Who will emerge as the king of the desktop OS jungle: Apple’s Panther or Microsoft’s Longhorn? Read the article at Microsoft-Watch.
Why OSX Panther May Tear Up Windows Longhorn
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
If you have Intel/AMD hardware you have Windows Longhorn, if you have Apple hardware you have OSX Panther – no choice. This article would only make sense if both OSes ran on the same hardware.
but I still have to reinstall Windows XP after some lame, company mandated application messes-up.
I struggle to find a reason for this articles exstance. Was there a point here I missed, or is the author just trying to meet his quota?
It is not pointless when you are making a choice between, say, a PC or a MAC
Then the issue really matters.
Oh, meet quota for sure. Yeah, the article is worthless.
With Apple’s first venture into protected memory space operating systems, they have made several performance penalising mistakes and learned from them. Or is this extra sophistication the cause for most of the speed lag? Some believe so, I do not. MacOSX is built on a very robust, tried and true kernel. Quartz is what I believe to be the main contributor to the speed lag.
On the other hand, Microsoft never really had to experience these problems as their line of 32bit OSs have tended to produce reasonable to slightly slow performance. Pre-NT4 OSs were reasonably slow. NT4 ok. 2000 was quite fast and XP is dragging toward the slow side again. Longhorn could be where Microsoft gets themself into trouble. Never before have they had customers outraged at the speed of their OS. Apple had this with 10.0 but it was so revolutionary that most of the customers dealt with it with promises of a faster 10.1 which Apple delivered on.
It looks to me like Microsoft have truly lost their focus on delivering functional OSs. I have never personally found any of Microsoft’s OSs to be anywhere near as functional as blackbox or GNOME but thats just me
Longhorn and its ?DIGITAL VIDEO? interface sounds just too farfetched to win the heart of me and many like me who seek a secure, stable and functional OS (notice the order of importance). Pre-rendered video tends to not impress the majority.
MacOSX 10.2 seems to have a reasonable headstart. Quartz widgets (or controls for you wintel ppl) are all dynamically rendered thus more lightweight than any pre-rendered visuals that Microsoft can produce. Speed is swinging toward Apple and although Windows XP is dubbed by many to be faster and more responsive than OSX, many forget that no Quartz equivalent exists on Windows yet.
Soon Windows may well be gorgeous and lickable like OSX. But I believe that it will be __VERY__ slow. Imagine how much more optimised OSX will be at this point.
Oh my god. I just wrote this huge OSNews comment without mentioning Linux, *BSDs or x. y. z. Scary! It must be the inner Mac advocate coming to life.
Longhorn ships TWO YEARS after OSX Panther!
Microsoft has given themselves plenty of time to completely fuck up on their first version of Longhorn, check out Panther, and redo the whole horny thing, replicating the parts of Panther that they like.
Is the progress of PC’s towards being more useful tools for individuals totally stalled because of Microsoft? Now that is a more interesting question that doesn’t get asked by the media.
> Is the progress of PC’s towards being more useful tools for
> individuals totally stalled because of Microsoft? Now that
> is a more interesting question that doesn’t get asked by the
> media.
An interesting point, one I’ve never really thought about. Although you might want to watch your tongue if you want to avoid being modded down.
The writers were guessing if the OS X Panther of 2003 will be better than MS Longhorn of 2005 without any information whatsoever about the Panther.
They are even asking: “If you put a Longhorn in a Panther’s cage, which beast will triumph?”
And the point was?
Did they really pay for TWO writers to make that article?
From the article:
>Natural-language query capabiities. No longer will users have to go on lengthy (and often fruitless) quests for files and data stored on their PCs, local networks and/or the Web. Instead, they will be able to type in commands (such as, “Find all the spreadsheets I generated last year that included sales data from Bob Jones”), and Longhorn will auto-magically return the results.
That sounds very advanced to me. Combine this with speech recognition and we finally have the Star Trek style computer..
Do I miss something?
Where is the comparison..
They only guess about the features of Longhorn in 2005.
Well, what are the features of Panther.
I call a comparison something different
Considering the rumor that much of Longhorn was STOLEN from a strategy document from a small software company… it will be hard to say Microsoft will have innovated ANYTHING in Longhorn. Even the NAME of their new framework — AVALON — is directly from the document Microsoft stole.
Doing something like finding all your spreadsheets from last year with sales data from Bob Jones is not very difficult. With a small amount of metadata search capability, it could be done today.
In fact, doing such searches could have been included YEARS AGO in Windows. However, the glacial pace of innovation and usefulness in Windows… is due to the Microsoft monopoly… so don’t bet on there being anything truly great for users in Windows unless Mac or Linux pushes Microsoft to code up a cheesy and buggy imitation.
I agree, and just wanted to say the same thing. Not only does the article failt to make any comparison between the two, but still don’t see why panther ‘may tear up Longhorn’? Well i do (as a mac user), but i didn’t see any arguments to this effect from the author. If anything, she pointed out numerous reasons for why Longhorn may tear up Panther.
L.
I’m not a Windows advocate, but apple didn’t innovate with OSX, they bought Jobs and next didn’t they? So you can’t really talk trash about Microsoft for buying companies and using their innovations.. I don’t really see the difference who creates these innovations, as long as they’re included in the OS.
Well, the article was pretty poor, but it did bring out some interesting points. It is almost assured that Apple will have updated OS X once between Panther and Longhorn, but there is also the chance that it will happen twice depending on when Longhorn is released in ’05. Either way, this is Microsoft’s first venture into a third generation display model and tha will cause trouble for them. Apple has already refined their display engine and continue to do so. Also, Apple is rumored to have a BFS-like file system written by the person who wrote BFS so WinFS may be passe by the time it gets here. Now, myself, I use an HP Pavilion notebook, but that doesn’t mean I can’t accept Apple’s technology as better. The problem is that I need one Windows programme (NetObjects Fusion) and, right now, Apple’s hardware is a bit expensive. Once the PPC970 gets firmly entrenched – and in notebooks – they could be cheaper pound for pound – Apple has been in the past. Personally, I would love to see Apple become a more software/entertainment company. It might be bad financially for them, but it would allow me to run OS X on my Pavilion. I don’t want to start a debate over this because it’s a mute point. I’m just saying that for me it would be beneficial.
I don’t really think this makes any sense at all, BUT
I think the panther is supposed to tear up longhorn because Mac users are going to have a perpetually updated OS while Windows users are going to have to wait until at least 2005–and Microsoft having a history of being late.
That MIGHT be how its supposed to work in the authors’ mind. New releases somehow illustrate progress to some people–or something. Remember when Microsoft changed it to Windows 95 from Windows 5, which it would’ve been? (I don’t know what happened to Windows 4) well 95 is a lot higher than 5, and it looks more big and important. Its just like AMD changing their PR ratings all around, or Intel focusing on MHz before performance.
Or they could just be thinking about the beasties? Maybe I should write an OS called huge dinosaur and send it to them so I can be famous. Yeah.
I’d say, this will always be MS with 90% desktop penetration, no matter how good or bad it is…
The BFS-like file-system is mainly BFS-like due to the journaling-capability. It is already in OSX — and it is dog slow and that’s why it is turned off by default anyways.
> The BFS-like file-system is mainly BFS-like due to the
> journaling-capability. It is already in OSX — and it is dog
> slow and that’s why it is turned off by default anyways.
Maybe so, but I still can’t understand why Apple didn’t choose UFS2 + Soft Updates. The speed they lost with Quartz would be immensely gained with filesystem performance. Admittably UFS2 isn’t quite stable yet but UFS1 is for the present.
get Panther over that blue.. thing full of DRM.
Well if you have an Apple, then you don’t have a choice do you?
Same would be true if you don’t.
Apple couldn’t compete with MS 15 years ago with better hardware and a vastly better OS. How can it compete now or in the future with slower hardware and a marginally better OS and a tenth of the market share it had in 1990?
how can the author even compare something that’s coming out this summer (panther) and something that’ll hit the shelves in 2 years from now? its pointless.
I hope Gill Bates is thinking along the same lines as you, anonymous. Just keep thinking that no-one can compete with M4 and it’s 90% market share…
Alone, apple would never stand a chance against M$. but things have changed. Linux is here, and showing people that they don’t HAVE to run windows – and might be better off if they don’t. As this happens, more and more will look at apple as a viable alternative (just like i did last year). Apple will still never get the 90% share that M$ has enjoyed, but who cares. I’m sure apple is looking at 5-15 percent as a good place to be.
You already can use UFS, however, there are two reasons for not using it by default:
1) You can’t run classic on a UFS partition due to the use of resource forks which Classic applications use and UFS doesn’t support.
2) A number of carbonised applications are still not 100% pure in the sense that, for example, some still use resource forks, some still rely on the case insensitivity of the filesystem etc etc.
Hopefully in the future there will be an eventual move by Apple to either adopt UFS, or better yet, talk to Vertias and use VxFS for the default filesystem. I am asure that Veritas wouldn’t mind settling on a payment per-unit shipped model, say, $5-$10 per unit. It would be considerably more than what they’re earning off it now.
I believe Apple made a decision – born of necessity– to invest in and and develop code that was easy to hack and extend… An example of this was seen in the choice to AVOID Gecko as the basis for Safari.
The point… OSX has been under constant, rapid evolution since it came out. Does anyone doubt that Apple seems ready and able to stick to its yearly updates to OSX and that those updates are meaningful improvements? So…Longhorn better be good… because Apple will be long past Panther by the time Longhorn rolls around.
As long as people who currently run Windows would have to buy completely new PC’s in order to use OSX, then OSX has already lost. That 90% market share is something these articles don’t seem to take into account.
I agree with Michael – how do you compare when they’re so far apart? And his larger question too.
Others may be correct in trying to discern the author’s real intent, but why doesn’t the author do that? 🙂
I’m sure they will both be really good. And there’s other stuff in the mix too, that makes things a little murky, like processors, etc.
It is not pointless when you are making a choice between, say, a PC or a MAC
Then the issue really matters.
Uh, no. To the average computer using public (i.e. the people that buy Dell’s because of the cute ads) the only issues really are, “Does it run the applications I want to run?” and “Can I easily get those applications?”
The racks and racks and racks of Windows software available in Circuit Citys, Best Buys, Wal*Marts, KMarts, etc… make those choices easy for people.
“2000 was quite fast and XP is dragging toward the slow side again”
XP’s performance is better than win2k.
-G
I’m sorry to go off topic so badly, but as long as we are talking Microsoft/Apple, I thought I’d include this. MSN for Mac OS X was released yesterday. I got it for my wife – she has an eMac and uses it, but isn’t a big computer person. I got the option of getting the software to run on our current broadband ISP.
It’s pretty nice for that type of thing. Much better than AOL, which is a mess. Much better organized, colorful in the XP way and there seems to be no performance hit. Browsing is really good. Of course, it has all the other feaures, but I’ll end this now. A job well done.
It is only a matter of time before some open source group decides to replicate quartz and finally do it right for a change. OSX’s major advantage is the GUI being so integrated, and with the way things are starting to look in the X11 camp, it will only be a matter of time before a few of them split off and work towards a new incarnation. This is a very exciting time because finally people are starting to see the potential of Unix platforms on the desktop, particularly when the right GUI is used on top of the underlying unix below. OSX proved it could be done, but still is a long way from perfection. The open source crowds are most likely going to be the ones to finally get it right. X11 works great for power users, who want the freedom and customization available with the components offered. Projects like Fresca or any other open source projects that may be working towards cloning the OSX gui will be focused on the desktop and prove once again that unix not only can conquer the desktop but will offer the most choice to the user to chose the interface and components that best solve their problem.
“It’s a matter of time” you keep saying, but you forget that “in that matter of time” Apple and Microsoft will keep making new products. It will always be a “matter of time”..
“Finally get it right” is also a pretty stupid things to say. Yes, the opensource crowd will be able to take all the R&D of commercial companies, it will be able to take all bugreports, feedback and testing of those commercial projects. So their first release will probably be better than the first release of another company, but the company released their version years ago.
And also here you miss the point that commercial companies will keep working, and cleaning up their products. By the time that the “opensource crowd got it right”, apple or microsoft may already have launched Quartz Extreme 3.2 and Aero 2.1. And they will have got it *more* than right.
Only way for the opensource crowd to innovate, make new products is by investing in universities and their computer science departments (and let them release their code under the BSD license). Or transforming the opensource movement in a hybrid commercial-opensource movement. Something what Apple did.
Well, do Microsoft care about Panther? I decided to check out some OS X rumour sites. See what Panther is all about. It seems more like a OS X 10.0-10.1 than a 10.1-10.2. Features wise, nothing all that fanstastic that Microsoft can’t outdo in a small service pack.
However, if the rumour sites are true, then the big feature of Panther wouldn’t be the software rather the fact that it can run on 64-bit processor. Wow – big deal. Ironically, Microsoft has already been working on a optimized version for Opteron – and Windows runs fine already on Opteron.
Then on the software front, if I was the OS X customer, probably the only thing I would shout and scream about is more optimization. But then again, OS X’s speed isn’t something to write home about.
And bengal tiger, heh :-P. I can imagine them marketing slogan “We can kill Bengalis, but they can’t do the same legally”
And to Matthew Baulch, Quartz uses Display Postscript. May have its advantages, but as mentioned here many many many times, Longhorn’s only similarity is that it uses some 3D API to render it. Whoa. Big deal. But unlike Quartz, controls/widgets on Longhorn would be rendered by Direct3D, while for Quartz Extreme, OpenGL is only used for effects. Effects that I would most probably turn off given an oppurtunity.
Besides, I have used NT4. Maybe not that much. But it certainly wasn’t slow. Sure, after 24 hours, it starts to slow mysteriously down… but I guess the same for Mac OS 8.5(?) at that time. And Windows XP is actually faster than Windows 2000. Yes, it uses more RAM, it gets dirty faster, etc., but things like bootup and login, DirectX, Win 9x apps, etc Windows XP is hands down faster.
Besides the fact that Microsoft increase the speed quite a lot with SP1.
And Apple didn’t choose UFS because of technical problems. IIRC, you can choose to use UFS during installation – but after that just notice how significantly the performance goes down the drain. Besides the backward compatiblity problems with Classic (and some, I believe, poorly ported Carbon apps).
And nice little Michael, I wonder, you were talking about Be? Cause Avalon couldn’t be possibly be stolen from them – unless they planned to shock their only pathetic loyal developers by shocking them with a frakenstein merge of something Java-like and Win32 – which is entirely unlikely. Sorry to say. Unless, of course, you were talking about another company. If that’s true, I wonder which? You weren’t descriptive enough.
And such searches are being done in current windows. It isn’t advertised because it lacks any useful speed – it crawls the hard drive looking for stuff. This just crawls through a database, far more faster. Therefore more logical for things like search filters. And Linux had anything like that? And Mac? Boy, I sure didn’t know. Must have been a long time since I last used Sherlock at a random Apple store.
And Sean, BFS may be nice, it is just database like. Unless they plan to use one of those open source databases (laughable, sorry to say, and know, I don’t really want to debate about databases). Or license an expensive one from one of those big companies. BFS stores metadata is a very interesting way.
Besides, the guy you rumoured to be working on it some time ago said he wasn’t working on anything file system related, IIRC. Apple hardly lies on its future plans, it may keep quite or twist the truth, but not a out right lie.
Lebowski – Linux may becoming more famous, but the only hit they are doing for the desktop, if any, besides geeks of course, is the corporate market. Apple, the last I checked, ISN’T targeting that market. In other words, MS can take care of Apple though matter how sharp Linux’s teeth gets.
And Anonymous, there are groups replicating Quartz in one way or another (e.g. Fresco), or plan to in the future (GNUstep). None of them however are anyway close to achieving the same amount of usefulness, or anywhere close to it, in comparison to even X. And GNUstep still runs on X. Personally, I don’t see any problem using X now. Sure, it may not be nice – but it is certainly enough. There are many other things that Linux should fix first. Why X gets targeted?
Quartz doesn’t use Postscript Display. This has been covered again and again. Apple dropped Postscript display as it requires royalty payments to Adobe. Instead Apple decided to implement something similar but with PDF which doesn’t require royalty payments. As for its performance, considering that it hasn’t been out for long and is not as mature as GDI/GDI+, I consider what Apple has achieved so far pretty good.
As for 970, MacOS can run on it, without ANY modifications, however, why run a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor? thats like having a Lada with a BMW motor.
Regarding BFS, it is NOT A DATABASE FILE SYSTEM! read and repeat. Up until R3 it WAS a database filesystem, however, in R4 it reverted BACK to a traditional journalling filesystem with the idea of clusters and so forth. It was changed back for two reasons, first the database concept was TOO complex and secoundly the performance penalty was TOO HIGH.
I think I would bloody know, I was following BeOS since its initial creation and placement onto the market.
Quartz doesn’t use Postscript Display. This has been covered again and again. Apple dropped Postscript display as it requires royalty payments to Adobe. Instead Apple decided to implement something similar but with PDF which doesn’t require royalty payments.
Umm, I thought PDF was Adobe’s proprietary PostScript implementation… Therefore wouldn’t PDF require the royalty payments and PostScript not? (and if it is the other way around, why is PostScript so extensively used in *nix?)
I think you must be the only one who actually believes the rumor-sites.. The only site I would say “hmm, they may be right” is ThinkSecret.
Btw, are you really calling compositing just an effect?? Yeah, I would turn overlapping windows off too..
Other than that it is pretty pointless to compare Panther and Longhorn.. But there is nothing known about Panther, or what features it will have. Nothing is known about the the two releases that follows Panther, but are before Longhorn. By that time Quartz Extreme is at it’s third revision for crying out loud..
Umm, I thought PDF was Adobe’s proprietary PostScript implementation… Therefore wouldn’t PDF require the royalty payments and PostScript not? (and if it is the other way around, why is PostScript so extensively used in *nix?)
PDF is not proprietary, but is an open standard.
Windows is useful for average people like us. It seems only Linux Geeks who find it useless. It’s because Windows are for people who use computers for to do useful work. Linux _geeks_ has done nothing but to speak about code w/c we don’t really care about. XP is ok, and it has great speed. Who the fuck cares if Linux still runs on a 486? Yeah they use that in Somalia maybe. Yeah windows sucks, but linux sucks more. So whoever said “Microsoft’s OSs to be anywhere near as functional as blackbox or GNOME” is a fucking idiot!
I don’t get why people are so hung ho on the “database like” versus “real database” file system.. What counts is how it looks to the user, not how it was implemented. If you can do everything on a database like filesystem, then that’s all that counts. It would be absolutely stupid to implement a real database file system in that case. Due to the overhead, and inherent complexity of a database.
“We know, that site’s name causes us to shudder, too. But, that’s what we’re paid to do; we have to read it all from everywhere. But, hey, why not just watch what Apple was doing 3-5 years ago to see where Microsoft will be going today? Wayback Machine, anyone? But, we digress…”
http://www.macdailynews.com/comments.php?id=1073_0_1_0_C
was even more retarded than most of the 10k view operating system surveys (like the what, 20 beos ones we’ve seen in the last two years) that show up here.
Not as far as I can tell.
My Windows 2000 PIII 667 with 8 meg video, 256 RAM is significantly faster than my PIII XP Home 1.1 Gig with 32 meg video and 256 meg RAM.
PDF is not proprietary, but is an open standard.
Well, after a couple minutes of looking around, I found that Adobe allows royalty-free use of PDF (they own several patents relative to creation and reading of the PDF format, which they control), and the specification is freely downloadable (as long as you agree to the license terms). It’s an open standard in about the same sense that java is an open standard. A lot of people use it, and you can almost always use it for free, but when it comes down to it it’s up to that one company (Adobe for PDF, Sun for Java) to keep allowing you to use it. There’s no standards body keeping a true standard for it that will mean that there’s always something you can write to that you know will work with other standards-compliant implementations.
PostScript also appears to be an Adobe format, for which they charge royalties under certain situations (though I don’t know what conditions that falls under).
As long as people who currently run Windows would have to buy completely new PC’s in order to use OSX, then OSX has already lost. That 90% market share is something these articles don’t seem to take into account.
Just about everyone I know does not update their OS unless they buy a new computer. I have many friends running ME or 98 because thats what their computer came with and they see no need to upgrade.
My Windows 2000 PIII 667 with 8 meg video, 256 RAM is significantly faster than my PIII XP Home 1.1 Gig with 32 meg video and 256 meg RAM.
It mostly depends on what you’re doing, how the systems are setup, and what you view as faster, but if you dropped another 256 MB of RAM in both of those systems, you should find the XP machine to be significantly faster, even if the CPUs were closer to being equivalent. My 1.8GHz system at work running 2k w/ 256MB RAM (16MB video) is a dog next to my 2GHz system at home running XP w/ 512MB RAM (128MB video), not even counting video-intensive tasks where the video card would come into play.
Rajan,
This may have been corrected already but, OS X does not use display postscript. That has a license fee associated with it. Quartz uses PDF instead which is free.
I think that comparing rumors from Microsoft to rumors from Apple is not a good comparison. Apple is notoriously tight-lipped whereas Microsoft starts talking months before a product even reaches alpha.
I guarantee that Panther will be more than just 64-bit. Apple will expect people to pay for Panther and no one is going to pay for a 64-bit OS for their 32-bit computer (I mean, duh). Panther will, of course, be a smaller step than Longhorn. But then Apple is releasing an update a year compared to 3-4 years between XP/Longhorn so that is what one would expect.
Ok, I see the postscript thing was corrected already
As for 970, MacOS can run on it, without ANY modifications, however, why run a 32bit OS on a 64bit processor? thats like having a Lada with a BMW motor.
According to IBM the 970 can run a 32-bit OS with very minor modifications. It would require changes but they would be very small.
Adobe will give you a copy of their PostScript software for use in way thing you want as long as you pay royalties.
Adobe published the PDF specification as a multi-system document interchange format. You may freely implement your own version royalty free. PDF is also a superset of PostScript.
Next Computers licensed a copy of the PostScript software from Adobe in order to create the Display PostScript system used in the NextStep OS. This means that they paid a royalty to Adobe for every copy of the OS shipped.
Apple decided to save some money and use the PDF format instead since it supported 100% of the old Display PostScript and also included some new stuff. The biggest change however was that they no longer have to pay royalties to Adobe.
A filesystem is a database. It has records. It has an index. It is just not a very sophisticated database. Ok, pet peeve rant over.
Panther will, of course, be a smaller step than Longhorn. But then Apple is releasing an update a year compared to 3-4 years between XP/Longhorn so that is what one would expect.
I’m sure Microsoft would be just as happy to release an update a year, but consumers pretty much told them to shove it sometime during the 98, 98SE, 2k, Me, XP cycle (and never mind the confusion over 2k being an NT upgrade, Me being a 9x upgrade, and XP replacing both 9x and NT). In other words, MS really doesn’t have much choice but to go to releasing service packs until they have a larger update than 98 was over 95, or Me was over 98, because almost all of us still know people running 98 (and a few of us know people running 95 or Me), and even MS expects a lot of business to still run 2k for a while, both on the server and the desktop.
APPLE can control the hardware. It MUCH easier to write software when you can control the specific hardware config.
Microsoft has no idea what someone might be running … first, it could be Intel, AMD, the old Citrix … whatever. Then video cards are either intregrated, on board … The merely number of combinations (actually permintations) that could be run with Windows is endless and Microsoft works well with ALL.
I highly doubt Apple could ever do the same.
The fact that this article compares OSX and Longhorn tells a story in itself. One OS is here now and in use, another is slated for 2005. So basically Microsoft is playing catch up. When they finally have something comparable in 2005, apple will most likely again have something to catch up to…
It’s not a reason, yes it may be much more easy for some aspect of the os but you cannot say:
“Yes our software is not as good as the one of our competitor it’s because it is easier for them because blablabla…”
You release what you release and a bad designed os is a bad designed os it’s not hardware question!!
“Not as far as I can tell.
My Windows 2000 PIII 667 with 8 meg video, 256 RAM is significantly faster than my PIII XP Home 1.1 Gig with 32 meg video and 256 meg RAM.”
Thats your “mistake” — give XP 512 and it will be equally fast as W2K. 256 isn’t really enough…
The fact that this article compares OSX and Longhorn tells a story in itself. One OS is here now and in use, another is slated for 2005. So basically Microsoft is playing catch up. When they finally have something comparable in 2005, apple will most likely again have something to catch up to…
Actually, they were comparing the next version of OS X to Longhorn. The only real story that tells is that either:
a) the reporter has no clue what the next XP service pack will have in it (which is probably nothing of note but bug fixes and previously released upgrades to things like WMP, IE, OE, etc)
b) Apple is really tight-lipped about where they’ll be in 2005, whereas MS has already been talking out their ass about Longhorn for a couple of years.
The article even states that ‘Apple insiders are well-aware of areas where XP is ahead of Mac OS X’, implying that OS X is still playing catchup with XP in some areas, despite being released first and coming upon it’s 3rd (semi-major) update.
They don’t really go into detail on Panther, yet state that it will rule the ‘desktop OS jungle’ at least until Longhorn is released (and probably longer since another update will most likely come along before that).
The real questions are: How long will OS X remain the Mac’s latest OS? Will Jaguar be a compelling update to justify the price that Apple has put on the previous releases and most likely will on this one (I can’t imagine being an OS X user that had to pay for OS X, 10.1, and 10.2, and then going out for 10.3)? Is Longhorn going to be enough to not only bring the rest of the OS up to the areas where XP is ahead, but to keep ahead of OS X (which is assumed to have a 10.4 and possibly 10.5 release on the way in the time frame for Longhorn’s release)?
Finally, do any of us really care when the only people that are choosing between these two operating systems are people that are going to go out and purchase a completely new computer?
You release what you release and a bad designed os is a bad designed os it’s not hardware question!!
That really depends on a number of things. Many people will blame the OS for hardware-related problems. Some people see daily blue-screens regardless of what version of Windows they use, while people with better-behaved hardware have never seen a blue screen despite pushing their computers fairly hard and running Win2k or WinXP for days (weeks, months) on end.
I love nothing more than the fact that most of the software I write is only run on a very small number of hardware/OS configurations so that once I test it I know it’s going to work. If it had to work for Jack and Jill running an overclocked AMD processor on a cheap Chinese motherboard I’d probably be pulling my hair out in frustration by now.
1) XP runs slower on my girlfriend’s 1.8gz p4, 512 RAM laptop than 2K does.
2) It crashes more often and more severely on her new machine than 2K did on our old 500mhz celeron, 96 RAM thinkpad.
3) Two of the four machines in my house that run XP have had serious hardware compatibility problems they didn’t experience with 2K.
Conclusion: XP suX0r. 2K…er…well, it’s still Windows, but it’s better than XP.
On the issue of Panther v. Longhorn…the real question is whether or not Apple will try to port their OS and start selling software instead of hardware. I’ve heard rumors they already have a port of it for their own use, no idea how complete it is though. Anyone have thoughts on that? Things could change significantly for everyone in the OS game if Apple went in that direction.
boo…forgot to sign the last post
WinFS: I haven’t done a search in the last 6 months. Where is this gonna benefit me? It’s like adding a feature for searching thru litter rather than trying to clean up the problem in the first place. A search box, à la Jaguar is sufficient. The My Document folder was a great idea. Now it’s time for Microsoft to take it further. If Windows was really “task-oriented”, it would leave it up to the apps to organize the content of the My Documents folder. Right now, Apple is more “task-oriented” than Microsoft by a long shot. And I don’t think they’ll get it in time for Longhorn. Fix the root of the problem rather than dealing with the consequences. And ENFORCE IT. Also IMO they should work to resolving the high fragmentation problem using NTFS. The older HPFS file system, also from Microsoft, didn’t have this problem. Let’s tackle the real problems.
Longhorn UI: This is a VERY useless feature. I can understand why Apple needs this because of their crappy underperforming CPUs. But why does Windows need this? We have 3GHz CPUs nowadays? This feature won’t even be available for people with P2s. Instead they should fix the much needed multitasking problem first. It’s not that the CPU is bogged down, it’s the lack of multitasking that’s bothering. I want OS/2-like milky smooth. By the rate it’s going Linux will be ahead of Windows in this department.
Ranting DISABLED.
>Instead, they will be able to type in commands (such as, “Find all the spreadsheets I generated last year that included sales data from Bob Jones”), and Longhorn will auto-magically return the results.
find / | grep *.xls
It seems a lot easier than typing “Please find all files that are spreadsheets that I’d like to read right now please if you don’t mind Mr. Bill, Sir.”
Oh, and if you don’t think you’ll have to coax your computer to getting what you want it to to read this:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Yeah. Longhorn is the future. Just like Armageddon.
I run both XP and OS X and for some reason I had to re-install XP already because I had a blue screen and this Dell is only 6months old. XP is nice but its not the Gem everyone talks about and its not that much faster then OS X. Actually feels like im more boxed in when im using this Dell running windows. I use my older mac more then this pc just because its running OS X
both have demonstrated that nothing ever lasts. The railroad and steel barons all fell and so will microsoft. the only question that remains for MS’s inevitable demise is when will switching from MS become more valuable more economic than staying with MS. My guess is that ten years will give us a far larger role for apple and especially linux in the computing world (say a total 30-40% of the market). You might even see palm OS and symbian desktops by then, who knows. Apple won’t price themselves out of the market forever because eliminating that scheme of part arrogance and part necessity is now a matter of survival.
MS’s day of reckoning is coming. Tick tock tick tock. PC fans can bash everyone and everything as long as they want and they can talk about past mistake forever but that won’t stop the inevitable.
Just wait until Ximian comes out with their version 2 desktop, then we’ll probably have to add the linux desktop to this debate. From what I’ve read so far, Ximian D2 is going to be amazing compared to what we are used to for linux. I keep mentioning this but no one believes me! You’ll see!
The My Document folder was a great idea. Now it’s time for Microsoft to take it further. If Windows was really “task-oriented”, it would leave it up to the apps to organize the content of the My Documents folder. Right now, Apple is more “task-oriented” than Microsoft by a long shot. And I don’t think they’ll get it in time for Longhorn. Fix the root of the problem rather than dealing with the consequences. And ENFORCE IT.
You seem to be going both ways there. Most Microsoft apps (at least the newest versions of them) save their documents to the My Documents folder. It would be nice if Office saved it’s documents in a better fashion (Excel to an Excel folder under My Documents, Word to a Word folder, etc), but most of the rest of their applications already do this (I’m not sure how Office2003 handles this, either), and it’s how they recommend other applications do it, as well (and a few 3rd party apps have taken this step).
Now, if Windows were to enforce it, that wouldn’t really be the same as leaving it up to the apps, now would it?
Personally, I don’t really care for whatever search enhancements are added. Until they show something really remarkable I’m still not going to search for documents, because I somehow manage to keep them in a structure that makes sense to me, so I can find my information much more quickly than any current query would find it in the first place.
Now hardware rendering of the desktop, if done right, is much more appealing, though I can already do it with 3rd party apps to some extent anyway (though most of those are trying to do things I don’t really want, like 3d desktop and file management abstractions).
[ An interesting point, one I’ve never really thought about. Although you might want to watch your tongue if you want to avoid being modded down. ]
What is it with you born-agains? You shouldn’t impress your “clean and perfect” lifestyle on the world, the world doesn’t care for it, it’s just as imperfect and dirty as the syllables we sometimes tend to put together, go ahead and mod and ban until you create your utopia for all I care, cause the only person that would exist in that utopia would be you. I think you’ve got some fixation on morality, holier than thou complex. Why don’t you join the “fucking” real world, buddy? Dubayah himself and Al Gore probably even curse once, fancy that? Did I crumble your utopia?? My word, heavens no! MuhAHhahAHahha
As to the article–worthless–the only thing of interest was the fact that she stated longhorn was going to replace some of the win32 api’s with win.NET versions, that’s going to be like win95 all over again, a new sdk, no wonder they require until 2005 to ship, they need to test it like crazy in order to work out all the a la win95esque bugs. Anytime you drastically change an os’es underlining SDK API, you’re bound to leave yourself in a world of hurt.
So here’s a question to all you born-agains and less-anal people (my people!): why is her statement so true that in the desktop market, Mac OSX and Windows are the only players? If there’s profitability in giving desktop users a simple, good-looking, easy-to-use graphical environment (such that microsoft and apple have proven), how come some company (aside from SCITECH with SNAP) allocate some dough to make a new or comparable desktop OS, perhaps not even on top of XFree86? Why does it have to be some standards body with bureaucratic inefficiency meddling in this? I read some article about X making an effort to improve its next full release so that it could run toe to toe with quartz and windows, but does anyone really expect this to come out anytime soon, before post-panther? I’m not against standards, I’m against bureaucracies (er, i love the us gov’t, hail dubayah!).
I myself use Gnome on my x86 and have no real problems with it, except that other than its network transparency, there’s really nothing of it that seems to dust mac os x or windows. It seems to merely follow in their footsteps, ok.. ok… maybe the multiple workspace feature is cool, gtk is wonderful to develop with, but what else? Is there anything of real innovation? Perhaps I’m stuck with provincialism because I haven’t really had the time to try out black box and other cool x-window managers like enlightenment, but Gnome is not a great alternative to XP and definitely not OS X. I’m trolling now, but my point is that the world would probably pay for a concerted effort by some company to design a nice graphical interface on top of the wonderful linux kernel that’s not just a great thing for developers but home users like mom and dad. Am I missing some marketing data here? Is there more money in the enterprise market? Perhaps that’s the key, there’s no money in the desktop market, which is why microsoft is working hard in the server market? No! That can’t be the case, longhorn is probably one of Microsoft’s more expensive projects, they know that the desktop market reaps benefits. But I think one thing is fair to say, the enterprise market and desktop market are seemingly converging (this is nothing new, look at mac os x server and windows 2k3, bleh). Perhaps because of ease of administration with gui interfaces, more companies are looking for graphical based os’es with solid kernels? no offense to you scripting guys, sometimes i prefer a nice terminal window plus text as well…
I applaud efforts by SciTech even though I don’t think they’ve hit the numbers quite with their package. Lycoris makes me want to puke, their business model is suffice to say, following in the footsteps of an outdated windows desktop environment, that’s some real innovation. Xpde makes me want to barf even more. I think that’s what should separate distros in the future, a group of studly interface designers, leave the kernel hacking to the oss guys, and proprietary layer to the refinement of gui. Good business model? People will then pay for your stuff. Perhaps I fail to understand Red Hat or Suse’s contribution to linux other than marketing and some so-so applications, oh yeah, services… but this is an area where I think Apple’s got the right idea, innovation instead of a strategy based on mimicing other’s footsteps (evolution/exchange?) I mean sure, any real idiot would know that some mimicery is required, but not at the point of idolotry and business strategy.
And I know everyone’s going to say, Gnome and KDE are great for me, but come on, why isn’t it great for the rest of the desktop market (meaning non-developers)? Discussion or flaming…
Yup, it’d be nice if underlying problems were solved, rather than more eye-candy added. But glitter sells. You want a functional machine…heck, you know what a functional machine *is*. Frankly, I think most of the desktop market wants something that looks and feels “high-tech” and if something fits that bill, people will think it’s functional so long as it isn’t horribly worse than what has come before it.
I am using WinXP for 2 years and Yes it is quit stable. But many of my app crashes. The major application to crash is ie6. Windows has made its OS crash proof, not its applications.
I’m a programmer. Why would someone like me be so stupid as to to create a native GUI application for Windows knowing that its architecture is an absolute mess, not to mention it is screwed shut. So from a programmers point of view, moving into the future, OS X, Linux, and any other open architecture is far more advantageous from a developers point of view. Java is good for GUIs that you know you want to run on multiple OSs. But for an application like, say, Evolution, that needs the native speed, I can’t see myself ever creating something like that using Microsoft’s Foundation Classes. All I’m saying is that as a programmer I have seen the light, and if you’re concerned about the quality of the programs you write, then you have to be concerned about the quality of the foundation they are built on. Or, you have to at least know what the foundation looks like, and that you could fix it if something went wrong. I know people don’t want to hear this, but Windows, as long as it is closed, is a dying platform. Once programmers have vacated it for other architectures, what will be left? And to all you Windows developers, wake up and smell the coffee!! Just because the “media” says that .NET is the best thing since sliced bread, and that web services are the end all and be all, have you bothered to verify these claims? I know I have, and I’m not very impressed with either of these technologies.
osnews is running a lot of apple stories (which i like) these days and those stories get a LOT of comments. Has there been a shift in readership or their interest. Apple stories get the kind of responses that BeoS stories used to get.
I think that when people say that Because Apple control’s the hardware they give consumers a better product. I think this is true for the short term but it has flaws, flaws that for a person like me : I always owned PC’s but bought an iBook for mobility. Will not invest to much in Apple hardware.
We always seem to come back to market shares and how much penetration Apple has. But it cannot compete with an opponent that even though it is a monopoly let’s consumers have a choice. With Microsoft the choice is subtle in that you get to choose your favorite coporation (ie Sony, Dell, gateway, etc or none for home made boxens) and get an OS that will run it behave the same way. For this M$ is more organic than Apple. And in that specific instance decentralised. Because it is not tied down to a specific implementation of a computer but a concept of a computer. Which is why Apart from the marjor free *nix or clones (linux) we do not have much of an OS choice : Irix, Solaris, etc all are pretty much Hardware specific. (which is kinda of against the Original unix ideal of portability).
But back to my point, M$ has found ways to ensure that it survives no matter what, yes it has a lot of work to do for support of drivers, but with XP and driver signing an unsigned driver (not M$ aproved) will most likely not be installed by joe user. M$ has created an army of MSCE to support various aspects of a M$ network ( though many might doubt their competence, for a manager it is a reassuring thing to know that his/her employe was trained to use the OS by the maker), mayny are consultants, freelancers which created a new market in it’s own. But I digress being an OS company enabled M$ to divide and conquer, to be able to shift the competition’s battle ground elsewhere : the hardware. M$ Windows has not gotten cheaper over the years, but hardware has. M$ is more of a meta-company than an actual one like apple or sun. Yet this is precisley what will keep it around and afloat not matter what court ruling or linux distro comes along. If Apple truly wanted to compete, innovate and revolutionise (ie think different) they would keep away from their line of action which promoted closed hardware specs and try to have OS X work on as much hardware as possible. Now for those who will say that they will loose the ability to produce quality drivers etc, I say moot: have those drivers certified!!! adopt a Netbsd-like driver architecture which makes it easy to port them accross platforms, establish a standard of quality and stick to it (unlike UI guidelines) and charge for certification!!! this would enable users to actually have a choice and think different enable true competition!!(linux is not quite there yet)
Decentralisation for apple would be like palm and palmOS5 let other people do their best to market your product and pay you for it. M$ gets free rides this ways because every vendor want to be M$ compatible they ben backwards for this!! whereas apple has no one, not even Video card makers!
this is a reason why I would not buy a mac tower, but a PC because of choice, and because of my status as head geek in my personnal influence zone which is rather large people around me without consulting me are more likely to buy a PC than a mac,and this is how it works everywhere. because it is the organic way of life.
As for the phallacy of the car imagery, for those who will try again to use it, an OS nor can hardware be compared to a car because this is the precise imagery that makes apple look like an suv and M$ like a civic! you donc play with your SUV you pollute. (lol)
(side note: apple does have Apple certification, but they aren’t of much use since they are usually tied down to a resseller)
Yes I know that but you cannot release a product that do not work on all plateform that you target and say that it’s not your fault.
Maybe microsoft should target just one kind of plateform if you want. But if it’s not worked on supperted hardware then it’s a bad product.
APPLE can control the hardware. It MUCH easier to write software when you can control the specific hardware config.
Microsoft has no idea what someone might be running … first, it could be Intel, AMD, the old Citrix … whatever. Then video cards are either intregrated, on board … The merely number of combinations (actually permintations) that could be run with Windows is endless and Microsoft works well with ALL.
I highly doubt Apple could ever do the same.
I must agree:
Case in Point:
It would be impossible for Microsoft to implement something similiar as Quartz Extreme since it has no idea what video card you will be running. Microsoft in this case would have to wait a significant amount of time (2005 would probably be about right) before they implement something like this so that 32/64 MB high end graphic cards became the norm in peoples systems. The ‘average’ user runs a Celeron 600 Mhz system with integrated video and that won’t cut rendering all system display output through the integrated video chip.
… would be to make quartz unix compatible that is work on the BSD’s and linux as an X replacement, this could be a great step towards decentralised control (meta control).
What the hell u are telling me about driver signature?. I am running my SoftK56 PCI modem on WinXP with unsigned Generic modem driver and the amazing thing is , It works!!!
Your PC fans will stay with the PC, your Mac fans will stay with the Mac, your Linux desktop fans will stay with Linux. The OS and doesnt matter anymore, people are locked into what they like. People have different tastes.
” But until Microsoft lets Longhorn out of the corral, Panther will rule the desktop OS jungle.”
OSX Jaguar is an excellent OS and I am sure that Panther will be an awesome OS when it is released, but the fact is, Windows is the King of the Jungle when it comes to the desktop OS. So the only thing that Panther will rule is maybe a few isolated desktops here and there.
Maybe microsoft should target just one kind of plateform if you want. But if it’s not worked on supperted hardware then it’s a bad product
Microsoft’s pretty much in a position where they let hardware manufacturers do all of the driver work, and simply certify drivers that are sent to them (if the manufacturer pays for the testing and certification process). Most people don’t even know if all of their drivers are certified, and some hardware has a smaller feature set on certified drivers (such as certified nVidia drivers often don’t support OpenGL to the extent most games need). Supported hardware is basically not the same thing as hardware that can run Windows and that Windows will install on (or will allow you to install drivers for). The system I mentioned before (overclocked AMD) is definitely not a supported product, even by the manufacturer of the hardware, but it will run Windows (and perhaps quite well, at that).
It would be impossible for Microsoft to implement something similiar as Quartz Extreme since it has no idea what video card you will be running.
Actually, the OS has quite a good idea of what you are running for a video card, as long as the correct drivers are installed. DirectX allows any function not supported by the hardware to fall back on software mode. This would increase the load on the CPU, but at least it’s still possible.
Microsoft in this case would have to wait a significant amount of time (2005 would probably be about right) before they implement something like this so that 32/64 MB high end graphic cards became the norm in peoples systems. The ‘average’ user runs a Celeron 600 Mhz system with integrated video and that won’t cut rendering all system display output through the integrated video chip.
That’s a slightly better point, and perhaps they may decide to drop support for some video cards in Longhorn. However, there has been mention of different options for the level of effects that would be used on the desktop, so it’s possible that even the integrated graphics that use system RAM and graphics cards with 8/16 MB of RAM could do just fine, with the proper settings (and Windows could set itself up according to the graphics ram and video chipset it detects, but since when has MS done that sort of thing well).
I doubt seriously that their file system would have _that_ much impact on their performance. I can capture video on a 1GHz Mac laptop and still move the mouse without penalty. Doesn’t work on a ASUS PC motherboard running 2100 DDR and 1.6 P4 (will capture, but drops frames for mouse movement).
I just don’t see how your comment was even remotely rational…
I have a 32 mb Nvidia Geforce 2 graphic accelerator With P4 1.8Ghz Processor. Its driver support enables windows transparency in WinXP.
When i enable transparent windows with the help of Nvidia properties, My Windows become utterely slow. With this u can guess what will be the performance of Longhorn with Quartz extreme.????
re: No choice – you alreay have a PC or a Mac
Well I never upgrade – I just buy a new computer. Look at all the problems with upgrading in the support forums. You actually have more choice of OSes with PowrPCs than Intel- Architecture.
re: Software availability
That is why my mom bought a PC until the Monitor and mouse died on her and the Windows 98 kept crashing on her 30% of the time. The eMac she now has has never crashed on her. Also there is a Mac store closer to me than any store with Windows software. And with people with all these broadband connections they can definitely download software from the Internet. I download major software packages over a 33.6 connection. And there are low priced software titles for the Mac too as well as many Mac only software titles.
re: Apple bought Next, so not innovative
Apple was innovative as they brought a truly mutimedia desktop system to UNIX and built it on top of free software. Steve Jobs is the head of Apple and he invented NEXT, so I don’t see how Apple didn’t innovate in any sense of the word.
re: Marginally better OS
Obviously this person never actually used OS X. I never turned back to my PC once I got my Mac. If you care about stability, memory management, graphics, or processing power, you will buy a Mac.
“I doubt seriously that their file system would have _that_ much impact on their performance. I can capture video on a 1GHz Mac laptop and still move the mouse without penalty. Doesn’t work on a ASUS PC motherboard running 2100 DDR and 1.6 P4 (will capture, but drops frames for mouse movement).
”
I am surprised you beleive what you are saying and don’t even doubt that it is unnormal to have frame-drops with such hardware. How about switching your IDE controller from PIO mode to UDMA..? In most cases W2K/XP won’t do it by default…
It could also depend on the interfaces being used for the mouse and video capture on both systems, which, if causing the dropouts, could have nothing at all to do with the filesystem.
” I am surprised you beleive what you are saying and don’t even doubt that it is unnormal to have frame-drops with such hardware. How about switching your IDE controller from PIO mode to UDMA..? In most cases W2K/XP won’t do it by default… ”
The point is that on a Mac, this isn’t an issue, because the hardware vendor and the software vendor have already made that switch for you. Or in other words, you get what you pay for :-).
That said, the problem he’s talking about is architectual in nature, OS X is an order of magnitude slower at copying files over a network connection than XP on the same network, while OS X can stream data through it’s slower FSB and IO hardware with better throughput than XP can because of design decisions made early on. There is a reason that most high end audio software is only on Windows as an afterthought. Especially on NTFS with it’s write behind cache logic. It’s great for a general use OS, but when you want that kind of throughput to the disk, you need to look at other alternatives.
DJ Jedi Jeff: This may have been corrected already but, OS X does not use display postscript. That has a license fee associated with it. Quartz uses PDF instead which is free.
PDF is based on Postscript, so don’t blame me for getting confused once in a while, k? Especially when I posted that, I was kinda cranky at my ISP.
DJ Jedi Jeff: I think that comparing rumors from Microsoft to rumors from Apple is not a good comparison. Apple is notoriously tight-lipped whereas Microsoft starts talking months before a product even reaches alpha.
In comparison with other Windows releases (namely Windows 4/95, Windows XP), there were a lot of blabably about it before it was released. Longhorn is strangely different. In comparison with Apple, the big difference being that Microsoft have way more naughty employees that are hard to track down (most probably the route of leak versions of Longhorn).
However, if you wanna compare with Apple, you can do it with OS X. Rhapsody pre-alphas and alphas was showcased far more often in trade shows than Microsoft currently now for Longhorn. If you can find a site with proper archives dating back then, you can see how it look back then (pretty much like NeXT and Platinum merged, no Aqua jelly beans yet).
DJ Jedi Jeff: I guarantee that Panther will be more than just 64-bit.
If it isn’t, man, that would be low
DJ Jedi Jeff: Apple will expect people to pay for Panther and no one is going to pay for a 64-bit OS for their 32-bit computer (I mean, duh).
If it’s main feature is 64-bit, people would pay for it via hardware – far more profitable than software packs. Meanwhile, Apple already suffered a rather not nice backlash because of Jaguar pricing, considering the amount of rumours of Panther now in comparison about jaguar then, it would be another 10.1-like release instead. In other words, free copy at the Apple Store.
DJ Jedi Jeff: According to IBM the 970 can run a 32-bit OS with very minor modifications. It would require changes but they would be very small.
Word minor highlighted. Current benchmarks of Opteron uses 32-bit Windows out of the box.
Many here have wondered what is the point of this information-less article? The answer is the very first line:
“Sorry, Linux desktop fans: When it comes to desktop operating systems, it’s currently a two-way race between Windows and the Mac OS.”
The first line is a swat at Linux. ‘Nuff said.
Uhm, just because Microsoft doesn’t include it, doesn’t mean it is imposible. Any video card that supports Direct3D (or OpenGL is they decided to ditch everything and go that way) can easily do what Apple did with Quartz Extreme on Quartz. Case to point: WindowsFX. Works perfectly fine with any computer with a non-generic display card (anything else is just plain hair-pulling slow).
It’s the applications that matter. It’s the applications that were written for Windows and DOS that have made Windows so dominant.
If you could put OS X on Intel/AMD and run ALL your Windows applications on it then you would have something to write about. But as it is, I don’t think OS X on a Mac will ever be dominant no matter how well it runs or how fancy the gui
looks. Rembember BEOS? It is still superior in many ways to both Windows and Macs but its gone.
Microsoft and Intel/AMD have 90% of the destop market and all of them use Windows for their Windows applications (minus the a few who use Lindows)
Case in Point:
It would be impossible for Microsoft to implement something similiar as Quartz Extreme since it has no idea what video card you will be running. Microsoft in this case would have to wait a significant amount of time (2005 would probably be about right) before they implement something like this so that 32/64 MB high end graphic cards became the norm in peoples systems. The ‘average’ user runs a Celeron 600 Mhz system with integrated video and that won’t cut rendering all system display output through the integrated video chip.
Oh, you mean how games don’t really care what video card you are using because as long as the driver meets the requirements for DirectX version “whatever” things would go just fine?
What YOU seem to be missing is the notion of the common API with hardware-specific drivers underneath. Do you really think that the authors of Microsoft Word really care what video card is being used when doing their 2D graphics? No they don’t. And when transparency, transformation, and 3D graphics become part of the standard windows APIs they still won’t care.
Sure, having lots of hardware configurations for Windows means writing drivers is harder. But that’s not a restriction to what can and cannot be done.
So what you’re saying RJ is that marketshare can never change? Such innovative ideas you have. You should teach at Harvard Business School!
I have a 32 mb Nvidia Geforce 2 graphic accelerator With P4 1.8Ghz Processor. Its driver support enables windows transparency in WinXP.
When i enable transparent windows with the help of Nvidia properties, My Windows become utterely slow. With this u can guess what will be the performance of Longhorn with Quartz extreme.????
The way that the nVidia drivers are enabling window transparency is a little different than some might think (since it’s in the video card drivers). What it does (and why it’s only supported in their 2k and XP drivers) is pass the window (a handle to the window actually) and a transparency value to an API in Windows that makes that window transparent. The only work the video card is actually doing is the same work it does all the time, drawing the screen the way Windows tells it to. The transparency is handled by the Windows API, which doesn’t offload the work to the video card, but rather handles it by doing some calculations with your CPU and storing extra bitmaps in your system RAM until it can figure out what the frame looks like with a transparent window on it, and then sends that frame to the video card for buffering/rendering.
The idea of Longhorn’s rumoured graphics system, Quartz Extreme, and others, is to offload the functions that determine what’s visible on the screen to the video card, rather than letting Windows and the individual applications handle it through the CPU and system RAM. Video cards have had functions built into them for a long time to do things like this both in 2d and 3d, mostly because games have required it (basically any graphics card with more than 2MB of RAM could probably draw a transparent window better than Windows currently does). With 3d cards where they are today, though, it’s nearing the point where it doesn’t make sense not to do it on the video card.
Not a personal attack, but..
You’re ignorant if you think it will change within the next 2 years. For every 100 people that have pc’s, 90 of them use Windows.
A weak article but I see the point as: Apple has a big lead on many features that the average user find most compelling and appealing, but they are behind on many “business-class” features. However, because of OS and certain skunkwork plans that Apple has, it appears they will roll out substantial updates every year for the foreseeable future whereas MS can only make promises about what’s two years out (if they deliver these features and if this date doesn’t get pushed back).
As for filesystems, besides Classic and Carbon compatibility issues, there are plenty of other reasons not to use a Nix filesystem: Mac users are use to not needing to see filetypes, are use to case-insensitivity and special chracters in names, and additional metadata.
The Display Postcript thing was kind of cleared up, but I have to say, it’s shocking to see someone like rajan who claims to be such an expert be so wrong.
Quartz uses Generic PDF–the pdf spec which is free of royalties. There are other PDF specs that contain more features and do include royalties–but these features are for itneractivity, forms, and such and aren’t necessary for display purposes.
Quartz renders using PDF (for 2D), OpenGL (for 2D and 3D), and Quicktime for video. OpenGL is hardware-accelerated prior to compositing. LH’s graphic system is being described rather vaguely now–from what I can tell–MS is largely wrapping GDI+ in a new DX… it’s really not much more special than using another API for rendering prior to composition.
How can anyone claim Panther will not be a substantial update:
-64 bit support (this is not insignificant. Yes, MS has 64bit OSes, but they aren’t a consumer option. ANd they certainly do not have a 32/64bit OS which can run both types of apps natively)
-filesystem improvements (I prefer DB-like; a database is not required for the functionality so why add overhead)
-Quartz improvements
-enhanced dock and other UI features like piles
-I’ll note piles again because these accomplish the query-based storage of virtual directories in LH and stacks in one object
-fast startup and shutdown
-fast user switching and multiple logins to one device
-the ability to sync Home dirs (Documents and Settings) across the net and multiple devices
-increased integration of net-based purchasing, third-party help systems, and software updates
-improvements to iApps and many other system apps (mostly utilities)
-increased integration of .Mac and the proliferation of Rendezvous thoughout applications
…and this is just a start. This is just what is relatively CERTAIN to be in Panther. I can’t even imagine the handful of goodies they REALLY want to keep quiet.
It could change in two years. Two years from now it might change up or down by a few percentage points.
But the real key is that RJ was wrong when he said the OS doesn’t matter anymore and that people are “locked in” to what they have. It can and does change. It may not change quickly, but it can change.
And why the question of “two years”? Do you really think all those people with Windows at home are going to upgrade to Longhorn? Doubtful. Longhorn will be on most new PC’s sold and OS XI (or whatever) will be on new Mac’s. Again, you seem to be referring to installed base and not marketshare (a distinction I made in the last Mac discussion because people had a habit of confusing the two). New OS’s are primarily an issue for marketshare of new computers because so few people choose to upgrade.
1) Everyone claims to be an expert here. Rajan has been mistaken more than once, wether it be the display postscript thingie, or “apple is a monopoly”.
2) Nothing is certain on Panther. Last time the rumor sites said that there wouldn’t be anything special at the MWSF in January. Steve Jobs proved them wrong by announcing Safari, Keynote, 12″ powerbook and 17″ powerbook. Apple likes to surprise people. A bit like on Christmas were “Santa” surprises the children with cool gifts.
If you have Intel/AMD hardware you have Windows Longhorn, if you have Apple hardware you have OSX Panther – no choice. This article would only make sense if both OSes ran on the same hardware
Um Linux
If Apple would do a pc OS X this might have more impact
You can have an article discussion about OS feature sets that says x leads in this category, y leads in this category–to the consumer y will seem more impressive…
…without any implication of consumers switching platforms, or reality changing substantial.
We all know of circumstances where better tech is not the most popular, but we don’t say it’s irrelevent if it’s better.
Two years is when all the current WindowsPC manufacturers will start selling PC’s with Longhorn preinstalled. I highly doubt that between now and then there will be a surge in people buying Apples. Main reason is the expense. I’m not a Windows zealot, but you mac zealots need to face facts, that no matter how great MacOSX is (i agree) that you’re going nowhere with it in terms of marketshare. And don’t forget that just because Windows has 90% of it, that doesn’t mean Apple has 10%.
“I’m a programmer. Why would someone like me be so stupid as to to create a native GUI application for Windows knowing that its architecture is an absolute mess, not to mention it is screwed shut.”
LOL so, according to you, the whole software industry is stupid since they support windows. maybe the companies should drop windows and support linux, yeah, that will guarantee them a nice cash flow compared to windows. yeah, let them shrink the range of potential customers. That is brilliant