Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All 545
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.'"
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:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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).
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:The real difference is that (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Astroturfing (Score:2, Informative)
Nor do I, and I am certainly not going to audit every post to find out. I've got getter things to do.
But in this case it is hardly the point; the article referenced by the OP is actually reasonably balanced, and certainly doesn't qualify as a shill or an attempt to astroturf.
Re:Windows VII ? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Windows VII ? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:2, Informative)
One, they both ripped off Xerox PARC's Alto. Two, Apple genuinely does it BETTER most of the time. It's not just a desperate attempt to win back users with a poor blatant clone that's just different enough to not get sued.
My memory may be a bit rusty, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Haven't "docks" been in use since BEFORE Microsoft introduced theirs with Windows 98?
Cases in point, NeXT OS, and IBM's OS/2 4 Warp, both used docks (a dock launch bar in NeXT's case, and a task bar launch bar in the case of OS/2. The Mac OS only picked this up as an official feature with OSX, while before that, you had to run a 3rd party app to simulate NeXT OS' docks (at least back in 1992 with System 7 on).
If one was to claim copying was made, then didn't Apple swipe their docks from NeXT OS (yeah, that was also Jobs' baby), and for that matter, didn't Microsoft in fact swipe their quick launch bar from OS/2 4 Warp?
And before any Mac fans mod this down in an effort to try and rewrite history, remember that the original Mac interface itself was swiped from Xerox PARC. They admitted to it themselves, and after introducing it to the mainstream, the idea of moving an arrow back and forth between graphical icons pretty much became the defacto standard.
It's that, or spend the rest of your life using CLI for *everything*.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:3, Informative)
You were: I worked for a company that produced one of the first commercial browsers for Windows, and which predated anything commercial for Macintosh AFAIK:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17043026.html [highbeam.com]
http://skypejournal.com/blog/2005/12/skype_status_report_part_3_by.html [skypejournal.com]
It was built on a license for Spyglass' Mosaic, just as was Internet Explorer, but preceded even that to market; it may have even beat Netscape to market, I can't recall for sure. Note that Quarterdeck's browser also had "tabbed browsing". I don't think the Macs got a commercial browser until later.
Quarterdeck also had the Sidebar product, a paradigm which has often been copied in the decade and a half since.
Re:Windows in more environmentally friendly than M (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft copied the recycle icon from NeXTstep which of course became Mac OS X.
http://www.andrewnotarian.com/blog/images/win95nextStep.gif [andrewnotarian.com]
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Xerox Star had a dock for applications, printers. tools, and so on.
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.
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]
Re:The real difference is that (Score:3, Informative)
Unless you've plugged in your Vista Business Keyboard becaue the apple supplied one was crap. Than it's 'alt.'
Unless you've reconfigured your keyboard in OSX, it should be WLK, not alt. OSX maps WLK to Cmd. Alt gets mapped to Alt/Option, and Ctrl gets mapped to Ctrl. Although this rearranges the positions a bit, it makes it easier to remember that Alt=Alt and Ctrl=Ctrl.
Re:The real difference is that (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Disappointing (Score:2, Informative)
Hence I use Witch - it gives me a choice between window switching, or application switching. I set alt+tab as window switching and cmd+tab (default OS function) as application switching. Works lovely.
http://www.manytricks.com/witch/ [manytricks.com]
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:2, Informative)
This post smells like flame-bait but I'll bite anyway:
The way Windows works might be *ingrained* in your skull but Windows before 95 didn't have a task bar so you wouldn't have learned it from before then. Even so, there have been a total of maybe 10 updates that required reboot since Leopard came out and I don't see what's so annoying about them, they all come in at the same time and require 1 reboot. I recently updated a Windows machine, first I had to update a set of packages, reboot, upgrade to latest service pack, reboot, update another set of packages, reboot (why can't they do it all at the same time).
So after 1 year you went to Vista (a system you couldn't have possibly tested out before since it wasn't out yet) and you call it just as unstable? Unless there was a problem with the machine hardware I have never seen a BSD system act up. Length of time to start up: it takes 10-15s to start up my PowerPC G5, Mac's simply don't hibernate unless you run your battery empty (which you wouldn't have on a desktop and laptops run empty batteries in sleep mode after ~7 days) and any Mac I've ever seen wakes up in about a second from sleep again, unless something was seriously wrong with your hardware.
The dock is there for the same reason as the start bar. It gives you quick access to programs, Windows is Start -> Programs -> Vendor -> Program [click], Mac is Dock -> Program [click] and if you can't read it or you have an awful mouse there is the magnification feature. As far as open documents go, click F9 (or the button for the window sorting thing) or F10 to show all the windows for the current program or F11 to clean it up to your desktop or click and hold the icon of the program on the Dock similar to how Windows groups applications and then allows you to select the window by document (although Microsoft's programs seems to deviate from all pre-defined standards even on their own platform). You can also use Alt-Tab. All these and more can be found on the Apple websites, Mac OS X for Dummies, (10, 100, 1000) tips for Mac or by reading the booklet that came with the computer or by asking anyone that has used Mac's for more than a week.
As far as organizing: I don't really want a set of documents on the bottom of my screen nor on my desktop. You can't really see anything in a huge set of documents no matter where they are organized and Windows' task bar is imho less space efficient than a single icon but you can effectively have to start up or switch between 20 programs that run. Stacks is great IF you keep your documents somewhat organized or alphabetical, I rather use it for sets of Programs (like OpenOffice, just drag it's folder in the Dock) I use Spotlight (and it has also a lot of shortcuts) to find my documents.
Re:Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
Quicksilver [blacktree.com].
Re:Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
I couldn't disagree more strongly.
As a heavily keyboard-centric user, I find using OS X from the keyboard much easier than using Windows from the keyboard.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose search, or navigate a lot.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
In Windows Explorer, if I want to rename a file from the keyboard, I'd hit F2, rename the file, and hit enter. F2 holds no significance for me.
If I want to delete a file on the Mac, I hit apple delete. We could argue about whether this is better than Windows' deleting files by just hitting delete, but to empty the trash on a Mac, I hit apple shift delete. I don't know of a keyboard shortcut on Windows to empty the Recycle Bin.
If I want to create a new window on OS X, I hit apple n. Because that combination is already taken, if I want to create a new folder in OS X, the shortcut is apple shift n. I know of no keyboard shortcut on Windows to create a new folder in Windows Explorer.
If I want to open the preferences for any(all but a few very early) Mac OS X application, I hit apple ,.
I don't think most Windows programs have any keyboard shortcut available to quickly access preferences/options/whatevertheparticularWindowsprogramauthorwantstocallit.
If I want to quit a program in OS X, I hit apple q. If I want to close a window in OS X, I hit apple w. How is Windows' alt f4 more intuitive?
If I want to hide all documents from a particular application in OS X, I hit apple h. And since to do the opposite in OS X is typically the shortcut plus shift, if I want to show *only* documents from the front application, I hit apple shift h.
Then there are the features for which Apple has keyboard shortcuts where Windows doesn't even have the feature. This would include Exposé, where f9, f10, and f11 can display "all open windows", "windows for the front application", or "hide everything and show the desktop", respectively. Or apple ` to switch between only windows of the front application.
And OS X has individual keyboard shortcuts to bring up the equivalent to Windows' Process Viewer, Log out, et cetera. OS X's keyboard shortcuts can even be changed, for every application at once if you like, from the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse panel in System Preferences.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:2, Informative)
As Anpheus said above:
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!)
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1101639&cid=26569921 [slashdot.org]
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.
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:3, Informative)
What you've just described is why graphic design people, video people, music, etc etc tend to prefer Mac's - the windowing system lets you focus on the task, not the application. Subtle difference, but important enough to workflow for those people who don't just do "Outlook" or "Excel' all day long.
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
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, both of you hit two heads of the same nail.
The cleanest model for applications running is that you open documents for them, and you close documents for them. Everything else is OS overhead (e.g. is it running?)
BUT, some apps aren't doc-centric. iTunes shares your music when it's open, and the window is the app -- closed = gone, open = running. There's some opportunistic fuzziness with multiple playlist/store windows open, but it's really more of a desktop accessory than a normal file-editing program.
Question is, is it a problem? Application startup/shutdown for doc-editing apps usually isn't a problem until you want to free up some resources. iTunes runs or it doesn't run, usually not a problem unless you forgot it was open on another virtual desktop.
Re:Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that is correct: I press command + ` to move from window to window in the same program; and command + tab to move from an application to another.
And again, the Mac way is the best. Using your example: I have two web browser windows open, and a word editor. Now, I am reading one of the browser windows, and want to read the other. I just press two keys and I'm there - no chance to move to a different program unless I want to.
But just two programs? Let's make the example more realistic. You may be running a number of programs at once: text editor, graphics editor, audio editor, web browser, instant messenger, torrent client, whatever. Each program may have several windows. What to do... wade through a list with perhaps dozens of windows? The Mac way enforces a logical hierarchy: first the programs, then the documents that belong to each program. You want a "flat" system, that just gives you all every document at once. For me, that's a pain. I mean, when I use XP, I always change the taskbar to two rows, because one is just not enough.
Re:Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose search, or navigate a lot.
WinKey-F. On Vista, it's actually much faster to just hit the WinKey itself, then type - your text automatically goes into the search box.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best of my knowledge, this paradigm is not used anywhere else in the known world. All the way back to the days of console-based file managers, Enter has meant "use this" not "rename this" and furthermore, Enter (with a selected item) is usually the same as double-clicking that item. Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
If I want to delete a file on the Mac, I hit apple delete. We could argue about whether this is better than Windows' deleting files by just hitting delete, but to empty the trash on a Mac, I hit apple shift delete. I don't know of a keyboard shortcut on Windows to empty the Recycle Bin.
I don't know of any such shortcut for the Bin either, but then I've never needed one. Shift-Delete deletes an item permanently, which makes emptying the Recycle Bin such a rare need that I honestly don't care. Out of curiosity, what does just hitting "Delete" do on OS X?
Then there are the features for which Apple has keyboard shortcuts where Windows doesn't even have the feature. This would include ExposÃf©, where f9, f10, and f11 can display "all open windows", "windows for the front application", or "hide everything and show the desktop", respectively. Or apple ` to switch between only windows of the front application.
Expose is great if you like to use the mouse, but I find Alt-Tab both quicker and simpler, and the thumbnails that are shown in Vista are fully sufficient for identifying the window I want if it's not the most recent one used. It doesn't have the distinction to show only windows from a given process, but it orders windows in the order last used, which more than compensates for this, I feel. Also, Windows has two ways of hiding all open windows: WinKey-D (Show Desktop, a toggled mode) and WinKey-M (Minimize All).
Additionally, it's easy to access the menu, and any option under it, from the keyboard. For example, Alt-T-O (in sequence, not chorded) will open the options display for the vast majority of Windows desktop applications. Similarly, between the Start menu (especially with Vista's search, but even without it) and WinKey-R for Run, it's easy to run any installed program from the keyboard alone. Finally, it's possible to bind any application or app shortcut to a globally-recognized key chord using the Properties page (Alt-Enter).
While some of the difference is clearly just a matter of UI paradigm, Windows is an OS where it has always been possible to do literally everything with the keyboard (admittedly not always simple - emptying the recycle bin without the mouse appears non-trivial, though still easy if you're used to keyboard navigation). If some of the specific key combos are less intuitive than they might be (Alt-F4 is a fair example) I submit that's simply because there are so very many in use.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:3, Informative)
microsoft wasn't allowed to, thanks to an apple lawsuit.
Re:The real difference is that (Score:3, Informative)
Are we still talking about Windows? I don't have Photoshop installed here, but I do have both InDesign and Illustrator, and I can drag and drop any object (path, bitmap, text or even a graph) from a document in Illustrator into a document in InDesign and vice versa. It works exactly as you describe for dragging objects within an application, and is functionally identical to copy/paste.
I can even drag any object into MS Paint which accepts the drop, but of course can't interpret the content. What does work though is dragging text from Word into InDesign, the text just appears on the workspace. So in conclusion, the app just needs to handle drag and drop to accept it, and then understand the format the data is in.
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.
Re:The real difference is that (Score:3, Informative)
You know the Office 2007 (and other apps using that interface) ribbon can be minimized, right? Double-click on the currently active ribbon tab. Single-click on a tab to have the ribbon temporarily appear until a button is pressed or you click elsewhere (like pressing Alt to access the menu bar) or double-click to restore the ribbon permanently. When minimized (the way I usually have it) it's actually thinner than the the collection of toolbars I would have on Office 2003.
You would have loved OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
If they'd done that properly, i.e. create the blank file, AND auto-opened the application, so you can just work right away, I think it would be a great improvement.
Which is almost what OS/2 did. You could have so called templates - when you double clicked them a new document based on the template would open. When you dragged and dropped them a new document would be created at the destination. A bit like the "New Printer" icon on windows.
Need you own Template. Easy: prepare a document with the desired content and then mark it as template. The mark would be added to the extended attributes of the document - no special extension needed - works with any application as the whole mechanism was provided by the Workplace Shell.
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
I don't know about that. If an app is running, its icon will be in the doc and it will have blue dot under it.
If you CMD+Tab you will get a list of all apps running as well.
UNIX processes and daemons will not be there of course, but that's why you have terminal and ps (or even activity monitor).
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:3, Informative)
This ArsTechnica article is kind of dumb (Score:3, Informative)
The starting premise is that, even though everyone thinks Windows 7's taskbar is cloning the Dock, it's not. It then goes on for several pages explaining the history of Windows' document management. ...and that's it. Somehow, explaining the history of the taskbar for several pages is supposed to be enough to convince you that the Windows 7 taskbar is not a clone of the Dock, even though it tries to behave the same way as the Dock.
Seriously, there's no real explanation of any differences between the Windows 7 taskbar and the Dock. You're just supposed to accept that they're not the same because of the history of the Windows taskbar that was given over the last several pages.
I don't get it.