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A Mac Fan's Take On Vista 499

Posted by kdawson from the ooh-shiny dept.
jcatcw writes "Ken Mingis has been running Vista on a MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks. Highlights from his review: 'Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm... Gadgets and widgets. What's that line about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?... The UAC implementation in Vista is heavy-handed and intrusive — it halts what you're doing, even if you want to do something as simple as change your clock. My sense here is that Microsoft has been criticized so often for security vulnerabilities that it decided to club users over the head with its new operating system-in-lockdown-mode... I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.'"
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A Mac Fan's Take On Vista More

A Mac Fan's Take On Vista

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  • Painfully Subjective Review (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Thursday September 28, 2006 @10:50AM (#16229463) Journal
    I'll just out and say it -- Ken Mingis is just looking for bells & whistles. He's not in search of the 'best' operating system, just looking for the one that can waste CPU cycles while making the user ooh and ahh.

    Here's something you could have figured out for me: how efficient are these effects? What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero? Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints? Are Gadgets & Widgets memory efficient? Does all this extra shit cause any more bugs than a regular operating system without them?

    Big deal. Call me when you write an object review. I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it. Not all of us have the new intel core 2 duos.

    Congratulations, four pages of inundating me with ads, bitching about UAC & falling head over heels for Aero. Sounds like every other Vista review I've read.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by DebianDog ( 472284 )
      > He's not in search of the 'best' operating system, just looking for the one that can waste CPU cycles while making the user ooh and ahh.
      Duh he -IS- a Mac user!

      I am a mac user too and quite honestly except for the new "Ohhs and Ahhs" it does not seem to be much different than XP. Granted, now you get some integration of built-in applications but it still PALES in comparison to iLife. [apple.com]

    • Vista (Score:5, Informative)

      by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:01AM (#16229673) Homepage Journal
      Runs on my XP 1700 as a "headless" media center server powering two xbox 360 and handling file share and windows media share for over 10,000 photos and about 7,000 songs. This machine has 1 gig of ram, several 250 gig hard drives and handles recordings with a single tuner at this point in time. Working on a second tuner that will run FireSTB to handle pulling hi-def from my comcast box.

      I only have a geforce 4 mx 440 on thre so my score is 1.0 but everything that ran in XP is useable and same performance in vista.. i can swap out video cards and make the desktop fully useable with aero but i like it powering my extenders. Biggest thing i did was optimize the system for services, enable a large cache and dump my recordings on a different drive then what most of my pre-recorded stuff is and have a seperate boot drive as IO is where most of my latency is.

      I will be throwing in an XP 2600 becuase i got one off ebay dirt cheap, but there you go. Vista works and it doesn't need a super system like you fellas seem to believe. Beta testers have it working on much lower end systems as well - just add memory.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ozmanjusri ( 601766 )
        Vista works and it doesn't need a super system like you fellas seem to believe.

        Well, that's just wonderful for you. I'm very glad you've found satisfaction with Vista, and unsubstantiated anecdotes are always so valuable in helping us assess new products.

        Umm, just one question, wtf did all this have to do with TFA?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cybrthng ( 22291 )
          if you read the comment i replied to is suggested that vista couldn't run on his P4 which is probably more capable then my XP 1700 as described above.

          RTFA

      • ...XP 1700...1 gig of ram, several 250 gig hard drives ... I will be throwing in an XP 2600 ...

        How zippy is your machine? An XP 1700 wita a gigabyte of RAM is capable of simulating regional weather patterns in real time, or of calculating about 10,000 lunar orbital injection trajectories per second, or of playing 100 competition chess games simultaneously, or of analysing and controlling traffic patterns in a mid-sized city core.

        So, er, your 1700 *is* a super system. With that much horsepower at your disp

    • The problem is... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Spaceman40 ( 565797 ) <(gro.mca) (ta) (sknilb)> on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:09AM (#16229825) Homepage Journal
      ...that the major differences between XP and Vista are graphical. On my computer, I can't tell the difference in speed between XP (SP2) and Vista, but Vista sure looks prettier.

      (Note: I only had it on my computer for about a day before switching to Ubuntu, which can actually use my sound card. Vista doesn't let you use any unsigned drivers, and Creative's 64-bit Vista drivers are beta and -- guess what? -- not yet signed.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        I believe you can use unsigned drivers in the 32-bit version (works for me.!)

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:23AM (#16230095)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jimicus ( 737525 )
      I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it

      Really? I want to know which will do that AND run software appropriate to my needs with minimal hassle. But hey, each to their own.
    • He is not trying to appeal to audiences such as yourself, who wish to run a minimalist OS on older hardware until the end of days. He is comparing features of mainstream operating systems for those who are interested in them. Linux and its kin will always be able to run in a less power-thirsty fashion, at the 'cost' of discarding the features he is writing about.

    • Re:Painfully Subjective Review (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:38AM (#16230375) Journal
      Here's something you could have figured out for me: how efficient are these effects? What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero? Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints? Are Gadgets & Widgets memory efficient?

      Here are some subjective comments from someone who operates two laptops - a ThinkPad running FreeBSD and a PowerBook running OS X - which I hope will answer your questions on the Os X side.

      • Aqua is fast. All windows are buffered, and so dragging them around only causes a small CPU spike. This was bigger before Quartz Extreme, because it was all handled on the CPU. Now it's done on the GPU, and even my old S3 ViRGE could handle compositing opaque textures easily (the shadows around the edges, and any transparent windows require a little more power, but not too much).
      • Aqua is quite memory intensive. A moderate size window is likely to require about a 3MB buffer. Assuming it's double buffered, guess 4MB (we'll allow for some smaller windows in the average). Now multiply that by the number of windows you have. You're looking at a lot of memory just for this. I don't know how much of it is VRAM, but on my system it amounts to more than my total VRAM so it can't be all unless they use some form of lossless texture compression.
      • Widgets have a big memory footprint. Each one seems to have its own instance of the Javascript runtime (probably for security reasons). 20MB of real memory each seems a good approximation. Invoking the dashboard after doing other memory intensive things will cause a lot of swapping.
      Widgets, I could easily live without. There doesn't seem much point in having them written in Javascript other than buzzword compliance. Let me write them in a language that doesn't require a hefty runtime (or, at least, one where the runtime overhead can be shared more efficiently), and I might change my mind.

      Aqua, however, is worth the cost. Memory is cheap; this machine has 1.5GB in it, which is slightly more than I actually need (it struggles a bit with 1GB, I have some spare in 1.5GB), and it's a couple of years old. If the cost of a more responsive UI is more RAM, I'll pay it. When compositing support stabilises in x.org, I'll probably enable it there as well.

      More bugs? Hard to quantify. I've encountered bugs in Quartz (a lot in Quartz 2D Extreme, which is why it's not enabled by default in spite of being faster), and I've encountered bugs in x.org. In a purely hand waving manner, I would say I've encountered more bugs in Quartz, but more serious bugs in x.org, so it probably evens out in the end.

    • Painfully Subjective Review
      I'll just out and say it -- Ken Mingis is just looking for bells & whistles. He's not in search of the 'best' operating system,

      You are correct, however the implication that looking for the "best" OS would have been less subjective is laughable. Any search for the "best" operating system is inherently subjective, because "best" is a totally subjective criteria.

      Any time I see a review where someone is looking for the 'best' anything, where two solutions exist, is not going to be

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by e2ka ( 708498 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @10:54AM (#16229527) Homepage
    What's that line about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?

    I think it goes something like "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Chacham ( 981 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:04AM (#16229747) Homepage Journal
      I think it goes something like "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

      I think it goes something like "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RorschachUK ( 1006841 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:06AM (#16229785)
      Here's a Google Video featuring audio from a Microsoft presentation of Vista's new features over video from OS X Tiger, showing that pretty much everything that was touted as new in Vista is already in Tiger. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-413444611 2378047444 [google.com]
      • "put comsumers back in control of their PC" -- it's like a politician who has been told not to stray from the talking points -- just keep repeating that mantra over and over and over

        Tell me again guys, just which OS it is that prevented me from having full control of my PC, and which company developed, sold, and provided weekly security patches for that OS? Hmmm... could it be... satan? (jk)

        This is the reason that I switched to a Powerbook in February this year, and replaced my second PC with a Mac mini in

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by BrokenHalo ( 565198 )
      ..."Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

      Well, as far as I'm concerned, both UIs can just go suck my... whatever. I don't like either of them. Vista's UI is just more of the sameoldsameold slapped on top of an OS I prefer to shun, and Aqua (as distinct from OS X, which seems pretty good at its job) is an irritating pain to use.

      Although I do own a (now aged but nonetheless functional) iBook G4 in addition to my desktop and server machines, I prefer to run Linux on it with Gnome as my UI of choice.

  • Missing out on the real features... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @10:55AM (#16229547) Homepage Journal
    I'm not going to copy and paste them here, but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista [wikipedia.org] for all of the features & enhancements that really make vista what it is.

    The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.

    UAC annoying? Not really, it finally juts alerts you to a change that affects your system as a whole. UAC used to be MUCH more annoying on previous betas but really is a non issue for most people on 5728 or higher because once your running there really isn't much you need to change and being alerted to changes that can impact your system is a good thing.

    It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.

    • Re:Missing out on the real features... (Score:4, Funny)

      by fomhoire69 ( 869874 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:21AM (#16230061)
      Solitaire has been updated and rewritten to take advantage of Windows Vista's new graphics capabilities well thts sold me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by LoudMusic ( 199347 )
      It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.

      You said enough at "Windows are a misconfiguration". ;)

    • reboot? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by codethreader ( 955402 )
      It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.

      It reboots in 2 seconds? Amazing. It'd be even faster if Microsoft could figure out how to make an OS that allows you to modify a configuration without requiring a reboot. Everyone else seems to have figured it out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by laxcat ( 600727 )
      Ok, sure, there's tons of new stuff in Vista. Cool. But I'm so sick of people discounting UI like its just one among many feature. UI is the only feature that matters. I think techies loose sight of the fact that most people don't care about "features" like "Service hardening" or "Windows Defender." That stuff is just confusing and people wonder why they need to be bothered with it. All people want is a way to get to thier applications and a way to find, organize, and work with their documents. You know. Wo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aug24 ( 38229 )
      You see, the weird thing is, I read that and I can sum it up as follows:

      1) Eye Candy
      2) Somewhat more secure
      3) Improved backup facilities
      4) "We unbroke the XP search facility"

      "Plus we copied a lot of the features in FireFox and added some DRM, which will help prevent people copying your music/video/porn collection. Including you."

      And this is worth 350 bucks or 200 quid?

      Justin.
    • ... 20% will be sold on the internals.
      It's Windows and it costs a lot.
      The average Windows user isn't caring about or using what XP TRULY does different than 98SE except it looks better.

      • Re:It's the GUI that will sell 80%... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mistshadow2k4 ( 748958 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @01:10PM (#16232235) Journal
        The average Windows user isn't caring about or using what XP TRULY does different than 98SE except it looks better.

        That's not true. What I heard more than anything else from the people using XP when it was new was that it wasn't crashing all the time and didn't need rebooting so often. (Of course, all that is true of 2000 as well, but these people were upgrading from 98.) Looks came in about third; stability was what experienced Windows people talked about the most. Believe me, I remember it well, as I was considering upgrading from 98 then myself as I was sick of its instability and everyone encouraged me to, but then I upgraded to 2000 -- after which, my response was, meh, cutesy interface, so what.

        Nevertheless, we wound up getting XP early this year because there are a few high-powered games that require XP that my husband just had to have *rolleyes*. (I mainly use the computer for graphics & picture editing; imagine my surprise when I found that some of my favorite apps work better with 2000 than XP, even though those apps came out after XP!) But that brings up another point in the anti-Vista argument -- look how long it was after XP came out that there were XP-only games from game companies besides MS itself. People say only Vista will have DX10, but any game company would have to be out of their minds to trade the XP user base for the new Vista user base. And frankly, posts you see on every forum show how little interest there is in Vista; it's not just /., it's everywhere. Vista just doesn't offer enough compelling features to make XP users want to upgrade. Of course, new pre-made computers will come with Vista, but more people already have computers than in the XP days, so widespread adoption of Vista is definitely going to be slower than it was for XP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Speare ( 84249 )

      The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.

      People rate the quality of a new road solely on the smooth pothole-free surface they encounter when the construction trucks finally leave. They don't know about, are not curious about, and don't want to be curious about the improved fiber trunks, water reclamation system, ice resistant tarmac, or wear-resistant striping polymers. This is really pretty much th

    • Re:Missing out on the real features... (Score:5, Funny)

      by whathappenedtomonday ( 581634 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @12:27PM (#16231345) Journal
      reboot.

      Good thing that this particular feature remains unchanged.

  • Old Arguments. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Thursday September 28, 2006 @10:57AM (#16229591)
    Well that is the typical Windows vs. Mac Debate. Apple OS method is do what you need to do, and let the OS Do What it needs to do, and try not to step on each others foot. Windows is a working Microsoft Commercial for every feature that help you save time or protect you from trouble it is like Windows says "See Microsoft cares about you because we just protected you", While Mac OS X is more like go do what you need to do we will keep out of it and protect you when you need it, and we will only talk to you when we really have to. Even the Eye Candy. OS X eye candy is subtile while Windows is flashy. It is like a a man in a nice suit vs. a Pimp.

  • Flip3D is aesthetic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:01AM (#16229685)
    I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.


    Ken, are you freaking kidding? Expose simply looks and behaves so much more efficiently and aesthetically. Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one, including the desktop (weirdly, Flip3D puts the desktop in there as a window too). In addition, there's no need to "cycle" through the windows in Expose, because it displays all windows at once. Flip3D is essentially a completely useless tech demo that's not that impressive. Flip3D doesn't win on anything.

    • Re:Flip3D is aesthetic? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:23AM (#16230085)
      Expose simply looks and behaves so much more efficiently and aesthetically. Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one, including the desktop (weirdly, Flip3D puts the desktop in there as a window too). In addition, there's no need to "cycle" through the windows in Exposé, because it displays all windows at once.

      Very true. With a button press (or mouse squeeze on my desktop), I can see all the windows at once. So I'm a button press and a click (or a squeeze and a click) away from anything. However, with Flip3D, I'm a button press, a bunch of scrolling, and a click away from anything.
      Also, Exposé is also useful if I need to see both windows at once, like if I'm typing something based on something I'm reading (summarizing news articles in my case) or if I need to compare 2 or more images for some reason.
      Also, Exposé runs fine on a 1.33 GHz G4 with 32 MB VRAM (although most OS X eye candy like 64 MB VRAM), while Flip 3D will require 64MB or, more likely, 128MB VRAM.
    • Just thought I'd chime in here as well. Most of the commentary I've heard about Flip 3D has been negative, and I thought I'd give it a try myself. Honestly it's little better than standard alt-tab behavior with the added dis-benefit of not being able to see the contents of all the windows at once. It's a rip-off of Exposé, and not a great one at that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dema ( 103780 )
      Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one

      In all fairness, try the same thing in Exposé. Depending on your resolution, you will likely have to mouse over each window to get the title bar text as a description (which may not even tell you much) to get any idea what the window contains. I love Exposé, but I rarely ever have to use it with 20 windows open, maybe 10 to 15 max and even then it gets a bit sketchy. I

  • Aqua, Aero, Terra, Pyro? (Score:3, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:02AM (#16229689)
    Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero.
    OK, I'll bite. Where are the "Terra" and "Pyro" UIs?

  • SUSE does it better (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Alphax.au ( 913011 )
    An article written in May [desktoplinux.com] suggested that OpenSUSE 10.1 combined with Xgl will perform better with lesser hardware requirements and wins on several other fronts too. Plus, you can probably run it on your MacBook.
    • Well I can't compare 10.1 to Vista as I have little interest in Vista at the moment; I can say that SuSE 10.1/XGL runs just fine on my 2.5 yr old laptop (Pentium M-1.4, and whatever ATi 64MB mobility chipset was popular in laptops back then)

      While many of the XGL eye candy is cool looking, in the end it hasn't made me any more (or less) productive, but it does catch the eyes of people (and gives them back thank you) and most people are either surprised or confused when I tell them it is linux and not window

  • UI ain't everything (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Programmer_In_Traini ( 566499 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:09AM (#16229833)
    "I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. " ...geez, then we wonder why we gotta have a top-of-the-line PC with 1G of ram....just to run the OS smoothly. What happened to my good ole alt-tab and shift-alt-tab ? I dont recall having any kind of problem with that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )
      It's not mandatory. You can use it if your computer supports it (and you want it turned on), if not the UI will revert back to a more 2000/XP-like version. Alt-tab still works exactly the same. Just because you don't have a problem with something doesn't mean others don't :) The flip-3d thing shows the contents of the window, not just the app's icon and window title. The windows are also "live", so video plays, websites flash away, downloads update, etc. It's just another way of looking at what you've

  • End the madness! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:21AM (#16230051)
    Everyone seems to be seeing how OSs fare compared to each other, giving bragging rights to whichever one was the first to use various features, when that doesn't even matter in the slightest. An OS is to be used - it's not your child, you don't have to stand up for it. If it does what you need it to do, then it's great. I don't give a rat's ass who invented "windows flying around revealing themselves" first, I just care if it's of any use to me. It's an operating system, not a political statement. Fucking fanboys.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tony ( 765 )
      It's an operating system, not a political statement.

      Well, for me, it's both. I use Linux partly because I love the power it gives me (which is in itself a political statement, I guess), and partly because of the freedom it gives me (which is definitely a political statement).

      I stopped using Microsoft Windows in 1992, when I started using OS/2; and then I stopped using OS/2 in 1993, when I discovered Linux. I stopped using MS-Windows because of the DR-DOS situation, which was just one piece in a long line of

  • Security nags (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:24AM (#16230109) Journal
    The more you tighten your grip, the more star^H^H^H^Husers will log in as administrator.
  • Sure, gadgets are blatant knockoffs. But they arent blatant knockoffs of OS X widgets. Theyre blatant knockoffs of Konfabulator (Now Yahoo Widgets), which is what Apple knocked off too.

    Apple fanbois dont get to complain about this one.
    All MS did was copy Apples copying. Now admittedly, there are plenty of legitimant copyjobs going back and forth between both companies, but this isnt one of them.

    =)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      *sigh*

      I guess you've never heard of Desk Accessories [wikipedia.org], have you?

      Hint, they were included with the very first Macintosh.

      But, Gruber [daringfireball.net] says it best:

      "Bullshit. Dashboard is not a rip-off of Konfabulator. Yes, they are doing very much the same thing. But what it is that they're doing was not an original idea to Konfabulator. The scope of a "widget" is very much the modern-day equivalent of a desk accessory."

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mypalmike ( 454265 )
        I guess you've never heard of Desk Accessories, have you?

        Desk accessories were a hack to workaround the lack of multitasking in early versions of Mac OS. See MultiFinder [wikipedia.org].

        Apple Widgets are a knockoff of Konfabulator because Apple borrowed the idea of writing little desktop applications in Javascript.

  • So Vista can look and act like OsX... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thansal ( 999464 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:30AM (#16230207)
    ... But can it look and act like Win2K?

    I am a windows user (yes, I know I will be shuned for addmitting this), and my preffered OS is Win2K (it works for what I want it to, and that is primarily games).

    Up untill recently I just ignore anytihng about windows that is not Win2K (I admit I have to use XP at work, but I have done everytihng I can to make it look and act like 2K). However, with more and more mention of games that will be "vista exclusives" I am starting to wory that I will eventualy actualy HAVE to switch (I stuck with DOS untill I had to use windows for games, then with 3.11 till I had to "upgrade" to 95 for games).

    So for those that have been ussing Vista, Can you strip out all this silly extra garbage and make Vista look and act like 2K?
    Can I make all the gadgets/widgets/whatever they are called quickly disapear and not waste CPU cycles?
    Can I turn off all the bubbles and colouring and effects?
    Can I make everything flat? (I like sharp edges, one of my largest dislikes about OSX/XP/others is this urge to make defaults rounded and pretty looking)
    Can I make the colour scheames nice and simple? (a solid blue title bar?)

    yup ,set in my ways, and loving it.

    (btw, a quick link to all this info that I have probably missed would be highely apreciated).

  • Gadgets and Widgets huh? (Score:3)

    by celerityfm ( 181760 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:35AM (#16230299) Journal
    Yeah. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery huh? So Microsoft really likes Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke? Lest we forget that the Apple Widget Dashboard is a "total rip-off" of Konfabulator [macworld.com]. Though there are dissenting views [arstechnica.com] on this.

    I used to feel bad for the Konfabulator team until they were bought by Yahoo- they finally got the attention they deserved.

  • UGh (Score:2)

    by andreyw ( 798182 )
    I am not enamored of the VIsta Expose knockoff. More aesthetic? Nope. More useless. Cycle through one by one? Apple's Expose actually increases my productivity, while Vista's looks more like a tech demo. Nice thing to "wow" your friends with or whatever, but completely useless in the long run.

  • Newb (Score:3, Informative)

    by adavies42 ( 746183 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @11:50AM (#16230621)
    Mac OS X users can now use the apple-tab key combo to move through open applications just as quickly as Windows users.

    Whaddaya mean, "now"? To quote someone's sig, if I yell "Frog blast the vent core!", is Ken going to duck and cover, or will it be a whole cow-oncoming train thing? I'm strongly betting on the latter. We've had command- (and yes, it's "command", dammit, not "apple") tab since, what, System 8? The people who pass for Mac fans these days....

  • Productivity nitwit (Score:3, Informative)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @12:01PM (#16230829) Homepage
    I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does. In Mac OS X, all of the open windows are arranged in a two-dimensional way that makes it easy to see what's in each one. But it's not as visually appealing.

    Both do pretty much the same thing; Vista's method wins on aesthetics.

    It may win on aesthetics, but that's ALL it wins on. Okay quick example here... this is early in the morning and I've barely begun to work at ALL, but I've already got Mail open, one email being written, 1 finder window, iTunes and 8 movies open in QT. (Gotta check last night's compressions in the morning) So that's 12 windows open here... not really that much but, let's say I want to go right back to the email. I can either Apple-Tab (4 times in this case) or I can hit F9 for all window Expose and them simply click it.

    Now compare that to Flip 3D. I'm gonna flip through my ROLODEX? From all the videos I saw it appeared each window shows up separately(Thanks you spell check) so I would actually have to hit the flip key 12 times here? How is that better? It's not. Expose is O(1), Flip 3D is O(N). They definitely do NOT do the same thing, one shows you all your windows, the other buries them.

    Here's how I think it went down. Rumors have been around for years about Apple's "Piles" and how they were going to be the next generation file system interface. Microsoft thinks they know what Apple's next big secret is, so they try to get a jump on them and release it first. Whoops... fooled you, "Piles" are actually part of "Stacks" and the light table mode in Aperture... now THAT is useful! (Check out Compare and Select videos 2 and 4 here. [apple.com]) Good thing they got rid of that stupid code name "Piles" :-)

  • Yawn - Another Mac fanboy claiming Apple invented (Score:3, Interesting)

    by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @01:24PM (#16232527)
    This would've been an interesting article is this guy didn't spend so much of it whining about Microsoft supposedly copying Apple (taking a cue from Steve Jobs' pathetic performance at the recent WWDC, where he spent a full 10 minutes whining about MS copying Apple, and continued the idiotic snide remarks throughout his "keynote", then proceeded to demo features that were ripped off from others, including Microsoft, without even blushing).

    And the "evidence" cited to prove that MS copied Apple is so minor and trivial. I mean things like "Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm." What, does Apple have a trademark on four letter words beginning with 'A' now? And it's not like the user gives a damn what the UI is called anyway. The other things this guy cites are that close/resize buttons glow when the mouse hovers over them and Aero has photorealistic icons that scale nicely, etc. Oh really? Well, whoop-de-doo!! I guess any OS that incorporates good looking icons is stepping on Apple's toes, right? *yawn*

    And what's all this talk that Aero copies from Aqua anyway? I've been using OSX since 10.0, and I've seen Aero. Regardless of whetehr a few things are similar, the overall look and feel are not alike at all.

    And this is where this guy's arrogance really kicks in:
    Note to Microsoft GUI gurus: Take a look at the latest version of Apple's iTunes software, the recently released Version 7. Gloss and shine are out, the 3-D sandblasted look is in.
    Huh? Why, just because and Jobs says so? Give me a break.

  • fuddoesnotmeanwhatyouthink (on fud/notfud) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kristoffer Lunden ( 800757 ) on Thursday September 28, 2006 @03:34PM (#16235153) Homepage
    We all need to start tagging the stories with "fuddoesnotmeanwhatyouthink" because I only ever see it used as "I like/don't like issue X" now. It means Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and is very specific as a tactic to spread scary misinformation folks. It's not meant as a label for anything, *anything* that you disagree with.

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