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David Pogue Takes On Vista
guruevi writes to let us know about a review of Microsoft Vista in the NY Times, in the form of an article and a video, by the known Mac-friendly David Pogue. In the article, Pogue recasts Microsoft's marketing mantra for Vista: "Clear, Confident, Connected" becomes "Looks, Locks, Lacks." Pogue writes that Vista is such a brazen rip-off of Mac OS X that "There must be enough steam coming out of Apple executives' ears to power the Polar Express." But the real fun is in the video, in which Pogue attempts to prove that Vista is not simply an OS X clone.
kdawson, the link to video not working...can you fix it?
Since the poster broke the link to the video, it is available here:8 aabc2:10f959c69f8:-76e0&fr_story=d14603c1e23e6ce37 920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&st=1166446268999&mp=FLV&cp f=false&fvn=9&fr=121806_075108_718aabc2x10f959c69f 8xw76df&rdm=415999.3568509814
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=a71
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if that was either total bunk, or gross misrepresentation by the author.
The idea of using a flash drive to supplement main memory is assenine for a number of reasons. Like the above, yanking it out would leave the OS in a totally assed up state. As well, flash only has ~ 1-2 million write cycles. Your thumb drive would be toast in just a week or two if you were using it as RAM.
You could read the article and find out, that the link is prominently displayed in the lefthand side. But then again.. This is Slashdot... ;-)
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Nah - they are competitors even in the eyes of the courts / law, but that doesn't meant that MS isn't a monopoly for legal reasons...
Remember, a dictionary definition of "monopoly" is not the same thing as the legal definition as far as anti-trust laws are concerned. MS's 95%+ of the desktop market is "good enough" for them to still be considered a monopoly in the marketplace even though they are not the "exclusive" provider of operating systems.
a recent typical USB thumbdrive is something like 10x faster at random access of 4KB chunks than even the fastest hard drives. So Vista can use one of these USB drives as a cache for the pagefile, speeding up a system quite a bit *IF* it is using the pagefile quite a bit. That is, if you're a bit low on RAM and the pagefile is getting hit pretty hard. Pop in a USB stick and allow it to use a portion for this feature and you should get a pretty decent boost. If, however, you already have tons of RAM you aren't likely to see as big of a gain. On my 2GB machine I can't tell the difference with a stick in or not. If it only had 1GB, or god forbid 512MB or less, perhaps this feature would be more noticable.
Two comments:
I can put Tiger on a G4 and run with it... Last I heard anything below a P4 / Athlon XP would have issues with Vista. (My memory is a little fuzzy, but I seem to remember the G4 coming about a little after PIII / Athlon) Have you tested Vista on any older hardware (even without Aero) to see how it performs?
And 2nd is that 10.4 isn't 64-bit yet.... 10.5 is.
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
I'd suggest that you watch the video. It's not the 3D graphics that he's talking about.
Also, I've had OS X on my laptop since July of 2001. Aqua was first released to the world in an OS X alpha build presented at MacWorld in January of 2000. According to the Wikipedia article (if we can trust that), work on Vista started in May of 2001. And Aero (even if not by that name) has only been in Vista since build 4074 (according to the Wikipedia article on Aero); Paul Thurrott's images of that build are dated May 5, 2004.
So, some might "remember" that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "Vista Road Map" had been published clearly stating that Aero has always been slated as part of the operating system - but they'd be remembering wrong.
might [sic] remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista... "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system.
The earliest I can find of any discussion of Longhorn's "advanced user interface" as part of the roadmap appears to be about 2003 timeframe. Aqua was publicly revealed at Macworld 2000 San Francisco.
A few notes: 1. Glowing buttons were completed in Mac OS X long before WindowBlinds came up with it (August 2005). 2. As a former Apple employee, I know that we sure had Spotlight figured out to a large extent by the time that GDS came out. 3. The widget thing is pretty old, at least as old as the original Mac OS (sure, the technology and capabilities were not the same, but widgets really are supposed to be mini/assistant apps). Linux has quite naturally taken a liking to it and has a better "widget" system than either company, though (IMHO) not as easy to use. 4. Yup. Although, how could they not stay competitive and not include these apps? 5. I think that Expose likely corrupted their imaginations into what was possible with a 3D windowserver. I honestly believe that they didn't have anything better than Flip3D that wasn't already too similar to Expose.
It's slower, [...]
OS X is the slowest mainstream OS on the market. Heck, Vista on an old ~500Mhz P3 laptop is snappier than OS X on my 1Ghz iBook. Windows XP or 2003 even more so. XP or 2003 on a 1Ghz iBook-era PC laptop absolutely trounces it.
OS X has a lot of nice features and very cool technology. Performance, however, is *not* a feature.
[...] not in fact cheaper, [...]
Well, that depends entirely on how much value you assign to Apple's software bundle and small hardware footprints. I assign little, since most of the functionality it bundles I'm not particularly interested in and I have loads of empty space under my desk. Add in the significant expense to get any sort of decent hardware flexibility and the comparison is even worse.
[...] particularly when you consider the average life of a Windows PC is about 3 years and a Mac, closer to 5 years.
Of course, the PC likely only cost 3/5th as much as the Mac in the first place or has 7/5 the performance.
This "Macs last longer" canard carries about as much truth as the "Macs have lower TCO" line. Apart from a handful of exceptions, over the last 5 - 7 years, PCs have consistently delivered more powerful hardware at equal or lower cost to Macs. Combine this with OS X's atrocious performance (especially in the past), lack of hardware options and configurability (especially on the low end) and the idea that Macs "last longer" in any sort of competitive sense is laughable. People may well hold onto their Macs for longer, but a Mac that's X years old will be slower in an absolute sense than a PC of equivalent age, and in a relative sense (how fast the whole package is) it will be slower still. You need a G5 class Mac with a gig of RAM or more for OS X to deliver the kind of responsiveness Windows XP can on ~1Ghz PCs with half as much memory.
Windows is so clearly a knockoff. It's the classic knockoff strategy, looks similar but lower quality.
For most of the things *I* care about, Windows does them better and has been doing them for longer. I fail to see where the "knockoff" is in this equation.
I don't use an Apple... I'm not a Mac zealot, and I'm speaking from experience in a corporate environment.
So where's the evidence of Macs having a lower TCO ? I'm not aware of any recent third-party studies, and I've done the maths before as to evaluate the possibility, with Macs being distinct losers (largely due to an incredibly rigid and uncustomisable hardware lineup).
I'm a Linux fanboy, not a Mac fanboy, but I can: Genentech. 90% Mac and pushing towards 100%. I'm familiar with Genentech because I did some consulting for them last year. The Windows dominance on corporate desktops has much less to do with suitability for the task and much more to do with inertia and culture.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I can tell you right now that I will likely never have a mac for a desktop. I know I can get more value if I build it myself, since Intel's offerings for desktops are pretty affordable now and I enjoy having more control over my desktop. However, if I get a new laptop, it will probably be a Macbook Pro. Those things are really sweet. I would get it for the screen alone. I hope they can get the graphics drivers for linux on the macbook fully working, because that's what I really want on there.
Wow. Apple was so never anywhere near bankruptcy. That investment was a settlement of a lead-pipe cinch lawsuit Apple was prepared to bring against Microsoft. The money was chump change.
Frankly, I think Apple should have gone ahead with the suit. They had enough cash on hand to weather the storm, but didn't have the clear way forward.
Shoulda woulda coulda...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I love it when people drag this up, from your article.
"Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content,"
Apple was not about to go bankrupt. Microsoft was essentially buying the right to have Internet Explorer installed on Macintosh computers as the default Web Browser.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n