Microsoft Feared Mac Vs. Vista In '05 652
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"
News??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... this is news? Any good businessman always watches the competition and tries to estimate how many customers might switchover. That's not "fear". That's just good old commonsense.
Re:News??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there's a sense, at least to many on slashdot, that Microsoft owes its position not to good software, but to its monopoly status. Thus, if the MS execs are concerned about the competition, it means maybe the end of the windows domination is that much closer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, Mac is a bigger threat to Linux than Windows/Vista/XP ever was or will be.
For the longest time, I wanted to move to a *nix OS. I kept trying ubuntu, FreeBSD and the likes, only to switch back to XP because of office apps and all business were using stuff like Office Suite of apps. Further, tried Cinerella for my video editing on Linux, it has potential, thats all I will say.
Recently got a Mac (some say I switched to the dark side). Interestingly, I find it has all that I need and nothing I don't. Best
Re:News??? (Score:5, Funny)
People need to be reminded of the monopolistic software prison they live in. They don't have to use Windows, and there is better software out there.
If you can leave any time you like, it's not a prison. It's just a really shitty hotel.
Re:News??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:News??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only people who care about such things as 'monopolistic software prisons' are geeks. A very small percentage of the overall population. The rest of the population just wants something that will work.
Macs work. PCs running Windows I must begrudge mostly work too.
Linux? meh
Broken premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is just plain wrong. Consumers don't upgrade operating systems. They use the one that came with the box until they need a new box. Techno-nerds and enterprises upgrade operating syatems. In the case of Vista, enterprises have stayed away in droves.
Re:Broken premise (Score:5, Insightful)
And, as an aside, business do upgrade operating systems. But not immediately. They give them time, wait for bug fixes and evidence that the platform is stable. With Vista, that never happened, so they didn't upgrade.
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Re:Broken premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista Ultimate was what, like â600 retail when it first came out?
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Vista Ultimate was what, like Ã600 retail when it first came out?
No. The best version of Vista cost $129 from the beginning [apple.com].
Broken ad campaign (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of Vista, enterprises have stayed away in droves.
Which is a point I've been making for months to pro Vista people who don't understand why this is such a disaster and keep claiming "Vista isn't that bad." What they don't understand is that for the business market, Vista is extraordinarily bad!! That's extraordinarily bad for Microsoft, and which is their main source of income. Business are still buying XP licenses for new machines, but they aren't upgrading current machines to Vista because i
Re:Broken premise (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Created Much of the Comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure many will remember the comparisons of the screen shots and betas for Vista vs. OS X. It was remarkable how much Vista looked like OS X. In both feature (bloat) and GUI. Microsoft is as much, if not more, to blame for the feature comparison. Redmond continued to flaunt using Cupertino as their proxy R&D. When Microsoft finally shipped the goods, the comparisons it seems, were only skin deep.
Still true (Score:5, Interesting)
It does hav bugs like any OS which luckily they are fairly quick to address, and they have a much faster turn around for new versions of the OS (one every year versus every 3-5 years for Windows).
Would I prefer it to be more open like Linux? Oh hell yes especially now that they are adopting HDCP and other DRM related technologies. I suspect however that the Vista fiasco and Netbooks have caused enough people to consider a switch to Linux and with Apple embracing OpenGL for game development on iPhone and iTouch, it will only be a matter of time before it is on equal footing as a game platform and openGL is equally considered thus giving Linux a footup as well; afterall, Blizzard already has admitted to having a Linux Warcraft client internally that they haven't released.
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Trailing Edge Technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trailing Edge Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft knows this and they know all about Tiger, they copied alot of it. What Microsoft was concerned about was rogue press saying things like Mossberg wrote. Anyone who knows technology over the last 20 years knows that Microsoft is a marketing company before they are a tech company and this email just shows that. 'Don't let the public know there is something better' is all this says and that is SOP for Microsoft. IMO
LoB
Tiget may be better than Vista, but (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm the kind of person who hates it when politicians run smear campaigns and TV ads slandering the opposition, and for Apple to be doing this for their TV ads seems unprofessional and childish.
If you want to highlight your product, great! Do so, and let the product speak for itself. People who are so fed up with Microsoft will see a commercial highlighting the Mac's features, and they will generally go research it. I have been put off by the commercials, and any interest I genuinely had in getting a Mac was completely destroyed.
Re:Tiget may be better than Vista, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm getting really annoyed at the Mac commercials that constantly slam PC's.
I get the opposite reaction. I find Apple's ads cute, fun, and surprisingly truthful as Microsoft runs desperate "I'm a PC, so I'm nowhere near my computer" ads.
And the iPhone and iPod Touch ads are musical, elegant, and actually make me want to buy the device, as opposed to the other carriers' ads that show dominoes of inventory but no one doing anything cool with their phones.
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I get the opposite reaction. I find Apple's ads cute, fun, and surprisingly truthful as Microsoft runs desperate "I'm a PC, so I'm nowhere near my computer" ads.
MS's first ad in that series I thought was brilliant. (The two guys in Apple's ads are nowhere near PC's either.) It was both a really positive message for MS and a really subtle but effective needling of Apple. It showed the diversity of PC users, with both regular and famous/creative people, and by extension implied pretty effectively that App
Maybe something like this (Score:3, Funny)
"Better ingredients. Better OS. Papa Steve's."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) You missed the point again. He didn't defend MS. He criticized the Apple ads. They're not the same thing if you view them outside of an extremist, black and white, there can be only one pure and perfect OS mindset.
2) There are no "important facts" in the Apple ads, nor have there been.
3) I know a lot of people who are typical computer users. They're not buying Macs, but they are specifically avoiding Vista almost exclusively because of the Mac vs. PC ads. This amazes me. They're largely the same pe
OS X is no longer the only problem (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2005, Mac OS X was available and rating "better" as a desktop environment in many places, but in order to "upgrade" to OS X, it required purchase of all new hardware.
by 2008, Mac had adopted Intel x86-based processors and expanded support into the realm formerly controlled only by PC. While technically you still need to upgrade to Mac hardware according to the Mac OS X EULA, the validity of that claim is currently being questioned. Additionally Ubuntu and other Linux distros that make setup easy and are very user-friendly have started spawning and are also beginning to take a significant chunk out of MS's market share.
There may have been signs of things to come in 2005, but thinks look even more bleak for MS now unless they can get things together with Vista or at least Windows 7.
Re:OS X is no longer the only problem (Score:4, Informative)
In 2005, Mac OS X was available and rating "better" as a desktop environment in many places, but in order to "upgrade" to OS X, it required purchase of all new hardware.
by 2008, Mac had adopted Intel x86-based processors and expanded support into the realm formerly controlled only by PC.
You really mean in 2001 Mac OS X was available and by 2005 Mac had adapted Intel processors - right? Your first 2 points confused the hell out of me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow. You mean MS might have to continue to limp along with a mere 91.8 percent market share!?
Balmer must be totally losing bowel control over the whopping 0.63% of users who roll with some flavor of Linux.
(Going by web-use stats, Linux is currently in 4th place behind "other", but don't let the numbers get in the way of a good story. Curl up with your ragged copy of In the Beginning There Was the Command Line and you'll feel better about the inevitable Free Software revolution.)
I'm not quite sure if you're trolling or just completely misrepresenting what this conversation is about. We're talking about the adaptation of Windows Vista, not MS on the whole. Within that 91.8% of the market share you quoted, there are a very large number of people who aren't willing to switch to Vista from XP and because of the poor support and large system requirements there is a lot of attrition to other operating systems.
Even the article you quoted says:
Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows still dominates, with a 91.8% share as measured by the Web metrics company. But it lost ground in December, as it has for seven of the past 11 months.
.63% share)
The Mac OS share, by contrast, grew 7.4% in the past month, nearly double November's rate.[...]
The Linux operating system also showed strong growth (up better than 10% to hit a
This is also what we're talking about... the
Vista the bloated pig (Score:5, Insightful)
Russell went on to defend Vista, specifically its ability to "run on a very wide-ranging set of systems from the minimally capable to the incredibly capable," he said. "Apple doesn't do that."
Riiiiight. Apple was able to slim down OS X to run on an ARM smartphone, can MS do the same with Vista ? Oh yeah that's right, they had to extend the life of XP just for the netbook market, cause there's no way Vista could run on that hardware, and they were afraid of Linux taking over.
I can't see how this guy could think that, did he not ever use Vista ?
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shooting the messenger... (Score:5, Insightful)
"A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column]."
That suggests that when Microsoft received reports of a competitor offering a superior product that executives regarded the reports themselves as the problem and not Microsoft's deficient offerings; Warrier writes of addressing Mossberg's column, not of addressing the problems with Microsoft's planning and development processes which led them to an inferior market position.
Blaming someone outside the organization is smart corporate politics because it does not make enemies inside your own organization who might retaliate against you. But then maybe that is the problem with Microsoft management, that it is full of shrewd corporate ladder-climbing types instead of inspired artists and engineers.
features myth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe that's the purpose behind 'Snow Leopard [apple.com]'... Apple have taken a time-out to work on the underpinnings of the OS, and tune-up the performance.
The two things I'm most looking forward to are OpenCL (a standard way to access any GPU from user-code, AFAICT) and Grand Central (a way to easily harness multiple CPU's in a standardised way. Between the two of those, I can see Apple leaping ahead in performance over "normal" PC's...
From my perspective, I see it as Apple sweating the details, so I don't have
Ballmer! (Score:5, Funny)
I will kill this Mossberg for you for ten million of your American dollars and a lifetime license for Windows XP.
Enough already! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I know this is Slashdot and all, but honestly I'm starting to get microsoft-vista-embarassing-email-story fatigue. Ever since the Vista class-action exposed all of these internal Microsoft emails, people have been cherry-picking emails and making them into full-blown stories for months it seems.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, it's just that it's starting to get old. Yes, we know Vista sucks. We know Microsoft felt the same way. We get it!! Please stop beating us over the head with it already.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As of Leopard, OS X is certified UNIX.
Previous versions had full or nearly full UNIX underpinning
Yes, WE can: The New Mac commercial (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Gates: And I'm a PC
Mac: WHOA, Bill Gates! What are you doing on a Mac commercial?
Bill: To remind people that Microsoft is more than Windows. We've been writing software for the Mac since before there was a Mac. The same Office suite that PC's use is available to Mac Users
Mac: Actually, Bill, it's better.
Bill: [blushes] Thanks. And with Boot Camp and virtualization, you can run Windows if you have to.
Mac: Or want to. I think Vista ROCKS on a Mac.
Bill: That's all. Microsoft makes software and operating systems... for PCs AND Macs.
Mac: So, we can work together.
Bill: Yes. Yes, we can. [shakes hands] Nice shoes...[Exit, Stage right]
[Mac stands stunned]
[Enter PC, eating a churro]
PC: You're not going to believe this. I just met Jerry Seinfeld in the hallway.
[Mac stands stunned]
PC: What? What'd I miss?
[Fade to iMac running Office 2008 and Parallels with Vista] and new 'Yes, WE can' logo
Not Fear (Score:3, Insightful)
What you see here is an interest in the competition, a dialog to consider improving your own product in response to a competitor.
Sounds like the market actually working, but it's not fear.
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What you see here is an interest in the competition, a dialog to consider improving your own product in response to a competitor.
That theory might hold more sway of Microsoft actually improved anything.
You know what it is, my peeps (Score:5, Funny)
It's fear of a Mac planet.
Even worse, Macs can run XP (Score:5, Insightful)
'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written.
When my wife was asked to do half her work from home (and be much more productive that commuting to the office, it turns out), she had to look into replacing her ancient (4 years old ;-) Windows box. It was running XP, and her office hasn't upgraded to Vista, so she was looking for a PC to run XP. She couldn't buy one, until she asked at an Apple store. They explained to her that she could indeed run XP on a Mac. She got an iMac, installed XP via Fusion, and it works fine. Now a number of other people at work want her to teach them how to do it.
This has gotta be one of the things that terrifies MS's management. They lost a customer to Apple because the customer couldn't use Vista (for work-related reasons), and a competitor's system can run a virtualized XP subsystem. You could probably do the same with Linux.
Back in the 1970s, when the VM OS was taking over the IBM mainframe world, IBM responded by adopting VM and supporting it. This radically improved the usefulness of IBM's mainframes to their customers, and helped them consolidate their stranglehold on the mainframe market. So far, MS has viewed virtualization as a threat to their business, and has tried to block it. Maybe we shouldn't tell them that they're making a huge mistake. If they keep fighting it, they'll never be able to duplicate the total takeover that IBM managed in the mainframe arena. Virtualization is just too useful to a large percent of the users. And if we can avoid that sort of monoculture in the desktop, laptop, etc parts of the industry, we'll have a much healthier industry that will continue to innovate.
So let's all encourage MS to continue to try to block this development. It's for the benefit of everyone (except for MS's main stockholders).
Not exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless your wife installed a cracked version of XP she got off of Pirate Bay, Microsoft didn't lose a customer. I'm betting the license for the copy of XP she's running was paid for and did, in fact, generate a sale for MS. She probably also installed a paid for copy of Office as well.
Some PC manufacturer lost a sale but MS didn't. In fact, they probably made more money than they would have if they'd sold the OEM license.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Funny)
It's not fair to call vista a virus.
Viruses are some of the tiniest and most efficient pieces of code written.
You haven't seen some viruses (Score:4, Funny)
You haven't seen some viruses. I seem to remember, back in the dark ages of floppies, long before the internet, when 1.44 MB was all the space on a floppy and viruses were supposed to go unnoticed on one so they could spread, someone had written a 100K virus in Clipper. Or one of the similar DBase2-like databases. In an age of 512 _byte_ viruses, or where even complex and sophisticated ones were measured in single digit kilobytes, that was fucking huge. It's akin to having a 100 MB virus nowadays. In fact, it's akin to nowadays writing a virus in Java and distributing it together with a JDK.
So in all fairness, you can't generalize like that. Just because Vista is the most extreme case of a bloated and inefficient virus, doesn't mean there weren't other viruses that were only slightly less bloated and inefficient before ;)
Re:You haven't seen some viruses (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally think the most impressive virus was CIH, which could be considered to be zero bytes in size, due to the fact that it didn't increase the size of executables it infected. It didn't damage them either, it filled alignment gaps in the PE (.exe) file format, making the infected exe "denser" than the uninfected one. Pretty clever.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Funny)
Some are. The virus world has gone downhill a lot though. Why, many of them are written in Visual Basic!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Even though we are all supposedly geeks, it might help if you gave grammar lessons in English instead of regex.
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Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Insightful)
the supposed "security" of Vista is laughable
Excellent comment. Those of us who work in computer repair or who have porn-addicted friends know that getting malware on Vista is as easy as getting malware on any other version of Windows, the sole difference being that the UAC dialog(if enabled) pops up 5 times a second instead of 5 times a minute.
Vista is an epic fail! They moved everything around and added unnecessary menu options making navigation a nightmare for people familiar with prior versions. Bold moves in changing the layout for Vista and the latest Office, though it turned their user experience into a counterintuitive nightmare!
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Insightful)
There are no intuitive interfaces.. everything it learned.
One thing that doesn't help is hiding options.. the original IBM style guides (that MS prety much stuck to until Vista) were clear that an option shouldn't appear and disappear as it's confusing.
Max. 'oops' points of cours goes to Office 2007 that manages to hide the file menu so successfully I've actually been called in to 'fix' a machine when 5 people in an office couldn't work out how to save a document.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Interesting)
The user experiences is in many ways more intuitive, but that's not the issue...
What people say "intuitive" they actually mean "familiar". They are familiar with the old interface, and don't want to change to the new one even if it is better. They use the same argument against linux or mac too.
That's pretty much true. I work for a company that a while back yanked out all of their Windows XP systems and replaced them with Ubuntu.
Here is how they did it. First they moved everyone off Microsoft Software, and replaced it with what they would find later on Ubuntu. (Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, & Pidgin primarily.). After a time they instructed people to "Expect things to be diffrent, and diffrent does not mean bad. Some things will not work the same way, some thing may not even work at all, but some things will work better. You need to approach this as if you would approach an alien landscape, it's not the same so don't expect it to be the same." After that we did the change all at once. There have been complaints, some muttering here and there, and there have been issues, but overall it has gone over really really well, and the entire company is just as productive and happy on Ubuntu now. Maybe even more productive, we are getting to a point where there are very few IT Support issues regarding client desktops.. nearly none are work related, most are due to flash and pulseaudio..
But that's the big thing about interfaces.. people who are not interested in computers don't want to learn about them, and they don't want to learn a new interface even if it is better. They will get frustrated if they can't find their "C:\" drive, even though the thought of labeling a drive mappings by alphabetical charters is, and always was, archaic, confusing, and idiotic.
If they at least expect everything to be diffrent, things go a lot better.
Why People Said No to Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft didn't sell the reason people needed Vista. They polished a dashboard up with some glassy looking graphics and slapped a pricetag on it. That's not relevant to 99% of users. Most people use their computers for the internet, or for writing letters. Could Vista do anything like that better than XP? No. And there's your answer.
If Microsoft wanted to sell Vista, they should have examined what the main concerns are of people and acted on them. Most people don't care about what is happening behind the scenes... that's what nerds are for. Most people care about what the computers can do for them.
Now if they wanted to sell Vista, they should have got Jerry Seinfeld to do the Vista commercials from the beginning, and keep Bill Gates out of them. Seinfeld would simply sell the reason people need to upgrade to Vista which is for security and for expanded multi-media capability.
Jerry could have also addressed most of the user objections to Vista openly and with a dash of dry comedy that people tend to admire in the comedian.
But they chose to do a faceless monolithic kind of ad campaign, to combat Apple's ads but that actually made people think about how good Apple is compared to windows which was the kicker-backfire!!!! OMG yes.
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Re:Why People Said No to Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just not worth the cost. If a computer comes with it, that's nice - I'll take it
You may come to regret that attitude, as I have. I needed to buy a new laptop (old one broke) and I considered whether I should pay extra to get a new XP license with it, but because this was an unexpected purchase I ended up deciding to save the money and go with Vista.
Big mistake.
For one thing, I discovered Vista's DPC latency is always, always worse than XP. This is a big deal for me as I record music, not professionally, but for myself and it's one of the things I use my computer for. Basically can't do it in Vista, the OS defers too many procedure calls.
And I've spent literally *days* now trying to get the OS to run the way I want it to run, figuring out what I can safely shut off and basically trying to streamline it to where I don't have a mess of useless junk running all the time and slowing down my system. (I have a ThinkPad, so I'm not talking about crapware that came pre-installed, I'm talking about Vista processes, services, etc.)
I actually ended up turning Aero off and going back to the Vista Basic interface. Aero is just tiring to look at after a while, and seems to serve no real purpose. I see no justification whatsoever for dedicating all those resources to it.
Someone said in another thread about Vista that while it's basically a functional OS, it fails at what an OS is supposed to do and that's let you run the programs you want to run without getting in the way. It is instead an impediment. It's like a spoiled child constantly begging for attention and throwing tantrums when you don't give it any. I feel like I need to babysit it all the time; I am literally working more on Vista than I am doing anything productive on my computer.
If I had it to do again, I would spend the extra money for the XP downgrade.
Re:Why People Said No to Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
You could use Win2008 in desktop mode. It's vista from the other end... starts with everything switched off and you enable only what you need.
It's actually quite snappy.. bit of a memory hog but not too bad, and would have made a worthy successor to XP if it had been released in that form in the first place.
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Just FUD and bullshit... (Score:5, Funny)
From someone who has never used Vista. I've had it installed for years, it's every bit as stable as XP, and while it's clearly somewhat more "expensive" (CPU+Memory), on any kind of modern hardware it is irrelevant.
It's also clearly more secure than XP. In all cases where I've installed it for friends and family, it has noticeably reduced the amount of cruft that gets installed.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Informative)
The key here is the phrase 'on the same hardware'. As operating systems do more, they take more hardware to perform adequately.
If Vista were actually doing more for the user than XP, then people wouldn't be quite so upset.
But, most of what makes Vista slow are either bugs (file copy bug, poor algorithm used by SuperFetch that actually slows down real-world usage, etc.) or things the user doesn't want, like DRM or the extra pseudo-security features that don't really do anything, since there are still exploits from the Win2K days that work on an out-of-the-box Vista install.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Interesting)
Like my customer that wanted to pipe his rush limbaugh stream through the house. to his airport express on his whole house audio system.
Installing airfoil and running it gives a big vista "YOU ARE A MEDIA THIEF!!! HELP! HELP!" warning message.
It still works because airfoil get's around the silly Vista protected audio path, but it angers this very rich man.
I told him that he should consider downgrading to XP or moving to a Mac as Vista does nothing for him except get in his way.
He called us last friday looking for a company t hat can downgrade all his machines to XP. I sold him a raft of OEM XP Pro licenses and the required hardware to make it legal to downgrade them, and a phone number of a very good tech that can do it for him without loss of data.
I'm guessing they will never upgrade to Vista at the company he owns now....
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I told him that he should consider downgrading to XP or moving to a Mac
FYI: Apple is starting to implement HDCP/DPCP DRM as well. [arstechnica.com]
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Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Interesting)
If Vista were actually doing more for the user than XP, then people wouldn't be quite so upset.
Vista is more secure than XP. Unfortunately, people it turns out, really don't give a shit about security.
or the extra pseudo-security features that don't really do anything,
Forcing legions of inept users to not run as administrator is not pseudo-security.
I'll concede that some the warnings amount to pseudo-security, but the reality is that Vista is much more secure than XP. Signed drivers, the inability to put administrator items into your startup, and a whack of other measures all significantly hardened Vista to a damned LOT of the XP malware out there. Unfortunately it also broke a bunch of shoddily written legitimate apps, and users care more about running that crap than security.
since there are still exploits from the Win2K days that work on an out-of-the-box Vista install
Vista is much more secure than XP. Its not remotely impregnable, but it could be considered to be like a police armor compared to XP/2K's T-shirt and short-shorts.
But the bigger problem for windows isn't remote exploits, its its own users. Windows is a victim of its own success, the malware ecosystem for windows is unique.
Even if Windows were impregnable, due to its marketshare, it would still be the dominant target for exploits that rely on the meat using the PC. So Vista is challenged not only with being secure, but with protecting users from themselves... which has led to Vista being tasked with the impossible.
But give it time, there is nothing about OSX or Linux that makes it more secure against idiots installing keyloggers, rootkits, and other malware into their systems. If they ever have the same sizeable legions of inept users then the malware authors will target them too.
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But give it time, there is nothing about OSX or Linux that makes it more secure against idiots installing keyloggers, rootkits, and other malware into their systems. If they ever have the same sizeable legions of inept users then the malware authors will target them too.
I usually try not to be inflammatory but are you smoking crack? XP is a member of the Microsoft OS Family. All work on it from 1985 to 1993 or so was based around the fact it was to be a non-networked, single user machine. Anytime there as a trade off between speed, ease of use and security. Well, security lost. After 1993 they tacked networking on top of that, then in the early 2000s they started trying to combat the internet and the bad security rep they had.
Since Microsoft OS's have to support legacy app
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarily. MacOS X, 10.2 was faster than 10.1, and 10.3 faster than 10.2, on the same hardware. It wasn't until 10.4 that you actually started seeing a performance hit on G3 and slower G4 computers.
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Not necessarily. MacOS X, 10.2 was faster than 10.1, and 10.3 faster than 10.2, on the same hardware. It wasn't until 10.4 that you actually started seeing a performance hit on G3 and slower G4 computers.
What you say is true, but to be fair MacOS X was so unbelievably slow to start out with that it was pretty easy to find places to optimize.
In contrast, Windows 2000 was pretty darned speedy and optimized already. XP slowed it up a bit, but mostly with eye candy that could be turned off. IIRC, it's the same basic thing under the hood.
And I'm saying this as someone with 2 Macs, so this is not intended as a flame. I love OSX.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily. MacOS X, 10.2 was faster than 10.1, and 10.3 faster than 10.2, on the same hardware. It wasn't until 10.4 that you actually started seeing a performance hit on G3 and slower G4 computers.
In any event, I'm not sure that I'd call the jump from 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 'major iterations'.
In any event, I'm sure you don't know what you're talking about. The full list of features in each iteration was astounding. The difference between 10.1 and 10.2 was of the order of those between Win 2k and Win XP. The fact that they update minor version numbers doesn't change the fact that they add enough to call it a major iteration.
Don't believe me? Check out for yourself on wikipedia: 10.1 [wikipedia.org] 10.2 [wikipedia.org] and 10.3 [wikipedia.org]. Thank you, come again.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Informative)
On another note:
Windows 2000 - Version 5.0
Windows XP - Version 5.1
Windows 2003 - Version 5.2
Hmm, seems like somebody was barking up the wrong tree...
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Insightful)
OSX is often optimised for speed over successive releases... in fact one of the goals for snow leopard is improved performance.
It's something MS could probably learn from.. OTOH keeping everyone on the upgrade treadmill is worth it to them.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Informative)
I, for one, would welcome our upgrade treadmill overlords more if I were delivered faster performance with my upgrade.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Only on hardware that doesn't have XP drivers (or a misconfigure xp since it has very few drivers out of the box)...
Once you have the proper drivers for your hardware XP just walks all over vista on any machine.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:4, Interesting)
And Vista is faster than XP on the proper hardware
ie Dual Core, 4GB+ ram
My dual core 3ghz processor with 4gb of ram says otherwise when going from XP to Vista. Intel stuff no less with up to date drivers and also a high speed SATA drive.
File copies in XP took twice as long in Vista for files of equal size on the same hardware.
Re:What Microsoft should really have considered (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, what's not compatible with Vista 64? What's wrong with 100% working video drivers that install and function for nVidia and ATI devices exactly the same as the 32 bit drivers? I also suggest you try comparing Vista and XP boxes after a month of use. XP slows down, Vista gets faster. After even a day of use, Vista will be faster at loading some applications (at least Firefox, Word, Trillian for me). Vista will typically have lower average framerates by 0-5% as long as you run a DX9 version of whatever you're playing in Vista. If you use DX10, in most cases you'll suffer by 10-50%. App productivity benchmarks like running PS filters will probably show a very small XP advantage. Differences are negligible on most cases, but it's true that a few albatrosses are still out there, unaddressed.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You realize your perl cache has overhead and the execution time is actually a negative there, as miniscule as it is. Vista's method doesn't do things like hit the FS every few minutes "just to see how it's going" when it does prefetch.
The reason people complain about Vista's memory usage is because they see this:
Physical Memory (MB)
Total: 3069
Cached: 1794
Free: 13
And they think "OH MY GOD IT'S USING ALMOST ALL OF IT."
No.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, but how much time do you spend loading apps vs using them ?
It's true. I find OSX to be so slow opening (some) apps that I just leave them open all the time. After my computer's been up for a month or so they pretty much are all running. Looking down my dock right now there are 15 apps running. Generally I find the VM swapping preferable to the bouncy bouncy in the dock.
Certainly application startup has almost no bearing on my choice in OS, though. It'd have to be really obscene to sway me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The same universe where windows 95 is faster than XP on a Pentium-MMX with 64mb of ram but not on a 2 processor system with 2 gigs of ram.
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:5, Funny)
I would have gotten hooked Linux if it wasn't for OS X. Terminal.app sitting in the Utilities folder is like a drug pusher. First it starts out with a little 'ls' and 'mv'. Then you learn to SSH and X11 forward. Then come the shell scripts and built in gcc.
Oh god, and then you discover screen and it's all over. You're hooked.
I'm now a CLI junkie. I get my fix from my debian rtorrent machine that gives me my movies and now I'm building a home automation center from NSLU2 and 1-Wire. My MacBook Pro starts Terminal.app on start.
Parents keep your kids away from Apple, they could be come CLI Junkies. Vista is the one true path to salvation.
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:4, Informative)
mplayer -ontop -cache 102400 $drag and drop video here from NFS share$
Only way to watch videos in bed/couch. Never have to worry about Firefox or what ever being in front of the video. Caches enough to watch the movie without hiccups.
Although aalib gives new meaning to ASCII Porn.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Only way to watch videos in bed/couch.
Judging by that comment and your nick, I'll wager you don't have a girlfriend.
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:5, Funny)
You might as well sell your sole to Richard Stall..erm Satan!!/p>
Why would Satan, or Stallman for that matter, do with one of his shoes??
Re:I feel like the more people that use MAC... (Score:5, Insightful)
MAC = Media Access Control
Mac = Short for Apple Macintosh.
My friend, I fear that the computer you chose to use will have no bearing on what people already think of your intelligence.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except that Apple *never* uses "MAC" to refer to their machines or software in its literature anywhere. It is always "Mac" or "Apple Mac" or "Apple Macintosh" or sometimes just "Macintosh" but never "MAC".
The only exception would be if it appeared in an all-caps paragraph or something, which the original post clearly is not.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Got that backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X has a simple metaphor that exposes the underlying principles of computers in a way that average people can understand -- apps are files you drag from an archive to an HD to install for instance. That's the exact opposite of dumbing things down; it's making things clear. Windows, by contrast, hides the issues -- having programs you download actually be installers that download more files and install them to a non-obvious place, for instance. THIS is dumbing-down -- it leads to users that don't understand what they've just done, never mind how to solve problems. And don't get me started on how illogical having a "file" menu with an exit option is in a PC browser, or an anti-virus program. Macs make that app vs. file distinction much more sensible too.
Re:Got that backwards (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps the example that causes the most confusion is the missing Word document. When you save a document attached to an e-mail on a Mac, by default it saves to /username/Documents, which is a single click to get to in Finder. Compare that to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKD3.
Disclaimer: For all I know, Vista has removed this ridiculous obfuscation. Having not used Vista, at home or at work, I don't know and don't really care. :D
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that Vista downloads to \Downloads. Its true path is still c:\Documents and Settings\\Documents\Download, but it is now only one click. Hallelujah! ...cept I run linux which is just dumps it to the user directory.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that's true of the Mac hardware, but I'll take Ubuntu over any recent Mac OS. I'd say the same thing of the iPhone - my T-Mobile G1 hardware sucks in comparison, but the Android OS is a fine competitor.
I think Dell loves to compare their products to Macs. Same features, at half the price.
Re:Their fears were justified. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple would simply allow their OS to run on generic PCs, Microsoft would have a true competitor.
If Apple would allow their OS to run on generic PCs, they would fall into a support hell.
Re:Their fears were justified. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, though Apple naturally dropped the opportunity to really take on Microsoft. If Apple would simply allow their OS to run on generic PCs, Microsoft would have a true competitor.
This old canard again?
Nobody makes Big Money on desktop operating systems. Microsoft uses theirs to leverage sales of MS-Office and their enterprise solutions.
Apple uses theirs to sell hardware.
The only people who get worked up about the "OS wars" are fanboys. Everybody at Apple and Microsoft is too busy making money to care.
Re:Their fears were justified. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple makes their money as a hardware vendor. People would just pirate the OS, and everyone else would rather just run Windows on their PCs and have all their apps. Apple would fade away if you were running the company.
Oh, and the iPhone isn't going anywhere. THAT'S how Apple is taking on Microsoft--invading the mobile market where PCs are inevitably headed. Their laptop sales go up every year, and they have portable media and cell phones.
Re:Their fears were justified. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple would simply allow their OS to run on generic PCs, Microsoft would have a true competitor.
People say this, but Apple would have to take on a lot of expense to support generic hardware. They'd have to massively upgrade their test procedures, spend huge amounts of development time on drivers, hire reams of new tech support... unless their market share spiked, there is no way that they could justify the expense. Either that or the "generic" OS would cost a lot more than it does today.
Apple is perfectly happy with their niche of selling only high-margin products. Dell has margins of under 5%, Apple is over 14%. MS is 29%, for comparison. Of course, Apple could never get to that high of a number since MS is only able to price gouge due to their monopoly. It would be kind of fun to see how cheap Windows got if Apple entered the marketplace. We're already seeing it in sub-notebooks where the monopoly was destroyed.
As a bonus, Apple doesn't get called "unstable" every time the crappy $300 Dell hardware flakes out.
Re:As desktop support... (Score:5, Informative)
there should be an oversight committee to determine if a Mac is a necessary item
I'm sorry, that's just stupid. If a researcher feels they'll will be more productive using a mac with windows under emulation for the apps that need it who are you to judge?
I use a mac in a research setting at Purdue and run windows for a handful of Apps I rarely use. I probably fire windows up once every couple of months. I used to use it more frequently but apps like SAS, SPSS, and the windows version of Powerpoint are offered over the web via a CITRIX client so I don't need to waste disk space installing those apps locally anymore. However, if their had been the kind of unnecessary oversight you are suggesting I'd be SOL.
I get the impression from your post that you work for the researchers, but not as a researcher yourself. You are poorly equiped to decide which tools would best benefit the researcher unless you are the PI in question.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You may have excellent qualifications to make suggestions as to what is or isn't feasible, the relative amounts of work required to do a task one way or another, or even the skills necessary to conduct the research yourself. However, if you are not the PI then you can simply collect your paycheck at the end of every pay period, do your work to the best of your ability, and get on with your life.
However, the PI has to spend 6 years prov
Re:As desktop support... (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, funding oversight should focus on inputs and outputs, not process.
Assuming that the committee will know better than each and every researcher is a bad idea, and inputs and outputs are easy to measure, meaning that monitoring them will probably require less bureaucracy than making sure that all dollars are spent in 'approved' ways.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, if you knew anything about how federal funding works (NSF, and DARPA for example... I am sure NIH et al do the same) there is plenty of oversight. Most funding grants requires to provide report and justification on how, what, and by whom each penny in the grant was spent.
As a researcher myself, I think the original poster has no idea on the amount of overhead that goes into managing a grant. $12K in the big scheme of things is not that much. A normal paper may cost triple that just on student sala
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft could do this, but probably won't... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's certainly a lot of interest in that. There was so much talk out there about the possibility that Windows 7 was going to be this kind of "New Windows" with legacy software running in a thin emulation environment that it became conventional wisdom at one point. They could do this... a lot more easily than Apple did... because the Windows application model is not tightly coupled to the API exposed through it... for example, the Pocket PC test environment in the Pocket PC SDK is just a Windows applicat