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A Mac Fan's Take On Vista
jcatcw writes "Ken Mingis has been running Vista on a MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks. Highlights from his review: 'Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm... Gadgets and widgets. What's that line about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?... The UAC implementation in Vista is heavy-handed and intrusive — it halts what you're doing, even if you want to do something as simple as change your clock. My sense here is that Microsoft has been criticized so often for security vulnerabilities that it decided to club users over the head with its new operating system-in-lockdown-mode... I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.'"
I'll just out and say it -- Ken Mingis is just looking for bells & whistles. He's not in search of the 'best' operating system, just looking for the one that can waste CPU cycles while making the user ooh and ahh.
Here's something you could have figured out for me: how efficient are these effects? What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero? Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints? Are Gadgets & Widgets memory efficient? Does all this extra shit cause any more bugs than a regular operating system without them?
Big deal. Call me when you write an object review. I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it. Not all of us have the new intel core 2 duos.
Congratulations, four pages of inundating me with ads, bitching about UAC & falling head over heels for Aero. Sounds like every other Vista review I've read.
My work here is dung.
Was the new WGA experience better than expected?
no bias there.
If it's dead, you killed it.
What's that line about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?
I think it goes something like "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
I think it is horribly stupid and ugly, I much perfer zooming out on loaded applications then zooming back in.
Overall I feel that the Vista UI is way to dark. Either black stained glass on higher end systems, or black borders as a default for users who cannot fully run Aero. The entire black motif might have been cool if this was 1999.
Yes I know that the glass color can be changed, but no matter what it is still dark and depressing.
The sheer number of icons that surround the UI also makes everything feel very crowded, which is rather sad considering the work that MS has put in to try and unclutter the UI. Moving everything out of the menus and onto icons that then surround explorer windows is not really decluttering though.
Disclaimer: I haven't played with anything after beta2, if anybody wants to report that the newer releases have cleaned up the UI (and gotten rid of that horrible black theme... which I doubt!) then please feel free to correct me!
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I'm not going to copy and paste them here, but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista for all of the features & enhancements that really make vista what it is.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.
UAC annoying? Not really, it finally juts alerts you to a change that affects your system as a whole. UAC used to be MUCH more annoying on previous betas but really is a non issue for most people on 5728 or higher because once your running there really isn't much you need to change and being alerted to changes that can impact your system is a good thing.
It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.
It's quite some time ago, that I've seen screen shots taken with a camera. Must have been in the good old C64 era.
...that previous year's OS X is next year's Vista: people still won't come over to the OS X platform (is my prediction). With the advent of the Intel Macs, no more excuse exists not to migrate to the literally safer option. Why can't people let go of that Windows ****?
Well that is the typical Windows vs. Mac Debate. Apple OS method is do what you need to do, and let the OS Do What it needs to do, and try not to step on each others foot. Windows is a working Microsoft Commercial for every feature that help you save time or protect you from trouble it is like Windows says "See Microsoft cares about you because we just protected you", While Mac OS X is more like go do what you need to do we will keep out of it and protect you when you need it, and we will only talk to you when we really have to. Even the Eye Candy. OS X eye candy is subtile while Windows is flashy. It is like a a man in a nice suit vs. a Pimp.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Runs on my XP 1700 as a "headless" media center server powering two xbox 360 and handling file share and windows media share for over 10,000 photos and about 7,000 songs. This machine has 1 gig of ram, several 250 gig hard drives and handles recordings with a single tuner at this point in time. Working on a second tuner that will run FireSTB to handle pulling hi-def from my comcast box.
I only have a geforce 4 mx 440 on thre so my score is 1.0 but everything that ran in XP is useable and same performance in vista.. i can swap out video cards and make the desktop fully useable with aero but i like it powering my extenders. Biggest thing i did was optimize the system for services, enable a large cache and dump my recordings on a different drive then what most of my pre-recorded stuff is and have a seperate boot drive as IO is where most of my latency is.
I will be throwing in an XP 2600 becuase i got one off ebay dirt cheap, but there you go. Vista works and it doesn't need a super system like you fellas seem to believe. Beta testers have it working on much lower end systems as well - just add memory.
Ken, are you freaking kidding? Expose simply looks and behaves so much more efficiently and aesthetically. Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one, including the desktop (weirdly, Flip3D puts the desktop in there as a window too). In addition, there's no need to "cycle" through the windows in Expose, because it displays all windows at once. Flip3D is essentially a completely useless tech demo that's not that impressive. Flip3D doesn't win on anything.
"Sufferin' succotash."
You know where this is going.
An article written in May suggested that OpenSUSE 10.1 combined with Xgl will perform better with lesser hardware requirements and wins on several other fronts too. Plus, you can probably run it on your MacBook.
...that the major differences between XP and Vista are graphical. On my computer, I can't tell the difference in speed between XP (SP2) and Vista, but Vista sure looks prettier.
(Note: I only had it on my computer for about a day before switching to Ubuntu, which can actually use my sound card. Vista doesn't let you use any unsigned drivers, and Creative's 64-bit Vista drivers are beta and -- guess what? -- not yet signed.)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
"I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. " ...geez, then we wonder why we gotta have a top-of-the-line PC with 1G of ram....just to run the OS smoothly. What happened to my good ole alt-tab and shift-alt-tab ? I dont recall having any kind of problem with that.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Everyone seems to be seeing how OSs fare compared to each other, giving bragging rights to whichever one was the first to use various features, when that doesn't even matter in the slightest. An OS is to be used - it's not your child, you don't have to stand up for it. If it does what you need it to do, then it's great. I don't give a rat's ass who invented "windows flying around revealing themselves" first, I just care if it's of any use to me. It's an operating system, not a political statement. Fucking fanboys.
He is using multiple hard-drives. I have all my media files on a separate hard-drive, and triple-boot with XP, SLED10, and Vista. It probably doesn't take long to figure out if Vista will actually destroy another hard-drive who's sole purpose is for storage, however you feel about MS developers.
...putting the XGl cube on that nifty 3-view screen. With some engineering skills one can build true 3d-rotating desktop!
The more you tighten your grip, the more star^H^H^H^Husers will log in as administrator.
Ok, we all know Windows sucks underneath. It's been a pretty crappy OS ever since they first came out with Win95, and stability/ease of use hasn't gotten much better since. No, it's all about compatibility. The day all my PC games and favorite apps run under Mac OS I'll consider switching. Of course by then they'll also likely all run under Linux, which is even better.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Sure, gadgets are blatant knockoffs. But they arent blatant knockoffs of OS X widgets. Theyre blatant knockoffs of Konfabulator (Now Yahoo Widgets), which is what Apple knocked off too.
Apple fanbois dont get to complain about this one.
All MS did was copy Apples copying. Now admittedly, there are plenty of legitimant copyjobs going back and forth between both companies, but this isnt one of them.
=)
... But can it look and act like Win2K?
,set in my ways, and loving it.
I am a windows user (yes, I know I will be shuned for addmitting this), and my preffered OS is Win2K (it works for what I want it to, and that is primarily games).
Up untill recently I just ignore anytihng about windows that is not Win2K (I admit I have to use XP at work, but I have done everytihng I can to make it look and act like 2K). However, with more and more mention of games that will be "vista exclusives" I am starting to wory that I will eventualy actualy HAVE to switch (I stuck with DOS untill I had to use windows for games, then with 3.11 till I had to "upgrade" to 95 for games).
So for those that have been ussing Vista, Can you strip out all this silly extra garbage and make Vista look and act like 2K?
Can I make all the gadgets/widgets/whatever they are called quickly disapear and not waste CPU cycles?
Can I turn off all the bubbles and colouring and effects?
Can I make everything flat? (I like sharp edges, one of my largest dislikes about OSX/XP/others is this urge to make defaults rounded and pretty looking)
Can I make the colour scheames nice and simple? (a solid blue title bar?)
yup
(btw, a quick link to all this info that I have probably missed would be highely apreciated).
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
I'm not too pleased with the idea that Vista's gonna need to allocate processing power from my video card just to render the bloody GUI, especially since the reason I bought a high end 3D card is to run Maya, not my start menu. I don't care about stupid flashy GUI novelty crap. The windows XP system is about as good as it can get. I also recently got a Mac. OS X's GUI absolutely no different than the Windows GUI except that they feel the need to take up more screen real estate with big fancy icons, whereas they could have just written the name of the programs currently running. Or is it that the Apple folks somehow think their users are incapable or reading (that'd explain simpletext)
Did anybody else initially read that headline as "A Fat Man's Take on Vista"?
Yeah. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery huh? So Microsoft really likes Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke? Lest we forget that the Apple Widget Dashboard is a "total rip-off" of Konfabulator. Though there are dissenting views on this.
I used to feel bad for the Konfabulator team until they were bought by Yahoo- they finally got the attention they deserved.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
He is not trying to appeal to audiences such as yourself, who wish to run a minimalist OS on older hardware until the end of days. He is comparing features of mainstream operating systems for those who are interested in them. Linux and its kin will always be able to run in a less power-thirsty fashion, at the 'cost' of discarding the features he is writing about.
It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.
It reboots in 2 seconds? Amazing. It'd be even faster if Microsoft could figure out how to make an OS that allows you to modify a configuration without requiring a reboot. Everyone else seems to have figured it out.
With Flip 3D you have to cycle through all the windows to find that window you're looking for. That's one more action (or 1 action x the number of windows) than exposé with which you can see all your windows at once in a glimpse.
I say windows loses again.
I happen to like dark themes. I rejoiced when they replaced the Beige Box with the Black box. I cringed when Majel Barrett started a 40 year tradition of female AI voices for fictional computers. The only reason I don't have an AlienWare PC is because some recent reviews called them on overpricing.
Vista has dark themes? Uh oh. I'd better resist! Meanwhile, the fact that 75% of Apple's products are White has been at least a small part of my decision not to buy.
Not posting as an AC...
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I am not enamored of the VIsta Expose knockoff. More aesthetic? Nope. More useless. Cycle through one by one? Apple's Expose actually increases my productivity, while Vista's looks more like a tech demo. Nice thing to "wow" your friends with or whatever, but completely useless in the long run.
Whaddaya mean, "now"? To quote someone's sig, if I yell "Frog blast the vent core!", is Ken going to duck and cover, or will it be a whole cow-oncoming train thing? I'm strongly betting on the latter. We've had command- (and yes, it's "command", dammit, not "apple") tab since, what, System 8? The people who pass for Mac fans these days....
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
... 20% will be sold on the internals.
It's Windows and it costs a lot.
The average Windows user isn't caring about or using what XP TRULY does different than 98SE except it looks better.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"put comsumers back in control of their PC" -- it's like a politician who has been told not to stray from the talking points -- just keep repeating that mantra over and over and over
Tell me again guys, just which OS it is that prevented me from having full control of my PC, and which company developed, sold, and provided weekly security patches for that OS? Hmmm... could it be... satan? (jk)
This is the reason that I switched to a Powerbook in February this year, and replaced my second PC with a Mac mini in April. The only Windows machine I own is in my MAME cabinet, and that's because my roll-my-own MAME frontend requires Window's lack of security to work.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Both do pretty much the same thing; Vista's method wins on aesthetics.
It may win on aesthetics, but that's ALL it wins on. Okay quick example here... this is early in the morning and I've barely begun to work at ALL, but I've already got Mail open, one email being written, 1 finder window, iTunes and 8 movies open in QT. (Gotta check last night's compressions in the morning) So that's 12 windows open here... not really that much but, let's say I want to go right back to the email. I can either Apple-Tab (4 times in this case) or I can hit F9 for all window Expose and them simply click it.
Now compare that to Flip 3D. I'm gonna flip through my ROLODEX? From all the videos I saw it appeared each window shows up separately(Thanks you spell check) so I would actually have to hit the flip key 12 times here? How is that better? It's not. Expose is O(1), Flip 3D is O(N). They definitely do NOT do the same thing, one shows you all your windows, the other buries them.
Here's how I think it went down. Rumors have been around for years about Apple's "Piles" and how they were going to be the next generation file system interface. Microsoft thinks they know what Apple's next big secret is, so they try to get a jump on them and release it first. Whoops... fooled you, "Piles" are actually part of "Stacks" and the light table mode in Aperture... now THAT is useful! (Check out Compare and Select videos 2 and 4 here.) Good thing they got rid of that stupid code name "Piles" :-)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The man is completely wrong about gadgets' being on the desktop being inferior to Dashboard's widgets--given the context. If he'd ever interacted with Windows users, he'd know that they love shit on their desktops. The stupid ones have Bonsai Buddy, the smarter ones have Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets, the power users have, I dunno, hand-crafted Yahoo! Widgets, or a rootless X layer and some K widgets running in cygwin or something. Clean desktops are a Mac thing.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Did anybody else quickly glance over the title and their brain munged it into "A Fake Man's Take On Vista"?
Both systems are are proprietary, DRM crippled and offer only vendor lock-in. With open solutions I am able to install without any hassles (don't have to worry about "Apple only" hardware or WGA). And I am not tied to any specific company. Plus with Compiz, I get all the desktop eyecandy I want. I don't see why OS X or Vista as even a choice.
You will have to forgive me. My definition of PC user has expanded in the past couple of years from big-haired douchebags from Wintel who trolled Tekserve at night trying to get through Crystal Quest or Inside Macintosh. (Ahh, the '80s.) I now use "PC user" as a general term to describe the wannabes who exhibit an attitude of "Yeah, we cool. We're Mac users," when they are clearly from some other part of the universe.
However, to prevent further confusion from the teeming masses, I will use the term poseur. Or in this case, switcheurs. These are the dunderheads who proclaim their trendiness because they use a Mac even though they were probably maximizing their windows until last week.
They try to act counterculture by making comments about good taste and how everything is beige, and think of themselves as nonconformists, which is laughable since all they are doing is conforming to another lifestyle.
What is really pathetic is when these expatriates proclaim their love for their adopted platform. When I hear it I cringe and automatically think of that Daphna Kalfon song "I Love My Mac." Not that there is anything wrong with Daphna.
That phrase reeks of such vomit-inducing pretension. You think you are cooler than the rest of the world because of your computer? Because of your zero-button mouse? Because of the fact that you have to manually sort the Desktop upon failing (inevitably) to understand the Mac's right-handed icon arrangement? Where I come from, this is called "trying too hard."
The Mac platform today is ground zero for the switcheur epidemic, which means more tourists and more expatriates moving in. It has become way too mainstream and too damn self-congratulatory to live here. And with more corporate giants moving in, the Mac is so ovah.
Windows Vista hasn't very new ideas behind.
:)
The only sure think is you need to change your pc to run it decently.
I think the Avalon/WinFX gui is quite interesting if we can develop web application with it (a sort of ajax of M$), but for the rest Vista seems...with no sense.
To check if it is good, count the games runs on it
-- Giovanni Daitan Giorgi http://gioorgi.com http://www.siforge.org
How zippy is your machine? An XP 1700 wita a gigabyte of RAM is capable of simulating regional weather patterns in real time, or of calculating about 10,000 lunar orbital injection trajectories per second, or of playing 100 competition chess games simultaneously, or of analysing and controlling traffic patterns in a mid-sized city core.
So, er, your 1700 *is* a super system. With that much horsepower at your disposal, you shouldn't have to wait more than 0.1 second to start up your favorite application. If you notice *any* lag before any dialog box comes up, you should be questioning why.
Compiz/Beryl on LINUX blow both mac and vista away theres just no comparisono mpiz_graphics
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2915/linux_xglc
and this is old
also im not sure if it shows off some of the best features like being able to 'shrink' all windows down so they all fit on the screen at once so you can easily see/pick between them, or you can select between windows of only a certain type
also the alt-tab shows a preview of what that window looks like before you switch to it which is great
the 3D 'cube' for desktops is much cooler than anything the other two have going (desktop switch wise i mean)
only one guy mentions it on the whole thread (and called it Xgl, which isnt even needed anymore)
When you change your clock on windows, your changing the system wide clock...
On unix, the system clock runs in UTC, and each user can have their own time zone, which is worked out as an offset from UTC.
This is very usefull, for instance I regularly log in to systems in other countries, and it's usefull to see the correct time possibly as well as the local time... If i send an email from a server located in the US, it's usefull for them to know what time it is *HERE* when i sent it, rather than the local time of the server.
Also if i travel and move timezones, the system can keep track of my local time and the time back home properly, adding the offsets for me as/when needed.
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Yah I was all for black awhile back, but it got boring.
For one thing, dark themes have a hard time with contrast. There are a million shades of beige, so it is possible to make things stand out without breaking theme. Black has a disadvantage that UI elements tend to "sink" into the overall theme.
I would have preferred an ice crystal theme or some sort, I really liked some of the earlier Vista themes as well, before they settled on the Aero appearance.
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You got moderated insightful, but I think that is silly, so I feel compelled to reply.
From your comments, it sounds like you have already made up your mind about visual effects in user interfaces. By the way, just because something in a user interface is attractive does not make it impractical.
To make this comment at least a little worth-while, let me see if I can answer your questions. “How efficient are these effects?” Define “efficient”. “What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero?” Define “cost”. “Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints?” Aero: yes, Aqua: no. “Does all this extra shit cause any more bugs than a regular operating system without them?” I offer the rhetorical question: “do graphical user interfaces cause any more bugs than a regular operating system that is command-line only?” This question is recycled from 30 years ago, and both the answers and implications are the same today. Specifically, yes, bugs tend to be proportional to the amount of code, but that does not mean we stop writing more code and inventing new features or evolving existing ones. “I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it. Not all of us have the new intel core 2 duos.” Mac OS X “Tiger” runs fast on my old 533MHz G4, which is vastly inferior to your P4 laptop. I have it running on an old bondi blue G3 iMac running at 233MHz, and it is, in-fact, quite usable. Windows Vista, on the other hand, will not run on old hardware. So, this is really a question of your vendor.
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As any (Motif programming) fool knows, a gadget is a lightweight widget. Except they ended up being even more heavyweight so nobody used them.
Runs like butter, with 640 megs of RAM, without being restarted for weeks on end. All Aqua and Aero effects are hardware accelerated by the video cards. Can't speak for Aero since I have not used it, but I find the majority of Aqua's effects to be pretty while adding legitimate benefit to the user. Expose makes it incredibly easy to find a lost window or to switch apps for someone as visual as myself. The Genie effect not only makes the minimizing of windows attractive, but shows me exactly where the icon for that window resides. Minimizing a movie will continue showing it live on the Dock, allowing me to keep tabs on it without having it take up much desktop space. Even Dashboard's dimming effect not only looks cool but reduces the visual clutter of the desktop items interfering with the Widgets.
I suggest you go back to DOS and leave the rest of us to enjoy the evolution of the modern GUI.
Seriously.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Hehe... So that'd put both of them as imitators of Konfabulator (now Yahoo Widgets).
sigs are a waste of space
That said, why is Aero so f*****g ugly? Jeez, it's awful. I've seen better-looking FVWM screencaps! It's a real poor attempt at imitating Aqua. And I'm not convinced of the value of imitating Aqua in the first place, at least as far as widgets go.
MS has prolly a whole team of full-time, professional human interface people, and another team of full-time, professional graphic designers. Why do window managers and themes created by decentralized, often unpaid development efforts (i.e., GNOME, KDE, xfce + themes) routinely look better? Or maybe my tastes are just WAY off--I know this is a subjective matter. Perhaps Joe Sixpack likes the ugly mfing Aero look....
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
>> The UAC implementation in Vista is heavy-handed and intrusive -- it halts what you're doing, even if you want to do something as simple as change your clock. My sense here is that Microsoft has been criticized so often for security vulnerabilities that it decided to club users over the head with its new operating system-in-lockdown-mode...
I'm not clear how Microsoft think repeated 'Are you sure' dialog boxes add security to a system. Can't hackers also click 'yes'? Anyway, do hackers really use the gui? Surely most if not all hack attempts all come via the network.
It seems Microsoft are spending their security investment on marketing-style perception management not actual product quality.
I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.'"
I sincerely disagree. I don't want to go flipping though all my windows to see their entire content. I'd rather have them scaled, then point and click on the one I need. I find it more aesthetic to have window content scaled rather than hidden. Just a matter of preference which is more aesthetic.
Name a compellinng reason to buy/install/use Vista. Any help out there? Anyone? Anyone?
That which does not kill her only prolongs my agony.
``It's superficially Mac-like -- as if Microsoft, rather than coming up with a more original look for its operating system -- decided to offer its take on Mac OS X's interface.''
I guess it's everybody's right to decide for themselves what constitutes "superficially Mac-like", but I don't find the Vista interface to look like Mac OS X a lot. Apple's UI is full of friendly, rounded shapes; Vista is still stark and square. Frankly, it looks more like Windows XP, GNOME, or Ubuntu to me.
``There's even a "sidebar" that, while it functions differently than OS X's dock, looks similar at first glance.''
Hey, and did you notice that they _both_ have windows and icons? They must be identical twins! Come on, the sidebar is _not_ an imitation of the dock.
``Take a look at the latest version of Apple's iTunes software, the recently released Version 7. Gloss and shine are out, the 3-D sandblasted look is in.''
Kind of reminds me of how Enlightenment looked, years and years ago. I've never much liked the textured windows in OS X; not that they're bad, but Aqua looks so much better. But yeah, a lot of people feel differently, and it's a matter of taste, after all.
``Perhaps most annoying is the fact that millions of Windows users will be delighted by the new look of Windows when it's released next year, blissfully unaware that Mac users have enjoyed bling for years.''
That always annoys me, too. Except that I usually get that feeling about features than *nix has had for ages and that Windows just got. And it's worse, because Microsoft usually makes the Windows version incompatible with existing implementations. So that, for example, both *nix and Windows machines can share directories, but not using the same protocol. The real kicker is that, sometimes, the *nix world gets an open source implementation that interoperates with Microsoft's, and we all standardize on the Microsoft knock-off, instead of the original.
``They'll also likely be delighted by the fact that Microsoft has slammed the door on some of the more glaring security holes that have plagued XP users for years.''
That remains to be seen. I think they tried. I hope they did a good job. But we can't tell at this point.
``Bouncing back and forth between Vista and OS X, I've tried to figure out what it is about the way UAC works that bugs me in comparison to the way Apple handles similar security issues. Part of it is that seemingly innocuous actions trigger it -- such as changing the time and date on the computer. Part of it is that you can't selectively turn UAC off.''
UAC is more annoying, but offers more protection. I guess we'll have to figure out the right degree of protection vs. annoyance. At least Windows users will have more choices now than "you can do anything" and "you can do hardly anything".
``I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use.''
Yeah, and still puts them one behind another, so that you can't pick the one you want at a glance. Personally, I don't use such a feature (I use ratpoison, and I _know_ my shell is under Ctl+t 0, my browser under Ctl+t 1, etc.), but I feel Flip 3D is useless eye candy, whereas Exposé is actually useful.
``I'm less enamored of Vista's new sidebar feature, which allows small gadgets to run on screen all the time.''
I have the exact opposite view. Applets are a great idea for simplifying application development, but why artificially restrict them to their own space and time? I'd have made them just like regular applications. Vista does it better, because it gives the user choice. Mac OS X implements this in a way that I find counterintuitive and less useful.
``I see the same issue -- good idea, so-so implementation -- with Internet Explorer 7.''
I don't even want to talk about MSIE 7. It's playing catch up with the rest of the world, and not qui
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Terra is the UI you use to "reset hardware" with a brick.
Pyro is the flamethrower you use when that doesn't work nicely enough.
yours,
kbs
The blobbing windows and the cube make GREAT demos, but not so great products. The constant effects get tiresome quickly.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.
... wait, doesn't that require it to be somewhat annoying now?
Uh, a GUI is a Graphical User Interface, so by definition it's the Interface that the User sees. I'm amazed that some geeks don't get this. (Up next: judging music by what it sounds like, and why the color of the insulation in your walls is amazingly *not* the homebuyer's top priority!)
UAC annoying? Not really
If it's annoying to people, you can wave your hands all day but that won't make it not-annoying for us.
UAC used to be MUCH more annoying on previous betas
Ah, good point. It was much more annoying, therefore
It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.
Ah, Windows Vista can reboot in under 2 seconds?
(I know finding "Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC" would take much longer than 2 seconds.)
Ohhh, the new OS has better eye-candy than the competitors OS.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Parent has the most insightful post on Slashdot, ever...
!ERR: Signature not found.
Off topic but Alienware laptops are a piece of junk. They didn't seat the graphic card properly(which caused the wireless card to die), The didn't install the Raid properly, they left a screw stripped half-way out of the case, and the motherboard failed after 6 months....although I have been know to roll critical failures regularly....
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
And the "evidence" cited to prove that MS copied Apple is so minor and trivial. I mean things like "Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm." What, does Apple have a trademark on four letter words beginning with 'A' now? And it's not like the user gives a damn what the UI is called anyway. The other things this guy cites are that close/resize buttons glow when the mouse hovers over them and Aero has photorealistic icons that scale nicely, etc. Oh really? Well, whoop-de-doo!! I guess any OS that incorporates good looking icons is stepping on Apple's toes, right? *yawn*
And what's all this talk that Aero copies from Aqua anyway? I've been using OSX since 10.0, and I've seen Aero. Regardless of whetehr a few things are similar, the overall look and feel are not alike at all.
And this is where this guy's arrogance really kicks in: Huh? Why, just because and Jobs says so? Give me a break.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
What about Sun's Looking Glass... hmmm. I think both Apple and MS are little late with the idea.
Erm... I think that was "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", Ken.
By your powers combined, I am CAPTAIN COMMANDLINE !
If I can't plug a probe into my eyeball and have my primal urges control the content displayed by stimulating the nerves in my retina I'm not interested. M$oft and Apple you're OLDZORZZZZ!!!!! Now, if you'll excuse me I have to get back to washin my jetpack.
Novell / SuSe's SLED 10 does that already. It holds multiple desktops, and lets you flip through them quickly also.
t ion
I've looked at both, and while some things uniquely windows won't run on SLED10, I find it much more stable and secure. Granted, Vista is still in development, and SLED10 is in production, but still. I have no plans to go Vista. I'm sticking with SLED10, as it's the first real *nix I could put on my laptop and still do all my work on. I work in an environment with a Novell backbone (100+ servers), Citrix/App Center (600+ servers), and mixed Unix environment (100+ server). I have to support apps on all 3, and this fit the gap nicely for me.
Installation info : http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/SLED10:_Installa
Novell Main site : http://www.novell.com/linux/
I could not agree with you more. I am so sick and fucking tired of Mac fanboys who feel that Windows has to suck for the Mac to succeed, or who seem to think that Microsoft stole everything from Apple. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that Microsoft could actually add useful features before Apple thought of them? Is it unthinkable that the same ideas could have been arrived at independently, but implemented at different times? It's as if they're insecure about their platform choice, and perceived failures in Windows somehow validate that choice. These are the morons who give the entire Mac community a bad name. How about just getting your pathetic asses back to work and let the Windows users worry about problems with Windows? If so many of you so are vehemently anti-Microsoft that you declare their products anathema on your platform, why should you care at all what they're doing with their OS or applications? I certainly don't.
Disclaimer: I have only ever used a Macintosh. I have zero experience with Windows, and anything Microsoft does is simply irrevelant to me. I certainly have no hard feelings for Microsoft, and good luck to them with Vista. Frankly, I find the entire Mac-fanatic-jihad-thing baffling. Maybe it's because I actually have a life, and my wife and children are far more deserving of my attention and love than any machine, no matter how slick and stylish.
Effectively a virtual desktop manager decomposes your list of windows into two extra dimensions, rather than having to cycle through a single 1-d list (or worse still, constantly use your mouse to select one of a number of identical buttons on a task bar). So why have the Windows designers consistently ignored it?
I can't comment on actual memory use required for widgets and what not, but I can tell you that I'm afraid that Vista is doing its best to assassinate my hard drive. I installed Vista Ultimate RC1 on Monday and I think that it has spent about 75% of its time beating the crap out of my hard drive. Every time I don't use the thing for 10 or 20 minutes, the hard drive starts going berserk. I don't know if it is the indexing or defragging or what, but I have doubts about how much longer my hard drive will stand up. I'm sitting next to the system right now (not using it) and I'm just about to turn throw it out the window. It really is starting to drive me a little crazy. BTW... the only non-vista program I've installed is Adobe reader.
I'm using a new Logitech -- wireless, USB, etc. Haven't had any problems.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Painfully Subjective Review
I'll just out and say it -- Ken Mingis is just looking for bells & whistles. He's not in search of the 'best' operating system,
You are correct, however the implication that looking for the "best" OS would have been less subjective is laughable. Any search for the "best" operating system is inherently subjective, because "best" is a totally subjective criteria.
Any time I see a review where someone is looking for the 'best' anything, where two solutions exist, is not going to be objective. If it was objective, then it would need to explain why both things exist -- which implies that there are people who find both of them to be the best, respectively (otherwise why would they be using it?).
Frankly, I didn't find his review objective, but I'll take blatant over veiled subjectivity any day. It's not like he tried to hide where he was coming from, or give it much of a journalistic, authoritative overtone; he just stated his opinion.
As someone with a similar background to the reviewer, his statements were valuable to me. Sometimes, a variety of biased but straightforward reviews can be far more elucidating than a probably-biased but totally opaque one. At least with something like this, I can say "okay, so he's coming to this from the perspective of a Mac user, meaning he probably thinks the way OS X works is generally OK..." etc.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...I manage to get a BSOD on it, like I've been getting about weekly on Windows XP lately.... (and no, I know for a fact that I dont' have a virus)
Stupid Mac fanboys always saying Vista is better!
-- Boycott Shell
The interface is usually the best M$ has to offer. Everything else is starved for effort. If the interface sucks you can only imagine what a train wreck the rest is. No, you don't have to imagine because every review so far has called it just that.
The real feature that should be a deal killer is 3.5, DRM. You may have missed it because it was inappropriately placed under the joke section, "Security".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hey braniac, the dude was questioning if a P4 laptop could run vista.. My XP 1700 is 6 years + old and it *RUNS* vista.
Has nothing to do with the power of the CPU in calculating weather patterns or crunching numbers. Infact the machine used to be a Linux box running knoppmyth but i have since gave up trying to run myth because *cough* windows vista & xbox 360 is that much easier and my wife and kids can dig it.
so yeah, my old media center pc is capable of calculating traffic signals for an entire town while it does HDTV streaming to my 360's on top of file serving for my home network and recording tv shows off cable and still being able to login to it directly or through remote desktop.
We all need to start tagging the stories with "fuddoesnotmeanwhatyouthink" because I only ever see it used as "I like/don't like issue X" now. It means Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and is very specific as a tactic to spread scary misinformation folks. It's not meant as a label for anything, *anything* that you disagree with.
Spine World
Vista can do all of that and then some. The standard interface, is just that, the standard interface. Everything is customizeable and i'm sure you will see some neat stuff once 3rd party developers like stardock and others get a hold of it and release there addons.
If you notice *any* lag before any dialog box comes up, you should be questioning why. .NET apps... .NET) is launched just as slow as it did before.
You obviously haven't seen any Java or
After I upgraded my Pentium3-1000 with 256 megs of RAM to Pentium D 3200 with 1 gig or RAM, my scanner's driver (written in
And Java apps gobble up memory like candy - most serious apps allocate about 100 megs right after startup and about 170 megs when they're busy doing something. And Java is becoming more and more popular, especially among scientists. Most math software is rewritten or being rewritten in Java. I imagine the nightmare of having 3-4 Java apps running on Vista. 2 gigs of RAM will probably be the minimal amount.
Something which has always triggered a small iritation in me is this whole 'clock' issue. Early in my road with NT I discovered that the requirement that one needs local administrative rights to change the time on a machine seems to have been a niggling issue. Make no mistake, for quite a long time I was one of those who viciously complained about this 'feature'. A while back, however, when I started playing with the DRM in Office 2003, the light suddenly went on for me regarding this little problem. If you think about this a bit more careful, the administrative-rights requirement actually makes sense - specifically if you take DRM into consideration
Now, I know this is Slashdot, and I know that the mere fact that I seem to be positive about DRM in this post will probably cause this post to be modded down into the "Centre of the Earth". I would ask these modders, however, just to step back a bit and think of a bigger picture here. In terms of DRM, in the MS Office sense, its actually very very useful. If you think of any normal company, and consider the amounts of confidential information that travels over email and in documents in this company, it should become clear that any way of protecting this content should be very valuable. Using Office DRM one can protect Emails and documents with various different restrictions, but the one that is relevant to this little rant of mine, is the option to put an expiry date on electronic content. Now obviously if Joe bloggs in Contoso Ltd can change the clock on his machine to enable him to see documents long after he was supposed to, DRM will be quite useless. It is for this reason, in my mind, that the requirement for someone to have administrative rights on a machine to change the clock is a basic but quite necessary requirement.
Everyone seems to be seeing how OSs fare compared to each other, giving bragging rights to whichever one was the first to use various features, when that doesn't even matter in the slightest.
I won't speak for "Everyone" but you are right, who does what first does not matter.
I just care if it's [the OS] of any use to me. It's an operating system, not a political statement.
If you really think that, you are not using Windows. It's the least featured, most difficult to keep running choice you can make.
you don't have to stand up for [an OS]
Hopefully, I won't be getting a reply filled with all sorts of M$ is great for me bullshit because you don't have to stand up for it.
If you care about your neighbor you do have to stand up. M$ has spend billions of dollars on FUD and other misinformation. The only thing that undoes that is to use what they say is impossible and see for yourself how much easier it is.
Politics does play a role. As usual, free systems are more productive and better for all of their members. M$'s business model is good at obnoxious marketing and not so good at software development. Their strategy of only entering "mature" markets by purchasing tools and destroying all others has left them feature poor and buggy as all hell. Worse for them, no one is making new Windoze software companies for them to plunder. The only people they have left to push around are hardware vendors and users.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I built a new system and just installed XP 64-bit edition earlier today, but I'm now considering installing the Vista Beta (got easy access to it via MSDNAA) - is it worth the trouble? I'll be using the system in multiple ways, browsing, gaming, watching video, and (Java) development.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
>Aqua is quite memory intensive. A moderate size window is likely to require about a 3MB buffer. Assuming it's double buffered,
>guess 4MB (we'll allow for some smaller windows in the average). Now multiply that by the number of windows you have. You're
>looking at a lot of memory just for this. I don't know how much of it is VRAM, but on my system it amounts to more than my total
>VRAM so it can't be all unless they use some form of lossless texture compression.
They do use compression. The original version of osx had huge memory requirements for the window server (and a lot of other problems), but each version has gotten more effecient and pushed more processing onto the graphics card. At some point (I forget which version, probably 10.2 or 10.3) they started compressing every window in memory.
OSX is far from optimal in terms of performance, but every version has gotten closer by leaps and bounds, so I suspect they will get there before too long. Right now the window server seems very effecient on supported hardware, but the kernel could use a little work before things like threading get as fast as they are on linux.
The solution: Store user-set time as an offset of system time, have system time synced with NTP, and only check document expiry against system time. *Noone* can change system time. The offset might as well be timezone information.
Of course, once you go to the BIOS of a system or boot a more liberal OS, you can change the date/time. But that's as valid for the XP solution as for any other.
I kind of think Apple and Microsoft need to make it so that each can deal with the other's filesystem. Vista should be able to read and write HFS, and OSX should be able to read and write NTFS (currently I think it can read only). It would benifit both companies to work together on doing this. Maybe in the final release of the next OSX and Vista, they will be able to do that. Of course, Linux can do both (true, you need an NTFS write driver).
The Gospel according to lolcat
Funny how the main consenses of argument here is about the eye candy. If miCROsoft thinks eye candy is their main product now they seriously need to get some new people in there. So far even microsofts own double-market-speak says Vista is a loser if you read between the lines. The FUD writers believe their own FUD. Got to wonder if the support cycle will last as long as the development cycle. Can't say they didnt spark some new inovation in failure arena.
They'll also likely be delighted by the fact that Microsoft has slammed the door on some of the more glaring security holes that have plagued XP users for years.
They've gotten rid of Internet Explorer, Outlook, and the rest of the applications that use the HTML control?
Whoa, you had me going there for a second. What you mean is that they've added some more internal firewalls to make it a little harder for an exploit to use the more obvious hiding places... which is basically the same approach they've been using to attack the deep and fundamental security holes produced by the HTML control's criminally stupid trust model since 1997.
There's nothing new here. It's not going to solve the problem. It's just going to annoy people more.
They need to catch on: security is like sex. Once you're penetrated you're fucked. Get rid of the stuff that's making the initial penetration easier, and you'll find you won't need the rhythm method and the statues of saints.
DRM used to protect a confidential document has to be independent of displayed time. Setting the clock back has to be detected by the DRM mechanism, or else you could bypass it by copying the document to your own laptop. Which makes the DRM irrelevant.
> I am a windows user (yes, I know I will be shuned for addmitting this), ...
I think the expletive you're after is zuned. :D
What the fuck? Nobody's corrected this guy yet? Unbelievable.
Tiger (one release after Panther) supports all G3 machines with Firewire. Without looking it up, I believe Panther supported all G3s with USB. There are rumors suggesting that Leopard will finally drop G3 support, but they are just that - rumors. Based on a very early beta release that may or may not resemble what ships next year. To suggest that it'll drop support for 3 different architectures at once is totally and completely laughable.
Maybe you were just trolling. I guess I got sucked in.
From the article:
"Note to Microsoft GUI gurus: Take a look at the latest version of Apple's iTunes software, the recently released Version 7. Gloss and shine are out, the 3-D sandblasted look is in. From what I've seen so far, Mac OS X 10.5, or Leopard, still looks pretty much like the current OS X 10.4 -- at least according to the developer preview Apple released selectively last month. But I'm really hoping that one of the tricks Apple CEO Steve Jobs has up his sleeve is a plan to make the entire operating system look like the interface used in iTunes 7. We'll know in a few months."
I sincerely hope that OS X doesn't adopt the new ITunes theme. I was thinking of getting a new Macbook when Leopard is released. But if the current theme that looks very nice now changes into that ugly ITunes theme, that purchase is out of the question.
In work, my main desktop machine has 2 2.7GHz Xeon CPUs and 2GB of RAM and it crawls. It runs Lotus Notes, Firefox and Eclipse. I know that this machine should be fast as fuck but it's a pain to use. This is running XP. I hope that when I install Linux on it, it runs at an acceptable speed.
I dunno if this has anything to do with your comment or this news item. It's 2:16am here, I've been drinking some weird Polish vodka and I feel the need to reach out.
I know it is too late for most to see it as this article has been modded and replied to death at this point but...
The latest version of Tiger can install back all the way to the Blue & White G3 (300Mhz G3), and it actually runs fine. It may not be super spunky, but it is functional, and you can get work done, especially if you don't load the machine down with a bunch of 3rd party junk. Seriously, I've seen Photoshop CS2 running on them, and while the G5's smoked them, it was still usable.
All the effects in Mac OS are intelligently managed, if your hardware doesn't support them then they are either handled in software or dropped. Case in point is the ripple water effect for widgets. When you add a new widget on a machine with a graphics card that supports programmable shaders, there is a splash effect as the widget is 'dropped' on the screen. Don't have a good enough card? The widget just appears without any effects.
Shawn's Tech Articles
and I respect it, really. I have played with Ubuntu and am impressed with it, really. However, since I run a business, having access to tools such as Photoshop, Filemaker (I know I'll be laughed at for using it, but I built my business with Filemaker and a "Dummies" book and I'll never look back) as well as shareware/commercial utilities and what not is totally worth the "Mac Premium" that I pay. Having a choice of which program I need to get my work done, being able to know that the [whatever program] I've invested my time in using will be updated regularly because it's a part of the core of Apple's strategy (Mail, in this case, for me), and so on, are all worth the cost of buying my software, lock-in and all. Since I and my employees are all, you know, doing stuff that generates money, having even a 1% benefit in efficiency over a FOSS alternative easily pays back the cost of the Photoshop/OS X/Filemaker/whaever licenses. Of course, part of this comes from the fact that I am a long-time Mac user and can easily do what I need to do, compared to how slow I'd be if I had to do the same work in a Unix environment. (Well, you know what I mean.)
Another aspect to choosing Macs for my business is, I can take 1-2 hours a week to keep all our machiines running. If I'd chosen Windows, I'm sure I'd have neeed a full-time support person/admin to keep things going by now, and my sense is that this would probably be the case if I'd switched to Intel boxes running *Nix instead of OS X. It's simple math to calculate that, even if each Mac costs $1000 more than a PC running free software (which I disagree with), that person's salary would be far more than the amount of more expensive hardware. Again, this is partially the case because I happen to be an experienced Mac guy, so I might be off the mark.
I wonder if this trend holds up with others. Are most FOSS aficianados tending to be working for other companies or working for themselves on a small scale as contractors? How many people who run 20+ person companies would agree with your post, I wonder? I am not posting flamebait, just wondering what the correlation between "involved in a commercial enterprise making money" and "more of an enthusiast, not making money from my computer" aspects are.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Andy Ihnatko wrote a nice rant about Windows and Macs after writing his book on iPods. Well worth a read.
wow!
that was the most pointless over use of cheesy eye candy i have ever seen. thanks, i will have to save that.....
I also plan on running 2000 for as long as I possibly can. The difference, imo, between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple comes up with new features that are actually usefull, whereas Microsoft comes up with new features to entice users to upgrade, reguardless of how useful or not the new features actually are. See 'personalized menus' and Clippy for examples.