Where does Windows 7 leave Apple?

[tjbackstage]

But I have tried it in person, just not on one of my own personal computers. What I said is based off of my research and use of Windows 7, and nothing I said was based off of assumptions. Good point about the netbooks though, gagnerants.

 

[DaveyL]

New Windows ..... New Problems.


I Love My Big Mac.

 

[ideviouz]

Windows 7 is a step in the right direction/what Vista should've been. I built my own gaming rig, running W7 Beta right now. It does it's job well, but is still aesthetically tacky. My older brother has the non-unibody MBP, and I find it to be a joy to use. I think Apple has the smoothest OS implementation as far as notebooks, but for desktops, it's really up to preference.

 

[osxx]

I will not change as to the fact I use both OSX and XP currently
but I will say W7 in beta seems better than Vista and competition
is always good it forces the other camp to improve or fall behind.
I think Microsoft offering 5 versions is not going to help their pr.
It may in fact bring more customers to Apple.

 

[the8thark]

What does this mean for apple.

It means they get to advertise themselves as the only machine capable of using all the new systems (W7, 10.5.6 and the latest linux build). And there is a lot of people who would want to use more than one of said systems, without buying 2 computers or going to the trouble of a hackintosh.

Apple I think need to stop the "mac is better than PC" adds. They had their time and were good, but now I think Apple need to embrace W7. I know they don't want to support it officially, but if it means more hardware sales then so be it.

I think S.Jobs (or his successor) needs to buddy up with the guys at MS and get their apps fully integrated with the MS apps so it's easy to have work flow from OS to OS, on the same machine. And if people start to realise this, they might end up realising 1 good Apple is better than the cheapest apple + a PC.

 

[kman445]

i will be getting, but running it on my mac. As much as i love mac, its hard to go without windows (the few programs not on mac, and of course, games).

 

[Win+Mac_Dude]

I installed Windows 7 Beta in January. I used my laptop that's just been sitting around since I finally bought a gaming rig. So far, I am impressed. It's as if they put Vista on a treadmill and made it lean, mean, and it sweated out a lot of junk.

As for the famed UAC, I haven't heard a peep out of it except once when installing Avast.

The hardware I'm using is from 2006. It's a Dell notebook.
-----------------------------------
Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M65

Intel Centrino Duo T2600 2.16GHz
2 GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro FX350M 256 MB graphics
200 GB 7200RPM HDD
-----------------------------------

Installation was a breeze, under 30 mins, and it even downloaded and installed the correct and current drivers for all the hardware (!). Instead of having to reformat the drive it moved all of the old contents of the drive to a folder called "windows.old" so that you could access all your old stuff even with a "clean" installation.

Next was Office 2007.

Tried installing Adobe CS2 for Windows, that did not go so hot. The installer caused very strange behavior and only partially finished before dying. At that time I did not know CS2 is not compatible with Win Vista, and therefore will not work with Win 7. I have no reason to upgrade to CS4 yet, so shucks.

Installed games that I know for sure worked well with high FPS when XP was on there, so we'll see how that goes. This includes Half-Life 2, Halo, Call of Duty 4, and Fear. I am getting the performance I expect, if not more.

After copying all my music out of "windows.old" and putting it in the provided Music folder, I didn't have to tell Media Player to look for new music. It did it all on its own and FAST. I opened media Player and it was all there, album art included. Even scrolling down through all the albums was great. XP would lag a little bit as the album art loaded while scrolling down, but Win 7 flies through it all.

Search is incredibly fast. Just start typing something and it will already have found it before you're done. This is surprising because the file system Win 7 uses is still NTFS - which is a fine file system, but MS was and still is developing a more advanced file system that has become known as WinFS. This was supposed to go with Win Vista but MS put it back in the incubator.

In summary, I believe Win 7 is very stable, lightweight, and fast - faster than XP --- which it SHOULD be! Vista was like one step forward in design and two steps back in operation. Win 7 (so far) is nothing but forward in my humble opinion. Last week I switched the theme to Win classic, shiny interfaces do nothing for me, including Mac OS. You could say I'm pretty utilitarian.

What does this mean for Microsoft? It means that with Vista they are repeating their past with Win Me (what a disaster), only to come out with something better a bit later. Will it convince mac users to switch? No. Just like you won't get a Pepsi person to switch to Coke, these two OSs have their fans and die-hard backers. Windows will always have its appeal since it will run on practically anything. Heck, I run windows 3.1 on my toaster. Mac OS will always have its appeal: sleek, refined, and just georgeous. But in the end, does a photo turn out better edited either one, No.

I see Win 7 as a"win" for Microsoft, although I was highly expecting WinFS to be incorperated. The way they are rolling this OS out in beta to the public is awesome. Any little quirks you notice, you can send up a comment, and likely there will be a stream of updates coming down the pipe every day you shut down. Hopefully by the time they can say the beta is done cooking on the hundreds of thousands of PCs running it, it will be done enough for all who want it.

I am sure there are some on this forum that only see snake oil when they see Windows, but to those I say: open your eyes.

 

[cwa107]

I am sure there are some on this forum that only see snake oil when they see Windows, but to those I say: open your eyes.

While I agree with you that Windows 7 is a great step forward by Microsoft, I do see it as nothing more than a spit shine on Vista, because that's really all it is.

The NT kernel really hasn't changed all that much from Windows 2000. It's multi-processing capable, but it was designed in an era when 2 processors were rare, and 4 was practically unheard of (except on servers). So, while it is able to assign processor affinity to tasks, it's not a true preemptive, multiprocessing operating system.

In this day and age, that is of concern. As CPUs continue to move toward massive parallelism as a form of increasing processing power, an OS that can dynamically off-load tasks between processors (cores) grows more important. Apple is addressing this with Grand Central in Snow Leopard, and to a lesser extent, OpenCL. What I've seen from Microsoft in Windows 7 is a refinement of the UI, an overall emphasis on trimming down the footprint of the OS, but no fundamental changes.

Unfortunately, Microsoft won't be making the mistake of doing a 6 year development cycle between OS releases again. So, you can count on a continuing refinement of the OS, but nothing earth-shattering. What should be really interesting is how they market Win7. They can't tout many huge changes, because there really aren't any. So, all they can do is throw Vista under the bus and take the stance that they finally fixed it - and for that they'll want at least $200 in a retail version, thank you very much.

It was also disheartening to see that Microsoft still can't seem to get away from the 6 different versions of the OS that has confused so many consumers. I think they did it best with Windows XP - make a Home version and a "Pro" version, for those that want to have "the best". I'm still not clear on the logic here.

With all that said, taken at face value, Windows 7 does compare much better with OS X (the current version). I do think it's fast and stable, and will certainly be more accepted in corporate circles. My company is already considering it, and it's still in beta. And in light of the current economic conditions, it was a smart move on Microsoft's part to slim down the overall footprint - that will mean less stringent hardware requirements, a big plus for more conservative companies (like mine) who simply can't afford to replace all of their hardware.

 

[Win+Mac_Dude]

While I agree with you that Windows 7 is a great step forward by Microsoft, I do see it as nothing more than a spit shine on Vista, because that's really all it is.

No man yea. I know thats all it is. It's not groundbreaking in any sense. And I think they were high when they concluded that multiple "versions" of the same thing made it an easy choice for consumers who just know how to check their Gmail.

When all you really wanted was peanut butter, they offer standard, creamy, extra creamy, creamy and nutty, creamy with marshmallow fluff, and extra creamy nutty crunch.

 

[knightjp]

Windows 7 is definitely an improvement when compared to Vista. I have to say that by far, XP still remains the best working contender from MS lineup.
When I briefly used Windows 7, it worked very well, even on old hardware.

The one thing I always enjoyed about the Mac OS is that still works so well on old machines, even when there is a new release. It only shows the power of Apple's hardware.
OK.. I'll admit that Leopard had a few issues due to it not working on machines that had processors lower than 867 Mhz; but on my old G4 eMac 1 Ghz, it worked well. So well and provided you put in about 1 GB or more of ram, you'll never complain.

With Vista, Microsoft had lost it completely. New hardware would suddenly show loss of speed and would start to hang quite frequently.
I guess now MS has learned that just because they have the monopoly in 90% of computer OS market, every time they release a new Windows, people aren't going to be bullied into buying it just because its the latest.

 

[Leukeh]

I might switch if it is a decent OS, but only because I need a new laptop and you can buy them so cheap.

/life of a student.

 

[bikalpapaudel]

For one lets just face it by this time and age most computer literate people can use both OS without much issue.

We can stop the OS wars now.

One of the best things I've come across lately.

 

[knightjp]

My bro recently bought a new Toshiba. A nice machine with good nVidia graphics, etc.... The only drawback is that it had Vista. My bro is not a fan of Vista.
We just couldn't believe that even with 2GB of ram, how slow the machine became after just a weeks usage. The one fact he immediately claimed then was that my eMac, on which I installed Leopard, ran whole lot more better, faster and smoother. Leopard is therefore the better one than Vista.

He then decided to go in for either Ubuntu, but since he is a Flight Sim fan, he needed a Windows machine. He opted for Windows 7 as soon as he found out about it. I claimed that it was just Vista in disguise. To be honest, you need about 2 GB ram to run Windows 7 without flaws, but as far as it goes, Windows 7 is an improvement. The Toshiba is running smooth and easy.

 

[Mr Macintosh]

If someone (like me,) is completely dug hard into Mac OS X, there is absolutely NO point for them to switch to Windows. In my opinion, Microsoft copied what Apple had out on their Macs before Windows 7 came out! They've copied Apple, so anyone who owns Windows 7 and likes it, loves Mac more - they just may not know it!

And besides, those Microsoft Windows users are ALWAYS after transformation packs to make their Windows PC's look like the brilliant Macs we are all working from! To the extent of my knowledge, there is no transformation pack which will change the Leopard theme to Vista's as none of us want such a horrid thing!

(Sorry if I offended anyone in the process of blurting that out, I just had to let it out somewhere!)

 

[knightjp]

To the extent of my knowledge, there is no transformation pack which will change the Leopard theme to Vista's as none of us want such a horrid thing!

Heaven forbid such a thing ever taking place..... I can't imagine who would want someone to change their theme to something like XP or worse "Vista"..

 

[GinoLicious]

I dont see people who have been using macs for a while will hop over to the windows 7. Now i have been running the Windows 7 beta on my macbook for several weeks now, and too be honest I dont find anything too special with it. Its basically a vista that didnt suck as much. Kinda like Windows 2000 and ME. Bascially if you have been using mac osx for a while, there would really be a need to change over.

 

[the8thark]

I agree with most users here there's no need to reverse switch if you're entrenched in OS X. But Wundows 7 would make me feel a whole better using bootcamp when I have to.

Actually to mew Windows 7 is great because though OS X is better, W7 is new, innovative and actually something different for a change. But Apple has been cutting edge, new and innovative for years, so they can't win. People will still say they're copying Apple if not in products, then in spirit.

Anyways I think W7 is not the best thing ever, but a great means to an end. This being the thing after W7. But great things do not happen over night. And I'm glad MS finally is on the right track.

 

[JuanGuapo]

What are you guys talking about?! The best feature in Vista is the patented delayed shutdown feature.....it gives you an extra 5-10min to power off the computer AFTER you clicked Shut Down--what a nifty feature! I haven't really figured out how it helps me, but when I do you can be sure I'll be even happier w/ Vista!

 

[WolfsBane]

I keep an open mind in such matters. I used to be a heavy MS DOS and Windows user back in the early days. IMO, Microsoft just got too big, and too compromising in the quality of it's products. Everything they put out is more window dressing that substance underneath. And foot print/RAM usage is horrendous. After Windows XP, and NT4, I have not seen an OS that Microsoft has put out that I could truly call a quality controlled product. I'm not, at all, a fan of their Windows Server products, (on the surface, it may seem like a great cost cutting approach and it may seem fantastic for Systems Administrators, but it is a totally frustrating piece of garbage to the end user, and this feedback has been extremely consistent across various sized companies, specially those mating the OS to a thin client system). By all accounts, Windows 7 rely heavily on the fundamental infrastructure of Vista. That is not particularly encouraging, but I'll hold out hope that the people at Microsoft have decided to quit the lazy/corners cutting approach and finally put out a product worth bothering with.

 

[bad.heron]

Windows 7 is microsofts way of addressing the problems in Vista and they have a big job to do.