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Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All

Posted by timothy on from the this-comparison-is-not-like-the-others dept.

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.'"

19 of 545 comments (clear)

  1. The real difference is that by gravos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:The real difference is that by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      every Mac application is an MDI application, only the outer "application" window is always maximized and always transparent

      I don't know how clear that is to some of us, but regardless of how one switches windows or applications using hotkeys, the Mac windowing system (as the article makes clear) is essentially document-centric - each window corresponds (with some exceptions) to a document, which is sort of why closing the last document window doesn't terminate the application - i.e. it doesn't make this assumption, since your next action might be to open a new document.

      This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from. It does at least make for a more compact menu than that huge thing we see in recent MSOffice versions, which has obvious advantages if you are using a laptop.

  2. so, to summarize... by Cyko_01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ..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!

    1. Re:so, to summarize... by spoco2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And Windows never had a TASKBAR with BUTTONS for APPLICATIONS before Mac even had a dock.

      Noooo.

      For god's sake, grow up, OSX is not some holy friggen grail of OSes that everyone copies you know.

    2. Re:so, to summarize... by calmofthestorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But when Apple copies something it's innovation. When Microsoft does it, it's child porn.

      --
      93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
    3. Re:so, to summarize... by spectre_240sx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Personally, I don't necessarily care if one company copies a good idea that another company has. What I don't like is when that company comes out and acts as if they were the first ones to have the idea and that it's better than anyone else's. Going a step farther, if they bastardize what they're copying and still proclaim its greatness, that's just utter bullshit.

    4. Re:so, to summarize... by wish+bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      God, I don't know what I'd do without Expose nowdays. On my windows machine I compensate by having a few huge screens that I leave everything scattered around. But Expose + Spaces works much quicker for me, especially with limited screen real estate.

      --
      lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
    5. Re:so, to summarize... by Xest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's funny because it's true.

      I find the iPod's wheel is often described as a revolutionary peice of design and used as an example of the amazing things Apple does.

      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.

      If anyone truly believes Apple is some great innovator and that there ideas didn't stem from existing ideas then they're pretty oblivious to how just about all businesses work. Apple did what Apple do well, they made the idea popular, making it popular doesn't necessarily mean they innovated and invented in the first place though.

      The usual hypocritical response by what I can only call the extremist element of the set of all Mac fans would probably be "the wheel is different because it's used front on therefore it's innovation" but to take that stance the hypocrisy is that one could equally argue that the Windows 7 sidebar is different enough to be classed as innovation rather than immitation then also, which you can be sure the most extreme of Mac fans simply would not accept. When they're forced into a corner of applying the same principles to Microsoft as to Apple or choosing hypocrisy, they choose hypocrisy.

      I don't hate Apple, I don't hate people who love Apple, I hate people who can't be objective and realise things for what they are.

    6. Re:so, to summarize... by mdarksbane · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Obviously it's an evolution, but it's a big one.

      Scrolling on the front wheel is a single continuous motion. On a side scroll wheel you have to stop, come back, and scroll again.

      Innovation doesn't meant that no one thought of pieces leading up to something, it means you made some jump in how those pieces were used that makes a significant difference in final quality/usefulness.

  3. Re:Astroturfing by Macthorpe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By 'astroturfing', do you mean 'having a differing opinion to the groupthink'?

    I'm still yet to see a single mote of evidence that Microsoft bothers to astroturf Slashdot. Can you honestly think of a community of individuals (save, say, BoycottNovell) that are less likely to either:

    a) Switch to Windows, or
    b) Do anything at all on the whim of a commenter?

    --
    "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
  4. Re:Astroturfing by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    less likely

    Yeah, we're all Linux zealots here. *rolls eyes* Seriously, might have been true 10 years ago, but today? Not so much.

    --
    Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
  5. Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We arrived at the pretty much same place after starting somewhere else, so that makes it very, very, very, very different. Very.

    1. Re:Translation by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The suggestion elsewhere that an open source version of the dock might be called "SpackleMonkey" is apropos. If you patch leaky paradigms often enough, they begin to resemble each other: big balls of spackle.

      For me, the pre-OS X version of the Mac were about as good as things get. It was like those Japanese sedans that are alike as peas in a pod because their design was very task centered. I have found OSX just as annoying as Windows. Although it looks fabulous, it does so at the expense of getting in the way.

      This is the down side of Jobs' recreation of Apple. It is no longer a computer company. Yes, its still a user interface leader on its music players, but it's focus is on doing an impressive job on fine details. That works fine for iPods, but it doesn't work for computers, which users ask so much more of. The Dock is a prime example of a clever, obtrusive solution to a problem which had been handled with quiet competence before. In its jolly, gleaming, bouncy default state, it hogs huge amounts of real estate, jiggling and wiggling and generally calling attention to itself whereas everything it does was accomplished in less space, with less obtrusiveness in older versions of the operating system. You can tone it down, reduce it, and hide it, but aside from the fact it pops out when you don't want it, the Dock was designed to work best when it's just sitting there with a few big, fat icons. I do admire the magnification effect, which is a clever bit of UI spackle, but it would have been better to make it easy to launch/select with smaller widgets.

      The key, pre OSX user interface principle that Apple followed was deference to the user, and one aspect of that is that when the user arranges things a certain way, they should stay that way. This, of course, is impossible when you combine the functions of launching and switching. Once you've gone down that route, you've thrown away the user's ability to put launch functions where he can find them without thinking. To my way of thinking, anything that takes a user's attention away from what he wants to do is bad.

      After using OSX for about a year, I've concluded I'd rather use Vista, although it's frustratingly paternalistic, insisting on doing things on my behalf because it thinks it knows better. No, I don't want you to automatically install an udpate and reboot at 3AM by default, ruining a calculation that has been running for two days. But once you've fought it into a workable configuration, and thrown enough hardware at it, you can live with it.

      It's not that I'm anti-Apple. Their iPod user interfaces are clearly superior. While iTunes has serious defects, there's no question they're light years ahead on making the whole music store to player business work. They're just no longer a company that produces a great computer user interface, from the perspective of somebody who spends well over a thousand hours a year working on a computer. Gnome, KDE and Xfce are all better to work with on if you have to do complex things, hour after hour.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. Who cares? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  7. Re:Wendy's was first by gbarules2999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You would care if those three movies that were all similar if those were the only three movies that year.

  8. Oh come on, now by spitzak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Look carefully at "Application"... by JoshHeitzman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe that's the way you think, but its not the way I think. I usually think "It's time for some tunes" (not even caring which one just start playing randomly from all of my music), "What's new on ", "I need to find ", "It's time write some code for project ". The applications are just the means to those ends. Personally I don't want document centric, application centric, or window centric. I want task and result centric. By result centric I mean I get the result of music being played, as that doesn't fall into a the category of at task for me, since I'm not the one playing the music. It is just something I want the computer to start doing (and stop again later when I don't want it any more). To bad for me though, as that's now any of the OSes do it at present.

    --
    Software Inventor
  10. Re:So, it's different ... by Korin43 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't Windows 7 coming out earlier than originally planned? I think that's pretty as non-vaporware as you can get.

  11. "I want to go to iTunes" by krischik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.