Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista

An anonymous reader writes "With Macworld set to start Jan. 8, InformationWeek has a detailed comparison that pits Mac OS X against Vista. According to reviewer John Welch, OS X wins hands down. The important point: he doesn't say Vista is bad, just that technically speaking, OS X remains way ahead. Do you agree?"

It doesn't matter

Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.

As a cross-platform developer (hail Qt!), I recently got a MacBook Pro so I could run both OS X and Windows on the road, and I will admit, the Mac has remained booted into OS X the vast majority of time. This is admittedly do to mostly Universal Binary testing, but I could easily see that if I wanted to, I could run my day-do-day stuff purely on OS X. Except for its continued mouse-happy interface (come on, make ALL of those popup dialogs keyboard accessible!), when running on a fast machine OS X is very nice.

At the end of the day though, I can do MORE stuff on Windows, and Vista will be no exception.

Re:It doesn't matter

come on, make ALL of those popup dialogs keyboard accessible!

They are.
Use [tab] to select and [space] to "click". You need to look after the faint blue highlight around the button though, and if you press [Enter], the blue button is selected, not the higlight.

Re:It doesn't matter

Use [tab] to select and [space] to "click".

Not by default. First you have to go into the Keyboard & Mouse preferences and select the full keyboard access for "All controls".

Re:It doesn't matter

And it's worth pointing out that there's a reason for that. Generally, under MacOS X, anything 'advanced' is off by default. If you're the sort of person who wants to use keyboard shortcuts then you're the sort of person who's able to go to the preferences and activate them.

Conversely, on Windows, in general *everything* is enabled at start up. Confuses the hell out of novice users. The Mac approach - simplicity and usability with the option for power use - wins out every time.

Re:It doesn't matter

People stop being noobs by exploring the options and prefs dialogs, not by fumbling around. I doubt many people are able to figure out which random keypress triggered the action they wanted. But with something as complex as Windows or OS X, you can always discover new features by digging through the preference panes. THat is the experimentation that really helps.

Re:It doesn't matter

Except it confuses the hell out of the power users coming from Windows, ya know, the ones (like me) that don't know it can even be turned on.

Oh, for crying out loud... if you're a power user, and confused, R-T-F-M! Or visit a web forum, like Mac OSX Hints [macosxhints.com] or better, google's Mac search page [google.com]. Or maybe you're not really a power user, just well-adapted to using windows--I've noted the distinction, people who understand how to do things with windows really well, but aren't clear on why it works that way.

I'm constantly amazed at how people switch to a graphic interface and command line that is widely reputed to be "better" and yet expect it to work just like the one they abandoned.

Re:It doesn't matter

First you have to go into the Keyboard & Mouse preferences and select the full keyboard access for "All controls".

With an onerous requirement like that, I can see how it's a complete non-starter.

Re:It doesn't matter

Different platforms, different programs, different needs.

I think it was more on the grandparents post on the idea that the fact that Vista can run more games and application.

But it is a moot point if it can't run the one application I need it to run. The fact that it can run more may not be the right tool for the right job. Like having a swiss army knife when you really need a plain phillips head screw driver.

Helpful Mac Enthusiasts...

Highlight and [cmd]- C to take data from X11 to the apple side.

Hold down [opt] and click to paste from the apple side into X11 (That's the middle-click emulation)

I had this question earlier today, and looked it up.

Re:It doesn't matter

Final Cut Pro is making more and more inroads on Avid's territory due to the fact that it is just so much more cost-effective. Avid is a system with machines in racks in a term gear room. Final Cut Pro is a Mac tower with some displays and an editing keyboard. Avid is still used more, I know this, but Final Cut is a very attractive alternative. We use both daily at CNN.

Re:It doesn't matter

however, like all programs that makes a task 'easy' tends to direct the user along it's prescribed method for doing the task.

OK, I think you're confusing iMovie (free, or nearly) with FCP ($300 - $1200 or so, depending on discounts). Final Cut is not easy, nor prescriptive. I can edit, colour correct, audio edit, capture, etc. in dozens of ways, depending on workflow and habits. In fact, other than media management and settings (both of which SUCK on FCP), it's pretty much like Avid's functionality--and complexity.

None of what it accomplishes can't be done using other programs. And I feel more in control picking and chosing components. Plus, the existence of 'Final Cut Pro' on the Mac platform crowds out and eliminates the motivation for other people to come in and develop competing products.

Well, one can build a house with a can opener and a rock, but who wants to? FCP is the rage in the industry because it has an excellent balance of usability, reliability, and power, and it scales fairly well, including sliding into many an established workflow, especially now that it handles multiple cameras and better formats. No other programs offer that combination. In a sense, it breaks the rule of "cheap, fast, good: pick two." THATS why it dominates on the Mac, when Premiere and Avid were well entrenched leaders for... well, a decade. They dropped the ball.

I also cannot justify spending the tons of money for a new Macintosh, and all the new software I'd have to buy to get equivalent performance with other tasks.

Well, I guess you aren't billing $80/hr as an editor. Downtime (do you hear me, cinelerra?!) is costly, and in an afternoon of lost business, you've lost any price advantages; at 20 minutes per day of lost productivity, over the course of a year, well, that's just bad math, because at 40 weeks per year, that's $4800 you've sacrificed to the gods of false frugality.

Re:It doesn't matter

Agreed. Technically, you can do more stuff on Windows -- just as you can technically go more places in a SUV than you can in a sedan. But in reality, you never end up taking advantage of every little feature, relying instead on a core library of features. And when it comes to that "core library", Windows can't touch Mac OS X.

Re:It doesn't matter

Off topic a little (okay, a lot), but your comment applies to programming languages as well. When I was coding for the MCS6502 on an Apple ][ in 1978 or so, I had every instruction, every variation, every addressing mode in my head. The code just flowed. No need to waste time referring to documentation once I had learned the instruction set ... my fingers never left the keyboard.

Flash forward twenty nine years. Nowadays, programming environments are so complex (I won't use the term "sophisticated", necessarily) that no mere human mind can easily encompass them in their entirety. Yes, there may be a function that does exactly what you want, but odds are you won't remember it's there (if you ever did know) and will just write it yourself anyway. Most developers I know (myself included) settle for a "core library" of features and functions in a particular language, functions that do the majority of what we need. To do otherwise would mean continually searching through programming manuals trying to find some little-used feature which might (or might not!) actually be there and might (or might not!) do what you really want. Not worth the effort: just do it yourself and get it over with.

Language and operating system designers rationalize the insane complexity of their creations by saying, "yes, it's true, no programmer/user will ever use all of what we provide, but the subset of features each programmer/user chooses will be different, so we have to put in the kitchen sink." Now, that is true to a degree, but I think that in many cases they have simply gone too far and productivity has actually suffered as a result. At the very least, a large percentage of their oh-so-valuable features go unused by a large percentage of users.

The reality is that it is usually the marketing departments that demand more and more stuff be added in order to make their claims of "ours is new and improved!" so they can achieve some unquantifiable degree of "market differentiation".

Re:It doesn't matter

Now, last I checked I breathe air, produce sperm which contain human genetic codes, and am also in an intimate relationship with a human so I'm pretty sure I'm a person.

I can test that. It'll only take a minute; I have the gom jabbar right here.

Re:It doesn't matter

"As a cross-platform developer"

I assume you realize you represent less than 1% of the computer using public's needs/wants as a cross platform developer (most of them wouldn't even know what that means).

"At the end of the day though, I can do MORE stuff on Windows, and Vista will be no exception."

Like what? You may be right, but usually in a "discussion" thread you have to actually put up examples. My mom used to use Word, a browser and an E-mail app on her old Dell. With a Mac she now plugs in her digital camera to get photos as soon as I told her she didn't have to do a thing outside of plugging in the camera to the machine (no driver installs, no app installs), and she's been playing with iMovie, something she wouldn't have dreamed she could have done so easily on a Windows machine.

So, while you may be right, I think the majority of the computer using public couldn't care less about your statement, and more about what they want to do rather than what they can do. Remember, I may admit you are right (without examples that would be pertinent to the general public I can't argue anything), but for most people, OS X and their bundled apps are going to be far more rewarding, fun, stress free than anything similar on Vista. For games, BootCamp!

Re:It doesn't matter

I don't remember where I read it, but I think any version of Vista can be run inside a VM. What you can't do is running multiple instances of one licence of Vista inside a VM (also one licence of vista and the same licence running simultaneously inside a vm), unless you use the ultimate edition.

Re:It doesn't matter

The thing about PC gaming is that games on PC don't really use the operating system at all

Except for the sound, video, keyboard, mouse, monitor, network card, hdd, cd/dvd and other drivers the OS provides.

Windows isn't just the fancy GUI, it's a standard interface to non-standard hardware. Anyone who used DOS for gaming will remember the absolute nightmare of getting sound, video, network and CD drivers all running for every game.

Re:It doesn't matter

What the parent is trying to say is that games use DirectX to access sound, video, network and CD drivers, basically. If the DirectX API was ported, it wouldn't matter much to a game what OS it was running on because all it cares about is the DirectX API calls. This is the idea behind cross-platform game APIs, as well as OpenGL etc.

Vendor support

Technical superiority doesn't mean as much when you can't get vendor support. This is sad but true. For a long while to come Vista will enjoy all the attention and benefits of a larger install base regardless of technical merits (or lack thereof).

Tuesday!

I think it will be fair to say, wait till Tuesday.

Why not wait for Leopard?!

Isn't this strange. Why don't they wait for the just-around-the-corner Leopard to compare with Vista. At least they would be comparing apple with oranges instead of pineapples and watermelons! ;-)

Re:Why not wait for Leopard?!

it's more like comparing Apples with lemons.

Re:Because Tiger is already better.

Care to enumerate them?

I can name a few off the top of my head:

• OpenStep style application packages - application install and uninstall easily, application on removable media save preferences on local machines so you can move one installed app back and forth between machines, resources are easy to find so extracting an image or sound is easy, fat binaries are cake, I can IM an application to someone on a different chip architecture even and it just works without having to find installers
• Upgrade via firewire - I now run both Windows and Linux in VMs on top of OS X, mostly because of this feature. Plug in a cable to my old machine and click a button. All my files, applications, user accounts, settings, certificates, everything migrates seamlessly while I go for coffee and a bagel. Migrating Windows or Linux to a new machine takes significant time, sometimes weeks, and nontrivial effort, (or did until I installed them in VMs. Now full installs of those OS's come with me as well.)
• System services - applications and plug-ins can easily share functionality across all applications. I only have to train one spelling checker and it works in my mail, web browser, word processor, terminals, pro layout app, photoshop, chat client, etc. The same goes for grammar checking, language translations, a pile of scripts, statistics on text like word count, automated bibliography entries, dictionary and thesaurus lookups, online lookups at numerous references, etc. Writing the same functionality over and over again for each app is outdated. Easily re-implementable libraries like Kparts on KDE only work if the programmer knows beforehand about the library, so no one uses them. Services on OS X requires no work on the part of a given app developer. The maintainers of subethaedit have never heard of omnidictionary. The developers of omnidictionary probably never considered subethaedit users. But in subethaedit I can still easily perform online dictionary lookups at a dozen different dictionaries with a single key combo. Losing this would be disasterous to my everyday workflow.
• Save to PDF from every application.
• Expose for easily finding and switching to one of my two dozen or more of windows.
• user account encryption that both works and does not ever get in my way.
• Ubiquitous application of zero-conf for local discovery of chat, music streaming, filesharing, collaboration tools, etc.
• Automater - I know I didn't think I'd use it either, but this is the fastest way I've ever found to do things like add a watermark to every page in a PDF when I don't have the source file. It is also the only scripting some nontechnical coworkers have ever managed to use. Before it became available they would sit an rename 500 files by hand, rather than spending 60 seconds writing a script.

I'm sure there are more items I'm forgetting and again I want to stress that OS X is not ahead in all areas and can really benefit from improvements. It is just that some of these things have been on OS X for quite a while and most Linux developers I talk to don't even recognize the value in them. A lot of them are things that you can work around on Linux, or hack something that works in one instance, but until they are available to average and novice users, they are just ignored anyway. I'd love to see Linux catch up to OS X on the desktop, I just don't anticipate it happening anytime soon. I don't think Linux developers are willing to make some of the hard choices needed or will be willing to accept complexity on the server for the sake of making Linux nice on the desktop.

.NET

In my opinion the only place where Windows is really far ahead of Mac OS X is .NET. Or more specifically: C# 2.0. C# is simply the nicest programming language and .NET the most consistent and easiest API that I've ever used. I went from a Java and Obj-C advocate to a C# maniac in about one month of using it. The biggest drawback with .NET is Visual BASIC which is horribly verbose and seems to attract idiot developers.

I think it would be great if Apple would adopt C# as the future of development on Mac OS X. I hate to say this but in comparison Objective-C 2.0 looks positively dated.

Other than .NET I think Mac OS X 10.4 and the up-comming 10.5 are still much better operating systems than Vista. Mac OS X is more consistent, nicer to use and is more stable than any version of Windows I've ever seen.

Re:Ever used Python, OCaml, Common Lisp, Smalltalk

C# 2.0 is lightyears ahead of Java. But compared to other languages, Java shows signs of severe mental retardation, and C# 2.0 looks like a preschooler.

Unfortunately I have to develop software in the real world. This (for the most part anyway) completely rules out every language you suggested. It sounds like you lack experience programming in the real world.

In the past I have worked with trading companies on various exchanges (FTSE in London, NYSE in New York, CBOE & CME in Chicago, etc.). It doesn't get much more "real world" than winging around millions of dollars, pounds, and euros electronically in markets where seconds can mean the difference between profit and loss. Many of the infrastructure components for the real-time trading systems used were written in Python (the speed of development and platform flexibility made it invaluable), so your notion that Python programming isn't done in "the real world" is more than a little misguided. Of course, if your "real world" is limited to the subset of computers running Microsoft Windows, then I can understand how your impressions of "real-world" computing may have been skewed.

Of course, I quite like Ruby, but Python is very nice for what it does, and has many more real-world applications already in use than you realize.

I don't know about Java

I don't know about Java, but you can do much of this in .NET:

      1. Enumerate all the subclasses of a given class, or classes that implement a particular interface, including those supplied in plug-ins, at runtime.

** You can, through reflection

      2. Call methods by name.

** You can, through reflection

      3. Query whether a delegate object implements a given method, allowing for informal protocols.

** You can, through reflection

      4. Handle the case where an object tries to call a method on my object that doesn't exist, to allow the simple creation of generic proxy objects.

** That can never happen in C#

      5. Add methods to a class, even if it's part of the standard library and I don't have the source code (I can even do this at runtime, although it's messier, and I haven't ever needed to).

** What's wrong with inheritance?

      6. Separate the allocation and initialisation of an object into separate methods, to allow different allocation policies to be implemented (e.g. pools for commonly re-cycled objects) transparently to users of the class.

** Not needed in .NET by design. You can't allocate anything on your own.

Wow, that wasn't biased, LOL...

...I don't think I've ever seen so many ad hominem attacks against a non hominem. ;)

Saying that OSX is better than Vista because OSX hasn't changed its UI much since 2001 (at least regarding buttons) and Vista has changed the look of the window bar buttons? That's just stupid.

Spending most of the first page of the article beating the dead horse of Cairo promises regarding WinFS and other things which have nothing to do with comparing Vista to OSX?

I'd much rather read an article by a Linux or Windows fanboy bashing each other unapologetically than listen to that author say "I'm going to compare A and B" and then spend half their time talking about C.

Solving the world's problems with vista

f you believe all the hype, installing the new Windows Vista operating system will solve world famine, end the AIDS crisis and bring about world peace.

If those windows zombie botnets were used for scientific work instead of sending spam I'm sure it would in fact have a positive impact.

The Mac Vista Upgrade...

I been figuring out how to upgrade my Windows XP system to run Windows Vista. I can spend a bit of money on old technology that won't upgrade to a future system. I can spend a lot of money on current technology that will be outdated in the next year or two but some components will upgrade to a future system. Or I can spend too much money for a brand new system that might be good for the next five years. Ironically, if I need an entire new system, I just might get a Mac to run Windows Vista. Go figure.

Inactive windows - he's got it wrong

TFA has quite a bit about how OS X does a better job of making it clear which windows are active/inactive etc.

His example is of Safari in the background of something else, and the Back/Forward/Reload/Stop buttons being greyed out. On Vista, he points to the similar buttons still being full colour and equating that to confusion.

The only reason his Safari buttons are grey is because he hasn't loaded a web page and has nothing to go back to, reload or stop. In OS X, with a page loaded those buttons would indeed look active. Yes, I just tested ;)

Re:Inactive windows - he's got it wrong

I'm not sure how well the author has articulated his point. The safari buttons stay active because you can actually click them at any time from any window (including when safari is not the active application.) This behaviour exists in a few applications but only where it's useful. E.g. you can change tracks in iTunes without activating iTunes. However in Safari when back/forward is pressed it's logical to switch to the application. It's not that they are highlighted and non-functional, which is a past windows trait.

Personally I find the actual issue with XP or Vista is that there is simply too much over stimulation on the screen, a user is desensitised to the bold interface and thus the OS requires more brazen efforts to gather attention when it's required in a different area of the screen. This is why windows users find that all the mac windows look grey and unsubstantial (this is also why mac users can tolerate many windows on the screen at once). Opposingly mac users find that windows is excessively clunky and child-like in appearance (hence terms for XP such as Fisher-Price). The excessively bold interface of windows leads users to maximise each window otherwise they can't concentrate on the task at hand.

OS X would be way ahead;;;

if I could buy the DVD and install it on any computer. At least Apple could let any distributer buy the software to install on a computer with the required EFI chip instead of locking it down only to their hardware. Until Jobs stop this it's "mine, mine, mine!" idealogue with Apple OS's they will always have a limited marketplace. I predict the use of bootcamp to boot winXP on a mac will kill the Mac OS in one year. My mac frind now use winXP 99% of the time on his mac intel.

Re:OS X would be way ahead - wrong

You should realize that one of the top features of a Mac system is that things work well together -- OS, software, and hardware. This is due to a hell of a lot of QA testing on Apple's part, and I just cannot fault them for it one bit. On the other hand, just releasing a DVD for people to install on whatever frankenbox they've cobbled together (or whatever cost-cutting box Dell sells now for $500) will mean the OS and software will no longer "just work" -- it'll turn into the driver/hardware support nightmare that Windows has enjoyed for quite some time. Given the beast that MSFT has helped create in terms of hardware diversity, there is now simply no way MSFT and/or anyone else can do the level of QA Apple performs -- at least not where the software would be meaningfully improved. I'd rather never see this happen to OS X, and if that means you turn your back on OS X as a result, that'd be just fine here. [shrug]

Replace Windows when I can

Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.

Most businesses don't care about games. As Microsoft's continued move to game consoles helps my strategies more, and more. Most businesses want to have easy access to their financial information and sell what they have. For the small business owner OS X is ideal, and I have deployed several iMac Core 2 Duos at business sites, replacing the far dated XP/Dos systems. In pharmacies we often deploy Linux based servers that run their core applications, and write scripts for OS X that automatically bring up the login to their Linux box to run their terminal applications via SSH.

I have been working on Windows replacement strategies for 3 years, and have so far converted more than %20 of my customer base from windows to another platform, mostly OS X and Linux. One or 2 scenarios involve FreeBSD, and Solaris. The next step is finding solutions to replace, and convert data from 3rd party software vendors that have little, or no support, and attempt to charge for support when their software is corroded with bugs. Ridding of these shoddy software vendors are my next target, which will cover %60 of my user base, which is about 800 businesses in Mississippi.

The replacement costs, or TCO is as estimated.

Average Dell = $700
Windows Costs = $250
Yearly Crap Cleaning = $300 (per machine)

Replacement options:
Average iMac = $1200
Average Linux Costs = $40
Yearly Maintenance = $40 (per machine if at all)

As for Vista, its happy hunting, and fair game for me. The TCO of Vista will be so high for many small businesses that when they see the numbers they will more than likely convert quickly. Microsoft continues yet again to hack off their own foot in a Monty Python skit while claiming "Its just a flesh wound", while I will continue the battle, and the fight will be mine.

of getting a fair comparison

I don't believe it's possible to get a fair comparison of two so completely different things unless you have been forced to use both of them for an extended period of time and have truly given them both a chance.

I am in that position where I work, and I have to support both macs and PCs in the desktop support world. For me what it all comes down to is simplicity of use. Just pulling an example out of thin air... 99% of mac software runs as non-admin, and better than 70% will run as a very restricted user. (kids) 98% of software can be installed as a non-admin so long as you know the admin l/p. Then we have windows. 0% of software can be installed as a non-admin, even if you know the admin l/p. After that, 80% of it requires you to be logged in as an administrator. So make them an administrator you say? (like THAT is a good idea in a school!) In OS X that is one check box and takes 15 seconds to do. I have a sheet of paper somewhere around here with all the steps needed to promote a user in Windows, I was astounded by what the PC tech said had to be done. Anyone that says windows is easier to use needs a closed door meeting with a baseball bat. When it all comes down to it, the amount of software available isn't truly what's important, it's how easy, pleasant, and non-frustrating the system is that actually matters to a lot of people, tho they may not admit it. Having a flying car isn't so great if it takes you 45 minutes to get it into the air every day and is prone to running into buildings. I admit I get a little personal enjoyment when I see a windows user is just totally frustrated and ranting and I say well you know how we can fix that? and they scream back, "Don't tell me about macs, I don't want to hear it. I *LIKE* my pc!!!" Yessir, I can see that, looks like you've having a great time. The 5% of them that finally switch come to me later and say why didn't you tell me about this before? I triiiiiied.....

They're different...

I will certainly admit that there are a lot of things to like about OS X, and for some people, it will be the better choice. For others, Windows is better, and Vista is a big step forward.

The article comes across as "Why OS X is better than Vista" instead of "Comparison of OS X and Vista". But that's par for the course. The author does have some valid comments about areas that could have been done better in Vista.

I do disagree on some of the evaluations of Vista's merits. The most misunderstood area is User Access Control.

Not that UAC is perfect -- I've got a nice list of things I don't like about it. For example, if the system incorrectly detects that a program probably needs to run as Admin, it is a bit of a pain to convince the system to just run it normally. And there aren't any good tools for working with UAC from the command line (i.e. I want an equivalent to Unix su). I've written some myself, but they really should have been included with the system. And some tasks that should be able to be done by accepting one UAC prompt end up requiring 5 or 6.

However, the author of the article passes UAC off as useless and annoying. Well, it is annoying, but so is finding my car keys every time I want to drive my car. But it is definitely not useless - just misunderstood.

UAC consists of three mechanisms, along with related tools for configuring them:

1. The shell of an Administrator can optionally be run with reduced permissions. This means that if UAC is enabled, the user's shell (explorer.exe) will drop privileges when it is initialized (after the user logs on). In other words, the shell tells the kernel that even though it is running under the account of an Administrator, the kernel should deny any requests to use administrator privileges, and should not grant any access to resources based on the user's membership in the Administrators group.

2. There is a mechanism to regain administrator privileges so that administrative tasks can still be performed. If you are logged on as a user in the Administrators group, this mechanism requires a confirmation dialog (ok/cancel). If you are logged on as an unprivileged user, this mechanism requires a username + password of an administrator ("over the shoulder login").

Note that this mechanism must be protected from abuse. Potential abuses include: keyloggers (capture the administrator's password), event injection (simulate a mouse-click or keyboard event to respond to the confirmation dialog automatically), and luring (put a malicious executable with the same name as a trusted executable into the user's path, then trick the user into trying to run the trusted executable). Protecting against these abuses leads to a bit more inconvenience, but a lot more safety. This is why nothing else can be done while the UAC prompt is active -- the UAC prompt turns on some security features to protect against keyloggers and event injection. This is something that is more annoying than OS X's system, but also significantly more secure.

3. There is a mechanism to detect programs that require administrator privileges. Vista-aware applications include a manifest that tells the program loader whether administrator privileges are required. Vista also tries to automatically detect non-Vista-aware applications that require administrator privileges (such as installers). For now, this is a bit of a pain when it doesn't work, but in the future, this will end up working well. For example, as the author indicated, it becomes more challenging to install a pre-Vista application to your personal folder without help from an admin (Vista detects that the installer probably needs admin privileges). In the future, the installer will have a manifest telling Vista that it doesn't need admin privileges immediately, and will ask for them only if the user decides to install the app onto the system instead of to a personal folder.

What would you expect a /. reader to say?

I bought a black macbook this morning. Needed a powerfulish but portable dev server. Wanted black because the plastic probably won't stain with heavy use the way the white ones do. But I talked them down on price so as not to get ripped off.

It's now running Ubuntu. The new wireless card isn't supported. Setting up xmodmap has been painful and should be unnecessary (and it's still not as I'd like it) but even so - nothing else comes close.

New theme

Dear god, Outlook is ugly in that screenshot. I hope vista is 3rd-party themeable without replacing system DLLs.

Oops

Anyone who looks at my post history will see that I am a Mac zealot, but I have to correct a small bit of misinformation in the review.

He praises Mac OS X for dimming toolbar buttons when windows are in the background, using the example of a Safari window behind a Finder window. Unfortunately, the reason the Safari window's toolbar buttons are dimmed is not that it's in the background, but that it's not displaying any page. Put a Safari window displaying any page into the background and its toolbar buttons (unfortunately) stay active. The behavior he describes is application-specific.

For example, both the Finder and Path Finder [cocoatech.com] do the right thing.

There were other inconsistencies in the review. Two examples: First, he slammed Vista for requiring UAC approval for installations where it might not seem necessary, where OS X does the same thing. Second, he praised Vista's interface consistency, without mentioning the lack of consistency that has been typical of Mac OS X in recent years. (This lack of consistency, because it is strictly cosmetic and apps have remained well-executed, is something I think is OK or even valuable... but there are a whole lot of Mac users out there who violently disagree with me.)

People usually prefer What they're used to...

It's pretty clear that the author of the linked article is a mac user.

OSX is a good OS, but it's not without its problems. Apple still hasn't really figured out how to handle a mouse with more than one button despite having it thrust upon them by moving to a BSD foundation. (Seriously, how many mac users were using one-button mac mice a month after OSX came out?) Apple's about face on the "One mouse button is all anyone will ever need" issue was probably just to protect their hardware sales. The new apple mice are fairly nice. They're not those god-awful puck-mice from a couple years back at least.

OSX does do some pretty non-standard things itself. For example, try inserting a CD or other removeable media into your mac and then copying the file to your computer. Most people who have ever used a linux box, windows box, or *even* an Amiga for chrissake will drag the file off the CD and onto their hard-drive or desktop. Then they toss the CD because the data is on their machine now. If you do that in OSX and you'll find the link you just made now leads nowhere because OSX *didn't* copy the bloody file, it only linked to it. No other OS I've used does this, and it's bloody counterintuitive. What were they thinking? Don't even get me started about the OSX task-bar...

I use OSX when I have to, but I still prefer other OS's. The eye-candy just doesn't do enough for me and I've been using other OS's a lot longer, so I tend to prefer them. That's a personal bias, and I admit that. My point here is that OSX isn't perfection itself and mac fanatics need to accept the fact that some people have tried their chosen OS and weren't blown away by it. (Some people have even been forced to spend extended periods of time developing software on their beloved OSX without falling in love with it... Myself included) OSX was certainly a revolution for mac users, but do consider how primitive MacOS was before OSX came out. Heck, it didn't even have pre-emptive multi-tasking! OSX I can tolerate, but the old MacOS was truly wretched. That's why OSX is viewed as such a revolution. Consider that even Windows users had pre-emptive multi-tasking from windows95 on. Microsoft had their revolution about 5 years before Apple did. It's lucky for Apple that Vista isn't another one.

Vista not bad?

In the Microsoft world, if Vista stacks up against the current Apple offering and is not "bad" in comparison, why, that means that Vista is just absolutely fantabulous.

Good is a relative term, you know.

My $.02

I use Windows XP at work and OSX, FC3, Win2000 and XP at home. I am a heavy duty business user and student developer. I offer the following observations:
1. I use OSX primarily, on a pre-Intel iMac. Speed is good. System slowdowns are generally longer under Windows than OSX, but the 'pinwheel' in OSX drives me insane.
2. The UI and system administration tools in OSX are hands-dows way easier to use. I used every version of Windows from 3.1, and worked at a support desk in college - and once I learned OSX (ok, BSD) - style system maintenance and operation, I never went back. *NIX is far more discoverable and has a well-engineered feel that I like.
3. I have yet to run into any software package that I needed that did not have a counterpart on Mac.
4. I still have not played Half-Life 2. I do not need to, but I would like to, and I bought WinXP just to do so. I can't really blame Apple for this. In fact, Apple, by moving to Intel, has made it easier for their user base to access windows apps. Microsoft, by making it more difficult (from what I've read - haven't tried it yet) to run Vista in any kind of virtual environment is not really helping the user base much. Although they probably don't care about Mac users, there are many business reasons to support virtual environments, from posts I've seen on /.
5. Searching in OSX returns better results than WinXP or 2000.
6. Mac help, for system related issues, returns more relevant results than WinXP or 2000.
7. Mac hardware just works. I have a hetogenous network - my Mac has no problems, nor does my FC3 laptop. I have a dual-boot PC with WXP and 2000 - 2000 recognized my wirelss card and the built-in ethernet adapter. WXP doesn't have a driver for the built in. The wireless card has a driver, but cannot acquire a network address from my AirPort. Win2000 has no problems with the wirelss card or network address. The driver in both OSes is up to date. I should NOT have to put in this much effort, especially for supposedly supported hardware - it stuns me that 2000 is actually better at 'figuring out' what to do than XP. Needless to say, the Mac setup has never caused any problems for my Mac hardware.
8. Development - I do mostly Java and Ruby. Java runs pretty much identically on both boxes, but setting up newer versions of the Java environment is more difficult on Mac. Installing and configuring Ruby also requires a lot more effort. However, it is easier to troubleshoot in the Mac environment. XP and 2000, the installs seem to 'just work' but if they go wrong or there is a misconfiguration, it is a lot harder for me to figure out what went wrong.
9. Licensing - I can install my OSX CD/DVD on any Mac I have, no registration necessary. I do not do this, but I can. Windows XP, I installed and because it couldn't get on my network, I had to use the dial-in service to validate my copy of XP, which was a PITA.
10. I took C in college, working in a UNIX environment. It was amazing and taught me a ton. I took Java in college, working on a PC with NetBeans. Worked great. I used VBA to do corporate work and learned two things - first, an IDE is very nice, especially to learn UI implementation and second, VBA makes it way too easy to write crap code. You can write crappy Applescript too, but I've seen far less of it. Xcode is a nice balance and can hit multiple targets. I like it, although I've not done much Objective C work.
11. I like scripting and *NIX tools. Scripting is far easier in a *NIX-like environment than on Windows. Yes, there is Cygwin, but that was designed to remedy the lack of such tools in Windows.
12. C# for web development is, in a word, crap. Sure, it is easy to learn. Sure, it is free. Sure, the MS IDE is ok if you choose to use it. HOWEVER, it is so wrapped up in Microsoft-specific 'stuff' it sucks to use. Example - to simply change the color of a button in a web-form, I spent several hours working through my code to see what went wrong. I sent it to my professor, who told me it was fine and worked. I was mystified

gcc? bash? X support?

comparing osx with vista has to include also the level of usability for an a liettle bit more experienced user. can you open a terminal with bash in vista? compile and run code for Xorg? or is that oging to come when microsoft figures out how to implement this?

i never tried vista running, but from what i see from all the screenshots all oover the internet is basically: it has a new widget-style, some of the GUI elements are inspired form osx and diverse opensource apps but there is nothing "new" and really unique to vista.

The funny thing is...

By the end of the year Windows Vista will be on more computers then OS X. OS X may be better on a 1 on 1 camparison but the IT industry favours Windows, thus it will come out on top.

oh, boy

You can't determine whether something is usable by writing a review, you have to observe actual users and what problems they have. And in that regard, I have seen little indication that OS X is significantly better than Windows or Gnome. Just from observing my parents on some of the points discussed in the article, I noticed

* They keep getting confused about which application is active; among other things since the frontmost window may not correspond to the menu bar.

* Wireless configuration causes no end of problems for them: the configuration panel is confusing to them, and the Mac often picks the wrong wireless network even if it could easily figure out what the right one is.

* Having to confirm some System Preferences changes with a password is a feature that makes OS X more secure in a corporate environment, where random people may walk up to your desktop trying to change things; it's a nuisance in a home environment.

* The green button thingy is as unintuitive to them as it is to me.

That's just some off the top of my head; there are many other usability problems in OS X.

Not having tried Vista, I don't know whether OS X is "better than Vista" in terms of its UI, but I don't see that it's a breakthrough in usability and it doesn't seem to be better than XP for real-world users. I suspect something like "Sugar" may be way more usable than either OS X or Windows "for the rest of us".

In Vista's defense when the OS X zealot bites

Windows is...well, Windows is very eager to tell you what's going on. Constantly. Plug something in, and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message.

While I can agree of Windows traditionally being quite attention seeking, this is a poor example as it's often been useful for me to diagnose USB device or driver problems. Is he saying OS X doesn't tell when you that the USB connectivity is working? That seems like a quite big disadvantage here.

I'd have to say a little of both. Vista is definitely continuing the gradual convergence of the OS UI and the Internet Explorer UI.

Not moreso than in e.g. XP this time around. It's not any more similar now than before. And Vista has now finally separated IE from the shell, so it's surprising to hear this now, of all times. Obviously IE is quite similar in look & feel to the rest of the Windows OS; there's no reason it shouldn't be, as it belongs to the same OS, after all. I'm sure OS X users are happy if their apps use quite similar looks too.

Second, in my usage, the window transparency, while nice, is not what I'd call an "instantly obvious" indication of window status.

Yes, I agree about this, and it's basically my only beef with Vista and I'm sorry to see that stayed through the betas as it was remarked on before and MS was aware of it. They fixed the maximized window issue where the frame turned black (in order to blend better with the black of underscan areas on CRT's) and deviated from the theme colors. Now it's sort of a mix. This is a good thing, because on XP, you don't see if a window is maximized or not besides from it filling the screen. However, a maximized window on Windows has more different properties than that, such as not being able to be moved across multiple desktops. But unfortunately the active window isn't very visible; it gains an extra shadow effect and colored buttons, but not much more than that.

The UI is also lacking in some consistency, and MS has directly commented on the ShellRevealed blog on that in the past, in an unusually lengthy post, where they acknowledged the problem and gave some circumstances behind this.

The other thing I keep noticing about Vista's UI is how many times things just seem to be changed seemingly for no reason beyond "new version, gotta change stuff." You may have noticed in the first image in this article that "My Computer" has changed to just "Computer." I'm not sure what was served by this change, but there it is. There are a lot of things within Vista like this, where you just wonder, "why?"

Yes, however, just because you don't understand why doesn't imply there's no reason behind it. That's more or less a logical fallacy due to an overly aggressive opinion, and unfortunately the reviewer doesn't see and sitestep this mistake. Anyway, now that he did it, I believe the "My" was removed since it's been called superfluous and has often been brought up as a silly "Microsoft thing" in the past. I'm pretty sure I saw MS comment on this too in the past, although I don't exactly recall what they said about it then, right now.

This kind of "change for change's sake" is all over Vista. The window controls in Vista are smaller and flatter than in XP, and unlike XP, don't reach all the way to the top of the window anymore.

... but the bounding box of the target area still reaches to the top, right? I assume this is just a design change in Aero Basic (Glass still has them all to the top even visually), like OS X has also seen in the past. Why did Apple go from flat looks to brushed metal? Nothing is "broken" in the flat look, so why fix it? Personally, I don't know, and I don't care. I'll let the designers do their thing for branding because that's not going to stop anyway, even if grumpy reviewers sometimes want it to.

The Vista version? "Programs and Features."

Well, Linux wins...

On Vista you simply can't do a lot of the stuff you can on a standard Linux distribution today without installing a lot of extra programs. Which is a pain i a body-part or in your wallet.

And what about the price? It doesn't mean a lot to a Slashtoter who just bought a new graphics card for $4000, but most people actually care about the cost and rather have some nice dinners instead of paying for computers.

Linux might still be harder for a Window-user to use, but it's way easier for me to use than any Windows. I think that Linux will take Window's place as "The stuff that everyone has, always is complaining about, but it turns out that you can't use anything else because there is some program that is only for this system." in 10 years. And Mac... I don't get it and most people will never like it. >;)

OS X is way ahead of Vista - why?

"Most people just don't care about things like who has the superior kernel. People care far more about the parts they see and work with, so that is what I'm going to deal with here."

So immediately, this article is already biased to a "who has the best user interface" because people don't care about the rest of the operating system - I highly disagree, and while most people might not directly care, it still matters. Afterall, the most important parts of the OS are Process management, Memory management, Disk and file systems, Networking, Security, User interface, Device drivers - to only focus on one yet claim that OS X is miles ahead because of it seems a little biased. But even then, is it a fair review?

So lets have a look at what this article boils down to, at the start:

> Messages from the operating system: Windows by default gives you feedback when you do things, wheras Mac OS X doesn't have to because "it just works".

Some people like feedback, I plug in a mouse to a windows PC, and it "just works", just like their mac example, yet it tells me it's installed new hardware. I like the feedback, and if I don't, I can disable it. Some people like feedback, some people don't. If I plug in a stranger hardware device, it's nice to know what Windows had the drivers, rather than me needing to install them. Surely this would only be a flaw if the messages were forced upon you, but the fact you can turn them off and gives you the choice suggests to me it's not really a problem with the operating system.

> User Interface: It is difficult to tell which application is active because buttons are still coloured even when the window is not active. Furthermore, Vista is both consistenty yet not consistent at the same time, wheras Mac OS has great consistency.

I found this quite a long shot, I've never had problems telling windows apart because there is colour in a non-active window. I'm typing this in notepad right now, and firefox is behind me with coloured buttons. The window is darker because it's active, the window behind is lighter - people have been used to that, and I haven't heard of people having problems with it in Vista or Pre-vista. If you don't like the UI, you can change it too, to make it easier to tell the difference, or even to go back to windows classic. As for consistency, I've frequently heard people complain about the lack of consistency on Mac OS X, so I found their reference to it amusing. For example, this article on the 'many facces of Apple's OS X applications' here http://www.robservatory.com/archives/2005/05/17/co nsistency-of-design/ [robservatory.com] - not to mention the fact that different programs often need different interfaces. Internet explorer does not look like Media Player. iTunes does not look like safari - they're different things alltogether. On Windows, most of the time things are fairly consistent, however, on Mac, you can have 3 or more different interfaces showing at the same time ( eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TigerDesk.png [wikipedia.org] )

Change and renaming: Some things have changed in Vista, for example "My computer" to "Computer"

I would say change is a natural part of the evolution of an operating system. There were lots of changes from OS 9 to OS X, it takes a bit of getting used to at first, but most is done logically, and I wouldn't say it's a significant disadvantage.

> UAC: It doesn't ask for a password, and it's annoying because it isolates the rest of the operating system when it asks, therefore it's bad and it's different.

Ok, it's different but it's not as flawed as they seem to make out - first, it does require a password unless you have the priviledges to not require a password (contrary to what the article would have you believe) - this is an added convenience in the fact that if you're the system admin, you don't want to constantly be putting in the p

I did not know it was possible.....

to perform fellatio on an Operating System.

The reviewer should have Steve Jobs autograph his kneepads.

Huh ?

There are nearly an infinite number of ways to compare complex beasts like operating systems. I'm going to skip low-level issues, like comparing driver architectures.

Ie: we'll ignore all the places Vista is a clear winner, because then we wouldn't be able to say OS X is da shiznit...

Then we get criticism because the reviewer does not understand the interface:

With that in mind, note that, even though the IE window is not front-most, the "back" button looks as though it's active.

That's because it *is* "active" - Windows does not require a window be in the foreground for its widgets to be used.

The non-IE windows are more consistent in appearance, but if you didn't know that the red "x" or close widget in the front-most window shows that it is the active window, it would be somewhat easy for a new user to get confused about which window is the one they're really working in.

Apart from the way it's overlapping all the others, has a different coloured title/border and is the one the the user is interacting with...

Further in, it's ironic that a) they praise the "consistency" of MacOS (given it's been heading steadily downhill since OS X was first released) and b) they criticise "change for the sake of change" (given most of the UI changes in OS X deliver - at best - no usability improvement over MacOS Classic and are textbooks examples of "change for the sake of change" - or, more acurately, "change for the sake of flashy demoes").

This "comparison" boils down to three statements, all dressed up in various ways and repeated a few times:

"It's kinda different to previous versions of Windows"
"Its not like OS X"
"I don't know what I'm doing or why this is happening"

Some reasonable criticisms, but terribly biased..

First off, this really isn't Vista v. Mac OS X.. it's a comparison of their user interfaces (the author ignoring everything else about them..) - OK fine, but let's just make that clear from the get-go.. because while Vista has a lot of nice UI improvements, many of the exciting changes (at least, from my perspective) are more "under the hood" (one of them.. a I-can't-believe-they-took-so-long-to-get-this is per-application volume levels).

Now, here's where the article gets a bit nonsensical. It's a comparison of the UIs.. but he turns OFF part of Vista's? OK.. I see we've got an objective comparison coming here..

In all, he makes a few good points about Vista (UAC nagging and "personalization" vs "display" notable), but it's mostly just nitpicking.. and he doesn't criticize MacOS in any way, and doesn't point out any of the deficiencies in the MacOS UI (because it's plainly obvious what action clicking on red, yellow, or green circle has, to someone who hasn't used OSX..)

It's very rough, not intuitive

I have installed vista corporate on several systems so far, here is my experience. It installs fine, at first I hated the installer and now it is a minor annoyance but it is still not as nice as the OS X installer. I have had it detect all hardware on any system I have installed it on The new security system does not allow a lot of older apps to operate correctly, 2 major ones I have found is Acronis True Image and Maximizer 8. Once the new sudo security is turned off, then they will install. User profiles are a HUGE problem, Vista uses a new profile scheme and is NOT compatible with 2000/XP profiles, forget about easily trying to get people to roam from a terminal server login, XP to a vista machine, this is a huge issue. The new alt-ctrl-del by default on a network is very bad, changing users is a huge head ache. There are a lot more things that I can go into by default, but the point I am trying to make is POLISH. This OS feels like it was rushed, that it just isnt finished and that no real people were consulted on it before it was released. My 2 cents, flame away JW

Apple needs a good desktop that is not a AIO

And the macpro cost is high and the mini is low end and hard to open.
They need a mid-end system that does not have a screen build in.

UAC dialogs are modal?

I didn't realize that UAC dialog boxes were modal and prevented you from using the system. What is to stop some application from triggering "authentication" events every second so that it makes your computer unusable? That seems like a terrible design decision that you can't ignore those.

The article Tags have never been clearer!

yes, maybe, no (tagging beta)

Works for me!

Summary: Apple is better because it is Apple

I use about 90% Kubutun and 10% Windows XP, I've spent perhaps a total of 1 hour on OS X, porting a small Java application for a friend, so I am definitely not qualified to talk about OS X.

But after skimming through this article, it seemed like the author's just using a lot of words to say that, he likes Apple's OS X.

From his other articles, obviously he uses OS X a fair bit and is his preference of platform. And all signs of Apple favouritism is there in his writing, albeit wrapped in much nicer language than your typical fan writing. Nevertheless, it comes across.

But this article is almost not worth reading. I mean, he spends most of time talking about the UI experience between the two, which is completely subjective to users, rather than anything that can be compared objectively. So he ends up saying, OS X is superior to Vista, because he likes it better. Pretty much nothing more, just _because_ he's used to it and likes it better, and he's probably been using OS X since its inception, and likes things to stay that way for a long time.

He complains that it takes complicated steps to find the computer's IP address in Vista. Two questions here, 1) do users who care that much about whether the title bar goes transparent on inactive windows really need to know the computer's IP address? 2) I believe you can get it in one step by typing in ipconfig or something like that.

and spouting stuff like "being able to use USB memory sticks as additional RAM"...
WTF... in words of Pauli, this is "not even wrong". why is he even worth reading?

I've run out of steam, so don't actually know how to finish this off properly.

Short answer:

Yes, I agree.

And that's without having seen Vista. But if you scan the list of features they had announced for "Longhorn" and then removed before calling it "Vista", well about everything that would be an actual technological advancement is on that discarded-features list. So whatever is left except some eye candy - the one area where MS has been at least 10 years behind Apple for all of its existence? Trying to beat Apple in looks of the OS is the one thing that a company like MS, driven by marketing freaks and a few remaining techies will never, ever accomplish.

No, "Longhorn" (as originally announced) might have become a state-of-the-art OS. "Vista" isn't.

the ultimate in UI consistency

I spent a few years in uni using latex on pine for documents, lynx for web-browsing and pine for emails. The UI was totally consistent, actually, absolutely fucking the same.

Simple: This is all non-sense

This argument can be seen in a variety of forms. Here are the basics, with all the changes and upgrades Microsoft has made to its windows operating system, no application built to work under windows has ever failed from its initial release. Could you say the same about Apple's OS X? Try supporting legacy code "because you know you don't want to rewrite the damn application" and then we'll talk.

windows is annoying

I've always found working in Windows XP to be frustrating and annoying, but never was able to articulate it as well as this author has (even though he was mostly referring to Vista). Of course any version of Windows is frustrating for someone used to Unix just due to its lack of certain features, but I found XP so much more difficult to adjust to than 98 or 2K.

The fact that Windows XP is so incredibly verbose about what is happening is extremely annoying. Constant bubbles popping up from the system tray talking about hardware, updates, firewalls, unused desktop icons (yes, I know it can be disabled), etc. Dialog boxes popping up for everything. I just want the OS to leave me alone and let me work. But UAC in Vista will make this even worse.

As the author mentioned, they also have the habit of renaming and moving commonly used tools, and making them harder to find for someone who really knows what they're looking for. Probably the worst example in XP was the changes to the control panels regarding network settings, workgroup computers, etc. Things that were easy to find in 98/2K became more difficult to find. Apparently Vista moves the "Add and Remove Programs" feature to "Programs and Features", and "Display" to "Personalization". I don't see how that makes the OS more intuitive to use at all, whether it is for a new user, or a power user with prior Windows experience.

Despite having a much different UI than GNOME/KDE/Windows, I found OS X much easier to adapt to. The Unix underneath certainly helped a bit, but the bigger part was how things just worked. There are still a couple annoyances, 'Finder' being the biggest one (the unix command line somewhat mitigates this), but overall OS X is so much better at not getting in the way of the user.

I think that if I could replace Finder with Windows Explorer or Konqueror (which I could probably do actually), I'd have very little to complain about on my OS X desktop. Add Fink and suddenly you've got something similar to Linux. Add Parallels and Boot Camp, or maybe free tools like DarWine and Qemu, if you need Windows applications. OS X has become the ultimate desktop (can run almost anything but Windows games), and Macs the ultimate hardware (can run OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux on the bare hardware). The fact that Mac OS X has gotten faster every release, and Windows has instead eaten gobs more memory every release, is just icing on the cake.

Rapid update cycles

I prefer rapid update cycles as it allows a company to respond to user feedback. We can talk about kernel and filesystem features till we are blue in the face but the layman end-user ultimately dictates the usefulness of a software. Apple can respond to user peeves well in a relatively short period of time. Even Ubuntu is superior in that way in that it could evolve to be better that Windows. OsX is consequently more evolved that Vista in that it is structured as much by user feedback and as by developers. I suspect that the Vista UI will have some growing pains that will persist to annoy many for some years.

being able to use USB memory sticks as additional

Is this even helpful in a practical sense? I might be wrong, but I figured access speeds are so slow you might as well just store it on the freaking hard drive...

Vista does win in one category

I must admit I really do like the ability in Vista to plug in a flash drive and use it as expanded swap memory for processing/booting the computer. However, beyond that one neat, but likely to be little used, feature Mac OS X wins in every category except

1) Windows has more software, especially in the gaming department.

2) Mac OS X is technically only allowed to be used on a set of proprietary hardware that, for the most part, is upgrade limited.

In other words, Mac OS X itself is superior to Vista in every respect, but only loses out due to software support and a marketing decision by Apple, not because of any failing in OS X itself.

Of Course

Of course I agree I'm posting on /. where M$FT is bad and AAPL is always way ahead except in the security vulnerabilities department.

To each their own...

RFTA and the 550+ comments, here's my 2 pennies worth (I'm from the UK).

As many other posters have said with MS's monopoly Vista will end up the #1 OS whether the alternatives are better or not. A large proportion of people are blissfully unaware that alternatives exist and many others would not use another OS regardless. However from my experience of the average Windows/OS X user they do not particularly like change whether it is for the better or not and will bitch about it when stuff that used to work now doesn't, I suspect this will be the case with Vista and to a lesser degree Leopard as well (Linux users generally know their systems better and even if they have problems eg, Dapper to Edgy Ubuntu, they just get on with it).

I am a sys admin and primarily use OS X (I have been using Macs since System 6) but have also used Irix, Red Hat/Fedora and Windows boxes, I am currently playing with Ubuntu at home just to see what it's like. I find there are annoyances with all platforms but find it more difficult to get stuff done in Windows whatever version it is due to the fact it is the OS I am least familar with. People like what they feel comfortable with.

I am not familiar with the TFA's author but he obviously predominantly uses OS X and as such his opinions will not be particularly objective but enjoyed reading the comments (except the coding bits which gave me a headache).

Great stuff!

I've just bought a Intel C2D and a GeForce 8800GTS for my home gaming rig. I've played around with Vista on PC's before I got this one, waiting for the GPU to be supported under Vista by nVidia, and I've mucked around with Linux as well, it works pretty sweet!

Where can I download this OS/X to install it? It's free isn't it? Free as in speech? Or just beer?

(Yes I have plenty of karma. Flame away. I'm making a point about OS/X being even more closed than Windows.)

Windows wins me over because of keyboard shortcuts

I have an Intel Mac at work, and after half a year of running OS X and Win XP side by side, I have given up on OS X and now use Win XP under Parallels for most of my professional work. There are two reasons:

1) MS Office works better under XP. I'm working in a corporate setting. I have to book meetings from time to time, and meeting rooms can't be booked in Entourage or Outlook Web Client. Sad but true.

2) Keyboard shortcuts are way better in XP. According to this article [xvsxp.com],

OS X's keyboard navigation support is generally superior to XP's.

IMHO that amounts to propaganda. In XP, I can access most menu items using the Alt button plus two keystrokes. In OS X, it's Ctrl-F2 plus four keystrokes. Also, in dialog boxes, most items can be focused with Alt+[letter]. Real-world example: In Photoshop, changing the saturation is as easy as Ctrl-U and Alt-A in Windows XP. In Mac OS X, there's lot's of tabbing or mouse movement to reach the Saturation item. It's just not productive for me.

Hmmm

Why do we continue to try to compare these 2 operating systems. They both do some of the same things well and a few specific thing better or worse than each other. Thank God there is still competition in this (the OS) arena. I own and develop for Windows and OSX. I like both. Right now I love my Mac Book Pro with XCode because it has all of the cool camera/light sensing stuff and it is interesting to play with prgrammatically. I still like my Windows XP with visual studio cause it allows me to develop stuff quickly and is more compatable with all of my buddies sutff so we can exchange projects and executables easily.

Re:Unfair comparison

2) What computer were they running Vista on? The Aero UI wasn't running, implying that either they were running it on an old PC, or that the author was so unfamiliar with the OS that he didn't realise!

If you actually read the article, he makes a point of saying he's not running Aero, and why.

- Roach

Re:They both lose at source availability.

Mac OS X and Windows Vista completely fail in this area, however. I cannot see the source code to the window systems of either, for instance. Nor can I inspect the kernel source code.

You are correct that you cannot view the OS X window system source but wrong about the kernel. The source to the Mac OS X kernel (XNU) is easily available from Apple [apple.com]. Apple also releases source to other major parts including things like launchd and bonjour as part of the Darwin core operating system.

Re:Wrong. XNU source code is no longer available.

Since the x86 switch, Apple no longer makes the XNU source code available.

Wrong. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/ 2359256 [slashdot.org]

Re:No OS X on common hardware, so no need to evalu

Hi:

Apple is a hardware company. It's how they make their money. You're basically saying you'll test a BMW if you can get it for the price of a Pinto. Asking companies to adpot suicidal business models for your benefit is a bit rich.

Re:They both lose at source availability.

When I use a system, I expect the source code to be fully accessible to me. I want to be able to inspect the quality of that system for myself, and fix it myself if the need arises. A system like FreeBSD is excellent in this regard, as are most Linux distributions...

Well thats a really arrogant stance isnt it? Do you demand to know the technical specifications of your televsion, radio, mp3 player, telephone, so you can inspect the quality for yourself (since you know what quality is) and have the abiity to modify them and fix it yourself? Unmount yourself from the sticking post, or how should i say this...get off your own dick. I know Linux fanboys like linux because it makes them feel smart, kinda like, those guys that swear of a gui because the command line is so much "easier since i know what im doing", or those guys that say, "reading the instructions is for losers, even though they could have resovled an issue in 30 seconds, rather than the 2 days it took to resolve the issue. But the basic assumption that you are smarter or know whats best for a given OS and the app stack that it supports more than the team within the company that created the damn thing? yeah dude, log out of warcraft for a few hours and breath some fresh air.

Re:They both lose at source availability.

Grandparent wasn't high-horsing: availablility of Free source means a lot to him/her, as it does to me. It is a requirement Windows and Mac OS X do not fulfil adequately. We therefore make like good capitalists and pays our money (or not) and takes ours choice — be that Linux, BSD or something more exotic. So-called moral high-grounds are not in play.

That an operating system can run on my computer is its privilege, not its right.

Re:Unfair comparison

Authentication before making system changes. This, the author implies, is acceptable on OSX, but not Windows? Why?

Because it's better implemented in OS X.

Re:Unfair comparison

He explains the Aero issue (he turned off those features so it would more closely mimic the wider user base), and he also goes into quite a few paragraphs of detail about the difference between authentication and approval.

I'll agree, though, that he seems from the outset to show some bias. I've noticed many of these things in Vista (I'm running RC1 right now, waiting for the release), but I also happen to much prefer it to XP. They're getting better at this. And frankly, I have a Mac that I hardly ever use because I find the UI so strange sometimes. It's just me, I'm sure, as most other people much prefer it. But I find, for example, that the Windows MUST CLICK OK FOR EVERY ACT mentality suits me better.

Re:Unfair comparison

1) Inconsistency in the UI. Yes, it's inconsistant in Vista. It's the same in OSX. Look at the differences between iTunes and other core programs and iLife.

This isn't exactly fair either. The iLife suite is separate from the OS. Its not bundled with the OS (though it is with new computers) and is simply a suite of applications that runs on the OS. So stating that the atrocity that is iLife's UI consistancy, as being a problem with the OS, would be the same as complaining that MS Office's UI is inconsistent with windows. I'm not saying there aren't serious issues with the iLife UI (it drives me up a wall, and I REALLY hope that Apple follows its own UI guidelines in iLife '07), but I dont think it is fair to claim it is an issue with the OS UI.

IMO, looking across OS X itself, the UI is more consistant than the Vista UI.

Re:Almost

I couldn't agree more! I think people don't complain about it because of the "Apple religion" where anything Apple does is sacred and cannot be discussed. That, by the way, is one of the worst things in the whole OS X environment: the fanatic community that not only don't see problems in the system, they also bash you if you complain about those problems!

Re:Unfair comparison

3) Because auth on Vista is such a tremendous pain in the ass that I end up disabling it.

This raises two points: 1) Authentication shouldn't be disable-able. 2) By preventing it from being disabled, MS would actually have to put work into making it usable day-to-day.

Re:They both lose at source availability.

When I use a system, I expect the source code to be fully accessible to me. I want to be able to inspect the quality of that system for myself, and fix it myself if the need arises.

Microsoft's customers would rather pay for competent technical support.

Programming is not their competence, the internals of an OS is something they have no desire to muck with, ever.

re: 1)

IMHO that is a fair ding against Vista. With Vista MS somehow managed to make the gui LESS consistent than it is in XP. I really don't know what the heck they were thinking but it appears they just did a really bad job copying OS X. Many areas that MS changed in Vista were very much change for the sake of change, they don't actually improve efficiency or make things easier for the user. Maybe I'm being too harsh but conversely I've just seen way too many Vista defenders swoon over things like Aero which from any objective viewing currently add very little to the user experience.

Re:Unfair comparison

The point the author makes about authentication is that on Vista it's APPROVAL (clicking yes or no), but on OSX it's AUTHENTICATION (having to type your password).

A huge difference, very important.

I've only used Vista for about an hour, but I must have got about 30 popups from the UAC and it annoyed the hell out of me. For Gods sake, even for a hardcore nerd, why the hell is Vista displaying a GUID in the approval dialog?!?!?!?!?!?! What does that mean to ANYONE?!?!

Re:Nobody cares

I didn't know the Medium Access Control had so many fans.

Re:Unfair comparison

3) Authentication before making system changes. This, the author implies, is acceptable on OSX, but not Windows? Why?

Well, among other things, he spends most of a page discussing the difference between authentication, which OS X does, and approval, which Vista does.

Authentication means you actually enter a password to prove you're the person who has rights to modify the machine.

Approval means you just click a "yes, go ahead and do it" button.

The article then discusses the weakness of 'approval' from a security standpoint: i.e.: it doesn't stop J. Random Passerby from hosing your system, it just means he has to push the 'Okay' button to do it.

In practice, this means that if the two of us are sitting side by side, you on a Vista box where only you know the admin password, me on a Mac where only I know the admin password, I can change the settings of your machine while you step away for coffee, but you can't change the settings on my machine while I step away for coffee.

Re:Service Packs

Well, how does OSX from 2001 compare to Vista?

Let's take a look at the article's complaints.
  - Authentication for systems tasks: Vista sucks horribly; just about everything else I've seen does decently. That aspect of OSX hasn't much changed.
  - Consistent user interface: Vista sucks, but it's mainly an annoyance. OSX has had some interface annoyances, but the article makes a point about its interface being consistent for the past six years.
  - Sane and consistent hierarchy, naming convention, and interface for settings: the article makes a point about these not having changed significantly since 10.3, and that change was merging keyboard and mouse settings. Windows XP settings are bad enough, and Vista applied a confusing naming convention to them.

OSX 10.0, then, probably beats Vista. At any rate, if Apple decides it's better to release incremental versions every year or two, and the evidence supports that, are we to say it's unfair to Microsoft? Or do we tell them to get a better business model?

And Windows XP is only stable if the drivers are. That goes for any OS with a monolithic kernel, but given how many bad drivers there are for Windows and how little quality control Microsoft has over them, you'd think they'd have done something to change that. Running unverified drivers in their own address space, for instance. Apple doesn't have that problem, also due to their business model. Linux doesn't have this problem, due more to their design model than any business model.

Still, since releasing often seems to work for Apple and Linux, why doesn't Microsoft do the same?

Re:No OS X on common hardware, so no need to evalu

With the exception of the video and audio production areas, Apple has pretty much given up on the business sector.

As a home user, if you don't play computer games, and aren't interested in open source, a mac is a very very strong altenative.

Re:dumb article...

Something a lot of people tend to forget is that Windows has to account for much more different hardware then Apple ever had to...

That's also something that escapes everyone who whines that they'd use OS X if oooooonly Apple would sell it to them for use on a generic PC they built themselves.

As if Apple could support all that generic bargain-bin crap overnight and have all it work as well as it does on genuine Macs. Microsoft has spent billions over the last 20 years trying to achieve the kind of HW/SW synergy that the Mac offers, and they still haven't gotten there (and probably never will).

If Apple tried to open up OS X for generic hardware and things didn't go absolutely perfectly, the impact to their "it just works" reputation would be devastating. Think about the bargain bin hardware these fools want to run OS X on. Shoddy drivers, poor "documentation" (i.e. a short text file written in Engrish)-- Apple would never let their corporate reputation ride on the quality of 3rd-party Mac drivers, so the only other option would be for them to write the drivers for everything, which is completely and totally impractical.

The best they can hope for is a return of how things were in the NeXTStep for Intel days, which was something like: "Here's a list of the dozen or so motherboards, CD-ROM drives, network cards, etc that we support. If you don't wanna use this stuff, you're SOL."

~Philly

Re:They both lose at source availability.

Linux and FreeBSD are free, in that they cost $0.00. I pay for the other two and I expect them to fix their own bugs. I don't know what world you live in; but for 8-10 hrs out of a day, my employer expects to work on company projects not analysing 50 million lines of code and fixing someone else bugs.

I love my OS X hammer...

I have a Mac hammer,
I hammer in the morning,
I hammer in the evening - my mouse in my hand,
I hammer without danger,
I hammer without BSOD,
I hammer out the love between my iMac and my iPod,
I think X is grand!

I'm so sorry...

Now if I had a Bell...

Re:Wacky mouse

Apple's brick wall between the user and the machine doesn't teach the user anything

You're right, it just lets them use their applications to accomplish things. An OS isn't there to teach you how to use it, it's there to stay the fuck out of your way and let you do other things.

OSX does not encourage exploration

Oh, and Windows DOES? Bwahahahaha!

I have helped many non-geeks switch from Windows to Mac, and to a person they were AFRAID to try anything outside of normal application usage-- either because they had been more curious in the past and accidentally blown up their computer, or because they had heard of such an experience from a fellow non-geek. It took quite a bit of convincing to get these people to relax and not be so afraid of destroying their computers by going to the wrong web site or installing the wrong software.

~Philly

Technological Turtle and Hare

I think your optimism has a turtle and the hare theme going oin. "Give it a few years" assumes that Apple is going to sit around and do nothing while Microsoft catches up, but we all know that's not the case. In a few years it's very possible that Microsoft will be just as far behind as they are now.

For instance, let's look at the biggest feature of Vista, it's GUI. Windows finally has a 3D GUI that handles RGBA graphics in windows and icons. From the time Apple had this functionality with OS 10.0, the GNU/Linux community has leapfrogged both Mac and Windows with XGL, Beryl, Compiz, and that whole scene. That means that at this time, Microsoft is in last place against adversaries who have either been doing this for years, or have implemented those features above and beyond in a fraction of the timeframe.

Give it a few years and the fun and games won't really be starting, they'll still be lagging behind.

Mac + Wii = Computer Bliss + Gaming Bliss

I have a Mac and a Wii. Perfect computer experience, perfect gaming experience.

Of course, since you probably need to buy a new computer to run Vista anyway, you might as well buy a Mac and run Vista using Boot Camp.

Re:Games and Macs

LMAO @ "upgrade" to a game console. The GeForce 8800 has already made the PS3 and X360 obsolete and you can bet that every six months the gap will get wider and wider.

Even excepting that, I just can't imagine many PC FPS fans willingly adopting a controller over a keyboard and mouse.

Re:Wacky mouse

You insensitive clod.

Most of the stuff you use on the internet everyday was created or developed by us >50 year olds.

On the other hand, since I retired, I use Macs (They are *NIX and "Just Work".)...