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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'"
[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.
XP's searching capabilities are shite compared to Windows 2000. What the hell is up with that stupid dog image when using the XP search? So it's better to compare Vista's searching with that of Windows 2000. At least then you're comparing Vista's capabilities against something that's usable.
Same with the Start menu. It's really simple and sensible under Windows 2000. But then XP came along and made it really awkward to use. So again, don't compare against XP, since it was a step backwards. Compare against Windows 2000!
And yet again poor old linux if left alone in the corner with only a lute for company..
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At what point can you call a spade a shovel?
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I don't see Vista as having a "far better" user interface. In fact, compared to Windows XP and the basic configuration things, Vista requires traveling through a lot more menus and clicks to get where you want to get.
Apart from Vista's new eyecandy UI, it's pretty much the same deal. Sure, there's a neat thing here and there - like the disk space bars and renaming files when you have viewing extensions on. Other then that, I don't see all that much of a difference.
It's not a terrible thing, I mean - Windows XP has a very decent UI.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Why can't you delete a file in OS X with the delete key? Because you need to use a modifier key (in this case, the command key) so as not to inadvertently delete items. Anytime you make a critical key stroke (such as deleting), a modifier key should be used to avoid unintended consequences. What happens if the user isn't paying attention and they hit the delete key to remove a string of text, but actually where clicked on an important document? With the command key, the USER is telling the system that he or she REALLY wants to do something. It is simply sound interface design...something PC people never seem to understand, as they continually pound the "del" key on a Mac, then bitch that their Windows-centric mentality doesn't work on a Mac. This goes for nearly EVERY niggling complaint I've ever heard from a PC user about Macs...."Why doesn't this thing do it like Windows???"...um, because it is decidedly NOT Windows.
In their performance section, Vista won because more games are compatible with it, and PCs have more HDDVD and Blu-Ray options available? I don't get how this has anything to do with performance of the operating system.
Ubuntu vs Vista was on the front page yesterday:
/ 1337246
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/27
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Everyone knows OS X is derived from Mach and BSD and has nothing to do with Linux. But then anyone who would consider Vista equal to it probably spent more time dressing up and playing with swords than reviewing the products anyways.
OS X = Ubuntu = Vista.
If you've got the cash, you've got options. Sort of like everything else.
"There is nothing so American as our national parks.... " - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
What should have been a quote from a specific part of the article, is actually summarized in a way that indicates it was an end result. The actual article affords Vista the victory. But, maybe the article should have stopped at a tie, it seems Vista won because Mac OS has less standard acceptance and because Greenpeace declaired PC's to be more green than Macs.
Demented But Determined.
you get a dialog box asking if you want to delete the file (by default) - so you have to hit enter to confirm your deletion.
The file by default gets shoved in the recycle bin as well, so easy to get back if you've realized you've made a mistake.
You have the option if you wish to remove the prompt on the delete, or skip the recycle bin by holding shift.
I think the point I'm trying to make about XP/Vista is that when you press the delete key, the OS assumes that you are actually trying to delete a file (quite sensibly) and respond to you accordingly.
Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls?
It's called "FItts' Law." The edge-of-screen menu is a much easier target to access. This has been covered to death before. Who wrote this article? A million monkeys with typewriters?
What's it say about these guys if they can't find a real woman to play the part of the woman? ;P
Today, I had to get a new Mac Mini. Turning it on and getting to the desktop took all of 3 minutes. I had it updated, and configured to my liking in about 45 minutes (most of which was taken up downloading a ton of updates, as his Mini had been on the shelf for a while at CompUSA.
In contrast, a few weeks ago I was working for a company that needed a new laptop. The laptop we got was very similar to the Mini I purchased today. Intel Core 2 Duo, and it actually had much more memory stock in it (still need to crack open the Mini and upgrade to 2GB). It took a full 45 minutes to get Vista to boot for the first time. Between just getting the software updated (which was a super painfully slow process in comparison), it took over 3 hours to get it even usable, let alone the hour it took to install Microsoft Office 2007, and then update it. Then it took another few hours to figure out how to Vista actually, well, less like Vista. This was some Acer laptop BTW.
I liked Windows XP in comparison a lot, and still think that Windows 2000 was super-stable in comparison to XP. I still haven't figured out what Vista does for the end-user that XP doesn't do- asides from being a PITA and making you purchase new hardware. In fact, I'm going to do a Bootcamp install of XP in a few minutes.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
forget the fancy pants spandex crap
I'm waiting for the guy in the penguin suit and army fatigues to show up
with a pen knife in one hand (for carving the word stallman into one of the foreheads of the Vista guy) and a machine gun in the other
The real issue is user complaints not head on comparisons. Most people aren't objective in head on comparisons so they tend to be more about reviewers preference than which is a superior OS. There have been significant customer complaints about Vista where as few if any about Leopard. It's impossible to tell until the final release but all looks good for OSX Leopard. In comparison people are more and more comparing Vista to ME. What other standard is there than customer satisfaction? Comparing the OSs is completely pointless. It'd make more sense comparing OSX and Linux. Vista isn't all bad I'm sure but it's hardly all good. The very fact large numbers of users especially businesses are resisting the shift to Vista and plan to use XP as long as possible is a bad sign. I think you'll find no resistence to Leopard. Which is better will be argued until the next Microsoft OS is released when the arguments will begin anew. The real decider is who is happiest. The vast majority of Mac users are happy where as Vista users seem on the whole very unhappy. You decide.
I, on the other hand, just prefer to right click.
And for those of you who think that right mouse buttons are not confusing, you need to watch normal people use computers. I work in a school and my job is to train teachers how to use computers. Most teachers can't follow simple instructions like "right-click on the desktop". Also, left-handed teachers have to share computers with right-handed teachers (and students too). Don't tell me that telling a left-handed user to "right-click" on something isn't confusing. Come work with me for a day.
I would just ask if you are going to criticize something, please get the easy facts straight first.
Ugg -
I guess this is what happens when you let drama people write a tech review. The final battle was Vista winning the hardware matchup (and the showdown) because:
a) OS X can run Vista in Parallels
b) Apple hasn't committed to a timeline for the phase-out of PVCs from their products. Never mind that no other computer manufacturer has actually phased PVCs out - they've only committed to a timeline.
Notice that they didn't compare the same programs on similar hardware, or actually talk about the hardware.
That it would take XP and Vista for people to understand that Windows 2000 was "simple and sensible."
You "draw" a giant "WIN" on the OS X side of the board.
There is so much discussion about Windows 2000/XP/Vista searching here... but they all three really suck! Windows Vista sometimes wont even find "easy to locate" files when I search for them by name AND its painfully slow. Its really quite pathetic! I run Vista, Ubuntu Linux and Mac OSX. Anybody who uses all three would definitely rank them from best to worst as OSX, Linux, Windows. OSX takes the cake because it has Spotlight, Locate, Find and Grep.
:)
My grandmother could work Spotlight. Its fast, accurate and searches for files based on content and name at once. Its availible at the flick of your wrist and does pretty well. Though, personally I prefer Quicksilver to spotlight because I usually just search by filename and its *instant*. There are also smart folders that you can set up for searches that are done really often.
Linux comes in second to OSX only because OSX *includes* all the nifty decades-old command line tools that Linux has. The command line utilities are not for everyone... but if you know what you're doing, you can find anything quickly. Locate will instantly find anything that has been on your computer for about a day (usually). For newer stuff, its useless. Find (find / -name blah.txt) is about as fast as Windows search and much more flexible. Then you have recursive grep for locating instances of some term inside arbitrary files.
Now Windows: After using the above platforms, searching on Windows is just painful. Sometimes it finds what I was looking for... but it can be quicker to just mount my windows drive on my Mac and do it from there
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I find the XP level of eye candy pointless and destracting. More sugar coated pixels in Vista are unlikely to be a Good Thing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The play is really just for infotainment. The purpose is not technical accuracy and probably only wants to use sound bites that people have heard of.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
They were fighting over a girl. I mean, c'mon, what male Mac user would even be interested in girls?? He obviously had no motivation to win.
;)
I'm joking, friends...lighten up
Use TweakUI to turn on classic searching in Explorer and IE. Problem solved.
In fact, the lack of TweakUI and basic configurations is probably why many people find XP to be difficult to use. It's really very intuitive once you ditch MS's crappy default settings.
You know, Nautilus does saved searches and Beagle is "fast, accurate and searches for files based on content and name at once". It's also available in Deskbar, the handy taskbar app, and I find Nautilus' saved searches to be rather more elegant than Finder's...
PCs are definitely the place to go if you want the latest technology. PCs were privileged to the first Intel Core and Core 2 Duo CPU
Well that's debatable. Apple recently launched the first 3GHz dual Core 2 Quadro Xeon based computer to my knowledge by shoving these bleeding-edge chips into the Mac Pro. Also they do invent (individually and collbaoratively) useful technology, like FireWire. Sometimes you do get things first with Apple.
Bah, when did I turn into such a Mac fanboy?
Ok, the article was a bit... fanciful.. but I really have to disagree. I have an 8 month old mac book pro core 2 duo. My co-worker just purchased a brand new HP laptop AMD Turion X2 64, 4GB of RAM, spent just as much as I did for my macbook.
the macbook absolutely runs circles around his vista machine. It took him 45 minutes yesterday to create a network share. And no, it wasn't a huge directory tree. He created an empty folder so I could upload a couple files to him. Vista took 45 minutes to enable the share on an empty folder!
Besides the fact that his system consistently hangs programs that we both use daily (outlook (i run it in XP in parallels), our development environment, whatever) He reboots his brand new system at least twice a day.
I can't believe anyone would think vista is better.. ok except for games
I used all three and I range them in other direction. Perhaps you don't have fast enough disk or CPU for Vista?
I like this one:
... *not walk around dark alleys at night with no pants on?
"Buy an Apple PC and you can be confident of safety. It ships with all communication ports closed. Native services such as FTP access, remote login and printer sharing are all switched off by default so the chances of a hacker attack are minimal to say the least. Even without all this *fancy *protection, nobody's bothering to make viruses for Macs anyway,"
[emphasis added]
If closing ports to incoming traffic is "fancy" then, um... I can't think of a funny way to finish that.
Is it fancy to, um
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
For Performance
"We can find a winner even without resorting to talk of clock cycles and gigaflops."
*sigh. What has happened to journalism? CNET is a pretty well-respected outlet.
Can you find a presidential election winner without resorting to talk of votes and electoral colleges? (Dieblod, put your hand down!)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I hate to be the one to burst everyones bubble here, but Windows Vista is NOT Microsofts flagship OS. Vista introduces alot of new items into their OS line that need to be addressed by software and hardware development teams. Windows ME introduced driver signing to the MSOS world, and people hated it and wished they had never upgraded to ME. Well, then Microsofts flagship desktop OS came out (XP) with all of the same feature sets as ME, but with not nearly the headache. The world fell in love with XP and it became the 'standard' OS. Now Microsoft releases Vista, and again, this is just a stepping stone to the next flagship. Microsoft has added features such as reduced backwards compatability, and the quasi requirement for signed drivers and programs. It has been said that the next OS will not be at all backwards compatable, and will only allow signed drivers to be installed. Why you ask? Because Microsoft has been getting alot of flak from the industry and its users about security and compatability issues. Contrary to what anyone may think, Windows XP was a very stable OS from day one, it was only when you started adding drivers and software that issues began to appear. Now is that really Microsofts fault, or the fault of the developers for being lazy and not taking the time to code their software and drivers to the specifications that Microsoft put forward? To help answer that question, lets look at Junctions in Vista. Microsoft had to include these because some programmers had the tendancy to hard code c:\documents and settings\%username% instead of programming %userdir%. Again, is this really Microsofts fault. How about the compatability issues in Windows Vista? Well again, developers that wrote programs that require administrative access to install/run properly. In Vista, even as an administrative account, you are not truly an administrator, you are just not asked to provide credentials to run things as an administrator. Yes this is long winded, and yes I spelled things wrong. But I also want people to understand that Vista is the stepping stone for the OS that you have all been crying for since Windows XP was found lacking in both the security and functionality that you were looking for.
that there's an OS that has a more intuitive use for the 'DELETE' key than DELETING?
Certainly this was silly fun and all, and for many people Vista may be the logical winner for their needs and circumstances. But some of the things said by the referee in this contest, CNET, were outright ignorant. The ref needs glasses. Throw the bum out!
A list of CNET stupidity:
- Why wasn't Linux in this competition? Didn't fit the cute Elizabethan dual metaphor?
- Mac OS X 'forged from the fires of Linux.' Linus Torvalds just had an aneurism over that one. It is blatantly and unforgivably WRONG. The kernel for each of these operating systems have NOTHING to do with each other, never have. The only similarity is their use of the UNIX model for the rest of the operating system. Mac OS X literally IS UNIX because it incorporates BSD Unix. It is forged from the fires of OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Linux is NOT. The only real commonality is the ability of both OSes to use a vast number of the same applications, recompiled for each platform, or in the case of Mac OS X run in X11. Shame shame shame on CNET.
- Mac OS X performance used to be held back by Apple's use of the PowerPC chip? For a period of many years this statement was quite incorrect. The PPC chips were verifiably 2x faster and cooler running in their heyday. Sadly this lead was lost at the time when Motorola stagnated at 500MHz with the G4 chip for years. IBM managed to come out with the G5 to keep speed between PCs and Macs on a par as long as you were using a desktop box. But if you were using a PowerBook you were held back by IBM's laziness or inability to make a cool running G5 chip that was compatible. During this period of time up until the Intel Dual Core MacBooks were released the PC laptops had a distinct speed advantage. Them's the facts that CNET conveniently glossed over. Tsk tsk.
- Mac OS X's 'performance' is currently held back by having fewer games? That is a 100% illogical non sequitur. A better criticism would be that there are many applications for Windows that do not have equivalents on the Macintosh. At least let Mac OS X lose on its real deficits, not nonsense. Regarding the similar criticism of Macs not getting the latest bleeding edge gaming cards, this is only a matter of when drivers are written for compatibility, as long as you are using a Mac Pro desktop box or an XServe, which I assume is what any serious graphics of gaming geek would prefer over an iMac or a MacBook. Make sense CNET!
- Usability complaints. There are a bunch of these that are quite dopey. (1) CNET want to be able to resize windows with ANY corner? Why? On Mac OS X it is simple. Use the bottom right corner. (2) The 'mystery meat' school of navigation regarding the three control buttons in the top left corner of every window. Huh? Funny how I have never ever been confused. CNET even pointed out that hovering over the buttons provides symbols to indicate the button purposes. The only complaint I can see anyone realistically making would be the use of colors for the three buttons. If you are color blind then you may have some minor difficulty. But if you know the Rule Of Fives you know that we humans are capable of remembering between three to seven, an average of 5, things at any one moment. Remembering the purposes of left, center and right buttons on a window are not a challenge. (3) CNET want to delete files by only hitting the Delete key? Why? On the Mac there is a safety measure added: You have to hold down the command key first. This prevents unwanted blunders. I have never found it a burdon compared to the Windows method. Then again I have two hands. If someone only had one hand I could see their point, and I would direct them to Mac OS X's kewl Universal Access features for help. (4) Again with the games criticism. Hey CNET: Go get a PlayStation! You clearly are too immature for a computer.
- The final battle is won over propaganda and myths? Come on! (1) Mac OS X is perturbed by his ISP's lack of support for Macs? In what decade? This is the 21st century. That old myth is dead and buried. (2) Greenpeace are holding a
I don't think that is true at all.
Vista hides a lot of expert stuff and has much more incredibly annoying "repeatedly assume user is stupid" dialog boxes.
I've gone back to XP because I'm far more productive with the XP interface than Vista.
And do you have proof of the mac's slowness?
Yeah, and to make it even more fair, they could let people who've never used either O.S. review them so that OSX doesn't suffer from lack of familiarity. Unfortunately, most people reading that article already have a computer and 90%+ of them run windows. It makes sense that the review would look at things, at least partially, from the perspective of a windows user.
I'm not tired of Royale Noir yet.
Or whatever name the black theme is called.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
In Windows, you can really do configuration using GUI (and control panel).
In Ubuntu, there is some pretense of allowing GUI configuration, but below VERY THIN cover you immediately fall to need to edit usually very cryptic config files. If somebody said that this is good UI - he is an idiot. Also it is usually VERY easy to crush (and destroy) presumably solid Linux by playing with config files, and there is usually no easy way to know what you can do and what not.
My example was when I tried to use dual heads in Ubuntu. Graphic config tool simply didn't work, and after long play with not very user friendly config files and utilities dual heads finally worked (I was able to achieve this in Ubuntu, not so lucky in some other versions of Linux).
May be there exist Windows PC on which hibernate apparently doesn't work, but apparently Microsoft has done it's part of work to make hibernate work.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In Performance: ... " Vista didn't get C2D quicker than Mac OS X. Some of the Windows platform system manufacturers released C2D systems quicker than Apple did. Of course, there were also some that were slower. But if you are living on the Windows platform, you could get C2D systems quicker.
"PCs are definitely the place to go if you want the latest technology. PCs were privileged to the first Intel Core and Core 2 Duo CPUs, they've had access to high-speed wireless 802.11n wireless for some time, not to mention high-capacity Blu-ray and HD DVD drives
In Finale:
"PCs are greener than their Mac brethren. A Mac "scores badly on almost all criteria", and Apple "fails to embrace the precautionary principle, withholds its full list of regulated substances and provides no timelines for eliminating toxics polyvinyl chloride (PVC)"." Again, this is a platform issue (at best!). Pretty sure this has to do with hardware manufacturing. MS didn't harm the environment by producing Vista. But neither did Apple in producing Mac OS X.
or video that demonstrates it a little differently
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
mdfind, the command line interface to Spotlight, allows you to perform searches similar to locate only they are always up-to-date. It's also much faster than find. From 'man mdfind':
DESCRIPTION
The mdfind command consults the central metadata store and returns a list
of files that match the given metadata query. The query can be a string
or a query expression.
Very useful in conjuction with mdfind is mdls, which will display what attributes have been indexed for a given file.
If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
Unashamedly using the troll FP to get this up there, but comment readers should be aware that the summary is, in fact, wrong. (Shock horror, eh kids?)
The quote of a tie in the battle is not the last page in the article - In fact, Vista wins the contest 3-2.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Got to say, one of John Dvorak's truthful statements -- and there are some -- is that "the list" is a way to spin a story out of nothing. Thus, the "50 best," or the "10 worst." If you read the list, you see what actually happened: an editorial meeting was held, there were four or five people with their agendas, and they slap together a list out of their own preferences and fallible memories, and there it is, as if it actually meant something. The same goes for comparisons like this. Some people, those who have been using OS X for a while, will much prefer it (I agree!), whereas those who have been using Windows will prefer that. Otherwise, they'd be using the other, wouldn't they? I read somewhere where somebody thought that Windows was more "intuitive" than OS X. What were they smoking, the Mac user in me said.
So CNET held an editorial meeting, and then a photo shoot, and compared the two OSes. Is anybody surprised they found it a "tie"? They had to. They want to bring in all users, after all. But they don't want to start flame wars.
Actually, the Mac platform has the major advantage now of running OS X all you want, and then either rebooting or firing up Paralells -- or soon, VMWare -- and running Windows or Linux or what you will.
Yes, they wore wool. They also did not bathe, and lived in conditions that supported incalculable populations of fleas.
Which shows that Shakespeare would have used open source. Nobody had to explain to Elizabethans the importance of people "scratching their own itch".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Why does the author complain about OSX's positioning of menu bars? They are at the top of the screen in OSX because a window is NOT the application: something not made clear with Windows. This makes more sense when you consider apps, like IM clients, that may have very small windows. How are you going to fit 10 drop downs on top of Adium's contacts or chat window? Look at Trillium if you need an example of what devs have to go through in that situation on Windows.
It ain't just the summary, the article itself is misleading.
First off, the Greenpeace attack on Apple is acknowledged as being a sham. They even backed down on it at one point.
Second, Windows XP has the gaming performance edge, not Vista. Vista has less performance than Windows XP almost across the board, and Vista compatibility problems with hardware and games are rampant right now... AND there's a good many boards (not all of them old ones) that are never expected to have drivers updated for Vista.
If they're going to throw the match by comparing OS X against an older version of Windows, why didn't they throw in complaints about Mac OS 9 as well?
TFA cracked me up when they handed the performance point to Vista because it will be able to run the latest games better. On the IT side, OS performance is more concerned with being able to run the fully-invested body of legacy software without hiccup, not kowtowing to a planned obsolescence mentality. Not having to change boxes in eight years keeps the refresh cycles in the hands of the IT managers.
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
Do you mean that Vista has Smart Folders? I haven't used Vista, but OS X has them for sure. From the Finder simply do File --> New Smart Folder. I don't do searches often though.
I used all three and I range them in other direction.
Good to see you eating your own dog food, Steve B.