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Microsoft Feared Mac Vs. Vista In '05
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"
I'm sure many will remember the comparisons of the screen shots and betas for Vista vs. OS X. It was remarkable how much Vista looked like OS X. In both feature (bloat) and GUI. Microsoft is as much, if not more, to blame for the feature comparison. Redmond continued to flaunt using Cupertino as their proxy R&D. When Microsoft finally shipped the goods, the comparisons it seems, were only skin deep.
With a BSD backend, a controlled hardware architecture and the ability to run tools from all platforms via MacPorts or VMWare or Wine, Mac has shown it is not only a better user experience in th long run but a far lower maintenance computer. There are fewer problems due to the maintained hardware architecture by Apple and no viruses to speak of due to sandboxing and BSD's UNIX background.
It does hav bugs like any OS which luckily they are fairly quick to address, and they have a much faster turn around for new versions of the OS (one every year versus every 3-5 years for Windows).
Would I prefer it to be more open like Linux? Oh hell yes especially now that they are adopting HDCP and other DRM related technologies. I suspect however that the Vista fiasco and Netbooks have caused enough people to consider a switch to Linux and with Apple embracing OpenGL for game development on iPhone and iTouch, it will only be a matter of time before it is on equal footing as a game platform and openGL is equally considered thus giving Linux a footup as well; afterall, Blizzard already has admitted to having a Linux Warcraft client internally that they haven't released.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I'm getting really annoyed at the Mac commercials that constantly slam PC's.
I get the opposite reaction. I find Apple's ads cute, fun, and surprisingly truthful as Microsoft runs desperate "I'm a PC, so I'm nowhere near my computer" ads.
And the iPhone and iPod Touch ads are musical, elegant, and actually make me want to buy the device, as opposed to the other carriers' ads that show dominoes of inventory but no one doing anything cool with their phones.
It's just not worth the cost. If a computer comes with it, that's nice - I'll take it
You may come to regret that attitude, as I have. I needed to buy a new laptop (old one broke) and I considered whether I should pay extra to get a new XP license with it, but because this was an unexpected purchase I ended up deciding to save the money and go with Vista.
Big mistake.
For one thing, I discovered Vista's DPC latency is always, always worse than XP. This is a big deal for me as I record music, not professionally, but for myself and it's one of the things I use my computer for. Basically can't do it in Vista, the OS defers too many procedure calls.
And I've spent literally *days* now trying to get the OS to run the way I want it to run, figuring out what I can safely shut off and basically trying to streamline it to where I don't have a mess of useless junk running all the time and slowing down my system. (I have a ThinkPad, so I'm not talking about crapware that came pre-installed, I'm talking about Vista processes, services, etc.)
I actually ended up turning Aero off and going back to the Vista Basic interface. Aero is just tiring to look at after a while, and seems to serve no real purpose. I see no justification whatsoever for dedicating all those resources to it.
Someone said in another thread about Vista that while it's basically a functional OS, it fails at what an OS is supposed to do and that's let you run the programs you want to run without getting in the way. It is instead an impediment. It's like a spoiled child constantly begging for attention and throwing tantrums when you don't give it any. I feel like I need to babysit it all the time; I am literally working more on Vista than I am doing anything productive on my computer.
If I had it to do again, I would spend the extra money for the XP downgrade.
And Vista is faster than XP on the proper hardware
ie Dual Core, 4GB+ ram
My dual core 3ghz processor with 4gb of ram says otherwise when going from XP to Vista. Intel stuff no less with up to date drivers and also a high speed SATA drive.
File copies in XP took twice as long in Vista for files of equal size on the same hardware.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I personally think the most impressive virus was CIH, which could be considered to be zero bytes in size, due to the fact that it didn't increase the size of executables it infected. It didn't damage them either, it filled alignment gaps in the PE (.exe) file format, making the infected exe "denser" than the uninfected one. Pretty clever.
Like my customer that wanted to pipe his rush limbaugh stream through the house. to his airport express on his whole house audio system.
Installing airfoil and running it gives a big vista "YOU ARE A MEDIA THIEF!!! HELP! HELP!" warning message.
It still works because airfoil get's around the silly Vista protected audio path, but it angers this very rich man.
I told him that he should consider downgrading to XP or moving to a Mac as Vista does nothing for him except get in his way.
He called us last friday looking for a company t hat can downgrade all his machines to XP. I sold him a raft of OEM XP Pro licenses and the required hardware to make it legal to downgrade them, and a phone number of a very good tech that can do it for him without loss of data.
I'm guessing they will never upgrade to Vista at the company he owns now....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not necessarily. MacOS X, 10.2 was faster than 10.1, and 10.3 faster than 10.2, on the same hardware. It wasn't until 10.4 that you actually started seeing a performance hit on G3 and slower G4 computers.
In any event, I'm not sure that I'd call the jump from 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 'major iterations'.
In any event, I'm sure you don't know what you're talking about. The full list of features in each iteration was astounding. The difference between 10.1 and 10.2 was of the order of those between Win 2k and Win XP. The fact that they update minor version numbers doesn't change the fact that they add enough to call it a major iteration.
Don't believe me? Check out for yourself on wikipedia: 10.1 10.2 and 10.3. Thank you, come again.
Of Code And Men