thing sounds awesome, yes, but that's not going to make a huge difference in my life day-to-day. It's the type of thing that's used in those "oh shit" scenarios we all hate. It's not going to save me if the power suddenly goes out and I didn't save what I was working on, and so forth. But it's an effort.
I don't personally begrudge Apple for this too much. They've just switched architectures, and are responsible for developing every part of the Mac experience - minus 3rd party programs/hardware to a limited extent. That's not a trivial task, I imagine.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
WMP for mac is nomore.
You might be referring to Flip4mac the quicktime plugin that Microsnot says you should use to replace WMP.
Some ideas are good and are adopted by both, some fall by the wayside. I don't look in my garage at my Ford and my Toyota and freak out; "OMG! Both Vehicles have 4 wheels, 4 doors, and a steering wheel! The Toyota must be copyng the Ford!" It's just natural evolution. That's the best way to do stuff. Cars have been around for over 100 years and are for lack of a better term, a mature product. Personal compuers roughly 30. There's still a lot of great ideas out there that Mac or Windows or KDE or Gnome, or XFCE, etc etc. will come up with that will end up in the other systems.
That's how you build a product. Grab as many good ideas as you can and make them seamlessly work together.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
This analysis makes me laugh. First paragraph says "Apple is copying Windows." Second paragraph says "Leopard has two good features, neither of which is common in Windows. The other new things are a complete waste of time."
Thurrott claims to be "more productive" on Windows than on Mac, but if this is the best argument his increased productivity lets him make, I'd hate to see the logic he would produce writing on a Mac.
'Careful, Gates calls people with ideas like yours "Terrorists."'
That's as absurdly over the top as calling linux a "cancer." Has Microsoft ever labeled anyone a terrorist? Realize that the Gates's foundation (started in 2000) has helped the world more than any linux user. You sound ridiculous.
I love this little preemptive strike from his conclusion...
Gee, you conclude your column with a passive-aggressive insult. Of course, there's going to be another round of name-calling, Paul! You started it! Yeah, zealots are a fact of life when discussing operating systems, but you don't take the high road by sneering at the other guy's lack of elevation.
This sig intentionally left blank.
When Apple steals from MicroSoft, they get it right.
When MicroSoft steals from Apple, it doesn't work as well, and it crashes the system even faster.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Umm, if you use a mac where most people use office on windows then you need something that's compatible.
Jeez, Who pissed in this guy's alphabits?
It's just a little corporate trash talking. Lighten up.
That's good, because Apple stole Sidebar idea wholeheartedly from Konfabulator and other widget environments that predated Dashboard.
Christ... remember, kids, ideology is not just a point of view, it's a mental illness. Just say no. :)
I get a lot of flak from the Mac community and no doubt this article will start another round of name-calling. (See how Apple's childish behavior rubs off on its fans?)
Well, if you insist. How about "elitist, holier-than-thou prick who needs to be kicked in the nuts so hard he'll tea bag himself every time he sneezes." Howzat?
Man, I just have NO patience for pundits anymore.
Despite what P.T. says, Windows mail now looks a lot like Mail.app with the 'vertical' arrangement rather than the traditional 'horizontal' arrangement of outlook and outlook express. What's interesting is that many people hate Mail.app's vertical paradigm and were hoping for a switch to a more outlook-like arrangement in Leopard... since that would fit better with Apple's emphasis on wide aspect-ratio displays.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Yes. I especially liked those Linux ideas running on my SGI Indigo in 1991.
So what does he want? Apple seems to have pretty much everything Microsoft was planning to ship (and probably some of the stuff they ended up dropping) with Vista covered. He's long on criticism for Apple's mountains-out-of-molehills marketing, which is completely valid, but he doesn't say what they're missing at all.
He explains right off why Apple has to be grandiose about their software. They're trying to get attention for their computer business. They're trying to increase that tiny sliver of market share they have, and if they just hop up on stage and say "Hey guys, we got a couple new features in here. Hope you buy our computers," nobody's going to go for it.
Microsoft can afford to be more reserved and dismissive of Apple and their other competitors. They're the 800lb gorilla. Even admitting Apple exists is probably more than they'd like, because more people will hear that than all the Apple shouting from the rooftops in the world.
Game... blouses.
I lost all respect for Paul Thurrot just over a year ago. IMHO, he has become irrelevant, and only gets the publicity he does because of his tenure in the field rather than any tangible credibility. This article is yet another example of this trend.
Yup, VMS had autoversioning of files way back when, but it was the Apple Lisa(tm) that had a GUI based file versioning system. When you created a document, an icon was created that looked like a page. When you editted the document, pages where added to the icon that looked stacked. You could easily go back to any prevision version. (This may have been copied from the Xerox Star system out of PARC that Apple copied.)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
When your product dominates the marketplace as Windows does, you can and should expect the underdog to take potshots at you. This is not considered bad behavior for an underdog. Microsoft doesn't publicly bash Apple because that would play in Apple's favor, not because of some odd sense of propriety. If Microsoft's people (Paul Thurrott) feel badly because their one desktop competitor bashes their product they seriously need to get a life and quit taking this personally.
I seem to recall that Apple ripped off Karelia's Watson for their search capability, not Vista. Both companies have a penchant for stealing features from each other and their own third party developers to bundle with their operating system. Anyone remember the Stacker/Doublespace fiasco? Netscape/Internet Explorer. Konfabulator/Dashboard. Watson/Sherlock. And let us not forget the Apple vs. MS look and feel lawsuit of 1988. Surprise! Apple and MS both ripped off Xerox! I'm sure there are many many more I coud add to this list.
In summary: It's perfectly acceptable to mock the incumbent; in addition, idea "theft" is practically a tradition in the operating system business.
Thurott's column is, IMHO, pretty much on the mark. In fact it seems to me that from about 1996 on, many of the things Apple has done have been, if not copying Wintel, nevertheless moving closer and closer to it. The miserable Dock is functionally very much like the WIndows 95 taskbar, the Finder and OS now handle file extensions about the same way Windows does, and so forth.
.mp3 players. I must have read two dozen reviews that all begin the same way: This could be the iPod killer. The reviewer always says that it has, you know, twice the storage, more features, longer battery life, a lower price, whatever. Then as the review goes on it becomes painfully obvious that the reviewer encountered a number of serious problems--invariably dismissed as "glitches." It wouldn't play, or it crashed, or it wouldn't sync properly to the PC, or it wouldn't play music that the reviewer had paid for. Invariably the reviewer mentions that despite having just as many knobs and buttons as an iPod, the menu system was difficult to use, and so forth.
.mp3 player they'd ever seen... because it was the first one that had been "perfected."
And, yes, Jobs' presentations are rather dishonest... starting from the day in 1984 when he pulled a Mac out of a bag and demonstrated things like MacinTalk, never bothering to mention that he was using a prototype Mac with 512K of RAM and that of his demos would run on the shipping Mac (which had 128K).
Still, it is important to recognize that what Apple has been good at is innovation, which is not the same as invention. Most of Apple's innovations were not invented by Apple, but Apple wrapped them up, made them work, gave them fit and finish, made sure they would work for your mom and not some geek in a lab.
To use an old-fashioned word, Apple is great at perfecting things.
This shows up particularly in the world of
To put it bluntly, the iPod was an Apple innovation. It didn't actually do anything that Creative and other companies hadn't been doing for years... but it worked, and people liked it, and for an awful lot of people it was the first
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
From TFA:
"In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition"
That's great. Not only are the 64 bit editions very unstable to this day (and shouldn't be counted as "released" until they are), the difference between all of these "releases" of Windows XP is which features were #ifdef'ed out of the pro version, which service pack they shipped with, and which drivers they shipped with. That's not a "release." I don't know anyone that would look at XP Starter Edition and say "Yes! What a great new release! A true engineering marvel!"
Besides, until we really see Vista as a released product, I'm not ready to compare it to the very first version of OSX, much less Leopard. Maybe it'll fall short of what OSX has always been, maybe it'll eclipse Leopard - I'll decide when it's released, but comparing a few tweaks for XP to the OSX releases is hillariously ignorant.
This is completely and utterly wrong.
Do your homework, geek, both Apple and Microsoft "borrowed" contextual menus (be them accessible via right-click, CTRL+Click or whatever other shortcut you may want) from Xerox' Alto computer (the pop-up menus of the Smalltalk environment that ran on Altos at the time).
And NEXTSTEP walked the next step by opening the contextual menu at the location of the mouse, creating what's now known as "right-click menus".
Microsoft did create the submenu notion (for Microsoft Word) though.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Apple went to great lengths to accuse Microsoft of copying OSX. Details of Leopard are released and it appears that quite a few of the new features in OSX.5 are "copies" of features that are already in Windows in one way, shape, or form. When Microsoft is accused of copying Apple and Windows users argue that the implementation of the idea is vastly different, slashbots shout the guy down. The shoe is on the other foot now. I like the implementation of Time Machine but let's not say it's anything new. Time based back-up software has been a part of Windows since XP and it's been improved (vastly) for Vista. Core Animation is something Microsoft has been also doing with Avalon and the integration of DirectX into the presentation layer of the OS, though the groundwork for this actually started with Windows 2000 and GDI+. While Vista is not yet out, Apple has certainly been well aware of Microsoft's efforts towards this goal and Core Animation smacks of a me too feature. Apple did it with 10.3 too when they implemented fast user switching. Windows XP had the feature long before. The point being that if Apple is going to accuse Microsoft of copying, they had better not be doing it themselves.
Total cost of ownership. The MacOSX releases really add up over the years, while you only had to pay once (but much more) for XP. Of course, you also had to buy antivirus software, muck with popup blockers and get a spyware removal tool if you were using XP, so who am I kidding?
Nor do they make the components for Quicktime - those are produced by a company called Flip4Mac
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
I think you've missed the point here. Yes, I agree that if an OS offers a useful function, it would be silly for competitors to downplay and ignore it just because they didn't come up with it first.
But here, we're talking about Microsoft, the company with a much bigger budget to spend on R&D, literally sitting back and waiting for Apple to do something innovative. Then they order their developers to implement it, if it looks like it works out well and users like it!
Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Apple is taking bigger chances and putting things out there (instead of just talking about them). When they do see a feature from Windows they like but don't yet have, they generally *improve* on it and put a flashier, friendlier version in their next OS release. (EG. XP had multi-user fast switching first. Apple took it further, making it switch users with the cool rotating 3D cube effect, and let users with iSight cameras take their own photos to directly use as their user icons.)
With that out of the way, a bunch of other "less exciting" features were announced, albeit not in the keynote.
A few highlights:
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Intellitype and Intellipoint 6.0
MARKETING
Apple is in difficult if not precarious situation. On one hand, it is competing with the likes of Dell for hardware sales. On the other, it is competing with Microsoft for software sales. In the case of Microsoft, it is still relies on the giant to keep Office up to date. Nevertheless, in both cases, Apple is the clearly the underdog. What do you do? You highlight the features that you offer that are better than the competition. Smugness? That is a personal defect which has nothing to do with the software or hardware I use nor does it affect the relationship with MS. The features that Leopard offers is an improvement, albeit small ones. I think it is best to focus on a small set of features and offer them in regular updates rather than take Microsoft's approach and have to embarrassingly drop features that are unattainable and then take a long time to develop the rest. I think these features will keep Apple ahead or at least at parity with Vista. Also, Jobs didn't preview all the features in leopard. I think there is one of great strategic importance that Apple isn't so worried about copying (Vista is beta now and will recieve no more features) as they are worried about the fragile relationship with Microsoft and other developers. (Windows application compatibility layer or the releasing of OSX to OEM)
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I said essentially the same thing in my blog the other day: "Leopard - Is Apple Late to the Party, Again?" http://mikesalsbury.com/mambo/content/view/519/ Apple seems to have this habit of taking an existing technology (like an MP3 player, a GUI, etc.) putting a slightly prettier package on it, and acting as though they invented it.
Spotlight allows vendors to develop plugins to spotlight so they can expose more information to spotlight's metadata search than just strings and whatever Apple thinks the file looks like. Although Microsoft apparently does this with COM objects called iFilters, developer support for these things seems pretty terrible. Apple offers much more free tools for working with and developing mdimporters and goes out of their way to make it easier. Consequently, there are better mdimporters than iFilters and Spotlight works a lot better for the end user of Mac OS X. I suppose this might constitute "extensive" system support for all filetypes a user might have on their system.
Additionally, Spotlight is faster than Indexing Services. Lots faster. Spotlight also uses new filesystem level enhancements to detect and index changes immediately. It can even tell other applications that a file now matches their search criteria on the fly. IIRC, Indexing Service doesn't do this. Maybe the new on in Vista does, but Tiger has been shipping for over a year and was disclosed as existing in 2004.
Spotlight is much more advanced than Indexing Services. New WDS in Vista is supposed to match Spotlight in feature parity. I would say Windows is the laggard here and Spotlight is not a copy of anything Microsoft.
Many people have the smae opinion as you do. The article was informative in reminding us of the cool things apple hasn't copied from microsoft. Tablet pc's for instance. There are also a lot of little things that microsoft does better, IMHO, but from another person's perspecitve it could be reversed. It seems as if Apple is geared towards being easy to use out of the box at the expense of making it more difficult to do advanced things with it. Whereas Micorsoft usually exposes more of the advanced features at the cost of usabliity. For most average users, Apple seems to work best. Plus, witn the Unix back end the possibilities for the power user are greater. Its still a bit difficult to get it to work exactly as I want sometimes, and its annoying to use someone elses mac that isn't tweaked to my liking. Then again, at home i use suse. Your milage may vary.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Either Apple is copying MS oin hardware choice or MS is wishful thinking that they are as secure as Apple.
Well I download it from Microsoft.
Both are copy cats in my book cause of the Amiga.
Yeah you thought it wouldn't be brought up.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=26747917993 39834706 :)
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Looking Glass. :)
Hey, Thurott is a longtime MS fanboy. He rarely looks at other technology sources unless they somehow threaten Microsoft. Just take what he says with a large grain of salt. Just like you do with every MS/Apple/Linux/IBM/HP/Dell/Sun/Cisco/ad nauseum fanboy.
MS used to buy macintoshes just to copy their features in early versions of Windows. Infact Bill Gates had the first mac prototypes before anyone of course with the knowledge of making Windows 1.0 like it.
So now MS after years of poor management and engineering finally decided to focus on making a good os rather than concentrate on Office is outdoing MacOSX. Or at least attempting too.
Good and so what? This is what companies do and its good for consumers. Hyundia imitiated Toyota for years and finally make cars that are more reliable than toyota cars. So now the other company is imitiating Hyundai by hiring better engineers. Its life.
So why bash Apple? I bet he never bashed Microsoft for copying macos and even incorporating quicktime code in Media player which ms admitted to doing a decade ago.
http://saveie6.com/
It's amazing considering all of the humilation and detritus Paul has suffered and remains a loyal Microsoft puppy. Consider recently he had been accused of having a pirated copy of Windows... his response? "Aw, well." Then he observes Vista is not ready for prime time, or as he said (paraphrasing), "No, God no!"
But each time he comes back up for air, he's primed and ready to carry the Microsoft torch just a little bit further, and hold it up a little bit higher. Wonder if he gets paid by Microsoft?
Personally, I've used both for many years... and I prefer the Mac. I don't care how many people switch, unless they plan on calling me when something breaks. Many of my competitors (graphics/video production) are using Windows... That's fine by me. My computer and OS have never slowed me down, caused me to miss a deadline, or hindered me from offering a service. All I ask for in a system is all the tools I need and no downtime. The Mac, especially with OSX, has not only given me what I want in a system, every new set of features has given me a few new ways to increase my productivity that I had never even thought of. My experience with Windows has been nowhere near as nice. Most of us are looking for similar features, and in my experience, most of them are executed better by Apple.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Instructions for booting OSX in the command line here.
How much did Bill pay him?
Right-clicking for contextual menus was around as an additional software feature (sometimes even included with mouse driver software) long before it was part of any OS, but Microsoft added it as a built-in feature of Windows95 long before Apple jumped on the bandwagon.
Granted, if it was also a feature of NeXT, then Apple probably would have carried it over to OS X regardless of what MS was up to, since OS X is really just the newest version of NeXT with a few MacOS features bolted on, but the fact remains that Apple was late to the party on this particular feature.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Perhaps many of you missed the point of this...he isn't so much complaining about the fact things are being copied as how Apple is marketing this. Apple is taking ideas from Microsoft and bashing them. Microsoft is taking ideas from Apple and keeping their mouths shut. Apple is trash talking windows instead of just making OSX look good. Microsoft talks about how it improves upon itself. While Apple may have great software and great ideas, it's more the attitude I think is the problem. Of course, judging from many of the comments on here as well, the idea of the smug Apple user is pretty much hitting the nail on the head.
Um, how 'bout installing open office and saving as an MS office doc (which you can do), or even just installing Windows on an intel Mac, noob. I use Windows 70+ percent of the time (at work) and OS X and Windows at home, plus Mandriva. Believe me, anyone who whines about compatibity (unless they mean VB) anymore is just displaying their ignorance. There is a way to get EVERYTHING to work on ANY current OS. You just have to know what it is. It may involve file conversions, but it can be done. I know, because I do it.
Back in 1997, Steve Jobs got on stage at MacWorld and told the Mac faithful to get over it, the desktop war is over and Microsoft won. So why does Apple seem to want to promote the idea that Windows is copying a lot of things from OS X?
1. Perfection Required 2. Provocation Means Attention 3. Developer Motivation 4. Justifying Reverse Copying 5. The Next Wave All of these reasons add up to some very compelling reasons to do a little ribbing at Microsoft's expense. It's doubtful that any of this will stop before Leopard goes live, but it most certainly won't get worse. Apple isn't likely to venture into territories of slander or libel.Microsoft found it cheaper to pay Flip4Mac to allow free downloads of the plugin. MS makes sure that the Flip4Mac item is a free download, but they do nothing to develop it directly. It existed before MS started linking to it
Nobody even knows all of the features that are going to be in Leopard, except for The Steve himself. Sure anyone can bash WWDC, but what importance does it have when there are "top secret" features to be released? Although mostly everyone agrees that these features are secret because they are buggy, they still could be something important that could warrant the price for uprading your OS every 1 or 2 years.
Equation editor. Idiot.
"Apple and MS both ripped off Xerox!"
Ooh, goodie, cue the mini flamewar below.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Apple paid, with stock, for the right to use the interface, MS did not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Microsoft actually has discontinued development of the Windows Media Player (if that's the program you mean). The last version (WMP 9) was released for OS X in 2003. Microsoft has also discontinued development of Internet Explorer for the Mac (last version was v5) and Virtual PC now that Parallels has beaten them to the punch. What you might be referring to is Flip4Mac, which recently released a Universal binary of their Quicktime plugin that allows windows media to be played in OS X (although not always well).
r oducts.aspx?pid=windowsmedia
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherp
I have to say I don't like the Apple marketing. They are so-hyperfocused on putting down Microsoft that they fail to show the strength of their own products. I understand how much Apple relies on it's "switch" campaign, but it's time for the company to turn the corner and play off of its own strengths. In a lot of ways, this approach is childish--didn't you learn you can't elevate your own position by putting down others? I own 2 macs, and though I appreciate the way they just work, don't crash, and meet all of my needs, I do find them extremely expensive. In the end there's nothing I can do with my mac that I can't do with a PC. Even though Jaguar may rectify this, there are things I can do with a PC that I can't do with a mac, namely gaming and customizing the look and feel of the OS. I assume the continued expansion of Internet-enabled software and devices will narrow this gap. Apple's recent meteoric rise in profile is in no ways guaranteed going forward; I suggest they focus on true innovation and not just integrating features from various -nixes and Windows.
Contextual right-click menus were stolen by M$ from OS/2. And they never did implement the object model consistently, even today.
Its on the radar sites: (by nat):
a ts_whiners.html
A good read actually:
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/apple_e
A free program called Space.app ran on 10.2. My addiction to multiple desktops runs deep. It worked flawlessly until I upgraded to 10.4.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Get with the times, man. Did you fall into a coma in the 1990s?
New things are hard for most people to grasp, and so they don't see the innovation. Innovators have to spend a lot of time trying to demonstrate their innovation. In this matter, Apple has hardly done a good job explaining the innovations; they seem to have expected everyone else to look at the announcements and to put them into context. Obviously that hasn't happened, and everyone is saying that Apple made meager announcements, with nothing cool. Paul is one of the blind people, and most of Slashdot is blind too. Paul says that Time Machine was already implemented by Windows. That is balloney. Earlier, the Slashdot crowd claimed that Time Machine reimplements VMS's file system. That is balloney. Time Machine is too innovative for you guys to see why it is awesome, so here is my attempt at explaining it, to make it clear that innovation is hard to spot: http://slashdot.org/~XMLsucks/journal/141549
I personally like his claim about Mac OS X updates, "..I'd argue that virtually none of those were major updates at all."
Tell that to the people using 10.0 when they updated to 10.1. Each update contained major additions in functionality, and often broke preexisting binaries (especially ones you compiled yourself)
How about the one about windows mail being first... Hrm... wasn't mail.app part of NeXT?
His point about 64 bit support in leopard: "Thanks to the 64-bit Xeon chip that will be shipping in the new Mac Pro systems, Leopard will be fully 64-bit enabled (unlike Tiger, which is only partially 64-bit and then only on certain Power PC systems). That means that OS X will finally do what Windows XP x64 Edition did last year: Run 32-bit and 64-bit applications natively, side-by-side. Good for them."
Umm, nope, sorry. Tiger already has that functionality too: http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview/
Of course there is the premise that OS X on intel does not, but what 64 bit intel offerings do they currently have?
How about this one:
"Apple is integrating applications like Boot Camp, Photo Booth, and Front Row into Leopard. Previously, these applications were only available with new Macs, or in the case of Boot Camp, as a free public beta download. Sorry, but this is hardly impressive."
So, does ilife not exist now? Hey, its more free software.
Enough of this. I'd like to see his take on Linux already.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Funny then that even Paul himself stated last week that "Hell No" Vista is not ready. Not ready in the way that features are not complete. Things are missing, or way bad.
So, to follow your reasoning, they may remove the rest of the broken things to ship a workable OS, maybe, then Vista may have many fewer features than Leopard.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Some background logic-fodder first, I used to work in advertising years ago (TBWA Chiat-Day among others) and the biggest mistake you could do was giving your competition free airtime on your nickel. Even if you're slagging the competition - you're putting that name into the audience which doesn't always work in your favor. Plus it's just idiotic to be spending 100 million a quarter on ad-buys and then slapping your competitors name on it in any shape or form.
That said, except for the first IBM vs Mac ads which were centered around an ease-of-use argument (the manuals thudding was a fave) most of Apple's campaigns have been too "Us vs Them". I'm not so concerned when they make the case generic, but when they drag in a name-brand, that's just immensely stupid. And it's been a hallmark of Jobs since he was bashing IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Intel, etc.
Why not push (HARD) the positives of YOUR product instead of wasting time - and a buttload of money - bringing someone else to the table?
Is it the Cola war spots that caused this? I don't get it myself. I'd be showing a ton of fun and cool things that you can DO with a Mac rather than harping on whose-better / first all the time. iLife is great, but looking at Apple's ads you'd never know it (and yes I know they hinted at it in one of the two "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC spots) but hinting isn't showing.
The thing is, Apple may not be doing wholly original stuff here, but the reality is that they take what they do and make it usable and appealing. Take for example, expose's ability to show you every window you have open at the same time. This is trivial to do. But it's such an amazingly useful thing and it's implemented elegantly.
I saw the preview video of time machine and yeah maybe the interface is a little hokey, but the basic idea of it and how they interface with it is borderline brilliant. No longer does somebody even have to think in terms of backups, they just go into time machine and get the old copy. It's just simple.
This is what Apple has always been good at. They don't necessarily invent the wheel, but they sure make a wheel that's easy to use and has nice rims. The stuff just works. The reviewer clearly doesn't get the appeal of it because feature for feature it isn't that different. But how it does what it does is really what makes it distinctive.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
If you actually watched the keynote speech, you would have discovered that they didn't make anti-Microsoft comments, but were merely pointing out that "THEY" are the industry leaders in software development. Microsoft is following their lead by implementing many of their usuablility features into their new "OS" (i.e., spotlight, dashboard/widgets, notes, etc. etc.) These are all things that OS X had YEARS ago.
I think the whole Leopard/CopyCat theme is hilarious.
Microsoft is doing nothing groundbreaking. And we all should learn to expect more from them, not defend them. Their ENTIRE business is software, they basically have an unlimited budget, and they should be kicking the crap out of Apple. But instead, they try to emulate eye-candy and fail to fix the real issue, which is the CORE of their OS. Forget about reverse engineering thingies from OS X. Show us what you are made of. Ingenuity and their testicles walked out the door with Mr. Gates. They will have their asses handed to them soon enough.
On the otherhand, I do feel kind of ashamed of Apple...they did take the BSD infrastructure to build their fantastic OS, borrowing code to make money from isn't exactly something to gloat about.
But Dammit...I like it, I own it, and I'll promote it.
---I have no mod points, therefore I post.
A third party created a QuickTime plugin that plays Windows Media files better than the Mac player.
_ stupidity_of_the_fl.html
I wouldn't say better. It's buggy as heck in Firefox (in my experience), and the installer contains a major security flaw:
http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2006/08/fixing_the
You make it sound like Microsoft has never had a good idea in its life, and that Apple only borrows from Microsoft when it has no other choice. This is not the case. "Time Machine," for example, is Volume Shadow Copy, except probably easier to implement. (Although this depends on how MS integrates it into Vista.) I'm not an expert in Apple's OS (I stick to Windows and Linux myself) but I'm sure if I did a little digging I could find plenty of genuinely insightful concepts created at Microsoft that Apple copied.
Everyone steals from everyone. The only real concern should be who presents the most user-friendly package without compromising security or reliability. If that package is also pretty, hey, all the better. Apple's done a much better job at this than Microsoft, although to be fair (from a security standpoint), Microsoft's user base is much larger, so those holes that are found receive much greater publicity and affect a lot more people--which has greatly aided the conception that Windows is not a secure OS.
1. Troll Mac users on Windows site.
2. Page hits for Windows site shoot up as furious Mac partisans flock to read the blasphemy.
3. Profit!
At least Thurriot puts the entire text of his articles on a single page, though.
they really arent that true. At least I wouldnt imagine for most slashdotters. Just seems to me they are appropriate for the average user which is the majority of people out there. Most people here seem to have the know-how to avoid average user pitfalls. Having used both for both private and professional use, I refer to macs as 'cute' but you wont find one anywhere in my house. I have work to do! And having seen high end mac editing rigs in action, im really not that impressed. Generally slower and crashes more than the equivalent pc, but final cut pro is so damn sweet! -just my 2cents i do find the commercials annoying but they did set up a great bit on the 'Daily Show'...so its a draw
-those people who tell you not to take chances, they are all missing what lifes' all about-
Well-said. I can think of a great example. Alt-Tab switching I think first appeared on Windows. So Apple implemented it as Command-Tab switching, BUT they improved it. Once the (much better-looking) bay of icons respresenting open programs comes up, if you continue to hold down Command, you can use Command-backquote to iterate backwards through the open windows. Or, if you start by hitting Command-Backquote, the task switcher automatically goes into iteration through the foreground application's open windows. So a combination of keystrokes easily can bring a background application's background window to the fore, with a caveat: in the Apple task-switching world, hidden windows don't come up for iteration, but on the whole, I think it's much cleaner than MS's implementation. I find that I rarely need Expose do to its efficiency.
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... but cant we all just get along?
Heck the Intel Macs let ya run both...now if a PC comes along that runs both natively I would be behind that too. Heck I love OS X but cant game on it, I can game on windows though. I want them both.... at least until a user freindly interface comes along that does it better than both.....
Until then lets all remeber the immortal words of the prophet......" more cowbell!! "
"He does have a few kind words for Apple and it's leader Steve Jobs..."
means
"He does have a few kind words for Apple and it is leader Steve Jobs..."
Oh? You don't care about writing well? Then you're a slob. I should have guessed that from the slovenly way you dress.
I'm going to take a guess and say that TimeMachine is actually based upon the ZFS filesystem that Apple recently announced they were going to include in OS X. I've seen a lot of people talking about TimeMachine so figured I'd toss that idea out there.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Apple's banners ("Hasta la vista.! Vista." and "Introducting Vista 2.0") implied that Leopard was going to have something jaw-dropping, and the keynote just didn't show it. I like the announced features, but when you put up banners like that, you'd better be able to take the heat if you don't deliver.
Enough of the copycat this, rip-me-off that. They both have some good features and some bad ones, and both take elements from others. How about we discuss who does it better? One would have to look at individual categories. The overall OS -- MS Windows was almost certainly a copy of the classic Mac OS, but if I remember correctly, the concept of a GUI wasn't unique to the Mac. As far as the current state of the art, OS X incorporates the best features of its previous incarnations as well as other UNIX-based OS's. I doubt few people would argue for Windows as a unique OS with nice features...uniquely vulnerable maybe.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."
R2.0, I thought I was the only person left on the planet who remembered that. Hands down the funniest single moment of network television since I have been alive. The show in general doesn't hold up to rewatching, but that one bit still makes me spurt coffee through my nose when it happens to come to mind.
Your comment about the no last names was amusing as well.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
So Apple may or may have not incorporated ideas in Leopard which might have originated on a Microsoft Platform, So Microsoft most probably have incorporated ideas in their operating systems which originated on Apple OSes.
What about the biggest technology copycat scandal of the last 100+ years, how many improvements to automotive engineering have been touted as revolutionary by one manufacturer had been previously instituted by lesser known manufacturer?
It is in every businesses interest to introduce features to their product which have proven popular by their competitors.
Microsoft has released nothing to date that is a Universal Binary. They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client. There isn't a date set on the next version of Office. Virtual PC and Windows Media Player for Mac have been cancelled.They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client
Microsoft isn't planning to release a UB of Media Player for Mac. Their site links to a free UB version of the Flip4Mac QT plugin. I replaced Messenger with Adium and RDC with rdesktop.. Adium supports 12 different account types along with MSN Messenger which is a huge advantage. As for rdesktop it requires Apple's X11.app and you have to launch it from the command line but at least it allows you to open multiple connections simultaneously.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'm a mac user. There's one thing that Vista, XP and even newer Windows Mobile versions do that I wished Tiger would have already done, and that is support for IPv6 transition support. Sure, you can get native IPv6 addressing on the mac. However, it would have been equally nice if Tiger did 6to4 or Teredo transparently, like what the others already do. I hope they address that in Leopard.
if Apple was copying Windows in any way shape or form, my home machine would be a piece a crap like my work machine.
one thing missing in the article was how much MS put down up front for it.
That's all I really wanted to say.
Where's the 0xBEEF
I don't care who borrowed what from whom. I care about functionality. I want my stuff to work, plain and simple. I work in research and use Linux machines, Sun machines, Macs, and Windows machines. The two computers I own are Macs because imho they work the best for me. My PowerBook runs Matlab, Grace, xfig, Gimp, LaTeX, and a bunch of other Unix utilities quite well. I can compile TinyOS code and load it from my PowerBook. I personally like Mail, iCal, and so forth. I can do a lot of things I need to do to make me a better engineer. I can use a windows laptop to do some of these things, but they do not, imho, run things like this quite as well. Matlab has always crashed more on Windows than on the Suns or my Mac...ymmv.
I like the new features that have come with the new OS X's. Spotlight alone made Tiger worth it to me. Having said that, I like the integration of the widgets in Tiger too. I know that those were pretty much taken from someone else, but I don't care. I like that I can hit my f12 button when I am deep in my lab and see what the temp is or that it is raining outside. Could go look out the window, but who has time for that?
I think that this is an article by a guy who loves M$....and more power to him. I am guessing that the article is somewhat a response to Steve J's keynote and somewhat a response to the recent Mac vs. PC commercials. It would not suprise me to find out that this guys nuts ache everytime he sees that pasty faced grown version of Martin Prince representing his beloved PC's in commercials. I'd feel the same way about my computer if someone had that dude representing them as well.....satirical or not.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
Another really good example is fast user switching.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
You make it sound like Microsoft has never had a good idea in its life
Only if you don't know what the words "broad generalization" mean.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages." from http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopar d_preview.asp
These are not all really unique versions of Windows per se. More like full versions and varying versions of crippleware with stripped out functionality.
Windows XP Home Edition - Windows with no domain functionality
Windows XP Professional Edition - Windows with domain functionality, not much changed from 2000 except crappier IO
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - Windows on 64 bit, very buggy, little driver support
Windows XP Media Center Edition - Windows with some tacked on media functionality
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 - Windows with some tacked on media functionality, rebranded
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 - Windows with some tacked on media functionality, rebranded again
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition - Windows with a touch sensitive monitor and some minor mods
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 - Windows with a touch sensitive monitor and some minor mods, rebranded
Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions - Windows without Windows Media player, for Euros!
Windows XP with Service Pack 2 - Windows with less bugs, but a crappy firewall.
Windows XP Embedded - Windows stripped down for devices
Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs - Fat client display
Windows XP Starter Edition - Windows Home-esque crippleware
If you think about the overall changes from Windows 2000, to Windows XP, Windows as a whole has not really changed that much.
(did NT 3.51 have right-click menus?)
It did in the same sense that MacOS System 7 had it: If you bought a multi-button mouse from certain vendors, context-click menu software was often bundled with it.
Neither company invented the idea, but by the time it was rolled into Apple's OS, it was old hat to the Windows world.
(And it was added to the Mac with little or no fanfare. To this days, there are a lot of Mac users who never use them at all, while it's the very first thing I try when I want to do just about anything on a Windows box.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
... Enlightenment has a looooong feture set that today is taken as "new" on both SO's.
Did anybody see E17?
Did I also mention that this guy is bashing Apple because "these lame updates aren't enough for a new OS?" Well, who said that everything mentioned was all that was being done for Leopard? There very well may be much much more in store. At least seeing as the OS is being released SPRING OF 2007.
"Apple vs Microsoft - Who's the Copycat?"
Well, as my grandfather (a man of huge smarts, but few words) would say, "Yes."
Good stuff gets copied. It can't all be different. Look at music... The Byrds would hear Bob Dylan doing a tamborine-accentuated-cool-thing and incorporate the cool-thing into their music... then the Beatles would hear The Byrds' song and put something similar to the cool-thing into their music, and so forth..
What I don't want to hear is someone saying "We've innovated x" when x was invented or innovated elsewhere... on the flip side, I think it is OK to take good ideas to make things better.
I don't know if bashing $MY_COMPETITOR at a public event is a smart marketing idea... but I must say, it can be pretty funny... there was this film at JavaOne where a diver was using a Windows-enabled dive watch/oxygen regulator, and it did a BSOD - diver freaks... etc., etc..
A Passionate Independent Musician
You happily skipped over Office X and MSN Messenger (their new version is actually semi decent.. dare i say.. better than the XP version?)
But i agree, they have a bad habbit of not maintaining their mac products.. (keep in mind though, what is their motivation?)
MABASPLOOM!
Did Windows or OS X come up with the first GUI, with protected memory, with preemptive multitasking, or for that matter, multitasking, with virtual memory, with process scheduling, with threading, with multithreading, with username/password authentication? Gimme a f*c*ing break with all this juvenile copycat garbage. Apple, shut up. Thurott, shut up. Microsoft, quit your day job. I think there are better measures of an OS than who came up with somehting first.
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the robber or the robee? Seems like most times, it's the robee.
Just a thought.
iirc, contextual menus appeared in nextstep, and also in various X window managers before that.
This is a tautology.
Is the man kidding ? My God, has he forgotten 10 years of Linux bashing and on-stage mouth foaming from Ballmer. Please.
Actually, both AmigaOS and X beat OS/2 to the punch there, by a long shot.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The gui was another case of Microsoft copying Apple. Apple was the first to steal the concept of a graphical interface from Xerox. Then microsoft had to go and steal it too.
If this were a patent case, we would look at who had each idea first. This isnt about patents... it is about implementation. I don't care if Microsoft came up with the "Windows Search" idea in 2000... or 1995... or 1985. The bottom line is that while Microsoft has been talking about desktop search for years, Apple went and actually did it a few (two?) years ago.
Lets look at another example. The Microsoft PowerToy for virtual desktop's dates back a decade (all the way to NT 4). I've used it a few times over the years and I have to say that it sucks. It works... but it sucks. If the MS people had just updated and integrated it into Windows with XP, Apple would not have been able to make such a big deal. What was stopping them? Its an excellent bussiness tool. Frankly I am annoyed that Apple too SO long to come out with virtual desktops. Linux has had them for what seems like forever, and there are already several (free) third-party virtual desktop solutions for the Mac.
Aqua vs. Aero?? Who cares. Maybe Aero was "thought of" first... Aqua has been in production for half a decade (something like that). If Aero was first, them congradulation to Apple on a great preemptive marketing strike.
Widgets and Gadgets. This is pure evil on both sides. Apple ripped the Widgets from Konfabulator. That program was GREAT, I even purchased a license. I was pretty annoyed that Apple did'nt even compensate the original innovator. Microsoft ripped it off of Apple... so I guess Apple deserved that.
The point I am trying to make is that in the end it doesnt really matter who came up with what idea first. The credit goes to the first to market. Welcome to economics... companies release NEW products, or BETTER products. Anything else is just market saturation. On another note, maybe Microsoft will wise up and stop discussing new enchancements 5-10 years before they go to market. Any other company would go out of bussiness by laying their cards face up on the table like that!
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Setting aside the tablet and embedded stuff. . . All this different "editions" of XP are not something I would brag about. Am I the only one who thinks it's boneheaded and frustrating to have so many different versions of the same OS? If I were shopping for a copy of XP today, I would have absolutely no idea which one to get. Maybe that's the idea. I'm not sure exactly what the scam is, but Microsoft are clearly jerking us all around. And Paul Thurrot praises them for it, because it shows all the hard work Microsoft has been doing for us! Sorry, but this kind of help I don't need.
Meanwhile, Apple have done a fine job of providing one OS that works for everybody. (Or nearly everybody, since there's also Mac OS X Server.) It doesn't cost a fortune (as full versions of XP tend to), it doesn't require "product activation", and it doesn't confuse anybody with a plethora of "editions" with different features, different prices, different hardware requirements, different license agreements, etc.
Unfortunately, bread just isn't compatable with Microsoft's BRM (Bagel Rights Management) and allowing bread slicing on your new Vista PC might have crumby results.
Huh, you do realise that, since Microsoft wrote nearly all of the original OS/2 code (before selling it off to IBM so they could make NT), you're basically saying they stole this feature from themselves?
By "lights out" the previous post did not mean pulling the plug. Although for some servers that might be a good idea.
By the way, could anyone help me find the "any" key?
My favorite part comes near the end when Paul says, "Lies, damnable lies, and statistics..." and then goes on to make a few comments, which he ends with, "...but his comment is technically true..." Good one! He made me a believer.
I don't need statistics to know that Thinkpads are used in a higher proportion than Vaios by business users. I also don't need statistics to know that ultimate frisbee players are generally less aggressively competitive (probably because they smoke pot) than football players. It's sufficient for someone to say "in my experience" and move on. The poster wasn't characterizing you personally. He was making a collective (and relative) judgement about a group of people with which we all have experience. If you can't smell the elitism in the community of coffee-house art-hipster Mac users, then you probably couldn't detect the elitism of Amiga users, or NeXT users.
I've been part of them all, by the way. I went to the Commodore Amiga user group that met every other Tuesday when I had my Amigas, had a NeXTstation Turbo, and have a Powerbook and iMac. In every case, the percentage of elitist users among the user-base that I interacted with was higher than Wintel users. I don't have to quantify it to be able to make a judgement about it. It could be because these platforms had more enthusiastic users, more willing to jump in to something not in the mainstream, but I tend to think that it's the inverse of Amiga Persecution Complex. Instead of thinking that there is some large conspiracy against the platform, this tone of elitism helps to rationalize the lack of success that the platform sees.
"Those people just aren't cool enough for my platform of choice."
The obvious intent of the Apple ads is to play on the characteristics of the users of the machines, and I think they're very effective ads. Do you really view that shiny new MacBook (which looks arguably more cleanly designed than any other notebook available) as a converse-and-sweatshirt-wearing slacker? Really?
This view of the Mac as a smarter, cooler, computer is probably helping sales, so don't worry about it. If you're not a jerk, just use your computer and continue not being a jerk.
I guess you had no idea that holding shift iterates backwards with Ctrl+Tab and Alt+Tab in Windows. It's been like that as long as I can remember. Just because you don't know the keyboard shortcuts doesn't mean they don't exist.
Can anyone confirm the rumor that Apple has removed the OPTION key from all new Mac Pro keyboards? I guess Options are a sensitive subject in Cupertino these days. Yes, Jobs did look rather gaunt and drawn during the keynote. But bear two things in mind: 1. He is a recovering pancreatic cancer victim. 2. He is either a vegan or vegetarian (or a vulcan?) Jobs did seem to rely upon his exec staff more than in the past, but it did afford us the opportunity to size them up a bit. A few observations. 1. Phil Schiller looks as though he could hold his own in a Sumo wrestling bout with Steve Ballmer. 2. Bertrand sounded as though he was auditioning for the Inspector Clouseau part in The Pink Panther. 3. Scott Forrestall (flunky!?!) appeared to be aping Steve Jobs' gestures, mannerisms and speech patterns. Is he the anointed one? Is he being groomed as Jobs' successor? If it happens, you read it here first. Like most of Wall Street and the world, I and other Apple stockholders hope that neither illness nor executive shuffling prevent Jobs -- duplicitous as he may be -- from helming Apple for some time to come.
Peter Weisz Weisz Marketing Services Carmel, Indiana USA www.peterweisz.com
You're joking right? The latest version of MSN Messenger for Mac (Or should I say Microsoft Messenger, since that's what they call it now) is handicapped compared to the XP version. It STILL does not support webcams, crashes frequently during file transfers and lacks many other features from the XP version.
how Apple can jump in to the future and copy software that hasbeen released. Yet a constantly delayed, in the works OS doesnt copy an OS that users are already using.
in windows (and for decades) alt-tab switches apps, with the last used at the start of the list.
pressing shift whilst doing this reverses the direction of focus.
pressing ctrl will abort the focus change.
ctrl-tab switches between tabbed and sub-windows of the current app.
again, shift reverses the selection.
tab alone switches between interface elements of the current window.
shift reverses the selection. this is one nice bit of standardisation no-other OS has got to the same extent.
it's a shame that windows doesn't ship with a manual explaining these things, but who would read it anyway?
The other users cleared up what happens in Windows, but it should also be stated that command-backtick is not a MacOS feature. It's application specific and happens to work in some of the applications that come with MacOS. It does NOT work in tons of non-Apple applications.
That's because cotext menus in MacOS [X] are basically worthless fluff to fill a tickbox, whereas context menus in Windows are actually useful UI tools.
Note that this is not because of any inherent flaws to MacOS, it's merely because context menus are grossly underused, since The Steve hasn't backflipped and blessed them yet. Now that he's finally conceded multibutton/scroll mice are useful though, it might actually happen.
Did you offer "Whiney Mac Boy" the opportunity to buy a $3,000 Mac system with similar software? Microsoft makes an office suite for Mac which surely also benefits from your non-profit pricing status. InDesign for Mac or PC costs the same, right? So, you'd be left with at least $2,000 in both cases, and I'm pretty sure that for $2,000 you can buy a Mac system which easily competes with anything you could buy that would be called a "PC". The fact that you save on the OS cost from Microsoft is irrelevant re: Apple--they "give" you the OS for "free" with your hardware purchase--no discount required. I think the notion that you can spend $X on a PC vs. Mac and somehow come out way ahead on a PC is almost dead...the fact that you have an employee in your company who wants to blow $8K of your cash isn't Apple's fault...look within, sensei.
My broad generalisation:
When Apple "steals from Microsoft", they're just reimplementing ideas that either a) already exist in multiple alternative products, or b) are blatantly obvious improvements to existing technology.
When Microsoft "steals from Apple", they're just reimplementing ideas that either a) already exist in multiple alternative products, or b) are blatantly obvious improvements to existing technology.
You are misunderstanding how it works on a mac. Command-tab switches between applications (Finder, Firefox, etc) Command-backtic switches between windows within an application.
This means I can either switch between all of my open Firefox windows, or switch to the file browser depending on which key combo I use. In windows, all applications are mixed and when you alt-tab once you may switch applications or you may not depending on the order of the windows you have clicked on lately.
It's more flexable than the windows approach and in practice, it is more often what I want. Oh and shift works the same way.
Stravinsky's famous quote (slightly paraphrased): a good composer borrows, a great composer steals.
Funny you say that, because I find the "Alt-tab" task switching paradigm in OS X to be horribly frustrating and broken, to the point of uselessness, because it switches between *entire applications* and not *windows*. Since the user is generally interacting with different *windows*, this makes it significantly more clumsy and time consuming in OS X to switch between different tasks.
Expose was an excellent kludge around the otherwise broken and/or unusable methods for task-switching in OS X. But it hasn't made them any less broken.
Wikipedia> makes no mention of that alleged fact. Care to provide a source?
As for other items such as the search being stolen entirely from MS. Well I'm not sure how any one can own the idea of a "quick search" using methods that we're accustomed to on the internet. The difference being that MS has rattled on that they'll have the feature for 10 years now and never delivered it. So it's hardly "copying" MS on a feature that has not only never been delivered, but cancelled for the foreseeable future.
Ideas like spaces have been around for a while, it's how it's implemented in OS X which is clever, you only need as much memory as to support the applications, the application windows move, not the desktop.
As for other features like stationery, I wouldn't rattle on too much about the use of themes on internet mediums, as the concept of templating is hardly an original one.
My point here is that a lot of the added features are obvious or a natural evolution of their existing products. It is easy to compare these to MS, but it's hardly copying. The keynote presentation held by apple which highlighted the similarities between vista and 10.3+10.4 etc took only the most blatant examples where MS has been a tad bit unoriginal and directly copied the visual interface, down to the colour scheme used and program nomenclature.
Overall I think Paul just needs to be a bit more like MS and take it on the chin, everyone gets haggled in this industry, it's pointless trying to refute points which only show his lack of research and his genuinely blinded zeal for MS products. Paul only throws in the occassional lucid counter argument merely to appear less biased than what he is, unfortunately the giant scope difference between his pro-apple and pro-ms remarks show his lack of genuineness. That and his logo & style guide are a rip-off of Microsoft graphic design circa 1998.
Is this a equation editor?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Wow, thank you. I didn't know that and I always found it really frusturating not being able to cycle through the windows in the foreground application.
Also, don't forget that you can even quith apps while cmd-tabbing. Just hit Q to quit an app as you tab/backquote over it; hit H to hide it. One hand, two fingers, no awkward shift key reach. (Though if you're a windows junky you can still shift-tab to go backwards)
---k--
</stupid>
I think the notion that you can spend $X on a PC vs. Mac and somehow come out way ahead on a PC is almost dead...
Almost, but not quite yet. If your requirements don't include desktop publishing or design work then spending the extra cash on a Mac is hard to justify. The average user simply doesn't need a G5 to open some word processing documents and check their email.
But it's not compatible with MS office which was my point.
I must confess, I don't quite get the appeal of the Windows Supersite. It's butt ugly and offers really annoying commentary.
Nonetheless, this is his best comment:
> "And I'm not claiming that Vista is somehow 'better' than Mac OS X Tiger
> or Leopard, though I do find myself to be more productive in Windows than
> in OS X. Your mileage may vary."
And me? Much more productive when I use my PowerBook vs. the Windows machine at work.
Thus a preference -- and brand loyalty -- is born.
There really is no other point to what more or less amounts to a religious war.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Shadow Copy is referred to on other OSs as snapshotting. It's been around long before MS implemented it :). I'm not even sure if Apple is doing that. I hope they are, but they could just be monitoring the filesystem with kevent and doing a copy to a hidden directory when a file changes. It also sounds like they only do it once a day instead of every time the file changes. I still haven't figured out that last part. I really hope they do it every time the file changes..
Jobs must fix MacOS X problems rather than throw stones at Goliath up there in Redmond to win PC converts. FixitLIST:
.com mail addresses (ie. Gmail, Yahoo, Netscape, etc...)
#1 Add WINDOWS to MacOS X - run it native at machine level in Mac windows like any other Mac app.
#2 Add NxHost functionality, securely implemented with an easy interface
#3 Add IPC-value, inter-process communication, to Apple applications running on MacOS X.
#4 Replace FINDER, the crippled and bastardized NeXT Finder.
#5 Fix Mail.app - search+autoconfig
Paul's point that Microsoft's OS is more productive than Apple's holds a kernel of truth, I secretly share. MacOS X presently is just cumbersome and rigid about how it wants your work accomplished. Rigidity is bad policy.
Another EnterpriseLIST:
for when #1-5 are onboard.
Neither is Super Mario compatible with an Xbox. Your point?
Honestly, it looks more like Ubuntu than anything MS has put out.
http://chickencamels.poemofquotes.com/
You can say that evil old Microsoft is stealing from the great and wonderful Apple, but don't forget that all these shiny graphics come from Apple stealing from Xerox.
OS/2's WorkPlace Shell used context menus heavily almost everywhere ... in 1992.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
OS/2's WorkPlace Shell used context menus heavily almost everywhere ... in 1992.
Which does not contradict my point.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Nice get out.
So, anyone who disagrees is going to be a Mac fanboy so we can ignore what they say.
Here's the deal: I'm a consumer end-user, I'm using Spotlight, Expose, Aqua....right now. I couldn't care less if Microsoft promised me they'd release these features in 5 years.
I'll start this off by saying I'm a HUGE Apple "fan boi," I have an ibook, a dual G5 tower, and an ipod nano that I think run circles around my PIII dual boot Dell box.
Having said that I'm VERY disappointed in the leopard preview. HTML stationary in mail.app is a BIG step backwards, it reminds me of the worst spyware infested XP running outlook express boxes owned by pre-teen girls (OMG Ponies). Yep I know there are some very smart sophisticated calculus crunching pre-teen girls, but as a demographic average I don't think that is where interface design should be targeted.
Virtual desktops BIG yawn my free and ethically superior GNU/Linux Ubuntu desktop has virtual desktops, already no waiting for a 2007 release.
Time Machine the big "dazzling" feature with it's file versioning looks like a slightly more refined version of the atrocious Windows restore of Windows Millennium edition days. While it might be handy, I can back up myself thanks, how much HD space will this monster eat on top of my regular backups? And yes I am running out of hard drive space thank you very much, it doesn't take too many digital SLR photo shoots on a gig flash card to max out a 160 gig drive and a 200 gig backup.
And...
I waited what 18 months for this? The big secret feature better be REALLY big like a 50% performance improvement using "thread farming," or a complete implementation of the Windows api under OS X or I'm not buying, I'll just stick with Tiger that's already better than XP or Linux and skip the 150 buck minor update.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Did you? As I doubt it... he says Vista is behind, he gives full credos to Apple for releasing features well ahead of Microsoft and doing so very, very well, and he says himself in ways which are probably better than Vista will at launch.
BUT
He has the very same problem with Apple as I do at the moment. Grandstanding and putting down the competition. They are directly putting down the competition (Vista/Windows) in their ads and other marketing and they talk up everything they do to the point of it being the next coming of Christ.
These OS releases that Mac users are paying for are just a collection of things that Windows users get for free over the life of the operating system.
SP1 and SP2 along with all the apps and add-ons that XP users have been getting for nothing since it came out are all things that Apple would charge for.
Why is a point release of the operating system charged for?
Why do they have to do these combative ads?
Why, when I clicked on the link to watch the keynote did Quicktime crash? An Apple product... not because this is an XP box... it was Quicktime that crashed... XP didn't flinch... but Apple's 'never crash' software crashed.
Bah.
* Please note I do really like OSX, I think Macs are dead sexy machines... I just really take offence at Apple's current marketing angle.
That's because cotext menus in MacOS [X] are basically worthless fluff to fill a tickbox, whereas context menus in Windows are actually useful UI tools.
That may be a Windows fan's perspective, but any Mac fan will be quick to point out that what makes right-click pop-up menus so "useful" in Windows is that the shortcomings of the OS itself creates a need for them.
Back in the days when Win95 was new, Apple users had a muscle-memory for "Command-c to copy, command-v for paste, command-x for cut, command-a for select all, command-s for save, shift-command-s for save as, command-o for open, command-w for close, command-q for quit, command-f for find, command-b for bold, command-i for italics, etc." because you could count on pretty much every application to work that way, and furthermore the contextual menus which were already at the top of the screen taught them to you as you used the Mac.
The top-line menu on the Mac makes right-click menus best suited to be used for a fast shortcuts to extremely short lists of actions which are common enough that you will use it once in a while, but not so often that you will have the keyboard shortcut memorized within a couple weeks of using the Mac. For example, "view source" in a browser window. (Shift-command-u... or just look in the... surprise! "View" menu.)
Windows has gotten better about HIG over the years, but I still see Windows users right-clicking and searching through a (sometimes very long) menu for something as simple as copying a line of text. Hell, I do it myself when I'm in Windows. I still have a few apps where I can't count on the "normal" keystrokes to work.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You can buy a $600 Mac Mini, pick and keyboard, mouse, and monitor you want (you probably have spares), and buy a copy of InDesign. Even though a Mac and PC both have a copy of InDesign, the files aren't going to play nice. What are you going to do about fonts? Now that you have two different platforms, you're going to have to create outlines for all the fonts, making the InDesign file's fonts uneditable. Maybe you should have listened to your design guy, since he obviously knows at least the basics of working with layout files. You don't.
The main difference between Apple and MS is this:
* MS: "We'll blow you away. Real soon now. Look, shiney!". Two years later: "Oops, we removed most of the stuff we once promised. But it'll still be great. Err... it'll also be delayed a bit..."
* Apple: "Available in stores today"
Especially regarding Vista, one should remember that Apple can not possibly have copied from Vista, because all the cool stuff they're accused of copying is not in Vista. It was promised, but it never showed up. It's all vaporware, marketing stunts to keep people from switching to something else while the release date slips ever further.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Don't forget Virtual PC.
They took the market leading Mac PC emulator and relegated it to insignificance.
It's not really a problem if one company uses other's good ideas.
The problem I see with Microsoft is that Vista ONLY adds ripped features, and really has nothing innovative.
That is really sad such a huge company can't surprise us.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
Apple must REALLY be in trouble if they have sunk to copying Vista.
*runs*
Actually, Apple did more than just copy BeFS and its "DB-like" filesystem metadata facility. They hired the former Be, Inc., engineer who designed BeFS and the cool system of "live queries" that would update in real time as the file system changed. The engineer's name is Dominic Giampolo. As I understand it, Dominic has contributed extensively to HFS+, including the journaling support. He's written a book on file system design too, so this guy can be fairly described as knowing the problem domain pretty well.
Since BeOS is now defunct, I'm glad that Apple absorbed one of the cooler technologies from that OS (which I was an early developer for -- my BeBox is now living in Tucson with a friend). I hate to see good ideas wither and die for lack of a platform. The implementation might not be identical to that in BeOS, but it certainly behaves in much the same way for the end user. I should also point out that both BeFS and HFS+ with Spotlight do pretty much what WinFS promised to do -- except that WinFS now is no longer slated to be included in Vista, and in fact may only ever live in future releases of MS SQL Server.
Even if Apple hadn't absorbed the engineering talent to make this feature possible, Paul Thurrott would still be off-base in claiming that Apple "stole" spotlight from Vista. After all, Vista is still unreleased software, and is still in a state of flux (e.g., features are still being adjusted and, just recently, some were dropped, such as WinFS). It takes a lot of chutzpah to claim that a shipping product "stole" features from a product that still isn't available for sale. (I guess there's room to argue here, but to me, it seems clear that Vista is still vapor for most rank-and-file users.)
I'm writing this as someone who briefly worked for Metrowerks on their BeOS suite of compiler tools, and I met Dominic twice -- once while working for Metrowerks, and once at Comdex at Be's booth. He's a great guy.
"Command-backtic switches between windows within an application" Try using ctrl-Tab
He's not saying that that is a good measure for a company having done more for their operating system: he's saying that's the metric that Steve Jobs chose to use for his audience (it seems to have been used as a sort of propaganda, IMHO), and if that's the measure Apple wants to use, then in that sense Jobs is incorrect.
Who has actually done more work in the past 5 years is up to the reader to decided.
Putting the 33k in G33k.
"Command-backtic switches between windows within an application" Try the ctrl-Tab key combo
A) Vista and XP copied off of Mac OS X's interface. B) It doesn't matter because its called healthy competition and is what prevents monopolies and closed markets. C) Who cares
While holding down the Alt/Command key, I find pressing two additional keys (Shift with little finger and Tab with ring finger) much more difficult and uncomfortable than pressing a single additional key (Tab or Grave Accent with middle finger).
That's pretty ironic, as it's usually the conservative-looking businessmen who are deeply in the closet, and the younger generation who are more open about their sexuality.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Well. You have NOT been using it right :)
(1) To move between applications use Command + Tab
(2) To move between multiple windows in the same application use Command + ' (backquote above tab key)
(3) Ideally, you should use Command + Tab to go to your application then use Command + ` to find the right window with-in your app.
Well.?
Try it. it works like a charm.
Maybe you should have listened to your design guy, since he obviously knows at least the basics of working with layout files. You don't.
You're talking about the same design guy who doesn't know crap about why his files keep getting corrupted and I had to do the research into version queue to figure that one out for him. As I'm sure you know, InDesign doesn't always work so well in a networked environment.
We could go back and forth all day playing the, "Your computer sucks because..." game, but getting back to the point of the original post, a computer is a computer. If it's running Windows you are going to have to deal with a certain set of problems. If you're running MacOS, you're going to have to deal with another set of them. No matter what OS you're running, a failed hard drive is going to ruin your day. At the end of the day, the people who know how to deal with and work around the problems are the ones who are going to get the job done.
I don't know about six-packs, but every graphic designer who has ever accidently thrown out a critical client file just saw the light of creation during that demo. No backup policy or storage system has ever been able to completely keep designers from occasionally trashing a week's worth of work. If this system is as slick as it looks, maybe it will finally solve the problem.
First of all, I am an PC person, i love the AMD CPUs, all my pcs from the 386 has been from AMD, except one. I won't tell you what how bad that computer was, because i don't want to remember, I will never again buy an cpu from intel, however that's not relevant to this thread at all, only as an sidenote, I have never owned an Mac, i probably never will either.
The thing is this guy, first of all his homepage has bla bla bla name whatever his name was Windows site whatever thingy logo on the top. Interesting. Could this possible be a Windows (ass) licker? Seriously. Just look at the points he gives. Ok the new Windows Vista search engine can do this and that, and whatever the mac name is can do the same. Only that Microsoft announced it to the public first. Does this mean that Microsoft was first to try to implement it, or does it mean that Apple has higher standards in releasing info to the public?
Lots of questions arrise when I read his text, most of them is, wtf is he talking about. And ok, that's not an major os update, but has apple said it was?
Operating systems is one thing and bundled applications is another. It's like Microsoft would say: Hey we have made this mayor OS upgrade: now you can push ctrl+s to save documents in notepad. (actually they did talk about the new features in notepad when they announced the beta of windows 2000 in Sweden).
However, I don't think this guy is an reliable information source he seems much to much like an "I like getting spyware and stupid adware on my computer, hell that gives me free porn, I ejaculates everytime i push that little sweet button on my computer and it takes 30 minutes to boot and the first thing I have to do is to look at 6004598 porn pictures before I can do anything on my computer."
This has most likely been covered before and I am sorry if I used "bad" language.
I have to say that is true for me - My intelligence can't be insulted. But people can (and often do) say things that make THEM look like fools.
"Well i dont have a tv. At a friends i saw these ads the other day. I was surprised. They were quite condescending and offensive." You must be very easily insulted. Condescending and offensive? My, my you're a sensitive person. Maybe you'd like to comment on the thousands of other advertisements on TV, like the Enzyte 'Bob' commercials. If you won't buy a product because it is represented by 'bad' commercials on television you must not buy many things.
It might be more keys (I certainly don't find it akward), but at least it's consistent. Having shift reverse all tab iterations (just tab for controls, alt for applications, ctrl for tabs/mdi) makes a lot of sense, partially because of how it works with case in text.
Yes, I have.
I *know* the keyboard shortcuts.
I *know* the UI rules involved.
(I even know the historical and philosophical reasons while OS X task-switching works as it does.)
Try it. it works like a charm.
No, it doesn't. It requires a much higher conceptual - and, frequently, physical - load than Windows to achive the same goal.
The problem is not in how to use it properly, the problem is the system sucks. It's a (relatively) fiddly and difficult process in OS X to move from an arbitrary window in one application to an arbitrary window in another, via the non-Expose methods. They pretty much all suck because the OS X UI is fundamentally application-, not task-, document- or window-centric. Expose was a (beautifully conceived and executed) kludge around this problem, but even it gets difficult to manage once you get into the dozens of windows (unless you have *huge* amounts of desktop space).
This is a problem I have been complaining to Apple about pretty much forever. MacOS Classic has the same fundamental issue, but it at least has the excuse of a UI that was designed back when multitasking on the desktop - particularly GUI multitasking - was basically unheard of.
(This is, IMHO, why the UI responsiveness of OS X in terms of multitasking is so poor - because the whole thing is basically designed around the assumption that users *won't* be partaking of heavy interactive multitasking, it's not an aspect of the OS that gets a lot of attention.)
I'm only a few paragraphs into the article but...
When he compares the 5 releases of OS X, he the goes on to say:
By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages.
The problem with this list is that it includes versions to markets that Apple does not target. So while it is Microsoft being busy, it hasn't improved the product that OS X competes with. When we actually slim the list down we get:
- XP Home
- XP Pro
- XP Pro x64
- XP MCE (2004, 2005)
- XP N versions
- XP Starter Ed
Now frankly I'd cut that list down further. I do not consider versions where you remove features to be proper releases. Which leaves us with.
- XP Pro/Home
- XP Pro x64
- XP MCE (2004, 2005)
He kinda wants to include SP2. However the major inoovations in SP2 were added security, which I'd call more of a bugfix.
So it is a reasonable question, what has Microsoft been doing for the past 5 years?
Interestingly he moves on to talk about what is good in Leopard. It seems he couldn't go there with attacking Apple first.
meh
I'm not a Windows "fan". I use both, equally, and appreciate them both for what they do well.
Context menus are useful in Windows because they provide quick(er) access via the mouse to commonly used functions.
In OS X, they conceptually do the same thing, but to a *vastly* smaller subset of practical functionality is exposed via them. (Ironically, given your comment) Finding anything on them other than the basic Copy/Cut/Paste options is uncommon and usually the sign of a non-tradtitionally-Mac developer.
Once you involve keyboard shortcut they whole issue becomes irrelevant. The point of context menus is to access functionality via the *mouse*.
Back in the days when Win95 was new, Apple users had a muscle-memory for "Command-c to copy, command-v for paste, command-x for cut, command-a for select all, command-s for save, shift-command-s for save as, command-o for open, command-w for close, command-q for quit, command-f for find, command-b for bold, command-i for italics, etc." because you could count on pretty much every application to work that way, and furthermore the contextual menus which were already at the top of the screen taught them to you as you used the Mac.
In other words, just like Windows users with "muscle memory" for their respective keyboard shortcuts.
The top-line menu on the Mac makes right-click menus best suited to be used for a fast shortcuts to extremely short lists of actions which are common enough that you will use it once in a while, but not so often that you will have the keyboard shortcut memorized within a couple weeks of using the Mac. For example, "view source" in a browser window. (Shift-command-u... or just look in the... surprise! "View" menu.)
Which is *exactly* what they are supposed to be - and are - used for in Windows, and what they are grossly *under*-used for in OS X (this is perhaps because of the "lag" OS X tends to have displaying menus - particularly context menus - making developers reluctant to use them).
Windows has gotten better about HIG over the years, but I still see Windows users right-clicking and searching through a (sometimes very long) menu for something as simple as copying a line of text. Hell, I do it myself when I'm in Windows. I still have a few apps where I can't count on the "normal" keystrokes to work.
That you - and others - do not know how to use the Windows UI properly, does not change the fact that context menus in Windows are a *vastly* more useful UI construct than they are in OS X, because they are used as they are supposed to be, rather than because they meet the bare minimum of UI functionality required to meet OS X's HCI guidelines.
The HCI guidelines for context menus in Windows and OS X are pretty much the same (for obvious reasons). The difference is, in Windows they generally get used as they are supposed to be, whereas in OS X they are generally looked on as the work of the devil and subsequently ignored.
when Buick first introduced turn signals to cars, don't you think Ford did the same one year later
This raises an interesting point. In the car industry, standards are laid down that all cars must be built to comply with, for obvious safety reasons. Many of those requirements came from innovations by manufacturers, but probably equally many were thought up by standards committees who are just thinking about what makes things better/safer.
There is no such similar standards requirements in the computer industry, but perhaps there ought to be. With so much of our various economies relying on this stuff working, perhaps it would be better if there were design principles laid down in law that everyone had to comply with. That would kill a lot of the arguments about who stole what from whom, since everyone would have to have, e.g. backup systems built-in, a certain resistance to viruses, certain usability standards, document interchange standards, etc. Leaving it to the market to sort this out obviously hasn't worked, since the market is heavily biased towards one system that would fail to comply with even the most rudimentary of reasonable standards.
If one can't share files with others using MS office, then it makes it difficult to transtion to opemoffice and be left out.
When you play super mario and I have an xbox, I don't give a fuck if they are compatible.
If we work together and we have to collaborate then they have to be compatible.
I sent this article to a freind who is a mac fan, and I here is the corresponding e-mail: From Fan: I think that this guy is just being contrary, like you, I use both OS all day long...and know which one I like. anyway, wouldn't you call winsupersite writer guy fanboi (despite his disclaimer)? My responce: No, I wouldn't call the windozesupersiteguy a windows fanboi. Unlike apple, M$ doesn't really have adult fanbois, it's more like a useful tool from some non-descript company you really don't feel any need to get excited about until some apple fanboi or Linux RTFM jackass starts attacking you. As for using both OSes all day at work, he definitely wasn't talking about which OS is better, or who has superior engineers. He was talking about marketing. Apple isn't humble and are notorious swing masters..seriously, Steve and his marketing team should be in politics or news media. I don't see it as being contrary as a primary, although the spice is there, I see it as being a truth seeker. This guy just wants apple not to insult our intelligence...which they do as a habit. Anything they do is major and innovative, to hear them tell it, but geeks with some history know better...just in the way I know better when I hear marketing claims from pet companies. I know the reality and history behind their claims(note-I worked in the pet industry for many years). WWDC seems like preaching to the converted. I totally get the purpose of this method, I would do the same. If I owned a company I would swing everything I did to make me look like the company that my expanding demographic wants to buy from. I don't think apple should have done anything differently, it's simply that articles like the one this guy wrote are valid and his argument is sound. Regardless of his writing style or his choice of language that paints apple in a more negative light than their choices may have deserved, his point is sound: Apples marketing machine swings their technology in such a way that it insults the intelligence of the geek community.
Vista is a blatant ripoff of Copland! Apple managed not to deliver a new operating system YEARS before Microsoft! Shedding features left, right and centre just to get something out of the door? Been there, done that. Finally giving up and rolling what can be made to work into a half-assed release just to get something out of the door? Yawn, Apple had that ten years ago.
I find that I rarely need Expose do to its efficiency.
It's hard to beat Expose for efficiency if you have a Mighty Mouse. Getting to any non-hidden window is just squeeze, point, squeeze.
It really is all summed up nicely by the man, Fake Steve Jobs, here.
Innovators and Artists : Implementers and Bureaucrats Yum...
If I want to switch to a different program, I click on its icon in the dock and it moves it on top of the other windows.
We really need to recognize the differences between the two companies.
Microsoft is a software consolidation house. They look for what's already out there and popular, and build a more or less standard version of that technology into their platform. That isn't bad. Almost every form of software does end up being dominated by one or two major implementations in the long run, and it's darn good business sense to try and own as many of those implementations as possible. That's one of the reasons Microsoft will continue to be relevant in the marketplace even if it does lose its OS-and-application-suite lock-in. It'll just shift from an 'upgrade treadmill' strategy to an 'integrated solutions' strategy, and will continue to play a significant role in the software market for years to come.
Apple, OTOH, can't make enough money on consolidation to stay afloat. It has to find (or build) new markets and cash in on the early adopters before the product becomes so well-known that consolidation houses like Microsoft can take over. In the long run, Microsoft stands a very good chance of owning a healthy chunk of the digital music market. Apple has dominance in that market now, thanks to the combination of hardware integration with the iPod and the RIAA-induced significance of its FairPlay DRM, but in the long run that will likely fade away. We'll probably see enough artists opening their work under less restrictive terms than the RIAA would like before we see the RIAA itself give up on DRM, but eventually there will be a profitable catalog of music available under terms that allow other vendors to sell music for the iPod. At that point, it will make sense for Apple to license FairPlay, and Microsoft will be able to bring its financial endurance to bear.
And by then, Apple will be going for profits in some new and completely different market that isn't valuable enough for Microsoft to try and consolidate yet.
'Copying' is a vaguely correct term for the natural flow of technology from a company that makes its money by finding the version of a new product that's good enough to create an expanding market, to a company that consolidates the good ideas already in known, profitable markets and builds something good enough to become a standard product. It definitely has some topspin to it, and there are more moderate ways to discuss the issue if you really want to be balanced. But let's get real: we're talking about advertising, here. The goal is to create a positive impression for the client's product while not saying anything outright false. And the event in question was an Apple Developer's conference. Show me a Linux conference with absolutely no MS-bashing, or a Microsoft conference that doesn't engage in its own spin (anyone remember the "Windows 95: so good the feds want to make it illegal" bumper stickers floating around Seattle about ten years ago?), and we'll talk about the denotative accuracy of the statements Apple made at WWDC.
Context menus are useful in Windows because they provide quick(er) access via the mouse to commonly used functions.
;-)
Well, part of that is due to the habit some Windows developers have of ignoring the basic UI guideline:
the depth of a nested menu tree should be less than the mean-time-before-failure of the mouse button.
All those hotkeys do, and have as long as I have used them (Win 3.11), work on MS software. If some 3rd-party Windows developer decides to move the Redo combo Ctrl-Shift-Z instead of Ctrl-Y, that's not MS's fault. I hate stuff like that, because I use hotkeys so much that I end up triggering erroneous commands. In that area, Macs have it pretty good. They have another advantage: keyboard layout control. Not every PC has the ` key right above the Tab key, so using that for reverse-navigating Alt-Tab would be a bad idea. You can pretty much count on the Shift key being there, in almost perfect position for left ring or pinky finger. Windows has a good middle ground between the wildly different hotkeys of the *nix world (I think a lot of people stand by emacs simply because they can't get their fingers to do anythng else anymore... same for vi. GUI programs are slightly more consistent.) and the limited software selection of the Mac world. I realize this isn't Apple's fault, and they would love more people to develop for their platform... but some of those people would not (do not?) respect Apple's preferred UI tricks. Bringing up the PC users who use right-click to cut and paste is silly, since plenty of Mac users go all the way to the screentop menu bar for that. Using context menu for bold or italic I have never seen; Win and Mac alike use toolbars if they don't use hotkeys. Where the Windows contet enus REALLY shine is in things like SendTo (right-click a file, click once, it's and attachment. Right-click another file - say an HTML page - and open it for editing rather than viewing.) and Properties (yes, there are hotkeys for Properties. Almost nobody knosw them, but even the naivest Windows user learns how to open them from context menus really quickly). On XP, Runas... was the saving grace that made it halfway possible to use a LUA for everything, even if it was dumb you had to do it that way. OTOH, Linux isn't that far yet, generally; you need to use a terminal. Linux does have Move To and Copy To context menus on files, though. At any rate, these are things almost nobody would use the keyboard for (it's doable, but you need to be desperate or crazy). finally, remember that although Apple has had graphical, mouse-driven desktops for far longer than MS, I had 3-button mouse back in DOS days, and while XTree Gold didn't use the other buttons for much, the desktop environment we used at the time (looked a lot like Windows 3x, but not a MS product) and some games actually could and would use every singles button. For the last 5 years, I have felt feel utterly crippled if I must use a 2-button mouse, and always have uses for at least 5 buttons in virtually any program. That alone made using Macs a nuisance for me.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
It's magic(5). At least on Unix systems.
However, in the specialized case of XML docs, if properly formed, you should be looking at the DTD and making your determination from there. Of course, if the document lacks a DTD, it's not exactly well-formed XML, now is it ;-)
On which point: one issue which nags me on OS X is that file associations aren't managed at the kernel level, for "executable" file types. Which is to say, *.app bungles. You can invoke them through the commandline but only through hacks such as "open" or "launch" (one of those is a finkism, I forget which.
Oh... and as I type from my WindowMaker desktop: the NeXT interface may not be the most beautiful thing in today's world, but damned if it's not amazingly useful and configurable.
There are few ideas that are original to either Microsoft's or Apple's products. Most of their software features have either been acquired, copied from other products, or are based on academic work. And that's perfectly OK, that's the way things are supposed to work.
OS X, in particular, is, from the ground up, a copy of other people's ideas, technologies and software: the Mach kernel, the Cocoa GUI, Objective-C, gcc, vector graphics GUIs, hardware desktop graphics acceleration, the BSD userland, RSS, tabbing, smart folders, mouse sensitive corners, virtual desktops, translucency, shadows, desktop search, mail reader spam filtering, desktop widgets--you name it, it almost certainly was invented and implemented somewhere other than at Apple first. But that's OK: Apple makes good choices in what they copy and they implement it well.
In some sense, part of Microsoft's problem is that they aren't copying enough. When Microsoft copies stuff from other people, they are usually successful with it. When Microsoft comes up with something original, they often fail. The reason why a lot of their "innovations" aren't widely used in the market is not because nobody thought of them before, it's because they didn't work well when other people tried them before.
It doesn't bother me that Apple is not innovative; I think their focus on design and copying proven technologies actually makes their systems better. What bothers me is that Apple isn't doing their share to fund innovation. Microsoft is investing heavily in research, both in their own research labs and grants to universities. Those investments don't necessarily lead directly to Microsoft products, but they make sure that 10-20 years from now, there will still be innovations for people to use. Apple is a bunch of cheapskates; they don't have a research lab and they don't support research or education at universities. Apple should be ashamed when they try to pass themselves off as "innovative".
Am I really the only one to think that the comments on Jobs' appearance are utterly disgusting? Gates is leaving and I wish him a long life. Can't the Mac-haters at least pretend that, now that Apple is doing well, they're not longing for the death of its founder? Is Jobs' health now the only thing you can call beleaguered?
You missed the (imho, of course) best function: you can click on the icons. It's one of those things that when you realise it works you can't understand why it hasn't allways been like that or how you could stand the old way.
print "Yet another p{erl,ython} hacker\n",
What does it matter if businessmen use Apple solutions or not? Why hold them up as paragons of taste and class?
I think the parent was simply referring to the fact that people use computers every day in their workplaces, but we don't see Apple ads featuring Macs in the workplace.
As for businessmen as a class of humans not worthy of any respect, your examples seem to be pulling almost exclusively from the excesses of the worst Fortune 500 size companies. Small business fuels the economy:
I have a hard time believing that the people who run most of the businesses in the United States are worthy of such scorn. Painting all businesspeople as vile creatures is akin to saying that all athletes take steroids, all programmers crack DoD systems, and all (pick an ethnic background) are criminals.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
the theory of leverage would suggest they are both copying xerox
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I'm downright startled by the volume of pure, unadulterated asshattery evidenced in Thurrot's article. Some of his strongest "points" are just dead wrong.
His comments that Windows had simultaneous 32-bit and 64-bit support "last year" in XP x64 Edition is just laughable. Anyone who actually attempted the upgrade to find missing drivers, and then that their 32-bit licence had been invalidated by the attempted upgrade, will be heartily rolling their eyes at that one.
When he talks about "Spaces" he mentions that Microsoft at one point put this into a version of NT long before to support his claims that Microsoft did all this stuff first, and then he mentions Linux. Linux has had a multiple-desktop pager solution available for pretty much as long as I can remember (which is a long ways back). Microsoft invented what again?
He repeatedly attempts to imply that OSX's GUI widgets are rip-offs of Vista's "glass" theme, somehow without noticing that Apple has had Aqua just about forever now.
Is this guy campaigning to work for the Bush administration or what?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Say what you will about Microsoft (heck, I do), but the company is at least deferential to its customers in public, about as far from smug as is humanly possible, and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition.
Remember the infamous "Get the Facts" campaign by Microsoft against Linux??
Ok, I can tell you weren't actually baiting, but this whole topic is in fact bait, so the simple fact that either you or I are contributing anything must be interpretted as fuel.
:
Let me begin by saying that I love Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Let me also add that I hate/deplore Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. See the problem is that all three main players have made such incredibly large systems that you have to love at least some features and you have to hate some features as well. For example, I love the stability of Windows and Linux. I even think OS X is extremely stable, but the applications for OS X are typically incredibly unreliable and unlike on Windows or Linux where you can use another application for the same thing, Mac probably doesn't have an alternative application.
Linux release schedules have to be ignored since there's really no such thing as a release in Linux, it's more of a compilition of a bunch of stuff that's been released inbetween the previous disc and the new disc.
Let's look at what consititutes and OS X release....
- Applications (that are typically also downloadable separately for previous version such as iTunes, iMovie, etc...) are upgraded and designed to work a little better together
- Unix subsystem features that Apple should have held back the OS before releasing have now been included (so in otherwords, they held them back for the next release or whatever)
- Compiler tools have been upgraded.
- They fixed some performance issues with the Windowing system by implementing hardware hooks to offload processing the the GPU instead of CPU
- They charge you $129 to upgrade to the latest version of address book since the older version is now no longer developed or supported
- They charge you $129 for iSync support for your new telephone instead of releasing a module to support it on the previous version (this is why I upgrdaded to Tiger)
Microsoft released Windows XP, which included APIs for all the third parties to write pretty much anything they wanted to write. The rest of the OS is running strong to this day and I don't see any reason to upgrade to Vista before they make it impossible not to.
So far as I can tell, Microsoft has put a great deal of focus into moving the entire graphical architecture to run on the 3d GPU subsystem on Windows. This is cool, yes Apple did it first, but it's not an issue of copying, people have talked about this for years, it was just logical progression. So, yeh, it was time for Microsoft to do it now that pretty much every machine shipping has at least a half way decent GPU.
Here's a big reason why Apple does it first... they want to brag that they have released a new OS every year for 6 years. As far as I can tell, Microsoft just waited 5 years to include all the features in a $129 upgrade where Apple charges $129 every year for the same feature set.
Does Apple or Microsoft do it better? Who knows, I use both operating systems every single day since I'm in the video business and frankly, the PCs are typically more reliable and require far less reboots than the Macs. The biggest reason for this is Final Cut Pro which is an obscene memory hog, it's the first application running on a UNIX that I've seen that leaves memory all falling to pieces even after being exited.
The keynote picked on Microsoft over the Windows registry. Probably the most useful OS feature ever... in fact it netinfo on Mac would be just as useful if Apple did in fact get developers to use it instead of bashing Windows registry. Instead, I have piles of crap all over my Mac in hundreds of different places and uninstalling applications is damn near impossible, reinstall is the real way to fix a Mac.
So, does Microsoft have a reasonable schedule? I can't say, I tend to find that by the time Microsoft releases a new operating system
- Their compiler tools are all up to date and easy to use
- They have do
I sure hope Microsoft will copy the idea of "non-modal" "sizable" floating windows when it comes to the next version of office, or visual studio (sure i haven't tested the latest beta.. maybe it's there...) And whoever that comes from, whether they copied it or not.. i don't care, because it's real annoying, especially when you have a list with only 4 visible items and the windows size is about one tenth of the space available on your screen, and you just can't make it bigger because some smart ass decided it's not resizable!!!
:) ), but that pseudo micro kernel architecture which is not really one anymore and just adds 36 layers and different approach to kernel programming 1) does not really simplify the job of kernel developpers 2) performances are sluggish. Apple did a great job in Tiger by removing one funnel, and I was kind of hoping that after Tavenian left Apple, we would have a brand new kernel "mostly compatible" with what was there before... but much faster. I want a more "monolithic" apple/bsd and the mach ipc system (can't be removed and it's good).
Speaking of which, the awful "customize" toolbar window is one of them (first thing I use in a windows software to get read of the 4 toolbars with 80+ buttons i won't ever use.... and make my own with the only useful buttons). That thing in visual studio/office is HORRIBLE. So if Vista could add an API to do it cleanly like in OS X or XUL/Firefox, i'd be happy.
Drag and drop. Even before Macos X, Macos had a much more decent support of it... and this might be because of the underlaying APIs... Hope Vista will fix it.
And the last one, I want a "usable" spacial file manager... even gnome has a decent one now! Windows XP has only a limited support for it, which was not improved much from Win95, and in fact it is so annoying that I simply disable it and end up like all windows user, having that Giant explorer windows with my directories on the right...
===
Now here's my list to Apple for leopard.
Make this fucking kernel run faster! Ok the 64 support bit is great (copied from M$
Second, i would like some kind of virtualization manager included in the OS/kernel... I remember connectix made apple add some features in MacOS X for their virtual PC (vmm API), which disappeared on x86. It was ok, wonder why Apple threw it away... I guess the VMWare and Parrallel folks will have "each" to write their own hooks in a kext.. and make their own stuff... I would like an OS integration feature with a GUI level for "virtualized" machines and all that built-in in leopard, even if there is no apple virtualized machines.
JFS support.
NTFS writing support.
Security, I want a sandbox environment that I can trigger and watch for every application I use. Something that's builtin in safari 3, but i would rather have a Finder option "lauch in secure environement". That thing should write logs of what the application is doing and so on... and this option should be used by default to open any e-mail attachment / safari downloads... And all the bad guys that gave interest to Apple lately would be even more disgustted by the cost of writing crippleware for Mac, and would return to their well loved platform... Microsoft. And Apple could still say in their ads "no virus" on mac.
I don't know how big your shift key is, but I find nothing uncomfortable with this combination :)
alt - thumb
shift - index finger
tab - middle finger
Except I liked it. But it sucked though. Although it said lots of good things. And it was also terrible. And the guy who wrote it had some great points. But it was all a bunch of crap and a waste of time to read. It was good though.
Frog blast the vent core.
Him knowing that it was a developer-heavy crowd and stating so makes it obvious he's well aware what type of conference it is.
Parent should be modded redundant.
As far as I can see they still are stealing from the Amiga and as long as GREED rules Amiga rules. Tell me any other OS that is as easy to write apps to! Too bad Amigans have to fight with each other over bones. MS is junk that the government voted us to have and will NEVER work 'cause you can't fix a wrong answer no matter how much money you throw at it and Apple has always been an Amiga wannabe...Nuf' said!!!!!!!
How can the author say 'and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition' when they've called Linux a form of communism and a cancer in public. I'd hate to see what a pointed shot looks like.
Don't know about copying, but cats are apple, I mean, tiger, leopard.. get it?
If you dislike the majority of these new operating systems, explore the Internet on the TeleType!
-Yim
Is the modding on this post a joke? This got a 5 for interesting!?! Was the modder smoking crack? A painful, blow-by-blow description of how to swtich between applications using the keyboard is interesting???
It's turtles all the way down!
There are a lot of general inaccuracies and slants in the article, but the one that bothers most is saying that Spotlight is a rip off of Vista's search.
Apple's OS's have had the ability to do instantaneous system-wide searches since OS7. None of this "where is that MP3... wait... wait... wait... wait..."
Quite frankly, this will be the benefit of Vista search for most people: search quality equivalent to that of Apple 1993.
The ______ Agenda
Mr. Thurrott,
In the future, when you tell these little stories, try to have a point. It makes it SO much more interesting for the reader.
Please remove you head from Micro$oft's ass. OS X is a mach core based on a BSD like UNIX (called Darwin) its interface is based upon Nextstep. Dock originally called "wharf" was the around while your windows was still running program manager.
"Windows Search". WASN'T even created by Miscrosoft. IT WAS developed by "Lookout Software" originally based upon MNGOSearch. For the Love of God, how is Apple stealing something Microsoft didn't develop.
And actually Steve was referring to all the silly names for the new tech M$ came up with Longhorn, Cairo, Stinger, Vista.
Vista is XP SP3, and if M$ doesn't get on the ball I will be more like Windows XME
Windows XP is a 32 bit hack written for a 16 bit GUI, originally run on top of a 8 bit OS created for a 4 bit processor made by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
OK... I'm a Mac geek and have owned every version of OS X that I could legally get a hold of and a couple of developers copies that I couldn't.
Retail Cost:
Mac OS X Beta (Late 2000) - $30
Mac OS X 10.0 (3/2001)- $130 - $30 discount for owners of Beta
Mac OS X 10.1 (9/2001)- Free Update for 10.0 owners
Mac OS X 10.2 (8/2002)- $130
Mac OS X 10.3 (10/2003)- $130
Mac OS X 10.4 (4/2005)- $130
So, the extreme geek who has bought every version at full retail price is out $520 as of right now. Where does he get the $750 figure?
Not to mention that most Mac users get much better prices than what I listed above... either the $70 academic price, or the $199 5-user family pack.
While I've owned every version of OS X, several have been family packs for 3 Macs in our household, bringing the actual cost of upgrade to less than $70 per Mac.
Most Mac users would also argue that each update is a major improvement over the last... Thurott either is lying or he's never touched any of these versions if he can actually write that none were a major upgrade.
I get the spin and the bias that goes back and forth between the Mac Fanboys and Windows Zealots but this writer just flat out lies and hopes no one calls him on it. Sad.
and it comes down to who's going to execute that idea better.
If you watch the WWDC keynote telecast (and the accompanying "PC guy" intro video, both of which are available on the Apple Web site), you'll notice immediately that Apple is more than a little preoccupied with Windows Vista.
... ah, forget it. Ballmer's an easy target.
Vista is an embarassment to Microsoft, and a source of cheap entertainment to everyone who isn't hooked on Windows. Every new announcement about Cairo-I-mean-Longhorn-I-mean-Vista has put the final release date further off, has reduced the promised features, until the final release seems more like a fat Windows 2000/XP service pack.
Apple's new features might be unexciting to geeks, but does anyone expect them to get cut before release? Does anyone expect them to have features like this? It's certainly possible that Apple could use the TPM module to lock down the kernel like that, but Microsoft's already done it... pretty soon the only way to modify the kernel will be by embedding a virus in a video or image file, using the kernel hooks for Windows Media Player the put in to lock down the DRM.
[Microsoft] is at least deferential to its customers in public, about as far from smug as is humanly possible, and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition.
Ballmer: Linux is a virus, Linux is Communism,
But I'd still take that over Bill Gates' slippery innuendoes. "With Linux you have to pay for virus protection." Please, Bill.
And, really, I don't care how deferential Microsoft is being when they pull pranks like this. And given my own experience with Microsoft support when it came to licenses (their support line gave me bad advice on how to handle client licenses, then demanded I get a support contract before they'd help me fix it), they can be as nice as they want when they ask me to piss in the Windows Genuine Advantage cup but it's not going to make me feel any better about the latest outbreak of Palladium poisoning in Vista.
He even took a shot at Vista's glass-like logo, because it looks too much like an OS X icon. Whatever. Microsoft is pushing a "glass" theme in Vista, and the logo represents that.
Microsoft is pushing a theme inspired by early releases of OS X, and the logo represents that. Whatever.
The point remains that Apple has a more elegant solution though. It's much less of a hand-mangler to just use the key immediately above Tab than it is to add the shift key into the equation. Also, you can click on the icons that appear. Also, the point remains about initiating window-switching with backquote doing application-specific iteration through windows.
(%i1) factor(777353);
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translation: MS does actually come up with something original. Other people copy it despite the fact other people tried it the first time. Something like Apple copying Vista desktop search into OS X Tiger (April) before Vista was even released (July) in beta in 2005.
Something that had prior existance is by definition *not* innovative.
translation: MS is really innovative.
A summary of research projects conducted over the past two decades
Genome Research at the University of Nottingham
You mean like the Microsoft Linux Lab. Show me a reference to the Apple Windows Lab where they try and figure out MS innovations.
Thats five seperate mentions of innovation in all
davecb5620@gmail.com
Look, you can get used to anything. But an OS that uses Alt-F4 to close a window instead of CTRL-W is not usability paradise. Alt-Space for menu? Not intuitive and easy to fat finger. There are plenty of examples that we are used to because they have been there for a time. Also, I understand Windows wants to reserve keystrokes so that applications may use them. I just don't agree with the approach.
OS X has its warts too (I actually prefer GNOME to both) but objectively as someone who uses XP, GNOME, and OS X for hours a day, I can say that XP is the worst of the 3 in terms of usability.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
"Microsoft even implemented it in NT-based versions of Windows, though the company curiously never made it easy to access this functionality until it shipped a free PowerToy for Windows, called Virtual Desktop Manager, in 2001. It works an awful lot like Spaces, frankly, though Apple's version is obviously more polished and, well, Apple-like."
He forgot that powertoy worked like a joke, amazing slowdown of system while you switch desktops. One of the main reasons were trying to render the desktops without any hardware acceleration taking place. When you tried to switch desktop, it basically rendered (think like BMP scaling) all of desktops just to "visually" show them. Never worked. I was using XP that time and as all my operating systems, I wanted to use multiple desktops, installed it and when I figured what a joke it was, uninstalled immediately.
Apple managed to make it fast performing and end user friendly just like all Apple software. I use/prefer Codetek Virtual Desktop Pro (never seen more advanced) and my non geek brother uses opensource Virtue Desktops which is really modern and simple to use. Non of them explodes CPU usage.
As a friend said against it: "If it worked right, it would be part of system, not powertoy"
that apple hasn't quite picked up on that whole oh I don't know compatible cooperate software thing yet. Where are all those developers again? oh thats right working for M$. Seriously you can make hateful claims about the UI and features, but as of yet... apple still has yet to really gain a good share of the software, why is that you ask, becuase unlike windows their OS isn't meant to bend over backwards to make something work. Its great that apple has a secure product, I just wish they had a developmental market to match. You can call it industry standard but in truth industry standard is what gets used, and innovation is just a cute side note.
Did someone say cake?
Something that had prior existance is by definition *not* innovative
Hence the double quotes.
translation: MS is really innovative.
You're such a zealot and so eager to put words into my mouth that you don't even see the first sentence of my posting: "There are few ideas that are original to either Microsoft's or Apple's products."
A summary of research projects conducted over the past two decades
A site on K-12 education studies that cites five "research" studies? You must be kidding.
Where are Apple's Turing award winners? Where are Apple's academic research grants for computer science research? Where are the conference and journal papers published by Apple researchers? There's nothing. By all accepted measures of research success, Apple is a complete failure.
Go look at research.microsoft.com, www.parc.com, www.research.ibm.com, and other corporate research lab sites to see what kind of activity goes on there. Try to find equivalent records of refereed publications, university sponsorship, university collaborations, honors, and credentials at Apple; there are none.
Genome Research at the University of Nottingham
The article you point to talks about how the University of Nottingham bought a bunch of XServes; according to that artcile, Apple didn't donate any equipment, let alone sponsor any research.
Thanks for illustrating my point so well: even the best examples of Apple research you could come up with are pathetic.
As I understand it, Spotlight is the realization of a technology that Apple originally introduced internally called "V-Twin". This was in the early '90's - I don't recall the exact year but it was either '91 or '92. Now, V-Twin may have had its original genesis in another technology, but it certainly was not anything that Microsoft had.
BTW...I am glad to see that Apple continues to pick up great people like Dominic. They did the same thing with the people at CaffieneSoft - the makers of Tiffany3 and PixelNhance. Those products went away quietly while Apple picked up the programmers (happened to also be the owners) and then Core Image was born. Very nice stuff.
I think I should mention that while the current implementation of Cmd-Tab switching on Mac OS X is fantastic, Apple's previous attempt (beginning with Mac OS 8.5) was positively awful. I always disabled it, and used a third-party solution instead.
Guess which third-party solution?
The Microsoft Office Manager, a utility included with Microsoft Office (and, I think, available as a free download, although I could be mistaken) whose primary function was to put a quick-launch menu at the top of the screen with a list of all Microsoft applications. It included a command-tab task switcher that, while not nearly as pretty, worked about as well as Cmd-Tab in OSX does today.
It took Apple a very long time to get it right.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Most apps use Ctrl-W for close. Alt-F4 works too, but whatever.
I think as far as Alt-Tab/Ctrl-Tab, Windows leaves it up to the app to know how best to manage its Windows/Tabs/Whatever-else-is-most-appropriate.
I think the only time I use Alt-Tab is when I'm playing a game full-screen though.
I've read some of the comments on here and they all center around what users can see. As a developer I've focused on what users can't see, and adds to the usefulness of what they can do with a microcomputer.
Apple's emphasis has long been bringing good design and ease-of-use to computer users. Microsoft's emphasis has been on bringing powerful infrastructure down to the user level at an affordable price. There is a difference. It's true that Microsoft has copied a lot of GUI features. I can only guess, but I think if you were to ask people at Microsoft what the most important part of the platform is, they'd tell you it's the integration of technologies, making it easy to develop powerful applications that allow people to integrate disparate forms of information in a manageable way. The GUI is just a means of accessing that information. It's not the be all and end all of the platform.
Here are some examples of what I think are Microsoft innovations, though user's can't see any of it. I'll accept corrections as I don't know everything. It's been years since I've used a Mac. I've used PCs since 1994. I've had to read up on some of this. That gives you an idea of my background. Keep in mind that I'm talking about these things from the perspective that they were implemented on the PC platform, which for years had limited CPU power and memory as compared to minicomputers and mainframes. I'm sure somebody implemented many of these technologies before Microsoft did. The question you should ask yourself is who else besides Microsoft implemented this before they did on the microcomputer form factor:
"So remember the new number: 0118-999-88199-9119-725...3"
Did you search Here http://www.flip4mac.com/flip4mac_home.htm
If you're not cheating you're not trying.
Before OS X, and even in the first version or so of OS X (when it used the Dock for switching instead of the bar of icons that pops up), built-in app switching with the keyboard in Mac OS was miserable indeed. You apparently found yourself the wrong solution, though. What you should've been using was LiteSwitch, which does pretty much everything the OS X keyboard switcher does now, except it did it several years ago, and it still runs on at least as far back as 7.5, from what I remember. Plus it's free now (the non-OS X version, that is), and they even released the source at some point. It's rather nifty.
Don't confuse market share with the ability of the OS to "bend over backwards".
There's a lot more that contribute to market and that includes (but are not limited to): pricing, distribution, marketing strategy, partnerships, timing and a whole lot of luck.
Microsoft is a successful business and Bill Gates is one heck of a cunning businessman, but gaining market share does not automatically mean they produce better software. Microsoft knows that, so should you.