Comparing Tiger and Vista Beta 1 678
UltimaGuy writes "This article is an excellent comparison between the features of Apple Tiger and Windows Vista Beta 1. The point it raises - 'Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt. For Mac OS X users, however, Windows Vista Beta 1 engenders a sense of déjà vu."
64-bit? (Score:2, Interesting)
same old (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been hearing this for years: "My Mac was able to do [blank] years before Windows did it, and it still does it better than windows for a mere $1,000 more than your silly little white box."
Mac does do it better, IMHO, just not cheaper.
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I thought XP was fairly useful, if only an incremental upgrade to 2k.
Meanwhile, Vista is panning out to be nothing but XP with alpha transparency and a lot more DRM. As a network admin, I see no reason at all to upgrade. As a gamer, I see no reason at all to upgrade; Avalon/WGF are being ported to XP. As a user, there's incentive not to upgrade, because it costs more, it's more of a hassle, and it doesn't allow me to do anything I can't do on XP, already.
Not impressed by Tiger (Score:4, Interesting)
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently. The selection of Widgets is symptomatic of this, I mean, who really needs a countdown timer to the next episode of Battlestar Galactica just one keypress away at any moment?
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else. Its a nice idea, but in practice not a very useful one.
Inquiring minds want to know, (Score:4, Interesting)
Just what does Windows Vista do, Out Of the Box??
I mean, as it comes, without having to PURCHASE additional software such as MS Office, Word, etc..
As distributed, what can you do with it?
Word processing?
Financial stuff?
Photo & image manipulation (Paint prog?)
Spreadsheets?
Desktop publishing?
Multimedia editing / DVD authoring & burning?
Webpage authoring / editing?
I'm curious. Can Vista do any of these things as it comes or do you have to dish out more cash separately for each desired application, on top of the price to purchase the OS??
Search not instant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite arguably. Say I'm looking for "Programming in C", which may or may not actually be named that on my disc (although I know it'll have program-something in its name).
Tiger:
Pro... Final cut pro shows up...gr
Vista:
You have two options:
Pro + enter
too many results, try again
Program + enter
program files.... look down the list.. there it is!
or
Programming + enter
hmmm... I don't see it... try
Program + enter
oh! the name was mispelled in the filename and was actually "programing" of course
And at this point I've made how many searches to equal the instant feedback of Tiger? Instant feedback is the whole point of having desktop search! Otherwise it's only a slight improvement over what they've had for ages.
Inadvertant note about why OS X so nice to use (Score:5, Interesting)
So what he's saying here is that Apple figured out what features they wanted, then took years to refine them.
Vs. Microsoft, which has a beta out now but will cram a lot of stuff in over the next several months and let users test it in early releases.
Re:Quick Notes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Inconsistencies in the Mac UI? The most obvious one is that you double click to launch applications from the finder but single click them from the dock. Double click isn't always safe, because sometimes it'll launch two copies.
Another is that some configuration dialogs have `OK' or similar buttons, while others take effect immediately, while others take effect when they are dismissed.
These are hardly earth-shattering, and as a long-term GUI-distruster I'm very impressed (hell, I'm using `Mail' while since 1988 I've used MH or mutt). But it's not perfect: it's just very, very good.
ian
Re:Quick Notes... (Score:5, Interesting)
"It's not that hidden, it's right at the top of the Get Info window; and it's not just for documents, it's for *any* file or folder."
I saw a few comments similar to the one you were answering here, and my take is that all of the features he considers hard to find may only be so if one has only ever used Windows, and cannot get out of the windows mindset. I have had my notebook for about a year (and I have used many oses including dos, every version of windows to date, linux, irix, etc), and I find most features and ways of organization in os x to be more intuitive than any other os I have used.
Oh yea, I also agree about the origin of spotlight. He clearly says that he has no clue wether features like spotlight were originally intended, or came from microsoft? First of all, has apple historically ever worried about microsofts features validating their own ideas before including them? He certainly leaves the possibility open that apple somehow copied the idea for spotlight from microsoft, but it doesn't seem logical. For spotlight to work so well, and be so bug free (I have not noticed problems anyway) I doubt that they said "hey that sounds cool, we'll do it too".
Perhaps in another article he will talk about microsoft adding a new dashboard-like feature, so apple must have stolen it from microsoft. Give me a break.
N Years == Animated Icons (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm neither impressed by this Vista or Tiger thing.
MS takes how many years to produce a windowing system that has animated icons?
Or N number of years to come up with a manner of searching your files that quite frankly doesn't sound any better to me than what already exists.
I mean quite honestly, how many grandmothers are going to build what is essentially an SQL where clause to find their great-grandbabies photos.
If those grannys are like my mother they will be lucky to remember where the friggin power switch is from day-to-day.
The author states:
> For Windows enthusiasts, Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases
I guess he is right assuming your expectations are incredibly low.
Re:Apple/Microsoft comparisons are moot (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista Development (Score:5, Interesting)
Win32 has been how you write Windows software since Windows 95 (and that was based on Win16) - from the very first version of Windows to today, you're creating HWNDs and sending messages to them, and calling CreateFile when you want a file and so on.
But now Vista is delivering on a whole lot of strategies at the same time.
Avalon / Xaml replaces how you create user interfaces.
Indigo replaces how you do communications.
WinFS (which will probably get rolled into Vista at some point, now that it's gone from vaporware to betaware) replaces a lot of how you manage your data.
The rest of the
It probably won't be for another 5 years or so, when developers can start thinking about depending on this stuff, that things will really change, but for Windows developers, it is a pretty big change.
The Mac of course has made these kinds of "forget everything you know and start over with this new technology" changes many times. It's the courage to do this that has kept the Mac alive, and I think shows that Microsoft is on the right track.
The really annoying thing is that both companies are radically changing how you develop software for their platforms, and they're completely different.
As a developer, will I ever get to use Avalon in a real app? I'd guess not. Making a portability abstraction for Avalon and Xaml is a lot different than wrapping a button or a listbox with a generic API. Every platform has buttons and listboxes; no other platform has a Xaml equivalent yet (XUL is a bit of Xaml but they're not really directly comparable).
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:5, Interesting)
[no envelopes were harmed (or even discolored) in the making of these wild ass guesses]
Re:In bed with Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
How can you debate a point when you must rely on ad hominem?
Despite the fact that her posts are horribly inaccurate she whores for a lot of karma by pandering to the Linux zealots on
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows owns around a 95% marketshare and Macintosh has around a 1.9%, and Linux has around a 2%. Please note that I am talking client not server OS.
Now, I bet that way less than 10% of the Windows users will upgrade to Vista within the first month of release. So I do agree with your email in principle. The bad news for these users is that companies like Dell, HP and IBM will make Vista the default OS and that will drive Vista as the defacto standard within a couple of YEARS. Then after a year or so most large companies will standardize on it, and thus drive even more sales.
Now, having said that, it is my belief that Linux will continue to chew in to Microsoft's client market year after year and this will in a weird way also help Apple. It is my belief that when Linux hits around 10-15% marketshare the game will be over for Microsoft. At around 12% ALL companies will be forced to provide drivers and support and thus the core reasons for not using Linux starts to fade away. It is also my belief that it will take Linux far longer to reach 8% desktop market share than it will take it to go from 8 to 12%. Once the ball starts rolling it will be hard to stop it.
I say 10 to 12% because that is around the time management types start listening and reacting. A perfect example is Mozilla and Firefox. Quite a few companies around my area have started "fixing" their web applications because they didn't work with anything but IE. Well it took Mozilla to get enough traction for these companies to allocate resources to fix their applications. Trust me, NONE of those companies wanted to do this work. It took them time and time is money...
Re:Not impressed by Tiger (Score:5, Interesting)
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Are you actually counting out 8 seconds? That seems awfully long. I have two 80 GB drives, and I usually get complete results in 2-3 seconds. I'm using it more and more to find invoices, contact information, and email.
Oh, and the Spotlight search box in "open" dialog boxes is just the greatest thing ever. It saves me so much time just to search for the file I want and have it appear instantly!
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently.
It's finding its uses. It's very good as a data aggregator, sort of an analog for raw information to what RSS is for news. Using the stupidest examples of user-made widgets to represent the essence of the technology is silly.
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
Sure, among the fools-who-make-crap-up demographic. Spotlight indexing is a kernel call that takes virtually no resources and doesn't slow the machine at all.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else.
Sure, uncreative people won't think of using it when they should, and they'll say it has no use.
I find I use it quite frequently. It can take care of almost any repetitive task. Today, I set up an Automator applet that grabs photos from iPhoto, renames them sequentially, resizes them, and puts them in another photo for uploading to eBay. A tedious process that would take 10 minutes on Windows takes about 10 seconds with OS X and Automator. In my humble opinion, it's one of the most remarkable technologies ever added to an OS, and it's almost infinitely extendible with Applescript and custom actions.
Honestly, Vista isn't going to come close to any of this; but I expect Leopard to bring wonderful improvements.
Re:i hate to take their side (Score:3, Interesting)
PDF is an open, published standard with multiple open and closed source implementations of both readers and writers. PDF sucks on Windows right now mostly because most people view PDFs with the slow and bloated Acrobat reader plug-in running with IE and neither IE nor Windows in general has good end-to-end multitasking. When most people think of PDFs they think of clicking on a link and then waiting a few minutes while their computer is unusable for the thing to load. Viewing PDFs on Linux or OS X on the other hand is fast and if your internet connection is too slow, your machine is still usable while you wait for it to download. PDF as format is just fine.
Now contrast this with what MS will likely be offering. You will have no choice of client, probably no choice of OS, it may or may not be readable on current software in a decade, and it will probably be as half-assed as all their other take over programs. It will be just good enough for most users to not bother buying or downloading an alternative. It will suck for real publishing where PDF will continue to dominate, but it will still take over on the low-end because it will be bundled with the OS and hence with pretty much every PC you buy. Basically it will be very similar to the existing Word format with better layout controls and vector graphics. It will abound in office settings since most users and managers won't realize that they are losing choice and forward compatibility. It will suck for everyone who has to deal with it that is not running Windows.
I guess if you think moving from an open standard to a closed one owned by Microsoft is a good thing, well we'll just have to agree that you're being paid a lot of money by them.
Re:Quick Notes... (Score:4, Interesting)
On a large desktop (standard resolution for me is 1600 x 1200 on a 21" Trinitron), hitting those menus requires a fair amount of precision. And yes, I use XP/2000 at the office, and primarily 98 at home. The family machine runs OSX.
Whatever works best for you.
Tim
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just last week a friend of mine came to me complaining that his 13-year-old son had (once again) "totally screwed up" the family PC. I asked him if they did much gaming on it and he said they had a PlayStation they used for that. The PC was for mostly homework, email and web surfing. I said "Hey, If you have to reinstall anyway, how about installing SUSE instead?" He gave me a blank look and I explained that SUSE was an alternative to Windows. (another blank stare) I said, "It's a version of Linux..." (stare) "...made by Novell (OK I lied a bit)". Oh, OK, he'd heard of Novell. After explaining to him that it came with everything he'd need (legally and for free), he said he never knew there was even a choice.
After a few days I ran into him again and asked how it had gone. He said, "Since my son broke it, I told him he had to fix it. I handed him the CD's and he installed it all by himself. He then asked me which virus software and firewall software he should buy. I told him he didn't need any, that it was all there and already working for him with no cost (a bit of a stretch, I know, but the impact was what I'd hoped - later I'll mention that he may want to scan Office documents manually with ClamAV so as not to spread anything nasty to his poor "Windows-using friends".)
For this guy, Linux is the perfect solution. We'll give it some time and see, but I predict that after surfing pop-up free, malware-free, virus-free and trouble-free for a while he'll really have to think twice the next time he upgrades his PC. Maybe, after taking the first step he'd even consider buying a mac-mini - now that he's seen that Windows isn't the only way to get the job done.
Re:Not impressed by Tiger (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:5, Interesting)
When XP was first released, there was still a very large # of PC's coming out that didn't have hardware acceleration on the video "card". If it's more common to have that today, then offloading from the CPU onto the GPU will garner at the very least an increase in perceived performance.
I'll see those claims and raise you... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet the admin/user model is still broken in XP
-Fast switching isn't useful in most domains
Says who? It'd be nice to FUS to an admin account without repeating, "Do you need to save this?" ten times to a user.
*You can do system images for fairly disparate hardware already, but not completely different.
And all the fun that comes along with changing the SID and testing to make sure your hardware changes don't break the image? I'll take any improvement we can get here.
-There are already public recovery disks
Which are hacks that violate the EULA
-You can already get real shells
You will hear no complaints from me if MS wants to improve the default shell.
*I'm sure a more advanced task scheduler is useful _somewhere_
Uuuh yeah. The current scheduler is pretty weak. Improvements welcome... again.
Some of these are very welcome improvements to Windows. I think you downplay them too much.
Re:I'll see those claims and raise you... (Score:2, Interesting)
We have standard hardware for supported systems and Ghost for imaging. We have around 4000 supported desktops and don't have any major issues that this would appear to help with.
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:5, Interesting)
But, even if you accept that Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous--and not because it's an easy target--then OSX still is a safer bet, and OSX will remain a safer bet until it's saturation reaches 51%--if we're, again, assuming that market-share is directly correlated with exploited vulnerabilities. This of course means that OSX will remain a more secure system for the foreseeable future. This is what you pro-Windows guys don't seem to get, OSX is more secure than Windows right now, you'll spend less time farting around with malware.
As for applications, it depends on what you do, I for one use the iApps and FCP and consider the Windows equivalents to be anemic at best.
Finally, OSX is very easy to deal with, I don't get the odd dialog asking me if I want to launch a wizard every time I do something new and I don't have Outlook demanding attention. I have to deal with fewer patches and updates and I get some very cool extras like Automator that make my computing life a little easier. You should try OSX when you get the chance.
Re:Vista is a total rip-off of Tiger... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I am a pro-Windows guy, but that's probably partially due to the fact that it's paid the bills for the past decade. Personally, I don't spend any time whatsoever messing around w/malware. I typically use Maxthon (uses IE engine) for browsing, Thunderbird for email, and run two apps for maintaning security - Avast (antivirus) and Sygate (firewall) both free and very nice. Sometimes I use Firefox, but until version 1.06, performance sucked. Version 1.06 is much better though.
I don't know what iApps or FCP are, so I can't really respond to those. Are there equivalent apps for the Mac relating to GetRight? How about ACDSee, or Photoshop Album? How well does iPicture (or whatever it's called) deal with 20K+ pics categorized with people/pet names, etc.? Note that I'm referring to a single processer XP box, so don't compare it to a dual proc Mac.
As for wizards, I don't typically deal with them in Windows, so I'm not sure what ones are bugging you, but I'd be willing to bet most of them can be turned off.
As for trying OSX, that's probably not going to happen. I'd never spend what they want for them, and as a Windows software developer, there's really no draw there for me to. It's like a Chevy mechanic buying a Ford.
Given what from an outsiders perspective seems like "proprietary everything" I just have a bad taste in my mouth regarding Apple. IMO their machines are under-powered and overpriced. I think the iPod is overpriced as well, but that's a whole other discussion I guess.
If I knew someone with one, I might use it for a few minutes, but I just can't imagine I'd be as impressed as many people seem to be.