Microsoft Responds To "Like OS X" Comment

Z80xxc! writes "After a comment by a Microsoft employee claiming in an interview that 'what we [Microsoft] have tried to do with Windows 7... is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,' the Windows 7 team has issued an official rebuttal, saying that the comment came from an employee who was 'not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,' and that it was 'inaccurate and uninformed.'"

Comments

ego

[sopssa]

Random person thinks he knows everything, grows an ego and tells "juicy" stuff to press to boost that said ego while actually knowing nothing.

Nothing to see here. But I suspect lots of Linux/Mac OSX fanatics will be coming in 3.. 2.. 1..

Re:ego

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect lots of Linux/Mac OSX fanatics will be coming in 3.. 2.. 1..

I came as fast as I could! Just let me get my breath back and I'll start bashing whoever the bad guy is in the story! Who is it today? MacDonalds? Apple? Microsoft? Jack Thompson?

Re:ego

[zmollusc]

..0
OMGBBQ!!!!! Gnome is bettar than both!!!!! and anyway it all comes from PARC work blah blah GEM blah blah Amiga blah ....

Re:ego

[sitarlo]

Or, totally informed person tells the truth and evil corporation fabricates a "rebuttal" to save face.

Re:ego

[Jarik C-Bol]

Penny Arcade put it well:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/30/

Re:ego

[gbjbaanb]

so did xkcd.

Re:ego

[Mitchell314]

I don't get why it'd be funny, but I also don't get why it's modded troll. Some people are just to trigger happy, eh?

Maybe it's a KDE user who did it.

Re:ego

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt a KDE user would do it, they'd have to spend too long looking through the huge array of buttons and options that do similar things in order to just be at the end of desperation, push one of them in the hope it does the right thing.

Re:ego

[L4t3r4lu5]

Jack Thompson is a safe bet in all situations.

For every Off-topic mod you get, you'll be almost guaranteed one Insightful mod. As long as you're against Jack Thompson. Which I am!

Re:ego

[webmistressrachel]

Which is exactly what the problem with capitalism is - what if the other companies product IS better?

Advertising laws have been twisted so much that we're allowed to use subjective lies, but you can be sacked for giving away facts... roll on 1984. It's late. Very, very late. But not never...

Re:ego

[iamhassi]

"Random person thinks he knows everything"

He's not really that random, he's the "partner group manager with Microsoft", LinkedIn says he's the SMB & Distribution Director at Microsoft Ltd. He's kinda high up there, and in my opinion that's a huge slip, to say on record your company took inspiration from your main competitor. Can you imagine how bad it would sound if Chevy said "We wanted the look and feel of the Ford Mustang when we created the new Camaro". I'd be surprised if he wasn't looking for a new job by now, or at least given a position where he'll never be asked another question again ;)

Re:ego

[DJRumpy]

Why would they even bother to deny it? It's not like they tried to deny their Microsoft store inspiration. If anything, they were being blatant about their inspiration.

OS X does have a nice UI. If they did take some Win 7 ideas from OS X to improve Windows, then I think they did a decent balancing job between outright copying, and failing miserably. That said, they should have paid more attention to details past the first layer of the UI. There are still far too many obscure clicks or info overload to get to specific settings, like changing an IP address for example. Although I supposed some might love to see every possible network configuration option all on one screen, a little information partitioning would go a long way. They still have to balance convenience with presentation. I think they went too far the other way in an attempt to keep the clicks to a minimum, or to hide more advanced configuration settings from the casual observer.

Windows 7 is ok, but it's still Windows, and all that the definition entails.

Re:ego

[xtracto]

You forgot Sony, RIAA, MPAA.

BTW for the GP:

Nothing to see here. But I suspect lots of Linux/Mac OSX fanatics will be coming in 3.. 2.. 1..

We do not have to come, we *live* here.

Re:ego

[davidsinn]

How is Iphone better than a WinMobile device?

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/why-windows-mobile-rules-iphone-vs-windows-mobile-part-2/

Re:ego

[ozmanjusri]

And Charlie Brooker.

Re:ego

[Gilmoure]

Jack Thompson as Ronald McDonald would be scary.

Things not to do if you like your job

[Random5]

Pretty sure on the list of 'Things not to do if you like your job', admitting you're inspired by the competition and complimenting their design TO THE PRESS has got to be in the top 3.

Re:Things not to do if you like your job

[L4t3r4lu5]

I would probably go with defecating on the CEO's desk, being caught copulating with cleaning equipment, and attempting to snort toner out of the photocopier would take up those top slots, but hey, if you think you can get away with one of those...

Re:Things not to do if you like your job

[spruce]

In my defense, that mop was a slut

What Apple does right

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Apple and Microsoft attack the problem of user interface from two completely different points of view. Microsoft wants things to be orthogonal, logical, menu driven, hierarchical, and otherwise fully featured. Apple takes the approach that the user doesn't want to fuss with all sorts of menus and submenus (no two button mouse for years!) and just wants to do what they need as simply as possible. So you end up with two completely different interfaces.

Apple's interface is elegant but inflexible. Everything fits into the existing scheme and runs perfectly within that scheme.

Windows' interface is flexible but clumsy. While this has gotten much better in later versions, we're still looking at deeply nested menus, and applications which do not necessarily have any UI themes in common with each other.

However the key point is that Microsoft is gradually becoming more user-centric. As far as that goes in their own perspective. They are making changes to the OS that were implemented in Mac years ago, and now that they are here, they make Windows a better product.

Aesthetics is a major theme with Apple, and it is one that Microsoft hadn't fully embraced until Vista. Listen to the users. Let the users tell you what is good and bad. Build the interface to match the user.

In a sense, the MS employee was right. Microsoft is doing a lot to emulate Apple. And frankly, it's about time.

Re:What Apple does right

[Procasinator]

One of the problems OS X has is that it lacks the ability to use these menus through the keyboard easily. In Windows I can hit the Alt key, and quickly see all the menus I can open by using an other key (the letter used for the menu item will have an underscore). Such as Alt + F is the file menu.

Each menu item then can be accessed usually through an access key. So Alt - F - S would be save. I know in both Windows and Mac OS X you have direct save short cuts too, and you can configure short cuts to common items, but that's not I want.

What I want is to be able to access a menu list from the keyboard quickly while exploring, not remember various different short cuts.

Re:What Apple does right

[Dupple]

On the mac you can hold down the control key or right click to get a contextual menu. Try it, you might like it. Support varies from program to program and you don't always get what you might expect or hope to see. But that's down to the application vendor and not apple

Re:What Apple does right

[DarthBart]

Right click? What is this right click you speak of?

Re:What Apple does right

[Mitchell314]

Multi-button USB mice work perfectly fine with Macs. To right click with touch pad, put two fingers down on surface instead of one. There still is the control click, as you said.

Re:What Apple does right

[TheRaven64]

One of the problems OS X has is that it lacks the ability to use these menus through the keyboard easily

Remembering the shortcuts on Macs is usually easier because they are consistent (ignoring the three different ways I have of making Apple's video-playing apps run full screen, and the fourth way that VLC uses). On Windows, an entire key on the keyboard is reserved for going to the menu bar. This is something that most users don't do - they either click on the menu with the mouse or hit shortcuts directly - and so on OS X is a chord. By default, it's control-F2, but it's configurable in System Preferences, so if you want it to be something easier to hit then you can change it.

Re:What Apple does right

[Procasinator]

When you say contextual menu, you mean the right-click menu?

Cause this isn't what I am talking about.

What I am talking about there is a menu options in Tools -> Options -> Random Area -> Some Option. In Windows (most anyhow, and most linux apps too), the underlines appear when I hold down alt (I used italics to demonstrate where this will be). I can then go Alt + T + U + R and then use arrow buttons to get too Some Option.

How do you do this in Mac OS X?

Re:What Apple does right

[joh]

What I want is to be able to access a menu list from the keyboard quickly while exploring, not remember various different short cuts.

This is Control-F2 on OS X. This selects the menu and allows to browse it with the cursor keys.

Alt+character has always been the way to type various special characters and ligatures on the Mac. Wasting this for another way to access menu entries instead was never an option for an OS that grew up with DTP.

Re:What Apple does right

[gtomorrow]

System Prefs > Mouse & Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts*.

A quick look tells me that CTRL-F2 puts focus on the menubar, CTRL-F3 places focus on the Dock, etc etc. OSX has had this since (someone correct if i'm wrong) since at least 10.2 .

So, that's about enough of this "can't navigate in OSX without the mouse" propaganda. [/wishful thinking]

* Apologies if the wording isn't exact as i'm translating from the italian.

Re:What Apple does right

[Procasinator]

Which is slower, as I mentioned in a reply to another poster who brought this up.

Might not be important to some people, but to me, it's a feature I miss in Mac OS X land.

Re:What Apple does right

[TheRaven64]

I don't understand your complaint. On windows, you do alt, F, S and get to the save menu item in the file menu. On OS X you do contol-F2, F, S, and get to the save menu. It is just one more keystroke. I'm not sure why this is better than using shortcuts to jump straight to the menu though, nor why you think pressing keys to explore the menu is better than using the mouse.

Re:What Apple does right

[Procasinator]

I was told you could only use the cursor keys. I seem to remember that myself, but could be wrong (don't have a Mac OS X installation near me to find out). The reasons why I might not want to use the mouse are many, including:

• I could be using a program that is keyboard centric (such as word processing) and might want to access a menu option that I don't use regulary.
• Using the keyboard is usually (and when designer properly, always) faster than using the mouse. Especially on a dual display, where the distance between my cursor and the option I want to use could be quite large

Re:What Apple does right

[caseih]

Definitely sounds like person who has only used a Mac on occasion. I used to think like you about it until I actually used a Mac for a while. Actually I find OS X and most OS X applications to be more keyboard-friendly than Windows. Every single command you use frequently has or can be assigned a command-something combination (or control-something). So things like open, close, print, save are always assigned the same command key sequence across all apps. That's a time saver right there. Why alt-f-s when command-s will do? While most Windows users will actually click on file->save to save their document, very few Mac users I've seen bother with clicking on the menus for most common tasks; it's all done with the keyboard.

As was said earlier in the discussion, OS X and Windows come from very different philosophies. You speak of how you want to explore the menu. On OS X that's absolutely wrong. If you have to explore the menu to find something, then someone screwed up. Deep, nested menus are considered bad on OS X. Besides, alt-something-something-something reminds me of emacs!

There are many inconsistencies in OS X that are legitimate grievances. But not being able to alt-something-something-something the menu doesn't appear to me to be that important. I'm far more frustrated on a daily basis by how OS X eats the click that focuses a window (now I use command-tab and command-` to focus windows anyway without the mouse), that you have enable keyboard navigation in dialog boxes as it's off by default, and that carbon and cocoa apps behave so differently.

Both systems have their inconsistencies, and both are getting better in this regard. And from what I can tell from using Windows 7, Windows is getting more usable and mac-like all the time.

Re:What Apple does right

[Procasinator]

Why alt-f-s when command-s will do?

That was only a simplified example. Not a very good one (as everyone can remember Ctrl+S). But some applications on both platforms can potentially have a lot of shortcuts.

Every single command you use frequently has or can be assigned a command-something combination (or control-something). So things like open, close, print, save are always assigned the same command key sequence across all apps.

Which is a good thing, but not a replacement. There are some applications where the amount of shortcuts are massive. I don't want to remember them all. I don't want to have to configure applications all that much either. This means I have to do it on new machines too. Personalisation is handy, but I want something out of the box.

As was said earlier in the discussion, OS X and Windows come from very different philosophies. You speak of how you want to explore the menu. On OS X that's absolutely wrong.

Which works for most applications, but not all. Word processing (like Word) and graphics (like Photoshop) often have many options. Most will be quickly accessible, but others won't be. I think the visual cues given from the Alt system is very handy, and allows jumping into applications much easier. The contextual switch is less of a burden. It might be a small thing, but it annoys me and probably other power-users who like relying on the keyboard (although, I could be alone on this).

Re:What Apple does right

[johneee]

users. Let the users tell you what is good and bad. Build the interface to match the user.

The interesting thing here is that your evidence doesn't match the examples.

Microsoft puts every single thing they do in front of users, and tests it to death. Apple puts some really smart, good designers in a room and they do what they think is best. (overly simplified, but you get the idea)

One of the first things Jobs did when he came to Apple was to kill the UI research group. They have a unified, attractive and logical interface because they keep it tightly controled and don't let groups of just anyone come in and tell them to change things. They're also secretive to the point of paranoia, which means they'd never be able to do user testing groups before launch of anything.

Microsoft is bland because every single thing they do is tested over and over and over again with user groups, which gives them a lot of data, but means they end up with the lowest common denominator on everything.

You can make your own decision on which is better.

I actually read something that made the case that Microsoft was too consumer focussed. This is around the time when MS had just got the security religion and the person said that until then, nobody was asking for security in their focus groups and market research, just features and compatibility with older software. Geeks were asking for security, but they made up a relatively small number of people in the market. When worms,viri and root-kits and all that started being more and more prevelent, people started asking for security, and so MS started doing security.

Short version: Ask your users what they need all you want, but you're always going to be a reactive organization, and you're never going to surprise anyone, because they'll always just get what they ask for. If you make educated guesses what they need, you'll sometimes blow them away with something awesome.

Re:What Apple does right

[webdog314]

So, what you're basically saying is that Apple designs their interfaces to be intuitive, and Microsoft... doesn't.

Yup, that pretty much covers it.

But to be fair, you have to remember that Microsoft wasn't originally targeting yuppy thirty-somthethings and college students, they were going for business programmers and well, nerds. This is a completely different audience than Apple, and frankly, they hit the mark. Nerds don't want intuitive. Nerds want it the way they want it. This kind of interface is great for a logical thinker who can remember where they buried that TPS report, but not so hot for a non-programer who still confuses RAM with drive storage.

Re:What Apple does right

[gtomorrow]

Okay, try this...

1) CTRL-F2 (yes, yes, bear with me)
2) Type the first letter of the menu item you want*
3) Down arrow
4) Repeat step 2
5) Repeat 2-3 until you drill down to the desired command and hit "enter"

* If by chance there are two menu items with the same first letter, it's sufficient to type the first and second letter.

How is this slower if not more efficient than ALT-whatever?

Only happy to help.

Re:What Apple does right

[Hatta]

why you think pressing keys to explore the menu is better than using the mouse.

Because then I don't have to remove my hands from the keyboard. Seems obvious enough.

Re:What Apple does right

[Bungie]

On the mac you can hold down the control key or right click to get a contextual menu. Try it, you might like it.

I think what the parent is talking about are accelerators. Menu captions in Windows can include an an ampersand which indicates the accelerator key to be used. The letters appears with an underline underneath them (under XP and higher you may need to press ALT first to display the menu accelerators depending on the user settings). They be accessed when ALT & accelerator key is pressed.

So, for example to display the File menu's conetent, you can press ALT & F and then to select the "New" option once the File menu is open, you can then press ALT & N.

In classic MacOS there was a tool provided by Connectix (perhaps Speed Doubler?) which provided this functionality, but I have not seen it duplicated on OS X.

So?

[war4peace]

So a Microsoft employee says something out the top of his head. In a normal discussion between me and you, this would be just an opinion, something along the lines of "I think that...". But change the speaker and all of a sudden it's along the lines of "BIG SECRET REVEALED!!!1111" kind of thing. Even worse, for most people it becomes one with the company's official PoV and this simple statement grows so much that the company must spit out a rebuttal via an official channel/spokesman.
We are living in a twisted, perverted world, where one can't express an opinion without being beheaded by both the press and the company he's working for. God help us all! :)

Hi

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Mac and Windows 7 was MY idea

employee who 'inaccurate and uninformed'

[hibernia]

and no longer has a job

Hello Streisand

[je ne sais quoi]

Well, considering that I had no idea what that guy said until I read it here, I'd say MS is putting more fuel on the fire by saying that. Would it have ended up on slashdot even if MS hadn't issued the denial? Maybe, but by denying it, it ensured it ended up on slashdot. In any case, this guy has the title, "partner group manager" which sounds like not only is he a manager but, suspiciously, in marketing too. It is funny though that MS periodically has these guys go off the reservation and start spouting not tactful, but perhaps true comments.

But anyway, considering that Apple has put a huge amount of effort into streamlining their OS and making it more responsive to the user, just in general I think that's a good thing to emulate in your OS. For example, I can remember waiting on 10.0 and 10.1 for what seemed like eternities for the spinning beach ball to quit but that's gotten a lot better with recent releases. (Don't get me started on if you were trying to log onto an ftp server that wasn't responding.)

Re:Hello Streisand

[bruno.fatia]

Well, considering that I had no idea what that guy said until I read it here, I'd say MS is putting more fuel on the fire by saying that. Would it have ended up on slashdot even if MS hadn't issued the denial? Maybe, but by denying it, it ensured it ended up on slashdot.

Who said Microsoft cares about whats on slashdot front page? Nothing really "good" from Microsoft is likely going to be news here anyways.

Re:Hello Streisand

[CrazedSanity]

I would venture to guess that the retraction wasn't for the reasons that it appeared to be. Mr. Simon Aldous made a statement that essentially compared Microsoft to Apple, but I don't think the issue at hand has anything to do with any "stealing ideas from Mac" or anything like that; the problem is that Simon basically said, "Mac's interface is better than ours and has been for a long time, so now we're gonna start making ours look like theirs, 'cuz ours sucks." Joe-Bob might read it and think, "wow, Microsoft even says Mac is better, why don't I just buy a Mac?"

Re:they've been copying Mac all along...

[JerryLove]

So Mac copied Xerox Star, and Windows Copied Mac? Do you know who copied whom for OS/2, Amegia Workbench, NeXT, Linux, BeOS, and GeoWorks; all of which have similar WIMP interfaces?

It would be silly to say that any (other than STAR) evolved in a vacuum; but "borrowing ideas" has happened in every direction.

This is not like OS X!

[zebslash]

Microsoft has issued an official rebuttal: "We never used OS X as a source of inspiration in the design of Windows 7. This is completely uninformed. We used KDE 4 instead".

Ideas don't occur in a vacuum

[Interoperable]

Apple has a lot of good ideas that Windows and Linux copy. Likewise, Windows and Linux generate a lot of good ideas that the other two copy. It's not surprising that Windows is mimicking some OSX features (and it obviously is). It would just be nice if Microsoft and Apple stopped getting patents on every damned thing (sudo) and acknowledged that other can have good ideas. Personally, I think Windows would do better to take pages from the KDE book, but maybe that's just personal taste.

Re:If this is true...

[recoiledsnake]

Windows 7 is still clunky, slow, and unstable.

Citation needed. I use Windows 7 and it's certainly not one of those.

Re:If this is true...

[kannibal_klown]

Then they did a terrible job copying OSX. Windows 7 is still clunky, slow, and unstable. It's nothing like OSX at all.

I threw Win7 onto my MacBook Pro via BootCamp for work reasons and it's running fine. Heck, I even managed to get the 64-bit version running on it without any issues.

I've had no crashes and it feels a little speedier than Vista. So far it's looking like it's not a bad release.

Now I don't get the OSX and Win7 comparison, they don't look that much alike.

Re:For everything Apple does one way

[Mitchell314]

There'd be a lot more tech support calls to Apple if you could easily get rid of the top menu bar.

Save face?

[professorguy]

The employee specifically said they copied the Mac's "look and feel" which is a determining factor for infringement lawsuits. So as far as lawyers are concerned, he basically said "We stole some of Apple's work."

They ain't trying to save face. They are trying to save a lawsuit loss (i.e., money).

Re:Save face?

[RedK]

Except Apple's look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft has already been thrown out. About 20 years ago. So Microsoft can copy "look and feel" all they want, they have the legal precedents to do so.

Re:Save face?

[Vancorps]

Perhaps because the look and feel then and the look and feel now are still completely different from that of Apple's offerings? I don't think anyone running 7 is confused about what OS they are running. Same with OS X users.

Re:Save face?

[Abcd1234]

Except Apple's look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft has already been thrown out. About 20 years ago. So Microsoft can copy "look and feel" all they want, they have the legal precedents to do so.

Uhhh... no. According to Wikipedia, Apple won because the court ruled that:

"Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]."

and, that (and this is a Wikipedia quote):

"The court established that Apple could not make copyright claims based on these ideas and could only make claims on the precise expression of them."

So, with that said, if Apple could demonstrate that Microsoft copied specific expressions of certain ideas, then they absolutely would have the basis for a lawsuit.

Re:Save face?

[Quarters]

Double Jeopardy protects a person from being tried twice for the same crime. It doesn't mean that you can't be held accountable for committing the same type of crime multiple times. If you don't believe me try this; go speeding through a school zone at 80-90mph on a weekday morning. Keep doing this until you are pulled over by the police. Get the ticket, go to trial, pay the money, go to jail, etc.... When all of that is behind you start speeding through school zones again. The next time the cops pull you over look them in the eye and calmly say, "I can do this all I want now, I've already been tried and convicted for this." The Apple/MS look and feel lawsuit you are referring to was about a specific Microsoft product possibly borrowing the look and feel from a specific Apple product. Since both of those products predate Win 7 and Apple OS X the ruling (or dismissal, I can't really remember what happened) in that suit has no bearing whatsoever on whether there has been copying/borrowing going on with both companies current products.

Re:Save face?

[arminw]

...So Microsoft can copy "look and feel" all they want,...

Boy and they have been doing it too, wholesale! The problem is they do a pretty poor job of it. The task-bar, for example, is a second rate copy of the OS X dock. They have copied the transparency effect in the task-bar and Window frames. They even copied the crinkled paper sound when emptying the trash can they call they "recycle bin".

They still shut down the computer using the "start" menu. It still has the abomination called the registry. It won't open PDF files without downloading a reader program first. A user still has to go through a not always working "uninstall" rigamarole, rather than simply dragging the program to be deleted to the trash. Apple trusts their users by not requiring lengthy installation codes and don't require an Internet connection to activate their computer. The computer, even a Hackintosh is always activated.

What does Windows 7 have out-of-the-box that OS X won't do? Play as many games? Run some specialized corporate software? OK, what else?

The Apple Time Machine program is a far better backup system that requires no work, being fully automatic, after setup. It is able to backup multiple computers over the network. The Apple iLife programs are light-years ahead of what Microsoft offers.

Look and Feel

[Adrian Lopez]

Considering Apple's litigious nature and the fact that it once sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing on the MacOS "look and feel", I can easily see why Microsoft would want to distance itself from this guy's statements. Apple has always wanted to have exclusive rights over Mac-like graphical interfaces, damn the negative consequences to the rest of the industry.

This guy's statements are fodder for Apple's bloodthirsty lawyers. Should it turn out he's lying about Microsoft's intentions, firing him would seem to be the best course of action.

Someone got called out

[onyxruby]

So some clueless employee in a company of tens of thousands of employees made a comment on the record. If this was an employee on one of the design teams, and it was a comment in an email to their manager and said email leaked, there would be a story and a lawsuit. However it wasn't, it just happened to be conjecture by someone that pulled their comment out of their ass.

The employee should have known better to make such a comment to begin with and is likely now /very/ aware of Microsoft's press policy.

What the employee did was no different from a factory worker for Ford that spends their day driving new cars into the parking lot making a comment about the design inspiration for the F-150. To be frank, I'll be surprised if the employee doesn't get fired, they certainly have cause.

Re:they've been copying Mac all along...

[Halo1]

If you ever saw the Triumph of the Nerds documentary by Bob Cringely, you'd have seen Steve Jobs saying "Picasso had a saying Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless in stealing great ideas."

Of course, in the same documentary he also says "The only problem with Microsoft is that they just have no taste" :)

As reported on by zdnet australia

[jonaskoelker]

"We never used OS X as a source of inspiration in the design of Windows 7. This is completely uninformed. We used KDE 4 instead".

That's not far from the truth.

Or at least, if you tell people KDE4 is Windows 7, they believe it.

Re:If this is true...

[d34dluk3]

Windows 7 is still clunky, slow, and unstable.

Citation needed. I use Windows 7 and it's certainly not one of those.

Which one of them is it not?

Re:If only....

[Procasinator]

Ummm... Windows Vista and onwards is more secure out of the box. I mean, Mac OS X hasn't even really implemented ASLR yet. That Mac OS X is more secure is a common misconception.

Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hack-windows-security-snow-leopard,8704.html

Charlier Miller covers why he thinks Windows is more secure than Mac OS X.

Nothing to see here

[BlortHorc]

Oh man, the number of times I've heard one of the BD/marketing guys spouting off about some shit he has only been paid to sell, not understand and I've thought, man, seriously hope no one he is talking to has a clue, because, really, if they do, we are going to look like dicks right now.

This shit happens a hundred times a day all over the world, BD/marketing guys spout shit, what we pay them for, apparently, just happens this time someone wrote it down where people who know better could see.

Nothing MS specific about this, except this particular waste of space happens to work for them. Or at least, he did :)

Re:Quick, name one technology...

[phillymjs]

Firewire.
Apple Desktop Bus (which was copied and improved a bit by Intel, and named USB).

There's two.

~Philly

Re:Put aside the ego...

[h4rm0ny]

I'm torn! On the one hand, I don't think you can legitimately call Microsoft learning from a competitor a debacle on their part. On the other hand, I can see from your sig that you loathe the usurping and stupid SI versions of computer memory terms and their pandering to the brainless as much as I do!

So I'll merely lament your inappropriate modding as Flamebait. Slashdot's getting so that you can't post anything without getting a Flamebait or Troll mod unless you write like you're talking to a very spoilt child that will cry if you contradict them.

Regards,
H.

Re:Put aside the ego...

[jedidiah]

Don't try to bullshit the rest of us. Windows gets shoved down our collective throats so we can't help but have experience with it. This isn't like MacOS where you're only ever going to have experience with it if you explicitly seek it out.

Need encryption? Try using a tool that explicitly ensures it. There is even a "checkbox" for it.

Re:they've been copying Mac all along...

[wzinc]

"The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was given Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)#PARC_legacy

People don't realize this: Apple paid Xerox!!! That stupid, "I stole the TV first" thing is rubbish. Apple paid (in stock) for the GUI; Xerox didn't want it anyway. Apple brought it to market, raising the price of the stock Xerox owned.

Re:Day is Night, Black is White, and Good is Evil

[Procasinator]

Yes, no problem.

The fact that OS X has never had a virus or worm (don't know how true this is) doesn't necessary show the platform is secure.

It well know that the scale of market share of Windows VS OS X more than tilts towards Windows. This means, as attacker, Windows is the most profitable to target. Hence we see more exploits.

It's like if I owned one house in Harlem and the other in Luxembourg. The house in Harlem would more than likely being broken into quicker than the on in Luxembourg. This is external to the houses: it's the environment outside of it.

Botnets are not only comprised mostly of Windows machines running IE

Safari has had plenty of bugs (if we are comparing browsers too), and these would have allowed Worms quite easily.

Could you tell me, how many bugs can you find for IE8 that are being *exploited* on Vista or Windows 7? There was one pre-release (in IE8 beta). Keyword is exploited here, because thanks to ASLR, the vulnerabilties that are being found and exploited on XP are notoriously difficult to exploit on Vista/7.

As for the 80% of virues. How about 8 out of 10 tested. And let's not forget this viruses were just put on the system, which usually come by other means (usually browser exploits - which are covered better in Windows Vista/7 with ASLR than Mac).

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowssecurity/archive/2009/11/06/windows-7-vulnerability-claims.aspx

ASLR, as well as many other security initiatives, go a long way to protect Vista/7 users from vulnerabilties within Windows itself and 3rd party products that support it. Mac OS X is one of the few platforms that haven't implemented this.

Re:Ok, well, let's look

[mario_grgic]

You seem to be one of those people who don't get it. It's not any one individual feature, or lots of them that makes OS X polished. It's how they work together, and how usable they are (usability is all about hiding complexity or exposing the absolute minimum necessary to get something accomplished in an as intuitive way as possible).

And this is where OS X shines. When I first switched to it from years of mental abuse from Redmond, I felt naked without complexity (where is my regedit, computer icons on desktop to right click on and choose manage, where are all the dialogs popping and jumping in my face, things steeling focus, where are the problems for me to tinker with instead of you know doing things that I turned the computer on for). IT just all seemed too simple, and I was wondering, what the hell, how can you do anything with so little. I didn't realize that I was conditioned for years to expect trouble, to spend my valuable time making windows run smoothly to the point that it become an instinct and expectation. Without it I felt just wrong.

But amazingly enough, you later realize that you don't need any of those things, and that OS X just gets out of the way, and lets you do things, and enjoy your applications. And the few base services that it does provide (like spotlight, expose, spaces, etc) are there on each machine and they work well and fast. And you don't need to spend significant amount of your time baby sitting the OS and making it run fast and smoothly. It does that on its own. My OS X installation is just as fast as the first day I put it there 2 years later. Windows somehow manages to get progressively slower with time.

Re:they've been copying Mac all along...

[ClosedSource]

As a person who spent years using a Star and the earlier Alto, I'd say that if you eliminate Xerox's ideas from the original Mac OS and Windows, there wouldn't be much left.

Re:It's just a myth

[wzinc]

They may've used that as a defense, but it never got that far:

"Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds. The lawsuit was dismissed because Xerox had waited too long to file suit, and the statute of limitations had expired." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)#Adoption_by_Apple (same Wikipedia article)