Apple's Windows Apps Not Ready For Vista

narramissic writes "A new Apple technical support document confirms that none of the company's Windows Applications are compatible with Vista. Affected applications include: 'QuickTime, the iPod shuffle reset utility, Bonjour for Windows, AirPort for Windows, the iDisk utility, AppleWorks for Windows, and Apple Software Update for Windows. The stand-alone iPod updater for iTunes 6 for Windows also isn't ready for Vista.'" The article refers to an Apple tech support document dated "today" (02/08) — without providing a link — but a search turns up only this one from 02/02.

Comments

Not exactly accurate

[daveschroeder]

Not "ready" or "supported" on Vista != "doesn't work on Vista" or "never will be supported on Vista"

Also, what does "compatible with Vista" mean in this context to most users? If a product works just fine on Vista, what does something being not "compatible with Vista" mean to end users?

That is, all of these pieces of software work fine, except iTunes, for which Apple has released a temporary fix until the next iTunes release, which will officially support Vista. The next QuickTime release will also officially support Vista, though the current release works fine.

Yes, yes, they're not officially supported on Vista and that's a consideration, but this submission acts as if none of Apple's Windows apps even work on Vista, when actually they all do.

Also, that isn't a "new" Apple technical support article. It's been around since at least November 2006, and simply enumerates the versions of Windows officially supported by Apple's various software products for Windows. Considering Apple has already stated that at least two products (iTunes and QuickTime) will officially support Vista in their next versions, and Apple has released a temporary fix for their only Windows product that has identified problems with Vista (iTunes), I fail to see how this is news.

Should all of these applications have been qualified for Vista? Perhaps. But this is Apple we're talking about here, and meanwhile Microsoft has systematically killed off several major products on Mac OS X, even as Mac OS X's marketshare increases (Windows Media Player (Flip4Mac is neat, but is no substitute and also doesn't support Windows Media DRM), Virtual PC, VB in Office, Outlook, and so on).

Apple's new Apple Software Update for Windows (which does work on Vista) will bring down new versions of itself, and every other applicable Apple product, in a seamless and automated fashion when they become available.

Next? (Slow news day?)

Re:Not exactly accurate

[dedazo]

This sounds a bit apologetic, but the bottom line is that Apple has had two years (at least) to get their shit together with widely available documentation and SDKs from Microsoft that many other software companies have happily used so far.

Of course, as you say "not ready" doesn't mean "doesn't work", but I would expect Apple to *at least* get Quicktime to function correctly. If they're not interested, that's fine. It's not like Microsoft needs Apple software to work on Windows. It's the other way around at least for the time being.

I have no idea what "has systematically killed products blah blah" has to do with anything. If Apple wants to systematically kill their apps on the Windows platform, I'd say that's fine. Quicktime has gotten better in the past few years but it's still buggy and brittle. At least it doesn't take over every media association in my computer and try to stick me with a non-removable tray icon anymore.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Thalagyrt]

Supporting this, I've had absolutely zero problems using iTunes and Quicktime on Vista, though I only sync my iPod using my MBP, so I don't know what the issues are there.

I have to say that iTunes is butt ugly on Vista, much like it was on XP. Hopefully they'll at least make some use of the compositing engine in the next one to make it fit in somewhat better.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Bastian]

Thank you.

I don't seem to remember it being such a big deal when Microsoft was fashionably late to the porting-apps-to-OSX party. Their stuff (mostly) worked under Classic from day one. It was no big deal; folks barely even noticed.

Comparatively speaking, this is making a mountain out of an almost imperceptible molehill.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. Appreciate it. At least I have decent spam filtering in place. Not like the bots couldn't figure out the email formatting from that anyway.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Gropo]

I have to say that iTunes is butt ugly on Vista, much like it was on XP.

And yet unsurprisingly it shines on Windows 2000 like a software Tek Jansen, sent from the future to save me from assured ugly GUI demise.

12 executions of iTunes in unison: "GO THAT WAY!"

Re:Not exactly accurate

[bitserf]

I'm sorry that I'm using iTunes on Vista with no problems.

I didn't know I had to wait until it was "ready" or "compatible", since "working" seems to imply former.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Nasarius]

widely available documentation and SDKs from Microsoft that many other software companies have happily used so far

These "many other software companies" apparently does not include Microsoft.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[oxnyx]

I can not say I run all of this apps but my personal testing has seen: iTunes 7 - worked just fine until the Vista patch then ran like a memory hog and wouldn't load the GUI QuickTime - I installed without iTunes first works like a charm AppleUpdates - Windows didn't scream when I installed it Video iPod 60 - Works like a charm I've try them all out on both 32/64 Vista Ulm. Personally I think it funny what with all of Apples Upgading a PC is Bad ads that they could not pull it together to get there software working. I must say I'm really enjoying Winamp again while I wait for Apple to get it's Music Store working again.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[nbritton]

"This sounds a bit apologetic, but the bottom line is that Apple has had two years (at least) to get their shit together with widely available documentation and SDKs from Microsoft that many other software companies have happily used so far.

What makes you think Apple wants to get their shit together for Vista? IMHO the less things that work with Vista the better...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Grail]

You seem to be operating on the assumption that Apple didn't get it's act together, when it's equally likely that the reason Apple's products aren't fully compatible with Vista is that Microsoft changed some API calls at the last minute in a way that was not fully compatible with the previous two years of that API's existence.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Zonnald]

Hello, We are talking about the latest versions of Apple software, you are talking about 2 previous version of Visual Studio .Net. Had you read on on your link you might have noticed:

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 and the beta of the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista. For more information, see Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. To submit feedback on the Visual Studio on Windows Vista issue lists, or to report new issues, please visit Microsoft Connect.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Trillan]

I don't understand why Apple is being held to this standard. I can't remember the last time Microsoft Office didn't require an update to move from "sorta works" to "supported" following a major Mac OS X update.

Likewise, I'm not blaming Microsoft here. The product I worked on until a few months ago isn't supported on Vista yet (something that's entirely unrelated to me being on something else).

The point of pre-release software is to test that software. We use pre-releases to prepare for major changes, to report unintentional changes back to the vendor, and to build a list of issues to re-check and possibly fix in the final. Sometimes if we're doing something wrong that's being exposed, it'll get fixed right away, but we don't try to work around ever pre-release OS issue.

If you live on the razor's edge, expect a bit of blood from time to time.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[dedazo]

If you can find a reference for that, I'll concede your point. I'll take a statement by Apple that says as much, and you'll have to ignore the hundreds of software titles out there that were updated in time for the Vista RTM using Microsoft's API reference.

Thanks.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[p0tat03]

You're right, a lot of documentation has been available for a long time now, but you're forgetting two things:

1 - The last release of iTunes was a quite a while ago, it is quite likely that the Vista API has changed since then. If Apple released iTunes now and it wasn't compatible, there would be no excuse, but during iTunes' development, many aspects of the OS were still up in the air.

2 - Many companies that are using the "widely available" documentation is having trouble getting their apps to play nice with Vista, and those that have released things in the last year or so find themselves having to patch their app to work right under Vista. This includes my company.

Apple is far from alone in the "help! my legacy app doesn't work in Vista!" camp.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[dedazo]

LOL and all that, but no one uses VS2002 anyway, and those who have not moved to 2005 and are still running 2003 can do so in Vista, with caveats. I run VS2003 on an HP laptop with Vista Business and aside from a few minor annoyances it works well enough.

Applications written with previous versions of the .NET runtime work perfectly well in Vista.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Nasarius]

No, I'm talking about Visual Studio 2005, which gives you an enormous warning message when installing on Vista. There was no update when Vista was released to businesses, and now after it's available to everyone, the update is still in beta. It sort of invalidates GP's snide attitude about having "two years (at least) to get their shit together", when Microsoft still doesn't have its shit together.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[MattyCobb]

I think they must mean buggy and not supported. Because I have been using itunes to synch to my ipod through vista since I got my MSDN copy back in early November with minimal issues (mostly just the new security crap being picky). Now I dunno if it has issues playing music as itunes eats disgusting amounts of memory and I play my music through Winamp, but the transfer bit works fine. Can't say for sure about Quicktime. I hate it so I don't have it installed. Now an app that I love that won't work in Vista is WinRAR. The new security crap simply won't allow me to just do the right click unzip. This annoys me to no end...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[ConceptJunkie]

It's also equally likely that Apple's products were never fully compatible with XP in the first place. Apple's track record for Windows software isn't exactly what I would call stellar. Of course, neither is Microsoft's, and while Apple shines on their own platform, the Windows versions of software like QuickTime have often left much to be desired.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Achromatic1978]

And the first thing that happens after you install VS2005? (Which was released well before Vista, so the whole 'but they had time to prepare' is moot) You get prompted to check for updates, and lo and behold, there are SP1 and Vista updates.

I'm failing to see your so-called point.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Achromatic1978]

Why, because QTW and iTW are stellar examples of following Windows API calls? I'm not sure, plenty of other companies seem to have done just fine with media applications and compatibility with Vista - not that I use them, but Sony (ew, yes) just released a slew of DVD authoring software updates, and other media application updates for Vista for their Vaio bundles - they seem to do just fine.

I actually expect that that "last minute undocumented API changes" is rather unlikely as the reason, considering build 6000 is several months old now.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[ergo98]

I'm failing to see your so-called point.

Are you intentionally being dense?

Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 is not currently considered compatible with Vista. There is a different patch called "SP1 for Vista" that is in beta, exactly as the GP stated several times.

Microsoft has a number of products that have issues on Vista, so the whole "Get their shit together" thing seems a little ridiculous.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[heffrey]

The documentation to Vista is widely available but rather incomplete. It seems that they have decided to release the product before writing all the documentation.

And then of course there is the moving target effect, that the API kept changing with each beta. That's fine though but it didn't leave much time to get things right for the RTM version.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Mr 44]

How is the parent comment in any way insightful? Vista RC1 was released 5 months ago, and there were very very few major changes from RC1 to RTM. And it would be one thing if thir software worked perfectly on Beta2 or RC1, but thats clearly not the case...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[jofallon763]

There's a lot of major Windows apps that aren't certified for Vista yet. I'd guess most didn't start serious reprogramming till Microsoft froze the code and released it; no point in aiming at a moving target. We've had to push our target migration date back quite a few months.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Jim_Maryland]

Check out ESRI's desktop products for support on Microsoft Vista. Apple is by no means the only company to not immediately support Microsoft's latest OS. Yes, releases have been available but that doesn't require the company to have an update immediately available. How long have some of the Apple products been out?

Oh, I looked at some of the IBM Tivoli documents as well and when selecting the OS in the support section, they haven't updated to include MS Windows Vista yet. I also saw the following question in one of the Tivoli support questions:

Problem
Several customers have asked if TBSM has plans to support the soon to be released Vista Operating System.

Solution
Due to the upcoming TBSM 4.1 release, there are currently no plans for TBSM 3.1 to support/run on the Microsoft Vista O/S.

From the BEA WebLogic site, neither their current release (9.2) or their preview release (10) are listed as supporting Vista. They only cover XP.

From a quick check of the Oracle website, they didn't have support at Vista release as well. 32 bit support 1st quarter 2007, 64 bit sometime in the second half.

Why bash Apple when they are not the only company that hasn't jumped at Microsoft's latest creation.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! And in those two years they made a platform switch to both 32 and 64bit Intel-based processors of their whole product line, making MacOS and all applications Intel-compatible. That was time much better and much more profitably spent than fixing MS's shit broken in Vista.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Garse Janacek]

Of course, as you say "not ready" doesn't mean "doesn't work", but I would expect Apple to *at least* get Quicktime to function correctly.

Uhm, isn't that the point the GP was making? It does function correctly. At least, that's what people seem to be saying (I don't have Vista myself). So it isn't officially supported yet, so what? It would be kind of silly to declare "official support" before having the real, final, public version(s) of Vista so they can work out all the details (as opposed to the beta versions they can use to recognize major issues and minor things that may become issues if they last into the final version).

With minor exceptions, these applications work. They function correctly. They just don't have official support from Apple yet, but they will soon. Why is this even a slashdot story?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[bbernard]

"the bottom line is that Apple has had two years (at least) to get their [stuff] together with widely available documentation and SDKs from Microsoft that many other software companies have happily used so far."

Yes, you could say that, or you could also take note that several other companies are in a similar position. For instance, Cisco barely has a beta VPN client for 32 bit Vista http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929490# and they aren't alone. Perhaps part of the issue is that Vista is "so secure" that everyone is having to re-write their code from the ground up to fix all the sloppy hacked-together stuff they put out for XP. Or maybe there's a bit more to porting an app to Vista, or more to porting an app to run natively in 64 bit mode...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[w3woody]

In a large corporate environment such as Apple or where I work, you cannot officially claim that your product works on a consumer install of a particular operating system until someone from QA goes to the store, picks up the consumer install disk (or you get the consumer install disk in the mail--the pre-release "Release Candidate" install doesn't count) and actually tests the entire product on the final release operating system--even if you have been using Vista internally for development for more than a couple of years.

There have been several times when the final release of the operating system in the consumer channel was "slip streamed" to fix last minute bugs--and while the potential of one of those last minute fixes affecting your code is low, it's not unprecedented.

So for Apple to claim that they do not officially support Vista right now just goes more to conservative QA testing than it does to sloppy programming, not having access to pre-release builds of Vista or not caring about the product.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[CDarklock]

> Microsoft has systematically killed off several major
> products on Mac OS X, even as Mac OS X's marketshare
> increases

And while Apple spends millions of dollars on a multinational ad campaign directly insulting Windows?

How unusual.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[ncc74656]

no one uses VS2002 anyway

"No one?" I guess that makes me "no one." Hell, there are plenty of people here who are running VS6 on Win2K. If it ain't broke...

Not everybody uses Visual Studio to grind out web apps in VB or C# or whatever. A device driver or video compressor builds the same way in older versions of VC++ as in newer versions (especially if your code has a fair bit of hand-coded assembly-language optimizations to take advantage of SIMD operations).

(The only reason I'm not still using VS6 is that my app triggered some MFC bugs that got fixed in VS2002. Now there are some other bugs that have started making themselves obvious, so I'm ripping MFC out from underneath the app and rewriting bits as necessary to talk directly to the Win32 API instead.)

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

But mommy, my friend does it!

Re:Not exactly accurate

[thedbp]

> It's not like Microsoft needs Apple software to work on Windows.

I'm willing to bet that every day, more and more people find that the app they used most often other than a web browser is iTunes. As iTunes gets even more popular, and more people expect and demand iTunes on their computer, this will change mighty quickly.

It'd be a real hoot if Apple wound up writing the killer app for Windows ...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[rising_hope]

What about the million other applications that just don't work with Vista yet? Vista might be ready, but the software industry at large is not, and it's not just Apple. Heck, even the Zune wasn't ready by the time Vista was released to Businesses. I don't see why everyone is making a big fuss about this.

Quicktime (the Windows version) hasn't seemed buggy or brittle to me in a very long time. Sure, it's 2.x days for Windows 95 were shit, but 6.X+ have been largely fine. I agree about not taking over every file extension -- it's one of the things I hate about Real player, too, which is FAR worse, IMHO. And, the "non-removable" tray icon you speak of has always been removable. They just used to put the process for it in the startup folder, which was easy to remove.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Lars T.]

And somehow iTunes was released years after Vista?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Enrique1218]

The tray icon is removable. look in the perferences buddy.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[geekoid]

And MS has had years to make their shit work with OSX.

Considering how much the Vista legacy has changed, I would wait for the release before stamping my program "Compatible with Vista"

This goes for pretty much any New OS.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[beemishboy]

I don't think it's beyond Microsoft to mess with Apple at the end of their Vista development to make them look bad and try to take market share with their own media player. That's what they've been doing for years in different and subtle ways anyway.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Saint Stephen]

This one is pretty funny:

Title: Opening IIS WAP project non-elevated silently fails to create misc files project

        * Description: A developer has already run Visual Studio with elevated permissions and created a new WAP project on IIS. The user then runs VS without elevation, and opens that project using MRU list. When opening this project without running VS elevated, the project opens fine, but all the ASP.NET functionality is broken and project will work more like a class library.
        * Workaround: While there is no error message shown, Visual Studio needs to run with elevated administrator permissions even after the project has been created.

Its so casual and conversational.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[gordgekko]

What makes you think Apple wants to get their shit together for Vista?

So Apple has no problem abandoning their customers because they want to screw over a rival company? Nice ethics...Apple, meet Microsoft. Microsoft, meet Apple. You'll love each other, you have a lot in common.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Tim Browse]

It'd be a real hoot if Apple wound up writing the killer app for Windows ...

The only thing Apple's iTunes app kills on my Windows PC is performance.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Rogue Pat]

Along the same line of reasoning, why doesn't Microsoft's own Zune product work with Vista?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't used to be, "buddy". That's his point.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Elektroschock]

It is no excuse for Microsoft. Applications as important on the market place have to work. Microsoft has a tradition of insane binary compatibility. If they don't guarantee it for widespread Apple products than its intentional incompatibility.

Haha, oh we didn't know our users want to use Apple products...

Apple should approach the antitrust authorities which keep an eye on VISTA.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[jacksonj04]

Quicktime *does* work perfectly (Well, as perfectly as Quicktime normally does) under Vista, it's just not got an official 'Supported On' stamp yet.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[SolidSnake1298]

Huh.....*Stares at Quicktime playing the 1080p trailer of 300 in Vista Home Premium* Seems to work fine to me.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[encoderer]

His point is "whhahahhahahahah how dare you criticize Apple!!!! Whaaaaa" I've been on /. for many years but I still don't understand the love for Apple as a company. I own an iPod. I own two, actually, because I recently bought a Nano for when I'm working out. I have an intense affection for my iPod. It's beautiful and usable and blah blah you've heard it before. But my love does not extend to the billion dollar corporation that produced it. And it certainly doesn't make me think that the Corporation can do no wrong. But around here, if you dare speak bad about the Cupertino kids you get seriously chastised by both being flamed and modded down. Let's talk honestly: Apple dropped the ball with Vista. Maybe, just maybe, this is done on purpose. In fact, I don't see how it _WASN'T_ done on purpose. As others have said, they had ample time to make sure that their killer-device worked on what will be the worlds most widely installed OS. I'm left thinking that someone there thought that a user thinking 'vista broke my iPod' isn't a bad thing. As a software developer, I (and others), realize that in this case, the blame falls on Apple, not Microsoft. I butter my bread writing Windows software but I'm also sure that in many ways Apple beats Windows. Not in every way, not even close. In some way Microsoft beats apple, in most things, they're about the same. Accepting this is like accepting that in most ways, a Honda is the same as a Toyota. Each has certain areas of excellence, but neither is glaringly deficient. I'm probably singing karma just saying these things outloud, but I believe that we should talk about things on the merits. Instead of an unorganized censorship system, which is what happens here when people speak good of Microsoft or ill of Apple/Linux, why not welcome the debate as a chance to match wits and prove that your chosen platform is actually superior. The kind of censorship that's done using the Moderation system here just smacks of type of thing that some people hate Microsoft for.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple has had two years (at least) to get their shit together "

The thing is, why break compatibility in the first place? It all worked on Windows XP. The burden should be on Microsoft to keep their operating system compatible (I thought that was the whole justification for using Microsoft in the first place??? "I can plug in anything and it just works"???)

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Aokubidaikon]

At least it doesn't take over every media association in my computer and try to stick me with a non-removable tray icon anymore.

Maybe not, but now they force you to download and install iTunes when you want to get Quicktime, which is even more annoying.
Stick with Quicktime Alternative I'd say.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, why would anybody care if something does not work on Windows? Who uses it besides morons and office workers?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea of course the fan boys are going to mod you down for saying something positive. What were you thinking?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[o2sd]

LOL and all that, but no one uses VS2002 anyway,

Really? We still use VS6 alongside VS2005.

run VS2003 on an HP laptop with Vista Business and aside from a few minor annoyances it works well enough.

That's very interesting, but so fucking what?

Applications written with previous versions of the .NET runtime work perfectly well in Vista.

So no new applications then?

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

They also don't have an ad campaign saying OS X sucks. Apple says Vista sucks, and won't be bothered to get their own software working.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[mblase]

Yeah, but Microsoft's been busy all that time getting a major OS upgrade together, while Apple... um... well... ok, nevermind.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Grail]

What if 5 months wasn't enough time to stabilise the Quicktime code?

I'm sure Apple is painfully aware that every time someone can't use iTunes on Windows, there's an other reason for someone to buy a competitor's MP3 player instead of Apple's.

I don't buy the "Apple trying to boost Mac sales" line that some people have trotted out here. "Apple too busy with Leopard to get Vista compatibility out the door" I might believe, if it was the same folk working on the last minute code and quality assurance that would normally work on the Windows iTunes software... but that's drawing a very long bow.

The simplest explanation to me is that 5 months was just enough time to get iTunes fixed to work around the major changes in Windows Vista, with the last minute changes in RTM causing a few more hassles which will delay release by an extra month or so. Apple has a lab full of Macs of all varieties for developers to test their software on before releasing to market. I'm sure they have a lab full of the worst PCs they've encountered to make sure that iTunes works properly.

To be fair, Apple's not the only company that hasn't got their software fully compatible with Vista. One explanation could be that they were all expecting a very small interest in Vista, and chose to spend their time working on other things until at least SP1 was released. But that would only make sense if their software was operating in a vacuum and had no competition in the market.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[dapprman]

You must never catch colds with all the vit C you must take as an obvious lover of apples ^^

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Weedlekin]

"Many companies that are using the "widely available" documentation is having trouble getting their apps to play nice with Vista, and those that have released things in the last year or so find themselves having to patch their app to work right under Vista"

Companies whose applications have to run on platforms other than just Windows are likely to have even more problems because they usually have sets of (possibly proprietary in-house) toolkits so that most of the main code-base can be platform-independent. These frameworks will have to be certified (i.e. tested, where necessary rewritten, tested again, and so on) for all current _retail_ versions of Vista (not betas or RCs, because MS have a habit of changing things at the last minute), after which the applications that use them will also have to be individually certified. This is notably non-trivial with complex commercial applications and frameworks, large portions of which are likely to have written by contractors or employees who left long ago, and which can fail in obscure ways that would take significant amounts of time and effort to track down even in one's own code, let alone someone else's.

Perhaps some of the those laying blame on Apple, MS or whoever would do well to take a look at some of the forums for professional programmers who are involved with maintaining major applications, because a lot of them are having trouble adapting substantial existing code bases to Vista. Microsoft have made every possible effort to document Vista APIs and make betas and release candidates available to developers, but the fact of the matter is that betas and release candidates are by their nature liable to change, and the documentation doesn't always track those changes reliably, and even where it does, isn't 100% accurate because it's written by people, and people make mistakes. In most cases, it isn't the big changes that cause most of the problems, but subtle ones that manifest themselves as intermittent faults on some machine / OS combinations that can be difficult to duplicate, and whose causes are very hard to track down and fix. A big code base can have tens or hundreds of this type of issue, each of which has to be resolved without breaking something else in code written by other programmers whose motivations and practices are unknown to the maintainer.

NB: the Slashdot gestalt seems to be notably deficient in the area of long-term memory (hence all the dupes!), because it's forgotten how many applications that worked fine under Windows 9X or NT4 were notably problematic on XP (including a lot of Microsoft's ones), that many of these took a long time to be fixed, and that some of them still don't work properly (or at all) today. More recently, XP Service Pack 2 broke a bunch of stuff from Microsoft and others, and still causes enough problems to ensure that significant numbers of corporate users have stayed with SP1 because it's easier and cheaper than having the IT department validate all the software they use for SP2.

Re:Not exactly accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confused. Windows Vista by nature kills the performance of your machine...

Re:Not exactly accurate

[StemCellVirus]

Actually that fix you mention Apple releasing, is only ONE of the problems for iTunes under Vista and doesnt prevent the app's GUI from blacking out (literally turning black) and becoming unresponsive and having to be shut down through Task Manager hehehe.. Seems it likes to do it whenever it feels like, sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes itll stay open all day.. I had to go back to WinAmp for now.. :(

Not Ready

[drooling-dog]

With so few 3rd-party applications available, it would appear that Windows Vista is simply not ready for the desktop.

Re:Not Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be excused, because even if you RTFA it would make you think that.

But all of these 3rd party applications work -- I'm running quicktime on Vista RIGHT NOW and I've seen the Apple updater work on a friend's Vista computer; the rest of it also works, except iTunes needs a patch. Sooooo...all of these 3rd-party applications are available.

Re:Not Ready

[Anonymous Coward]

joke. you. whoosh.

Re:Not Ready

[archen]

Not just applications, but hardware for that matter. I just found out that my HP5400 scanner won't work with Vista. HP says too bad, "consider buying a new product (from us)". It's sort of interesting that people criticize Linux for it's driver support as they're mostly written by someone other than the vendor, but windows depends on those vendors for drivers which means you're often SOL after a certain period of time.

Re:Not Ready

[QuantumG]

Not to mention the terrible driver support, and where's all the games? Macs have more games than Vista, and compared to consoles, no PC platform has any signficant number of games.

Re:Not Ready

[Nasarius]

Ha! I saw a few days ago that Logitech is doing the same thing:

This Camera will not work with Windows Vista. Please see our list of newer Vista compatible cameras.

Nice.

Re:Not Ready

[Ucklak]

It situations like yours that makes me feel good about buying hardware that is equally supported between the Lin/Mac/Win world.

I have an Epson 3490 Scanner
Samsung ML-1710 printer
MadDog external dual layer DVD burner (haven't burned it in linux yet but it works so far as a drive)

Yeah, that limits it to a few vendors but I got burned on a scanner back in the Win9x days and I'll never do that again.

Re:Not Ready

[Tony Hoyle]

I'll see your camera and raise you a Laptop.

I have Asus A6T bought new in October, covered in 'Vista capable' stickers.

Asus do *not* intend to produce vista drivers for this model, Apparently a 64bit dual core laptop is 'obsolete' according to their techs.

Asus suck.

Re:Not Ready

[JoeRandomHacker]

I have Asus A6T bought new in October, covered in 'Vista capable' stickers.

Asus do *not* intend to produce vista drivers for this model, Apparently a 64bit dual core laptop is 'obsolete' according to their techs.
Sounds like that model is class action lawsuit-ready.

Re:Not Ready

[rifter]

Not just applications, but hardware for that matter. I just found out that my HP5400 scanner won't work with Vista. HP says too bad, "consider buying a new product (from us)".

That's nothing new. Typically HP direct-attach printers and scanners only work with one version of Windows. They expect you to buy a new one every time a new version comes out. The only exception seems to be their network printers which are usually bought by corporate customers, have a more or less generic interface, are more expensive, and most importantly are real printers. One of the things that drove down the cost of consumer printers was the rise of "winprinters." Like winmodems, winprinters delegate important functions that were once implemented in hardware to the driver and other printer software. This virtually guarantees that such hardware will only work on one version of one OS.

That's where Linux zealots have their revenge. Whereas people may not give a rat's ass that their printer or modem will not work in Linux or on the Mac OS, they soon find that new versions of the OS, and sometimes even service packs, put them in a position where they have to buy a whole new piece of hardware because it just became a brick.

It reminds me of a funny story, too. A company was stupid enough to buy one of those 4-in-1 HP printer/scanner/fax/copier things. But they needed to upgrade their accountant's computer to Windows 2000 to get better security and support newer versions of quickbooks. Unfortunately this meant now their fax machine didn't work. And even though they were lucky enough in that HP was nice enough to make drivers for Windows 2000, they were mean enough not to offer them for download from their website and require $99.99 + shipping to get the CD with the drivers. And after exhausting all other options and confirming this was indeed the case, the company paid and waited 2 weeks to get them with "rush shipping."

As long as companies can get away with screwing customers they will. But when "everybody's doing it" as is the case in many industries, or when they have the upper hand for some other reason, or they just have a giant market share, the balance of power is so much out of whack that it's pretty much impossible for companies *not* to get away with it.

They're in good company....

[edwardpickman]

I'm not ready for Vista.

Re:They're in good company....

[MoxFulder]

I loathe Microsoft and dislike Apple. I guess I should consider this a feature, not a bug!

Repeat of DOS is not done?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Dont know if Apple is deliberately creating FUD by claiming that Vista breaks all these applications or if some deep skunkworks inside Microsoft nostalgic for the good old days of "DOS is not done, till DR-DOS wont run".

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[Why2K]

"DOS is not done, till DR-DOS wont run"

That doesn't make any sense. The quote was "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run."

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[gstoddart]

Dont know if Apple is deliberately creating FUD by claiming that Vista breaks all these applications or if some deep skunkworks inside Microsoft nostalgic for the good old days of "DOS is not done, till DR-DOS wont run".

Or, maybe, the apps are actually broken on Windows, and Microsoft didn't set out to break Apple's stuff.

Microsoft changed a lot of stuff, maybe it just broke in a predictable but not malicious way. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but even I don't need to see a conspiracy here.

Cheers

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[Maxo-Texas]

Maybe someone said it the other way after microsoft specifically coded windows 3.11 to check for drdos and fail.

The lotus way was the original version I used to hear and use.

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[Tim Browse]

Maybe someone said it the other way after microsoft specifically coded windows 3.11 to check for drdos and fail.

To be fair, that was actually put into a beta version of Windows to avoid getting bug reports due to people running Windows on top of DR-DOS. They didn't break DR-DOS compatibility (there was no such check in the release version), but DR-DOS just wasn't a supported OS for Windows (afaicr). I can't say I blame Microsoft for doing that.

For example, if someone cloned the OS X API, I can't say I'd fault Apple for not supporting iTunes running on that hypothetical new OS.

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

That's garbage. Tech support reasons were hardly what was behind the AARD code.

First of all, the code *is* present in the final win.com. What's different is that they added a flag byte in the final version to control if the error message should appear or not. A one byte patch will make the "error" message re-appear in the final code. Basically, they patched around it once caught. In all likelihood, their lawyers figured out it wasn't a great idea.

Why did the code present a confusing bug like error message of "Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726" rather than a simple "MS-DOS not found" message? The code didn't even check for something *useful*, like checking the data structures to verify that they contain information they're going to need later.

And if this code was so benign, why was it using all the tricks that copy protection routines used, self modifying code, XOR encryption, anti-debugger tricks? Why spend developer hours *hiding* this code? They had nothing better to do? Time on their hands, Windows was finished, they're just waiting for the release date, so what the heck, let's try our hand at obfuscating some code for fun.

The real story.

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[drsmithy]

Maybe someone said it the other way after microsoft specifically coded windows 3.11 to check for drdos and fail.

Except that's not what they did.

The AARD code checks for a *non-Microsoft* DOS, not DR-DOS specifically. Additionally, it was only enabled in the beta versions and was a warning, not a fatal error.

Finally, anyone who knows about the messing around Windows 3.x did with DOS's undocumented, internal memory structures should realise in a minute or two why checking whether or not the code messing with those undocumented data structures was working on data structures it actually knew about, was a prudent idea.

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[Tim Browse]

Why did the code present a confusing bug like error message of "Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726" rather than a simple "MS-DOS not found" message?

Well, using error numbers instead of text is hardly a new approach. I expect there were lots of numeric error messages.

And if this code was so benign, why was it using all the tricks that copy protection routines used, self modifying code, XOR encryption, anti-debugger tricks? Why spend developer hours *hiding* this code?

This is indeed harder to explain - I hadn't realised that whoever wrote that code had gone to those lengths. Perhaps they really didn't want to see any bugs from DR-DOS installations, so tried to ensure no-one could hack past the DOS check?

In those pre-internet days that doesn't seem that likely though - it's not like someone could produce a hack and then stick it on a website - maybe a BBS, but that wouldn't be very widespread either.

They had nothing better to do? Time on their hands, Windows was finished, they're just waiting for the release date, so what the heck, let's try our hand at obfuscating some code for fun.

While I appreciate the sarcasm, it's always possible that is exactly what happened :-)

Thanks for the info though - as Schulman observes, it's impossible to gauge intent, but the evidence doesn't look good for Microsoft. Maybe they were just practicing for the whole Stacker debacle? :-)

Re:Repeat of DOS is not done?

[SuiteSisterMary]

You know, if you look hard enough, you can find the documents that Microsoft coughed up during the court case, that show their people explaining exactly why DR-DOS wasn't able to run windows (or Norton file utilities, for that matter.)

Misleading

[Adam Zweimiller]

From my experience, Quicktime works fine under Vista, and I've used it extensively. The apple software update works as well. Perhaps they mean it works, but just isn't supported?

Re:Misleading

[stratjakt]

No I think it has more to do with paying MS for the little bit of QA that lets them put the "certified for Vista" sticker on the box.

I have a handful of old NES carts that never bore the "Nintendo Seal of Quality", and they worked fine too.

This is just slashdot at it's lamest level of its-not-news-but-we-can-bash-msft-if-we-spin-it-is hness

Re:Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience, Quicktime works fine under Vista, and I've used it extensively.

Phew! I don't know what I would do without all my pr0n in quicktime format.

Didn't work six months ago

[David Horn]

I remember the iPod updater didn't work back in June with RC1. I don't know why Apple's waited this long to even announce that their software doesn't work - although I have a sneaky suspicion it might solely be for PR purposes. "Look at this awful operating system. It breaks EVERYTHING! Buy a Mac instead."

Or perhaps there's a completely innocent explanation and I'm just being a touch paranoid.

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[0racle]

Everyone, including Microsoft, has waited for Vista to be released retail before handling Vista incompatibilities. Of the big ones I know of, Visual Studio also does not officially have Vista Support, and Vista RTM warns you of this when you install it.

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[truthsearch]

Why would Apple announce their products don't work with a beta OS? The issues could have been their own or Vista's. But there's little point looking into the issues while the OS is still changing. Once the OS went live they confirmed issues they'd have to fix. Makes sense to me.

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[venicebeach]

I don't know why Apple's waited this long to even announce that their software doesn't work

They have made no such announcement. As the editor notes, the only relevant tech support article is one that simply lists which versions of Windows each piece of Apple software is supported for. The article is updated when this information changes. It has not been updated to claim Vista support, since they don't promise that yet. This is different from Apple announcing that Vista breaks their software.

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Before the final version is released, nothing is final. Why waste your time working on something only to have an API change with RC2?

If I was writing software for Vista, I'd wait until release, too. I don't owe Microsoft any free beta testing, and it's not like a company that doesn't support Vista right now is going to go out of business for lack of users...most people will still be on XP for quite a while...

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[countSudoku()]

Exactly. This is not an Apple Press Release, it's just a slow news day at itworld and they needed something to generate pageviews. They say to say "thank you" to everyone who went there to read it, rather than feast on the /. dissemination.

You can bet a dollar to a donut that Apple will indeed release and support all their key Win apps in due time. Personally, I'm waiting for Vista Pro SP3 before I take the plunge. ;)

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[mrmcwn]

Excuse me, can I see your invitation? I think you're at the wrong party.

See, /. is for nerds, and you appear to have some strong PR/marketing communications intuition.

The cool kids like you are all hanging out on the Ad Critic forums. Say hi for us.

Re:Didn't work six months ago

[PopeRatzo]

Personally, I'm waiting for Vista Pro SP3 before I take the plunge. ;)

Now you're talking.

I can't afford to spend a lot of unproductive time messing with a new operating system just because it's got shiny graphics. I spent 5 hours last Sunday with a new PC that came with Vista before formatting the drive and installing XP Pro SP2.

I will almost certainly upgrade to Vista at some point. I assume that the serial number of Home Premium that came preinstalled on my computer will not work when I actually get installation media for Vista Home Premium. It probably is a super-special OEM serial number that only works with restoration media (if I had such a thing). The computer I bought was suspiciously inexpensive for a high-end box with a $250 operating system on it, and the lack of media is probably a hint. I was supposed to burn restoration media once I got Vista booted up, but I never got Vista booted up, so that's that. I kept the restore partition, just in case. So I'll probably end up buying a full upgrade license to Home Premium, once SP1 is out, and since I'll get the academic discount, I won't care all that much. But I am not going to go through the several days it would take for me to visit every single web site for every single bit of hardware and software I own just to see what kind of patch or update I need to make stuff run under Vista. I don't have time for that. I have to work.

Which brings up the biggest issue of all for me: Why does an OPERATING SYSTEM have all of this BS anyway? I would really prefer if Windows was just an operating system and not an all-inclusive collection of applets and widgets and other crap that I should be able to install separately if I wanted it. And since an operating system is SO FREAKING IMPORTANT to the use of a computer, why don't they work this stuff out before they do the big rollout? I thought you had to be smart to build an operating system.

I'm sure there's a good answer, but I don't care enough to follow every story about MS or Apple to know it. Shit, I've got work to do.

Re:what a joke

[IwarkChocobos]

Apple worries about apple, just as Microsoft is worrying about Microsoft.

I love macs, but iTunes sucks for windows anyway..Winamp FTW!

Re:what a joke

[pionzypher]

I don't think it's apple. Most of the antivirus products aren't working with vista yet. Drivers for hardware are being worked on. This isn't apple fumbling. Either the world fumbled Microsofts' throw, OR Microsoft threw badly. I'll let you decide which is more plausible. ;)

Not all that surprising...

[ivan256]

Since installing Vista ultimate, my experience has been that less than half of software I used on XP which hasn't been updated specifically for Vista doesn't work. Many won't even install. It's going to take some time for the support to be reasonable.

02/02/07 he means

[aczisny]

My search turned up the same document. It's the third one listed. It's dated 2007-02-02. Also you can see it on that page if you scroll down to the bottom, where they have a modified date.

Thanks for that insightful interjection into the summary kdawson! /sarcasm

Standard Operating Procedure

[mpapet]

In my experience, the devs didn't port anything to a brand-new OS release that wasn't their _core_ business until it was, for all practical purposes, released for sale.

From a business perspective, there is little reason to rush to an OS that few people are using. Even if it's microsoft.

Many consumer hardware/software vendors will have some kind of support for Vista by Q4. Apple included.

Re:Standard Operating Procedure

[|Cozmo|]

I strongly disagree with that. If microsoft releases an OS you can be guaranteed that it will be shipping on almost every new PC sold after its release. I'd go as far as to say that the cost of getting your applications ready during pre-release stages of the OS is a lot less than the support hassle of pissed off customers calling you when the floodgates open.

There's no reason 1 person in your company can't install a public beta of a new OS or service pack and try out your programs. You get months or even years of time to get things prepared. Your company will also look a lot better in the eyes of your customers if your stuff already works when a new OS is released.

Re:Standard Operating Procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Vista as been out for over 30 days to business and was not released to retail until Jan 30th. The final product has been done for months. Are the just waiting for people test their software and tell them what's wrong so they can then fix it?

Re:Standard Operating Procedure

[mehgul]

Don't know how it is in the US, but here in Sweden I received mail ads advertising new PCs equipped with XP this last monday. Some are Media Center editions. Not a single one with Vista though.

Marketing decision?

[bakeman]

If all these applications are not officially supported on Vista and it is just hitting the press now, I'm guessing this is a marketing decision more than a technical one. Just a hunch.

hmm...

[slashes]

Do I smell sabotage? It's quite ironic that all these Apple programs are "broken" in Windows Vista. Why not other programs? Maybe I'm thinking a bit to farfetched, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody from the Microsoft side deliberately told its software engineers to somehow break compatablity with Apple programs.

Re:hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean "Why not other programs?" This article does not imply in any way that all other programs are working. The Zune won't even work with it and it was made by Microsoft. There are plenty of programs from other companies that don't show vista as being supported.

Apple just didn't changing its release schedule to match the release date of Vista - kind of like Microsoft hasn't changed the release schedule for Office on a Mac to meet the Intel change. The only urgent change should have been th iPod and who knows why they didn't meet the deadline, but it is not like the world switched to Vista the first week it was out.

Re:hmm...

[MoneyT]

Sabotage? Unlikely. I recently had the misfortune of installing vista. After finally coercing the installer to install (it won't unless all the installed hardware in the machine is supported, and apparently vista doesn't like the IDE controllers that XP likes) I finally managed to get vista running, only to discover that despite supporting my sound card (a CL Soundblaster something or other) I still have no sound, and various tiny applications seem buggy at best (VLC for example runs about half the time, and still no sound). Also, Vista managed to blue screen itself simply by me changing my monitor's refresh rate. Sure some of what I experienced so far may be unique, but if I were a developer, I wouldn't be annoucing official vista support with what I've seen until vista is stable.

There are two possibilities ...

[boxlight]

I don't for a moment believe this is an accident. Since Apple surely had access to the beta versions of Windows Vista all along to make sure their apps were compatible with Vista, there are two distinct possibilities:

a) Apple intentionally did not release Vista compatible versions of their software so that their iPod/iTunes masses would have a compelling reason to not buy Vista and consider buying a Mac instead.

b) Microsoft intentionally submarined Apple's software, specifically iPod/iTunes, because they want they Vista upgraders to consider dumping their iPod in favor of a Zune.

Either way, it's interesting that the music player industry would have such a compelling affect on choice of operating systems. I guess MP3 is this generation's killer app.

boxlight

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[falcon5768]

or how about 3) most major applications including many of Microsofts own apps dont have Vista support yet, and Apple simply waited like everyone else for Vista to actually be in peoples hands.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just two distinct possibilities? And both related to portable music players? And that's it? Couldn't Apple simply be taking their while because they know that Vista won't be widely adopted for some time yet?

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[bitserf]

All this conjecture would be somewhat valid, if the apps didn't actually, you know, already work on Vista. Someone has a screwy definition of "compatibility" if it doesn't include running as expected.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[venicebeach]

a) Apple intentionally did not release Vista compatible versions of their software so that their iPod/iTunes masses would have a compelling reason to not buy Vista and consider buying a Mac instead.

If that was really their intention, why would they release a temporary fix?

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[drinkypoo]

If that was really their intention, why would they release a temporary fix?

Misdirection.

The question isn't whether you're paranoid, it's whether you're paranoid enough.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[Grail]

Don't forget option (c):

c) With four months to go till release, Microsoft modified some part(s) of the Windows Vista API as part of their continuing efforts to shoehorn the X-Box DirectX into the Windows codebase. This left the people writing software for Vista playing catch-up, with many of them not quite ready when Vista was actually launched.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Insightful" my hole. Your suggestions may be summarised as,

a) Apple might benefit
b) Microsoft might benefit

Either way, it's interesting that the music player industry would have such a compelling affect

If you can't even decide what the effect is, then that hardly counts as "compelling," does it? How about

c) The programs work just the same as they always have; there's no need for new versions, or misplaced paranoia.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[Anonymous Coward]

c) Article author uses "ready" in place of "officially supported", has no idea what they are talking about.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[Tim C]

a) Apple intentionally did not release Vista compatible versions of their software so that their iPod/iTunes masses would have a compelling reason to not buy Vista and consider buying a Mac instead.

I think £1500-2000 for a Mac comparable with my current desktop machine is a touch more expensive than £370 (full retail for Vista Ultimate, I'd actually get an OEM copy for £130 and some cheap bit of hardware if necessary) for a copy of Vista.

Re:There are two possibilities ...

[dreamlax]

b) Microsoft intentionally submarined Apple's software, specifically iPod/iTunes, because they want they Vista upgraders to consider dumping their iPod in favor of a Zune.

But the Zune doesn't work with Vista either!

Re:what a joke

[evn]

They did. All of Microsoft's Macintosh applications still runs in the Rosetta processor emulation environment. Macs with Intel processors have been shipping for more than a year and no fix is expected until the second half of this year. There wasn't a version of Microsoft Office that worked in OS X until after Apple had released 10.1 - before that it ran in the classic environment.

Backwards Compatible?

[Applekid]

It's often been suggested that Microsoft give up a lot of legacy and backwards support in the Windows line and start anew. The official line to that is that Microsoft wants to assure customers of their commitment to existing technology blah blah blah.

Seems like if your Windows 2000/XP applications aren't working on Vista then the backwards compatibility they treasure so much really isn't that important anyway.

As I recall, Microsoft publically made available an RC version of Vista, and Apple makes iTunes and Quicktime (non-Pro, at least) available to everyone to download. Both parties should have known, but it would probably be in the best interests of Microsoft to make sure it would work since they are the ones putting themselves on a limb with Vista.

Re:Backwards Compatible?

[spwolfx]

In general, there is no reason for general purpose app not to work under Vista, as not enough things have been changed.

99% of applications work fine.

I have been positivly suprised by number of Microsoft employees contacting us for help in getting our application working under Vista.
So Microsoft went beyond expected from them to make sure applications work. Unlike Apple that simply breaks support for 3rd party without much care.

So much for backwards compatibility

[nysus]

I'm always reading about poor Microsoft and how hard it is for them to have to make their OS backwards compatible with older software. I guess that's just a bunch of BS?

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[ThinkFr33ly]

I challenge you to find a SINGLE Windows "Logo" certified application that does not run on Vista. Just one. (Not counting things like anti-virus, which use file system filters that were dramatically overhauled in Vista.)

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of backwards compatibility issues with Vista are due to the fact those applications are poorly written.

Microsoft publishes some fairly simple rules that developers should follow to make sure their software is compatible with future (and current) versions of Windows. Rules like "Don't store your freaking user settings in Program Files". Not exactly hard to follow.

Yet most apps that don't follow these rules STILL work on Vista. Microsoft actually wrote code that detects when crappy applications do stupid stuff that violates their Logo rules, and will automatically redirect their output to temp folders under the user's profile.

But there is only so much they can do.

Apple has had more than a year to get their software ready for Vista. In my opinion, the only explanation for them not doing so is because they want to try and influence users to not upgrade to Vista.

I still find it incredible that software that is over 20 years old still runs on Vista.

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[Grail]

I've only ever heard about the efforts that Microsoft goes to in order to make their Office products bug-for-bug compatible with previous versions.

It's news to me that Microsoft has made any effort to make a new version of Windows particularly compatible with software from previous versions.

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

QFT this. Shittily written programs are the cause of this. Not to mention retarded developers still using the windows API directly instead of the .NET framework.

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention retarded developers still using the windows API directly instead of the .NET framework.

The .NET framework doesn't cover everything and you actually in certain situations have to use Windows APIs to get the desired result when programming in a .NET language.

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[Tim Browse]

It's news to me that Microsoft has made any effort to make a new version of Windows particularly compatible with software from previous versions.

In that case, two things:

1. Just because it's news to you, doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
2. What rock have you been living under?

Anyhow, here's a jumping off point, and here is a particularly appropriate entry from that list.

Re:So much for backwards compatibility

[Grail]

Thanks for that. I've read a lot about the painful time that the office group has with releasing new versions of Word and Excel, but I've never seen anything about the OS group looking at the Windows upgrade path.

Vista isn't worthy of an Apple application

[wardk]

maybe Redmond hasn't grovelled enough?

Apples Time

[mbrod]

should be spent getting their apps to work on Linux and just abandon Vista. Would be a good attack against M$ and I would really like to use iTunes in Ubuntu.

Re:Apples Time

[Nasarius]

I would really like to use iTunes in Ubuntu

Pfft. Amarok beats everything. The only things it can't do is update your iPod firmware and download stuff from iTMS.

Re:Apples Time

[malevolentjelly]

I think your fanboy-ism is cramping your brain muscle. :p Windows is the dominant market. Linux is a fringe market with a lack of central supportable standards (lots of conflicting "open" standards) or a singular user-friendly installation interface. It'd be a nightmare to support a home user product on linux.

Re:Apples Time

[westlake]

should be spent getting their apps to work on Linux and just abandon Vista. Would be a good attack against M$ and I would really like to use iTunes in Ubuntu.

that new Vista Premium system will have damn good specs for media play.

when fully half your revenues come through sales of the iPod and iTunes you do not drop support for the OS that ships or will ship with 95-98% of the new home PCs and consumer laptops sold world-wide.

Re:Apples Time

[DurendalMac]

Because cutting out the massive bulk of the market would be a real smart idea. iTunes for Linux would be nice, but there's no way in hell that Apple is going to completely drop Windows support so they can concentrate on making iTunes work for a bunch of geeks (and I don't use that as a derogatory term).

Re:Apples Time

[jb.hl.com]

Or copy album art to a 5G iPod, or not delete all the album art currently on your 5G iPod (at least with the latest firmware).

Other than those, Amarok is just peachy :)

Re:Apples Time

[Pausanias]

How about sharing your playlists over the network, eh? It looks like you'll have to build amarok from SVN to kinda sorta get it to work. This, and database-like support for querying song tags, is why iTunes still rules all. Too bad it's closed-source.

I would really like to use iTunes in Ubuntu

Pfft. Amarok beats everything. The only things it can't do is update your iPod firmware and download stuff from iTMS.

Re:Apples Time

[Americano]

Yes, Apple should spend loads of time porting software which implements & supports DRM to a platform & user community that overwhelmingly ranges in attitude from antipathy to violent loathing of anything that falls in the category of DRM. And in doing so, abandon a platform which is going to ship with probably 90+% of the desktop/laptop computers shipping very soon?

Capital idea, governor. Splendid.

Re:Apples Time

[Nasarius]

How about sharing your playlists over the network, eh?

Fair enough. This isn't something I need/want to do, so I never thought of it.

This, and database-like support for querying song tags

Click the "..." next to the collection search box on Amarok. The interface could be better, but that's a full boolean search. Not surprising, since it's searching a SQLite or MySQL database.

Re:Apples Time

[Nasarius]

I should have read your link before replying. The wiki is out of date; the latest version of Amarok is 1.4.5, which does in fact include music sharing via DAAP (same as iTunes). Haven't tried to get it to interface with iTunes or another copy of Amarok, so I can't say how easy it is to use. It doesn't seem to automatically detect shares on the local network like iTunes does.

Re:Apples Time

[zxsqkty]

Or access shared iTunes music over DAAP.

Ok, this latter is Apples fault, but hey.

Re:Apples Time

[AusIV]

As much as I'd like to access the iTMS on Ubuntu, it's not going to happen any time soon (unless Apple actually drops DRM and allows 3rd party clients to access the store). First, this would require admitting that there are Windows alternatives other than OSX, which would be bad for business. Second, development and support would be pretty fairly costly, and as anti-drm as many Linux users are, the user base would be fairly insignificant. So for now I use Amarok for managing my iPod, and buy CDs to get my music. I've found quite a bit of good music buying CDs for one or two songs that I wouldn't have found if I'd just bought the songs I knew I wanted from iTunes, so I can't say I miss it too much.

Re:Apples Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Amarok does have DAAP support. http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/193-iTunes-Mus ic-Sharing-Client-Works.html
The support has only been in for about 8 months, so it's understandable you hadn't noticed...

Re:what a joke

[falcon5768]

just a clue, Microsofts products all DONT work for Intel macs, over a year since release. They have to be emulated to work.

Delusions of Grandeur

[rts008]

Is anyone but MS ready for Vista?

It seems that MS is overextending themselves with Vista. Not that I care, but for their sake, I hope they haven't pinned all of their hopes on Vista taking the world by storm...I don't see it happening for a while. Too many businesses can't afford all of the hassles of switching to Vista at this point.

And....LOL!...already planning (and announcing it for this year) the first service pack ready before the official release! No thanks, I'll pass.

I am not going to downgrade from Linux to Vista no matter what propaganda MS shits out.

If I go back to a MS OS, it will probably be ms-dos; and I can run dosbox on Linux if I was so inclined, so nevermind!

Re:Delusions of Grandeur

[jo42]

...and all of the people that I've talked to this week that went out to buy a machine, wanted to know if they could get it with XP instead of Vista.

Go figger...

Re:Delusions of Grandeur

[rts008]

LOL!

No accounting for Joe Sixpack's taste I guess.

It's a shame that the new PC's don't come with no OS...just specify which one you want installed from your friendly neighborhood dealer.

I guess that wouldn't work though as instant gratification isn't fast enough nowdays.

Really?

[iceperson]

Can you name a few apps? I'm running Vista here and everything I've thrown at it works (short of iTunes which still won't work using any of the suggestions from Apple.) A few things I'm using just fine here are Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, OOo, and quite a few legacy in house apps.

Re:Really?

[NSIM]

I agree, so far I've found very little that doesn't work. Paintshop Pro X ran with degraded aero graphics, but PSP-XI is now out and solves that problem. The only other thing I've had problems with is Audio Cleaning Labs 11 from MAGIX, but they have a patch out now so that should be fixed. Apart from those two programs I've not had any problems with software compatibility.

Re:Really?

[ivan256]

So far I've had the following apps fail:

iTunes, of course. The control software for the VoIP phone system we have here. Microsoft Outlook 2003 Business Contact Manager, McAffe Personal Firewall, and Daemon Tools.

It is about time to ditch QuickTime

[G3ckoG33k]

QuickTime hasn't run on Linux in a long time.

Apple, please port your apps to Linux first, and _then_ complain about Vista not waiting for you.

- - -

Re:It is about time to ditch QuickTime

[AaronW]

I generally have not had any problems dealing with Quicktime on Linux. Granted, I needed to install libquicktime and a recent version of MPlayer and/or ffmpeg, but in general the only format I have had problems with is Microsoft's WMV (i.e. J-frames are not supported and some WMA formats are completely unsupported).

I must admit, though, that I have had some problems with interoperability when I tried exporting DV under Quicktime from Kino where some Windows applications like Premier had problems.

Buhahhhahaah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right.

All these apps are "not-supported" because all of them break the rules and read/write stuff where they're not supposed to (HKLM, Program Files folders, System Folders).

Simply running iTunes as Administrator fixes it (you can't authorize iTunes, or play back iTunes purchased content when not run as Administrator). The reason for this is because they read/write stuff to areas of the system and registry where they're not supposed to, and the increased security architecture in Vista blocks their access to these restricted areas.

Re:what a joke

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

Not quite true, MSN Messenger is now UB.

But it still doesn't have audio or video, which open source projects do have!

Re:what a joke

[Bill Hayden]

What a joke. If Microsoft did this with Tiger, Mac fans would howl. Apple is just being sloppy, and the company obviously doesn't care very much about Windows users. PCs are shipping with Vista right now. Well, Microsoft still doesn't have a native version of Office for Intel Macs, and Intel Macs have been out for well over a year. I'd say that's roughly the same thing as what you just described.

Vista installs vs OSX

[iceperson]

My guess is in 2 weeks Vista installs will outnumber OSX...

Re:Vista installs vs OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

And this guess is based on what, exactly?

Sorry if I don't accept that, as that guess smell funky. As if it were pulled out of an ass.

Not exactly fair ... what about Zune, for example?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I remember Zune not working on Vista?

~just looked~

I looks like they claim to have fixed some of the problems a week ago...

So, how far behind is Apple on Vista Compatability?

Garick

battleground in the Mac vs. PC wars?

[blackpete11]

The more difficult Apple makes it for users to use "essential" Mac applications on PCs then the more likely people are going to look at Macs when making a choice in the current "transition period". People have become attached to itunes and the like, with them not working or having to wait for them to work on a PC it only attracts them to apple products more...

Not to mention, the air of doubt surrounding Vista is well known. I'm sure this is something that the strategists at Mac know well and are playing to their advantage. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have calculated how many users them can migrate using this tactic and feeding the hype of doubt as much as they can.

P.S. I'm really looking forward to Leopard!

Re:battleground in the Mac vs. PC wars?

[Grail]

I disagree - it would seem more reasonable to expect that if people have problems with Apple software on their existing Windows computer, they'll resort to using some other software.

Which do you think is easier for most people: download someone else's "free" MP3 player, or buy a new computer and transfer all their existing documents across?

Re:what a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. In another year or so, it will be roughly the same thing as what the OP described.

Not really surprised

[alphamugwump]

I can't say I'm surprised that apple's stuff is incompatible with vista. I've never experienced this myself, but I've heard reports that iTunes has to install a whole CD driver for burning. I know that quicktime starts itself via the registry (and was relatively difficult to turn off) so I wouldn't be surprised if there are some rather deep-reaching "features" in the software that make it incompatible with the new security in vista. At any rate, while Microsoft would probably love to break compatibility for apple, any idiot with internet could have gotten the beta, so it's not really microsoft's fault if apple didn't get it ready for vista.

Re:what a joke

[IwarkChocobos]

"The next version of Office for Mac - named Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac - is under development and scheduled to be available in the second half of 2007." http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=macI ntelQA So, why the complaining about iTunes when Vista just came out? This seems a bit more important, as well as ::ahem:: late.

"Bonjour for Windows"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Can't say I've heard of it, but I do like the sound of it.

Re:"Bonjour for Windows"

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the "Bonjour for Windows" is built into iTunes, which allows for the iTunes libary sharing.

Re:"Bonjour for Windows"

[Americano]

More info about Bonjour, Apple's "zero-configuration networking" tool, is available here.

It's what allows ITunes library sharing automatically on your local network, and can be built into other Windows apps as well. It's kind of a neat feature to allow things like printers, etc. to advertise services on a local network, and it's used pretty extensively on OS X -- Itunes Sharing, IPhoto sharing, printer config, various apps, all use it to advertise services on your local network that other users on the network can discover & connect to easily. Good if you trust the other users on your network (i.e., home network), bad if you walk around with freely discoverable services & no firewall on a public network. :)

AppleWorks for Windows?

[lag10]

When was the last time Apple updated AppleWorks for OS X, let alone Windows? I didn't even know they still made it for Windows. I'd think that they would mainly focus on their own platform over another.

Re:AppleWorks for Windows?

[hawaiian717]

January 20, 2004, was the release date for the AppleWorks 6.2.2 update for Windows: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/appleworks6 22forwindows.html. It installed and ran fine for me on Vista RC1.

Last OS X version was 6.2.9 on January 14, 2004: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/appleworksf ormacosx.html

Apple's applications not ready for vista...

[smash]

... 3 people care.

Maybe apple should use their monopoly on portable media players to leverage OS/X, and not bother to write any vista iTunes software at all :D

Re:Apple's applications not ready for vista...

[zlogic]

Are you mad? Buying a new computer just because your iPod doesn't have Vista drivers? I'd rather sell my iPod and get a Nomad or Zune.

Re:Apple's applications not ready for vista...

[smash]

I'm pretty sure a lot of "i just want to check my email" type users are more attached to their ipod than windows.

In fact, i know a lot of ipod owners who are more seriously considering Macs because of their love of their ipod...

Re:Apple's applications not ready for vista...

[zlogic]

If they only need email they wouldn't upgrade to Vista anyway since XP does the job nicely ;-)

bye bye /.

[peterjhill]

have not seen an interesting story on /. that I did not see on digg first. This is yet another /. story that is blown out of proportion. Have fun

Re:bye bye /.

[Canthros]

Strange. I just dropped digg last week because, their write-ups were almost consistently asinine (and equally exaggerated), and their comments actually managed to be less informed and level-headed than the ones at Slashdot.

Seriously, suit yourself and good luck to you, but I don't miss digg cluttering up my RSS reader much at all.

Apple Probably Surprised

[catdevnull]

Apple probably back-burnered development because:

1) Ship dates for Vista were always slipping
2) They were working on MacWorld O7 products under slave master Steve

Besides, it's not like MS has the cleanest Karma in this regard anyways.

All a Bunch of Crap

[jerquiaga]

I'm using Vista Business and Vista Ultimate, and all of those products are working just fine for me. All of this hype over Vista breaking everything hasn't seemed to really pan out for me. The one program I haven't gotten to work is NetStumbler, and I have a feeling it's because MS changed the way drivers interact with the system, and NetStumbler doesn't like that. So, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I have three machines with three different sets of hardware and various apps, everything seems fine. Definitely not a large sample, but who knows. Everyone just calm down a bit.

Well bust my knuckles.

[underwhelm]

I don't see Adobe or Intuit or anyone else in a great big hurry to release a new version of their software just because Microsoft has started selling Vista. Why should Apple be held to a different standard (i.e. that software released to work with one OS is expected work with the new OS the moment it hits the street)?

The system requirements pages for Adobe Premiere and Intuit's Quicken Deluxe don't mention Vista. If either application doesn't work quite right under Vista, dag gummit, it must be a plot to RUIN MICROSOFT!... and not just the ordinary course of development for supporting new OS releases.

Re:Well bust my knuckles.

[Anonymous Coward]

ya, I doubt apple is being sloppy. Necessity is the mother of invention. This is just what happens: New OS, no applications supported, next release, they support it.

my experience with Vista, iPods and iTunes work fine.

Re:Well bust my knuckles.

[davegust]

Intuit added Vista support to Quicken 2007 last October with R2. See this for their support of Quicken on Vista.

Vista is an STD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is like herpes: nobody wants it, but certain people will get it anyway.

Also, if it burns when you pee, you might have Vista.

Doesn't surprise me

[Bluesman]

Having had to help a friend set up iTunes and an iPod in windows, I can't say that this surprises me. The software barely worked under XP, and would render the machine unusable for minutes at a time when the ipod was plugged in/unplugged and iTunes was trying to recognize or sync with it, or whatever the heck it was doing.

I figured that whatever library they're using to communicate over USB, it can't be standard on Win32, as it brought the machine to its knees.

I couldn't believe the ipod was as popular as it is with such awful software support. After trying to get the damn thing to work properly for about a half hour, it had me desperately wishing for the standard "MP3 player shows up as a USB mass storage device so you can drag mp3's to it" interface.

Who pays hundreds of dollars for this crap?

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Grail]

My experience with iPod on Windows has been: plug it in, and it works as advertised.

If you're having such problems I'd suspect a non-compliant USB card, or perhaps an installation of Windows on hardware which isn't 100% supported by Windows.

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[ejtttje]

I think there was something wrong with that machine... my wife's XP laptop didn't bat an eye at iTunes/iPod setup.
Just saying you're right -- if it was usually that bad I'm sure it wouldn't be so popular.
However, it is popular, so therefore you can conclude it's usually not that bad ;)

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[slide-rule]

Counter-anecdote, then: I installed the iPod s/w on my own XP machine and things ran smoothly and flawlessly. Just as smoothly as it all runs on my Mac, in fact. No issues of any kind. Sorry you(r friend) had problems, but maybe -- just maybe -- there was more involved in your/his case.

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Slashcrap]

My experience with iPod on Windows has been: plug it in, and it works as advertised.

Same here, except it always starts this awful looking application that runs like molasses and tries to get me to purchase DRM'd music at every opportunity. It is very good at deleting stuff off my iPod just because I moved the original file though.

Other than that, it works fine.

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Grail]

If iTunes is deleting songs off your iPod, it's because you moved the song out of the iTunes Music Library folder, isn't it? Which means that iTunes is doing exactly what you told it to do?

not exactly unique to apple, either

[swschrad]

lots of stuff doesn't work with vista, antivirus and firewall stuff being the best known examples. every time somebody patches a hole, somebody else's favorite app breaks.

When even IT mags say Vista adoption subpar

[WillAffleckUW]

You have to wonder why Apple would even try to fix bugs that will just be fixed by MSFT in Service Pack 4 for WinVista in the first place.

Seriously, adoption projections have at most 10 percent of Business users adopting WinVista in 2007 - and that's higher than projected Consumer adoption of this "upgraded" OS that requires you to replace all your hardware just to get what you could get in the Mac OS two years ago.

Re:When even IT mags say Vista adoption subpar

[omicronish]

"upgraded" OS that requires you to replace all your hardware just to get what you could get in the Mac OS two years ago.

My desktop machine running Vista was built in summer of 2003 for $1300: AMD Athlon 2700+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 20 GB partition (yes, it fits with Visual Studio, Office, Baldur's Gate 2, and a bunch of other junk). I didn't have to upgrade a single piece of hardware to run Vista, and performance is great. So what hardware did you have to replace, or are you simply repeating what others say?

Re:When even IT mags say Vista adoption subpar

[WillAffleckUW]

Whatever. Hey, I noticed your slashdot name is Omicronish - I made a game called Omicron Galactic Clouds back when AD&D had one book (long time ago).

Let's not fight over our personal perceptions of what is suitable OS load - I think I should be able to run a game, have multiple office aps open in the background, and do an automatic file transfer in the background while I'm streaming a full video in a small window on my OS - without disk thrashing.

Which I can do on my son's Mac Mini already.

Re:When even IT mags say Vista adoption subpar

[omicronish]

Let's not fight over our personal perceptions of what is suitable OS load - I think I should be able to run a game, have multiple office aps open in the background, and do an automatic file transfer in the background while I'm streaming a full video in a small window on my OS - without disk thrashing.

Vista on my 2003 machine runs smoothly with:

• Two instances of IE7, 6 tabs open among them
• Live Messenger
• Visual Studio 2005 with a project and 6 source files open.
• Paint.NET
• Explorer window with folder in thumbnail view
• Control Panel
• WMP playing 640x480x29 fps video from hard drive (slower than streaming over the network due to the disk activity involved)
• Guild Wars running at 30+ FPS
• Downloading Ubuntu .iso at 200+ KB/s
• All running with full Aero (3d-accelerated UI) at 1920x1200

Again, what poor performance did you experience with Vista, and what hardware did you have to upgrade? Have you even tried yourself? Or are you simply repeating a claim that others have likely repeated themselves?

You can make all the performance claims you want about Mac OS X because you've used it. But stop saying that Vista needs a hardware upgrade or will run poorly without providing evidence.

Re:When even IT mags say Vista adoption subpar

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, people I trust - including some I used to be in a club with and hung out at their house a lot - have been writing reviews saying if you actually enable the full WinVista, the bare minimum is 1 GB, but the realistic load is more like 2 GB.

We can argue about it - or you can realize that most reviewers are saying this and deal with reality.

Still convinced we're winning in Iraq?

WHO CARES ABOUT iTunes? HOW ABOUT - CISCO

[n1_111]

CISCO does not have a production VPN Client compatible with Vista. There is a beta floating out there, but it does not work on several Vista boxes (fresh installs, and modified ones) that I tried it on. Here are statements from CISCO: "Cisco is planning to release the Vista 32-bit IPsec VPN Client at the end of March." "Vista 64-bit is planned for approximately CY3Q/CY4Q07 as part of our next-generation client "

Of course!

[Reality Master 101]

I'm pretty sympathetic to Apple on this score... after all, Microsoft has rushed Vista to the market so quickly, NO ONE could possibly have kept up with Microsoft's torrid pace!

Cut the poor Apple engineers some slack!

Oh noez! Omgz! Oh noes!

[alisson]

If you upgrade to vista before SP1, it's your own fault :)

It Sounds Like They Did Though

[EXTomar]

It sounds like they do have versions of their software that works "perfectly" under Vista instead of being "unsupported". They just don't want to release the version yet, for whatever reason is part of the speculation.

The cynic in me thinks that there is something fishy going on from both Microsoft and Apple. And I know for a fact many older games which ran fine on XP won't exactly be "Vista Supported" either so why the hate? This is just the usual bumps and hiccups for any upgrade rollout.

Re:It Sounds Like They Did Though

[dgatwood]

It sounds like they do have versions of their software that works "perfectly" under Vista instead of being "unsupported". They just don't want to release the version yet, for whatever reason is part of the speculation.

I'm not sure who the "they" is in this sentence, but assuming you're talking about a commercial software vendor such as Apple, Oracle, etc., my guess would be "testing". Do you have any idea how long it takes to fully qualify a piece of software on all of the different versions of Windows? Let me paint a picture in the form of a sleazy used car ad:

You remember XP. You got several variants from Microsoft. In addition to that, almost every major computer vendor provided their own slightly tweaked versions with custom drivers, different preinstalled applications, custom registry settings, etc. Many vendors had several such variants. You might pay as much as $200 for this product... but today, we've made the "deal" even better.

With the new Windows Vista, you get five, count them, five versions from the manufacturer, plus the European versions without Media Player. You also get the custom versions from the manufacturers, and if you act today, you also get the UPGRADE variants that install over XP, which may or may not behave exactly the same way as a clean install. But wait! There's more! You still get to do the same qualifications as before for XP because you have to support it, too! Call now! Our operators are standing by!

I don't know what's happening with any particular software manufacturer, but I know if I were preparing a product for Vista, there's no way I'd call it Vista compatible for at least a few weeks. Since the vendor versions have just started appearing on store shelves in the last couple of weeks, it's too early to expect any software vendor to certify that their software is Vista compatible. To do so could potentially put them in a position of financial liability if it turned out that it wasn't compatible with Vendor Y's customized version of Vista that hasn't even shipped yet.

Re:Not exactly fair ... what about Zune, for examp

[Anonymous Coward]

furthermore when can we expect the Zune software on OS X?
OS X has been out for more than a few weeks now, and the last indication
i've seen is that Zune works half-assed or worse.

Who wants to admit to things being broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why Apple's waited this long to even announce that their software doesn't work

Because it wouldn't look good when they use such stuff as a selling point!

Maybe sometime in 2008 they can get gapless playback ACTUALLY working correctly on 5th gen iPods....

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[kinabrew]

The think different campaign has passed as they are owned by Intel now.

You think Apple is owned by Intel?

Non-story?

[Canthros]

Several other commenters have claimed that all or most of those apps work under Vista (with the apparent exception of iTunes, about which a notice was posted a while back), so we're really just talking about support issues, which I'm sure is a matter of time.

In which case, could the MacZealots and 101st M. S. Brigade (Slashbot division) please shut up?

Thanks for the PSA, I guess. Slow news day?

Re:Not exactly fair ... what about Zune, for examp

[Real1tyCzech]

The market fo rthe Zune is primarily Windows. OSX compatibility is low priority for Microsoft.

The primary market for iTunes is also Windows. You'd think it'd be a pretty high priority for Apple.

Do you see?

FWIW

[Yaztromo]

For what it's worth, I'd like to note that none of Microsoft's Vista applications are Mac OS X compatible, and it's API has been stable for far longer than Vista's has been.

Yaz.

Of course....

[emor8t]

This is because Apple wants their minions of iPod users who are attached via umbilical (aka headphones) to their devices to switch to OS X. What is the easiest way to do that? Render their users thousand dollar ITunes libraries useless if they upgrade to Vista... Cut the head off and the body dies no? And people think MS is evil...

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[dloose]

Good, than they can go bankrupt. At least 80% of the iPod and iTV sales will be coming from PC consumers, they control Apple now.

So, in your mind, this is what will happen when people are deciding whether they want to upgrade to Vista:

Potential Upgrader: Hmm... this new Windows Vista sure is getting a lot of hype in the press. Bill Gates was on The Daily Show and he said I should buy it. Bill Gates sure is smart. I better do what he says.
<p>
*PU goes to the local Best Buy and encounters Best Buy Employee*
<p>
PU: Hi there, BBE. Bill Gates told me I should upgrade to Vista. What do you think?<br>
BBE: Vista is absolutely amazing. It's secure, fast, and pretty. I recommend everyone upgrade to Vista!! There is a problem though... Do you have an iPod?<br>
PU: Of course I do. What do you think I am? Some kind of loser?<br>
BBE: Unfortunately, iPods don't work with Vista right now.<br>
PU: Hmm, that's not good.<br>
BBE: But don't worry! I can turn that frown upside down! Why don't you pick up that >$100 box of software and accompany me to our super MP3 department. I'm sure we'll find a nice alternative to the iPod.<br>
PU: BBE, you're my hero!

That's interesting, because in my mind, it goes more like this:

BBE: But don't worry! I can turn that frown upside down! Why don't you pick up that >$100 box of software and accompany me to our super MP3 department. I'm sure we'll find a nice alternative to the iPod.<br>
PU: Uh, hold your horses there, cowboy. I just spent $200 on an iPod and another $50 on songs from the iTunes Store. Now you're telling me I have to buy a new MP3 player and then find all of those songs again? This >$100 upgrade just turned into a >$300 upgrade. <br>
BBE: Actually, you'll probably want to upgrade your video card too -- better tack another $200 on to that total.<br>
PU: No thanks, I think I'll stick with XP.

Hell, the company runs Intel. The think different campaign has passed as they are owned by Intel now.

You might want to double-check your sources on that one. I don't think Intel owns Apple.

PC users will never buy OSX (period), they do not want to pay a luxury tax for a system that they can do less with.

"Can do less with"? Wow. I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. There are so many things I can't do with my Mac. I can't have a meaningful conversation with it, toss the frisbee around, wear it as a jacket, or use it to trim my nosehair. Excuse me while I go throw it in the trash.

Please. Macs can do the same things Windows & Linux PCs can. Sure, there are some applications that are better/actually existent on one platform or another, but for most users they all accomplish the same thing: mail, web, photos, word processing. Grow a real argument.

If I was Apple I would just switch to selling nice PC boxes with Vista (or Linux) and can OSX.

I'm sure when Jobs retires you'll be first on the shareholders' list.

to all you people

[Zork the Almighty]

To everyone who pointed out that Microsoft has yet to ship Mac Intel binaries: that's hardly the same thing. Vista is an OS upgrade, not an architecture switch.

Re:to all you people

[mstone]

And Vista is a completely different codebase. New security model, new hardware abstraction layer, new network model, you name it.

If anything, I'd imagine that porting from XP to Vista would be more of a challenge than porting from OS X 10.4 PPC to OS X 10.4 x86.

Re:to all you people

[Anonymous Coward]

To everyone who pointed out that Microsoft has yet to ship Mac Intel binaries: that's hardly the same thing. Vista is an OS upgrade, not an architecture switch. I find it utterly mind-boggling that the repliers and some moderators fail to understand this. Stupidity dominates in Slashdot's Apple section.

So?

[k1e0x]

After all the Hype they probbly thought it would be pushed back.. :) besides.. like Linux.. Apple never has to write software for it if they dont want to.

Perhaps they think there is not enough user base to worry about at the moment.

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[EugeneK]

I think I'll start putting
's at the end of my sentences when I speak so people know when I'm done. (Hmm...maybe I should start with a DOCTYPE when I begin the conversation..)

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[MightyYar]

I gather that he feels that Apple is more pwned by Intel - that their destinies are tied. However, if Apple was able to successfully pull off an architecture shift, then they could certainly pull off a vendor shift to AMD... so I don't think that they are pwned.

They do need the iPod to work with Windows, though. Our anonymous friend is correct in that close to 50% of Apple's revenue comes from Windows users. This still does not make them pwned by MS, however, since presumably Apple can release iPod software for whatever platform happens to be dominant at the time. MS would have to make Windows refuse to run arbitrary programs. When that happens, I don't think Windows will be quite so popular - and even then, I presume that Apple could ship a bootable CD to patch it Sony rootkit style.

Mac OS X breaks programs?

[tentimestwenty]

I've been running OS X since the first release and most of my programs are old - Office X, Photoshop 7, BBEdit 7 etc. etc. I can't think of one program I had to update when OS X was updated. I guess there are examples of specific things that might not work which would apply to some minority of users, but I've done lots of print design and web design and never run into any show stoppers.

Re:Mac OS X breaks programs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running the latest build of 10.5 (9A343) on my iBook, and the following programs either won't install or don't work:

Office 2004
NeoOffice
Any Adobe application at all
Postal 2
The install for iLife '06 was borked, I had to drag it

I realize that this is a pre-release and all, and the iLife example is weak, but to claim that OSX doesn't break programs is a little shortsighted and slightly fan-boyish sounding.

Re:Mac OS X breaks programs?

[mehgul]

Do you mean to say that MS Office v.X was ready by March 24, 2001, the day Mac OS X 10.0 was released? Or would you think it would have been ready by September 25, 2001, the day Mac OS 10.1 was released?
How about Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, released only 3&1/2 years into OS X?

Re:Mac OS X breaks programs?

[Trillan]

I can't speak for Office v. X, but I can assure you that Tiger broke one of the ways to rebuild a table of contents in Office 2004. Microsoft Word would pop up a modal dialog box, but it would be under a progress bar. There was no way to switch from the progress bar to the dialog box. I don't remember much detail other than that; there was another way to rebuild the table of contents, but it wasn't exactly obvious, and a later update (to Office 2004) fixed it.

You must be new around here...

[EXMSFT]

That's all /. has been for years.

Re:You must be new around here...

[Canthros]

Seriously. The 4-digit uid, right? I know.

I am not new around here. I'm pretty sure I remember when Slashdot wasn't a site you logged into, and certainly when it wasn't something anybody subscribed to. Can you ding-a-lings cut out the HAR-HAR-U-MUST-B-NU-HEAR garbage already? I'm not now, I wasn't when you were, and I'm not going to be ten minutes from now when next one of you clever knobs gets it in his head to post a know-nothing response to something. Seriously. It was lame and tired back when it might have even been accurate.

Re:You must be new around here...

[Dunbal]

HAR HAR HAR U must... uhhh, hi Canthros ;)

Thanks Bill, we now have another y2k

[davido42]

.. and Vista is its name. Thousands of underemployed software engineers thank you for providing them with more work porting, patching, and coding in circles.

[url:http://www.bitworksmusic.com]

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[fishbowl]

>If I was Apple I would just switch to selling nice PC boxes with Vista (or Linux) and can OSX.

While I'm quite happy with my Linux desktop systems (at home, in the lab, an in my office), when the time came to buy a
portable, the only serious choice for me was a MacBook Pro. There's no way I was going to switch to Windows from Linux,
and I really didn't want to go through process of installing Linux on a notebook if I could not know in advance that every
component would work. Been there, done that, many times. I *did* look, and I found nothing that combines utility, portability,
and function to the degree of a MacBook, so it was a no-brainer.

But then, a Windows user; especially a Windows *developer* might not be as happy about such a switch.

I realize TFA is in regards to specific applications. Trying to care. Nope.

iTunes not ready for Windows XP

[DogDude]

From my and my families' and friends' experiences, I'd say that iTunes still isn't ready for XP. Buggy, crash-prone, and a memory hog, it was the primary reason I dumped my iPod for a Sansa (I sync now with Explorer or Winamp). Yuck.

Re:iTunes not ready for Windows XP

[jaimz22]

you can sync your ipod to winamp now... whats the problem?

How long does it take Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

As if Apple didn't have enough time to make their crappy applications Vista-complaint.

Vista has been in beta practically forever. Then it was in Release Candidate status for about a year. And, it's been out for around six months for business clients... ya think Apple is big enough to qualify?.

So aside from stupidity and laziness, what reason could Apple have for not being ready? Is it a simple lack of programming ability? Or is it just institutionalized incompetence? Or maybe it's just another one of Apple's passive-aggressive little games?

Alternatives

[Midnight Thunder]

I have no idea if they are any good, but here is a list of alternatives: http://circle.ch/wiki/AlternativesToItunes

Window's ain't done...

[shylock0]

...'till Lotus won't run. Anybody else been around long enough to remember that?

Re:Window's ain't done...

[Tim C]

I remember DOS not being done 'til Lotus wouldn't run, although I wasn't actually around to experience it personally; back then I was an Amiga user. I've also never seen any actual evidence of it, other than it being repeated here from time to time.

Re:Window's ain't done...

[drsmithy]

Anybody else been around long enough to remember that?

Yes, I have. You, however, have not.

The "correct"[0] phrase is "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run" and it's referring to Lotus 1-2-3 and DOS ca. version 3.x.

Ultimately, it's a ridiculous statement, given that a) Microsoft would have no reason to sabotage 1-2-3 at the time (quite the opposite, in fact) and b) anyone actually involved with Microsoft will tell you the ridiculous lengths they did - and still - go to with backwards compatibility. The idea they'd deliberately _break_ an application like 1-2-3 that most of their customers would have relied on to do business, doesn't even pass the laugh test. Practically speaking, in those days, a version of DOS that couldn't run 1-2-3 would be considered to have had a showstopper bug.

[0]I use the term loosely, since it's never actually been accurately attributed to anyone except anti-Microsoft trolls.

Re:Window's ain't done...

[shylock0]

Well, I actually have been around long enough to remember both. You're right on the DOS front; Microsoft would have been stupid for DOS 3.x not to have been compatible with 1-2-3, as at the time of its release 1-2-3 was still the critical app.

But I'm actually talking about what happened LATER, when Microsoft released Windows 3.0 (and then 3.1, and then 3.11, and then WFW, and then NT), which conincided with the release of Excel, Word, etc., and the creation of the office "suite" idea by Microsoft.

It was the problems getting older versions of 1-2-3 (Windows versions, no less) to run under subsequent versions of Windows that was the problem. Seriously, it did seem like Windows (3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT) was getting less and less compatible with older versions of software that Microsoft had a current competitor with.

Re:Window's ain't done...

[BeerCat]

Back in the day (round about 1-2-3 v1.0a), MS-DOS ran on a multitude of machines, not all of which were fully IBM PC compatible. (Apricot Xen being one example). Standard magazine reviews would try to run 1-2-3 (and MS Flight Simulator, IIRC), to see how compatible they were.

The problem with 1-2-3, even on full IBM PC-compatibles, was that they used some pretty low level tricks to get it to run remotely fast, and these tricks often used memory addresses that MS would then try and use in a later version of DOS, which given DOS loaded first, would break 1-2-3.

By 1-2-3 v2.2, the problems had been mostly eradicated; by 1-2-3 v3, Lotus had gone from coding in Assembler to writing it in a higher level language (C, I think), which bumped up the executable size from ~400k to ~2Mb

Re:Windows ain't done...

[shylock0]

Yes, I realize that there's an extra apostrophe in my subject line. Yes, I realize that makes me look like a moron. No, I am not changing my sig. That is all.

Vista (not) being ripped off from Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this funny movie about Vista (not) being ripped off from Mac OS X
http://www.alolmovie.com/listing.php?id=59

Re:what a joke

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem they did, if it wasnt for Apples work on rosetta Office would not even run. A handful of OSS programmers in their spareteime fortunately have ported and adjusted OpenOffice (http://www.neooffice.org) to the Mac to a big degree so that Apple has a viable office pack. Microsoft still does not have one, unfortunately once Microsoft drops their shitware again on the mac natively they will get 10 times as much in a single day than the Neooffice developers probably will get in their entire life. Anyway give Neooffice 2 a chance it is the best office you can get on the Mac and probably will be also in the future!

iTunes isn't even supported on WinXP 64-bit

[joe_n_bloe]

I don't think people who haven't used 64-bit WinXP can even begin to appreciate the scope and enduring nature of the compatibility problems with Vista.

The last time I checked, the current version of iTunes wouldn't install on XP 64-bit edition. (The installer didn't allow it.) I do have iTunes installed on my 64-bit XP box, but that's because I got lucky and downloaded a version that would. The following version wouldn't install. No version of it has ever been supported on 64-bit XP as far as I know.

Maybe all is well in the 32-bit Vista world, but I kind of doubt it.

Re:iTunes isn't even supported on WinXP 64-bit

[Yosho]

I'm guessing it's been a while since you've checked, because I'm running the very latest version of iTunes (7.0.2.16) on XP 64 with no problems.

Re:iTunes isn't even supported on WinXP 64-bit

[joe_n_bloe]

I do have a newer one on ... it may be current. I remember being unable to upgrade for months though.

Where is the conspiracy?

[Enrique1218]

What difference does a few weeks make? Take off those tin foil hats! I mean Apple would never leverage their iPod dominance to steal some switchers who are currently in the market for a new computer. Apple would also not stall the adoption of Vista to let their new ad-assualt on Vista to saturate the consumers (a process that would take a few weeks). Equally, Apple would not stall Vista to give it time to prepare its retail store employees on its anti-Vista sales pitch. Apple is competely content with 5% marketshare and has no designs to capture a single percentage point off of Microsoft. Never, I say, never.

Microsoft's urgency not Apple's problem

[BearRanger]

I mean really, it's the same argument Adobe used with Apple regarding updating CS2 for Intel Macs. Adobe opted to provide Intel Mac support in their next release rather than spending their resources reworking their older product. Fortunately Adobe/Apple customers had a (perhaps less than ideal) workaround thanks to Rosetta.

Apple's advisory notice also included a comment that Windows users should wait to upgrade to Vista after the next release of iTunes in "a few weeks". Sounds like Apple also rolled Vista support into their next release. The good news is that it will be available relatively soon. In the meantime, many people report that most of this software works fine on Vista now. That's their apparently acceptable workaround.

Microsoft might wish their third party software vendors would rush their releases for Vista, but urgency on their part does not constitute an emergency for those vendors. "Wait for the next release" is a perfectly legitimate response IMO.

Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[Greyfox]

After all, installing any Microsoft software on an Apple would be like crapping in a rose garden. You're wandering around your lovely rose garden and suddenly you come up on a big pile of crap. I didn't buy my rose garden to look at crap.

Conversely, putting Apple software on a Windows box is like putting a rose in a crap garden. That doesn't work a lot better. There might be a rose there, but it's still a crap garden.

Re:Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[st3v]

After all, installing any Microsoft software on an Apple would be like crapping in a rose garden.

Yeah, well installing any Apple software on Windows would be like a kindergarten student taking a semiconductor physics exam.

Re:Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[rdoger6424]

I thought it would be like going to siberia and making a random person take a english proficiency test.

Re:Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well installing any Apple software on Windows would be like a kindergarten student taking a semiconductor physics exam.

A user whom installs Apple software on their Windows computer is as clever as a kindergarten student with an understanding electrical engineering? I wouldn't go that far: they are still using Windows after all ;)

Re:Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[mo^]

Not trying to imply anything, coz i can't carry an analogy, but you do realise that crap on rose gardens = fertilizer don't you??

Re:Funny, I didn't Notice That...

[geoffspear]

Please stay out of my rose garden. Do not try to explain that you were actually trying to help my roses. Thanks.

I'll start feeling sorry for Vista users

[skingers6894]

when I get my Universal binary version of MS Office.

turnabout

[pixelguru]

Vista currently only has a couple of percentage points of market share at best, so why should Apple be expected to support such a "niche" OS?

Developer opportunity

[Slur]

We might as well see this as an opportunity for 3rd parties to step up and support the scads of "obsolete" hardware that are being abandoned by their manufacturers with every system upgrade.

As for scanners and cameras that are going to be unsupported on Vista, I urge everyone to have a look at SilverFast, whose bread and butter is in picking up the slack for scanner and camera manufacturers that drop driver support long before their hardware is in any sense truly obsolete.

It's my opinion that hardware manufacturers have a good-faith obligation to provide drivers for as long as their hardware can be expected to last and for as long as that hardware can be connected to a PC. I mean, how much difference in USB or serial APIs could there really be from one system version to another? Since there is no technical justification for dropping support, you can only chalk it up to shortsightedness. But I've noticed that scanner makers are especially lame when it comes to driver support.

In the long run, it will probably be up to the open source community to jump in and pick up the slack for hardware manufacturers. When Wacom dropped support for their serial model tablets in Mac OS X, I did initially cry to Wacom, but it was hard to justify such a demand given that no shipping Mac has built-in serial ports. So I started up XCode and wrote my own driver with invaluable assistance from Wacom's developer documentation.

I urge everyone with the requisite skillz to consider doing the same for their pet hardware.

Re:Developer opportunity

[PRMan]

If you write drivers, then you should know how difficult this is for manufacturers since Microsoft changes the driver architecture every single time an OS comes out...

The iPod is just a mass storage device.

[argent]

I figured that whatever library they're using to communicate over USB, it can't be standard on Win32, as it brought the machine to its knees.

What library? The iPod is mounted as a normal FAT file system by Windows. It's not mounted with a drive letter (so it doesn't show up on the desktop - I don't know offhand if it's mounted with a junction point or a UNC path) but that's *why* Apple had to add MSDOS filesystem support to the iPod for their Windows release.

Re:The iPod is just a mass storage device.

[PRMan]

I thought it used HFS until Enable Disk Use was checked in which case it converts to FAT32 (could be wrong on that).

In any event, I never found it to be particularly slow.

Re:The iPod is just a mass storage device.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Macintosh" iPods use the HFS+ file system, "Windows" iPods use FAT32. The file system is set to whatever is appropriate for the computer you connect it to when you run the "restore" function and it doesn't change until you run the restore function again.

Enabling disk use disables automatic syncing, stops un-mounting of the device when syncing has completed, and makes the iPod visible in Finder/Explorer while iTunes is communicating with it.

Re:The iPod is just a mass storage device.

[toddestan]

Well, if you have iTunes installed on your PC, you have a service running that cannot be disabled that detects when an iPod is plugged in. I'm guessing that is the trouble. Given all the hooks, services, bloat, and other crap that iTunes/Quicktime installs on Windows, it really doesn't surprise me that it doesn't work right with Vista.

Re:Not exactly accurate (W/ Line Breaks!)

[encoderer]

His point is "whhahahhahahahah how dare you criticize Apple!!!! Whaaaaa"

I've been on /. for many years but I still don't understand the love for Apple as a company.

I own an iPod. I own two, actually, because I recently bought a Nano for when I'm working out. I have an intense affection for my iPod. It's beautiful and usable and blah blah you've heard it before.

But my love does not extend to the billion dollar corporation that produced it. And it certainly doesn't make me think that the Corporation can do no wrong.

But around here, if you dare speak bad about the Cupertino kids you get seriously chastised by both being flamed and modded down.

Let's talk honestly: Apple dropped the ball with Vista. Maybe, just maybe, this is done on purpose. In fact, I don't see how it _WASN'T_ done on purpose. As others have said, they had ample time to make sure that their killer-device worked on what will be the worlds most widely installed OS. I'm left thinking that someone there thought that a user thinking 'vista broke my iPod' isn't a bad thing.

As a software developer, I (and others), realize that in this case, the blame falls on Apple, not Microsoft.

I butter my bread writing Windows software but I'm also sure that in many ways Apple beats Windows. Not in every way, not even close. In some way Microsoft beats apple, in most things, they're about the same. Accepting this is like accepting that in most ways, a Honda is the same as a Toyota. Each has certain areas of excellence, but neither is glaringly deficient.

I'm probably singing karma just saying these things outloud, but I believe that we should talk about things on the merits. Instead of an unorganized censorship system, which is what happens here when people speak good of Microsoft or ill of Apple/Linux, why not welcome the debate as a chance to match wits and prove that your chosen platform is actually superior.

The kind of censorship that's done using the Moderation system here just smacks of type of thing that some people hate Microsoft for.

Gut reaction: Why are the API's not backwards comp

[nickull]

Why would Vista engineers not make the API's backwards compatible? The whole gist of object oriented programming / SOA / interface based design is to try and abstract away dependencies on what provides the functionality from the interface exposing the functionality itself. True - new API's come and old ones are deprecated but I find it odd that a company the size of Apple would have issues. When win2k came out, the win98 API's were largely still supported as were win2k in XP. Does Vista represent a wholesale breakage of backwards compatibility or have too many companies (Apple) jsut become lazy in not heeding the warning that the API's really were being deprecated? Or am I completely off base here?

Re: Choice Probability.

[nbritton]

I Said: "What makes you think Apple wants to get their shit together for Vista?"

You Said: "So Apple has no problem abandoning their customers because they want to screw over a rival company?"

It comes down to a choice:
A = Buy a new PC to run Vista.
B = Buy a new PC and get Vista (forced upgrade).
C = Buy a Mac.

A won't choose C, but B might. If B is already a customer of Apple then the probability of C is high.

Re: Choice Probability.

[gordgekko]

I say again, nice ethics.

Don't be silly

[Anonymous Coward]

"The market fo rthe Zune"

Is basically non-existent. If the Zune doesn't work under Vista, it inconveniences at most a handful of people.

Curious

[flabordec]

Actually I've used QuickTime in Windows Vista without any problems. Perhaps this is the start of a trend of FUD from Apple.

This type of thing needs to be illegal

[insomniac8400]

They are running an ad campaign making fun of vista, but they accidently forgot to get a beta version of vista and test itunes on it? This incompatibility is definitely deliberate. Sadly most companies would be blasted to hell for not testing with a beta or rc version of vista to be ready for it's release. Not to mention the business version has been out for 2 months. But the fanboys will of course rejoice.

Isn't it funny

[tkrotchko]

Isn't it funny that as people who love technology, we're faced with Vista that has really awful drivers support, obnoxious licensing, exists as a way to force a unified DRM model on all users, and yet we all sit around and say "Well, I guess I'll eventually repurchase everything, seeing as how Windows has to win out".

I'll paraphrase a joke.

A old Unix hacker was sitting around and he prayed to god... he said "Dear God, I don't like Windows Vista. It's everything I don't like, the vendor has a bad attitude, it's expensive, it's proprietary, and the DRM is taking away freedoms that I believe are my right. Won't you please send me an OS that can take over from Microsoft?"

And he prayed and prayed, but after a few months he said "well, I need a new computer, and god won't answer my prayers, so I'll buy that new Vista powered laptop"

And so the old hacker eventually died.

He came before God in heaven, and he said "God, I prayed for deliverance from Windows Vista, and you didn't listen, so I ended up buying Vista, and it became the dominant OS on earth"

And god laughed and said "You idiot, I sent you Red Hat, I sent you Ubuntu, I sent you Mac OS X and a whole host of other options but you wouldn't take them"

Something to think about.

Microsoft's priorities have changed.

[Zaphod-AVA]

Microsoft changed it's primary focus a few years back, and Vista is the first major release since then. Previously, they valued compatibility over security. Now it's security over compatibility.

If making the operating system be secure costs us a few more growing pains with legacy applications, I'm all for it.

Over 42 Million iPods

[blavallee]

Maybe Apple shouldn't support their software on vista.
Then when it comes time for over 42 million iPod owners buy a new PC, maybe they will all buy macs.

Re:without PC users Apple is finished

[Divebus]

PC users will never buy OSX (period)

Absolutely true as long as you can't run OS X on a plain vanilla PC. You probably meant to add "they'll just switch to Macs completely".

Re:Gut reaction: Why are the API's not backwards c

[omicronish]

Does Vista represent a wholesale breakage of backwards compatibility or have too many companies (Apple) jsut become lazy in not heeding the warning that the API's really were being deprecated? Or am I completely off base here?

The APIs in Vista are largely backwards-compatible. I have games over 10 years old that still run on Vista (Civilization 1 for Windows 3.1, SimTower). The biggest change on Vista that can break apps is likely UAC: Whereas on XP users ran as Administrators, even the admin account on Vista starts off with regular user privileges. On XP apps could freely write to Program Files and modify HKLM--not so on Vista. There are other possibilities for compat breaking, such as bug fixes in the Win32 API (yes, this happens; see Raymond Chen's blog for stories), other security changes (such as moving services to a separate window desktop), and just plain changes that affect an app because it uses an API in an odd way.

testing the water

[Budenny]

What Cupertino has always been looking for, and now maybe wonders if they have found at last, is an application that people really desperately want. Then they would tie it to the Mac platform, and MAKE those people buy Macs to run it. The prime exampe is the OS. Lets make them buy our hardware to run it.

Its a sort of pathological blinkered view of the world. The problem is, that whatever it is you are trying to make your customers buy, is not attractive enough on its merits. So, you have to force them. But when you do that, you lose a proportion of the market for whom your combined package dips below the competitive cost/performance threshold.

So, we make them buy the Mini, so they can get OSX on a reasonably priced standalone. And Minis sell, so we think its great. Which they would certainly not do otherwise. But what we do not see is the larger numbers who would be Apple customers today if they could get some hardware they liked better.

As a long term business strategy, it is a recipe for niche market share with periodic collapses as the killer app is duplicated by competitors without similar limitations and bundling requirements. This is essentially what happend with Win 95 and 98 and OS9. Part of the reason that it happens is the complacency it permits to flourish. So OS9 had fallen far behind, but because the bundling disguised the competitive situation, it allowed drift and denial.

All this is defended by Mac people with the mantra that 'Apple is a hardware company'. It cannot be true, can it? This is not how hardware companies behave. What hardware companies do is sell hardware, packaged any way the most customers want it. Hardware companies are software agnostic. If Apple really were a hardware company, you'd be able to get Macs running Windows out of the Apple stores.

The solution is to free the OS and the hardware people. Not to stop selling bundles to everyone who wants them, but to allow two divisions to maximize sales to others. The solution to the music business is the same. Stop trying to make people who do not want to buy bundles. Make the store compete on its merits, the players on their merits. And make sure the software runs better on Vista than any competitive product.

And stop telling us all that Apple is a this or a that. That is not the issue. The issue is what a sensible business strategy would have it become.

who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

apple software doesnt work on vista? who the hell cares? and where the fuck are my native intel osx office binaries?

Quote from a small game company

[Ilgaz]

"Certainly, the game will run on some Vista machines, but perhaps not all. This means that we will not be able to promise you that the game will run on your hardware with the Vista OS. If you encounter problems running the game with Vista, unfortunately, we will be unable to help you.

We plan to officially support the Vista OS by the time the first Service Pack is released, which is expected sometime in the second half of this year."

Can you blame them after hearing even Nvidia couldn't ship some drivers yet?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784 .html

Re:Thanks, that's just how I feel

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had nothing but bad experiences loading Microsoft software onto my Apple Mac. I have decided not to *ever* load MS software onto my Apple again. Open Office removes my need to load Microsoft Office softwae. The recent security problem about .doc files, even on Apples made me feel I was correct. People that loaded MS software on their Apples eventually got nailed. Sorry.

Maybe it's threw up ;)

[freaker_TuC]

Maybe Microsoft just threw up this spawn of darkness euh .. I mean this operating system and we got to eat the chunks ...

It's Microsoft's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, given Apple's PR abilities and considerable goodwill, this will all be viewed as Microsoft's fault.

of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is of course intentional.

Re:Not exactly accurate (W/ Line Breaks!)

[Pope]

Most Apple articles here are full of ignorant anti-Apple comments made by people who have never used a Mac, or OS X, in their lives. Usually those are modded "Insightful" by other ignorant mods.

Responses to those comments to correct misinformation are invariably modded "Troll." Why, I don't know.

I don't know anything about Linix, so I don't go into those topics or comment on them. What it is about Apple topics that brings out the morons?

guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

guess what everybody? none of those applications are supported for XP x64 edition either. and that os has been out for a few years. but otoh, everything works like its supposed to, except for cd burning, which you have to go to gear's (maker of the burning driver itunes uses)and downloand and install the x64 aspi driver. thats been the least of my problems. alot of software dosent want to install on x64, in order to get it to install you have to hack the installer.msi file with orca to remove the only installs on 2000/xp flags and other nonsense developers put in those. i dont understand why there isnt a flag to NOT install on X (windows 95, etc) instead, would make my life easier. also im sure there are going to be far less issues on 32bits vista for most than 64bits, but why would anyone want to bother with 32bits vista would be beyond me anyway. anything that needs its own driver or requires low level functions is going to have serious install and/or runtime issues on vista x64, just like on xp x64 due to the os archetecture/difference in 32 bit vs. 64 bit, etc... how is any of this news?

He who changes is to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd... Usually for articles like this on /. the first thing that comes to my mind is also one of the first comments I read. This time I'm surprised no one has said this yet!

I realize some of Apple's software may actually work ok on Vista right now, but if any of it IS breaking with the release of Vista, that would have to be MS's fault. Apple wrote working Windows software, then MS went and changed Windows. IMO this is MS doing the breaking, not Apple.

This is like changing a car so it won't run on gasoline anymore - it's not that the gas isn't compatible with the car, it's that the car is no longer compatible with the gas!