Slashdot Log In
Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jan 22, 2009 08:19 PM
from the this-comparison-is-not-like-the-others dept.
from the this-comparison-is-not-like-the-others dept.
cremou brulee writes "Redmond's photocopiers have been unusually busy for the last couple of years, with the result that Windows 7 copies a lots of Mac OS X features. First and foremost among these is the Dock, which has been unceremoniously ripped off in Windows 7's new Taskbar. Or has it? Ars Technica has taken an in-depth look at the history and evolution of the Taskbar, and shows just how MS arrived at the Windows 7 'Superbar.' The differences between the Superbar and the Dock are analyzed in detail. The surprising conclusion? 'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac OSX displays a button for each application open, and Win7 displays a button for each document that is open and then groups them by application.
nah! that's not the same at all!
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Windows never had a TASKBAR with BUTTONS for APPLICATIONS before Mac even had a dock.
Noooo.
For god's sake, grow up, OSX is not some holy friggen grail of OSes that everyone copies you know.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called "Windows 1.0." Look into it.
I did for you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/e7/WindowsLiveWriter/HappyAnniversaryWindowsontheEvolutionoft_1365F/clip_image002_2.jpg [msdn.com]
See that at the bottom? 1985 called, they want their dock back. (Nextstep "innovated" that in 1989, four years later!)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Xerox Star had a dock for applications, printers. tools, and so on.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, let me clarify that I posted like that to mock the guy above. Figuring out who invented what is obviously a useful UI paradigm and then pointing fingers at everyone else for copying is childish, immature, adolescent, etc.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
That's no moon! Err... I mean, that's no dock. Those are just the minimised Icons on the desktop from other applications. That was the way up to and including Windows 3.11. The taskbar was introduced in Windoes 95.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm assuming you're one of those kids who think you're "old school" because you used to play Half-life on daddy's computer in 1999. Because honestly, those are (as others have pointed out) minimized applications, Windows didn't have a task bar until Windows 95.
/Mikael
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
But when Apple copies something it's innovation. When Microsoft does it, it's child porn.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I don't necessarily care if one company copies a good idea that another company has. What I don't like is when that company comes out and acts as if they were the first ones to have the idea and that it's better than anyone else's. Going a step farther, if they bastardize what they're copying and still proclaim its greatness, that's just utter bullshit.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny because it's true.
I find the iPod's wheel is often described as a revolutionary peice of design and used as an example of the amazing things Apple does.
Unfortunately, the Creative Zen had a side scroll wheel years earlier that you'd scroll up and down to scroll through songs and click in to select etc. etc. The wheel on the iPod is different only in that you move your finger round the wheel straight on rather than having a physical wheel you scroll up and down- the concept is identical, only the implementation is different.
If anyone truly believes Apple is some great innovator and that there ideas didn't stem from existing ideas then they're pretty oblivious to how just about all businesses work. Apple did what Apple do well, they made the idea popular, making it popular doesn't necessarily mean they innovated and invented in the first place though.
The usual hypocritical response by what I can only call the extremist element of the set of all Mac fans would probably be "the wheel is different because it's used front on therefore it's innovation" but to take that stance the hypocrisy is that one could equally argue that the Windows 7 sidebar is different enough to be classed as innovation rather than immitation then also, which you can be sure the most extreme of Mac fans simply would not accept. When they're forced into a corner of applying the same principles to Microsoft as to Apple or choosing hypocrisy, they choose hypocrisy.
I don't hate Apple, I don't hate people who love Apple, I hate people who can't be objective and realise things for what they are.
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it's an evolution, but it's a big one.
Scrolling on the front wheel is a single continuous motion. On a side scroll wheel you have to stop, come back, and scroll again.
Innovation doesn't meant that no one thought of pieces leading up to something, it means you made some jump in how those pieces were used that makes a significant difference in final quality/usefulness.
Parent
Re:Wendy's was first (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Mac OS X used to be called NeXTstep, and NeXTstep had a dock which Windows 95 copied to create the task bar.
If you had actually used NeXTSTEP, you would know that its Dock and the Windows 95 Taskbar behave very differently. Much like the taskbar and the OS X Dock behave differently.
The Windows 95 look which came to be called the Windows classic look which was in fact a shameless but inferior copy of the NeXTstep look from 1988.
Rubbish. Application launching, task switching, menu interaction, window management - all these things were quite different in NeXT compared to Windows 95. Indeed, you'd struggle to find ways they were similar, that weren't also shared by every other GUI.
Parent
Re:Here's what Apple has copied (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually no, you're wrong--OS X displays a button every application that you decided to put in the Dock, whether they are running or not. Additionally, there is a document shortcut area of the dock which also shows minimized document/application windows (if document, independent of which app they are part of).
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
You're not weird--some of the original MacOS Human Interface Guide (HIG) designers agree with you (e.g. http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html [asktog.com] -- many of your criticisms mirror his).
When I got my first Apple laptop (10.3 powerbook) it took me awhile to get used to OSX. Probably because I was used to FreeBSD/Linux desktops, I adjusted fairly fast, and almost always have a Terminal window open. I remember a lot of frustration initially though, when I couldn't do things the windows way.
Stacks (introduced in 10.5) were one of those things I didn't like at first, but now LOVE for my Downloads folder only. Making the screen corners hook to Expose were another thing that took some getting used to, but I now seriously miss when I'm using Windows/etc.
I would say that OSX and vista re equally STABLE rather than unstable...though to be fair, I haven't had stability problems with windows since Win95/98/ME...
Parent
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
God, I don't know what I'd do without Expose nowdays. On my windows machine I compensate by having a few huge screens that I leave everything scattered around. But Expose + Spaces works much quicker for me, especially with limited screen real estate.
Parent
Disappointing (Score:5, Informative)
Normally Ars stuff is pretty good, but that article is *very* ordinary, with a lot of conceptual, functional and historical errors.
The main thrust is correct, however, the Windows 7 Taskbar is clearly a descendant of its Windows 95 Great-great-grandfather, not the bastard child of NeXT and MacOS.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Windows user, I found this article very informative. Every time I have used OSX in the past, I have been frustrated with the application/window behavior. Understanding the motivation behind the way the operating system UIs work will probably go a long way to reducing my frustration in the future.
Parent
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that, didn't work for me.
I still use my macbook occassionally and I still hate their separation between window and application switching.
In general, when I "ALT-TAB" (or "CMD-TAB" fwiw) then I want to quickly browse through all windows that are available to me. The UI is invited to provide a smart ordering for me (i.e. show other windows of the current application first) but the mental effort of distinguishing between a "window switch" and an "app switch" never worked for me.
But frankly OSX as a whole just isn't for me - even though I really wanted to like it and literally worked for 2 months straight only on my MacBook in an attempt to learn it. The semantics of the dock are still counter-intuitive to me and showstoppers like mandatory click-to-raise or the absurd "magic titlebar" ultimately made me go back to my linux desktop.
Parent
Spaces (Score:4, Informative)
You needed to use Spaces. Group any number of applications and windows into the same or adjacent spaces, then use control-arrows or control-numbers to immediately jump into the correct space.
See: Confessions of a Space-o-holic [isights.org]
Parent
So there's the proof! (Score:5, Funny)
It waddles. It quacks. It's a camel!
KDE (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 - KDE4 for Windows ~
"Superbar"? Who wants to kill marketroids? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 'Superbar.'
I'm going to get rich when I invent a machine that lets me stab people in the face over the internet.
Except there wont be anyone to run my marketing campaign :(
Re:"Superbar"? Who wants to kill marketroids? (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to believe an OSS equivalent might be called "Open Bar",
but experience tells me it would be named something impenetrable like
"SpackleMonkey" or a difficult to pronounce word from a long dead language.
Parent
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
We arrived at the pretty much same place after starting somewhere else, so that makes it very, very, very, very different. Very.
It is similar... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the fundamental philosophy each inherited is different, but in effect at the 'dock' or 'taskbar' representation, Windows 7 and OSX end up presenting things similarly.
He makes the point that the OSX dock is for applications and that Windows is for each window, though Microsoft is heavily encouraging grouping that makes it seem as much like the dock as possible. True, in Windows this can be turned off, but that doesn't do anything to disprove the intent is to acheive the model the Dock presents. He says that when you close the last application window, it dissapears from the taskbar. The issue there is it behaves the same on Windows 7 and OSX, if an application exits, then the dock icon or taskbar presennce will disappear unless persistantly set.
He mentions things like the presence of the notification area as proof of difference, but all it really proves is that MS had a few different design ideas as they went and they must support all of them as a consequence.
Just like WindowMaker largely deals with non-GNUstep applications and makes them seem NeXT like through some of the best window group identifying methods in an X system, Windows is trying to fight clutter by removing quicklaunch and taskbar redundancy, and enabling the taskbar presence to be manipulated to replace system tray presence.
Re:It is similar... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem I can see is if Microsoft copies it too well, that Apple's lawyers would be on them like ugly on a bulldog.
Wasn't the whole "look and feel" thing decided in Microsoft's favor, back in the 90's?
Parent
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they copy it? Did they not? Do I care?
Is it useful? Does it do what it should? Does it make my work easier? That's what I care about. There are things that are clever. And, bluntly, I'd rather have them copy a good concept than come up with a completely moronic one (Office 2007, I'm looking your way!) just to be "different", just to have nobody claim they "Xeroxed something else".
Honestly, why should I care whether Windows, Mac, KDE, Gnome or whoever else copies anything from whoever? Ain't the damn patent lawyers not busy enough already, do we have to start with the same crap? What I care about is whether the system is reliable, fast and easy to use. Where they got the idea for it, I do not care.
Slight exaggeration (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All
C'mon, this has to be flamebait. The article pointed out some differences, and mainly tried to make the window-centric-vs-application-centric distinction we all know about already. It didn't say that they "weren't so similar after all", because that's clearly false.
The new taskbar is nice and it has a couple of features that the dock doesn't have and probably won't ever pick up. Specifically, the window thumbnails and the fact that "jump lists" (aka contextual menus) stay behind even when the app is closed.
I'm not accusing MS of taking ideas. I am accusing them of taking too long to implement what was the optimal solution to a design problem. Having an icon on the desktop, in the start menu, the quick launch bar, and possibly the notification area...none of which correspond to the actual open windows, which are instead listed in the task bar: stupid. Not that anyone these days has a problem with it, but still, from a design standpoint it's wasteful and annoying.
Ars is fishing for objectivity points here, and at best is running this as a dog-bites-man story (that is, "we know the new taskbar acts like the dock, and MS has a history of playing catch-up in this area, but you'll be surprised at what we think is the truth"). The fact that the headline on Slashdot exaggerates this further pisses me off quite a bit.
If it looks like the dock, walks like the dock, and quacks like the dock...you know the rest.
Oh come on, now (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious change in the new Windows Taskbar is that there are icons for non-running-applications. I don't care how you try to word it, that is the major difference between the OSX Dock and the Windows Taskbar. So Damn right it is copying it.
But is that really bad? Yes they copied good ideas, and perhaps made their own improvements to it. But that is how we get better software! Is this somehow wrong when Microsoft does it? You mean you really want Look & Feel Patents and Lawsuits? Don't be idiotic!
And the Microsoft astroturfers should not be showing such knee-jerk stupid reactions. Why not say *proudly* "we copied good ideas and improved on them even more!" instead of convoluted arguments that somehow they did not copy it.
The real difference is that (Score:5, Insightful)
The crux of the issue is that the Mac UI (and the NEXTSTEP UI) has always been application-centric from day 1. All multi-document Mac applications work in the same way: Alt+Tab to switch applications, Alt+` to switch documents.
Document-centric UIs, on the other hand, don't scale well, and that has led both the Windows OS and its applications to try to fake it one way or another, by grouping task bar icons, staying alive in the sys-tray, etc.
Parent
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how clear that is to some of us, but regardless of how one switches windows or applications using hotkeys, the Mac windowing system (as the article makes clear) is essentially document-centric - each window corresponds (with some exceptions) to a document, which is sort of why closing the last document window doesn't terminate the application - i.e. it doesn't make this assumption, since your next action might be to open a new document.
This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from. It does at least make for a more compact menu than that huge thing we see in recent MSOffice versions, which has obvious advantages if you are using a laptop.
Parent
Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was using a dock in WindowMaker before I saw OS X -- WindowMaker was, of course, "inspired" by the same source in NextStep.
The difference is, the dock is not only about running applications, it's meant to just be about applications. So, if I want to go to the Web, I click Firefox (or Safari), and if it's open, I get a window of it. If it's not open, it opens, and I get a window of it. I no longer have to think about whether stuff is open or not.
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
But I digress...
It's not just grouping windows. After all, you can still minimize a window on OS X, and it will become its own Dock icon. And you can put other things on the Dock.
No, it's all about mirroring the way users actually think, which is "I want to go to iTunes", and then "I want to go to Word", not "I want to launch iTunes" or "I want to find the running iTunes window" or "I want to close iTunes, then open Word". They want to go to iTunes until they want to go to something else.
Once they're in Word, then they can think about which document they want to open or find -- but an intelligent application could even hide that. Autosave with a near-infinite, persistent undo stack, and frequent backups, is much better, I think, than save/revert.
Parent
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, both of you hit two heads of the same nail/
That has to be the oddest analogy I have seen yet on Slashdot. I have never heard of a two-headed nail, nor can I really conceive why such a nail would be at all better than the standard one-headed nail.
But taking into account your 4-digit ID, perhaps you are old enough to remember a time when we used two-headed nails and were lucky to have them, or were grateful for them, or something like that.
Parent
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Interesting)
hrmmm... the Ars article gave me the impression that one of the benefits of OS X (and shortcomings of Windows' MDI model) is that you can overlap "documents" from different applications. so, for instance, i should be able to easily drag-and-drop a vector shape from an Adobe Illustrator document into an already open Photoshop document. likewise, i should be able to have multiple Word documents, Firefox windows, and Photoshop documents all on my desktop at the same time (and in any layer order i want). are you saying that this isn't correct, that in OS X i would only be able to view the workspace of a single application at any given time? if so, then i don't see much of an advantage to having windows represent documents.
part of what i don't like about windows representing applications is that there's no easy way to drag-and-drop objects/text from one application to another. so if i have multiple programs running with multiple documents open in each, i have to switch applications, switch documents, copy the object/text, switch applications again, and then paste into the correct document.
it's even more frustrating with Adobe CS3 as all the applications are basically transparent MDI windows like you describe. so i'll have an Illustrator document open with a Photoshop document visible in the background. yet i won't be able to drag-and-drop objects from the Illustrator document to the Photoshop document like i would be between 2 Illustrator documents or 2 Photoshop documents.
Parent
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Funny)
There are several Vista keyboards. They are the Basic vista keyboard, Basic home vista keyboard, home vista keyboard, basic business vista keyboard, business vista keyboard, and professional business vista keyboard.
The basic vista keyboard looks just like the professional business vista keyboard, but you cannot use more than a single key at once and you have to call microsoft hardware support to activate your end user license before all the keys work. Also if you do not activate it before the 30 day trial the only text written to an application upon use of the keyboard is "activate.microsoft.com"
Parent
Re:Only the most facile... (Score:5, Informative)
Not that one should take at face value what Microsoft or Apple announce at their conferences, but in their developer conference the MS guys explained this evolutionary path. I saw several videos about it around the time.
The underlying tech is quite different between the Dock and the Taskbar, also they have similar but not equal philosopies behind them. I have been using XP's toolbars in pretty much the way Microsoft has done with the Taskbar.
Parent
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Insightful)
By 'astroturfing', do you mean 'having a differing opinion to the groupthink'?
I'm still yet to see a single mote of evidence that Microsoft bothers to astroturf Slashdot. Can you honestly think of a community of individuals (save, say, BoycottNovell) that are less likely to either:
a) Switch to Windows, or
b) Do anything at all on the whim of a commenter?
Parent
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we're all Linux zealots here. *rolls eyes* Seriously, might have been true 10 years ago, but today? Not so much.
Parent
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two basic options for people here, as it pertains to the astroturfing claim:
1. People use Windows, or
2. People use something else.
Obviously #2 can be expanded into a zillion other different options, but #1 is the important one to break out. If somebody already uses your product, you don't need to preach to them about how great your product is. It's the people in #2 that you have potential to change. That brings it back to the grandparent's point: the people here who don't use Windows aren't likely to change their mind about it as the result of some random commenter. Most of them have very specific qualms about Windows (or Microsoft) that drive their decision not to use it, and most of those people also have equally strong like for whatever OS they do use.
In that sense I have to agree with him. This seems like a really bad place to astroturf.
Parent
Re:Astroturfing (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, they're either Linux zealots or daemon worshippers then.
Parent
Windows in more environmentally friendly than Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:My wishlist for the taskbar (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he means, as basic functionality of the OS. i.e. without having to download any sketchy third-party apps.
One thing is sorta ok, but if you have to download a special app for every one of your UI niggles, you end up wasting far more resources than ordinary feature bloat wastes. I know because I've tried it.
It's much better to just try and figure out the "windows way" or the "mac way" or the "x way" for your taskload; the taskflow their developers envisioned for your use case, with as few personal modifications as possible.
Plus, using stock OS features means you won't be all used to a specialized way of doing things when you have to use other computers.
Parent
Re:So, it's different ... (Score:5, Informative)
How is it vaporware if it exists in beta form? I think you need to look up what that word means.
Parent
Re:So, it's different ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent