Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All
cremou brulee writes "Redmond's photocopiers have been unusually busy for the last couple of years, with the result that Windows 7 copies a lots of Mac OS X features. First and foremost among these is the Dock, which has been unceremoniously ripped off in Windows 7's new Taskbar. Or has it? Ars Technica has taken an in-depth look at the history and evolution of the Taskbar, and shows just how MS arrived at the Windows 7 'Superbar.' The differences between the Superbar and the Dock are analyzed in detail. The surprising conclusion? 'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'"
I always wondered how they turned photocopies into code.
but is it better?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
every Mac application is an MDI application, only the outer "application" window is always maximized and always transparent, with its menu always at the top of the screen.
The crux of the issue is that the Mac UI (and the NEXTSTEP UI) has always been application-centric from day 1. All multi-document Mac applications work in the same way: Alt+Tab to switch applications, Alt+` to switch documents.
Document-centric UIs, on the other hand, don't scale well, and that has led both the Windows OS and its applications to try to fake it one way or another, by grouping task bar icons, staying alive in the sys-tray, etc.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
I mean everybody has their fanboys, but what is up with all the Windows astroturfing lately? Not just random blogs here and there, but on slashdot, the last bastion of journalistic integrity and safety from MS shills. (for the sarcasm impaired, yeah, it's in there.)
..the article in one sentence:
Mac OSX displays a button for each application open, and Win7 displays a button for each document that is open and then groups them by application.
nah! that's not the same at all!
Remember vista boxes being sold with pictures of Mac OS? Now they can use real screenshots of windows and STILL confuse users.
Normally Ars stuff is pretty good, but that article is *very* ordinary, with a lot of conceptual, functional and historical errors.
The main thrust is correct, however, the Windows 7 Taskbar is clearly a descendant of its Windows 95 Great-great-grandfather, not the bastard child of NeXT and MacOS.
It waddles. It quacks. It's a camel!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This is how the article read to me: cockballs fuckshit windows lickass apple poopsperm paradigm groinsocket different all in all, most obvious comparison ever; thanks for the information everyone already knows.
Windows 7 - KDE4 for Windows ~
'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'
If by that he means to say that "the way it looks, feels and acts" are not important criteria for comparing the Mac OS X dock and Windows 7's Superbar, then I have to agree with him completely and whole-heartedly. I imagine the source code of each are completely different right?
Windows 7 'Superbar.'
I'm going to get rich when I invent a machine that lets me stab people in the face over the internet.
Except there wont be anyone to run my marketing campaign :(
Not that one should take at face value what Microsoft or Apple announce at their conferences, but in their developer conference the MS guys explained this evolutionary path. I saw several videos about it around the time.
The underlying tech is quite different between the Dock and the Taskbar, also they have similar but not equal philosopies behind them. I have been using XP's toolbars in pretty much the way Microsoft has done with the Taskbar.
+Raider of the lost BBS
That is FAR AND AWAY the best post on the Internet..EVER. Can I subscribe to get updates on your Internet-face-stabbing machine??
We arrived at the pretty much same place after starting somewhere else, so that makes it very, very, very, very different. Very.
Yes, the fundamental philosophy each inherited is different, but in effect at the 'dock' or 'taskbar' representation, Windows 7 and OSX end up presenting things similarly.
He makes the point that the OSX dock is for applications and that Windows is for each window, though Microsoft is heavily encouraging grouping that makes it seem as much like the dock as possible. True, in Windows this can be turned off, but that doesn't do anything to disprove the intent is to acheive the model the Dock presents. He says that when you close the last application window, it dissapears from the taskbar. The issue there is it behaves the same on Windows 7 and OSX, if an application exits, then the dock icon or taskbar presennce will disappear unless persistantly set.
He mentions things like the presence of the notification area as proof of difference, but all it really proves is that MS had a few different design ideas as they went and they must support all of them as a consequence.
Just like WindowMaker largely deals with non-GNUstep applications and makes them seem NeXT like through some of the best window group identifying methods in an X system, Windows is trying to fight clutter by removing quicklaunch and taskbar redundancy, and enabling the taskbar presence to be manipulated to replace system tray presence.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
can't believe I just read that.
Did Digg get a /. make-over, or vice-versa...?
Dark Reflection
Super Bar....Awesome Bar... can't they come up with they're own names?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Sorry everyone, Wendy's had the Superbar long before anyone else.
Seriously though, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Who gives a shit if the "Superbar" looks like the "Dock" or if one car looks like another or if three movies came out this year with suspiciously similar premises.
A product like that would sell itself.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The first thing i saw when looking at the task bar was KDE 4.
Source.
http://www.bash.org/?4281
Why didn't the author of the Ars Technica piece write it in such a way that we are in position to easily zoom the graphics? All detail is buried in tiny [un-zoom-able] sizes! I am not happy at all. Heck these are not the nineties.
I would like to believe an OSS equivalent might be called "Open Bar",
but experience tells me it would be named something impenetrable like
"SpackleMonkey" or a difficult to pronounce word from a long dead language.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did they copy it? Did they not? Do I care?
Is it useful? Does it do what it should? Does it make my work easier? That's what I care about. There are things that are clever. And, bluntly, I'd rather have them copy a good concept than come up with a completely moronic one (Office 2007, I'm looking your way!) just to be "different", just to have nobody claim they "Xeroxed something else".
Honestly, why should I care whether Windows, Mac, KDE, Gnome or whoever else copies anything from whoever? Ain't the damn patent lawyers not busy enough already, do we have to start with the same crap? What I care about is whether the system is reliable, fast and easy to use. Where they got the idea for it, I do not care.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Super? Just "super"? Firefox has an AWESOME bar! SUCK IT, REDMOND!!!!!11
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Why is it called Windows 7? The last Windows with a proper version number was 3.11. Since then there's been: 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, and Vista. By my count that puts the next version at 10 (or X in roman numerals, what a coincidence). To make the next version 7, we'd have to disregard three of the above. Certainly ME because... well, just because. Probably 2000 because it wasn't a "home" product. And finally Vista because... see ME?
Windows has a recycling bin but Apple still has trash.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Windows never had an "application switcher". It was always a window switcher. It just seemed like an application switcher when the processes all consistently only put up one top level window.
Software Inventor
For as long as I remember now, I've wanted a way to do the following with the Windows Taskbar:
1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open
2. Send windows to background taskbars (desktops), so I could be using different sets of apps at once
Hopefully they could add some minor usability features like this; I feel like I'm regularly working against the taskbar to get things done.
The windows taskbar has long had the quicklaunch bar, as well as the ability to add other folders as toolbars pointing to whatever folder. So it has been both a application launcher (you could set large icons too) and a window manager for a long time. This goes way back. Now it seems the application launcher areas of the taskbar are less limited. Considering this, the changes in Windows 7 are only a very small step in the direction of the OSX Dock.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
the only feature I like is the ability to drag tasks around on the bar and that is currently available in vista with third party applications
I also dislike grouping as it increases the latency of switching to different tasks, it kills the ordering of tasks in spatial memory, prevents clustering related tasks together (browser window, explorer window, some other task all being used in one activity, other tasks being used for other things). the problem the taskbar has with spatial memory is that it crushes tasks as you open more and more of them and the only hack job to fix it is to use a double height taskbar but with that said it's better than the horrible windows 7 model
icons are of course much less descriptive than text for different windows and hovering thumbnails requires fishing to find the right one. grouping all tasks of the same type under one icon is a way to solve this however it completely ruins the idea above of different tasks being related to the actual activity you are doing on the computer, ordered in any logical way, rather than grouping stuff just because it's the same application
in other words the windows 7 system is perfect for people who don't know how to use a computer, severely suboptimal for anyone who knows what they are doing and wants to be efficient
Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All
C'mon, this has to be flamebait. The article pointed out some differences, and mainly tried to make the window-centric-vs-application-centric distinction we all know about already. It didn't say that they "weren't so similar after all", because that's clearly false.
The new taskbar is nice and it has a couple of features that the dock doesn't have and probably won't ever pick up. Specifically, the window thumbnails and the fact that "jump lists" (aka contextual menus) stay behind even when the app is closed.
I'm not accusing MS of taking ideas. I am accusing them of taking too long to implement what was the optimal solution to a design problem. Having an icon on the desktop, in the start menu, the quick launch bar, and possibly the notification area...none of which correspond to the actual open windows, which are instead listed in the task bar: stupid. Not that anyone these days has a problem with it, but still, from a design standpoint it's wasteful and annoying.
Ars is fishing for objectivity points here, and at best is running this as a dog-bites-man story (that is, "we know the new taskbar acts like the dock, and MS has a history of playing catch-up in this area, but you'll be surprised at what we think is the truth"). The fact that the headline on Slashdot exaggerates this further pisses me off quite a bit.
If it looks like the dock, walks like the dock, and quacks like the dock...you know the rest.
The pure BS is it is a complete copy. It isn't. Nice troll Mr Coward, I'd mod you flamebait if it wasn't too late.
Win7 taskbar is not a straight cut copy of OSXs Dock. It has become a little Dockish, but your forgetting quicklaunch has been part of this for a long long time, you can even have large pretty icons with it. It seems to me the boundaries between Quicklaunch, task managerment and the tray have been removed. This does make it Dock like, but these staples of the windows taskbar have been there a long time, predating the Dock by a long way.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The obvious change in the new Windows Taskbar is that there are icons for non-running-applications. I don't care how you try to word it, that is the major difference between the OSX Dock and the Windows Taskbar. So Damn right it is copying it.
But is that really bad? Yes they copied good ideas, and perhaps made their own improvements to it. But that is how we get better software! Is this somehow wrong when Microsoft does it? You mean you really want Look & Feel Patents and Lawsuits? Don't be idiotic!
And the Microsoft astroturfers should not be showing such knee-jerk stupid reactions. Why not say *proudly* "we copied good ideas and improved on them even more!" instead of convoluted arguments that somehow they did not copy it.
...what did you expect?
Part of the reason I'm moderately optimistic about this OS (other than the improved performance over Vista that I've seen in beta) is that I've seen from reading their RSS feed that they actually have been listening to feedback and are attempting to incorporate a lot of it.
It stands to reason that if a large number of users likes the functionality of a particular taskbar function from a particular OS that they would provide feedback, when asked, to development programs for other OS that would might lead the developers in the same direction. Same goal, different path.
I had the same feeling, but once I tried the beta I was surprised at how much I liked it. There is still a clear distinction between what's running and what's not, but now it's more like an app having an on/off switch than being listed in one place if it's not running and two if it is.
Then again, I've long since gotten used to the way Macs do it, which is very similar. You may very well end up not liking it but I think it's worth your consideration. I was actually more annoyed by the changes to the notification area.
But I agree with the general statement...they should stick to one model. One window is one application. Great. I'm weird in that I actually like MDI. I hate how Excel does it, where I have to guess whether or not my workbook is in a child window or a brand new parent, since the task bar doesn't make it clear. Makes dragging and dropping individual spreadsheets into a workbook a huge hassle, and I've long since given up on trying to explain it to the users I support.
Oh, it's not a Superbra? I'm no longer interested in this article.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Thanks, botha yas. I was trying to be funny ;)
Actually, I thought it was by server kernel on the NT side (with "workstation" versions like NT had) so that Win2K was NT5, Win2KSP4/XP NT5.1, Server2K3/XPSP2 NT5.2, Server2K3R2/Vista NT6, and Server2K8/Win7 as NT7. But hey, how many angels *can* you get to dance on the head of that pin?
Irish by birth, Southern by the Grace of God.
I was using a dock in WindowMaker before I saw OS X -- WindowMaker was, of course, "inspired" by the same source in NextStep.
The difference is, the dock is not only about running applications, it's meant to just be about applications. So, if I want to go to the Web, I click Firefox (or Safari), and if it's open, I get a window of it. If it's not open, it opens, and I get a window of it. I no longer have to think about whether stuff is open or not.
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
But I digress...
It's not just grouping windows. After all, you can still minimize a window on OS X, and it will become its own Dock icon. And you can put other things on the Dock.
No, it's all about mirroring the way users actually think, which is "I want to go to iTunes", and then "I want to go to Word", not "I want to launch iTunes" or "I want to find the running iTunes window" or "I want to close iTunes, then open Word". They want to go to iTunes until they want to go to something else.
Once they're in Word, then they can think about which document they want to open or find -- but an intelligent application could even hide that. Autosave with a near-infinite, persistent undo stack, and frequent backups, is much better, I think, than save/revert.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If I picked up anything from Nintendo, UltraBar is the next logical step.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Haven't "docks" been in use since BEFORE Microsoft introduced theirs with Windows 98?
Cases in point, NeXT OS, and IBM's OS/2 4 Warp, both used docks (a dock launch bar in NeXT's case, and a task bar launch bar in the case of OS/2. The Mac OS only picked this up as an official feature with OSX, while before that, you had to run a 3rd party app to simulate NeXT OS' docks (at least back in 1992 with System 7 on).
If one was to claim copying was made, then didn't Apple swipe their docks from NeXT OS (yeah, that was also Jobs' baby), and for that matter, didn't Microsoft in fact swipe their quick launch bar from OS/2 4 Warp?
And before any Mac fans mod this down in an effort to try and rewrite history, remember that the original Mac interface itself was swiped from Xerox PARC. They admitted to it themselves, and after introducing it to the mainstream, the idea of moving an arrow back and forth between graphical icons pretty much became the defacto standard.
It's that, or spend the rest of your life using CLI for *everything*.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Microsoft copied the recycle icon from NeXTstep which of course became Mac OS X.
http://www.andrewnotarian.com/blog/images/win95nextStep.gif
Good point. Gnome should change "move to trash" to "compost file."
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
I'm only going to go off of the one thing you said.
No text?! That was something I heard over and over being complained about with OS X's dock. And then I saw that Microsoft decided to do the same for Windows 7's taskbar. WTF?!
I'll admit it. I've floated through multiple OS X like docks in my Linux desktop (Avant, Cairo-dock, kiba-dock, that one for KDE I can't remember the name of, etc.). I've even used the fancy Expose-like features that have come out on Linux as something of a task switching application. But I *ALWAYS* have wanted to see my text on a taskbar--even blackbox's only the one application on the bar at a time was satisfactory compared to only icons, in my opinion. Currently, I'm in OpenBox. I have xcompmgr running, allowing me to use Cairo-dock (currently the least annoying to me, as I use it really only as a launcher for my most common apps), but I still also have pypanel or another equivalent up. Why? Sure, I don't honestly use either one for managing my applications. Honestly, I've stuck happily with keeping my apps organized over the virtual desktops in such a way that the taskbar is almost never used. But take it away, and suddenly I feel completely lost. Take out the text, and I feel just as lost.
Why have they taken out the text? :( It's really depressing to me, and though I rarely use Windows any more, gives me one more reason to use it even less. And I know you can put the text back, but then it looks ridiculous IMHO unless you also make the icons smaller. So, two settings I have to change from the default, when alternatives make it so I can just start it up and the default is good enough to not annoy the shit out of me? I'm no fan of Windows, but this just depresses me. KDE 4's fat default taskbar depresses me as well, but that's a side note.
...if it's a copied concept or not? Tell me if it's better.
Horses and sea horses...coincidence? I think not! (Actually, I do think it is a coincidence. But it is pretty weird that an undersea creature would resemble a land mammal from the neck up [from a squinty distance] to the degree they do.) Meh. Today it's taskbars...in a few years it'll be "oh, so-and-so's 3-D holographic touch-space looks oh-so-much Apple's holographic touch-space". Xerox-X-Apple-Microsoft...the eye candy beat goes on.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
You needed to use Spaces. Group any number of applications and windows into the same or adjacent spaces, then use control-arrows or control-numbers to immediately jump into the correct space.
See: Confessions of a Space-o-holic
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I should have noted that I don't mean to compare OpenBox to the Windows interface... to me, they're very difficult to compare--OpenBox is meant to be light, fast, and not full of these nice features, meaning the fact that I then have to have other applications running is kind of a given. I was simply using it to compare what's more ideal (at least for the likes of me) to what they've done with Windows 7.
http://i42.tinypic.com/fku16w.jpg
"Copied" from KHTML? Not really. It was a fork and WebKit is still open source. You might as well claim that every Linux distro out there is a copy of the original.
And gee, what holds a lot of people up from buying a Mac? That's right, software compatibility! Now, what could you do with a modern Mac that could circumvent that issue? Hmmmm, I wonder? Seriously, rub two braincells together for two seconds and figure it out.
And why don't you move out of your parent's basement and stop being an obnoxious, typical, keyboard warrior-tough guy O' the internet?
Shouldn't that be Bar 64?
And the Xerox Alto. Sure, it didn't have a fancy taskbar, or many of the features of todays GUIs, but it is still the paradigm from which nearly every current GUI has spawned from thus far.
Yes, the "Superbar" and the OSX Dock aren't terribly original, but they are quite useful evolutions of the idea. I'm pretty sure I remember that many pundits were saying that the Dock was ripping off Windows when it first turned up on the OSX Public Beta in late 2000.
Now, it seems that the Mouse, Icon and Window GUI is approaching it's logical conclusion, that there isn't much else you can add without making things more complicated than they need to be. The Big Two aren't really innovating so much anymore, rather they're fine-tuning and optimizing their existing products as much as possible rather than adding feature bloat. Both have evolved into very similar products with regards to "look & feel", functionality and performance.
Who will really create a completely new way of interacting with data that really works? Multi-touch looks promising, but needs new ideas and refinement. Voice recognition is still pretty weak, it has improved steadily with increase in computing power. With todays processing power and connectivity, isn't it time for something as radical as graphics and a mouse were in the times of text based computing?
Correct, although SpackleMonkey seems appropriate, they have chosen Avant Window Navigator http://awn-project.org/
Are we still arguing over Windows supposedly copying OS X?
Who cares anymore :/
Is your monitor really that reflective, AC?
I would like to believe an OSS equivalent might be called "Open Bar",
but experience tells me it would be named something impenetrable like
"SpackleMonkey" or a difficult to pronounce word from a long dead language.
*Ahem*, that would be GNU/SpackleMonkey thank you very much. Except under Debian, where it's GNU/TotallyunspackledWeasel.
..the article in one sentence:
Mac OSX displays a button for each application open, and Win7 displays a button for each document that is open and then groups them by application.
nah! that's not the same at all!
If you right click, click and hold, or control click on an open app in the dock, it will show you a context menu with all open documents.
it IS a ripoff of the dock. I hope apple sues microsoft and seizes the bulk of their assets.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I know most people didn't like it in Vista, but I'm curious what they did with the sidebar in Windows 7... I know they renamed it to "desktop gadget gallery" and the gadgets appear on your desktop now without a dedicated "bar". I've read that the gadgets will only be visible on the desktop or floating over other windows. The floating thing definitely seems like it would be annoying, as I don't want crap floating over the part of the window I'm trying to read. The way I have my sidebar configured, it reserves the edge of the screen so when you maximize a window it only fills up to the sidebar and leaves it visible at all times. That way I have nice things like a big clock, network/cpu/ram gauge, current ip address, etc always at hand, like in this example. I really hope they didn't remove the ability to do this.
Guess I'll just have to install the beta and try the Win7 beta out for myself. I keep hearing good things about it and I already like Vista, so Windows 7 must be pretty nifty.
every Mac application is an MDI application, only the outer "application" window is always maximized and always transparent, with its menu always at the top of the screen.
Why do you think so? The Mac always - since Macintosh 128k - supported window independent menu bars. Certainly I never created any transparent windows.
Document-centric UIs, on the other hand, don't scale well, and that has led both the Windows OS and its applications to try to fake it one way or another, by grouping task bar icons, staying alive in the sys-tray, etc.
Document-centric is the natural way for humans to work. Everything else has been trained upon us like you can train a left handed person to write with the right hand.
Don't believe me? Well have you ever started Acrobat-Reader just for the fun of it? No - you want to read a PDF! Apart from system tools everything out there is about documents of one type or another.
Okay, the Internet-face-stab machine is quickly becoming a meme around here. Is there a Wikipedia page in place yet? Because if not, there should be. I look forward to tracking the spread of this meme, especially if it should become a reality :)
So you start iTunes just for the fun of it? Interesting. I usually want to play some Music and iTunes is just the means to do it.
Note that I once used OS/2 which had a different approach: You would not launch applications at all. You would double click documents and the application would launch for you.
Ok, you can do that any OS these days. But there was a difference here. The reason why you would not do that with i.E. music is that Finder does not browse music folders all that well. In OS/2 an application could/should provide a plug in for the Workplace Shell (the Finder equivalent) to make browsing easy.
And then you have true document centric interface where applications are just there in the background. But this won't happen ever - and for vanity reasons. Vanity? - Yes: Have you ever noticed how many icons the Acrobat-Reader installs on a Windows system? And have you ever used one of these? I don't - I double click PDF files. Vanity - there are just there for Adobe to show off.
So... they are not the same because in OSX a buttonclick opens a document and in Windows 7 it starts an application. And when closing a windows in OSX you don't close the application.
That seems to me more that you are listing differences between OSX and Windows 7 architecture, not between the dock and the sidebar.
And they're missing the "group similar taskbar buttons" on XP. That's not just a Vista feature.
But well, I still assume they are as similar to eachother as Linux is based on SCO Unix.
Worse... it's called AWN or Avant Windows Navigator.
The earliest version of Risc-Os had a taskbar. It is copied by Apple, Microsoft and any recent GUI developer on the planet.
Ernst
Yes. Apple took away the option to have a matte screen.
Windows needs a window for each application, and this need doesn't go away just because there are no documents open. So, Word has little choice but to display this ugly application window. There's simply nowhere for the application to exist without having a windowâ"the window is the application.
Um I thought a lot of apps would run in the background without a window (e.g., filesharing tools that stay in the tray after closed, skype, winamp, etc).
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
If they'd done that properly, i.e. create the blank file, AND auto-opened the application, so you can just work right away, I think it would be a great improvement.
Which is almost what OS/2 did. You could have so called templates - when you double clicked them a new document based on the template would open. When you dragged and dropped them a new document would be created at the destination. A bit like the "New Printer" icon on windows.
Need you own Template. Easy: prepare a document with the desired content and then mark it as template. The mark would be added to the extended attributes of the document - no special extension needed - works with any application as the whole mechanism was provided by the Workplace Shell.
Yes, it's really not copied from MacOS X this time, it's from KDE!
http://www.internetling.com/2008/12/29/windows-7-the-kde-3-5-wannabe/
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
this won't happen ever - and for vanity reasons. Vanity? - Yes: Have you ever noticed how many icons the Acrobat-Reader installs on a Windows system?
Are you seriously suggesting this won't happen because Adobe is so vain about the number of icons they use? I must be missing something.
Not just Adobe - all of them! They create far more icons then needed on installation. Desktop, quickstart, top level start menu, bottom level start menu and last not least a "quick start" icon.
Acrobat-Reader is just a perfect example of those useless vanity icons. Because with Acrobat-Reader none of them are needed. With Acrobat-Reader all you ever do is reading PDFs and you do so by double clicking the icon an existing PDF. I for once never ever clicked any of those Acrobat-Reader icons. OK, one exception: To drag them into the trash can.
Still Acrobat-Reader comes with all of them!
So what are they good for? Only thing I can think of: The remind the user that he / she has Adobe Acrobat Reader installed.
Thanks; whatever the next piece of software I write is; its called SpackleMonkey now!
Come surely in Slashdot thinking this article is missing a "yeah right" tag?!?!?
Mods: :)
Please kindly mod this up if you agree!
(and well have a sense of humor also!
"SpackleMonkey" or a difficult to pronounce word from a long dead language.
"we shall call it ghoti!"
The OS X dock violates most of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. It's not "Mac Like", unless you expand the definition of "Mac Like" to include "looks cool". Which Steve Jobs might want to do, but I don't.
It's a huge step backwards from the NeXT dock and shelf, as well.
So the ONLY distinctive thing that matters about the dock is, well, how it looks. And that's also the only distinctive thing about the new Windows task bar. And, damn, they look the same.
Or at least pick Good names to copy?
As their IE demonstrated, the apps have *some* control over their taskbar presentation. I don't know if it is as flexible as Dock though. So Win7 may see more apps doing stuff like that in the taskbar instead of resorting to tray icons.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But Amiga Os had trashcans in 1985, a year before next step was started, docks/taskbars/process lists have been around since the early days of computing, tweaking their functionality slightly doesn't mean you have invented something, or stolen something either.
Microsoft copied the recycle icon from NeXTstep which of course became Mac OS X.
http://www.andrewnotarian.com/blog/images/win95nextStep.gif
Are you fucking kidding me?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recycling_symbol.svg
Let me guess, the international community adopted that symbol because it was in the almighty NeXT?
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/KDE+4.3+new+plasma-panel?content=96882
I'm in the same boat. I would never ever go back to windows (and I was paid to develop software for windows).
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I still can't see the fascination with these things, unless used only for applets. As a launcher, they are horrible, and a context menu on a desktop is much more efficient and easy to use and navigate. Same thing goes for 'panels'. Wharf, and the windowmaker dock, at least are useful as a place to put monitoring tools.
I've noticed this in linux lately too. I've used windowmaker for years, but it's just not keeping up with integration with gnome and such. Oh well.
Docks suck. Can we have context menus on the desktop back please?
I don't care too much about the other features in Windows 7 but these are the two things that I need:
Quick Launch Bar
Up button in windows explorer
Without these I will find it very difficult to migrate (I launch almost all my apps from the quick launch and use the up button religiously - particularly on notebooks).
It is a complete usability nightmare.
And the experts tend to agree.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
Windows 7 taskbar is exactly like OSX taskbar, only different.
In reality all the other ones (OSX, KDE, WindowMaker, GDesklett, etc.) actually work.
The more people like Ars Technica tell them what's wrong with their beta products unleashed on the general public as usable products, the more Microsoft f&cks up those products trying to fix them. Most Microsoft end users just want Microsoft to finish making a stable and usable ANYTHING.
I say things which affects my Karma negatively. (and I don't care) For instance; All religion is false.
If the core OS sucks moose-balls, a souped up task bar ain't gonna help. If goofy crap like the registry is still there (etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum) Windows 7 will still suck.
Quickly BECOMING a meme? AFAIK, it's been a meme since before the bash quote even; first time I saw it was that picture that's been on the internet FOREVER with a man praying, "Dear Lord, please grant me the ability to punch people in the face over standard TCP/IP." If today is the first time you've seen it, you should get out more. Er... in more.
You must be new here, is what I'm trying to say.
I have always been in the habit of setting view >> large icons in the quick launch.
This is my only wish (have not tried the beta yet, perhaps this is possible) is to have the possibility to clone the taskbar, or strech it, over multiple monitors. I know there are third party apps that do this, but that's not an ideal solution. The way the OSX dock works is great on multiple monitors, why is this so hard on windows?
I think the dock has been hyper-analyzed--to the point of diminishing returns. The fact is you use it, the way it is designed, with a little bit of customization. You learn to use it the way it works instead of how you might want it to work...too bad. While this sounds like a deal-breaker, it has such surprising little impact on one's daily work flow, it is practically a non-issue.
What is more interesting about the linked article is the problematic way Windows handles multiple files open in the same application versus the way Apple does. I've never been able to pin-point what it is about Window that just wrecks a non-geek work flow until this article. It is laughable at how poorly Microsoft has tackled this (self-created) problem and astonishing they haven't unified the way apps handle multiple documents, even though they've had 13 years and six or seven version to do so.
'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'
I guess the Zune also is not iPod-like in any important way, right? Except for the (very nice I must say) small screenshots of an opened application with multiple windows, the rest is so much similar... The good thing is that this will make Apple improve its dock in Snow Leopard!
"and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'"
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Unfortunately, the Creative Zen had a side scroll wheel years earlier that you'd scroll up and down to scroll through songs and click in to select etc. etc. The wheel on the iPod is different only in that you move your finger round the wheel straight on rather than having a physical wheel you scroll up and down- the concept is identical, only the implementation is different.
Yes, the "concept" of a wheel to scroll through lists is the same. But the physical experience of the interface is actually quite different. On an edge-contact scroll wheel, you can only move the list as far as the length of your thumb (or finger) pad before you have to pick up and reposition. This limits how fast you can move through the list. On a flat-contact scroll wheel, you can scroll through an infinite list continuously, which is faster. And (crucial detail) the iPod software actually scrolls the list faster the faster you move your finger (the relationship between fingertip speed and scroll speed is not linear).
The real predecessors to the iPod scroll wheel, at least physically, are the scroll wheels used in the video industry for fine frame scrolling. Like the iPod these were flat-contact wheels that allowed continuous smooth scrolling for as long as you wanted. They just were physically moving parts as opposed to a touch-sensitive surface like the iPod.
I won't claim that Apple is an amazing inventor for what they did with the iPod. I will say that they did a very good job tweaking and combining existing ideas to produce a very compelling product. Yvon Chouinard draws a difference between invention (the creation of new ideas) and innovation (the application of inventions to create a good product). By that definition I would say that Apple is an innovator.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'd half expect Microsoft to rename the SuperBar to "Genius Bar" at launch, given their proclivity to copy Apple whenever possible.
... taskbars.
Not to be a linux fanboy, but with multiple desktops I've yet to even look at the taskbar in linux.
May it be.. WinBar? where-the-windows-hide-when-are-not-in-useBar? UbberBar? I agree with you theres plenty of options.
The obvious change in the new Windows Taskbar is that there are icons for non-running-applications. I don't care how you try to word it, that is the major difference between the OSX Dock and the Windows Taskbar. So Damn right it is copying it.
The taskbar in Windows XP on my work PC has a number of icons for non-running-applications. They are in the Quicklaunch area right next to the Start button. I put them there by dragging the icons, just like adding an app to the Dock in OS X on my Macbook Pro.
The big difference is that OS X mixes running and non-running app icons in a user-defined order, while the XP taskbar is segregated into distinct zones--the "quicklaunch" area, the "window tracking" area, the "clock-calendar-and-notifications" area, etc.
Personally I think Apple's way is much better, so I'm glad to see Windows moving that way too.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Innovation isn't taking an idea out of nothing. Innovation is doing something that hasn't been done before. The difference between a side-scroll wheel and the front wheel on the iPod was night and day. The difference between the iphone's touch screen and UI compared to a Treo is night-and-fucking-day.
I'd imagine if someone developed a time-machine you'd say they just built off of Einstein's work. It's true, but it means you completely missed the point.
"Redmond's photocopiers have been unusually busy for the last couple of years, with the result that Windows 7 copies a lots of Mac OS X features."
I am not a windows fanboy but starting an item with this really makes me think the author is a mac-fanboy and not worth reading. Couldn't you start with something less provactive?
The starting premise is that, even though everyone thinks Windows 7's taskbar is cloning the Dock, it's not. It then goes on for several pages explaining the history of Windows' document management. ...and that's it. Somehow, explaining the history of the taskbar for several pages is supposed to be enough to convince you that the Windows 7 taskbar is not a clone of the Dock, even though it tries to behave the same way as the Dock.
Seriously, there's no real explanation of any differences between the Windows 7 taskbar and the Dock. You're just supposed to accept that they're not the same because of the history of the Windows taskbar that was given over the last several pages.
I don't get it.
Gee, MS has a UI that uses a mouse, "windows" on the screen, and a central "dock" to arrange icons for both currently open and frequently used programs. That sounds like a feature that only Apple... and IBM... and Next... and Sun... and SGI... and KDE... and GNOME... and WindowMaker... and OpenStep... and LiteStep for Windows... and AfterStep... and everyone else in the desktop computer market in the last 25 years has done.
I don't care much for MS as a company. This is far from a unique idea, though, and I wish people would focus on things like anticompetitive price arrangements, coercive bundling agreements with OEMs, and such rather than MS and Apple both having seen the same sort of thing in another competitor's UI before.
Awesomebar!?!?
I seem to recall that stats (released for an anniversary I think) showed that more Win boxen than any other type access ./
They should print your browser string in the comment title ...
What's the recycling part supposed to mean. I understand the trash and retrieving from the trash metaphor .. but recycling?
Does some crawler come around and take your files away and turn them into new documents??
I thought it looks like the KDE4 one...
Well, I struck a nerve there! :-)
---
Anonymous company communication can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.
"I suppose that I came to the conclusion that I wasn't "metrosexual" enough to use a Mac."
You could be a little "metromactual"...
(as of 2009-01-23, time 1449 PST, a search i performed in Google returned no hits...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
a facile analysis of the windows taskbar will do just fine
I don't think that's exactly accurate.
Not in this context. It was not a settled-once-and-for-all decision, it was a your-contract-covered-it decision. The judge didn't find anything additional that they copied in MSW3 to be infringing, didn't find any reason the agreement relative to MSW1 should not apply to MSW3, etc.
MS and Apple later agreed to exchange tech. But that agreement also has limits.
New suits could definitely filed, if Apple saw something they thought was sufficiently flagrant.
Not that they will in this case.
I still don't really understand why Apple stood by and never got after Microsoft for all the cut-and-paste copying of actual code. Did the agreement relative to MSW1 allow that?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I love how someone will write a post full of insults, devoid of facts, and packed with facile immaturity - then when it gets modded down, can only blame some vague 'conspiracy' that has picked out some nameless nobody to mod down.
Pretending that people modding you down for your opinion only tells everyone else that you're so full of yourself, you can't conceive that your opinion might be disagreed with unless someone was paid to do so.
You're not that fucking important. Get over yourself.
The recycling metaphor is certainly more similar to what's actually happening and in my opinion it's also more intuitive by a very large measure. This is the first time I've encountered the idea that a garbage can is more obvious (not that I've gone looking for this idea). I figured undelete was similar to recycling a file rather than fishing it out of a recycling bin or garbage can.
most boring write up which was supposed to be insightful. summary: write anything about mac n windows you will get 507+ comments
Um, ever heard of the AwesomeBar?
CMD+` to switch
Which is really idiotic, because not all keyboard layouts have " ` " as a regular key, thus requiring the user to do complex multi finger "meta-alt-control-shift"-style combinations.
Same goes for tabs switching ( CMD + { or } ). ...I want my Linux back ! Waaah !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I figured undelete was similar to recycling a file [...]
Because you break it down into its component parts and make something else from it?