David Pogue Takes On Vista

guruevi writes to let us know about a review of Microsoft Vista in the NY Times, in the form of an article and a video, by the known Mac-friendly David Pogue. In the article, Pogue recasts Microsoft's marketing mantra for Vista: "Clear, Confident, Connected" becomes "Looks, Locks, Lacks." Pogue writes that Vista is such a brazen rip-off of Mac OS X that "There must be enough steam coming out of Apple executives' ears to power the Polar Express." But the real fun is in the video, in which Pogue attempts to prove that Vista is not simply an OS X clone.

I Like It!

[SSonnentag]

I've been testing Vista Business edition all weekend and so far I really like it. I'm also a Mac user, so I can compare the two firsthand. Vista takes a lot of the nice features of OS X and does them the right way in Vista. The gadgets are so much nicer in Vista than in OS X. They're easier to manage and they work more smoothly. The Vista user interface is absolutely beautiful from an eye candy point of view, and yet it doesn't seem to take any significant performance hit. My Mac Book Pro is not nearly as fluid in running OS X as my Dell laptop is with Vista. Both OS'es are 64-bit also. Even Photoshop CS3 runs much faster on Vista than on OS X.

Microsoft may have copied a lot of features and look from Apple, but they left the bad, took the good and have a much better implementation in my opinion.

Now if only Linux worked this well....

Some...

[Zebra_X]

might remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista, on WinFS never made it while another, "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system. Unlike apple Microsoft likes to get feedback from their customers before throwing something at them. So of course Mac users see 3d components, 3d windows and naturally assume that MS just ripped off the idea, however it's not fully the case - and the line isn't clear. The thing is: if you strip away the UI of vista and compare OS X and Vista based simply on their progamming models and underlying architecture - they are decidedly different. It would seem this author however is not qualified to make this evaluation.

To Be Fair ....

[eldavojohn]

Pogue writes that Vista is such a brazen rip-off of Mac OS X that "There must be enough steam coming out of Apple executives' ears to power the Polar Express."

I haven't used Mac OS X or Vista on a regular basis but, to be fair, if one operating system does something right, should we really criticize another operating system for coding that feature into their own product?

For instance, when I found out that Mac OS's had the Unix shell I was happy & enthusiastic at the same time. Not because I use Mac but because I like that shell over so many others & I hope to see every operating system standardize their shell. I would also like to see the same done with security schemes.

Now, whether widgets came first or gadgets came first--I don't care. What I care about is that my job (and I'm sure a lot of people reading this are the same way) forces me to use Windows & sooner or later they'll get Vista. Should I really be bitching and making fun of Vista being an OS X clone? Or should I sit back and enjoy the fact that something is changing and--since they're mimicking an already successful operating system--it must be for the better.

I guess this is some form of operating system snobbery I'm not accustomed to.

Re:One "interesting" feature I didn't know about

[antifoidulus]

They may not have as much bandwidth, but that doesn't mean they aren't as "fast" per se. If you are pushing around large amounts of data, then yes, the hard drive will be faster. However, if I want a page from memory(not exactly a lot of data), things can be a bit different. I first have to request the data from the hard drive, the hard drive has to spin to find the data, then deliver it to me. The latencies involved can really add up. Wheras on a flash disk, all data takes the exact same amount of time to find. So as soon as I know the address(a simple translation), I can get the data. No seeking necessary. Can save you lots of time if you do a bunch of little reads(and comparatively few writes).

They already have !

[alexhs]

MS has a desktop monopoly.

Please don't redefine words as you wish.

I guess that by your own definition of monopoly, Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly, as they only controlled 91% of U.S. production at their highest ?

Re:News for Nerds

[kahei]

...because a Slashdot reader's take on Vista would be completely unbiased!

I don't find Pogue's take hard to believe. In 5 years of development, I'd expect them to be able to pretty things up and reorganize the directory structure. I mean, this is 5 whole _years_. The only thing in the list above that sounds like a real change is the sleep mode -- I hear good things about that. So, it's not like we're seeing hugely inflated claims here.

All I want from it is for it to be a stable baseline for development -- right now with 2k and XP and .NET 1.1 and .NET 2 mixed around it's a bit of a pain.

Re:Hey wait a minute...

[TripMaster Monkey]

You falsely represent it as your own original work.

Re:To Be Fair ....

[StormReaver]

"...should we really criticize another operating system for coding that feature into their own product?"

Not at all. But then the makers of that other operating system shouldn't be screaming from the rafters about how they're innovating. Everyone borrows from everyone, which is how it should be. The best features from the industry should be adopted throughout the industry.

The reason that Microsoft takes so much flack for it is because its executives then refuse to admit that Microsoft didn't invent the borrowed features -- despite the obviousness of it all.

Re:One "interesting" feature I didn't know about

[drsmithy]

Why not just buy real RAM, instead of using a flash drive.

* Maybe your machine is maxed out with RAM.
* Maybe you aren't comfortable with upgrading it yourself and can't afford to pay someone else.
* Maybe you don't understand what RAM even is.
* Maybe you want the performance benefits of both (ReadyBoost delivers improved performance, even to RAM-endowed systems).

Flash drives would die pretty fast if you tried to use them as swap space.

This isn't swap space (well, not literally) it's (effectively) a DIY version of the new flash+magnetic hard disks.

One more perspective

[nutznboltz2003]

I have been running Vista on my laptop (HP nc6320) since it was released to business users. My laptop is a Core Duo 1.66Ghz with 512MB of ram. It was sold as "Vista ready" and even had that wonderful 100% Vista Compatible sticker on the side. Sadly, it was not.
Vista failed to recognize almost all of the hardware. Thankfully, it did recognize the wireless card, so I was able to go to HP's site and download most of the hardware. It never did recognize the fingerprint reader (likely bad drivers) and there were two devices that came up as unknown device which I have yet to be able to track down. Also, since the video card is shared memory, I do not get all of the nice visual features on this laptop that I would on a more powerful desktop.
That being said, I am very happy with the performance of this latop. The boot time is significantly nicer, and it runs Office 2007 perfectly. I also enjoy the menu structure so much more. Some of the layout reminds me of Mac/Linux, such as not having a "Documents and Settings" folder, but instead having a "Users" folder on the root drive. Things like this are not massive changes to the user experience, but for someone like me, who works on both Macs and PCs all day, it seems more natural, and I do feel I'm a little more productive during the day.
I would actually like to replace Windows XP on my home machine with Vista, which can handle the special effects, but as I have a very old Brooktree tv tuner card, I will likely be stuck with XP until I can afford a new tuner card as well. The Beta releases of Vista did not recognize the card, so I don't have any hope for the final release.
Also, for those wondering, Windows ReadyBoost has done wonders for my latop performance. I can actually tell a difference in the opening/closing time of office documents when I have my 1GB thumb drive attached. My older 256MB drives were not even offered the option of ReadyBoost, but they are not USB2.0 native, so that is likely the issue with those units.

Re:Corporate environments

[Tom]

From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.

Except any of the many Unix versions.

One of the first companies I worked for had a network of mostly Windos with some Solaris machines for the developers. Me and another guy managed the Solaris machines in addition to our regular jobs, and it was painless, smooth and easy. The windos dudes spent most of their days cussing at the inabilities of their OS.

Microsoft has been doing this since Windows 1.0

[argent]

You get the feeling that Microsoft's managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, "Copy that."

If you believe what Marlin Eller (a former Microsoft exec) wrote in his book, Microsoft has been doing this since Windows 1.0. Why did the first few versions of Windows use cooperative multitasking? Because the Macintosh didn't do multitasking at all, and because cooperative multitasking made running a single app seem faster and more responsive to Bill Gates as he shuffled between the team developing Windows and the team working on the Applications Apple was writing for the as-yet-unrevealed Macintosh.

Bill Gates loved the Macintosh, and I suspect he still does... he sees Apple as Microsoft's unpaid unofficial brainstorming lab. He doesn't care if a few geeks think of Vista as an OS X clone, because he knows that 99.44% of the customer base simply don't care.

Re:Without Apple

[drsmithy]

I beg to differ. I worked at a part time job at my college in University Relations and they had an old 400mhz clunker with OS X on it. I didn't even know it was a 400mhz Mac. OS X was very responsive and pretty much the only thing that took a long time was the disk load time.

You either had the fastest 400Mhz Mac in the world, or exceptionally low standards.

Having run Vista personally I am wondering if you have even run Vista. The idea of running Vista, even Windows XP, on a 500mhz PC and trying to get anything done makes me shudder in fear and terror.

I think you're trolling. XP is well and truly usable on a ~500Mhz P3 w/512M of RAM. It doesn't get iffy until you're down into 300Mhz P2, 256MB RAM territory.

I must admit I was surprised at how fast Vista was on my old laptop. I wouldn't use it on that machine over XP, but it *was* fast enough for web browsing, email, office, and the like. I wouldn't feel bad about giving it to my mother to use.

Windows XP on a 1ghz PC is fine if you just browse the web and edit word documents, but it's sluggishly slow, especially if you have an antivirus agent and are trying to do multiple things at once.

Your 1Ghz PC is broken if it is "sluggish" running Windows under any sort of reasonable load.

A G5 Mac is incredibly powerful and responsive. Some guys at my part time work had one and I was blown away by how smooth everything was (they use a lot of multimedia apps like Photoshop, the Macromedia suite, etc.) I've had direct experience of both of those types of hardware and IME at any rate, I found the opposite to be true.

I've used just about every Mac ever made. A G5 Mac is, indeed, a very powerful machine in an absolute sense, but OS X brings it to its knees. Any more than a couple of Safari windows with half a dozen tabs each, a few terminals, Thunderbird and maybe a Word document or two, and my mum's 1.9Ghz, 1.5GB RAM iMac can't keep up.

I'm not sure that's the issue here. We're talking about Vista. The eyecandy in Vista is the part of the product that is being marketed to customers, and appears to be the only interesting feature that Microsoft was interested in completing.

If you think the only interesting thing in Vista is the GUI, you don't know anything about Vista.

Personally, *I* don't care about anything in Vista either. That's why I'm sticking with Windows 2000 and Windows XP on my parents' machines. Windows XP just got pretty stable. After the horrors Microsoft brought with Windows XP I really don't think I'm going to upgrade to Vista for a long time. Say, 5 years.

My two highest priorities are UI responsiveness and the ability to multitask lots of stuff. Windows absolutely shits all over OS X from a great height at both of these things, so I prefer Windows. I do own an iBook, however, and use OS X quite regularly both personally and professionally. There's a lot I like about it, but the poor performance is just a showstopper as far as I'm concerned.

Wait wait, wouldn't uncustomizable hardware be a lower cost of ownership, because you don't spend money on upgrades every 6 months?

No, it added _significantly_ to the initial purchase price because to get a decent dual monitor configuration, we would have had to purchase quad-core Mac Pros.

TCO isn't *only* about ongoing costs (and there's little to indicate they would have been lower anyway).

However, if I get a new laptop, it will probably be a Macbook Pro. Those things are really sweet. I would get it for the screen alone. I hope they can get the graphics drivers for linux on the macbook fully working, because that's what I really want on there.

Laptops are a different matter. After waiting a couple of months for the bugs to be shaken out, I'm eagerly awaiting the MacBook Pro work has purchased me. Even if I end up running Windows on it full-time, it's still a damn nice machine. The only things missing are a multibutton mouse and a decent docking station (and the ability to drive two external LCDs, but that's off into fantasy territory).

Re:Corporate environments

[trimbo]

What does their internal software look like? Are they actually writing their business applications in Objective-C, or are they writing something with a bit of cross-platform safety in it, like QT?

Re:Or in other words...

[empaler]

Yes, Widgets are copied. But not from Apple [wikipedia.org].
I haven't read your entire post through, admittedly, but that is because it is a giant block of text.
If you have typed in lineshifts, you should have either set the text type as 'Plain Text' or used BR tags as lineshifts. That's set in the box right next to the 'Preview' button.
(If it's not apparent, I'm not trying to be an arse, just trying to help)