Submitted by OSNews regular Kaiwai takes a superficial look at Vista and MacOS 10.4/10.5, and concludes: “To say that the changes in Windows Vista are only skin deep is missinformed to say the least; spend some time reading those sources I have listed, and even if you don’t have a desire to run Windows Vista or particular interested in Windows based technology, it does provide some good resources explaining the changes and rationale behind those choices made. So from a purely technical point of view, Windows Vista is actually looking a whole lot more interesting than what the detractors have been saying in the computer press about the current direction.”
‘s/10.5/10.4/’
IMHO doesn’t make sense `comparing` (or looking at) one OS that isn’t released with another that is.
I think just when apple show us what 10.5 will be, we can make that kind of analysis.
Vista has enough development time to anyone know which inovative features will package it..
9 months before tha release of the two OSs we known anything about Vista and nothing about MacOS X.5
Edited 2006-03-12 19:24
nm
Edited 2006-03-12 19:18
h_t_r,
Re: “IMHO doesn’t make sense `comparing` (or looking at) one OS that isn’t released with another that is.”
True except that Windows Vista is nearing completion and estimated release date is Q3 of this year. People such as Kaiwai have been evaluating the OS through it’s ongoing developement as well keeping an eye on what Microsoft has planned for the OS. To have a better understanding of what has changed in Windows Vista you should see sites such as here http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions_final.asp
IMHO doesn’t make sense `comparing` (or looking at) one OS that isn’t released with another that is.
I think just when apple show us what 10.5 will be, we can make that kind of analysis.
Vista has enough development time to anyone know which inovative features will package it..
9 months before tha release of the two OSs we known anything about Vista and nothing about MacOS X.5
I put 10.5 in there on the assumption that Apple will continue evolving the operating system along the current direction; building in features into Cocoa which Carbon has and Cocoa lacks, improving scalability, which will be required when Intel start shipping 4 core monsters.
Sure, we don’t have a definitive map on the table as to where Apple is heading, but one can atleast make the educated assumption that it’ll build and expand upon existing technologies already found in MacOS X 10.4.
I found Kaiwai’s comment a realistic view regarding consumers shouldn’t be surprized when Windows Vista is released that it may “lack luster”. After all several people here and on other forums have asked the simple question “What’s left in Windows Vista?”. This is a reasonable question considering Microsoft has over the long course of developing Windows Vista continually drop features that were to make it a better OS than Windows XP Professional or even competitors offerings. Unless Microsoft does something dramatic to make Windows Vista more than just another eye candy desktop, consumers will be less inclined to upgrade from Windows XP. Unfortunately with the actions Microsoft has taken to rush Windows Vista out the door to vendors it appears it will be another Windows ME that was basically a flop showing that Microsoft sometimes acts before they actually think.
Not really; if you’d read anything about Vista (and Windows ME, for that matter) you’d know that the two are not at all similar. While Vista lost a lot of its “cool new features,” such as WinFS and Monad, Microsoft still has made many “under the hood” changes to make the OS more secure and stable. And, of course, we can’t forget the superficial changes, either.
On to Windows ME; if you’ll recall, it was basically a competely pointless money-making stopgap release before the planned switch to the NT codebase for future home versions of Windows. There were almost no major changes, save for the removal of real mode DOS, which was responsible for many of stability problems that WinME has become notorious for.
FreakyT,
Re: “Not really; if you’d read anything about Vista (and Windows ME, for that matter) you’d know that the two are not at all similar. While Vista lost a lot of its “cool new features,” such as WinFS and Monad, Microsoft still has made many “under the hood” changes to make the OS more secure and stable. And, of course, we can’t forget the superficial changes, either.”
I wasn’t implying Windows Vista will be indentical to Windows ME but that it’s going in the same direction with it’s mismanaged developement and misleading the public on how great the upgrade will be for consumers. Do you recall Microsoft telling customers upgrading to Windows XP would provide better security? Then Microsoft released SP1 and SP2 in an attempt to secure the OS. They failed to release in a timely manner IE updates for holes in the browser they knew were present as well other bugs found by third parties. Now their reasoning is they had to start from scratch with the code to make Windows a secure OS even though such claimed new advances like WinFS where dropped from Windows Vista developement. Maybe this sounds crazy but I believe if a developer fails on their promise to provide secure software where users have lost data because of the develper’s failure then those customers should be provided a discounted or even free upgrade. Otherwise trying to convince intelligent customers that this upgrade is necessary while they know Microsoft’s history will only make them either not upgrade or possibly look to other OS alternatives such as Linux or OSX. Microsoft’s actions with it’s lack of developement with Windows Vista may also find consumers having difficulty finding it on preinstalled systems or even more vendors offering alternatives such as Linux as an optional installation.
Edited 2006-03-12 20:12
Unfortunately with the actions Microsoft has taken to rush Windows Vista out the door to vendors it appears it will be another Windows ME that was basically a flop showing that Microsoft sometimes acts before they actually think.
I don’t think it’ll be a flop, but at the same time, it explains Microsofts more reserved approach in respects to analysts expecting, that through some miracle, it’ll push PC sales into high gear and spur another round of computer sales.
It took atleast 2 years before vendors finally dropped 9x support for their applications and in some cases, go the full monty with Windows XP support; if consumers see that the next version of their favourite application only works on Vista, and has enough compelling new features to justify the upgrade, then sure, you’ll see a fairly reasonable level of adoption – but like I said, I don’t think it’ll be the big bang that some in the IT world are hopeing for.
If one listens to all the guys proclaiming that Vista will be a lot different and new under the hood, I always think:
“yes – and no”
Vista under-the-hood technology will make it more secure, more stable, in one word: More UNIX-like. And this UNIX-likeness comes along by sticking closer to UNIX design and programming principles, which are much older than Microsoft themselves.
I can see the different operating systems converge technologically: Linux with Gnome, KDE or other desktops come closer to what Windows and/or Apple offers (and at some areas even takes the lead on the desktop), and Windows becomes more secure on the internet.
This would be a good thing for us consumers, if we could actually decide which operating system we want to have pre-installed on the computer we buy at Dell, HP or WalMart.
So securing your product automatically makes it more UNIX-like? Well that’s retarded.
As far as the under-the-hood non-security changes being more UNIX-like… somewhat. And some things are moving far away from it.
That’s how thigns go. Why even bothiner calling it “more UNIX-like”?
He talks about XPS and how great it is to have an unique, bugless format for printing. I just ask, what is Postscript for then? It is standardized decades ago, even human readable and just works… Will there be printers which can interpret XPS themselves? I bet no.
I don’t like how everybody talks for years what will be included in the upcoming windows release (this time: Vista). Most people don’t really know anything about it, others know some things, but there is a lot no one really can have a clue of. Mostly, people told about features which never really showed up.
Microsoft had this strategy from the beginning – getting the people to compare their competitor’s actual software with what could be “expected” from MS in the next two years. Look at OS/2 3.0, which was released, had fully 32bit code, a strong object oriented graphical desktop, real cpu scheduling and so on. Most people (alike the press!) didn’t give much about it and better talked (wrote) about what could be or not in Windows “4.0” (which would be released as ’95 2 years later)…
So, no thanks, I won’t do the mistake and wait forever for what Microsoft tells me I should wait for. I see what I can have from them *now* and it isn’t really mindblowing. In Q3, or better Q4, I will have still time left (which I saved this time) to compare the real thing!
Edited 2006-03-12 19:46
The problem with postscript is threefold:
1.) Microsoft doesn’t own it.
2.) It’s too widely implemented.
3.) It’s not associated with Microsoft.
See why they don’t like it? It’s actually a widely used standard that works! They’ve got to rectify that quickly so that the market can be flooded with incompatible printers and their competition can spend months trying to reverse engineer their badly documented system.
That or they had some little problem with it and decided to scrap the whole thing. Or this somehow extends beyond postscript and is therefore “better.”
I think they’re trying to unify printing and display, which is sort of cool considering people actually still like WYSIWYG. They didn’t like how a guy with a 1900×1200 monitor needs to use different fonts than a guy with an 800×600 monitor. So, to rectify this, they’re going to make the 1900×1200 largely useless and things will appear about as big on it as on the 800×600, they’ll just look sharper!
I still really dislike how they talk about pixels and big displays having things really small being bad. The first thing I’d do on a Vista system, if I can, is resize things down a bit so my young eyes can get some work done with the extra space on my fancy monitor. People buy high res monitors to make things smaller! That’s …. the point!
Not everyone buys bigger monitors to make things smaller. For instance, laptop resolutions have been on the rise for years, to the point where it’s difficult finding one with XGA these days. Anyway, as long as things are adjustable, I wholeheartedly support an entire scalable UI. XP defaults ARE too small on my screen, and I am a young person, but I prefer not to squint. KDE and GNOME generally get it right off the bat, but XP defaults are tiny, and XP’s scalability settings are way less intuitive than they should be–plus they only apply to fonts….
He talks about XPS and how great it is to have an unique, bugless format for printing. I just ask, what is Postscript for then? It is standardized decades ago, even human readable and just works…
XPS, unlike Postscript, is an open standard. Adobe licenses Postscript to OEMs. XPS has no such restrictions.
Will there be printers which can interpret XPS themselves? I bet no.
You’re wrong. Printer OEMs at WinHEC already announced that they will support XPS natively.
“XPS, unlike Postscript, is an open standard. …”
hahahahahaha. You’re kidding, right?
hahahahahaha. You’re kidding, right?
Not at all. Read the Wiki…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification
The format and the schema are documented in a public spec.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspec.mspx
And here’s an overview of the license…
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpslicense.mspx
“Microsoft plans to freely license XPS technology to encourage its use as general-purpose documents. Microsoft will grant a royalty-free copyright license to copy, display, and distribute the XML Paper Specification. Microsoft will also grant a royalty-free patent license to read, write and render XPS Documents. Execution of the licenses will be straightforward and will not require the company to sign and return the license agreement. There will be a requirement that any XPS implementation that is distributed, licensed or sold contain a notice in the source code of the implementation indicating that Microsoft may have intellectual property associated with the implementation and to provide a link to where the license may be obtained from Microsoft. The patent license will also include a covenant not to sue provision for companies engaged in certain businesses; the provision contents and reasoning are explained below.”
Yeah, but you missed this part of the patent license
“You are not licensed to sublicense or transfer your rights.”
this means that everyone I distribute an implementation to must take a license directly from MS. So creating an implementation under the GPL o similar free license is not allowed. Plus, the covenant not to sue is very narrow, only applying to hardware vendors or companies that support the hardware vendors. So everyone else is at risk anyway.
It doesn’t matter what the MS marketing materials say, you have to read the fine print. This “open” standard is so open that there cannot be a FLOSS implementation. No matter what you want to believe, this is not an open standard like pdf is.
So what do you mean by native? Alike GDI, which was “supported natively” and resulted in drivers converting in whatever stinky format nobody could understand, even windows not?
A really open standard which is supported natively would result in the following cool side-effect: You can pipe whatever XPS file you have under whatever OS you have to your printer, without the need of a driver for it.
This is already possible with Postscript, while cheap printers don’t support it and give us driver hell. *If* XPS would really be an *open standard* supported by cheap printers *natively* we could really benefit from it. If not – which I clearly doubt – it won’t benefit anyone.
He has four points.
1. WinFX (replacement for Win32) is simplified, more defined, and more ‘network centric’. Also uses .NET.
2. More useable interface, example being Office 2007.
3. More secure.
4. Windows embracing XML like OSX and then some.
The only really interesting things are the API and the WPF stuff, at least to me.
He makes some predictions, whether or not they’ll come true is anyone’s guess. The API, for example, is closed to us so we don’t actually know what it is going to look like. However, it is reasonable to expect that it will be better, but we still don’t know, we just have to take MS’s word on it.
WPF is nice, but Windows is now going to compete with PDF.
“XPS for example, one of the fetures which relies heavily on XML; this alone will not only provide better graphics capabilities to printer companies, which will create XPS native printers, it should also enable companies to provide better output from their respective applications, in regards to not needing to jump through hoops and work around bugs that currently sit in the existing printing model.
MacOS X PDF, but what Microsoft provides now is a notch up, not only for existing paradigms but allowing future enhancements later down the track – without compromises or breaking compatibility.”
Funny, is XPS an open standard, like PDF? If it isn’t then it isn’t a good thing. There are plenty of computers out there right now that understand PDF, why not use that and not make the printer companies implement compatibility with a new format? Because XPS is going to ‘one up’ PDF in some theoretical way?
Vista will be better than XP, yes. It is, however, not much different from OSX at this point. He keeps making comparisons to OSX and how Vista will ‘one up’ OSX, but it seems that all these features are largely to catch up to what other OSes have already. Nothing wrong with that, except perhaps it is over-due in some aspects. Vista is as interesting as OSX or Linux is already, except it isn’t out yet, but OSX and Linux are. That’s why nobody is as enthralled with Vista as they were with OSX or Linux, because everything Vista is doing has already been done by others. It’s not something new or innovative. That’s why it is refered to as ‘catch-up’.
Edited 2006-03-12 19:49
“The API, for example, is closed to us so we don’t actually know what it is going to look like.”
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/ There’s an entire section devoted to WinFX, among other things (that link doesn’t play nice with Firefox, IE only), last folder. WinFX documentation has been on MS’s website in one way or another for a couple of years now, though it’s not complete yet.
MS has always done a pretty awesome job documenting their API’s.
Funny, is XPS an open standard, like PDF? If it isn’t then it isn’t a good thing. There are plenty of computers out there right now that understand PDF, why not use that and not make the printer companies implement compatibility with a new format? Because XPS is going to ‘one up’ PDF in some theoretical way?
1) XPS 1.0 will be ready as Vista is released.
2) Microsoft is actively encouraging individuals who wish to create their own viewer on other platforms, to do so.
3) The format is licenced under a royalty free distribution; in laymens terms, create your own exporter and viewer without fear of getting sued by Microsoft in the future.
4) PDF isn’t an openstandard; a nice document tool, completely unlinked to Microsoft, but a not an openstandard – if the definition of openstandard is simply providing the specifications, then any number of things out there could be classified as openstandard.
5) I never made a comparison in terms of who will ‘one up’ who, as I don’t know what Apple has in its bag for the future. Yes, Windows XP is behind MacOS X in regards to *some* features, but at the same time, however, Windows Vista brings some interesting enhancements, which as I said, might interest those who have no interest in Microsoft products per-say.
“4) Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a break through for Microsoft; the full adoption of XML in almost every facit of Windows, coupled with the pushing of the processing of graphic details to the graphics processing unit, should not only provide a much need ‘match’ feature wise with MacOS X, but to also one up it in regards to future direction.”
PDF is an open format, with the specs viewable by anybody. It is also a standard in printing. Hence, ‘open standard’. Is the XPS spec freely viewable? Will it be freely viewable?
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspec.mspx
Funny, is XPS an open standard, like PDF?
Yes, it is. See my previous post.
XPS is designed to work in one of two fashions — and to understand them, you need to know how Windows does printing. Windows applications typically print through the GDI interface by calling individual primitives (BitBlt, etc). GDI, in turn, talks to the print driver.
The problem with GDI, though, is that it doesn’t really support a lot of things (ie. alpha channel, smooth gradients, etc) that are necessary to do precise printing. XPS can be used in legacy print scenarios to obviate the legacy print driver and do a lot of things in software that currently aren’t possible via the combination of GDI + PCL print driver. For example, XPS can handle alpha channel, high quality scaling/transformation, etc. This is transparent to the application and results in dramatically better print results.
The second way that XPS helps print scenarios is that it can be implemented on printers, themselves. All that your application needs to do is send a XPS (XML) file down to the print spooler, and the printer will handle rasterization, itself. The really cool thing about this is that, like Postscript, there is no loss of quality by doing rasterization on the client desktop through GDI/print driver. The printer can retain whatever fidelity it wants to preserve because the XPS XML file perfectly describes the document structure.
If they won’t ship a version of OSX that runs on vanilla PC hardware, I wish they would offer up a no support trial version of it so that those of us who are interested can check it out for ourselves. (As far as piracy concerns go, anybody who wants to pirate OSX will do so, either with or without a trial version.)
Even more important than trying the OS out (I’ve tried it out on in-store demo machines and didn’t care for it, but people say you have to give it time), I need to see how my various hardware devices would run on it. Some of these devices aren’t easily replacable with alternatives, such as my OCR pen scanner, which is really the best of its kind. Without the benefit of actually being able to ‘kick the tires around’, a lot of people like me are going to be skittish about plonking down that much cash for an Intel Mac without first being able to spend some quality time with the OS. The oly other way I know to get around this problem is to snag a copy of the Intel OSX and run it (illegally) on my own hardware, which I’m not too keen on doing.
Will you be doing or expecting the same from Microsoft with Vista?
Will you be doing or expecting the same from Microsoft with Vista?
Of course
The advantage with Vista is that it’ll run on hardware I already have (P4 2.8 with a pretty decent video card), so I don’t have to go out and purchase a brand new computer to try it out first.
As for running OSX on generic hardware, the reports I’ve heard is that it runs pretty flawlessly, And even if it is crash-prone, that’s ok, really … so long as it runs. I don’t expect the same kind of stability as I would if it were running on a real Mac.
They could release it ‘as is’ with no kind of support whatsoever, with warnings on the installation that it may not run properly on non-Mac hardware.
Edited 2006-03-12 20:53
So you’re saying you expect Microsoft to release a trial version of Vista? I’m just saying that it’d be pretty unrealistic to expect one from Apple without expecting one from Microsoft, is all.
So you’re saying you expect Microsoft to release a trial version of Vista? I’m just saying that it’d be pretty unrealistic to expect one from Apple without expecting one from Microsoft, is all.
Microsoft has trial versions of most of their software (including Windows) available for download from their website or via mail. Past versions of Windows and other software have also been offered via public customer preview programs. Vista should be no different.
Hmm. I had absolutely no idea. *LOL*
Ya learn something new every day. Thanks!
So you’re saying you expect Microsoft to release a trial version of Vista? I’m just saying that it’d be pretty unrealistic to expect one from Apple without expecting one from Microsoft, is all.
If I could actually purchase (or try out) a legal copy of OSX that ran on hardware I already owned, then you’d be right. But since I can’t, that is what makes the difference.
Yes.
I would not buy a Vista Box unless I can get a decent preview (not installable life-CD would be OK).
Or MS manages to shove Vista down my throat in bullying them big OEMs into preinstalling it onto every machine they ship (like it is now).
So.. you can’t buy a machine without Windows? Interesting.
Oh wait, you can.
Most things about OS X are in the details…
Expose is one such feature, which allows you to keep many windows open and switch to anyone window with ease. It is definitely a step up from the clunky taskbar of windows.
There is also a dictionary service, which give you pop-up definitions of words when you press cmd+ctrl+d in many applications (esp. useful in Safari)
OS X does have “non-trivial” technologies, such as Applescript, which allows you to automate most applications and make them work together.
There is also the various backbone technologies, such as the Core* APIs. You can read about them on the ArsTechnica review of Tiger.
It isn’t that Apple _won’t_ ship a generic OS X version, it’s that they _can’t_. Part of the reason OS X is less crash prone and all that is because it can be tuned to a handful of custom Apple machines. They simply do not have the support for some basement whitebox.
From what I’ve seen, the pirated versions are a hassle to get running as you have to have very specific hardware (ie: similar to what the x86 Macs have) otherwise OS X won’t boot.
This’s Apple WWDC is going to be held in August, so we have to wait even longer to see what’s in the Leopard pipeline. However, there was rumours of a new Finder which makes better use of spotlight.
As for XPS, I don’t think it can compete with PDF or is it meant to compete with PDF. PDF is well adopted and has been gradually refined over the years; I don’t people are going to suddenly embrace a new, untested, narrowly supported format (at least initially) that bring nothing new to the table. This being said, it does serve as a useful metaformat, however, the advantage brought by OS X’s embrace of PDF, which allows practically every OS X to output in PDF seems greater.
Edited 2006-03-12 20:30
A new Finder would definately be desireable, as it currently is a fairly useless non-configurable file manager.
As for XPS, I don’t think it can compete with PDF or is it meant to compete with PDF
It’s MSFt and as such they are embrace and extending PDF’s. MSFt is going to force the cheap printer companies to only support XPS.
They have already started doing this, and it is a matter of time. What MSF is going to find is that Larger printers($100,000+ printers) aren’t going to drop their decade of use with PDF’s.
No public comments have been made about what will be new to OS X 10.5. In his article, he doesn’t even speculate what will be in 10.5.
I think it’s totally fair to do a prediction of how Vista will compare to 10.4 or XP because so much is already known about it and the rest can be speculated about. However, comparing it to 10.5 makes no sense without any information about what 10.5 will be.
Other than that, it was a good article. I enjoyed reading it and look forward to what Vista will be…this comes from Apple fanboi#1
If Windows programs could run natively on OS X, that would be very cool.
I think Microsoft has it wrong by copying Apple’s OS. I think Windows people want an OS that’s much like windows, much like Windows 95/98.
Windows people seem not to be tech savvy like Mac and Linux users that jump at moving forward.
Since when has Mac users been considered especially ‘tech savvy’???
I for sure have met a ton of Mac users knowing their ways around Mac OS 9.x but that never took a rocket scientist anyway… with Mac OS X it seems to be mostly little things people discover — like nice little downloads that make the user do things that would otherwise be hidden within the OS… like Postfix Enabler, e.g.
but thishas nothing to do with being tech savvy, since that — to my best beliefs — would call for the same person using Postfix Enabler to have done the configuration work for him self…
I guess this differs very little from ‘mainstream OS’ to ‘mainstream OS’ with Windows users knowing their OS of choice better than a Mac user would typically do…
It’s a bit like saying that ‘only people who use Mac are creative at heart’ or ‘Windows people seem not to be tech savvy like Mac and Linux users […]’ …..
it’s all in the eyes of the beholder…
How many years has it been since XP was released? 5, 6, 7? My view on Vista is that if everything that was originally planned was included in the release it would have been worth a long wait. Looking at what work has been done now, and considering Microsoft’s manpower, Vista is beginning to look like a 2 year project. Just evolutionary, not revolutionary.
It still baffles me how the IT company with the most money and manpower can only produce a new UI and under the hood fixups in all that time. No new filesystem, not new shell, etc. Sort of a sad state of things. :/
Yeah so sad that MS’s high paid, educated software engineers or Bill himself resorts in copying Mac features instead of inventing new ones.
Why didn’t they just hire Apple to write their OS!
@sp29
Why didn’t they just hire Apple to write their OS!
Finder is still crappy. Taskbar > The Dock. Apple fumbled on that one (the Dock). The Top screen menu bar also is a usability problem. Problem reveals itself when toolbars are present. Windows has a better desktop interface by default. Just needs to be streamlined.
Finder sucks, but its still better than Explorer. At least trying to browse an FTP share doesn’t make Finder explode. Taskbar sucks compared to the Dock. That’s all there is to it. Don’t forgot, on OS X, the Taskbar equivalent is the Dock + Expose, not just the Dock by itself. As for the top-screen menu — it owns you. I know Microsoft folks don’t believe in UI research (or other sorts of high-falutin learn’n), but that doesn’t make it any less true.
@rayiner
I know MS often fails at UIs. But they got it right with the Start Menu and TaskBar. No wasted space like the Dock. More responsive than Finder. I never used Web Folder so I can’t give you my opinion on that part. I use SmartFTP for FTP duties.
The worst part of Mac OSX’s UI is the maximize window part. Why do every app maximize differently? User has to move with the mouse the app edge just to have it maxed out. Loses monitor spacing because of the fat Dock wasting precious space.
The top screen menu had good usability when they had the task list inside it. That’s it. The Toolbars getting in the way is annoying. OMGWTFBBQ!
Taskbar > The Dock.
My brain just exploded.
The clutterbar is a thoughtless tack-on that does nothing to help the user work. It’s a graphical frontend for alt-tab. I’d honestly like Windows a lot better if I could just turn it off completely. Open too many windows, and you can’t see what any of them is called. Good luck keeping a bunch of IE pages straight. MS tried to fix this with “Group Similar Taskbar Buttons,” but submenus are tedious. When I want Safari, I click Safari. Whether it’s already running or not isn’t my problem. The system gives me Safari. If I have a bunch of pages open, I have four different ways to switch between them (off the top of my head, and I’m not even at my Mac right now), and no number of open web pages can in any way interfere with my ability to locate and identify the Finder window I’m going to need later. MacOS and its dock keep windows arranged by task. It’s a more elegant system, to say the least.
People looking at shop demo Macs should really try to notice more than just the bouncing icons.
Here is your clue:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
Also i always keep my taskbar vertical. This works pretty well for almost 25 windows however i can only see first few letters of the application title, usually enough to identify the app.
Oi, I hate it when Windows users quote authoritative nonsense about Macs at people who know better. A whole third of the reasons in that article are just one gripe, that his advanced task manager isn’t well suited to being filled with shortcuts to documents. Show me any task manager that is.
I used to have trouble with accuracy on the dock, too, until I made it smaller. Yes, smaller. Thinking different pays off. People’s hands work differently, and this guy wouldn’t have had such a hard time if he’d been willing to try more than one setting.
Fitt’s Law is bunk, or at least this interpretation of it. The fact that a user can click any corner of the screen in half a second without thinking is exactly why you shouldn’t put functional objects there. Secure in the knowledge that [X] is always in the corner, I’ve killed the wrong web page in Windows because the one on top only looked maximized.
iBooks are still locked at a measly 1024×768, but you don’t see their owners complaining the dock is too massive. No, it’s always the kind of people who would maximize an empty Notepad document who think that a decent task manager is a waste of pixels. Its organized style of management creates a lot more usable workspace than the pretty pictures take.
The rest is just a complete lack of understanding of what the dock is. It’s not a folder. It’s not a launcher. It’s a program. It manages virtual objects, and it looks fabulous doing it. Apple keeps it because it’s vital to the function of the user interface, not because it makes a neat demo. I think it’s clear that it doesn’t, given how little people understand about it.
I would actually put it somewhere in between evolutionary and revolutionary.
Yes, it’s short of what they claimed years ago. No, it’s not a minor upgrade (XP SP3 if you will) that the slashbots will tell you it is.
The big thing that is if someone can’t see the changes, they assume they don’t exist. Microsoft could rewrite Windows from scratch but have it still run all the same software and have the same behaviour and feel, and people would think they’ve done nothing.
But any geek worth his salt can find a lot of information about what has been changed in Vista, what’s new, and what’s to look forward to. However, a lot of people seem to be content in just bashing Microsoft because of their history instead of trying to judge a product on it’s merits.
But any geek worth his salt can find a lot of information about what has been changed in Vista, what’s new, and what’s to look forward to. However, a lot of people seem to be content in just bashing Microsoft because of their history instead of trying to judge a product on it’s merits.
Speaking of history, let’s not forget that of Microsoft’s marketing tactics. When a big-name feature goes by the wayside, they have the decency to admit it, but when the ship sails and all we get for “vastly improved security” is more userspace clutter popping up dialogs to confirm that the user intended to type the letter F [Undo/Cancel], Microsoft will continue to insist we got what we were promised. Any “information” that isn’t acquired via time machine just isn’t reliable. The APIs are interesting, but won’t do anything on day one and will be backported as soon as they become useful. The interface changes vary from breathtaking (windows tilt back into oblivion when you close them, as if falling unconscious) to atrocious (why is the games folder in my start menu presented as a gallery?). Other than that, all we know for sure is what Vista won’t have, and it’s a very long list.
The reason people are fixating on the top level — the interface and all the features that have been canceled — is the same reason MS publicized them to begin with: it takes no imagination to see how an average user could get something out of them. People are looking for real reasons to salivate over a new toy. No one’s got XP in one hand and Vista in the other and can’t decide which to buy, so being a generally superior product isn’t enough. There needs to be a compelling reason to pay cash money to replace what we have now. As for me and a lot of people I know, what made XP worthwhile over 2K back in the day is that it booted faster. With Vista’s bloat, a pleasant surprise like that seems unlikely. So for the average consumer’s two cents, Vista is five years’ worth of frivolous interface effects. Or am I missing something?
Other than that, all we know for sure is what Vista won’t have, and it’s a very long list.
– WinFS (will be available as a download sometime after)
– Monad (will be available as a download, possibly by the time Vista ships)
Ok…?
– Monad (will be available as a download, possibly by the time Vista ships)
Its already here. I’ve been using it on Windows XP for a couple of weeks now and am very impressed.
I meant as a final product, but yeah :p
2/10 trollpoints.
+1 Comment with a smiley
+1 bad math (Xp was released in what year?)
I think you know that Vista has a tonne of improvements, but your os of choice is far behind. Its ok. Its just computing.
I haven’t used Office 2007, so I can’t comment exactly on its UI, but if Kaiwai says Microsoft has taken steps towards improving their interfaces, well, that’s good. However, I don’t think the deep braindamage in many Windows programs, particularly Office, is something that will be fixable in just one or two releases.
The thing that really throws me for a loop when using a lot of Windows software is, well, how often it throws me for a loop. The other day, I was using Office to write up a lab report (path of least resistance — the strict format guidelines are rather Word and Excel-centric) and after the fifth figure, Word suddenly changes the amount of spacing between the image and the caption. I couldn’t figure out why, and no amount of changing fonts and whatnot could fix the problem. I started over from a backup, inserted the new figures, and the spacing was right. I still haven’t figured out what happened.
Microsoft apps in general have a problem with state and with functionality. They have too much state, and too much poorly-organized functionality. Every release of Visual Studio has been a UI disaster, and its only gotten worse as they’ve added features. If you want to configure a certain part of the project, you often have to hunt through four or five different places to find the right option. The tiny toolbar buttons and giant menu hierarchies really don’t help matters any. All this is fixable, I’m sure, but it’ll take a deep rethinking of the UI, and I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.
The comments about the adoption of XML were fairly entertaining for me. I’m n ot at all surprised to see Microsoft embracing XML — it’s exactly the sort of baroque, overly-complex, overly-extended, and mostly useless technology that Microsoft likes. Microsoft seems to be a deep-seated inability to design rational, simple, and compact APIs. They seem unable to decompose them into small numbers of composable primitives, preferring to make large numbers of primitives that are still overly-general.
I can just imagine a Microsoft programmer asked to create a class hierarcy for a game’s monsters. He’d make an elaborate one, incorporating the monster’s Kingdom, Phylum, Genus, etc, and deeming that to be insufficient, would add classifications above Kingdom, such as “Earth Creature”, “Living Creature”, and “Object”.
Edited 2006-03-12 21:02
From the article:
Although not perfect, and avoids fixing the main problem, that is, making all new users by default, administration rights, it does, however, correct some of the problems today, without bringing too many hickups in the process – by enlarge, customers seem pretty happy with the new, more nimble and responsive Microsoft to the needs of its customers, in respects to timely delivery of software updates.
Somewhere, an English, teacher, sheds a, tear, silently.
The misuse of the language was rather breathtaking. So much so that I couldn’t read the article. In fact, it was so bad that I decided to register just so I could post this response.
What’s equally astounding is that so few people seem to have even noticed.
My problem with all the hype over Vista and how it’s new and improved security.
How is it the same bugs effecting XP etc are having Vista patches released, the WMV bug was the most recent.
Now if Vista is supposed to be this new security model, a lot more secure, how is it a bug from XP etc has managed to afflict Vista.
All I noticed when using the Feb CTP Build of Vista, was the amount of annoying questions it asked me EVERY time I wanted to run a program.
Honestly that annoys the heck out of me.
I double clicked on the Icon, so I’m sure I want to run it.
It’s actually WMF, and it was a bug in a file format (and IE), not in just XP.
Mistakes happen. Take a look at the recent Ubuntu thing.
What you need to realize is that subtle bugs like that are very very hard to find. Even when overhauling the security model of the OS, it can be overlooked, as there is such a large code base, and that attack vector is not something that would be very wide-ranging in people that could be affected.
I know, I know, you’re saying that IE opens it just by visiting a page. However, the final version of IE7 to ship with Vista will be run in a locked down protected mode which will prevent against something such as this. If this bug were found down the road after Vista was released, you would see that Vista users would be relatively unaffected, unless someone sent them a WMF files and that explicility opened it.
I’m sorry, but the author completely loses all credibility when he attempts to company Vista to 10.5, an OS no one outside of Apple has seen.
Yes, Vista is a great advance, as copies the best ideas from OS X, Sun Glass, and Unix. And of course, Microsoft made some advancements of their own.
Jobs in not one to roll over and let Microsoft catch-up. I am sure 10.5 is going to be a massive jump in functionality, features, and eye candy.
But back on point, comparing Vista to 10.5 is just moronic.
And of course, Microsoft made some advancements of their own.
Yes. They came up with the name.
*snicker*
Seriously, though, I’m looking forward to Vista. I won’t be an instant adopter, but I do plan to get it with my next system purchase (likely a laptop). All I can do is roll my eyes at the people who complain about how it won’t have anything they promised – to me, it looks like MS is earnestly trying to rectify their underlying true problem. They’re trying to rebuild the outdated sections of the OS – better, stronger, faster. It won’t be perfect, but it’s necessary. All the stuff they’ve “ditched” has simply become stuff that it sounds like MS is going to release for free later on.
The only thing I’m concerned about with regard to Vista is that the so-called “on again off again” Sidebar is going to be ugly and useless. From the screenshots, that looks like an unfortunate certainty.
Does Vista still use “Start” button to shutdown ? In that case Vista truely belongs to the Windows family
Yeah, good point! 🙂
For about a month as my parents got windumb, because some special hardware won’t work in linux, they asked me a similar question: “Where can I shutdown Windows?”. I responded. Logically they asked “Why is it under the start button?”. *LOL*
Windows and easy interface, I’m laughing … 🙂
They’ll surprise you: the start button is not named “Start” anymore! (just the windows flag)
Ha! You will not be able anymore to say “you have to click on start to stop”!
…btw… how will you call the damn button when doing phone support with clueless people? 🙂
Start -> Shut Down makes sense if you view the items on the Start Menu as processes or tasks.
You then start the shut down process (which is actually what happens behind the scenes).
“Start -> Shut Down makes sense if you view the items on the Start Menu as processes or tasks”
Thanks for your insightful explanation, the thing is the average Joe user don’t know what’s a task or a process and surely don’t want know…
“You then start the shut down process (which is actually what happens behind the scenes)”
Again, average users don’t have to know what happens behind the scene. Does every car/bike driver know how a clutch, gear box or an engine works ? Hopefully no…
Whatever you think, this “start button to shutdown” way of thinking looks more like a mistake than a visionary approach, perhaps that’s why Microsoft seems to have changed that in Vista
Please show me one person that can’t figure out how to shut Windows down. It may seem stupid and not make sense, but it works extremely well, and that’s all that matters.
No, I don’t think it matters more if something works well than if something is intuitive….both are pretty important. A gun that fires only by being caressed with hot oil might kill someone every time it ejaculates, but it would be a pain to fire. The shutdown issue in windows is so bad, but it is a comically misplaced button.
Also, there are prolly a million or some people on earth who consistantly shut down computers wrong…or just turn off the monitor and walk away thinking it is all good.
The shutdown issue in windows is so bad, but it is a comically misplaced button.
It’s so bad? Based on what? Because you think it doesn’t make sense?
It doesn’t matter WHERE you put a power off option, people will try to shut it off via the tower anyway (since thats how just about every other device they use works). Hence why doing so now will initiate a windows shutdown instead of turning right off.
Thanks for your insightful explanation, the thing is the average Joe user don’t know what’s a task or a process and surely don’t want know…
Again, average users don’t have to know what happens behind the scene. Does every car/bike driver know how a clutch, gear box or an engine works ? Hopefully no…
Whatever you think, this “start button to shutdown” way of thinking looks more like a mistake than a visionary approach, perhaps that’s why Microsoft seems to have changed that in Vista
It would take less than 5 minutes to explain this concept to Joe user and it should be simple enough that they can comprehend it without much thought required. This is nothing like explaining how an engine, etc., works. It’s more like explaining that the car’s ignition key starts and stops the engine. It’s a crappy analogy, but the point is that it’s not a low-level concept. Most people can relate to starting/stopping processes/tasks in their daily lives.
Vista removed the word “start” from the button to free up more screen real estate as most users are already familiar with the button’s function. The menu is still called the start menu and I’m pretty sure still shows something to the effect of “Click here to start” when you hover over the button.
you said:
Start -> Shut Down makes sense if you view the items on the Start Menu as processes or tasks.
You then start the shut down process (which is actually what happens behind the scenes).
I say: Your over rationalizing what is a pretty assinine UI decision on the part of MS.
Shutdown is in the start menu because there really isn’t any other place to put it. Its counter intuitive, but its there.
The point of a GUI is that it makes sense to someone with little or no computer experience….not confuses them.
WTF is this article?
He does not mention more than other news! And he mentions MSOffice 2007, what the hell has this with Vista to do? Its just another product. You don’t get it with Windoze!
To sum up the good features:
– slightly secured IE
– now integrated .NET
– some little modifications as lesser user account default (for the ones who might need this, the noobs and so on)
– did I forget something?
I do not call all the graphic stuff as WinFX good news.
Vista is lastly vaporware. Why? Because most good announced features like WinFS, complete new file organization and so on are no more in. So this is not the product as previously announced. => ergo, vaporware
Ah, and not to forget, all the new TCPA or LaGrande stuff, which will be integrated. No, thanks.
I keep my Linux and I will use for commercial programs MacOS X.
I wonder if Steve Jobs is thinking of bringing out MacOS one day for every PC. Hardware sales would drop, but I don’t think hat all, because apple hardware is stylish. MacOS could be THE killer app.
EDIT: I just forgot: Vista needs new PC’s. That do I call good news!
Edited 2006-03-13 02:12
I do not call all the graphic stuff as WinFX good news.
WinFX is an API, you’re thinking of WPF. Why are you talking about things you obviously have no clue about?
Vista is lastly vaporware. Why? Because most good announced features like WinFS, complete new file organization and so on are no more in. So this is not the product as previously announced. => ergo, vaporware
Yeah, because vaporware always has betas and previews that are downloadable.
Ah, and not to forget, all the new TCPA or LaGrande stuff, which will be integrated. No, thanks.
I keep my Linux and I will use for commercial programs MacOS X.
You really think OSX won’t have the same DRM type stuff?
EDIT: I just forgot: Vista needs new PC’s. That do I call good news!
My PC will be 2 years old in a few weeks and will run Vista with Aero Glass quite happily (I’ve tried it, legally, and it runs smooth evenw ith all the debug information in there and lack of decent drivers).
WinFX sounds great, so do the new APIs, the new Media Player, Internet Explorer, and everything else….
but think about it…
Vista is a massive behemoth, in terms of code quantity, sheer megabytes, and system requirements. It incorporates countless new, deeply-integrated software packages that were developed in a a number of disparate Microsoft divisions, and that are now being smushed together and rushed out the door at short notice. In addition, every program that’s based on .NET will use (I’d estimate) 1/3rd more resources than a normal program since it’s in a virtual machine, plus the number of 3rd party .NET programs out there will only increase, meaning even more resource consumption and slowdown. All this, plus a disk and processor-intensive disk-indexing service will be running full-time in the background.
With all this in mind, with Microsoft’s record for stability (or the lack thereof), and judging by the beta testers’ reports of slowdowns and crashes, it seems to me that it’ll take a miracle for Vista to run crash-and-freeze-free on any machine, much less on my 3-year-old (yet still quite capable) laptop.
What’s equally astounding is that so few people seem to have even noticed.
who kares! No one is perfect at writing, just read over it and shut up.
What’s equally astounding is that so few people seem to have even noticed.
who kares! No one is perfect at writing, just read over it and shut up.
I’m not asking for perfection, just something intelligible. Countless sentences make no sense whatsoever. In fact most of the sentences are entire paragraphs, running on and on.
Kaiwai makes the classic mistake of all Windows supporters. He seems to think that if Windows supports something, then that something is a “standard”.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Standards are methods and processes and formats etc. that the entire industry can use. Things like HTML, Postscript, POSIX API, TCP/IP, SQL, ODF – those are standards. Any vendor is readily able to supply software supporting these standards without being beholden to any other vendor.
Examples from other industries – a road is a standard. Petrol is a standard. Any car manufacturer is able to make cars that work on standard roads and use standard petrol fuel, without having to pay Ford for the priveledge.
Things like XPS – that is proprietary Microsoft – despite it being based on XML. Just being based on XML doesn’t make something a standard.
Microsoft is all about lock-in, and any notion of open standard or interoperability is totally anathema to Microsofts way. Microsoft products even lock you out of using Microsofts own legacy products, let alone products from any other competing vendor. This fact makes Microsoft products unuseable and wholly unacceptable.
This point is totally lost on a Windows follower like Kaiwai.
Edited 2006-03-13 06:18
It’s a shame your argument is moot since they made the specification and schemas publically available and are allowing anyone to create viewers/writers for it, royalty free.
and MS is also providing multi-platform viewers.
and MS is also providing multi-platform viewers.
Unlikely. IE and WMP for Mac just toppled in short succession. IE for Unix is a distant memory. Office for Mac will almost have to support the format, but Microsoft just doesn’t do broad base support. Even if they did, look at Flash and Acrobat Viewer. If you’re using anything but a middle-of-the-road i386 system, the 32-bit binaries they provide for Linux won’t do much for you. It’s a gesture, not a solution.
A standard needs to be truly open to be implemented with any breadth. So what if your product comes as an .rpm, a .dmg, and an .exe? That excludes more operating systems than it covers. I know Microsoft has released specs on what they have so far, but they have a lousy track record with documenting changes and almost no history with open standards. If they were serious about letting it become an industry-wide framework, they’d be developing it in the open, not just providing the finished product on their website. Of course this has never occurred to them. They’re about selling a finished product and then selling add-ons and upgrades to it. What steams those of us who run more than one OS is just how much pull their arbitrary and unchecked decisions have over the entire industry, and how likely we are to end up buying hardware that can’t be used as a result.
It may be royalty free, but I guarantee you they won’t allow any implementation to be redistributed under a free software license. This simple fact makes it not open and not free. True open standards can be implemented by anyone, on any platform, under any license terms they wish.
Show me the license that says any implementation can be freely distributed without taking a royalty free patent license directly from Microsoft. If you can, I will believe it, until then, it isn’t a free and open standard.
Nice job guaranteeing something you don’t control.
I don’t control it but I understand the Microsoft psychology. If you actually read the license and not just the marketing bull, you will see that I am right. I don’t have to worry about the guarantee, it is not possible for Microsoft to create a true open standard with no strings attached. It’s against their religion.
PDF has strings attached — Adobe controls it. Yet no one bitches about it not being an open standard.
People just like to bitch about Microsoft.
Funny, is XPS an open standard, like PDF?
See my comment above.
And again, read the fine print and not just the marketing text where they merely say what they are going to do. Please read the license, and really read it with an open mind. Then tell me with a straight face that anybody can implement the spec, on any platform, under any license. It’s not possible, you know it, and you’re just shilling
Was he comparing OS X to Vista or Office 12?
Is NO problem with UI in any Microsft!
All you people just criticize but in fact all OSX is ripp off and very much inferior!
Microsft is no UI problem because is very much _STANDARD_ in all industry! Is no problem!
Of course is Vista superior! Is not ripp off like OSX, is creative and new! And is better!
XPS may be ten times better than whatever Microsoft is usign now for their printing, but that does not change the fact that it is a lock in strategy.
By effectively disallowing people to implement XPS under Open Source licences, they are trying to use their size to undermine their competitors. Printer maker will use XPS, and Linux (and *BSD) users will be forced to violate this, which will mamke it harder for businesses to use their software.
Microsoft could have reserved the right to certify XPS implementations as correct (Xiph with vorbis, or Sun with Java) and even kept the trademarks and all, whilst allowing other to use their ‘technology’. There is nothing fundamentally new in XPS which didn’t exist in Postscript.
I like to bitch about Microsoft, but even I find this “start” to shut down a little overstated, a computer should sit there doing nothing, until you tell it to do something, like telling it shut down. And someone above said, you start the shutdown process.
It’s not like, say, Ubuntu is better, “System”, “log out user”, then “shutdown”?
Just in case you’ve got use to it, and find that natural, it’s not.