Microsoft Responds To "Like OS X" Comment 505
Z80xxc! writes "After a comment by a Microsoft employee claiming in an interview that 'what we [Microsoft] have tried to do with Windows 7... is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics,' the Windows 7 team has issued an official rebuttal, saying that the comment came from an employee who was 'not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7,' and that it was 'inaccurate and uninformed.'"
Re:If this is true... (Score:3, Informative)
Then they did a terrible job copying OSX. Windows 7 is still clunky, slow, and unstable. It's nothing like OSX at all.
I threw Win7 onto my MacBook Pro via BootCamp for work reasons and it's running fine. Heck, I even managed to get the 64-bit version running on it without any issues.
I've had no crashes and it feels a little speedier than Vista. So far it's looking like it's not a bad release.
Now I don't get the OSX and Win7 comparison, they don't look that much alike.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:4, Informative)
One of the problems OS X has is that it lacks the ability to use these menus through the keyboard easily
Remembering the shortcuts on Macs is usually easier because they are consistent (ignoring the three different ways I have of making Apple's video-playing apps run full screen, and the fourth way that VLC uses). On Windows, an entire key on the keyboard is reserved for going to the menu bar. This is something that most users don't do - they either click on the menu with the mouse or hit shortcuts directly - and so on OS X is a chord. By default, it's control-F2, but it's configurable in System Preferences, so if you want it to be something easier to hit then you can change it.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:3, Informative)
This is Control-F2 on OS X. This selects the menu and allows to browse it with the cursor keys.
Alt+character has always been the way to type various special characters and ligatures on the Mac. Wasting this for another way to access menu entries instead was never an option for an OS that grew up with DTP.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:4, Informative)
System Prefs > Mouse & Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts*.
A quick look tells me that CTRL-F2 puts focus on the menubar, CTRL-F3 places focus on the Dock, etc etc. OSX has had this since (someone correct if i'm wrong) since at least 10.2 .
So, that's about enough of this "can't navigate in OSX without the mouse" propaganda. [/wishful thinking]
* Apologies if the wording isn't exact as i'm translating from the italian.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:3, Informative)
Which is slower, as I mentioned in a reply to another poster who brought this up.
Might not be important to some people, but to me, it's a feature I miss in Mac OS X land.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:1, Informative)
In Windows (most anyhow, and most linux apps too), the underlines appear when I hold down alt (I used italics to demonstrate where this will be). I can then go Alt + T + U + R and then use arrow buttons to get too Some Option.
How do you do this in Mac OS X?
Control-F2 to give the menu bar keyboard focus, then use the arrow buttons or first letters of the menu items. Check out the Keyboard pane in the system preferences for other keyboard navigation options. (I found this in less than three minutes, by the way; it's amazing what one can figure out, when one is more interested in learning than complaining.)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:4, Informative)
Definitely sounds like person who has only used a Mac on occasion. I used to think like you about it until I actually used a Mac for a while. Actually I find OS X and most OS X applications to be more keyboard-friendly than Windows. Every single command you use frequently has or can be assigned a command-something combination (or control-something). So things like open, close, print, save are always assigned the same command key sequence across all apps. That's a time saver right there. Why alt-f-s when command-s will do? While most Windows users will actually click on file->save to save their document, very few Mac users I've seen bother with clicking on the menus for most common tasks; it's all done with the keyboard.
As was said earlier in the discussion, OS X and Windows come from very different philosophies. You speak of how you want to explore the menu. On OS X that's absolutely wrong. If you have to explore the menu to find something, then someone screwed up. Deep, nested menus are considered bad on OS X. Besides, alt-something-something-something reminds me of emacs!
There are many inconsistencies in OS X that are legitimate grievances. But not being able to alt-something-something-something the menu doesn't appear to me to be that important. I'm far more frustrated on a daily basis by how OS X eats the click that focuses a window (now I use command-tab and command-` to focus windows anyway without the mouse), that you have enable keyboard navigation in dialog boxes as it's off by default, and that carbon and cocoa apps behave so differently.
Both systems have their inconsistencies, and both are getting better in this regard. And from what I can tell from using Windows 7, Windows is getting more usable and mac-like all the time.
Re:So? (Score:1, Informative)
So a Microsoft employee says something out the top of his head. In a normal discussion between me and you, this would be just an opinion, something along the lines of "I think that...". But change the speaker and all of a sudden it's along the lines of "BIG SECRET REVEALED!!!1111" kind of thing. Even worse, for most people it becomes one with the company's official PoV and this simple statement grows so much that the company must spit out a rebuttal via an official channel/spokesman.
We are living in a twisted, perverted world, where one can't express an opinion without being beheaded by both the press and the company he's working for. God help us all! :)
It wasn't a conversation between you and me, it was a comment made to the press. Comments made to the press are taken to be official, which is why there are typically spokespersons specifically designated to speak to the press.
Re:If only.... (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... Windows Vista and onwards is more secure out of the box. I mean, Mac OS X hasn't even really implemented ASLR yet. That Mac OS X is more secure is a common misconception.
Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hack-windows-security-snow-leopard,8704.html [tomshardware.com]
Charlier Miller [wikipedia.org] covers why he thinks Windows is more secure than Mac OS X.
Re:Quick, name one technology... (Score:3, Informative)
Firewire.
Apple Desktop Bus (which was copied and improved a bit by Intel, and named USB).
There's two.
~Philly
Re:Save face? (Score:3, Informative)
Except Apple's look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft has already been thrown out. About 20 years ago. So Microsoft can copy "look and feel" all they want, they have the legal precedents to do so.
Uhhh... no. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Apple won because the court ruled that:
"Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]."
and, that (and this is a Wikipedia quote):
"The court established that Apple could not make copyright claims based on these ideas and could only make claims on the precise expression of them."
So, with that said, if Apple could demonstrate that Microsoft copied specific expressions of certain ideas, then they absolutely would have the basis for a lawsuit.
Re:ego (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, try this...
1) CTRL-F2 (yes, yes, bear with me)
2) Type the first letter of the menu item you want*
3) Down arrow
4) Repeat step 2
5) Repeat 2-3 until you drill down to the desired command and hit "enter"
* If by chance there are two menu items with the same first letter, it's sufficient to type the first and second letter.
How is this slower if not more efficient than ALT-whatever?
Only happy to help.
Re:Put aside the ego... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't try to bullshit the rest of us. Windows gets shoved down our collective throats so we can't help but have experience with it. This isn't like MacOS where you're only ever going to have experience with it if you explicitly seek it out.
Need encryption? Try using a tool that explicitly ensures it. There is even a "checkbox" for it.
Re:What Apple does right (Score:3, Informative)
why you think pressing keys to explore the menu is better than using the mouse.
Because then I don't have to remove my hands from the keyboard. Seems obvious enough.
Re:Day is Night, Black is White, and Good is Evil (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, no problem.
The fact that OS X has never had a virus or worm (don't know how true this is) doesn't necessary show the platform is secure.
It well know that the scale of market share of Windows VS OS X more than tilts towards Windows. This means, as attacker, Windows is the most profitable to target. Hence we see more exploits.
It's like if I owned one house in Harlem and the other in Luxembourg. The house in Harlem would more than likely being broken into quicker than the on in Luxembourg. This is external to the houses: it's the environment outside of it.
Safari has had plenty of bugs (if we are comparing browsers too), and these would have allowed Worms quite easily.
Could you tell me, how many bugs can you find for IE8 that are being *exploited* on Vista or Windows 7? There was one pre-release (in IE8 beta). Keyword is exploited here, because thanks to ASLR, the vulnerabilties that are being found and exploited on XP are notoriously difficult to exploit on Vista/7.
As for the 80% of virues. How about 8 out of 10 tested. And let's not forget this viruses were just put on the system, which usually come by other means (usually browser exploits - which are covered better in Windows Vista/7 with ASLR than Mac).
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowssecurity/archive/2009/11/06/windows-7-vulnerability-claims.aspx [windowsteamblog.com]
ASLR, as well as many other security initiatives, go a long way to protect Vista/7 users from vulnerabilties within Windows itself and 3rd party products that support it. Mac OS X is one of the few platforms that haven't implemented this.
Re:Save face? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What Apple does right (Score:3, Informative)
On the mac you can hold down the control key or right click to get a contextual menu. Try it, you might like it.
I think what the parent is talking about are accelerators. Menu captions in Windows can include an an ampersand which indicates the accelerator key to be used. The letters appears with an underline underneath them (under XP and higher you may need to press ALT first to display the menu accelerators depending on the user settings). They be accessed when ALT & accelerator key is pressed.
So, for example to display the File menu's conetent, you can press ALT & F and then to select the "New" option once the File menu is open, you can then press ALT & N.
In classic MacOS there was a tool provided by Connectix [wikipedia.org] (perhaps Speed Doubler?) which provided this functionality, but I have not seen it duplicated on OS X.