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

Win2K had better searching than XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

[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!

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[R.Mo_Robert]

I happen to like XP's Start menu a lot better than 2000's, particularly the list of the most frequently used applications. (Yes, I know you can put stuff at the top level of the old Start menu ... but not automatically--and there are no shortage of applications that abuse this privilege. XP intentionally doesn't let programs do this on the new Start menu. Plus, XP's Start menu provides easier access to My Computer, Network Places, and all that jazz without having to dig out the desktop.)

That, and you can go back to the Windows 2000-style Start menu anyway if you like in XP In fact, I think I could do that in the Visa beta I tried, unless my memory is just failing. Either way, I wouldn't call XP's Start menu "awkward."

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

He shouldn't have to turn it off. It just shouldn't be there in the first place!

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[phozz bare]

Yes, but it doesn't just pop away. No no. It licks itself, barks, wags its @*#!ing tail and walks away into the sunset, taking its time... Ah, those little things that can drive a man insane...

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[Cygfrydd]

To be quite honest, I would argue that Windows shouldn't be there in the first place. 3... 2... 1...

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[StarfishOne]

And let us not forget that this is man's best friend! Just imagine what would happen if mankind had any affection for say, ehm, paperclips! :D

Delete Key

[stewbacca]

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.

Re:Delete Key

[Anonymous Coward]

You dolt, that's because Windows users have to constantly delete spyware and other junk files. Remember to consider the context first.

Re:Delete Key

[Anonymous Coward]

So you mean precisely in the same way that Windows does it.

Fitts' Law

[Egotistical Rant]

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?

Re Searching in Windows sucks any way you slice it

[Jahz]

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 :)

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.