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What's Different About Vista's GUI?
jcatcw writes "Paul McFedries, author of Windows Vista Unveiled, thinks that an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user. He thinks the Vista interface rates 'pretty darned good.' The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) results in positive changes for both developers and users. Developers can do 2-D, 3-D, animation, imaging, video, audio, special effects and text rendering using a single API. The use of vector graphics and offloading work to the GPU result in better animations, improved scaling, transparency, and smooth motion."
Not to troll, and its nice that Windows users are getting these features, but how come no one ever calls MS out on the fact that Vista is basically still playing catch up to OS X, doesn't do it as well, and is probably going to be left in the dust when Leopard comes out?
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=267479179
Here's hoping MS uses the competition to better Windows. The more secure it gets and the easier it gets to use, the better for everyone, even those of us who don't use Windows.
"an operating system should be thought of as more than just its user interface, but then again that interface should work well for the user."
Vista can apparently be represented in a significant way by either Mac OS X, or XP with modifications. It's mostly a vehicle for DRM, including PVP, which will require you to buy a PVP compliant digital monitor. Vista's enhancements won't even work on many powerful systems you are buying these days - if they have "Vista Capable" stickers. In an age where we should be looking for energy savings, what's the benefit of making a system more complicated than XP, and requires more horsepower than a rather darn good OS Microsoft released in 2000?
Oh You POS
Silly user. File copying is evil! You're not supposed to look at files.
Win95/98: We won't show you directory paths or file extensions. ...and since some of you still didn't get the message last time, we're going to make everyone's home directory contain at least two spaces by calling it "Documents and Settings" ...and don't even think of trying to remove Outlook or other files we want on your hard drive, even if you never use the application. By the way, it phones home, but we won't nuke your box if you don't let it phone home. ...by the way, when we said we wouldn't nuke your box if you didn't let it phone home, we meant we would nuke your box if you don't let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't install any user tracking software not authorized by the government, though.
WinME: We won't even boot to DOS without a fight.
WinNT: Pay no attention to the 8.1 filenames. We're going to make sure everyone puts spaces in every path name, by calling it "Program Files"
Win2K:
WinXP:
Vista:
> Research dollars are hard to come by, and unless Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, it's just a matter of time before it will replace XP.
You've forgotten the lesson of Office 97.
Research dollars are hard to come by, and when it's confirmed that Vista totally breaks standard Office suite PC/applications, only then will it be only a matter of time until it will replace XP.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
You know what bothers me about this? They've taken nearly every proposed feature out of Vista that we wanted or that was going to useful...or even new...leaving us forced to debate whether or not there's actually anything new in the only really new thing about it, Avalon.
And when we do have people talking about it they don't have any idea what they're talking about, discussing cutesy shit you can do with their uber-advanced API and not improvements that Microsoft has made to the ACTUAL GUI that will help me complete complex tasks easier, find that which I need faster, and just make my user experience more pleasant and efficient overall.
Features, you say? They're not features, they're bugs. Much in the way that spam is email, these bullshit "improvements" are actually just annoying eye-candy and a stop-gap measure to one-up the actually useful features that exist in other operating systems such as OSX and Linux. And no, I'm actually not a *nix fanboy despite my heavy use of it; I've been a Windows admin for a few years now. And I've been a user long enough to know that dancing icons and spinning buttons do nothing more than impress grandma for a few seconds and piss advanced users off.
Where's the real innovation? Where's the Microsoft that made Windows 3.11 and Windows 2000 (which, despite it's faults, was one hell of an OS)?
Dead, I say, choked by the left hand of greed and the right hand of stupidity.
If all my base are belong to you and I attempt to retrieve my base, does that mean I'm freebasing?
It really baffles me why they haven't added virtual desktop support yet. This is something that X has had since swm, which Mr. LaStrange released in 1990!
Even the Sun workstation I used in the mid-1990s, running Solaris 2.5 and CDE, offered virtual desktops. For the love of fuck, Microsoft needs to add virtual desktop support.
Ok, I agree, the Linux people are major ripoff artists. That being said, when most things _are_ ripped off (which, being great artists, happens rather fast), new features do appear. The window manager Beryl (which is a fork of Compiz) has gone above and beyond in imitating the new graphical bling of Vista. And a lot of the bling from OSX too. I dare say that a lot of this bling comes at a smaller price (hardware wise) than what you get from Vista.
When I first saw screenshots of Vista I was impressed. Impressed with what could be done. Sadly, I haven't really seen them move any further with the bling since the first screenshot was released, and now that I have Beryl up and running I really couldn't care less.
If you look at the forum for Beryl you'll see a LOT of input from users, requesting (granted, a lot of stuff seen elsewhere, but also) new and innovative features and bling, that might actually prove useful when working (and naturally a lot that's pure bling).
What I'm basically looking for is what makes Vista stand out from something like Beryl, except for the fact that you can actually run (some) windows programs on it. Why are people getting so excited over this, when you can have Beryl running on your computer today? Or Compiz? Or Metacity?
------- I fumbled my registration and I now must suffer
When dear Lord will MS finally understand that we don't want to operate our computers. We want them to operate themselves. I want fewer controls, fewer buttons. I want the software to figure out what's the right way to do something, the right app to start, the right place to put an object. I don't want to be an AUDITOR for my system anymore. I'm sick of it. I don't really care about this years trendy glassy stylistic trend which will be as old as dirt in about 3 years anyway. I don't want rearranged controls that map out everything I could possibly do. I want all of that transparent to my use. I want for instance to be able to simply start typing on the desktop and have it popup the last 4 choices of applications, have me quickly pick one, and load what I just typed into the appropriate area. And if the input is unique enough, I want the software to know what the application is supposed to be and take appropriate action. I want a blank canvas. I don't want to start Adobe to read a PDF. I want a window to open up with the PDF and keep the application absolutely in the background. I don't care what it is. And I don't want to hear about codecs, plugins or patches. Just make it work or let me know how long it will be before you, the system is ready to do that. I want you remember all the little tweaky settings. Print still means print even if the last time I printed it went to email instead, just do that unless and until I tell you otherwise.
Then I want it run faster and quieter with fewer interruptions to update, fix and patch. The system can do that but it has to be completely quiet and unobtrusive about it. I want virtual reboots that allow me to keep working even when the system has to be restarted. I don't want to do storage management, that's your job.
I don't want to hear from firewalls, spyware blockers, AV or malware tools. Please do have them but if they are worth anything at all they will do 99% of their job with ZERO human intervention or notification of any kind.
And then what I want you to do is precreate a large array of batch scheduled housekeeping procs to run off hours, again, w/o me knowing about them to do the little things they need to do: update, defrag, clean off garbage, memory cleanup, patches etc etc etc etc. Take a few hours if you like, take more, do it at night or whichever schedule I give you and bring the system back to WHATEVER state or condition it was in before including all open applications and objects.
I recently purchased a Mac (A MacBook Pro to be exact). It's interface is surprisingly simple, yet easy to use, and very responsive. On my primary workstations, I run Debian linux with KDE - again, minimalistic in nature, it's fast, smooth, and doesn't distract me.
Then, I've got Windows Vista RC2 running on a 'play' computer - it's goofy, quirky, and distracting - to me, really annoying.
However, you do have to realize that the majority of Windows users are goofs, who are quirky, and love being distracted. Windows Vista isn't made for users like you and me who work with their computers. It's made for the millions who merely read mail, surf the net and chat with the "uber coo"l MSN Messenger.
It's all in the eye of the beholder. I just wish Vista would be a *little* lighter on system resources (especially my poor old ATI 9600 card).
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
By default, windows actually "fly in" to view. EVERY SINGLE WINDOW. You will be annoyed after 30 seconds.
Although I eventually tossed my vista install, I didn't really mind that.
I think it worked really well to hide the time it took for a window to open - something that was really obvious if you dropped it into that "classic mode that looked retarded because it was half windows 95 gui, half vista (mostly buttons)". It also gave the user feedback that something was happening and even made the open folder, etc, process feel a lot faster than it actually was.
You have the same thing on OSX with the genie animation , which doesn't imho work as well.
When I dropped back to 2k3 server, I had a "damn, this is much faster" moment. I was running on a 7800gt too, so..
I'm looking forward to the comparison reviews in the major mainstream publications.
Bah, doubt that you'll get what you expect. Microsoft's PR department will toss dollar bills at the reviewers and you'll get the usual tripe / reprinted press release that passes for journalism in the computer industry these days. Look how quick they got a number of people to play the part of the apologist with the Vista EULA thing. There was some damn spectacular spin done there, especially by some of the guys who write for the bigger windows oriented mags. Take a look at Paul Thurrot's article for a great example how you can confuse people into thinking how a significant eula change was just a "clarification".
The sidebar was stupid and slow but voice recognition in RC1 was worse by an order of magnitude. Vista would sort of finish booting, allowing you to open a firefox window or something and then, out of nowhere, VR would start, leaving firefox stuck on the start page, apps refused to load, etc. 20 seconds later, you'd be started up, but man was that annoying.
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