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Windows Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face
Nash writes "Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X. 'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead. That said, it doesn't thus far look like Microsoft will be doing anything so useful as Exposé. Though the blurred glass effect is rather attractive, it's not exactly useful. Other visual effects include miniature window previews when the mouse cursor is hovered over taskbar buttons and an upgraded alt-tab device, and Flip3D.'"
Of course, OS X also does live updates of windows in Expose, don't know why the article suggests otherwise.
From TFA: "The scaled windows that Exposé shows you are not merely static screenshots of those windows; they're the actual windows themselves, just scaled down. This means that they update live, and any changes in a window are immediately apparent to the user."
How do you read that as suggesting otherwise?
This guy's the limit!
Talk about bait and switch! It says that is more than just a pretty face but shows nothing but the history of Windows APIs and Eye (and maybe Ear) Candy. I will summarize this 8 page long article for you (emphasis mine):
...)
Page 1: This is Part I of Ars Technica's three-part Windows Vista review coverage. In the coming weeks we will be expanding on this coverage, culminating in an official review when our testing is finished.
(... history of Windows APIs, why Vista does graphics and audio better than XP, yada yada
Concluding remarks
The new APIs and all-new graphics stack are not the only things new in Vista. There have been major improvements in Vista's approach to secure computing, and many low-level changes to improve the experience of using the OS. I'll talk about these--along with some of the much-vaunted features that didn't make the cut after all--in my next article.
I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing? I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. No-one's suggesting that you specifically should upgrade. If you don't have any reason to upgrade, then don't. But that doesn't mean it's necessary to comment on every single story about any aspect of Vista "I don't see any reason for me to upgrade". I'm not going to upgrade to Photoshop CS3, but I don't go on forums, search for topics about CS3, and post "I'm not going to upgrade!", because it adds very, very little to the discussion. If there are no new features that are relevent to you, and there's no reason for you to upgrade, just -- don't upgrade. Simple as that.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I'm in the same boat though. It doesn't really seem that there are any UI improvements that would make a switch the Vista worthwhile. I was not happy with the XP interface, and I tried out Vista. It wouldn't run on my three year old laptop. Being a broke college student, I have no interest in dropping a grand so I can have some pretty new UI. But testing it on other computers, I couldn't see any real compelling reason to switch, unless I wanted to have a slightly prettier start menu and have needless, not-even-that-cool looking GUI effects. Those are not killer apps for me. WinFS, the only reason I was excited for Vista, is not there.
So then I tried Kubuntu on my laptop, looking for a XP replacement with actual changes to the UI that meant something, and I found it. This environment (for me) is FAR more productive than XP or Vista could ever be. I was their target market, unsatisfied with XP and looking for an upgrade, and they let me slip through the cracks. Not that I really care, I found Linux and will probably never go back to Windows. Nice job, Microsoft.
I am a developer for a small software company and started using Vista on my workstation about a month ago.
I just switched back to XP sp2 for the following reasons:
I/O performance for File Copy (HD to HD) was 5x slower than the same box running XP. No kidding. I was copying about 10Gb of files from one disk to another, and it took over 45 min to complete (and this was from a 10,000rpm RAID-0 striped drive to a SATA drive)
Usability is total CRAP when UAC is turned on. This is the feature in the Apple commercial where the suit asks "Allow or Deny" at every exchange. This is NO JOKE.
Something a simple as changing the DPI of your screen fonts requires that you click "Allow" on a dialog box before you do anything else.
When you want to view processes from All Users in Task Manager, you have to do the same every single time.
Copying or into a Program Files folder or Renaming a file requires 2 confirmation dialog boxes!
Drag and Drop to some applications is disabled when it is "Run as Administrator", which you must do for some things to work correctly. This means no more double clicking on a txt file to edit it in notepad if that file is in a Program Files directory. Nope. You must launch notepad using "Run as administrator" then use the File-Open menu item to open the txt file.
I would disable this but we develop software for enterprise networks and those machines will most likely have this 'feature' permanently disabled. I switched back to XP for my main workstation and I'm running Vista in a VM for now.
Vista more than just a pretty face, it's a GIANT pain in the A$$ as well.
The article made a big deal about how Win32 and GDI are obsolete in Vista, and all the cool apps use WPF on the .NET Framework 3, and this makes them vector-based, so they're DPI-independent and magnify cleanly.
.NET Framework really the native API for this? Not a great way to encourage existing applications to be ported to WPF, as "managed code" does not play well with compiled languages like C++ (they can't even marshal bool properly, for heaven's sake).
I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP (with the notable exceptions of Minesweeper and Solitaire, which still appear blocky under the Magnifier).
Does Vista even come with any WPF applications?
And is the
It's still being developed, but works pretty well so far.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
You mean like the equivalent of "tabbed" desktops? One for my video encoding folders and related apps, one for the video game I'm playing and its forums/cheat sites, one for my music directory and winamp? That does sound kind of cool.
It's very cool. In fact it's too cool, once you get used to it you can never go back. Fortunately you can replace window's desktop with a real window manager. Add in Cygwin in a Terminator window and it's almost tolerable.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Your statement with regard to PDF is factually incorrect. Adobe never refused to license it to anyone. They have an open license that applies equally to all comers and MS doesn't have to do anything fancy or sign anything to get such a license.
The quarrel with MS and Adobe was over the fact that MS was planning to break the law by illegally leveraging their Windows monopoly and Office near monopoly in order to promote their tools over Adobe's offerings. All of Adobe's complaints applied to both XPS and PDF and both of them were part of the plan and already written by the time Adobe said anything, so you can't claim MS created XPS as a response to Adobe's actions. Instead of risking the courts ruling that MS's office suite constituted monopoly power in that space, MS withdrew the features from that bundle, but they are still including the XPS features in Windows in violation of the law. Since Windows has already been declared a monopoly, this is just one more abuse and MS figures that by the time the courts take any action against them they will have already destroyed that market beyond any repair and they'll just have to shell out a few million bucks or take some pointless action that does not really help years after the fact.
I encourage you to please not continue repeating the MS FUD about PDF licensing, which is and has been open to MS and all other comers for a long time. It just doesn't mean MS can use that license in a way that violates criminal law.
FUD, simply put.
The offloading of graphics handling to the GPU decreases the load on the CPU and main memory. And, what do you know, 90% or more of all current PCs that you can buy have a motherboard with an integrated video solution that supports that GPU acceleration. In addition, I didn't have to shell out any bucks to get my computer to run Vista. And even if yours lacks a shiny new video chipset, don't worry, there's a non-Aero GUI for the soon to be 5% of you who don't have integrated video.
Given that... I think it's quite reasonable, given what you've said, to think that you're an idiot. What I'm worried about is that you idiots <em>do</em> seem to come in bunches.