OS X Vs. Vista — In Spandex

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK compares Vista Vs. Apple OS X in a Romeo and Juliet, spandex-wearing, Shakespearean English style. Two guys dress up as their favorite operating system and fight with swords, guns, and fists, while a third guy, dressed as a woman, awaits the winner. 'Usability - Act 3, Scene 2: Swords clash, sparks fly and men grunt, but the showdown ends in stalemate ... [Vista] has a far better user interface than XP -- the file and application search facility is vastly improved and the cascading Start menu has been banished, but it only takes a few moments of use to discover pointless idiosyncrasies. Microsoft constantly reminds us of how great Flip 3D is, but this feature doesn't help us find the right application window much faster than Alt-Tab did. It's very time consuming when you have many application windows to flip through, and it's in no way as efficient as OS X's Exposé feature ... We're calling this one a draw. They're just as good as each other, and in some cases just as bad -- a pox upon both your houses! Score: Mac OS X - 2, Windows Vista - 2'"

Comments

C|NET maintains status-quo

[bill_mcgonigle]

Am I missing something?

Microsoft buys more ads than Apple at C|NET?

Actually, it's more complex that that - C|NET can't go recommending OSX over Vista, even if they want to.

They depend on people thinking they're in-touch, relevant, right, have some foresight, etc. If they truly love the Mac (and it appears they do), let's think about what would happen if they recommended OSX over Vista. First, 5 years from now, I don't expect OSX to have over 50% marketshare in the commercial PC OS space. So, Vista will be what more people use. If C|NET starts recommending OSX, people will start to think that nobody listens to their recommendations, that they pick the wrong racehorses, that they don't 'get' what their readership wants [to hear], and that's going to affect their bottom line. Part of this is recognition that even with their industry presence, they don't have enough power to influence something this big.

But declaring a tie -- that's the strongest possible recommendation C|NET can give to OSX and by using their prose to point out its advantages, while ignoring them in the executive summary - read between the lines. Just don't expect to find what you're looking for on the lines.