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.'"
So, it's different ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So, it's different ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, it's hard to say exactly... but so far it hasn't managed to piss me off completely, and OSX accomplished that 5 years ago.
For now the winner is Windows 7... but to be fair, it's still vaporware and has plenty of time to piss me off even more once it hits reality.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Windows user, I found this article very informative. Every time I have used OSX in the past, I have been frustrated with the application/window behavior. Understanding the motivation behind the way the operating system UIs work will probably go a long way to reducing my frustration in the future.
My wishlist for the taskbar (Score:2, Interesting)
For as long as I remember now, I've wanted a way to do the following with the Windows Taskbar:
1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open
2. Send windows to background taskbars (desktops), so I could be using different sets of apps at once
Hopefully they could add some minor usability features like this; I feel like I'm regularly working against the taskbar to get things done.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that, didn't work for me.
I still use my macbook occassionally and I still hate their separation between window and application switching.
In general, when I "ALT-TAB" (or "CMD-TAB" fwiw) then I want to quickly browse through all windows that are available to me. The UI is invited to provide a smart ordering for me (i.e. show other windows of the current application first) but the mental effort of distinguishing between a "window switch" and an "app switch" never worked for me.
But frankly OSX as a whole just isn't for me - even though I really wanted to like it and literally worked for 2 months straight only on my MacBook in an attempt to learn it. The semantics of the dock are still counter-intuitive to me and showstoppers like mandatory click-to-raise or the absurd "magic titlebar" ultimately made me go back to my linux desktop.
Re:It is similar... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem I can see is if Microsoft copies it too well, that Apple's lawyers would be on them like ugly on a bulldog.
Wasn't the whole "look and feel" thing decided in Microsoft's favor, back in the 90's?
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called "Windows 1.0." Look into it.
I did for you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/e7/WindowsLiveWriter/HappyAnniversaryWindowsontheEvolutionoft_1365F/clip_image002_2.jpg [msdn.com]
See that at the bottom? 1985 called, they want their dock back. (Nextstep "innovated" that in 1989, four years later!)
Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was using a dock in WindowMaker before I saw OS X -- WindowMaker was, of course, "inspired" by the same source in NextStep.
The difference is, the dock is not only about running applications, it's meant to just be about applications. So, if I want to go to the Web, I click Firefox (or Safari), and if it's open, I get a window of it. If it's not open, it opens, and I get a window of it. I no longer have to think about whether stuff is open or not.
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
But I digress...
It's not just grouping windows. After all, you can still minimize a window on OS X, and it will become its own Dock icon. And you can put other things on the Dock.
No, it's all about mirroring the way users actually think, which is "I want to go to iTunes", and then "I want to go to Word", not "I want to launch iTunes" or "I want to find the running iTunes window" or "I want to close iTunes, then open Word". They want to go to iTunes until they want to go to something else.
Once they're in Word, then they can think about which document they want to open or find -- but an intelligent application could even hide that. Autosave with a near-infinite, persistent undo stack, and frequent backups, is much better, I think, than save/revert.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
You're not weird--some of the original MacOS Human Interface Guide (HIG) designers agree with you (e.g. http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html [asktog.com] -- many of your criticisms mirror his).
When I got my first Apple laptop (10.3 powerbook) it took me awhile to get used to OSX. Probably because I was used to FreeBSD/Linux desktops, I adjusted fairly fast, and almost always have a Terminal window open. I remember a lot of frustration initially though, when I couldn't do things the windows way.
Stacks (introduced in 10.5) were one of those things I didn't like at first, but now LOVE for my Downloads folder only. Making the screen corners hook to Expose were another thing that took some getting used to, but I now seriously miss when I'm using Windows/etc.
I would say that OSX and vista re equally STABLE rather than unstable...though to be fair, I haven't had stability problems with windows since Win95/98/ME...
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Interesting)
hrmmm... the Ars article gave me the impression that one of the benefits of OS X (and shortcomings of Windows' MDI model) is that you can overlap "documents" from different applications. so, for instance, i should be able to easily drag-and-drop a vector shape from an Adobe Illustrator document into an already open Photoshop document. likewise, i should be able to have multiple Word documents, Firefox windows, and Photoshop documents all on my desktop at the same time (and in any layer order i want). are you saying that this isn't correct, that in OS X i would only be able to view the workspace of a single application at any given time? if so, then i don't see much of an advantage to having windows represent documents.
part of what i don't like about windows representing applications is that there's no easy way to drag-and-drop objects/text from one application to another. so if i have multiple programs running with multiple documents open in each, i have to switch applications, switch documents, copy the object/text, switch applications again, and then paste into the correct document.
it's even more frustrating with Adobe CS3 as all the applications are basically transparent MDI windows like you describe. so i'll have an Illustrator document open with a Photoshop document visible in the background. yet i won't be able to drag-and-drop objects from the Illustrator document to the Photoshop document like i would be between 2 Illustrator documents or 2 Photoshop documents.
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two basic options for people here, as it pertains to the astroturfing claim:
1. People use Windows, or
2. People use something else.
Obviously #2 can be expanded into a zillion other different options, but #1 is the important one to break out. If somebody already uses your product, you don't need to preach to them about how great your product is. It's the people in #2 that you have potential to change. That brings it back to the grandparent's point: the people here who don't use Windows aren't likely to change their mind about it as the result of some random commenter. Most of them have very specific qualms about Windows (or Microsoft) that drive their decision not to use it, and most of those people also have equally strong like for whatever OS they do use.
In that sense I have to agree with him. This seems like a really bad place to astroturf.
Re:The real difference is that (Score:2, Interesting)
every Mac application is an MDI application, only the outer "application" window is always maximized and always transparent, with its menu always at the top of the screen.
Thats actually not true. The file menu at the top of the screen is all handled by the SystemUIServer daemon. It's not that the application opens a full screen window and makes it transparent.
My understanding is that the Mac OS UI has (more or less) 3 basic parts: loginwindow (sorta like x server), SystemUIServer, and Dock. Each of these are a separate daemon process.
The application then uses APIs to populate the menu items that SystemUIServer handles.
Those three elements are essentially what make up the Mac OS UI from what I understand.
Re:My wishlist for the taskbar (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he means, as basic functionality of the OS. i.e. without having to download any sketchy third-party apps.
One thing is sorta ok, but if you have to download a special app for every one of your UI niggles, you end up wasting far more resources than ordinary feature bloat wastes. I know because I've tried it.
It's much better to just try and figure out the "windows way" or the "mac way" or the "x way" for your taskload; the taskflow their developers envisioned for your use case, with as few personal modifications as possible.
Plus, using stock OS features means you won't be all used to a specialized way of doing things when you have to use other computers.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:2, Interesting)
Might I recommend Gnome-Do, with its new Docky theme? I wouldn't say its entirely there yet, but I think the same way and it's definitely the closest to "right" for me
Re:"Superbar"? Who wants to kill marketroids? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:3, Interesting)
Using a virtual desktop manager (like VirtuaWin, which I adore) has made my computing life much more enjoyable. At work I have dual monitors, but effectively have ~6. It lets me context-switch without needing to re-hunt through all the closed stuff.
Old hat to any Linux user, of course, but ... if you've never used one, I highly recommend it. {Win}+Number key combos are the bees' knees.
Re:"I want to go to iTunes" (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing is with Adobe Reader, it is just that ... a reader.
It's infinitely more likely that you will only ever use that application to read an existing PDF, because let's face it, it's not as if you can actually use that application to make a "new" document. So double clicking on the document rather than opening the PDF Viewer and choosing "open..." will always be more intuitive.
Office tried to do something "document-orientated" by integrating "make a new ...." into the context menus, but it doesn't really work for me. It simply makes a blank placeholder file on the system, and then you still have to double click to open it in the correct application. 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.
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
In Android, whether an application is running or not is managed by the OS. If there is enough memory, applications are left running; if the system is short on memory, applications are automatically shut down. An application must be able to save and restore its state to disk, so even an application that is in use can be kicked out under memory pressure and restarted when the user switches back to it, without losing state.