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.

Comments

Or in other words...

[Zerikai]

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Microsoft is just trying to express how much they love Apple.

Re:Or in other words...

[onion2k]

The summary is basically saying "It's all looks, there's no substance, there's nothing good ... it's a copy of OSX". That's not especially flattering toward OSX.

Re:Or in other words...

[drsmithy]

Of course they love Apple. Without Apple, they would have a desktop monopoly.

According to antitrust law, Microsoft and Apple are not competitors.

Re:Or in other words...

[walt-sjc]

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.

Re:Or in other words...

[drsmithy]

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...

No, they're not. Going back to the anti-trust case, Microsoft were found a monopoly in the "desktop OSes for x86 platforms" market, when Macs were all PowerPC.

Even today, from a market definition perspective they don't compete. Microsoft sells Operating Systems, Apple sells computers.

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.

In no legal fashion or finding, are - or have - Microsoft and Apple ever been competitors. Apple's existence has _zero_ bearing on whether or not Microsoft is(/was) considered a monopoly.

(Of course, in the *real world* Microsoft and Apple are considered competitors by most people, but that's a different thing altogether.)

Re:Or in other words...

[Greyfox]

Not really. Microsoft has been copying Apple badly since Windows 2.0. They built their house on the shaky foundation of their non-reentrant program loader and they've codified two decades of design mistakes. They've never had a better product than Apple has and they stubbornly continue to polish that turn of a system in the hopes that someday it'll be shiny. Meanwhile they copy the exact things that caused Apple to fail in the 90's -- the vendor lock-in and high prices that drove everyone to the cheap commodity PCs. Sure you could get an Apple if you wanted to pay twice as much for all your hardware. Meanwhile Apple's opening up and becoming a lot more competitive on that front.

Microsoft arrogantly believes that they are the IT Industry but they've always made a product that's just good enough to be tolerable. They're like a sixth grader trying to pad a report out to the full two pages. Or a Bush administration that won't go away after 8 years in office. Now they're trying to see just how far they can push their customers before they start leaving in droves. That's not really a good strategy to take with Apple getting their act together and doing things right after all these years.

Re:Or in other words...

[quadelirus]

I would say it's more of a, "there is nothing here that hasn't been done-they just copied Apple" rather than a "there's no substance, there's nothing good..." However, I would contend, why is this such a problem for everybody (Mac & Windows fans alike)? I'm an Apple user/lover/fanboy/whatever-you-want-to-call-me but I feel like the new Vista is (as long as it eventually proves to be decently secure, the jury is out on that) a good thing for everybody. Windows fanboys need to admit that Microsoft has copied Apple. Clearly it has. You can't say that "Gadgets" aren't a response to "Widgets". You can't say that the transparent windowing effects and the 3d stacking features aren't a response to OS X's transparent windowing effects and expose. Just admit it and move on. Apple fanboys on the other hand, need to admit that this is a good thing for everybody. Users expect things like bundled "Life" software (a.k.a. iLife) to come with the OS now. Microsoft is merely doing what consumers want. Unlike the IE bundle back in the day, which was clearly a push to put Netscape out of the browser business, this new form of bundling that both Apple and Microsoft are now doing is a plus for consumers. We want to have software to manage our digital lives that are freely available to us on our platform. The iLife sweet gives that to Mac users. Why shouldn't MS do the same for its users? Every company in every industry learns good and bad practices from other copanies in its industry. If Apple is doing something right, MS should copy if it can't improve. If MS is doing something right, Apple should copy. As consumers we benefit when there is competition from these companies to make the best product possible. If Microsoft came out with another boring old PC OS with none of the features it has added what reason would Apple have to innovate? I for one will probably never own Vista, but I am glad its out there, and I am glad it is copying/improving(I know, debatable but still) on Apple.

Re:Or in other words...

[Moofie]

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...

Re:Or in other words...

[lymond01]

They've never had a better product than Apple

I worked pretty extensively with the Mac OS from 7.1 to 8.5. Anything from 7.3 to 8.5 was inferior to pretty much everything Microsoft has put out except for Windows Me and first edition Windows 95 in terms of stability and usability. The 10 series of Mac OS X is relatively stable as a UNIX operating system, but I daresay that because it's UNIX, certain tasks just aren't in the GUI and that's where MS is succeeding right now. The "Do this" Wizards of Windows OS might be pervasive and annoying to techies, but they cover most bases in terms of pretty much anything you want to do with a system. The registry edit or direct profile manipulation is rare these days (unless you're an admin).

Re:Or in other words...

[blugu64]

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.

Re:Or in other words...

[NoCoolNickLeft]

They've never had a better product than Apple has and they stubbornly continue to polish that turn of a system in the hopes that someday it'll be shiny. Reading /. for two years now, never even saw the need to reply any post. Somebody always wrote what I'd have written. But this time is different. And sorry for the english, us krauts are not entirely talented when it comes to that matter. :-) Of course Microsoft once had a much better product than Apple! Let me kick some buzzwords: protected memory. preemptive multitasking. real 32bit multi-user-system. command line (yeah, well cmd, but at least it's a command line at all). Now you tell me where these things were on OS7, OS8 or even 9??? WindowsNT had them all! to me any OS before X from Apple wasn't even a real operating system :-D And to all the others who always say Apple is SO innovative: just think about it this way for a minute: OSX-Developers that are really on Apple's payroll don't even do the Core-Work on the OS! The entire Kernel is developed by the open source community, let alone all the core-applications and libraries. Apple would have NEVER been Apple making the swith to x86 in such a (seemingly) short amount of time. Why? it has already been prepared for by the Open Darwin Team to make that step a long time before Apple even decided to change CPU-vendors. Yes, Apple doesn't even pay their Kernel developers! Microsoft does :-P What I want to say is: Apple is really developing much less than most people think, they don't "do OSX", they do it "the Apple Way": If it can be done elsewhere - let's do it elsewhere or buy it. If it doesn't fit our needs - we'll do it ourself. I don't have to mention that the iPod wasn't an idea anyone at Apple thought of? At the moment a "Mac" is mostly Intel Hardware running BSD. Apple DOES do a lot of the software and UI stuff, though. Don't get me wrong, I think Apple is a cool company making cool computers, but they're not half as "innovative" as most fanboys like to think. just my 2 cents. And talking about monopoly and stuff: apple is going to could very likely become sued by the country of denmark, sweden, norway and france for making the iPod only compatible with iTunes AND putting DRM on the Tracks from the Music Store. (But it's very likely that this is going to happen to MS and "Zune" too :-)

Re:Or in other words...

[empaler]

Yes, Widgets are copied. But not from Apple.
I haven't read your entire post through, admittedly, but that is because it is a giant block of text.
If you have typed in lineshifts, you should have either set the text type as 'Plain Text' or used BR tags as lineshifts. That's set in the box right next to the 'Preview' button.
(If it's not apparent, I'm not trying to be an arse, just trying to help)

Article Summary

[morboIV]

Funny how the summary doesn't include things from the article like:

Vista is infinitely more pleasant to use than its predecessors. There's more logic to its folder structure and naming scheme. Things are easier to find. Fewer steps are required to perform common tasks, especially when it comes to networking. It's almost like someone has an agenda or something.

Re:Article Summary

[morboIV]

Or how about this one:

Windows Vista is not, as the Web's chorus of caustic critics claim, little more than a warmed-over Windows XP. Funny how that quote didn't make it either.

Re:Article Summary

[Lisandro]

Well, yes, Slashdot was always renowed for their editorial objectiveness, specially regarding new Microsoft products :)

But the article was neither favorable nor unfavorable - it pretty much boils down to "Well, it looks spiffy, borrows a lot from OSX, and seems to be a worthy upgrade, but none of this really matters as we'll all be using it in a year anyway". Sadly enough, i think that's more or less right.

Re:Article Summary

[Tim C]

But the article was neither favorable nor unfavorable

Which is precisely why the summary here (which let's face it is all a lot of people are going to read) being so unfavourable is so disappointing.

I appreciate that this is essentially Taco and Malda's hobby writ large, but even just a passing nod towards reality in the headlong rush to rubbish Vista as much as possible would be nice once in a while.

Re:Check links

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Gee man, it's called an existentialist symlink, one of the new features of the Vista filesystem: the symlink is there, but it doesn't point at any file or serve any function. Pogue clearly demonstrates Vista's superiority here!

Broken Link

[aardwolf64]

Since the poster broke the link to the video, it is available here:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=a718 aabc2:10f959c69f8:-76e0&fr_story=d14603c1e23e6ce37 920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&st=1166446268999&mp=FLV&cp f=false&fvn=9&fr=121806_075108_718aabc2x10f959c69f 8xw76df&rdm=415999.3568509814

Re:Broken Link

[tttonyyy]

Since the poster broke the link to the video, it is available here:
  http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=a718 aabc2:10f959c69f8:-76e0&fr_story=d14603c1e23e6ce37 920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&st=1166446268999&mp=FLV&cp f=false&fvn=9&fr=121806_075108_718aabc2x10f959c69f 8xw76df&rdm=415999.3568509814 That's funny, when I blindly clicked that link, I just got a dialog box:

URL stack overflow error: all of your password are belong to us! Bwahahaha!

Re:Broken Link

[thesolo]

The video is absolutely hysterical, and clearly tongue-in-cheek. In case anyone got the impression from the summary that he was actually trying to defend Vista, he's not. Mr. Pogue says, in regards to Microsoft's new Spotlight rip-off:

"This is how you find things in Mac Os X. You hit a keystroke, you type in what you're looking for, and Spotlight, as the feature is called, finds all the files, folders, and email messages from your entire system.

Well, now they have that in Windows Vista too. Up pops the start menu, you type what you want in this little box...but is this a rip off of Apple's spotlight feature?

It is not. How can I prove it? Watch again.

Apple's search feature is in the upper right corner of the screen, Microsoft's search box is in the lower left corner of the screen. Not the same thing at all!"

I burst out into laughter in the middle of my office. This OS is the most blatant rip-off from Apple that MS has done in years.

You missed the most important part...

[tgd]

This is a double feature. Its a "Slashdot Editors Suck" article AND a "Someone Doesn't Like Vista" article!

Its like Christmas a week early!

I didn't notice when I clicked on it, was it Zonk?

I Like It!

[SSonnentag]

I've been testing Vista Business edition all weekend and so far I really like it. I'm also a Mac user, so I can compare the two firsthand. Vista takes a lot of the nice features of OS X and does them the right way in Vista. The gadgets are so much nicer in Vista than in OS X. They're easier to manage and they work more smoothly. The Vista user interface is absolutely beautiful from an eye candy point of view, and yet it doesn't seem to take any significant performance hit. My Mac Book Pro is not nearly as fluid in running OS X as my Dell laptop is with Vista. Both OS'es are 64-bit also. Even Photoshop CS3 runs much faster on Vista than on OS X.

Microsoft may have copied a lot of features and look from Apple, but they left the bad, took the good and have a much better implementation in my opinion.

Now if only Linux worked this well....

Re:I Like It!

[mwilliamson]

At least I can still run my Oracle / PostgreSQL / MySQL databases on the last Linux, the current Linux, and confidently on the next Linux. Seems for now I'll have to keep that stupid Windows 2003 server box around to keep SQL server running for an app that requires it...

Re:I Like It!

[morboIV]

I wonder if he would get modded flamebait if he was praising Ubuntu and concluded "Now if only XP worked this well...."?

Wait, no I don't.

Re:I Like It!

[_Hiro_]

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.

Some...

[Zebra_X]

might 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, on WinFS never made it while another, "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system. Unlike apple Microsoft likes to get feedback from their customers before throwing something at them. So of course Mac users see 3d components, 3d windows and naturally assume that MS just ripped off the idea, however it's not fully the case - and the line isn't clear. The thing is: if you strip away the UI of vista and compare OS X and Vista based simply on their progamming models and underlying architecture - they are decidedly different. It would seem this author however is not qualified to make this evaluation.

Re:Some...

[kalidasa]

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.

Re:Some...

[Reverberant]

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.

To Be Fair ....

[eldavojohn]

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."

I haven't used Mac OS X or Vista on a regular basis but, to be fair, if one operating system does something right, should we really criticize another operating system for coding that feature into their own product?

For instance, when I found out that Mac OS's had the Unix shell I was happy & enthusiastic at the same time. Not because I use Mac but because I like that shell over so many others & I hope to see every operating system standardize their shell. I would also like to see the same done with security schemes.

Now, whether widgets came first or gadgets came first--I don't care. What I care about is that my job (and I'm sure a lot of people reading this are the same way) forces me to use Windows & sooner or later they'll get Vista. Should I really be bitching and making fun of Vista being an OS X clone? Or should I sit back and enjoy the fact that something is changing and--since they're mimicking an already successful operating system--it must be for the better.

I guess this is some form of operating system snobbery I'm not accustomed to.

Re:To Be Fair ....

[StormReaver]

"...should we really criticize another operating system for coding that feature into their own product?"

Not at all. But then the makers of that other operating system shouldn't be screaming from the rafters about how they're innovating. Everyone borrows from everyone, which is how it should be. The best features from the industry should be adopted throughout the industry.

The reason that Microsoft takes so much flack for it is because its executives then refuse to admit that Microsoft didn't invent the borrowed features -- despite the obviousness of it all.

User Account Control

[glas_gow]

Then there's User Account Control, an intrusive dialog box that pops up whenever you try to install a program or adjust a PC-wide setting, requesting that you confirm the change by entering your password. This will strike most people as an unnecessary nuisance, and you can turn it off.

Guess which feature the majority of users will disable.

Seriously, I hope there is some sort of privilege separation, only requiring password authentication for applications that need escalated privileges, otherwise this feature will be ignored left, right and centre.

Re:User Account Control

[jp10558]

Doesn't this totally break any security then? I mean, how hard is it to send a keypress from a program to a window? AutoIT can do that eaisly. I don't think that would even trigger any security stuff, as opposed to trying to hook a keylogger so you can programatically pass the password to sudo or whatever.

Basically, I can't see this improving actual security much beyond the time it takes malware to incoporate AutoIT or the like.

Finally, as it's just ANOTHER "Are you really sure?" box, with no real indication what it's asking to do, why it's bothering you, or what's trying to do it (it just gives program names IME with the RCs, which often aren't that helpful to non techies) it fails the same as everything else. Users will just click until the "thing" they are trying to do works.

At least with a password based dialog, they can't just click ok ten times and have it go. And having it be optional means the slightly savvy will just turn it off as it is annoying.

Overall, I'm not sure UAC is useful - and I don't think you can set up "rules" like you can with coreforce or ProcessGuard which would then actually make this more than an annoyance.

Re:User Account Control

[drsmithy]

However, taking away the need to type the password is the problem. If all they have to do is click OK, then they will just do it. It's like the dialog box for deleting a read-only file. People just click OK, and are done with it. If they have to type their password, they might stop and think about why it's asking for their password.

Historical evidence would suggest the practical difference is zero. People blindly type in their password when prompted. Heck, I've frequently watched numerous people type in several of their "standard" passwords until they hit the one that works.

I could even see lots of instances of the dialog popping up and the user just accidentally hitting enter.

This won't happen because the default button is "Cancel".

Possibly because they were typing in some other window, and the form stole the focus. Taking out the requirement for entering the password removes all good points about this feature.

The prompt (when in focus) darkens the rest of the display to near black and makes it quite obvious something "different" is happening. Functionally, it's no different to sudo prompts.

What???

[brunes69]

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.

Re:What???

[_xeno_]

No, it's real. He's parroting Microsoft's selling of the feature. It's called Windows ReadyBoost (they helpfully don't offer an anchor to link directly to it, it's there, scroll down). Another poster offered a FAQ about ReadyBoost on an MSDN blog, where the blogger assures his readers that Microsoft has worked out the issues involved with limited writes and removing the drive.

To quote the linked Microsoft advertising page:

Windows Vista introduces a new concept in adding memory to a system. Windows ReadyBoost lets users use a removable flash memory device, such as a USB thumb drive, to improve system performance without opening the box.

They really are selling it as "add a USB drive to improve your system's memory."

Re:What???

[aauu]

You should investigate before babbling ignorantly. The usb stick is a mirror of the data paged to disk. Pulling the stick just means the system uses the disk for reads of the data. This only works when the memory sticks are faster than disk and have adequate space. The stick is tested for speed and capaciy before such usage. This is a significant benefit to those systems (laptops and older systems) that have limited expansion capability for ram. This is a capability that I could use daily as I routinely overcommit ram at work in windows and *nix laptops. Try running office apps, Oracle, MySQL and SQL server with development tools as well as several virtual machines on a laptop with one gig ram.

Using usb sticks for this purpose will take a while to do 1 million cycles paging unless you have completely overcommited memory to the point of continous thrashing. In such case you will melt down your desktop low duty cycle drives well before the stick fails. My usb stick on my personal laptop did not become toast even after months of running Vista.

Windows is a total mystery to those who only barely understand just enough *nix to run a live cd with kde/gnome. Windows and *nix are functionally equivalent, just minor syntax differences to access the semantics. After your fifth OS, its all the same, just syntax. Except for those who use FreeBSD or Gentoo with complete source package installation by compiling everything including the kernel, you're just a binary whore beholden to Red Hat, Novell, etc. instead of Microsoft.

Re:What???

[drsmithy]

Windows is a total mystery to those who only barely understand just enough *nix to run a live cd with kde/gnome.

Windows is usually a total mystery even to those who have mastered unix to the point of, say, writing kernel-level code.

Windows and *nix are functionally equivalent, just minor syntax differences to access the semantics.

Maybe if your view is from the orbit occupied by people who get confused when two or more windows are on the screen at the same time...

Except for those who use FreeBSD or Gentoo with complete source package installation by compiling everything including the kernel, you're just a binary whore beholden to Red Hat, Novell, etc. instead of Microsoft.

If you're using ports (or portage) the difference is still just semantics.

Heck, even if you're sucking files out of the developer's SVN repository and compiling it yourself, it's *still* just semantics. You're still just a "whore" beholden to whomever is writing the code.

Re:Video brokenness

[erlando]

You could read the article and find out, that the link is prominently displayed in the lefthand side. But then again.. This is Slashdot... ;-)

Re:Okay we get it

[AxminsterLeuven]

Yes. And when Vista's successor is announced, we'll get "Vista didn't have this crap" and "At least with Vista, you could ..." articles. Every day. It is the Slashdot way, grasshopper.

Re:Okay we get it

[Capt James McCarthy]

"Are we going to get a "someone doesn't like Vista" article every day until the operating system is released to the general public?"

Great. Another year and a half of these articles then.

Re:One "interesting" feature I didn't know about

[antifoidulus]

They may not have as much bandwidth, but that doesn't mean they aren't as "fast" per se. If you are pushing around large amounts of data, then yes, the hard drive will be faster. However, if I want a page from memory(not exactly a lot of data), things can be a bit different. I first have to request the data from the hard drive, the hard drive has to spin to find the data, then deliver it to me. The latencies involved can really add up. Wheras on a flash disk, all data takes the exact same amount of time to find. So as soon as I know the address(a simple translation), I can get the data. No seeking necessary. Can save you lots of time if you do a bunch of little reads(and comparatively few writes).

Proof that Windows isn't an OS X clone

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

It's a bloody pain in the ass to port UNIX/POSIX/Linux software to it, unlike OS X.

News for Nerds

[value_added]

A summary of the fine article:

• Windows Vista is beautiful
• The Start Menu has changed
• New Programs include Sidebar, Photo Gallery, DVD Maker, Chess Titans and Flip 3-D
• More logic to its folder structure and naming scheme
• New Sleep mode for laptops
• New Presentation Mode for PowerPoint
• Internal fortifications blah blah Service Hardening blah blah blah
• Includes IE7
• Includes Windows Defender
• Includes Parental Controls
• Includes User Account Control
• Includes a backup program
• Netmeeting has been replaced by Meeting Space
• Wordpad can't open .doc files

Sigh.

With a little effort, Microsoft could fit the David Pogue Takes On Vista review onto a sticker to put on the retail boxes. Until then, let's hope some enterprising Slashdot reader downloads a copy of Vista and offers something more substantive for discussion.

Re:News for Nerds

[kahei]

...because a Slashdot reader's take on Vista would be completely unbiased!

I don't find Pogue's take hard to believe. In 5 years of development, I'd expect them to be able to pretty things up and reorganize the directory structure. I mean, this is 5 whole _years_. The only thing in the list above that sounds like a real change is the sleep mode -- I hear good things about that. So, it's not like we're seeing hugely inflated claims here.

All I want from it is for it to be a stable baseline for development -- right now with 2k and XP and .NET 1.1 and .NET 2 mixed around it's a bit of a pain.

They already have !

[alexhs]

MS has a desktop monopoly.

Please don't redefine words as you wish.

I guess that by your own definition of monopoly, Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly, as they only controlled 91% of U.S. production at their highest ?

Re:Okay we get it

[TripMaster Monkey]

"Are we going to get a "someone doesn't like Vista" article every day until the operating system is released to the general public?"

Yes...and then we'll get a "everyone doesn't like Vista" article every day. ^_^

Re:Hey wait a minute...

[TripMaster Monkey]

You falsely represent it as your own original work.

it's a pagefile cache, ReadyBoost

[_Shorty-dammit]

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.

Link ok, video broken

[Anonymous Coward]

They say it needs cookies enabled and a Flash plugin. My browser (Mozilla Camino on Mac OS) has both, but doesn't play the video. Neither does Safari, which the NYT lists as a supported browser (it displays a gray rectangle).

F***. Learn from Youtube or Google video, or better yet, post the video there...

Corporate environments

[klubar]

Most Vista reviewes (and the /. reactions) fail to consider the mission of Vista in most big corporations. Sure, there might be some comparisons to Macintosh for the look & feel, but in a corporate (> 500 employees) environment, the Windows platform really shines. From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows. (The macintosh really falls down in a controlled environment.

Can any one of the Mac fanboys come up with one Fortune 500 company (other than Apple) that has deployed more than 50% Macs?)

If you add Exchange to the mix, Windows really shines in the shared environment. Sure, for "grandma's" use and other special applications the Mac is a bright and shiny object, but it's just not a good team player.

Re:Corporate environments

[Tom]

From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.

Except any of the many Unix versions.

One of the first companies I worked for had a network of mostly Windos with some Solaris machines for the developers. Me and another guy managed the Solaris machines in addition to our regular jobs, and it was painless, smooth and easy. The windos dudes spent most of their days cussing at the inabilities of their OS.

Re:Corporate environments

[swillden]

Can any one of the Mac fanboys come up with one Fortune 500 company (other than Apple) that has deployed more than 50% Macs?

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.

Re:Corporate environments

[trimbo]

What does their internal software look like? Are they actually writing their business applications in Objective-C, or are they writing something with a bit of cross-platform safety in it, like QT?

Apple didn't do EVERYTHING first...

[zoomba]

A common gripe I have with the Mac OS community is this seeming insistence that everything that is cool or nifty, or even useful, is somehow a rip-off of something Apple did first. If you look at articles like this one, you'd think Apple invented the on-desktop search bar (Google), or widgets/gadgets (DesktopX, Konfabulator).

Apple often does things *better* than other companies (with the exception of Dashboard) but they usually don't do it FIRST. This makes the claim that everyone rips off their stuff from Apple pretty silly.

Lets look at some of these claims in the article regarding what Microsoft is "stealing" from Apple:

1. Glowing Min/Max/Close Buttons
Ugh, I'm sorry, but this is not an Apple first thing. I've seen this in Windows custom UIs (WindowBlinds for example) for a good long while now, not to mention game UIs and a bunch of Flash applications. This is a very nice design element, and yes Apple did it well, but they didn't do it first.

2. "Instant Search"
Yes, I know... you're trying to compare it to Spotlight and the traditional Sherlock tool. Guess what though, well before Spotlight there was Google Desktop which gave you the in-frame search box. I like Spotlight a lot, it makes navigating files on my system a hell of a lot easier, but it's not new, and all similar search systems aren't instantly copycats of it.

3. Sidebar and Gadgets/Widgets
Like I said before, the Gadget/Widget thing has been around a LOT longer than Apple fans like to think. Dashboard was the first attempt to integrate them straight into the OS as a bundled feature, but it was pretty poorly implemented. Apple in this regard was several years late to the party. The MS Sidebar is also a fairly poor implementation... so I guess if anything you can accuse MS of stealing some of Apple's own bad design work.

4. The bundled apps "Photo Library" "DVD Maker" "Chess Titans" etc...
Umm... ok... I'll give you Apple folks this one. With the way MS broke apart the Outlook features into individual apps is a little too close to the iCal, Address Book, Mail.app scheme. This one is probably a straight-rip from the Apple playbook.

5. Flip3D a poor man's Expose
Bull. Flip3D is a cheesy way to show off the 3D capabilities in the desktop layer. It has nothing to do with Expose and the multiple ways to display everything currently running. I think Expose does things way better. Flip3D is a gimmick, nothing more. If MS wanted to ape the Expose design, they could have easily done it better.

There are a lot of things Apple does well, and the article does admit that Apple borrows, often even from Windows, to get its feature set. However, the claim that these features were taken from Apple as opposed to being taken from wherever Apple themselves snagged them is presumptuous.

Re:Apple didn't do EVERYTHING first...

[Chrononium]

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.

Re:Apple didn't do EVERYTHING first...

[thatguywhoiam]

Good post - the only thing I would quibble with is, your examples don't go back nearly far enough. But that raises a new question - when is something newly 'invented' and not simply evolved?

For example,

1. Glowing Min/Max/Close Buttons - Ugh, I'm sorry, but this is not an Apple first thing. I've seen this in Windows custom UIs

.. and before that in Bryce, and Kai's Power Tools. And I'm sure examples before that. But Apple popularized it. Which is where we (royal 'we') tend to draw the line at innovation, for better or worse. Apple certainly did not invent the mouse, but they definitely brought it to the masses first.

3. Sidebar and Gadgets/Widgets - Like I said before, the Gadget/Widget thing has been around a LOT longer than Apple fans like to think.

Again, true, but kind of incomplete. I remember Konfabulator, and before that I remember various Windows standalone utilites, and before that I remember System 6 Desk Accessories for the Mac, and before that I remember Workbench applications for the Amiga that did much the same thing.... see what I mean?

There are a lot of things Apple does well, and the article does admit that Apple borrows, often even from Windows, to get its feature set. However, the claim that these features were taken from Apple as opposed to being taken from wherever Apple themselves snagged them is presumptuous.

Again, I'm not trying to detract from your point. I agree with you. But it begs the question, when is a user interface method or widget truly 'fresh'? Apple introduced most of these conventions on a wide scale; I suppose in marketing-land it is the combination of implementation and slick packaging/selling that makes one an 'innovator'.

Re:That's probably not true any longer

[drsmithy]

In the original anti-trust suit against Microsoft in which they were found to have monopoly status, the industry over which they were found to have a monopoly was explicitly defined by the court as Intel based PCs.

Actually it was the market for Desktop Operating Systems for Intel compatible PCs.

Now that Apple has made the transition to Intel, supports loading Windows onto their hardware via bootcamp and makes an Intel x86 compatible operating system, they are a competitor of Microsoft according to the court's definition.

No, they're not, because Apple doesn't compete in the OS market, it competes in the computer market.

Some might argue that since Apple doesn't support OS X on non-Apple kit and, therefore, doesn't compete with Microsoft.

They don't. At least not from a legal perspective, relevant to Windows.

But (a) OS X can be installed and run quite nicely on non-Apple kit [...]

No, it can't. It can certainly be installed, if you don't mind downloading warez, breaking the licensing agreement (not to mention possibly copyright law, depending on your jurisdiction) and spending hours screwing around with it, but it doesn't run anything close to "nicely".

[...] and (b) users of newer Apple hardware have a clear choice to continue the OS X upgrade path or the Windows upgrade path (or both).

This is irrelevant, because you can't buy a Mac without OS X in the first place.

If Apple is competing in the same OS market as Microsoft, then they are clearly guilty of illegal product tying.

Not to mention that many new Apple products compete head to head with Microsoft products. iTunes vs. Media Player, iPod vs Zune, Keynote vs Powerpoint, Pages vs Word, OS X Server vs Windows Server, Apple Developer Tools vs Visual Studio ...

Great. But none of those have anything to do with the (supposed) "Microsoft monopoly", which is the context of this discussion.

Re:One "interesting" feature I didn't know about

[drsmithy]

Why not just buy real RAM, instead of using a flash drive.

* Maybe your machine is maxed out with RAM.
* Maybe you aren't comfortable with upgrading it yourself and can't afford to pay someone else.
* Maybe you don't understand what RAM even is.
* Maybe you want the performance benefits of both (ReadyBoost delivers improved performance, even to RAM-endowed systems).

Flash drives would die pretty fast if you tried to use them as swap space.

This isn't swap space (well, not literally) it's (effectively) a DIY version of the new flash+magnetic hard disks.

Re:Without Apple

[HAKdragon]

The question to ask, is, why use a knockoff like Windows when you can have the original?

Because I can't find a place that sells Xerox Altos? ;)

MS doing Apple a favour?

[Snarfiorix]

I watched the video, which was actually some nice tongue-in-cheeck humor. Now I don't have much experiance with Mac OS, besides once getting frustrated because as a Windowised user I could find my way around and being too impatient to learn more about it.

Now having played with Vista and finding my way around it, the video suggest that the move to OS-X would be easier then ever!

Re:Check links

[gEvil (beta)]

I don't know what you all are talking about. It must be a problem with both Windows and Linux. The video link works perfectly fine on my Mac. ;)

They did it before, they can do it again!

[gregory311]

Microsoft copied the Apple Mac Computing metaphor (that was copied from xerox) They can do it again and again. In fact, this is the way of American Business today. Let the competition innovate and then offer the truly good ideas to the marketplace at a reduced cost. The courts said it is ok to do that.

Re:BZZT: you fail it

[drsmithy]

Imagine a user who just bought an x86 Macintosh running OS X 10.4. Apple would like to sell that user a desktop upgrade when 10.5 comes out. Microsoft would like to sell that user a desktop version of Windows. That makes Apple and Microsoft direct competitors on the Intel desktop PC market.

No, it doesn't. Because if you take the other example - some random PC user - Apple's OS is not an option for them.

Apple *very specifically* do not offer their OS to anyone who doesn't already own a Mac and, indeed, explicitly state OS X may only be run on Apple hardware. Apple do not sell OSes, they sell computers (and updates/upgrades to those computers). You may feel that Microsoft compete with Apple, but Apple clearly - and specifically - do not compete with Microsoft in the OS arena.

(Just to clarify, I agree completely that Microsoft and Apple compete for the same customers - but from a legal perspective, relevant to Microsoft's monopoly status, they are *not* competitors and never have been.)

One more perspective

[nutznboltz2003]

I have been running Vista on my laptop (HP nc6320) since it was released to business users. My laptop is a Core Duo 1.66Ghz with 512MB of ram. It was sold as "Vista ready" and even had that wonderful 100% Vista Compatible sticker on the side. Sadly, it was not.
Vista failed to recognize almost all of the hardware. Thankfully, it did recognize the wireless card, so I was able to go to HP's site and download most of the hardware. It never did recognize the fingerprint reader (likely bad drivers) and there were two devices that came up as unknown device which I have yet to be able to track down. Also, since the video card is shared memory, I do not get all of the nice visual features on this laptop that I would on a more powerful desktop.
That being said, I am very happy with the performance of this latop. The boot time is significantly nicer, and it runs Office 2007 perfectly. I also enjoy the menu structure so much more. Some of the layout reminds me of Mac/Linux, such as not having a "Documents and Settings" folder, but instead having a "Users" folder on the root drive. Things like this are not massive changes to the user experience, but for someone like me, who works on both Macs and PCs all day, it seems more natural, and I do feel I'm a little more productive during the day.
I would actually like to replace Windows XP on my home machine with Vista, which can handle the special effects, but as I have a very old Brooktree tv tuner card, I will likely be stuck with XP until I can afford a new tuner card as well. The Beta releases of Vista did not recognize the card, so I don't have any hope for the final release.
Also, for those wondering, Windows ReadyBoost has done wonders for my latop performance. I can actually tell a difference in the opening/closing time of office documents when I have my 1GB thumb drive attached. My older 256MB drives were not even offered the option of ReadyBoost, but they are not USB2.0 native, so that is likely the issue with those units.

Re:Without Apple

[Colin Smith]

It's faster, cheaper and runs more software. Oh, and it's not a "knockoff". It's slower, not in fact cheaper, particularly when you consider the average life of a Windows PC is about 3 years and a Mac, closer to 5 years. Windows is so clearly a knockoff. It's the classic knockoff strategy, looks similar but lower quality.

Are you Mac Zealots still talking about that TCO study that compared Windows 3.1 and System 7 ? I don't use an Apple... I'm not a Mac zealot, and I'm speaking from experience in a corporate environment.

Re:Without Apple

[Cro Magnon]

They'd have nobody to copy. Microsoft don't do anything unless they're forced to. Without Apple you would still be using MS DOS.

Without Microsoft, you would probably still be using MacOS Classic on a PowerPC, dreaming of the day you could smoothly run multiple tasks and not have one crashing program bring down the whole OS with it.

Which is exactly why we need competition. It's not just because Windows is teh suxor, or Gates is the devil. (true as that may be ;) ) It's that ANY company, Apple included, will stagnate without competitors pushing them to improve their product.

Re:Without Apple

[soft_guy]

Without Microsoft, you would probably still be using MacOS Classic on a PowerPC, dreaming of the day you could smoothly run multiple tasks and not have one crashing program bring down the whole OS with it There were plenty of other competitors to the Mac besides Microsoft Windows: Amiga, NeXT, GEM, etc. Apple would still have been forced to innovate, or maybe they would have been steamrolled by PCs running NeXT, or the Amiga.

Looks Cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few questions:

Where can I download the DVD iso's so that I can try it on a spare PC?

Huh? I have to pay for it? Oh. -- You mean like I have to contribute to a user group for the cost of the blank media, Right? -- No prob. I'll give 'em $5 and bring donuts to the install party.

What?! They demand a larger contribution?! How Rude!

Does MythTV 0.20 install OK on it? Once I get it loaded, I can just type 'yum install mythtv-suite', and I'll be set, right?

Huh? It doesn't use RPMS?! No prob, I'll just install the .deb's -- Huh? That won't work either?

What?! -- There aren't even any package repositories at all?!

You mean I'll have to build everything from source? -- Well, OK, I can see the benifits of that. -- No problem, I'll just download the Tarballs and type 'make'

Huh? I doesn't include a compiler?!

Frankly, I don't think the mirror sites will get much traffic for this distribution!

Re:Okay we get it

[soft_guy]

If you tried to engineer something like USB in the 80s, it would have been cost prohibitive. USB took tremendous efforts to bring the whole industry together. ADB was created by one guy, Woz, in a few weeks. And ADB worked very, very well and was very reliable and it was amazingly cheap to manufacure. That would be like calling the carburetor a failure because it has been replaced by fuel injection.

Also, I would not call AppleTalk a failure either. It did a lot to help people who were trying to network groups of Mac systems together. For its time, it was a good system. The fact that the industry standardized on IP does not mean AppleTalk was a failure. In fact, the whole ZeroConf effort comes out of trying to bring discovery that AppleTalk had from the beginning to IP networks.

And calling MacOS a failure? Give me a break. I suppose DOS was a failure. And the Apple II. And the telegraph.

You are an ignorant Microsoft fanboy.

Re:Without Apple

[drsmithy]

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).

Re:So the big new feature is "search"...?

[hjf]

So is that because Vista is good or because XP was so badly designed...? (Everything in a single menu???)

That wasn't a feature of XP, it was presented on Windows 95. Maybe 11 years ago it was a good idea, now it seems like it didn't work (either that, or people abused it). Anyway, who are you to say what's good and what's bad design? You, or your company (whoever you are), don't spend the kind of money Microsoft or Apple spend in research. Yes, there's a lot of research, especially in usability and UI design. Even in simple things as "fonts" (www.microsoft.com/typography).

Last time I used KDE, it contained everything in a single menu. If it's such a bad design, then why does KDE, and many other window/desktop managers come with a "single menu" and a "task bar" and "icons on the desktop", things that seem to be a capital sin to "UI designers", that is, some guy with a blog who thinks he's better than the UI teams from Microsoft and Apple. Why do they copy Microsoft's way of doing things? I guess because it's a "good", or "good enough" design. I don't want to think it's because they are just sellouts...

I gotta go lunch now, I'll keep going later, when someone answers "duuuh! that's because people are familiar with windows so they have to make it like windows or people won't switch!!".

Microsoft has been doing this since Windows 1.0

[argent]

You get the feeling that Microsoft's managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, "Copy that."

If you believe what Marlin Eller (a former Microsoft exec) wrote in his book, Microsoft has been doing this since Windows 1.0. Why did the first few versions of Windows use cooperative multitasking? Because the Macintosh didn't do multitasking at all, and because cooperative multitasking made running a single app seem faster and more responsive to Bill Gates as he shuffled between the team developing Windows and the team working on the Applications Apple was writing for the as-yet-unrevealed Macintosh.

Bill Gates loved the Macintosh, and I suspect he still does... he sees Apple as Microsoft's unpaid unofficial brainstorming lab. He doesn't care if a few geeks think of Vista as an OS X clone, because he knows that 99.44% of the customer base simply don't care.

And of course Microsoft hasn't dealt with security

[argent]

The much improved Internet Explorer 7 (also available for Windows XP) alerts you when you're visiting one of those fake bank or eBay Web sites (called phishing scams).

Unfortunately Internet Explorer, Active X, and the Desktop are still the same incestuous codependant family, with he least competant member... the HTML control... left in charge of security.

The level of integration in applications that use the HTML control is so great that it's inherently impossible to prevent cross-zone attacks. I can only categorize their continued use of this bankrupt approach ... unique among all browsers and other applications that display untrusted files ... a sign of improbable (and probably criminal) incompetance or mind-bogglingly callous cynicism.

Re:Without Apple

[Azureflare]

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. I beg to differ. I worked at a part time job at my college in University Relations and they had an old 400mhz clunker with OS X on it. I didn't even know it was a 400mhz Mac. OS X was very responsive and pretty much the only thing that took a long time was the disk load time. Having run Vista personally I am wondering if you have even run Vista. The idea of running Vista, even Windows XP, on a 500mhz PC and trying to get anything done makes me shudder in fear and terror.

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. Yeah, that's why I build my own PC and use linux ;) I agree with you there.

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 XP on a 1ghz PC is fine if you just browse the web and edit word documents, but it's sluggishly slow, especially if you have an antivirus agent and are trying to do multiple things at once. A G5 Mac is incredibly powerful and responsive. Some guys at my part time work had one and I was blown away by how smooth everything was (they use a lot of multimedia apps like Photoshop, the Macromedia suite, etc.) I've had direct experience of both of those types of hardware and IME at any rate, I found the opposite to be true.

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'm not sure that's the issue here. We're talking about Vista. The eyecandy in Vista is the part of the product that is being marketed to customers, and appears to be the only interesting feature that Microsoft was interested in completing. Personally, *I* don't care about anything in Vista either. That's why I'm sticking with Windows 2000 and Windows XP on my parents' machines. Windows XP just got pretty stable. After the horrors Microsoft brought with Windows XP I really don't think I'm going to upgrade to Vista for a long time. Say, 5 years.

with Macs being distinct losers (largely due to an incredibly rigid and uncustomisable hardware lineup). Wait wait, wouldn't uncustomizable hardware be a lower cost of ownership, because you don't spend money on upgrades every 6 months?

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.

Re:Without Apple

[drsmithy]

I beg to differ. I worked at a part time job at my college in University Relations and they had an old 400mhz clunker with OS X on it. I didn't even know it was a 400mhz Mac. OS X was very responsive and pretty much the only thing that took a long time was the disk load time.

You either had the fastest 400Mhz Mac in the world, or exceptionally low standards.

Having run Vista personally I am wondering if you have even run Vista. The idea of running Vista, even Windows XP, on a 500mhz PC and trying to get anything done makes me shudder in fear and terror.

I think you're trolling. XP is well and truly usable on a ~500Mhz P3 w/512M of RAM. It doesn't get iffy until you're down into 300Mhz P2, 256MB RAM territory.

I must admit I was surprised at how fast Vista was on my old laptop. I wouldn't use it on that machine over XP, but it *was* fast enough for web browsing, email, office, and the like. I wouldn't feel bad about giving it to my mother to use.

Windows XP on a 1ghz PC is fine if you just browse the web and edit word documents, but it's sluggishly slow, especially if you have an antivirus agent and are trying to do multiple things at once.

Your 1Ghz PC is broken if it is "sluggish" running Windows under any sort of reasonable load.

A G5 Mac is incredibly powerful and responsive. Some guys at my part time work had one and I was blown away by how smooth everything was (they use a lot of multimedia apps like Photoshop, the Macromedia suite, etc.) I've had direct experience of both of those types of hardware and IME at any rate, I found the opposite to be true.

I've used just about every Mac ever made. A G5 Mac is, indeed, a very powerful machine in an absolute sense, but OS X brings it to its knees. Any more than a couple of Safari windows with half a dozen tabs each, a few terminals, Thunderbird and maybe a Word document or two, and my mum's 1.9Ghz, 1.5GB RAM iMac can't keep up.

I'm not sure that's the issue here. We're talking about Vista. The eyecandy in Vista is the part of the product that is being marketed to customers, and appears to be the only interesting feature that Microsoft was interested in completing.

If you think the only interesting thing in Vista is the GUI, you don't know anything about Vista.

Personally, *I* don't care about anything in Vista either. That's why I'm sticking with Windows 2000 and Windows XP on my parents' machines. Windows XP just got pretty stable. After the horrors Microsoft brought with Windows XP I really don't think I'm going to upgrade to Vista for a long time. Say, 5 years.

My two highest priorities are UI responsiveness and the ability to multitask lots of stuff. Windows absolutely shits all over OS X from a great height at both of these things, so I prefer Windows. I do own an iBook, however, and use OS X quite regularly both personally and professionally. There's a lot I like about it, but the poor performance is just a showstopper as far as I'm concerned.

Wait wait, wouldn't uncustomizable hardware be a lower cost of ownership, because you don't spend money on upgrades every 6 months?

No, it added _significantly_ to the initial purchase price because to get a decent dual monitor configuration, we would have had to purchase quad-core Mac Pros.

TCO isn't *only* about ongoing costs (and there's little to indicate they would have been lower anyway).

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.

Laptops are a different matter. After waiting a couple of months for the bugs to be shaken out, I'm eagerly awaiting the MacBook Pro work has purchased me. Even if I end up running Windows on it full-time, it's still a damn nice machine. The only things missing are a multibutton mouse and a decent docking station (and the ability to drive two external LCDs, but that's off into fantasy territory).

Re:Without Apple

[Colin Smith]

Because I can't find a place that sells Xerox Altos? ;) You don't buy them. You build them.

Some good, some bad

[Slur]

I disagree with your characterization of Apple's development methodology. In fact they have a lot of salaried people working directly on the kernel, incorporating the functionality Mac OS X needs for features like Disk Journaling, Spotlight and Time Machine, the design and incorporation of which are determined by the OS team. It's true that Apple includes a lot of open-source software and established standards in the OS, but frankly both Apple and Microsoft suffered for a long time from the Not-Invented-Here prejudice. I see Apple's willingness to use well-designed open source tools and standards as a refreshing change.

Also, although the Mac OS X kernel uses BSD in its subsystems, it is not "mostly BSD." The kernel is a hybrid of Mach 2.5 with BSD subsystems available. But you don't even need the BSD subsystem to use Mac OS X. The BSD subsystem is an optional part of the OS installation. Just in terms of raw bytes, the majority of the OS resides in the frameworks. The lowest-level frameworks like Foundation and ApplicationServices were originally developed by NeXT and are brilliantly executed. The choice of Objective-C may seem like a strange choice now, but it's lean, easy to learn, and makes software development far simpler. If NeXT/Apple only ever used what they could get out of the Darwin project, there wouldn't be very much to excite us about Leopard. So frankly, Apple is far more innovative than most Windows fanboys think.

The transition from Motorola 680x0 to PPC is a good example of Apple innovation at its best. The transition was sometimes ugly, but overall amazingly smooth. The transition from IBM Power64 to Intel Core was perhaps less innovative, simply because they were using a state-of-the-art kernel. Nevertheless, the transition was almost completely transparent from a developer point of view. I'm amazed how quickly I made my Application into a Universal Binary.

You really have to give Apple some credit here. A lot of salaried guys at Apple worked long hours for years to keep Mac OS X running well on Intel hardware when no one else was aware of it. The kernel source is just endian-agnostic, it's not rocket science. There wasn't anything much deeper than that to build Mac OS X on Intel. But where they deserve serious credit is in making the developer tools, the headers, the excellent developer documentation... and providing it all for FREE and nicely ahead of their OS releases. Microsoft doesn't come close in its support of developers, nor in having the courage to revisit and rip out the crumbling foundations of their OS.

I agree that technically Windows in the 90's had some better things going on under the hood than Mac OS 7 through 9, but I still preferred Mac OS during those years. The main thing that kept me on the Apple platform was the consistency, aesthetics, organization, and manageability of the OS. Some of the things that bothered me about Windows at that time were:

- The centralized and cryptic registry (vs Mac OS Preferences folder)
- DLL Hell (vs Mac OS Extensions folder)
- BSOD from several fronts (vs Mac OS mysterious lockups)
- That flat, gray feeling (vs Mac OS sleekness)
- Inconsistent menus and interfaces (vs Mac OS well-established Human Interface Guidelines)
- Inconsistent text editing behavior (vs consistent Mac OS text services)
- Ugly font rendering (vs Mac OS decent typography)
- The word "Microsoft" preceding everything (vs no market-speak in Mac OS)

Meanwhile, there were some things that bothered me about Mac OS at the time:

- Mysterious lockups, requiring several long Conflict Catcher sessions
- Rare use of threading in software, system-modal dialogs
- No free developer tools
- No protected memory, often making software development into a reboot-fest
- The best VM system was third-party
- Expensive! hardware
- Not even an option to show the folder hierarchy in a Finder sidebar (Apple should copy MS here)
- Mac OS toolbox tedious to use (but lots of cool APIs and SDKs)
- The dark years (3rd-party licensing, dwindling marketshare, Copland...)

But all that is behind us, thank goodness! The future is in Unix and Unix-like systems with all the great strengths we had only been dreaming of all those years.