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Why Panther May Tear Up Longhorn
Posted by
pudge
on Fri May 16, 2003 04:49 PM
from the because-it-doesn't-exist dept.
from the because-it-doesn't-exist dept.
Sophrosyne writes "Microsoft Watch has presented an article on Longhorn, which is due not before 2005, and compares it with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), which may be released this September. The article touches on some of the areas where Windows is ahead in operating system design and technologies, as well as how Panther plans to compete. Included in Microsoft Watch's article were links to a Extreme-Tech article on Desktop compositing, and 3D User Interfaces. It also contains videos of Longhorn's 3D Quartz-like user interface in action." If processor power is so important, why are we so willing to waste it on making windows do funny things when we move them around? Just wondering.
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The biggest difference (Score:5, Funny)
the groundwork is in place already [microsoft.com]. It's only a matter of time before it's applied to the windows themselves.
Re:The biggest difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The biggest difference (Score:3, Insightful)
What you don't see if you don't open all formats, is the higher quality of the QT version.
Near fraud - or pseudo journalism.
Re:The biggest difference (Score:5, Insightful)
If she was hitting the "Start" key and the menu was being build and displayed, and all that, I would be a little happier with what I saw. But as it is, and knowing MS' track record of shoddy demo's, I'm gonna pass all judgement on Longhorn until I hear chimps talking about it on the bus.
Until then, ho hum
Parent
ridiculous comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, now about making windows do silly things - I gotta agree here - the first thing I do after installation of any system is turn off all window animations & effects. I want that extra millisecond!
I'm stuck temping on a weird laptop that keeps turning on window animation after every reboot - bizarre behavior. Plus it's Win98SE *sigh*. I haven't had to endure _that_ for quite some time.
I like OS X, and plan to switch to a Mac when I can afford a PPC970 machine (hopefully this year), but I must admit that I could do without all the extra window chrome in OS X. I don't even like the extra window chrome in Win Me/2000/XP (I turn it off, but it's still there in some apps like Windows Media Player), but in OS X, it's extra pixel hungry. And that frickin' metallic theme that Apple puts on everything now (despite their design guidelines) - yuck! Brushed metal looks good on hardware, not on software.
Re:ridiculous comparison (Score:4, Informative)
What the /hell/ are you on?
1. NO 970 MACHINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED BY APPLE YET. Say it with me, dammit. While it may be likely, don't take as canon rumor sites and IBM press releases that don't even mention Apple Power Macs. Jeez. You're already a Mac user, eh? (And I say that being one.)
2. 980? 990? WTF? At what data are you looking? Search Google for "ibm 970 chip" and the only info you find are two random comments in some forum somewhere; search IBM for roadmap info on PowerPC, and you will find their "9xx" selection, and the only thing under that is this:
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/tec hdocs/A1387A29AC1C2AE087256C5200611780 [ibm.com]
Lastly, with the release of the 970 being sometime in the second half of this year [arstechnica.com], don't you think saying we'll probably have a "990" by 2005 is a little premature?
Meh.
Parent
Re:ridiculous comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this isn't that far-fetched. Look at all the chips that have been called "G4" by Apple.
What is far-fetched is expecting a major redesign rather than minor incremental improvements.
Parent
Apple doesn't tell you anything... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, as everyone knows, Apple is famous for not saying anything until the product is in trucks, and heading to stores. So while it is not a guarentee that they will be using it, I would put money on the fact that the next step in the evolution of Apple computers will be twords the PPC 970.
I do agree that 980/990 prediction is a little early at this stage in the game though.
Parent
Re:ridiculous comparison (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't informative, mods. It's /still/ speculation.
The Power5 isn't "starting to replace the Power4", since it isn't going to be released until 2004 [infoworld.com]. (See also here [com.com] if you want more than once source on that.) 980 speculation is still that: speculation.
Making windows media player less ugly (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Extra millseconds (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Extra millseconds (Score:5, Informative)
You're also assuming that the majority of graphics/video tasks hit the videocard, most seem to be software at this point (and dripping with altivec code)
give this a look [arstechnica.com]
having the video subsystem handle things that were previously handled by the processor (like window composition) is faster than the cpu doing it, and also frees up the cpu do throw horsepower at an FCP render
Parent
Brushed metal... (Score:5, Informative)
> now (despite their design guidelines) - yuck! Brushed
> metal looks good on hardware, not on software.
Brushed metal is indeed annoying. Fortunately, it's simplicity itself to be rid of. Wether an application used Aqua or brushed metal widgets is defined by a single variable in an xml file inside the application bundle. Change that variable, restart the application, and the accursed brushed metal is gone!
There are free programs [unsanity.com] that'll demetallify all your apps in one step; or do so on an app by app basis, and keep track of the altered ones in a central location.
If you're some kind of freak, you can even ADD the brushed metal skin to applications that didn't use it in the first place!
cya,
john
Parent
Re:Brushed metal... (Score:3, Informative)
OS X looks pretty, there's no denying it. It does have lots of "eye candy" effects and pretty icons.
However, you can turn all this off, including the toolbars in the Finder windows.
You can turn off dock magnification and resizing. You can turn off the animation effect for minimising windows. You can turn off dock bouncing for opening apps.
The only eye candy you can't disable is the way the plus, minus and x symbols appear in the red, yellow and green circl
Re:ridiculous comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
New viruses (Score:5, Funny)
This is it. This is what e-mail viruses are going to look like in four years.
hrmpf (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hrmpf (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hrmpf (Score:4, Interesting)
Where the article goes wrong is that it presents the fight like it's one about UI or OS features. It isn't. It's about legal and financial issues. Linux, Mac OS and Windows are all capable enough to write a letter, surf the web, and do your accounting on which is the vast bulk of PC use to this day. MS is trapped by the market and its own business decisions to need to increase growth in order for those options not to stay underwater (thus invalidating their entire company compensation scheme). Their efforts to extract more money from existing customers, to break the informal contract they have kept for decades on casual piracy, and creating more and more restrictive EULA's will end up with their market share eroding. Apple will benefit from this as will Linux but Linux will be hampered by their reliance on the GPL which is and will remain the main focus of MS' FUD attack.
Parent
Re:hrmpf (Score:3, Interesting)
Hum... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a UNIX head 10 years ago, then I was a mac head about 7 years ago, and finnaly I moved to windows when windows 3.1 came out. Now I am going back to UNIX/Linux/Mac. I would like to redefine windows use as a proff of concept platform. When a new tech comes out it seems like it only works for windows for a while, then it moves to Mac and later UNIX/Linux. Windows is so restrictive and not very powerful. It forces me to things their way and conform my system to them and their products and technologies. Unfortunatly they have a software and hardware dominace in the market place. I think thats what they call a monopoly. Well I hope this will change with the new release of the Mac OS. The new MacOS already does things that Microsoft says it will include or be able to do later. Maybe this will end the monopoly that they hold if more companies switch. Go Apple!
Re:Hum... (Score:4, Informative)
It's more about what's under the skin
FireWire is always there and always works. Bluetooth is fully-functional. Wi-Fi(g) is done and I'm sending this over a g network now. Rendezvous is zero-configuration networking
The eye candy is the least of it. Bill Gates complained at WinHEC that Windows apps look like crap and asked developers to take advantage of the 3D video cards that are only used for gaming on the PC. On the Mac, our video cards work just as hard as every other part of the complete system, and things that look like eye candy come with no performance penalty. Steve Jobs says something like, "we've got a 64MB NVIDIA card in there that can do amazing things with OpenGL, so why not use it?"
Also, all Macs are dual display and have TV out. These features really work for you when you have them all there at once and they are easy to use and work every time.
Developers are exploiting this stuff in new ways and users are loving it. You are missing out on so much if you haven't at least given a Mac a test drive at an Apple Store.
Parent
Re:Hum... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is compatable with microsoft, *nix popular OSS implements protocols, api's, and software that generally runs on everything an it's dog. Linux itself runs on virtually every computer made in the last 20yrs, it runs on all modern console gaming systems, it's been ported to the ipod and numerous other systems, it runs on propriety POS syste
Re:Hum... (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux nerds need to pull their heads out of their asses and simply realize that Linux needs to be retardedly easy to use!
Only if your goal is to have everybody and their mothers use it.
What I want, on the other hand, is something totally different - I want power. And I don't care about world domination. I love Linux the way it's now. I think I'm not the only Linux nerd who thinks that way. Retardedly easy to use is for retards. They can use Windows or whatever, I don't care.
Re:Hum... (Score:4, Informative)
They don't anymore, and $150 million worth of shares in a company that has $4 billion in the bank isn't really a "big hunk" of the company anyway.
Parent
its all about revenue. (Score:3, Interesting)
3d gui bad (Score:5, Insightful)
What I would like to see is a vector graphics based user interface. Right now my task bar I have to set the width in pixels. I have to select one of 4 sides of the screen to put it on. All of my windows are rectangular in shape. With a GUI based on vectors I could have a round web browser. Or an oblong winamp. My task bar could be a triangle in the lop left of my screen. I could change the shape of existing windows to make room for new ones. Usually if I've got 3 or 4 windows open on a desktop all the room is used, but a small piece is left over, or one of the windows has to be sized awkwardly to fit. The awkwardly sized window ends up having it's internal ui elements messed up. With a vector based ui you could morph each window to maximize use of screen space.
Microsoft is using 3d because they can. They are thinking about keeping a hold on their 3 year upgrade cycle. Apple, while not making a vector based ui, is thinking about making a good ui.
Re:3d gui bad (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:3d gui bad (Score:3, Interesting)
That would be Microsoft Office.
Re:3d gui bad (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I disagree. I know it's the conventional wisdom to say "3D GUIs aren't practical" but I'd like to think that reality isn't constrained by our collective imaginations. Just because you're unable to conceive of a practical 3D GUI doe
Wow, what a great read...did I miss something? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I got out of the article is that because OS X 10.3 will be released before Longhorn, it's gonna "tear up Longhorn".
What a load! I love OS X but just because its out first doesn't mean it will be better than Longhorn. That list of longhorn's feature set is full of HUGE features and while Apple doesn't have to worry about things like providing a digital image catalog (a la iPhoto), other things like file system search features that takes english language strings and not query language are not so easy to deflect.
I do believe by 2005 when Longhorn is out, Apple will have made amazing OS X gains, heck it might even be OS XI by then, but I do NOT buy first to market wins.
Resistance is futile. [apple.com]
Re:Wow, what a great read...did I miss something? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the premmise of the article was that because Apple was so far ahead now when compared to XP, the introduction of Panther in a couple months will make that lead massive. In two years time that Massive lead will be growing exponentially.
While Longhorn may (or may not) be an innovative update, the article is simply saying that it will have to be absolutely INCREDIBLE to catch up to the hights that OS X will have achieved by that time.
Parent
adjustable pretties (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:adjustable pretties (Score:3, Interesting)
If you knew anything at all about OS X, you'd also know that it offloads all the visual interface processing to the graphics card, thus leaving the cpu free for processing which would make it even faster than your windows 2k desktop. since it's a g4, an 800 mhz machine will run comparable to an intel 1.6ghz.
Re:adjustable pretties (Score:3, Interesting)
I have at work bunch of Macs running 10.2.6 with GeForce 2MX cards and a motley collection of PCs fitted with Matrox G450 cards running Win2K - irrespective of CPU speed, the Win machines are more responsive for most UI tasks - they're just drawing much simpler things on the screen, and that's all there is to it.
I spend my OWN money on Apple PCs - I'm no Win troll.
Apple delivers and MS hypes (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is just full of puffs and bluffs. They have been talking about
MS is just a slow dinosaur that has to die sooner or later due to its total incapacity to innovate. Apple is 60 times smaller than MS, and yet makes more and better software than the Redmond beast, in addition to cool hardware innovations like Xserve, Xserve RAID, iPod, iMac, PowerBook, and so on.
Although Win XP has some nice features, but it just doesn't feel nearly refined as Mac OS X. Judging from the recent leaks, Longhorn can't even match Jaguar, let alone Panther. And no one can imagine how much better OS X would be by 2005.
Re:Apple delivers and MS hypes (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is SO completely entrenched in the dektops of companies that nothing, no matter how great it is, could change it. If for no other reason, Exchange ensures a dependency on Windows. IT support weenies aren't trained to support more than one platform, and Windows is it.
I carry my iBook to work every day so I don't have to do software development on Windows 2000. Whyen people come to my desk and see tools like BBEdit and SQLGrinder, the ooh and ahh. But none of that matters. Windows is the standard, and it's gonna stay that way.
Parent
Inaccuracies (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget it's MS we're talking about (Score:4, Interesting)
And this presentation coming from Microsoft I wouldn't be surprised if it ran on a Mac.
Regarding Extremetech's article: How extreme can their IT knowledge be if some forum member (!) has to enlighten them on that "Apple has being up and running with their Quartz Compositor engine in OS X, which is now hardware accelerated as Quartz Extreme in Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), and that MS is once again playing catch-up and acting as if it's new stuff." Hiding under stones much?
Besides: The public beta of Mac OS X came out September 2000 and Quartz was demo'd to the public half a year before that by Steve Jobs. So implementing wiggly windows takes MS 5 years. More like 6 (see above)...
hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from that I have one more question. Does anyone know if there will be a 64-bit version of longhorn, or if it will be exclusively 64-bit?
Panther to tear up Longhorn? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is like comparing a 2003 car to a 2005 one.
But the scariest part is that the 2003 wins. gofigure
Re:Fantastic, except (Score:5, Informative)
It is 3d in the resect that the content of the windows are treated as textures which are mapped onto planes. That allows the compositing to be handled by the video chip instead of the CPU.
Apple introduced this in Jaguar as "Quartz Extreme". Basically some of the CPU intensive stuff in the interface is offloaded into the 3D functions of the video chip. It requires a fairly hefty video chip (Radeon, or GeForce2+), but those are common now. The upside to it is that Quartz Extreme makes some of the flashier features (e.g. transparancy) available with no additional CPU cycles. It uses the video chip (which is largely untaxed anyway unless you are playing a game). In fact, on a Mac with QE, you can play a quicktime movie under a transparant terminal window with no slowdown and no increase in CPU use. You can use an OpenGL screensaver as your background with no significant CPU use.
Parent
Re:Fantastic, except (Score:3, Informative)
I have to disagree with you there -- on my 466 MHz G4 with a Radeon 8500, the Flurry screensaver running on the desktop takes up about 8% of the CPU, and the Window Manager process goes to 20-30%.
Processes: 91 total, 2 running, 89 sleeping... 326 threads 22:25:34
Load Avg: 2.44, 1.97, 1.75 CPU usage: 62.7% user, 21.3% sys, 16.0% idl
SharedLibs: num = 70, resident = 22.5M code, 2.08M data, 6.78M LinkEdit
MemR
Re:I think I missed something.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tearing up? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tear up meaninging... that Apple will lengthen the gap with which its OS is better than Windows.
"Shiny spinny stuff is cool and all that, but windows doesn't have huge market share because of an amazing interface."
That's for sure.
"It is because they arrived at market at the right time, with the right product, with the right marketing strategies.
The vast majority of consumers don't CHOOSE windows... it is chosen for them as the result of illegal business practices which caused microsoft to dominate the industry...
"(Perhaps not morally right.. but the proof is in the pudding as far as $$ go)"
You bring up an interesting point... The best way to gauge user preference is to measure boxed OS sales... something Apple has consistently outpaced Microsoft by a large margin.
Parent
Re:Tearing up? (Score:5, Insightful)
This value comes at a price. You helped create a monoculture of operating systems, where interoperability is possible essentially only when Microsoft was late to the party, where a single virus outbreak may take down most of the world's connected desktops, and where one company decides where you want to go today.
I like Apple, but I wouldn't want to see Apple with 95% of the market either. What I want is diversity, where several competing platforms capture various niches, none able to dominate the others.
Funny you should mention value for the dollar. You do realize that Microsoft can probably sell Windows at $10 a copy and still make money, right?
Parent
Re:Tearing up? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article referred to products, not Companies. Panther will tear up up Longhorn, not Apple will tear up Microsoft.
If the article said that, then maybe market share and earnings would be relevant.
A Porsche 911 Turbo will tear up a Honda Civic. Yet market share and earnings... Honda Civic wins. See what I mean?
How good a product is does not necessarily translate to how many of the items is sold. You're thinking like a member of a development team, not an end user. Which isn't all that surprising, considering your disclaimer
-- james
Parent
Re:Tearing up? (Score:3, Informative)
The reason these features are important is that application developers build on them. I plugged a new printer into our AirPort base station today and it just appeared in the printer lists on all of our Macs with no configuration, thanks to Rendezvous (ZeroConf networking). Also, our TiVo looks on the network for iTunes music and iPhoto albums and shows them on
Re:oooh, aaaah. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Get Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah-- you're wrong, wrong, WRONG!
1) What makes you think the people who buy shitbox $399 PCs will suddenly be willing to pay significantly more for genuine Apple hardware because then they could use Mac OS X on its 'native' hardware? That's how it is now, and the aforementioned cheap bastards are not seeing the light and beating a path to Apple's door, checkbooks and credit card