Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546
erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."
On What Hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)
All of the OSX machines I have access to seem more sluggish and less responsive than my 3 year old PC running XP.
Without more details, this "it-enquirer" is no better than the print Enquirer in the checkout line.
Speaking as a certified Apple fanboy... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, speaking as someone who personally perceives and is annoyed by logy, sticky, frictionlike behavior in Windows' UI... how the heck can you take an article seriously when it claims minuscule differences ("Windows XP scored 0.40 and Vista/Aero 0.52") in undefined metrics that are undoubtedly influenced by the hardware configuration?
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that Vista on a PC with 1 Gig of RAM and an ordinary video card has higher "friction" than Mac OS X... isn't it possible that it would outperform a Mac if you gave it the spiffiest video card and 4 gig? Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that Vista "needs" more powerful hardware and that in a year or so, a cheap PC with Vista will have it and perform with less friction than a comparably cheap Mac? If this were true, one could justifiably criticize Microsoft for high cost of ownership, software bloat, and selling wine before its time... but it would only be a rather qualified knock on Vista.
Vista-bashing is reaching ridiculous levels (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize Slashdot will leave no stone unturned when it comes to slagging Windows, but isn't this getting just a bit carried away? There are plenty of things to criticize about Vista - substantial things - if one is so inclined. Look at the totally brain-dead backup and defrag utilities, for example; both are a major step back from their equivalents in XP. But if you really think it's a horrible OS for the reasons cited in this article, you're venturing into Ted Kaczynski-like levels of MS hatred.
This is quite measurable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take, for example, the way menus appear. This affects a lot more than just the OS, since many apps use the same interface widgets. If a menu takes 1/10th of a second to appear, then you could be wasting hours of time over the course of a week or month sitting there waiting for a window to load. Having them appear almost instantly would save that time.
The same goes for positioning the menu bars for an application at the top of the window rather than the top of the screen. On the Mac, the menu bar is essentially infinite in size. You don't have to worry about overshooting it vertically. On Windows, the menu bar is only about 50 pixels high, meaning that every time you overshoot it, it's another 1/10th of a second in lost productivity.
I'll tell you one way its worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've never realy understood this. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On What Hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was able to find the full report as pdf linked from this page which also summarize the results:
http://pfeifferreport.com/trends/trend_vistauif.h
The document states that the tests were done on a Dual 2.8Ghz Dell Dimension workstation, and a 3.2GHz Dell XPS workstation, a dual 2Ghz iMac, and a GHz Mac Pro. No futher details on the hardware is given (RAM?), and while these four systems are listed the benchmarks provide only one set of numbers for each operating system.
Re:Vista-bashing is reaching ridiculous levels (Score:1, Insightful)
If this were a car review, and the reviewer said that its controls were sluggish and imprecise, you would not call that Chevy-bashing.
Think of how many copies of Windows are out there and how many people are clicking and typing.
Those milliseconds turn into lifetimes of lost productivity.
Speaking of "Eye Candy" GUIs (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a very slick looking desktop...won't be upgrading to Vista here
Re:On What Hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me just jump in here. I'm using OSX 10.3 so it's not the most recent release, but I'm also running it on a Dual G5 2.0GHz with 2 GB RAM, which is a pretty fast machine by any standard. OSX is an absolute dog compared to XP on a Core Duo 2.16GHz with 2 GB RAM. Granted, that is a slightly faster machine for most operations, but they are definitely in the same ballpark.
In addition, the XP system (which I am using to write this comment) is way loaded up with crap. I have about 12 icons in my little system tray, for example. The OSX machine is running, well, OSX. I don't have any additional cheese running to keep it going. But then, I don't use it as my desktop system. It is on my desk solely as a graphic arts workstation. I would have THAT software on the PC as well, except the former graphic artist was Mac-only (too afraid of technology to learn Windows) so I have the mac.
The Macintosh has provided me with little but frustration. The system locks up due to application errors more than XP does. I'm running mostly Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Photoshop has been pretty reliable, but the other two applications both manage to lock the machine up to the point where a cold boot is necessary on a semi-regular basis based on how much I am using the system.
Besides the lack of stability, there are also issues with inconsistency. I won't belabor this too much because I've gone over it frequently in the past, but there are no less than three visual styles used (Mail, iTunes, and everything else) and even menus are inconsistent. In some cases if you click a submenu in a context menu, it opens the submenu. In some cases you must hover to open it, because clicking will actually close the menu. What gives?
If you truly believe that OSX will make you more productive, then you are simply a fool, with one exception; if you want to use Apple's bundled applications. Unfortunately they are unintuitive as all hell. Apple is the only company that makes it harder to burn a DVD that just jumps in and plays than to make a DVD with animated menus. But if they do what you want, and you take the time to learn their many idiosyncrasies, it is definitely the cheapest way to get a production studio in a box.
Exposé vs Flip 3D (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't speak about the entire UI, but there has been one big disappointment in my limited experience with Vista.
Ever since Apple added Exposé to OS X, I've been dependent on it. It's amazing how useful it is and how much I rely on it every time I use a computer.
Every time I have to use an XP machine, I find myself trying to go to the corner to show all windows for an application, or for all applications, or to show the desktop.
For that reason, I was very excited when I first heard about Flip 3D - and I thought the 3D effect was a cool addition to already impressive feature.
Unfortunately, Flip 3D almost completely missed the point.
With Exposé, you can see every non-hidden open window at once. Even though they may be thumbnail sized, I can go through more than a hundred windows at a time at a glance. If I need more detail, I can just look at all of the windows for a specific application.
It's not perfect. There are a few small things I'd like to see fixed about it (like clustering related windows together and doing a better job at keeping a given window in the same region in the Exposé view). Still, it almost completely eliminates the need for multiple desktops and vastly improves my ability to find a specific window.
Flip 3D looks cool. It shrinks all the windows to a reasonable size and layers them in a stack. Unfortunately, layering them in a stack means that you can't see everything in a given window at a glance without bring the focus to it. As far as I know, you also can't look at all of the windows for a given application, rather than all of the windows.
It's just sad.
Somehow, Microsoft managed to copy and improve upon the least useful bits of Exposé while losing almost everything that actually makes Exposé useful.
Given that one gaffe, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the same philosophy permeates Aero through and through.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
An OS should be first and foremost both secure and fast. It should have a very small footprint and...
[...]
It should but does one modern OS have this?
OpenBSD [openbsd.org]
Windows 95 = Mac 88 (Score:4, Insightful)
WinVista is like MacOS on un-steroids (Score:4, Insightful)
At twice the price.
Look, I've owned every Microsoft OS since DOS (think it was 1.x, it was back when I used CP/M and dBase in the Army), but my WinXP laptop is the last "upgrade" I'm ever getting from them. It's either Linux/BSD or MacOS after this, most likely a nice Ubuntu Linux burn from the UW servers and I'll run Open Office (which is what I have on my WinXP laptop).
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
The long-running operations may seem to annoy you more, but they are unlikely to affect your personal productivity. You can do something else while you're waiting for them to finish.
The little things that occur while you are actively trying to get things done through the interface can distract you from what you are really doing. If you are concentrating on getting a piece of code just right, or shading that graphic just so a tiny delay in the user interface can take you right out of the zone. And that very definitely affects your productivity.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
I turned of menu fade in any system I'm on, be it Windows XP, BSD -w- KDE, whatever.
All of them display menus virtually instantly like that. Depending on which (KDE, Gnome, Windows), you start to notice slowdowns at various cuttoffs, KDE and Windows tend to slow down faster with decreased memory than CPU, Gnome with decreased CPU more than memory.
That being said, if Windows has a menu fading effect turned on and OS X does not, then there is a lot of bias right there. Also, if XP's fade is set to a shorter time, that's bias too.
Also, there's system information:
Did they compare systems with identical or close to identical hardware?
Did they compare systems with identical costs?
Ex:
Both systems had e6600 Core 2 Duo CPUs with 2GB of DDR2 800 and a 200GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0GB/s drive,
or
Both systems were $1800 from the leading manufacturer (say Apple and Dell for OS X and Vista/XP respectively)
I guess what I'm getting at is I'd really rather see the methods of the experiment rather than just the conclusions. It's not that I find it all that hard to believe (well, the mouse precision seems a little odd, I've never had an issue with the mouse selecting any pixel except that which I told it to click, even on precision stuff where actual pixel mattered - I can believe the menu performance potentially).
I didn't see an actual link to the report in the article, is it pay to read, or did I just miss it?
Re:I've never realy understood this. (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the things they mention in the article, for example, is "mouse precision". One of the nice things about MacOS is that the menu bar is always at the top of the screen, so you can be less precise about flinging your mouse up to the menu; you don't have to worry about overshooting. In Windows, even with a maximized app, you have the window title above the menus, so you have to be a bit more precise with your mouse movements. More precise mouse movements take more time, and that cuts into your productivity.
So even identical applications presented on the two different platforms can have different productivities.
From a Linux user's standpoint it's all the same; the OS is just the kernel and the rest of the user interface is up to the user's choice of window manager and the app designer's choice of widgets. There's upsides and downsides to that; more flexibility for the user vs. a common, uniform look that you only have to learn once.
Also remember that "productivity" depends on what you want to measure. I personally use mostly keyboard commands, and like the fact Windows menus can generally be operated without taking my hands off the keyboard, where MacOS is more secretive. There's also the fact that subjective effects can be more important than objective ones: if it feels faster to the user than that may be better for the overall experience, even if it is slower by a stopwatch. Good feedback, for example, can make slow operations seem faster; poor feedback can make an instantaneous one seem to take forever.
Re:This is quite measurable. (Score:4, Insightful)
On Windows, the menu is attached directly to the window for which it has meaning. On the mac, the menu bar is way away at the top of the display where I have to move the mouse further to get to it.
Most of the stylistic decisions between Windows and MacOS can trivially be argued either way.
I have some anti-mac ones for you though; unless you're using the classic theme, the lower-left (or upper-left, depending on taskbar position) corner is an active area of the start menu button. The upper-left corner of the menu bar is NOT an active location to click on the apple menu. The Start Menu's major components are always in the same locations; the recent programs list is always so many entries long, the list of programs to run is so many entries long, etc. The Dock resizes and warps around so that you cannot utilize muscle memory to click on dock items. Icons do not appear under anchored taskbars on Windows, but they DO appear beneath the dock. Windows will always leave my drive shortcuts in the same order on my desktop, and even in the same location if I don't use auto-arrange. On the mac, my "Macintosh HD" icon appears in a new location on my desktop on every boot.
Apple made many very poor interface decisions in OSX. OS9 was actually superior in most regards, but it wasn't as pretty. The Dock is gorgeous, so it is permitted to continue to suck.
Re:I've never realy understood this. (Score:1, Insightful)
Windows on the other hand, has pop-up "helper" ballons, a tray full of things that want to tell you every little thing going on. And now with Vista, UAC.
For example, one of my favourite programs at the moment is conky [sourceforge.net]. But I would never bombard the standard user with that kind of information (they don't want it, and it'd probably scare the hell out of them).
All and all, I'd sum it up by saying that people don't want their computers to get in the way of their work.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is quite measurable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, selecting the menu bar is easier on a Mac. That I can't argue at all. But selecting the individual menu items is still just as difficult, which you're doing at least once anyway - you gain, at most, 50% speed, assuming that selecting the menu bar is instant (which it isn't.) And if you're going through cascading menus, or searching menus for options, that gain decreases to zero very quickly.
Personally I very rarely use menus for anything - ctrl-s to save, ctrl-f to find, and once in a while I go and choose the "replace" option. But on Windows, the menu is part of the window and is less visually distracting when I change windows (since all the redrawing is localized to one square chunk), whereas on OSX I feel like part of the system interface is changing whenever I swap applications. It's more context that I have to keep track of.
Of course, some of that is doubtless just due to the fact that I'm used to Windows. But the whole "infinite size menu bar == good" thing seems like a bit of a red herring - how much does it honestly generally matter?
Hell, I just noticed for the first time that I forgot to turn menu fading off when I installed this OS a year ago. You can see how often I use menus.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense, but I see a lot more built-in bias in automatically discounting any article that says you can be productive on a Mac.
Anybody worth their salt will agree that the pretty widgets, animations, etc. on OS X are nothing but eye candy. But there are plenty of solid arguments for why OS X's interface still does a better job of facilitating productivity. Here are a few that come to mind. (Note that all of these points are orthogonal to cosmetic issues such as the particular bitmap that is used to draw a button.)
The standard Mac OS widgets offer a wider range of functionality than most equivalent Windows widgets. I find that I'm much more likely to feel the need to develop custom interface elements on Windows in order to get the behavior I need for exactly this reason. This leads to less consistency among applications, since different people tend to come up with different solutions to the same problem. Cocoa has done a much better job of cutting this off at the pass. A strong example is tables and tree views on Mac OS versus Windows.
OS X's interface doesn't condescend to the user as much or demand as much attention. There's also a much stronger culture of consistency for dialog messages. When using Windows, I spend a lot more time dismissing unnecessary dialogs and trying to figure out whether to click "yes" or "no" on a confusingly-worded confirmation dialog. (Like I said, this is largely cultural, but I put a lot of blame on Microsoft for this since they set an exceedingly bad example in their own OS - it's not uncommon for me to have to read a warning from the OS itself two or three times to figure out exactly what Windows is trying to say.)
OS X's interface is much more stable. For example, the sidebar in the Finder is static. The sidebar in the Explorer is constantly rearranging itself, adding and deleting items, etc. based on what folder or whatever-the-hell it is (control panel, network places) I'm looking at. It even changes when I select items. This leads to a lot of time spent scratching one's head trying to figure out, say, where the "Create New Folder" sidebar item went, or wondering why the Desktop link went away.
I have now banned Windows articles from my page (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to hear about how Vista is going to eat my children or destroy the Internet. I don't care whether some study indicates that it's "slower" than XP. I don't care that [H]ardOCP made a big deal out of the fact that Direct3D apps run 2-5% slower.
Vista is the OS that I use on my desktop and notebook. It's an OS that I have been using (in beta form) for over three years now. It doesn't stop me from playing XVID movies, my ripped MP3s, or my various-region DVDs. All of my software, with one exception (PDFCreator) runs just fine. It doesn't use up huge amounts of CPU time or gobble down my memory (I do have 1GB in my desktop, but I bet that most of you do as well).
You don't like it? Don't use it. There are legitimate beefs that you can have with Vista. But, please, don't post an article for every blowhard blogger who wants to spread some FUD about Vista.
I don't care. I have never blocked a specific topic on Slashdot before, but this is just getting old. If you feel like posting some real news about Windows, maybe I'll read it.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:2, Insightful)
The Vista FUD is rather amazing. I use Macs, XP and Vista desktops on a daily basis. There isn't much about the Mac desktop I like more than the Windows desktops: XP or Vista. There are other features of the Mac that are very nice, but the window manager isn't one of them. I've always disliked the app-centric menu bar on the Mac, I much prefer the menus to be associated with the app window, the way most *nix window managers and Windows do it. Aero does appear to be heavily influenced by the look of the Mac desktop, but that is all cosmetics.
So far the Vista functionality is certainly an improvement over XP in small ways, with the exception of the UAC, which is a meaningful improvement. Sidebar is a nice feature improvement as well. Given all of the Vista bashing going on, I'm wondering if those who criticize Vista so much are running the risk of discrediting themselves once more people start to use it.
Intuitive interface ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes time. And like other people have stated, I don't know that efficiency was necessarily the goal anyway.
Apple claims that OS X / Aqua is super easy to use, but I think more important to them and their users is that it looks pretty. People probably aren't going to take the time to learn an interface if they don't enjoy looking at it in the first place.
Re:Vista-bashing is reaching ridiculous levels (Score:2, Insightful)
Ultimately your average office worker won't be using the defrag or backup but if it makes them less efficient at using their computer, this is an important factor that needs to be considered.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
There so much insight in that statement that you deserve more than mod points. If I was nearby, I'd give you a shiny 5 dollar bill.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
Like posting to Slashdot?
Re:On What Hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
I admit that iTunes stands out like a sore thumb, but otherwise there is Chrome and then regular Cocoa. That's it. I don't see what you're talking about. It is Windows that is full of every conceivable visual style known to man. I can't tell you how many Windows apps I've used that insist on trying to stand out from the crowd by adopting some silly style and overriding default widget styles.
Wow, maybe it is because I'm coming from primarily a Linux background, but I've found OS X to be nothing but consistent. I mean, that is really its biggest strength for most users. Well, simplicity and consistency. Windows is, by comparison, totally screwed up. From the ground up. I mean, just look at the filesystem layout or the registry. It is like applications compete for the number of unique places that they can toss files during installation... such that cleaning up after them requires specialized tools if for some reason the "uninstall" doesn't work. The vast majority of OS X apps that I use simply drop a bundle in
Almost everyone I've talked to that has "switched" to OS X ahs found it nothing but intuitive.. ESPECIALLY the built-in Apple apps. Well, except for the Windows "power users" who are simply too entrenched in Windows Voodoo to recognized simplicity and elegance when they see it.
-matthew
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't? Everything you just described - ssh, cvs, bash, the "bsd heritage", hell, even Skype, would not exist without generations of open hardware before it. Well, some of it might, on workstations that cost ten grand.
Re:Aero != productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, no.
br> Mechanical aspects are just that - strictly mechanical. An 800dpi mouse with a crummy interface is better than a 300dpi mouse and a good interface and has nothing to do with strict user ability. This testing wasn't about ease of targeting based on mouse mechanics - it was about humans and how they make decisions. What is meant is how long you hunt around with the mouse trying to determine the next event that will serve your interests as defined by the current state of the OS, assuming the OS has accurately understood and reacted to you.
As you work with a new OS, you begin to establish a defined set of basic expectations. These are simultaneously calibrated against how reliable they appear to be to you, the wet ware. At some point, you have been trained by the system enough to move from experimentation and doubt as to what will or won't happen next, to Pavlovian reactions which are subsequently modified only as needed.
The original Mac OS was determined, by the US Govt., to take an average of 17 hours of initial use by an operator before they could be labeled trained and basically productive. In contrast, the Windows OS of that time required no less than 7 days before a hapless user was considered an asset.
Want to test yourself and your present OS? Close your eyes, or change the menus to another language and see if you can still hit the right button with the mouse as you operate the system, opening and saving files, etc. Nothing about shear mechanical accuracy or latency involved. It is just you and how well you know and trust the OS, reflecting how well the system was able to train you back when the two of you first met.
Re:On What Hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
One would hope things like this would get better with time not worse. Obviously a vain hope.
Re:On What Hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
Same with people who make broad generalizations based off of one example.
I have the same mac machine you do, and it absolutly screams for everything I use it for (It's my vid production box as well as my daily "Stuff" computer)
PS once you upgrade to 10.4 it goes even faster.
You also forgot to mention the new intel based macs....
Chill out man... maybe it's all the frustration from too much window(s) gui
Re:Just in from bash.org (Score:1, Insightful)
Never understood why (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't I like it when a menu "slides" open? It's because I often already know what I want from the menu, and I will subconsciously start to move the mouse roughly in the direction where the item I want will be, while my eyes gather more information to position the mouse exactly over the correct item. If a menu "slides in" or "fades in" or whatever, the feedback I get to position the mouse correctly is delayed (fade in), or even wrong (when sliding in as the item is still moving).
Position is often the thing people remember the best. I don't need to know what most application icons look like, but I do know that a specific program or file icon is somewhere on the top left, or somewhere left halfway down the screen. Windows on my taskbar are exactly the same, I know roughtly where I left the window -- that's why I completely hate stacking of similar windows. I often have multiple browser windows open (even when using Firefox) and I know the "slashdot" window is somewhere on the left or whatever... stacking 5 other windows on that button and then forcing me to read the title to get the correct window is ludicrous -- especially because if I click wrong, I need to repeat the process again (and if I'm lucky the "stacked" order hasn't changed). If I click wrong with all the tasks simply unstacked, I go back with the mouse to the same area, click the wrong one again (so it minimizes) then shift slightly and click the right one. Stacking of similar items makes all of that harder... the sole benefit it has is that I can read (a very small part of) the title on the button (something I never do since I locate the window by knowing where I left it) yet obscures many other titles because they're stacked.
Not all effects are necessarily bad from a usability standpoint. Showing where a minimized window is going might actually be good (if subtle and fast enough). I usually find however that just turning off all animations/slides/fades/transparancy/you-name-it is a far saner default to start from. I even turn off gif animations in my browser... once you get used to the nice static pages without anything flashing or animating 50 times per second you'll really wonder how you could stand all that crap on web pages before...
Re:Just in from bash.org (Score:2, Insightful)
Powershell makes a leap towards better CLI by introducing the concept of "everything is an object" rather than the unix "everything is a file" approach. Piping objects instead of files is ingenious, and seems so natural and obvious you must wonder why it took so much time for it to form. Maybe the infamous unix zealot culture is to blame?
Anyway, Powershell makes cmd irrelevant, as is the above cmd/bash comparison.
In the interest of balance... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bruce Tognazzini [asktog.com] has long taken Microsoft to task for their methodology. Tog, who used to work for Apple, believed in using real, objective metrics -- video of users, using stopwatches to measure time intervals, etc. Microsoft relies more heavily on questionnaires and other subjective criteria. In other words, to contrast the two approaches, Apple's approach is that the stopwatch never lies; Microsoft's approach emphasizes what users think makes them fast or more productive, rather than what actually makes the users faster or more productive.
But really, this all boils down to the logical fallacy of assuming that just because a corporation spends a lot of money on something, they spent their money well (instead of, say, spending the money as a smoke-screen to appear that they've done their homework).
The points about menu speed and mouse precision are actually valid ones, though the article probably doesn't explain these issues as well as it should. The mouse precision issue isn't so much a product of the mouse's resolution, but rather, the way in which Microsoft handles things like cascading/hierarchical menus, icon hit zones, and the like. Tog wrote an excellent article about Fitts' Law [asktog.com] which gets mentioned every so often, and it's still a good article which really reams Microsoft on a number of points. Pay attention to Question 6 and its answer, for example; this directly bears on menu performance and indirectly on how the mouse is used by typical users.
For those too lazy to follow the link...
To be fair, Tog also takes Apple to task, especially since Apple broke some of its own UI guidelines in OS X.
All that said, my personal experience with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the Vista previews I've seen seems to indicate a general negative trend with UI responsiveness. Menu rendering lag is especially bad in XP, though I will concede that some of the problem may be due to the insane system load imposed by my (corporate mandated) anti-virus software.
Of course, since you're a MS partisan, you'll deny everything I've just said, but I figured I'd inject something here just to try and add a little balance.
Closing note: Since TFA is lean on details, I actually followed the link in TFA to the source material [pfeifferreport.com] only to find out that it's strictly for-pay. (You can download a PDF of the table of contents for free, but that's not very useful.) So I can understand why you'd find the article to be "a very subjective review with no hard facts." It's not even that -- it's an executive summary of someone else's work. I'm simply not willing to fork over the money to read someone else's analysis.