Vista Preview shocks

I work in a company that today had its first ever vista preview. As the guy who is in charge of the IS requirments i was taken a back by how much it rips off Tiger.

I know this has been mentioned before but really the main impressors of Vista seem to be the glass gui. Thats it!

The rest of the feature spec seem to have been lifted directly from OSX. Most noticable form the preview was a spotlight application called search. ( great name) Alias has no been mimicked completly in its entirity. By dumping shortcuts windows vista has the alias system, or as they like to call it dynamic folders.....It now has thumbnail rescaling sliders...The guy from MS actually stated we want to make it more OS10 like to give users a better experience.....mmmm okay. I wondered if he had seen the Imac on my desk?

We now have user password prompts on all new folder creations and application executions....I've seen that before somewhere....Also we have security alert locks similar to the OSX padlock but for some reason on Vista this seems to be far more aggresive in terms of keep popping up, and oh boy did it keep popping up ,so much so that our man from MS got confused and then had to disable it.....lol

One feature that seemed to excite some of my business was the built in parental controls as it can be set via ESRB ratings, but since everyone who works in my office is no longer a child it seems pointless in a office environment....was this guy trying to sell us home versions as well, anyhow it does prevent games from being played such as solitare....why not just not install them in the first place...?

Under IE we get tab browsing and to be honest thats about it...did i mention the glass gui.....its probably the only nice implementation. In essense to me it looked like what XP should have been form the start. I have not talked about the dock as in our version it had been removed so i cant pass comment, though the widgets...whoops i mean gadgets were active.

the technical specs for Vista seem to dictate a mean PCI-E graphics card with a min of 128mb and stable performance with all gui options enabled on top end dual core processors. Suddenly the Mac Mini seems like a good proposal.

I am unsure what MS are trying to do in so much as they have made a poor mans Tiger on MS architecture with all the inherant issues of an aging OS. The same basis for every version of windows seems to still be there and when i promted the question of the well known MS rot issue, which effects most IT admins, ( the phrase is used regard to how windows seems to break down after a period of time on the machine after software has been installed/uninstalled etc) the demonstarter only commented that it was never going to give the same foundation of stability of UNIX. What an admission....

The key here is it shows how behind MS is both in terms of product offering but more importantly how it thinks, MS should launch a new ad campaign "THINK THE SAME", hopefully the replacement for Tiger will usher in a further series of enhancements that continue the trend of innovation and push OSX technological lead further.

having installed a beta version of Vista on a typical laptop ( 2.2Ghz P4m, 512Ram, 64mb video card ) to try it out, more than anything else, i just didn't see much that would make me want to switch from XP thats currently running on it.

Whilst it booted in the same timeframe as XP, the interface was noticably slower and many of the buttons felt smaller ( like the window close ones ) and harder to hit with the mouse.

The graphics card couldn't handle the Aero effects so you're left with a substantially poorer looking interface.

As for comparing to OS X - considering how slick OS X works on current mid-range hardware ( lets take a G4 mini for example - even with 512Mb ) then its even harder to justify a jump to Vista.


As for copying things - its always going to happen - accept it and get over it. to a degree, its good to have some commonality in the manner in which things work. This means that a new user to a computer who has experience of another OS should be able to pick up the new OS quite quickly.

As for programs which dont generally follow the accepted manner of working . . . . dont get me started ( lotus notes . . . mutter mutter mutter )

Have you (or your company) tried Vista with a 64bits processor? is there a good/no difference from the XPpro?
Microsoft is pushing a lot the idea of using the same OS everywhere, maybe it's true that Bill Gates wants to take over the world... With the new Origami project they may kill PocketPC within a year and finally put a Windows machine in every pocket around.
Anyway, they are supossed to release a version of Vista with the original GUI, so low level PCs may use it.

I think windows vista will disappoint many as expected, stealing others ideas is not smart, especially if you can't even implement them correctly. In all seriousness, I think that if M$ dropped windows and started from scratch on an OS with their own ideas, they could have something good.

microsoft and apple "steal" stuff from each other all the time. they also "steal" stuff from others that have good ideas and try to make them their own. the next version of OSX might use something that windows now has introduced. i would think it a compliment that windows is borrowing the good ideas that OSX uses, shows who has the right idea in the first place.

i personally liked the Vista beta i played around with; i thought it very nice.

personally - i just think MS should have started from scratch and built a ground up OS and taken the plunge by offering backward capability through emulation/translation a bit like rosetta.

I just get the feeling that windows have become so lumbersome and really doesn't make the best use of the a PC's resources.



i know that they are starting to do this approach now, but ever since seeing quake 2 and halflife, i've always wondered why an OS doen't run in a full openGL 3d space where each window is a polygon setup and the window content a simple texture wrapped over the polygons.

back then it was obvious that textures would soon be manipulated well enough to allow average sized text/detail on textures and when running in OpenGL, window manipulation would be much smoother and offloadable to the graphics card.

Having played with Vista a bit, all that I can say is that it is much more like XP than it is OSX. Frankly, I just don't see it being like OSX much at all. And it was running fine on a Dell that was a couple of years old with a Pentium 4 2.6 MHz and an ATI radeon 9550.

Both the Hype machine and the anti-Hype machine are in full swing on this one.

MS can't start from scratch, it would be the end of the world, really. MS is too big to do that kind of things, and its base of users have too many different configurations, the have to keep the same path.
Also, one of the rules for bussines in MS is the idea of creating products for the future. When XP came out the average user had a PC working around 500-800mhz and 64mb of RAM, yet XP was designed for bigger and better machines. It also helped the bumps in speed Pentium IV had and it "helps" big PC brands like HP or Dell, that work on corporate clients. Think about this: Vista is supossed to be the safest version of Windows yet, and the most [insert here whatever you want] in the history of MS, but of course if you want to really take advantage of all that you [insert company name here] have to upgrade your machines. Great deal for MS and PC makers, bad deal for average customer.

That said; MS has only really completed the transition from 16bit/32bit 9x Windows to NT architecture, I can't see them being ready just yet to make another great change in architecture. 64bit Windows is suffering enough issues itself and that is not a completely new OS underneath it.

And in fairness to MS, Apple did lift a number of 'Vista/Longhorn' features and dropped them into Tiger. The difference is that Apple was quicker to the market with these features; where as the development time of Vista has been so much longer than anticipated (and NT5/2000 was meant to be the mother of all monster projects...) that it appears to be the opposite scenario that MS copied Apple.

In some senses I don't think anyone seriously sat down and said; let's copy OS X 10.4. They probably thought "Well we pencilled that in before even OS X 10.0 was released but we were just too **** slow to get it to market, and as for that feature, well it's cool and I want it on my PC so I want to implement it.".

I'm not really fussed about Windows, they can copy OS X if they like; but they probably can't capture the feel of Mac OS X and my Macs. There is something so intangible about the experience that I would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

And Vista is a bit of a pap name (though the names of big cats doesn't rank that highly on list either!!).

Though Corel wins hands down for Painter IX.5 :flower: And all those saying 10.4.9 will mean 10.5 is around the corner, all Apple has to do is name it Mac OS X 10.4.X :flower

Either way; so long as I have my Macs, I couldn't give a monkeys what is used more, who does what and so forth; so long as Apple don't cock up monumentally, I'm a happy bunny.

Vicky

scooter said:

i personally liked the Vista beta i played around with; i thought it very nice.

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I would agree with this statement ... The problem I see: 6 years of development and all we get is "nice." MS is going to have to do better if they want to stop the very slow but still steady bleeding of corporate to UNIX and home to Mac.

I would say they are much more fixated on going after google right now and feel they can weather a less that expected OS release... But if it takes them another 6 years to get it right then they may actually end up with a problem in the OS arena. Especially if somebody can come up with a way to compete with MS Office.

We'll just have to wait and see. As lil said... As long as I have my Mac... I'm happy.

I heard somewhere that a bunch of developers were secluded in the Swiss Alps for TWO YEARS designing Vista, and in the end you know what they did?

They scrapped all of their ideas and gave up. The only reason Vista might sell is because it might have the capability to dual boot and everything will start coming out for vista, making XP an old OS where no programs come out for it.

Of course, everyone could get a mac and the world would be a better place...

Microsoft is taking a big risk with this new OS release. If hardly anyone likes it, microsoft could loose billions of dollars. Apple is usually ahead of microsoft in all terms of design, and hopefully it will stay that way. Apple should be prepared to sue microsoft if it finds any reason to do so.( Like copying the glass-like GUI, etc.)

Oh and BTW, is there a place i can download VISTA beta? I want to try it out for my self also.

macEfan said:

Oh and BTW, is there a place i can download VISTA beta? I want to try it out also.

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Check Microsoft's website, I think they're offering it there somewhere.

Immitation is the greatest form of flattery

unless you make millions/billions off of it..

macEfan said:

Microsoft is taking a big risk with this new OS release. If hardly anyone likes it, microsoft could loose billions of dollars. Apple is usually ahead of microsoft in all terms of design, and hopefully it will stay that way. Apple should be prepared to sue microsoft if it finds any reason to do so.( Like copying the glass-like GUI, etc.)

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Microsoft is not taking any risk. It has enough corporate backups to keep going for a long time. Even if all the average users decide to change to other OSs, is the corporate market the one that powers MS. Also, even if the average user don't like Windows Vista there is only a very small chance he/she will change the OS. Human nature is one important point for MS.
Also, don't get so mad if Vista looks like OSX, is a traditional strategy to emulate the succesful behavior.

vista is looking good. check out the pics
http://www.extremetech.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=&s=25501&a=156757,00.asp

My favorite capture...

http://www.extremetech.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=25501&a=156757&po=16,00.asp

It looks a lot like a themed XP, inside features will make the difference...

PowerBookG4 said:

Immitation is the greatest form of flattery

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...but it's also the lamest.

what is front row a copy of? i mean it is a complete clone with a differant interface and none of the funtionallity of media centre (like recording TV, PVR stuff, time shifting, blah blah)
Now it can share music and video, WOW!! LOL media centre was doing that 2 years ago?

yet you dont hear Windows people banging on about, they copied this and that?

A good idea will always be copied.

Did mac invent search or something i can use search in my Win 98 Box, just because Apple advanced thier search and called in spotlight does not mean when Microsoft evolve thier search like you would expect in a new OS that they have copied Apple.

Widgets were not invented by Apple, they were first used on PC and Apple ripped it (cant remember the App. name starts with K (not made by MS))

I have used the latest beta 2 of Vista and i dont know what your are talking about by saying the dock was removed. Do you mean the Side bar?
That is nothing like a the Mac Doc.

Windows Vista is much more like as has much more in common with Windows 95 then it does OSX. i have to be in Windows mode to operate it i cant use it like Mac OSX.

I am not saying one Windows OS is better then Mac OSX because i like Mac OSX better (will wait to see what the full retail version of Vista is like).

All i am saying and trying to get across is STOP with this whole they copied and ripped this crap.
If there are good ideas implemented by Apple or Micrsoft of course they will borrow from each other.