“Why is it that every application in the start menu except I.E. and Outlook has Windows in the name?” – Looking at the Mac… why does every application start with “i”? hmmmm? what a dumb complaint… its called branding.

“XP is cartoony” – blah blah blah… so is OSX… so is Ubuntu… if you don’t want a GUI go back to DOS… lets see what you can complain about with that OS.

“Keep buying M$ lemmins we love it.” – And how many revisions and new versions of OSX have we had to sit through (and PAY for) to get to where we are today? OSX is nice… but it wasn’t that spectacular when it came out YEARS ago.

“What surprised me is the Minimum recommended specs given by Microsoft for Vista.” – Key word being recommended… I suppose you’re driving around in a car that takes leaded gas and runs on bicycle style tires… heaven forbid a company design a product to take advantage of newer technology. And to provide a “better” experience for people running even newer technology.

“Microsoft is a deflated relic from the 90s trying hard to ape Apple’s hip design.” – Since when is iPutting the iLetter “i” in iFront of iEverything considered “iHip”? More like iStupid I iThink. (god a feel my brain melting from pop-culture overload)

“I don’t need access to Windows 3.0 applications.. run them in Emulation.” – AMEN Brotha

“All that gloss is making me nauseous” – All of these computer geeks using Uber-Butch screennames is making me nauseous. And on that note… I’m out

I think Microsoft will find, as it has for a while, that people will upgrade because it’s what one does when new software comes out. The people won’t really care whether it’s all that much better, faster, or safer. It’s what one does. Then there are those like me who need it and only it for one thing or another. Most notably are all the gamers. Gamers need it because that’s the platform games are written for primarily, developers need it because that’s the platform for which most people buy software. Most people don’t care whether the update is all that much better. They care about whether or not they will still be able to do what they always have. People don’t like change. And that’s what I think will save Microsoft – for one more crap release, anyway.

I initially installed Vista on an old test box (1.5 ghz, 512 mb ram) and in its full blown aero mode the computer slowed down to a crawl. Without aero mode, it felt just like an XP box with a hacked theme dll. Its bells and whistles are nice, but I see no need to “upgrade” my real desktop any time soon.

(do not bring Linux into this, it is not really suitable for a non-geek’s desktop)

Slightly tangential, I suppose, but I have to disagree with that. Depending on what you want to do, Linux can be a nice alternative. I set up a Linux box for my parents which they planned to use for web surfing, email, chatting, and writing Word documents. By setup, I mean that I installed Ubuntu and moved their browser/email prefs back into firefox & thunderbird. It was I’m hoping you did a little research before casting out Linux, because the Linux desktop experience has improved quite a bit recently.

For reference the spec of the computer I installed it on is: AMD64 3000, 512Mb RAM, Radeon 9500 Graphics Card and a 40Gb hard drive.

Firstly the good bits for Vista.

1) It is pretty quick once you get it running, it is faster than XP.

2) Stability wise, even as a beta it is more solid than any XP or MCE machine I have come across.

3) The transparency can be turned off (thank goodness)

4) In game performance is slightly improved over XP however that could be down to a fresh install more than anything else.

And the bad bits.

1) It’s awkward to get around, I know this doesn’t really say much but the operating system itself is difficult to use, in places it is overly simple and in others it is needlessly complex. Like the Control Panel, it may be sectioned off, trying to find something is still an absolute pig.

2) Speed at loading applications can be atrocious, CS Source takes a little over 7 minutes to go from clicking the Source icon on the desktop to being at the main menu. On my dad’s Celeron (2.4Ghz, 256Mb RAM) it takes about 5, it isn’t just games which take a long time to load, Photoshop, InDesign, any major application takes around 2 to 3 minutes longer to load than it does under XP.

3) The glass theme is truly awful, it’s a half assed attempt at taking XP’s candy interface, Apple’s OS X, and trying to add a bit of pizzaz and cool to it by making it see through, it doesn’t work, it make window chrome very messy and for your average user they will get really confused. I sat my dad down and got him to try out Vista, see what he thought of it and his comment was much the same as mine, spend the money on a Vista license on a Mac, the few things which keep him tied to Windows at the moment are not worth keeping when Vista becomes the norm, and he is looking at upgrading his computer in the next 2 years anyway and if he doesn’t want Vista it’s a Mac or nothing (do not bring Linux into this, it is not really suitable for a non-geek’s desktop)

4) Media Center is a farce, I know for a beta product it wont be perfect, but the speed difference between MCE 2005 and MCE Vista is horrific, after reading that Microsoft were working hard at speeding up MCE and making it easier to use I am disappointed. Apart from the speed it is an absolute pig to navigate, really 20 steps backward.

5) The User Protection crap, after 10 minutes I had been warned 43 times about something that might be dangerous. Very handy, but will scare the crap outta someone who doesn’t know what it means. And after those 10 minutes I was ready to kill whoever came up with the idea to lock us out of the OS when the dialog box was up.

As for an OSX vs Vista comparison, it is hard to be completely fair with the amount of time I have had with OSX compared to Vista. But there are some clear advantages to OSX, the simplicity of the operating system is vastly superior to whatever Microsoft can come up with between now and November. Vista gets in the way all the time with it’s User Protection software which warns you when a program might be dangerous, and it flagged up at the first boot to warn me about the Microsoft Network Wizard… something seems odd about that one. Flip3d is a farce compared to Expose, it truly is, anyone who says Flip3d isn’t MS’ version of Expose needs their head checked. The ability to click through onto a Close button without effecting the window focus is something MS need to look at copying, it really annoyed me having to click twice to close a window out of focus.

Michael, and anyone else who wants Vista screenshots with someone hopping down their throat: http://flickr.com/photos/stew/tags/vista/ All shots taken by me this afternoon, if you have any requests get them in quick over at flickr as I need to turn the computer back to my MCE 2005 machine for Friday evening (long list of programs to get recorded over the next few days with 24 ending and a few other programs as well)

Brian Meidell said :

I am getting so amazingly tired of these debates.

1) It’s rare to objectively prove that one choice or another is “better usability”

I’ve boiled your answer down to your first bulletpoint, as the rest was mostly backing up of that statement, and I present to you a multiple choice answer:

a) So ergo we shouldn’t talk about it at all.
b) That’s what Real thinks too (well more so in the old days).
c) It’s also rare to objectively prove that red is any given tone of red. Nonetheless red is red is red, and we can talk about it, since it sure as hell isn’t green.

Oh, and incidentally, who the fuck cares that Windows media player makes a bigger, centered play/pause button?

I didn’t comment on it being bigger, centered or combining play and pause. I commented on the color of it being a horrible blue and it’s glass surface being very aqua-like.

You know I love to debate with you, but that does require for you to get your facts straight :)

I’d love these discussions if people could actually provide some kind of interesting reference material to back up their tired claims, so I could learn something.

Sounds like what you really want is Research Report #324 from the Scientific Institute on Cognitive Interpretation and Response Situations as Formulated by Dr. S. Omething. Chillax dude. The way this works is, I make some observations, I throw in references where I think it helps my case and you do the same. We go back and forth for a while and hopefully learn something in the process.

Comparing and contrasting. Car enthusiasts do it, architects do it, game designers do it. It’s what we do man.

As for you definition of innovation and your view that Apple hasn’t done any of it lately, I think those two may be connected. Innovation is something as small as saying, you know what, let’s build well. And not just well, let’s make it SO good, that people will fall in love with it.

It doesn’t have to be a measure by empirical standards to be innovation.

And while you may be tired of the discussion, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a discussion to be had. Microsoft and Apple are two very different companies, and so is their output.

As for inspiration or no, there are trends and generally good ideas, and then there’s similarities that are hard to dismiss.

And no, of course MS and Apple fanboys will never agree, just like Amiga vs. PC, Coke vs. Pepsi, MacD vs. Burger King. But that’s part of the fun! Where conflict exists, lessons are to be learned!

And i agree with Brian to some extent. Apple- and MS users will never agree. But I guess that since this is Michaels blog, its to assume that whatever he writes here is his opinion about stuff. That he sometimes fails to remind people of that and instead writes in such strong words that it’d seem like all those flaws are the general opinion of everyone…is another matter :)

The nice hardware design existed is something B&O did before them, the basic desktop metaphor is from XEROX PARC, ambient light sensitivity and adjusting display brightness is something that has existed in expensive car dashboards for a long time, iTunes is basically a nicer version of winamp, with an integrated shopping interface, the iPod is just a large capacity music player which existed before iPod. Airport express type systems existed before as crappy cordless a/v transfer systems, and so on and so forth.

What they seem to have, is a knack for going that extra mile and making things seem more polished, plus they have a single person (Steve) who is anal and adamant enough about what he wants so that he bothers to push that idea all the way through to the end user (I have a strong feeling that Apple has corporate culture of ‘get onboard with Steves vision or get the fuck out of here’).
They also have a knack for integrating things really nicely, like iTunes and Airport Express, which is something that is so important to them that they prefer to produce both the hardware and software side of things.

So I think talking about stealing their innovations is a load of horseshit, since they do nothing but take ideas from everywhere, make them work together and coat them all with the same look & feel brush.
Not that that’s not a cool and valuable thing, but it kind of makes the point of who-“stole”-what-from-Apple a little ridiculous.

Apparently, it works and makes sense to people, so why the hell should microsoft decide to “innovate” something else? That would be downright stupid. They took some established arrangement in much the same way as Apple just ripped the play symbol from old tapeplayers like everyone else, because it’s an established symbol, rather than deciding to “innovate” a new symbol, just because they have to do everything differently.

1) It’s rare to objectively prove that one choice or another is “better usability”

2) Most of the debaters are people who are so deeply trained in one or another gui system that what makes most sense to a newbie is deeply irrelevant. Most of these points are entirely moot after an action has been performed a few hundred times.

3) The few things that can subjectively be proved to be better usability by some widely accepted standards (like time it takes to perform an action), are old hat because we have already read them in a thousand debates (such as Fitts law backing that the apple menu placement is faster to use).

4) Rarely are any of the arguments people come up with backed by actual research, but rather seems to be the results of afterrationalization of their habit-based preferences.
Like trying to prove it’s better to put the window control buttons on either side of the window.

5) It is so god damned irrelevant what is objectively better if one finds something subjectively better and is happy to use it.
Personally, I find Finder to be the worst piece of crap file manager, but I am not seriously going to argue to a mac owner that they are by some objective metric wrong for liking it better than, say, directory opus.

6) There is a smugness among even adult, intelligent mac os x owners that is so amazingly tiresome (like claiming that flip 3d is a bad ripoff of expose) that even though I believe mac os x to be the nicer, better operating system, I become quite annoyed at them.

The whole mac vs pc debate is so unbelievably pointless. Crying about PCs ripping off mac ui ideas is kind of retarded when you are comparing two OSes that owe 99% of their usability ideas to other, forgotten systems.
On the mac side, it smacks of mac owners being afraid of losing their precious differentness.
Arguing that button placement is better in windows because you are used to windows is also retarded and seems like you just have to nitpick about some irrelevant, highly subjective detail because you are jealous that mac os x currenly looks considerably more high tech than Windows.

Why not admit that most of what you are saying is just your own preference? Isn’t that good enough? Are your egos so frail that you can’t just be satisfied with “I like x better than y”, but need to make it into “according to these universal axioms, my preference is better than yours”?

I’d love these discussions if people could actually provide some kind of interesting reference material to back up their tired claims, so I could learn something.

Personally, I’d prefer to throw the entire lot of current OS’ and their nearly non-existant differences out the door, and go for an entirely different basic operating paradigm. That would be my preference.

Full credit was given, linking back to Paul’s article. How does that differ from qouting a piece of writing? Had I quoted Paul’s writing, should I then have taken down that quote on his request?

The danger by the way, doesn’t lie in Apple vs. MS. I’ve had many civilized debates both here and other places on that subject. The problem lies in people who aggressively antagonize others simply because they’re behind a keyboard.

Thats why i dont quite get why comments were closed and then reopened the next day.

Because with sleep and work, I’m out of it for a good long while, and I don’t want to see my blog get turned into a mud-slinging area behind my back.

As I’ve already explained.

If one ugly post appears, then i’ll understand.

Well we obviously have different views on how ugly things need to get before it’s no longer in a civil tone.

And I must say, it’s clear that you with a somewhat snobby and stubborn attitude, started this feud with Paul (grabbing screenshots + the way you replied when he confronted you with it). But I guess you wont let a Windows guy tell you what you can or cant do :-)

Rane said :

Closing comments down with the reason that things might escalate is a strange move if you ask me. When an Apple-user as big as Michael posts negative things about a Microsoft OS, you’re pretty much asking for things to get hot.

There’s hot and there’s ugly. I don’t mind hot, but nobody likes ugly.

Getting back on track, I’m sure that Apple too has “borrowed” things and ideas from other companies when making their operating systems…

Oh for sure, though I will wager that their innovation to inspiration quotient is considerably better than that of Vista, which was one of my points. I want to see Vista do well, as Apple could easily end up in a reactionary position, like Microsoft, if they aren’t challenged.

So basically, by starting this whole thread, you should be ready for some criticism and not get all defensive and stubborn when asked to remove screenshots you didnt make.

Getting back on track, I’m sure that Apple too has “borrowed” things and ideas from other companies when making their operating systems…including Microsoft. I’ve tried Beta2 and it runs wonderfully on my rig at home. Much better than any XP/2000 installation i’ve ever done. Stable, fast and more user-friendly.

All the gloat and eye-candy is a natural development in the OS business. Dont forget that a huge percentage of Windows users are home users who are not computer experts. And why not make it look more attractive to this target group just like Mac OSX does in a way? All the “geeks” will know how to remove the eyecandy and customize their Vista installation anyway.

i should have been more clear about my comment about the minimum specs of windows.

I have an old G3 imac here and the latest version of OSX will run on this machine without a problem. Try running windows on a machine of the same age and you will have an OS that takes 20 minutes to boot up.

Personally i would like to see Micrsotft produce a cutting edge os but i just don’t see that happening. To me an OS is something that allows me to use the computers hardware to it’s potential. If i want to do something on that pc i will buy the software to do it.

As for using the Vista screenshots on this post i think micheal is ok, as claiming screenshots as your property is stupid. given microsofts history, any screenshots of vista are property of microsoft so claiming ownership of them is pointless anyway.

Having used about 90% of operating system on the market i would say that no one system is the answer. All systems have hier good and bad points. it’s just a matter of choosing what works for you.

On a side note, I can remember (in the good old days) when you got hold of a public beta of Windows XP and was hyped over how cool this new OS from Microsoft was. I remember you even sending me a bunch of screenshots showing the new parts that you liked (you really like the screen dimming to black and white when opening the switch user window ;-).

So, even if you probably won’t admit it now caugh you thought that XP was the first really good OS from Microsoft. Of course, that was like 100 years ago – and nowadays when you got your Macs running OS X you couldn’t care less about XP or its interface, which is understandandble.

I don’t run XP because I like it, I run it because it’s the only OS which lets me does all things need to and want to do. I think OS X looks really swank, and I would gladely switch if there were more games or support for games – which may come true soon now that its running on the Intel architecture.

But for now, I’ll just have to stick with XP. Which is fine by me. I’ll probably give Vista a whirl soon too, just to see if I like it – or not.

Office 2007 is also really impressive to me for a beta. I think the new ribbon UI is highly intuitive and while it takes time getting used to, I believe it is the best version of Office to date.

But this post is about Vista, so I will comment on Vista now. I have installed beta 2 on my work machine and after using it for some time I really believe it has promise. There were a number of bugs that made it impossible to run it full time, but I’m not going to complain much aout bugs in a beta. I want to focus on how I feel about Vista versus OSX.

I believe both operating systems have their advantages. When I see the die-hard Mac people claiming that Vista is a blantant ripoff of OSX I wonder how they draw that conclusion. There are definitely features similar to OSX in Vista. But OSX borrowed the idea of fast user switching from XP.

For the most part I really like the Vista UI. Some of the icons I really detest, but I like the aero look and feel. In fact I believe that with all of the eye candy in Vista, it is prettier than OSX in my opinion. This of course isn’t really that important to me. I am just saying that if you like eye candy, Vista has a lot of it.

I have 2 iPods and have hated all versions of WMP until 11 which is what will ship with Vista and as a stand alone. I now have stopped using iTunes in lieu of WMP11. They have really made it a top notch player.

The one thing about OSX I really like is that there are so many talented artist types working on Macs that most software really seems to have a lot of care when it comes to the UI and functionality. I do get frustrated sometimes with the sheer number of windows that I have to open in OSX that I can seem to do with less in Vista or XP for that matter.

And there are many applications on XP that there just isn’t an application on the Mac side that does it all. The opposite is certainly true as well. iLife is an amazing package to be bundled. There definitely is nothing like that for Windows, and despite there being some nicely upgraded apps in Vista, they don’t hold a candle to iLife.

I don’t think I will be able to be a full time switcher at least at home until application support surpasses XP/Vista. The one thing many Mac people don’t consider is that when you have a product that owns such a huge amount of marketshare, it is foolish to write off that entire market segment. So many developers will choose Windows as their primary development platform for that reason alone. Plus, I haven’t seen an IDE on OSX yet that compares to the latest version of Visual Studio.

I think you have some valid gripes Michael. I think the Flip-3D thing is a complete waste. To me it seemed to be added just to add more style with no substance. About the only thing I thought was sorta neat was you can click any of the titled images when you are flipping through them and it will take you directly to that application, but how useful is that?

To be honest I wish I could have a lot of the functionalities of both operating systems in a single one. But I know that isn’t possible so I will continue to have both at home and used my switchbox often. :)