same goes for sudo and UAC. Sudo doesn't get in your way. UAC does
I would suggest that instead of knocking UAC, people step back and look at why it doesn't seem to work as smooth as sudo or other similar privilege elevation features in OSes.
Windows NT has had security since it was designed, and the token based security system has actually changed very little from NT 3.1 to Vista.
What did happen is that to make it easier to move users and 'applications' from the Win9X world where security did not exist in the OS, Microsoft made a really bad decision and let XP install and run as default with users having administrator(root) access.
This worked to make the transition smooth, but it also let people continue to write software that did not honor nor even check the system security. Basically they never 'enforced' the NT security model by leaving XP open for applications.
Along comes Vista, and Microsoft turns on the UAC, and forces users to never run as root, unless they intentionally disable UAC.
This brought Vista up to the same functionality as other OSes.
However because so many applications that ran on XP and previous versions of Windows 'ignored' security and assumed it had 'admin/root' level access to the system, these applications cause the UAC to appear 'a lot' more than you would ever experience with an OS like OS X.
However, this is really not a fault of UAC or Vista, but more of a 'past' mistake on MS's part by 'ever' allowing software to run without knowledge of security on the NT platform in the first place.
Think of it this way, if the UAC was 'always' present in XP or NT security was enforced and users weren't encouraged to run as administrators, all these UAC prompting 'bad' applications that ignored security would have been 'fixed' or written properly for security before they were ever released.
If an OS X developer makes an application that makes the OS X privilege elevation prompt appear each time it runs, the developer 'fixes' the application before the user ever sees it, since this has been how OS X has always worked, enforcing its inherent security. This is why you don't see many applications on *nix/OS X etc that drive people nuts wanting more than user level security access.
UAC and sudo are not that different, and Microsoft has tried to make the UAC less annoying than it originally was. However, the truth is all the UAC is going to do at this point in the Windows OS history is finally force developers to write their software with security in mind so the UAC doesn't drive the user nuts.
Even MS admits the UAC is more of a tool to force developers to write software properly with respect for the NT security system than it is to protect the OS because users will ignore the prompts or turn it off eventually.
I do feel your pain though, and I wish MS would have bit the bullet with Win2k/XP and enforced the NT security model for software back then and got this all out of the way years ago.
and they can no longer be combined with in-window hardware accelerated OpenGL Actually 'Windowed' combining is still allowed, it is when the 'Composer' is flipped off or full screen mode that this is no longer allowed. Understand?
City of Heroes is one of the biggest examples of this issue being visible to users, running the game in a Window with Aero on, cursors look fine, full-screen they don't work unless you turn on compatible cursors. (BTW ATI has addressed this at the driver level, and only NVidia currently hasn't found a work around for applications that do this that Vista no longer supports.)
To further the discussion...
GDI/GDI+ is accelerated; however, many tend to focus on the distinction between it and WPF. WPF at the top level uses a 100% DirectX class rasterizer, GDI/GDI+ doesn't.
In comparison to XP, GDI/GDI+ on Vista is very much alike, but some low level function of the GDI have been optimized to no longer utilize the 2D portions of the GPU, and instead shove these functions through DirectX 7, like WPF does. (This is why WPF is also fully accelerated on Direct7 hardware and newer on both XP and Vista, as Direct7 is the baseline of basic WPF features.)
For example even simple bitmap functions of the GDI/GDI+ are now processed via 3D functions that can compress and manipulate bitmaps faster than the CPU or the 2D native GPU functions of the older GDI/GDI+ rendering.
This is a fairly complicated topic, as many of the features of rendering changed during the development of Vista, and you can find incorrect or outdated information even on the MS blogs.
For example originally Vista was going to process OpenGL only though DirectX, and this changed as MS found a way to open the Composer to allow OpenGL to run hardware accelerated natively at the same time inside the composer without forcing it through DirectX. (You might remember the outrage when this was first announced and later changed to support OpenGL properly and this change happened in mainly in the last stages of development of Vista in 2006.
DirectX is now only used in the last WDDM layer (and I use th term DirectX lightly here) for the composer, as Aero still manages the display context for the OpenGL applications.
And the composer and Aero is one area of Vista that actually added features and 'improved' over the original Longhorn conceptual beta where a lot of other features were removed and changed.
As for Double-Buffering, this is another term that is easily mixed up.
There is a difference between full double-buffering as OS X does, and what Vista does. This is why Vista's composer is called a Vector/Bitmap composer, not just a Bitmap composer as in OS X.
GDI/GDI+ 'has' to render to a bitmap level in the composer, WPF, DirectX do not. So even though GDI/GDI+ is being somewhat accelerated, they have to draw to a bitmap at some point, where WPF and DirectX never have to.
(This is why RDP in Vista can be massively faster than XP and do 3D, because it utilizes the Vector layer of the Composer and even some GDI level calls instead of pushing bitmaps across the network. - Don't try a high texture 3D application over RDP though.)
What makes the Vista version of 'bitmap' composing different than OS X is the way it handles the memory for the window context and how it writes the 'bitmap' to the video display directly.
OS X must not only store the windows 'bitmap' but must also transfer the bitmap from system RAM to GPU RAM and then tell the GPU to render the 'bitmap' on a simple surface. Vista doesn't have to do this, as I referenced with the way it utilizes the AGP/PCI/e buses. Vista can put the rendered 'bitmap' in either System or Video RAM and defines no distinction between the two, as Vista can draw directly to the display surface from System RAM or Video RAM. (i.e. If the Window Bitmap from the composer is in System RAM, it doesn't have to transfer to the GPU VRAM before it is written to the video display surface. It can also intelligent
You know on OS X how when you first installed it, spotlight took CPU time to index the contents of your documents, photos, etc?
This is what happens when you do an install of Vista as well. The indexing service and optimization services run at first, maybe a couple of hours if you have tons of content like some users, and then the CPU usage drops down to nothing.
If Vista sucked 20-30% of the CPU all the time it was running, then it would unusable.
Also, go do a search on Vista vs OSX with Adobe CS3 applications. Notice how strange the same applications from Adobe, using the new native Intel versions of CS3 run faster under Vista than they do under OS X? This would lead most people to believe OS X has a far heavier overhead than even Vista. Ouch...
How freaking stupid can this get? The person that wrote the content at the link you provided knows NOTHING about what they are talking about, confusing terms, and not even 'getting' the context of what they are trying to argue. And you post links to technical articles you apparently don't even understand or you would realize how off track you were.
Here try this... Instead of 'Volume Shadow Copy' introduced in WindowsXP/2K or 'System Restore' introduced in WinME and effectively in WindowsXP; Go look up 'Previous Versions', released in Windows 2003 Server and turned on by default on Windows Vista.
Volume Shadow Copies are a way to copy or backup 'in use' files, in basic terms. And then go re-read the Volume Copy Service link 'you' provided, as it is another tool that OS and developers use, and is NOTHING the user ever deals with...
This is freaking stupid that Mac users can't even discuss the proper terminology or see a Vista user right click on a folder or document and bring up a 'time-line' of the folder and files, just like freaking time-machine on OS X.
Additionally... Previous Versions is 'transparent' to applications unlike OS X that needs applications to be aware if they use 'special data stores', requires NO setup, and is working from the moment Vista is installed or the PC is turned on.
Previous Versions can be accessed in every Folder or File/Open/Save dialog box for every application running on Vista, all the way back to programs from Windows 3.1, and it works equally well on all of them.
A user can go back in the Vista Timeline on any file, folder, data store, etc. and all folders and files can be opened to view previous times, be dragged and dropped to the current time-frame.
Vista Previous Version also uses advanced FS level file and differential points so data is NOT stored 'as redundantly' as it is on OS X.
If OS X could have pulled off adding ZFS, they could have made time machine MORE like Vista with FS level snapshots instead of having to backup the files and folders to achieve a similar function.
Sadly, OS X's FS does not have the capabilities of ZFS or NTFS to do this, so data has to be actually backed up for Time Machine to work.
On Vista, there is NO Overhead of backing up 'Previous Versions' since it does work at the FS level. (See Vista doesn't technically have to copy the data each time a change is made, due to the way NTFS works. Go read more on this and ZFS to see why it is the only other FS that supports these types of transactions.)
Now I admit the OS X Time Machine interface is far more cooler than the Vista 'list' interface, but it is less functional, adds system overhead to maintain the backups,and wastes far more drive space.
So the functionality DOES EXIST in Windows, first appeared in the Windows 2003 Server Beta back in 2002, and has been around doing what Apple is just now catching up to in a less efficient way 5 years later. (4 Years if you count the Release date of Windows 2003 and not the Beta previews in 2002.)
Now take this information back to your Mac forums, and tell them they gave you crappy information and they have no idea what the hell they are talking about when it comes to comparing OS X and Vista.
Re: Vista Previous Versions (Also in 2003 Server) Some users will find the feature objectionable because it could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees, or perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person. Previous versions of Windows were still susceptible to undelete utilities, of course, but this new functionality makes browsing quite, quite simple.
From today's article: The writer argues that Apple's new Time Machine automatic backup should be considered a security feature.
- So the same feature that first appeared on Windows Server in 2003 and then on Vista is considered a security risk, especially because it is too 'easy' to use.
- And now the same freaking feature in OS X is considered a 'security feature', and they claim it is even 'easier' to use than Vista's version?
How can logical people even accept information like this? Can we officially rename SlashDot - Apple's new bitch?
Doesn't anyone else find things disingenuous when you can get modded down attacking OS X faster than if you attack FreeBSD or Linux on a OSS site? We now see the same 'coveted' features in Vista are bad, but good in OS X.
SlashDot, I miss the real tech news, OSS information, and honest debate...
good thing they all come with the top of the line graphics cards that usually dont go obsolete until the computer needs replacing anyway;)
Ya, cause 2 year old mid-range cards are the 'best'.
So who next is going to argue that the ATI 2600 or the Geforce 7300 are top of the line Video cards? And this is the 'best' you can get in a freaking Mac, even the top of the line Mac. - (source www.apple.com)
Sadly you can buy a two year old Generic laptop with faster video than the most expensive Mac Desktop... Very sad even, and why don't Apple users care enough to demand Apple actually offer the best?
. If "Documents and Settings" was hardcoded in an application and now doesn't exist that screws the pooch. Next when it comes to actually running programs again user rights come into play. Even users who are Administrators do not have full administratove privilages. You still have to modify shortcuts to apps to have them run as the SYSTEM Admin.
1) Documents and Settings - STILL EXITS. It is a Junction pointing to Users. Do a freaking dir/ah from the root. In fact run it from the Start button: 'C:\documents and settings' and you get the Explorer Window for the Junction pointing to C:\Users
This is a BASIC and OLD concept for OSes, and even NTFS has supported Junctions for a over 7 years. So, even if the application was STUPID enough to ignore the user location variable, the program still works, as 'Documents and Settings' and 'Users' are synonymous!
2) If an application was developed without any concern for security, shame on the developer. If the application was written for OS X or Linux it would have failed ORIGINALLY!.
Sure MS made the mistake of making the move from Win9X to XP too easy by allowing applications to assume there was no OS level security, but these days are OVER. Guess what Windows developers, Windows NT has always had security, and if you were not checking for it and not trying to use admin rights when not needed, then you are getting what you deserve.
This is NOT MS or Vista's fault, just as if you wrote the security 'ignorant' application and expect it to run on OS X or Linux, it would not be OS X or Linux's fault for ACTUALLY ENFORCING SECURITY! And if you are an end user, then YELL at the developer. This is not Win9X where the OS had no security, and it is time freaking Windows developers catch up to the rest of the world.
I can't believe that a post on SlashDot is marked 'insightful' when the person is complaining about an OS because it 'enforces security properly', or uses 'junctions' and OS level variables for User folder locations.
These are freaking solid basic ideas on *nix and yet Vista is getting a bad presentation by an idiot because they think it should run un-secure like Win9x?
Please for the love of security, *nix people mod the parent down...
BSD is not and probably never will be what underlies NT. "Side by side" (your words) means it's an optional bolt-on addition to NT. IOW, SUA is a bone thrown in by Microsoft to UNIX developers so they wouldn't have to kluge out their code in something as asinine as VB.
I guess people are just stupid, and literally RACE to SlashDot to prove it.
MS would be 'insane' to strap BSD under any portion of Win32 or NT. You have no idea what you are even talking about and prove it by suggesting that as an option.
BSD is an API, it is NOT A KERNEL technology, but an interface to a kernel.
When running on the NT client/server kernel, all 'subsystems' run as virtual API environments. That is why the Win32 kernel is NOT THE NT KERNEL and also why the BSD subsystem can SIT ON THE NT Kernel just as it sits on a MACH variant on OS X. And YES Win32 and BSD run side by side, as they are separate but equal subsystems. In theory the Win32 subsystem could be removed and replaced with a full BSD subsystem on the NT kernel.
It scares me that so many people here have so little understanding about OS architecture, especially when it comes to NT.
No wonder everyone thinks Windows is a Joke, it is too complicated for them to understand apparently. So go back to the common 1980's kernel concepts, anything beyond that is apparently beyond the SlashDot community.
The current Unix subsystem for Windows NT (Vista/2003/Longhorn/XP) very much does have a BSD subsystem that runs 'side by side' the Win32/Win64 subsystem. Anyone that has even looked at the NT kernel architecture will understand how this works and why NT can do this.
What other experience do you think possibly matters to me, my company, and my clients?
Well we have no way to contrast whether your experiences are legitimate concerns caused by Vista or are just the result of a couple of bad IT people or your own ignorance.
It is also a sad misconception that 'your' experience is average and reflects the rest of the world, when there are smart people in tougher IT jobs than you that directly contradict your assessment.
As for the display issues, it seems like you know enough to be dangerous, not enough to use it constructively. Unlike you, I recognize everyone's accomplishments in the field. You're too busy being amazed by stuff that I find unremarkable and not unique. Just for kicks, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS [wikipedia.org]. That idea is so old it farts dust.
How sad that you reference something hyberbolic to anything we have discussed. Is it that you don't understand the differences or you just like to lump concepts together so they are easier for you to understand.
NeWS has nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, to do with anything I have said or we have been talking about. PERIOD.
When I was working on X11, you are the type of smart ass kid we would have sent off to document comment code. You are the type of person that can see a shelf of understanding above you, but you can't quite see what is on the shelf, and refuses to look any higher.
So enjoy your beer and come back to this conversation when you have a clue of how bad your analogy and link reference was in regard to our conversation. Until then, have a good decade...
Vista is using double-buffering. I have not seen any WPF feature that is not available in the Mac OS X graphic stack (Quartz 2D, Quartz Composer, Core Image, Core Animation, Core Video).
In the sense that it is used on OS X, no Vista does not use double-buffering.
And there are MANY things in not only WPF but the whole Vista WDDM (Video subsystem) that are outside the capabilities of what OS X can do. I know this is not what people want to hear, but sadly is true.
To accomplish many of the API featurs of WPF an OS X developer would have to dive into OpenGL, and it would not be as simple as writing a simple five line XML page as it is with WPF and Vista to create a 3D scene that is interactive.
OS X also cannot virtualize nor pre-emptively multi-task the GPU, nor utilize GPU multi-processing beyond simplistic SLI and Crossfire. Vista has inherent support for all these things and is not even tied to SMP concepts for GPU multi-processing. This is how Vista can maintain the 3D Aero interface and keep framerates in applications and games at near peak performance while running more than one at a time, and it is not a yielded or application managed concept like it was with XP or OpenGL.
Vista brings the GPU equivalent of pre-emptive and multi-processing to graphics and physics that the 386 architecture and 32bit OSes did over a decade ago. Sadly, NO OTHER OS currently does this, nor even attempts to do this.
No, because graphic designers do not generally have the skills to design UI. They can design the cosmetic/visual appearance, and improve coherency and balance, but design the UI itself? No thanks.
Nice generalization, but sadly not always true. Graphic Designers can work within the guidelines of UI design just as easy as the most graphically challenged geek.
It is 'bad' graphic designers that I think you are targeting, the people that learn how to use Flash or AI at home and have no art or psychological background.
Our company hires graphic designers for UI work, since they can actually produce pleasing prototypes and explain the graphical psychology to geeks. If you think 'real' graphic designers just go to school to learn how to draw or make pretty pictures in AI, you are very sadly off track.
I think your mindset is a little backwards and probably reflects a lot of people here, hence why most FOSS looks like a programmer with no psychological background or graphic understanding designed it for other geeks and not the average person.
People used to make the same kind of arguments against GUIs in general, and they were just as stupid arguments back then as they are now. Pretty often does equal more functional and easier to use as art in general is a reflection of the mindset of people in the real world, not people thinking only procedure and logic steps.
Of course, because if it don't look like WP 5.1 or an application from the Win95 era of computing everyone here runs and screams because it is too easy or too pretty and it insults our inner geek...
Thanks for pointing this out. I left out '2D' when referring to the specific portion of Quartz I was talking about.
Should have been: 'Quartz 2D Extreme' not 'Quartz Extreme'
You are also right about the shift in 10.4 and QuickDraw performance compared to Quartz 2D; however, I was trying to make a point of the problems that developers and Apple has faced with moving to display PDF (Quartz 2D). See QuickDraw is comparable to Windows GDI, and Quartz 2D is a lot like GDI+, and neither are acclerated.
This is in contrast to.NET 3.0/WPF that is new in Vista and is 3D accelerated, supports many features just not available in OS X and is a generation ahead of Quartz 2D and Display PDF, and even the latest PDF specifications that Apple doesn't even use yet.
With regard to the acceleration, my point was that QuickDraw and Quartz 2D are not accelerated on the GPU, only the Quartz Composer uses the 3D portion of the GPU and then it is using simple textures and very simple surfaces for the bitmap composer.
Vista takes advantage of the 3D portion of the GPU on many levels from math and line drawing to bitmap usage and compression, etc. Vista also at the composer level doesn't have to double buffer like OSX does. Vista uses a different technique of RAM Virtualization and using features of the AGP/PCI/e BUS so that it can do 'post effects' with the composer, and maintain a tear free interface without the performance and RAM penalty that OS X suffers from with the Quartz composer.
Thanks for clarifying the terminology in my post, what starts out to be a fast response ends up being longer than expected and the specifics can easily be lost and mangled.
I'd have you explain how Aero doesn't use double-buffering for 99.9999999% of the windows applications out there today.
And you would have to explain this to me because? You didn't read my post correctly? Go back and read slowly this time. The point I made was that Aero DOESN'T DOUBLE BUFFER and OS X's COMPOSER DOES...
I don't buy it. If the library is on the disk, you still have to load it into memory. If you cache the data so you don't have to load it again, so what, any operating should be able to do that. That's why you have so much RAM, so the file-system can cache pages. If that was a serious issue, we'd put the libraries on a RAM disk.
Wow, do I really have to explain how Disk Caching works, the benefits of simple look ahead/predictive caching works, or do I have to go through the entire specifications of how Superfetch is more than a simple look ahead cache system that usually can 'predict' what data is needed next, even if the data has not been used, and pull it into the cache if it is not there already.
Just go look up the Vista caching technologies so you can understand that it uses both application and user usage prediction techniques.
So what you're saying is, you're pre-loading a bunch of stuff, wasting valuable memory in the process, and this is somehow better. How about this instead: provide APIs and technology that makes it possible to write code that doesn't require loading 50MB of dynamic libraries before giving the user control.
Let me guess, you think it is faster to let data load when it is called, instead of pre-loading information with unused CPU cycles and unused RAM? Heck, why even let the OS do any caching, just make the applications do all the work and put the load back on the developers as you suggest instead of the OS managing usage. Then you will be back to a memory allocation system much like Apple System 9, where applications have to allocate and WASTE RAM when it is not caching data.
Trust me, it is far more efficient for the OS to manage this, as applications have NO idea what the rest of the system or other applications are doing. This is why pre-emptive multi-tasking at the OS level works better than a yield based multi-tasking at the Application level, and is one of the core concepts of a modern OS to handle.
Do you think anyone here is really going to run to your rescue and defend that Disk Caching is bad? Geesh...
Then you can explain how any new-fangled application that doesn't answer to WM_PAINT and make GDI calls like the rest of the world can be expected to run on XP.
Go look up WPF and DirectX, I assure you neither of them use GDI calls. I also suggest you look up WPF and GDI on Vista, and how if the video card is DirectX7 capable, Vista will shove basic line drawing, bitmap acceleration, and other aspects of WPF/GDI/GDI+ through the 3D portion of the Video card instead of using the legacy 2D acceleration portion of the GPU.
Then when you are done, you can come back and explain how this 'differs' from QuickDraw, which does not do this at all. Basic Quartz also does not do this, and ONLY Quartz 2D Extreme uses the advanced vector/math drawing function of a 3D GPU, and is disabled in Tiger because it is too buggy.
I apologize, I should have been more of a dick in my first post, then I wouldn't have to explain this crap out for others following this post and they could have just ignored your idiotic rants about 'your company thinks this' and 'the place you work knows better than the rest of the world' argument crap.
You want real world examples? Let me go on and on about Vista and what EDS, IBM, NASA, Lockheed Martin, GM and even EDS Europe thinks of Vista, how well it is received, how well it works from both technical deployment situations to new end-user usability testing these companies have performed.
But then again, I'm sure none of these companies represent 'real world experience' like you can provide from 'your company'. I'm sure your dev
Not to be a dick, but you 'claim' to be a Windows developer, yet your post is riddled with simple errors that even a novice Windows or novice Vista user would call you out on, let alone someone that should have understanding of Windows from a developer or architectural standpoint.
I am not going to take time to correct your post, I just don't have the time to educate people when they are so mis-informed or intentionally are trying to mislead people.
Just a couple notes so people don't think I am just saying this...
You keep referencing OS X as the 'shining' example of a 'good' OS and make really bad comparisons that leads me to believe you are an Apple fan boi and are using this opportunity to try to discredit something you probably never even used.
Let's take one: You say Aero=Quartz...
1) Quartz Extreme is the only accelerated version, and currently isn't enabled due to compatibility issues.(Sadly this is why developers are still using QuickDraw on OSX because of the horrible performance of Quartz)
2) Vista WPF/GDI/GDI+ are all accelerated
3) Aero is a 3D Vector/Bitmap based composer, OS X only has a simple double-buffer bitmap composer.
4) And as a 'developer' you would never compare Quartz to Aero, it would be like comparing a car engine to a car windshield. A real developer would compare WPF/.NET3.0 to Quartz, as they are the API technologies and Aero is just the composer technology.
So good luck to you and your Mac, but try to stay out of the 'Vista' posts until you actually get a chance to use it, adding several factual errors doesn't do you or your point any justice.
(PS We have developers compiling on Vista too, and it IS FASTER than XP because Vista smart caches the libraries using the new superfetch concepts that don't exists in XP, so when a large project compiles it is significantly faster than compiling under XP as Vista anticipates what it need to load into the RAM cache before the compiler/application asks for it.
Superfetch is also why large application like VS or AI open 5-10x faster because it is a 'smart' caching system, and our developers like the fact the applications load and run faster.)
I agree that WPF is the most interesting feature in Vista, and indeed a great step forward. Unfortuantely, it will remain a dream for a long time until Microsoft provides some form of compatibility to XP.
WPF is ALREADY available on XP. It is called.NET 3.0 and offers the SAME features as WPF on Vista. XP does lose some of the advanced video acceleration that only Vista can provide, but other than that, it functions identically.
WPF/e (Silverlight) is a subset of WPF and is also available on XP, Linux, and OS X. And also works in Firefox, etc.
So your wish for it to be available on XP is already true, and has been since Vista was released.
Vista brings no new development models, and especially no 'revolutionary' ones that didn't already exist...let me explain...
XML based interfaces such as XAML have existed for quite a while now. Libraries for doing such things have also been around for a while now...just take a look at Firefox, it is based on XUL (XUL has been around since 1998). Whats even better about XUL, is it is cross platform (something XAML can't claim) and based on existing standards. You may think XAML is a big deal, but I say its just another stolen idea that has already been implemented in a better way elsewhere. You could already write native-looking apps in an XML and cross platform manner. What does XAML do that XUL does not? If you know, please enlighten me - because I don't see it.
Go look up WPF or.NET 3.0. Vista's entire display to document to printer model is based on WPF and 'implemented' in XAML. XAML itself is just a structue and no it isn't revolutionary or important, but the information it can hold IS IMPORTANT.
So ya the XAML isn't important but using a simple XAML structured text file to create a UI with a round floating globe with a text box on the globe and an animated video screen on the globe is the bridge between 'desginer' and 'developer'.
Look at the MS Expression products, they were created with their own dog food so to speak, and the UI and application was created by graphic designers, not programmers. It is also very impressive in the ease at which this can happen in not only the quality of graphics, but the inherent abilities for 3D, animation, advanced graphic fills etc.
It also bridges technologies, so that when you have a printer in 5 years that can print animated or interactive ink on the paper/output display, Vista already supports this, as there are no longer hard lines between 'display' 'interactive' and 'output'.
So skip the whole XAML document format, as that is not the point, go look up what WPF/.NET 3.0 can do in terms of UI and documents and how this works on Vista from the display to documents to the web (via silverlight) interacts with scripting and goes all the way to printers and digital presses without losing the display or interactive information (even though the printer/press technology today can't do much with it yet).
More stable and secure than Linux? Stability (and security, for that matter) of the platform is still questionable and I simply feel it is, at best, baseless to say it is more stable than Linux (and simply silly to say its more secure than Linux). Baseless in the sense that no one has really tested it under long duration or high load environments for any appreciable amount of time comparable to its Linux counterpart. In other words...call me when its running on servers and has uptimes >1 year, then we can start to talk.
Sure stability is subjective, but in terms you can define, try this...
Unplug your video card and plug it back in while running any *nix distribution. Then come back here and tell us how well XWindows recovers, and this is assuming the OS doesn't flatline.
Next do this on a Vista system, Notice the box saying video encountered an error and Vista recovered. Not only does Vista not BSOD, but it elegantly refreshes the device, and this works not only for the Vista and Application GUI but even 3D games will usually recover if they are DirectX based.
Next test, do this with your audio card while playing music.
Sure these are not normal, but demonstrates that bad drivers or even hardware failure won't drop Vista.
Another good test, install Vista on a bad HD that is losing blocks. Notice that Vista not only realizes the drive is bad, but monitors the block areas in the background using a form of chkdsk, and will do all it can to intelligently keep the OS running.
There are tons of little things like this in Vista that just go the extra mile to keep the OS stable. This mentality started with Win2k and limited DLL isolation, moved to exp
Sure 1GB of RAM is going to run faster, and is the sweet point of Vista, but in today's world (year 2007) the price of RAM, especially 1gb is pretty cheap to have an OS that runs faster than XP and does more than any other consumer level OS can currently due in both user experience and strict architectural terms.
Any advancement should mean it runs my applications better, and supports more hardware. If I get Vista, my software will run at best, identically to WindowsXP, and I will get less hardware support. As I run audio software, the drivers circumvent all the media mixing and buffering in Windows anyway. They have to do this as using the Windows kernel mixer and routing is so unpredictable and unreliable.
See this is another Myth that gets a lot of play from people that don't know better.
Vista has more drivers for hardware than any other OS 'ever'. Even the 64bit version of Vista has more drivers for hardware than WindowXP 32bit does, and 32bit Vista has almost 2x the driver support already. This is nothing to sneeze at...
Is there some hardware that might not work on Vista? Sure, but it is very rare. Just like there was hardware that stopped working with Tiger, but people didn't go all mental when Tiger introduced some changes that made older hardware no longer supported. And this was just with Tiger, which was not a major OS changing release. (No core subsystems changed)
As for the audio issues, they are very minimal in terms of what the applications see, as Vista offsets the removed APIs through the new Audio stack. The thing it broke was hardware that used EAX and other specific decoding features that 'bypassed' the basic Windows model in the first place. Creative labs has addressed this for gamers. And new sound cards utilize the Vista audio model to provide features that just are not available on XP.
In terms of Audio, Vista's fidelity is several times XP and OS X just based on how audio is processed at what bit rate, how multi sounds are mixed in the OS so there is no downsampling, etc.
Go look up Sonar/Cakewalk, they produce some very popular sound software, and they also swear by Vista's new audio features bringing audio quality to new professional level beyond what XP had or what OS X can produce. (Not just mix or edit, but actually play in realtime with realtime multi-channel output.)
As for why you should move to Vista, there are tons of articles that go into more depth than I could provide here. But since Audio seems to be important to you, Vista is the best consumer level OS for Audio/Video, as it implements the most robust Audio stack with realtime sync features that have only been seen in BeOS to date.
See this is just myth, and yet people think it is true.
Compared to XP, Vista needs 2X the RAM to have equal or faster performance to XP. That is the massive 2X... (People forget XP runs well with 256mb of RAM or 512mb of RAM)
If 512mb or 1gb of RAM is a 'massive' number, then they need to go back to their commadore 64. Any *nix distribution running XWindows also likes RAM and 512mb is not a massive number to anyone.
In other news OSX also recommends 512mb and Leopard recommends 512mb - 1gb... (So we can assume it is bloated crap that needs 2X the hardware also, right?)
no longer acceptable. Ignoring your testers complaints on usability and performance issues will no longer get it done
But the people that 'actually' used Vista for a significant amount of time (i.e. the testers) don't see Vista as the horrible OS that others looking in that haven't used it extensively do.
Vista added a lot of architectural changes and paved the road for many new things the industry will just start seeing and using in the next couple of years. From hot dock Video to the revised audio and video subsystems that 'DO' increase application and even gaming performance in addition to pulling video out of the kernel for stability. (Latest tests now show Vista 5-10% faster than XP in 99% of the games on the market, it was NVidia and ATI that didn't put enough effort into performance optimizing the Vista drivers for games as they did with XP where they had 6 years to add tweaks.)
The other big shove Vista has going for it is the migration for development to not only a new set of APIs, but a new concept of development that is as revolutionary as Drag and Drop event based programming made popular with Visual Basic back in 1993. Vista's XAML and core WPF technologies are a graphic designer/developers wet dream in terms of abilities, performance and moving from basic UI constructs. This can also be witnessed with Silverlight, another technology based on Vista technology. People can say XAML or WPF or Silverlight is like Display PDF or Flash or SVG, but when they actually take a look at what it does, it is quite apparent XAML and WPF go further than the current technology hardware even supports. And this isn't even talking about its inherent 3D support and 3D UI hit testing and other features that have to be faked to appear 3D on OS X(Display PDF) or Flash.
Vista also added enough new features to the user side of the OS that it still offer more than XP, and yes still even offers more than Leopard, which makes Leopard look like a catch up OS - especially considering many of the Leopard and even Tiger ideas that were so coveted by Apple users first appeared in alpha versions of Vista.
Pick almost any Leopard feature and Vista has the feature, and architecturally there is no 'killer' feature of OS X that Vista cannot implement via 3rd part support. On the other hand Vista has technologies that OS X, Linux, etc don't have yet and won't have for several years.
Until OS X or Linux can handle and pre-emptively multi-task GPU operations, non-double buffer writes from system RAM to VRAM, or process sound with virtually infinite channels and bit discrepancies, there is a LOT of architectural work to be done to compete with Vista. On Vista you can run several CAD/High End graphical applications under the Aero interface and not lose performance in any of the applications, even with them performing side by side. (This is the same paradigm shift that pre-emptive CPU operations offered applications, and Vista has extended this concept to the GPU subsystem.)
And Vista as for the claim that Vista is buggy or broken or performs slowly, think about it in these terms instead. It is more stable than XP, OS X, and Linux and for an v1 OS release has shown that MS can get security on industry par and even best what is out there, as Vista has had fewer security flaws or bugs than OS X has in the last year and Tiger has been around a while where these issues should have been fixed a long time ago.
And as for Vista having 'poor performance' remember than using boot camp and using native versions of any Adobe CS3 product, it runs faster under Vista than it does on OSX on the EXACT same hardware. And this is with non-optimized Apple drivers for Vista, and a sad note to loss of performance OS X inherently has.
Another area of performance you can look at is the gaming, with the latest drivers OpenGL and DX9/DX8/DX7 games run 5-10% faster than they do on XP now. And DX10 games run faster on Vista than the same games running in DX9 mode on XP, and have better visuals.
Netware was far superior - it just lacked the developer base, which was a pity as NLMs werejust as easy to code as Windows binaries, without the Win32 API bloat.
PS Windows binaries on NT that ran in the Win32 subsystem were always Win32 API applications. Almost nobody and nobody to this day can or do code directly to the NT level of the OS. Developers pretty much have to pick an architecture subsystem, whether it is Win32/POSIX/BSD/Win64 and code for the subsystem and the subsystem kernel that abstracts to the NT kernel layers.
There really is no such thing as Windows binaries that are not Win32 or BSD or some other Subsystem based application API.
Well the 386 at that time would have been a major problem. Even 486SX chips of the time without a math-co in them suffered.
NT was i386, but 486 optimized, and this includes the use of the RISC pipeline in the 486 and even the math-co-processor for OS level functions.
On 386 platforms, Novell was faster than NT, but on a 486 server, and running as a server, it couldn't keep up with NT, which is what really blew consumers and even Novell away, as NT had an inherent GUI strapped on it which most assumed would consume both RAM and CPU cycles, even though the NT GUI model when not in use was very minimal on RAM and non-existent on CPU cycles breaking the 'GUI = slower' concept for servers.
Slashdot Mirror
same goes for sudo and UAC. Sudo doesn't get in your way. UAC does
I would suggest that instead of knocking UAC, people step back and look at why it doesn't seem to work as smooth as sudo or other similar privilege elevation features in OSes.
Windows NT has had security since it was designed, and the token based security system has actually changed very little from NT 3.1 to Vista.
What did happen is that to make it easier to move users and 'applications' from the Win9X world where security did not exist in the OS, Microsoft made a really bad decision and let XP install and run as default with users having administrator(root) access.
This worked to make the transition smooth, but it also let people continue to write software that did not honor nor even check the system security. Basically they never 'enforced' the NT security model by leaving XP open for applications.
Along comes Vista, and Microsoft turns on the UAC, and forces users to never run as root, unless they intentionally disable UAC.
This brought Vista up to the same functionality as other OSes.
However because so many applications that ran on XP and previous versions of Windows 'ignored' security and assumed it had 'admin/root' level access to the system, these applications cause the UAC to appear 'a lot' more than you would ever experience with an OS like OS X.
However, this is really not a fault of UAC or Vista, but more of a 'past' mistake on MS's part by 'ever' allowing software to run without knowledge of security on the NT platform in the first place.
Think of it this way, if the UAC was 'always' present in XP or NT security was enforced and users weren't encouraged to run as administrators, all these UAC prompting 'bad' applications that ignored security would have been 'fixed' or written properly for security before they were ever released.
If an OS X developer makes an application that makes the OS X privilege elevation prompt appear each time it runs, the developer 'fixes' the application before the user ever sees it, since this has been how OS X has always worked, enforcing its inherent security. This is why you don't see many applications on *nix/OS X etc that drive people nuts wanting more than user level security access.
UAC and sudo are not that different, and Microsoft has tried to make the UAC less annoying than it originally was. However, the truth is all the UAC is going to do at this point in the Windows OS history is finally force developers to write their software with security in mind so the UAC doesn't drive the user nuts.
Even MS admits the UAC is more of a tool to force developers to write software properly with respect for the NT security system than it is to protect the OS because users will ignore the prompts or turn it off eventually.
I do feel your pain though, and I wish MS would have bit the bullet with Win2k/XP and enforced the NT security model for software back then and got this all out of the way years ago.
If OS X could have pulled off adding ZFS" - Last time I checked, they did add ZFS.
1) It is a developer preview release.
2) It will be read only in Leopard.
3) It is not the default or main OS File System.
OS X cannot use the advanced features of ZFS as a part of the basic operations of the Operating System, nor rely on ZFS technologies.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9041178
Take Care...
and they can no longer be combined with in-window hardware accelerated OpenGL
Actually 'Windowed' combining is still allowed, it is when the 'Composer' is flipped off or full screen mode that this is no longer allowed. Understand?
City of Heroes is one of the biggest examples of this issue being visible to users, running the game in a Window with Aero on, cursors look fine, full-screen they don't work unless you turn on compatible cursors.
(BTW ATI has addressed this at the driver level, and only NVidia currently hasn't found a work around for applications that do this that Vista no longer supports.)
To further the discussion...
GDI/GDI+ is accelerated; however, many tend to focus on the distinction between it and WPF. WPF at the top level uses a 100% DirectX class rasterizer, GDI/GDI+ doesn't.
In comparison to XP, GDI/GDI+ on Vista is very much alike, but some low level function of the GDI have been optimized to no longer utilize the 2D portions of the GPU, and instead shove these functions through DirectX 7, like WPF does. (This is why WPF is also fully accelerated on Direct7 hardware and newer on both XP and Vista, as Direct7 is the baseline of basic WPF features.)
For example even simple bitmap functions of the GDI/GDI+ are now processed via 3D functions that can compress and manipulate bitmaps faster than the CPU or the 2D native GPU functions of the older GDI/GDI+ rendering.
This is a fairly complicated topic, as many of the features of rendering changed during the development of Vista, and you can find incorrect or outdated information even on the MS blogs.
For example originally Vista was going to process OpenGL only though DirectX, and this changed as MS found a way to open the Composer to allow OpenGL to run hardware accelerated natively at the same time inside the composer without forcing it through DirectX. (You might remember the outrage when this was first announced and later changed to support OpenGL properly and this change happened in mainly in the last stages of development of Vista in 2006.
DirectX is now only used in the last WDDM layer (and I use th term DirectX lightly here) for the composer, as Aero still manages the display context for the OpenGL applications.
And the composer and Aero is one area of Vista that actually added features and 'improved' over the original Longhorn conceptual beta where a lot of other features were removed and changed.
As for Double-Buffering, this is another term that is easily mixed up.
There is a difference between full double-buffering as OS X does, and what Vista does. This is why Vista's composer is called a Vector/Bitmap composer, not just a Bitmap composer as in OS X.
GDI/GDI+ 'has' to render to a bitmap level in the composer, WPF, DirectX do not. So even though GDI/GDI+ is being somewhat accelerated, they have to draw to a bitmap at some point, where WPF and DirectX never have to.
(This is why RDP in Vista can be massively faster than XP and do 3D, because it utilizes the Vector layer of the Composer and even some GDI level calls instead of pushing bitmaps across the network. - Don't try a high texture 3D application over RDP though.)
What makes the Vista version of 'bitmap' composing different than OS X is the way it handles the memory for the window context and how it writes the 'bitmap' to the video display directly.
OS X must not only store the windows 'bitmap' but must also transfer the bitmap from system RAM to GPU RAM and then tell the GPU to render the 'bitmap' on a simple surface. Vista doesn't have to do this, as I referenced with the way it utilizes the AGP/PCI/e buses. Vista can put the rendered 'bitmap' in either System or Video RAM and defines no distinction between the two, as Vista can draw directly to the display surface from System RAM or Video RAM. (i.e. If the Window Bitmap from the composer is in System RAM, it doesn't have to transfer to the GPU VRAM before it is written to the video display surface. It can also intelligent
VISTA to create about 30-35% CPU
You know on OS X how when you first installed it, spotlight took CPU time to index the contents of your documents, photos, etc?
This is what happens when you do an install of Vista as well. The indexing service and optimization services run at first, maybe a couple of hours if you have tons of content like some users, and then the CPU usage drops down to nothing.
If Vista sucked 20-30% of the CPU all the time it was running, then it would unusable.
Also, go do a search on Vista vs OSX with Adobe CS3 applications. Notice how strange the same applications from Adobe, using the new native Intel versions of CS3 run faster under Vista than they do under OS X? This would lead most people to believe OS X has a far heavier overhead than even Vista. Ouch...
How freaking stupid can this get? The person that wrote the content at the link you provided knows NOTHING about what they are talking about, confusing terms, and not even 'getting' the context of what they are trying to argue. And you post links to technical articles you apparently don't even understand or you would realize how off track you were.
Here try this...
Instead of 'Volume Shadow Copy' introduced in WindowsXP/2K or 'System Restore' introduced in WinME and effectively in WindowsXP; Go look up 'Previous Versions', released in Windows 2003 Server and turned on by default on Windows Vista.
Previous Versions is NOT System Restore, and it is NOT Volume Shadow Copies.
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/cfddaf10-24fa-4d6d-a34d-cfb84c5223781033.mspx?mfr=true
http://shellrevealed.com/photos/windows_vista/picture123.aspx
System Restore is an Application/OS restore tool, something OS X doesn't even offer.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/systemrestore.mspx
FTA: (System Restore does not affect your personal data files!)
Volume Shadow Copies are a way to copy or backup 'in use' files, in basic terms.
And then go re-read the Volume Copy Service link 'you' provided, as it is another tool that OS and developers use, and is NOTHING the user ever deals with...
This is freaking stupid that Mac users can't even discuss the proper terminology or see a Vista user right click on a folder or document and bring up a 'time-line' of the folder and files, just like freaking time-machine on OS X.
Additionally...
Previous Versions is 'transparent' to applications unlike OS X that needs applications to be aware if they use 'special data stores', requires NO setup, and is working from the moment Vista is installed or the PC is turned on.
Previous Versions can be accessed in every Folder or File/Open/Save dialog box for every application running on Vista, all the way back to programs from Windows 3.1, and it works equally well on all of them.
A user can go back in the Vista Timeline on any file, folder, data store, etc. and all folders and files can be opened to view previous times, be dragged and dropped to the current time-frame.
Vista Previous Version also uses advanced FS level file and differential points so data is NOT stored 'as redundantly' as it is on OS X.
If OS X could have pulled off adding ZFS, they could have made time machine MORE like Vista with FS level snapshots instead of having to backup the files and folders to achieve a similar function.
Sadly, OS X's FS does not have the capabilities of ZFS or NTFS to do this, so data has to be actually backed up for Time Machine to work.
On Vista, there is NO Overhead of backing up 'Previous Versions' since it does work at the FS level. (See Vista doesn't technically have to copy the data each time a change is made, due to the way NTFS works. Go read more on this and ZFS to see why it is the only other FS that supports these types of transactions.)
Now I admit the OS X Time Machine interface is far more cooler than the Vista 'list' interface, but it is less functional, adds system overhead to maintain the backups,and wastes far more drive space.
So the functionality DOES EXIST in Windows, first appeared in the Windows 2003 Server Beta back in 2002, and has been around doing what Apple is just now catching up to in a less efficient way 5 years later. (4 Years if you count the Release date of Windows 2003 and not the Beta previews in 2002.)
Now take this information back to your Mac forums, and tell them they gave you crappy information and they have no idea what the hell they are talking about when it comes to comparing OS X and Vista.
From article submission: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/31/0044201
Re: Vista Previous Versions (Also in 2003 Server)
Some users will find the feature objectionable because it could give the bossman a new way to check up on employees, or perhaps it could be exploited in some nefarious way by some nefarious person. Previous versions of Windows were still susceptible to undelete utilities, of course, but this new functionality makes browsing quite, quite simple.
From today's article:
The writer argues that Apple's new Time Machine automatic backup should be considered a security feature.
- So the same feature that first appeared on Windows Server in 2003 and then on Vista is considered a security risk, especially because it is too 'easy' to use.
- And now the same freaking feature in OS X is considered a 'security feature', and they claim it is even 'easier' to use than Vista's version?
How can logical people even accept information like this? Can we officially rename SlashDot - Apple's new bitch?
Doesn't anyone else find things disingenuous when you can get modded down attacking OS X faster than if you attack FreeBSD or Linux on a OSS site? We now see the same 'coveted' features in Vista are bad, but good in OS X.
SlashDot, I miss the real tech news, OSS information, and honest debate...
good thing they all come with the top of the line graphics cards that usually dont go obsolete until the computer needs replacing anyway ;)
Ya, cause 2 year old mid-range cards are the 'best'.
So who next is going to argue that the ATI 2600 or the Geforce 7300 are top of the line Video cards? And this is the 'best' you can get in a freaking Mac, even the top of the line Mac. - (source www.apple.com)
Sadly you can buy a two year old Generic laptop with faster video than the most expensive Mac Desktop... Very sad even, and why don't Apple users care enough to demand Apple actually offer the best?
. If "Documents and Settings" was hardcoded in an application and now doesn't exist that screws the pooch. Next when it comes to actually running programs again user rights come into play. Even users who are Administrators do not have full administratove privilages. You still have to modify shortcuts to apps to have them run as the SYSTEM Admin.
/ah from the root. In fact run it from the Start button: 'C:\documents and settings' and you get the Explorer Window for the Junction pointing to C:\Users
1) Documents and Settings - STILL EXITS.
It is a Junction pointing to Users. Do a freaking dir
This is a BASIC and OLD concept for OSes, and even NTFS has supported Junctions for a over 7 years. So, even if the application was STUPID enough to ignore the user location variable, the program still works, as 'Documents and Settings' and 'Users' are synonymous!
2) If an application was developed without any concern for security, shame on the developer. If the application was written for OS X or Linux it would have failed ORIGINALLY!.
Sure MS made the mistake of making the move from Win9X to XP too easy by allowing applications to assume there was no OS level security, but these days are OVER. Guess what Windows developers, Windows NT has always had security, and if you were not checking for it and not trying to use admin rights when not needed, then you are getting what you deserve.
This is NOT MS or Vista's fault, just as if you wrote the security 'ignorant' application and expect it to run on OS X or Linux, it would not be OS X or Linux's fault for ACTUALLY ENFORCING SECURITY! And if you are an end user, then YELL at the developer. This is not Win9X where the OS had no security, and it is time freaking Windows developers catch up to the rest of the world.
I can't believe that a post on SlashDot is marked 'insightful' when the person is complaining about an OS because it 'enforces security properly', or uses 'junctions' and OS level variables for User folder locations.
These are freaking solid basic ideas on *nix and yet Vista is getting a bad presentation by an idiot because they think it should run un-secure like Win9x?
Please for the love of security, *nix people mod the parent down...
BSD is not and probably never will be what underlies NT. "Side by side" (your words) means it's an optional bolt-on addition to NT. IOW, SUA is a bone thrown in by Microsoft to UNIX developers so they wouldn't have to kluge out their code in something as asinine as VB.
I guess people are just stupid, and literally RACE to SlashDot to prove it.
MS would be 'insane' to strap BSD under any portion of Win32 or NT. You have no idea what you are even talking about and prove it by suggesting that as an option.
BSD is an API, it is NOT A KERNEL technology, but an interface to a kernel.
When running on the NT client/server kernel, all 'subsystems' run as virtual API environments. That is why the Win32 kernel is NOT THE NT KERNEL and also why the BSD subsystem can SIT ON THE NT Kernel just as it sits on a MACH variant on OS X. And YES Win32 and BSD run side by side, as they are separate but equal subsystems. In theory the Win32 subsystem could be removed and replaced with a full BSD subsystem on the NT kernel.
It scares me that so many people here have so little understanding about OS architecture, especially when it comes to NT.
No wonder everyone thinks Windows is a Joke, it is too complicated for them to understand apparently. So go back to the common 1980's kernel concepts, anything beyond that is apparently beyond the SlashDot community.
Ignore Net Avenger. This is the same tool that announced that NT had a BSD subsystem
I hope everyone isn't this stupid...
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/695ac415-d314-45df-b464-4c80ddc2b3bc1033.mspx?mfr=true
The current Unix subsystem for Windows NT (Vista/2003/Longhorn/XP) very much does have a BSD subsystem that runs 'side by side' the Win32/Win64 subsystem. Anyone that has even looked at the NT kernel architecture will understand how this works and why NT can do this.
Enjoy your beer, you need it.
What other experience do you think possibly matters to me, my company, and my clients?
Well we have no way to contrast whether your experiences are legitimate concerns caused by Vista or are just the result of a couple of bad IT people or your own ignorance.
It is also a sad misconception that 'your' experience is average and reflects the rest of the world, when there are smart people in tougher IT jobs than you that directly contradict your assessment.
As for the display issues, it seems like you know enough to be dangerous, not enough to use it constructively. Unlike you, I recognize everyone's accomplishments in the field. You're too busy being amazed by stuff that I find unremarkable and not unique. Just for kicks, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS [wikipedia.org]. That idea is so old it farts dust.
How sad that you reference something hyberbolic to anything we have discussed. Is it that you don't understand the differences or you just like to lump concepts together so they are easier for you to understand.
NeWS has nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, to do with anything I have said or we have been talking about. PERIOD.
When I was working on X11, you are the type of smart ass kid we would have sent off to document comment code. You are the type of person that can see a shelf of understanding above you, but you can't quite see what is on the shelf, and refuses to look any higher.
So enjoy your beer and come back to this conversation when you have a clue of how bad your analogy and link reference was in regard to our conversation. Until then, have a good decade...
Vista is using double-buffering. I have not seen any WPF feature that is not available in the Mac OS X graphic stack (Quartz 2D, Quartz Composer, Core Image, Core Animation, Core Video).
In the sense that it is used on OS X, no Vista does not use double-buffering.
And there are MANY things in not only WPF but the whole Vista WDDM (Video subsystem) that are outside the capabilities of what OS X can do. I know this is not what people want to hear, but sadly is true.
To accomplish many of the API featurs of WPF an OS X developer would have to dive into OpenGL, and it would not be as simple as writing a simple five line XML page as it is with WPF and Vista to create a 3D scene that is interactive.
OS X also cannot virtualize nor pre-emptively multi-task the GPU, nor utilize GPU multi-processing beyond simplistic SLI and Crossfire. Vista has inherent support for all these things and is not even tied to SMP concepts for GPU multi-processing. This is how Vista can maintain the 3D Aero interface and keep framerates in applications and games at near peak performance while running more than one at a time, and it is not a yielded or application managed concept like it was with XP or OpenGL.
Vista brings the GPU equivalent of pre-emptive and multi-processing to graphics and physics that the 386 architecture and 32bit OSes did over a decade ago. Sadly, NO OTHER OS currently does this, nor even attempts to do this.
No, because graphic designers do not generally have the skills to design UI. They can design the cosmetic/visual appearance, and improve coherency and balance, but design the UI itself? No thanks.
Nice generalization, but sadly not always true. Graphic Designers can work within the guidelines of UI design just as easy as the most graphically challenged geek.
It is 'bad' graphic designers that I think you are targeting, the people that learn how to use Flash or AI at home and have no art or psychological background.
Our company hires graphic designers for UI work, since they can actually produce pleasing prototypes and explain the graphical psychology to geeks. If you think 'real' graphic designers just go to school to learn how to draw or make pretty pictures in AI, you are very sadly off track.
I think your mindset is a little backwards and probably reflects a lot of people here, hence why most FOSS looks like a programmer with no psychological background or graphic understanding designed it for other geeks and not the average person.
People used to make the same kind of arguments against GUIs in general, and they were just as stupid arguments back then as they are now. Pretty often does equal more functional and easier to use as art in general is a reflection of the mindset of people in the real world, not people thinking only procedure and logic steps.
Anyone else have the fear?
Of course, because if it don't look like WP 5.1 or an application from the Win95 era of computing everyone here runs and screams because it is too easy or too pretty and it insults our inner geek...
*smile*
Thanks for pointing this out. I left out '2D' when referring to the specific portion of Quartz I was talking about.
.NET 3.0/WPF that is new in Vista and is 3D accelerated, supports many features just not available in OS X and is a generation ahead of Quartz 2D and Display PDF, and even the latest PDF specifications that Apple doesn't even use yet.
Should have been:
'Quartz 2D Extreme' not 'Quartz Extreme'
You are also right about the shift in 10.4 and QuickDraw performance compared to Quartz 2D; however, I was trying to make a point of the problems that developers and Apple has faced with moving to display PDF (Quartz 2D). See QuickDraw is comparable to Windows GDI, and Quartz 2D is a lot like GDI+, and neither are acclerated.
This is in contrast to
With regard to the acceleration, my point was that QuickDraw and Quartz 2D are not accelerated on the GPU, only the Quartz Composer uses the 3D portion of the GPU and then it is using simple textures and very simple surfaces for the bitmap composer.
Vista takes advantage of the 3D portion of the GPU on many levels from math and line drawing to bitmap usage and compression, etc. Vista also at the composer level doesn't have to double buffer like OSX does. Vista uses a different technique of RAM Virtualization and using features of the AGP/PCI/e BUS so that it can do 'post effects' with the composer, and maintain a tear free interface without the performance and RAM penalty that OS X suffers from with the Quartz composer.
Thanks for clarifying the terminology in my post, what starts out to be a fast response ends up being longer than expected and the specifics can easily be lost and mangled.
Take Care...
I'd have you explain how Aero doesn't use double-buffering for 99.9999999% of the windows applications out there today.
And you would have to explain this to me because? You didn't read my post correctly? Go back and read slowly this time. The point I made was that Aero DOESN'T DOUBLE BUFFER and OS X's COMPOSER DOES...
I don't buy it. If the library is on the disk, you still have to load it into memory. If you cache the data so you don't have to load it again, so what, any operating should be able to do that. That's why you have so much RAM, so the file-system can cache pages. If that was a serious issue, we'd put the libraries on a RAM disk.
Wow, do I really have to explain how Disk Caching works, the benefits of simple look ahead/predictive caching works, or do I have to go through the entire specifications of how Superfetch is more than a simple look ahead cache system that usually can 'predict' what data is needed next, even if the data has not been used, and pull it into the cache if it is not there already.
Just go look up the Vista caching technologies so you can understand that it uses both application and user usage prediction techniques.
So what you're saying is, you're pre-loading a bunch of stuff, wasting valuable memory in the process, and this is somehow better. How about this instead: provide APIs and technology that makes it possible to write code that doesn't require loading 50MB of dynamic libraries before giving the user control.
Let me guess, you think it is faster to let data load when it is called, instead of pre-loading information with unused CPU cycles and unused RAM? Heck, why even let the OS do any caching, just make the applications do all the work and put the load back on the developers as you suggest instead of the OS managing usage. Then you will be back to a memory allocation system much like Apple System 9, where applications have to allocate and WASTE RAM when it is not caching data.
Trust me, it is far more efficient for the OS to manage this, as applications have NO idea what the rest of the system or other applications are doing. This is why pre-emptive multi-tasking at the OS level works better than a yield based multi-tasking at the Application level, and is one of the core concepts of a modern OS to handle.
Do you think anyone here is really going to run to your rescue and defend that Disk Caching is bad? Geesh...
Then you can explain how any new-fangled application that doesn't answer to WM_PAINT and make GDI calls like the rest of the world can be expected to run on XP.
Go look up WPF and DirectX, I assure you neither of them use GDI calls. I also suggest you look up WPF and GDI on Vista, and how if the video card is DirectX7 capable, Vista will shove basic line drawing, bitmap acceleration, and other aspects of WPF/GDI/GDI+ through the 3D portion of the Video card instead of using the legacy 2D acceleration portion of the GPU.
Then when you are done, you can come back and explain how this 'differs' from QuickDraw, which does not do this at all. Basic Quartz also does not do this, and ONLY Quartz 2D Extreme uses the advanced vector/math drawing function of a 3D GPU, and is disabled in Tiger because it is too buggy.
I apologize, I should have been more of a dick in my first post, then I wouldn't have to explain this crap out for others following this post and they could have just ignored your idiotic rants about 'your company thinks this' and 'the place you work knows better than the rest of the world' argument crap.
You want real world examples? Let me go on and on about Vista and what EDS, IBM, NASA, Lockheed Martin, GM and even EDS Europe thinks of Vista, how well it is received, how well it works from both technical deployment situations to new end-user usability testing these companies have performed.
But then again, I'm sure none of these companies represent 'real world experience' like you can provide from 'your company'. I'm sure your dev
Not to be a dick, but you 'claim' to be a Windows developer, yet your post is riddled with simple errors that even a novice Windows or novice Vista user would call you out on, let alone someone that should have understanding of Windows from a developer or architectural standpoint.
I am not going to take time to correct your post, I just don't have the time to educate people when they are so mis-informed or intentionally are trying to mislead people.
Just a couple notes so people don't think I am just saying this...
You keep referencing OS X as the 'shining' example of a 'good' OS and make really bad comparisons that leads me to believe you are an Apple fan boi and are using this opportunity to try to discredit something you probably never even used.
Let's take one: You say Aero=Quartz...
1) Quartz Extreme is the only accelerated version, and currently isn't enabled due to compatibility issues.(Sadly this is why developers are still using QuickDraw on OSX because of the horrible performance of Quartz)
2) Vista WPF/GDI/GDI+ are all accelerated
3) Aero is a 3D Vector/Bitmap based composer, OS X only has a simple double-buffer bitmap composer.
4) And as a 'developer' you would never compare Quartz to Aero, it would be like comparing a car engine to a car windshield. A real developer would compare WPF/.NET3.0 to Quartz, as they are the API technologies and Aero is just the composer technology.
So good luck to you and your Mac, but try to stay out of the 'Vista' posts until you actually get a chance to use it, adding several factual errors doesn't do you or your point any justice.
(PS We have developers compiling on Vista too, and it IS FASTER than XP because Vista smart caches the libraries using the new superfetch concepts that don't exists in XP, so when a large project compiles it is significantly faster than compiling under XP as Vista anticipates what it need to load into the RAM cache before the compiler/application asks for it.
Superfetch is also why large application like VS or AI open 5-10x faster because it is a 'smart' caching system, and our developers like the fact the applications load and run faster.)
I agree that WPF is the most interesting feature in Vista, and indeed a great step forward. Unfortuantely, it will remain a dream for a long time until Microsoft provides some form of compatibility to XP.
.NET 3.0 and offers the SAME features as WPF on Vista. XP does lose some of the advanced video acceleration that only Vista can provide, but other than that, it functions identically.
WPF is ALREADY available on XP. It is called
WPF/e (Silverlight) is a subset of WPF and is also available on XP, Linux, and OS X. And also works in Firefox, etc.
So your wish for it to be available on XP is already true, and has been since Vista was released.
Vista brings no new development models, and especially no 'revolutionary' ones that didn't already exist...let me explain...
.NET 3.0. Vista's entire display to document to printer model is based on WPF and 'implemented' in XAML. XAML itself is just a structue and no it isn't revolutionary or important, but the information it can hold IS IMPORTANT.
XML based interfaces such as XAML have existed for quite a while now. Libraries for doing such things have also been around for a while now...just take a look at Firefox, it is based on XUL (XUL has been around since 1998). Whats even better about XUL, is it is cross platform (something XAML can't claim) and based on existing standards. You may think XAML is a big deal, but I say its just another stolen idea that has already been implemented in a better way elsewhere. You could already write native-looking apps in an XML and cross platform manner. What does XAML do that XUL does not? If you know, please enlighten me - because I don't see it.
Go look up WPF or
So ya the XAML isn't important but using a simple XAML structured text file to create a UI with a round floating globe with a text box on the globe and an animated video screen on the globe is the bridge between 'desginer' and 'developer'.
Look at the MS Expression products, they were created with their own dog food so to speak, and the UI and application was created by graphic designers, not programmers. It is also very impressive in the ease at which this can happen in not only the quality of graphics, but the inherent abilities for 3D, animation, advanced graphic fills etc.
It also bridges technologies, so that when you have a printer in 5 years that can print animated or interactive ink on the paper/output display, Vista already supports this, as there are no longer hard lines between 'display' 'interactive' and 'output'.
So skip the whole XAML document format, as that is not the point, go look up what WPF/.NET 3.0 can do in terms of UI and documents and how this works on Vista from the display to documents to the web (via silverlight) interacts with scripting and goes all the way to printers and digital presses without losing the display or interactive information (even though the printer/press technology today can't do much with it yet).
More stable and secure than Linux? Stability (and security, for that matter) of the platform is still questionable and I simply feel it is, at best, baseless to say it is more stable than Linux (and simply silly to say its more secure than Linux). Baseless in the sense that no one has really tested it under long duration or high load environments for any appreciable amount of time comparable to its Linux counterpart. In other words...call me when its running on servers and has uptimes >1 year, then we can start to talk.
Sure stability is subjective, but in terms you can define, try this...
Unplug your video card and plug it back in while running any *nix distribution. Then come back here and tell us how well XWindows recovers, and this is assuming the OS doesn't flatline.
Next do this on a Vista system, Notice the box saying video encountered an error and Vista recovered. Not only does Vista not BSOD, but it elegantly refreshes the device, and this works not only for the Vista and Application GUI but even 3D games will usually recover if they are DirectX based.
Next test, do this with your audio card while playing music.
Sure these are not normal, but demonstrates that bad drivers or even hardware failure won't drop Vista.
Another good test, install Vista on a bad HD that is losing blocks. Notice that Vista not only realizes the drive is bad, but monitors the block areas in the background using a form of chkdsk, and will do all it can to intelligently keep the OS running.
There are tons of little things like this in Vista that just go the extra mile to keep the OS stable. This mentality started with Win2k and limited DLL isolation, moved to exp
Sure 1GB of RAM is going to run faster, and is the sweet point of Vista, but in today's world (year 2007) the price of RAM, especially 1gb is pretty cheap to have an OS that runs faster than XP and does more than any other consumer level OS can currently due in both user experience and strict architectural terms.
Any advancement should mean it runs my applications better, and supports more hardware.
If I get Vista, my software will run at best, identically to WindowsXP, and I will get less hardware support.
As I run audio software, the drivers circumvent all the media mixing and buffering in Windows anyway. They have to do this as using the Windows kernel mixer and routing is so unpredictable and unreliable.
See this is another Myth that gets a lot of play from people that don't know better.
Vista has more drivers for hardware than any other OS 'ever'. Even the 64bit version of Vista has more drivers for hardware than WindowXP 32bit does, and 32bit Vista has almost 2x the driver support already. This is nothing to sneeze at...
Is there some hardware that might not work on Vista? Sure, but it is very rare. Just like there was hardware that stopped working with Tiger, but people didn't go all mental when Tiger introduced some changes that made older hardware no longer supported. And this was just with Tiger, which was not a major OS changing release. (No core subsystems changed)
As for the audio issues, they are very minimal in terms of what the applications see, as Vista offsets the removed APIs through the new Audio stack. The thing it broke was hardware that used EAX and other specific decoding features that 'bypassed' the basic Windows model in the first place. Creative labs has addressed this for gamers. And new sound cards utilize the Vista audio model to provide features that just are not available on XP.
In terms of Audio, Vista's fidelity is several times XP and OS X just based on how audio is processed at what bit rate, how multi sounds are mixed in the OS so there is no downsampling, etc.
Go look up Sonar/Cakewalk, they produce some very popular sound software, and they also swear by Vista's new audio features bringing audio quality to new professional level beyond what XP had or what OS X can produce. (Not just mix or edit, but actually play in realtime with realtime multi-channel output.)
As for why you should move to Vista, there are tons of articles that go into more depth than I could provide here. But since Audio seems to be important to you, Vista is the best consumer level OS for Audio/Video, as it implements the most robust Audio stack with realtime sync features that have only been seen in BeOS to date.
2x the hardware
See this is just myth, and yet people think it is true.
Compared to XP, Vista needs 2X the RAM to have equal or faster performance to XP. That is the massive 2X... (People forget XP runs well with 256mb of RAM or 512mb of RAM)
If 512mb or 1gb of RAM is a 'massive' number, then they need to go back to their commadore 64. Any *nix distribution running XWindows also likes RAM and 512mb is not a massive number to anyone.
In other news OSX also recommends 512mb and Leopard recommends 512mb - 1gb... (So we can assume it is bloated crap that needs 2X the hardware also, right?)
no longer acceptable. Ignoring your testers complaints on usability and performance issues will no longer get it done
But the people that 'actually' used Vista for a significant amount of time (i.e. the testers) don't see Vista as the horrible OS that others looking in that haven't used it extensively do.
Vista added a lot of architectural changes and paved the road for many new things the industry will just start seeing and using in the next couple of years. From hot dock Video to the revised audio and video subsystems that 'DO' increase application and even gaming performance in addition to pulling video out of the kernel for stability. (Latest tests now show Vista 5-10% faster than XP in 99% of the games on the market, it was NVidia and ATI that didn't put enough effort into performance optimizing the Vista drivers for games as they did with XP where they had 6 years to add tweaks.)
The other big shove Vista has going for it is the migration for development to not only a new set of APIs, but a new concept of development that is as revolutionary as Drag and Drop event based programming made popular with Visual Basic back in 1993. Vista's XAML and core WPF technologies are a graphic designer/developers wet dream in terms of abilities, performance and moving from basic UI constructs. This can also be witnessed with Silverlight, another technology based on Vista technology. People can say XAML or WPF or Silverlight is like Display PDF or Flash or SVG, but when they actually take a look at what it does, it is quite apparent XAML and WPF go further than the current technology hardware even supports. And this isn't even talking about its inherent 3D support and 3D UI hit testing and other features that have to be faked to appear 3D on OS X(Display PDF) or Flash.
Vista also added enough new features to the user side of the OS that it still offer more than XP, and yes still even offers more than Leopard, which makes Leopard look like a catch up OS - especially considering many of the Leopard and even Tiger ideas that were so coveted by Apple users first appeared in alpha versions of Vista.
Pick almost any Leopard feature and Vista has the feature, and architecturally there is no 'killer' feature of OS X that Vista cannot implement via 3rd part support. On the other hand Vista has technologies that OS X, Linux, etc don't have yet and won't have for several years.
Until OS X or Linux can handle and pre-emptively multi-task GPU operations, non-double buffer writes from system RAM to VRAM, or process sound with virtually infinite channels and bit discrepancies, there is a LOT of architectural work to be done to compete with Vista. On Vista you can run several CAD/High End graphical applications under the Aero interface and not lose performance in any of the applications, even with them performing side by side. (This is the same paradigm shift that pre-emptive CPU operations offered applications, and Vista has extended this concept to the GPU subsystem.)
And Vista as for the claim that Vista is buggy or broken or performs slowly, think about it in these terms instead. It is more stable than XP, OS X, and Linux and for an v1 OS release has shown that MS can get security on industry par and even best what is out there, as Vista has had fewer security flaws or bugs than OS X has in the last year and Tiger has been around a while where these issues should have been fixed a long time ago.
And as for Vista having 'poor performance' remember than using boot camp and using native versions of any Adobe CS3 product, it runs faster under Vista than it does on OSX on the EXACT same hardware. And this is with non-optimized Apple drivers for Vista, and a sad note to loss of performance OS X inherently has.
Another area of performance you can look at is the gaming, with the latest drivers OpenGL and DX9/DX8/DX7 games run 5-10% faster than they do on XP now. And DX10 games run faster on Vista than the same games running in DX9 mode on XP, and have better visuals.
So Vista
Netware was far superior - it just lacked the developer base, which was a pity as NLMs werejust as easy to code as Windows binaries, without the Win32 API bloat.
PS Windows binaries on NT that ran in the Win32 subsystem were always Win32 API applications. Almost nobody and nobody to this day can or do code directly to the NT level of the OS. Developers pretty much have to pick an architecture subsystem, whether it is Win32/POSIX/BSD/Win64 and code for the subsystem and the subsystem kernel that abstracts to the NT kernel layers.
There really is no such thing as Windows binaries that are not Win32 or BSD or some other Subsystem based application API.
Take Care...
Well, it was 1992, and running on a 386
Well the 386 at that time would have been a major problem. Even 486SX chips of the time without a math-co in them suffered.
NT was i386, but 486 optimized, and this includes the use of the RISC pipeline in the 486 and even the math-co-processor for OS level functions.
On 386 platforms, Novell was faster than NT, but on a 486 server, and running as a server, it couldn't keep up with NT, which is what really blew consumers and even Novell away, as NT had an inherent GUI strapped on it which most assumed would consume both RAM and CPU cycles, even though the NT GUI model when not in use was very minimal on RAM and non-existent on CPU cycles breaking the 'GUI = slower' concept for servers.