Apple to Begin Advertising Push Targeting Windows 7 Launch?

[zarusoba]

I'm not sure if there's enough differentiation between OS X and Windows anymore.

From the consumer point of view, the two boxes look like they do pretty much the same thing. The Windows one is cheaper, might as well buy that.

It's not chalk and cheese anymore.

 

[rjohnstone]

Even with an account password will it still ask for the password in a UAC escalation prompt? I thought it was if you were a standard user and wanted to invoke admin it would throw in the password prompt and not for someone who is currently an admin. They'd just show you the buttons then and the option for more detail if you were an admin.

With Vista, if you are already logged in as an Admin, you will not be prompted for a password. You will still be notified by UAC and given the option to approve or deny the action. Why ask for a password if you're already running as an Admin?

I haven't tested this out in Win 7 yet, so I cannot say for sure if this is still the same.

 

[Eidorian]

With Vista, if you are already logged in as an Admin, you will not be prompted for a password. You will still be notified by UAC and given the option to approve or deny the action. Why ask for a password if you're already running as an Admin?

I haven't tested this out in Win 7 yet, so I cannot say for sure if this is still the same.

I know that it will only ask for the Approval or Denial under admin for UAC. The password prompt should only come into play if you want to escalate to admin from standard though.

 

[AidenShaw]

I thought it was if you were a standard user and wanted to invoke admin it would throw in the password prompt and not for someone who is currently an admin.

Correct, I clarified my post to say "if a normal user...there's an admin password prompt".

1. If someone in the "User" group attempts a privileged operation, the UAC prompt asks for an administrator password.
   
2. If some task in the "Administrators" group which currently does not have elevated access requests a privileged operation, the UAC prompt asks for an "OK". (Note that with Windows 7, the default UAC setting is to not prompt if a UI click results in the request, but to prompt if a program that is not elevated calls a privileged API, and also to prompt if a UI request starts a shell or other process that can issue general requests. For example, asking to "Run as administrator" for a command terminal or Explorer will get a popup.)
   
3. If some task running with elevated access requests a privileged operation, it is granted.

I haven't tested this out in Win 7 yet, so I cannot say for sure if this is still the same.

My screen caps are from Windows 7 Professional - still the same.

The password prompt should only come into play if you want to escalate elevate to admin from standard though.

Fixed it for you. The Windows6.* term is "elevation". If you see a popup or error message that "Elevation is required", it means that you should wrong-click the shortcut and request "Run as administrator", or wrong-click on command terminal and select "Run as administrator" and start the task from the elevated terminal.

 

[destinationspac]

Windows 7 is Great

I've been using Windows 7 RC within Virtual Box on my MacBook for some time now. I think it's a great operating system. I can't find much wrong with it. And, if you are still getting viruses and malware, you are just and idiot these days. I've never had a problem with that.

 

[Goona]

What's with the flood of angry Windows guys on MR lately?

I wonder, it seems since their operating system hasn't departed from the heavens, they are getting a little bit angry.

 

[Goona]

I've been using Windows 7 RC within Virtual Box on my MacBook for some time now. I think it's a great operating system. I can't find much wrong with it. And, if you are still getting viruses and malware, you are just and idiot these days. I've never had a problem with that.

So because you haven't had a problem with viruses, it means the millions of people around the world who get viruses are idiots?

 

[destinationspac]

So because you haven't had a problem with viruses, it means the millions of people around the world who get viruses are idiots?

Yeah, basically. It's 2009!! Who doesn't know what measures to take to avoid getting malware these days?

 

[Goona]

Yeah, basically. It's 2009!! Who doesn't know what measures to take to avoid getting malware these days?

The billions of people around the world who don't know much about computers.

 

[xIGmanIx]

yeah, that is a segment that should be dominated by apple users

What's with the flood of angry Windows guys on MR lately?

 

[Veri]

(edit) Since most people seem to be dismissing it without trying it, it's worth noting that anyone who wants to can download a final 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 90-day trial legally from Microsoft Technet. This will work via bootcamp, or your choice of virtualisation software, or even perhaps on that n year old PC in the closet. If you don't want to activate for 40 days, because activation annoys you or whatever, just slmgr /rearm every 10 days.

(That style of advertising must work, since Verizon is now doing a similar thing with their 'there's a map for that' ads bashing ATT.)

"There's an app for that" is a reason to choose iPhone over other-smartphone, and to choose Windows over OS X.

My first round of Mac-using in the late '80s to early '90s demonstrated an obvious theme of consistency and simplicity not apparent in OS X or any other modern GUI. If something looking like B did C in context, then all B's would do C in context, and if you wanted C you'd only have to look for B. The combination of sexed-up interface and Unix underpinning ruined this: 2 elements doing the same thing look different for style purposes; there's no need to approach a perfect GUI configuration because, hey, there's always the command line.

But OS X isn't really Unix in spirit, so you don't have a huge collection of single purpose tools to manipulate plaintext: you have Swiss army knives, and compressed XML, and blah. Even ObjC, which is a breath of fresh air primarily because it's not the behemoth that is C++, still feels like a Smalltalk-style syntax preprocessor - why do I sometimes have to be so aware of internals, and sometimes I'm supposed to be so hidden from them? How to feel when garbage collection comes round? The more I use OS X the more I have decided it doesn't know what principles it is trying to follow.

I know what .NET is; I know what Win32 is; I know what PowerShell is trying to be. But I'm not sure what single-platform Cocoa on a preprocessed C with a sprinkling of runtime support is, and I'm not sure where AppleScript should stop and bash begin. Where has that Apple conceptual simplicity gone?

 

[AidenShaw]

I wonder, it seems since their operating system hasn't departed from the heavens, they are getting a little bit angry.

Release date is a week from today, why would anyone be angry? We've known about the date for months.

Will you get angry on 4 December because Chanukah hasn't started?

(Actually, millions of us are already running Windows 7, so no need to be angry .)

So because you haven't had a problem with viruses, it means the millions of people around the world who get viruses are idiots?

If someone is still running Windows 98 in an environment directly exposed to the internet - yes, that person needs some computer education. (A technical definition of "idiot" is someone with an IQ below 25 - so no, she is not an idiot.)

Few systems, however, are "directly exposed" to the internet. Anyone with a home DSL/cable router with NAT in fact has a pretty strong firewall that protects against unknown intruders. Most modern routers have SPI firewalls that add even more protection.

Few of the malware propagating today are technically "virii", anyway.

Why go through all that hassle making back ups?

Much easier to buy a copy of Vista to install over XP, then buy a copy of W7 and upgrade again !!

Having switched to Mac in 2007, I'm going to miss out on all that fun

Obviously your wallet takes twice the impact!

Your wallet does not take a hit. Just upgrade XP to Vista without a license, and then upgrade to Windows 7.

Windows Vista will run for 30 days without a license key.

The very simple process is:

1. Upgrade your XP system to the appropriate version of Vista
2. Say "Skip" when it asks for the license key (and uncheck "Activate online")
3. Log in, insert your Windows 7 DVD, and upgrade again.
4. When WIn7 asks for your version/license, enter the correct information

I just verified this with a 5 year old XP Pro VM. Upgraded to Windows Vista Business - did not specify key or try to activate. On first login, connected Win7ProRTM.iso and upgraded again. Specified my Win7 Pro key (and "do not activate").

Logged into Windows 7, hit "Computer" -> "Properties" and selected "Activate now".

"Activation was successful."

I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't promote this as a way to avoid reinstalling....

 

[rwilliams]

I don't think anyone would buy a Mac just to run Windows on it. You don't buy a Mac for that, it just makes it less "scary" for Windows people, knowing that they can use Windows just the way they did before.

I think the stupidest thing in Windows 7 is that it can run Windows XP, which means that it's the only way you can get some programs to run on Windows 7.

I also think (but this is just my personal opinion), that Windows XP looked quite all right, I mean the interface, especially if you installed a theme called Royal Noir, which I really liked. Then Windows Vista started looking really bad, I really think it has too many different textures, colours, transparencies and stuff that don't contribute to making the system more understandable, they're just a show-off of wasted CPU power. Like Flip 3D, it's not useful like Exposé is, you can't use your mouse to choose the window you want, you just have to keep pressing WinKey + Tab to cycle through. I've seen some screenshots of Windows 7 betas and I think that it's even uglier than Vista, which means that Microsoft is going in the wrong direction (in my taste) of design.

And as everyone says, "it's still Windows", it's still going to bomb you with warning dialogs, it's still going to make you run wizards, it still will require lots of 3rd party software, for example, for your WiFi card in your laptop, you'll still have 4 icons in the task bar blinking and warning you about stuff you don't care about, one telling you that "the network has limited connectivity" when you're perfectly well connected, one saying that your virus database is out of date, etc... And then those drivers eventually run into some problem, you install another one, but the old one is somehow still there, causing conflicts, etc...

That's just my experience, and Windows 7 won't change all that. It might make better use of the CPU, it might have cool functions, but overall, I don't feel like "oh that feature would be useful to me". Windows is going along with what's inevitable: new features, slightly faster, etc. It will still be really darn slow if you don't format and reinstall it at least once a year! And then you start tweaking the registry, and everything goes fine, until one day an installer won't install an important program for some reason, you don't even know that you did something wrong in the registry 6 months ago to stop an annoying notification or a useless program from starting at login.

I love my Mac, and I love OS X. But this post couldn't have been more of a complete FAIL if you actually tried. It sounds like you've never even used Windows 7.

 

[AidenShaw]

I know what .NET is; I know what Win32 is; I know what PowerShell is trying to be. But I'm not sure what single-platform Cocoa on a preprocessed C with a sprinkling of runtime support is, and I'm not sure where AppleScript should stop and bash begin. Where has that Apple conceptual simplicity gone?

Let me know if you figure out what "64-bit OSX" is supposed to mean.

There's a lot of gobbledygook about EFI and MacBook4.2,3 and other arcane nonsense.

Why isn't it - "if you have an Apple Intel system with an Intel64 processor, you can load the 64-bit kernel"?

 

[HLdan]

So the Apple UAC asks for your password, and the Microsoft UAC asks you to click OK.

... and the difference is?

Ha, so interesting that you would try and make an excuse for how stupid the Windows UAC is. What's the difference between typing in a password and simply pressing OK? Are you serious? Well think about that the next time someone sits to your computer. Spare me with the commentary of, "I'm not foolish enough to allow someone to use my computer", it's reality, many people do. Also people do make minor mistakes by pressing the wrong button, they can just as easily press OK instead of cancel. Please accept the reality of the everyday end user and not the geek world of reality.

I'm not sure if there's enough differentiation between OS X and Windows anymore.

From the consumer point of view, the two boxes look like they do pretty much the same thing. The Windows one is cheaper, might as well buy that.

It's not chalk and cheese anymore.

Ha, if were only that cut and dry. Apple has the upper hand in this situation and for the most part always will. The problem with your logic is that most people have used Windows for a long time and have experienced the worst of times with severe slow downs due to clogged Registries and they don't even know what a Registry is or what is causing all these slow downs. Most Windows users have heard of viruses and pretty much know their computer has one or many since they can barely start it up.
Many Windows users have paid $$$ to get their hard drives cleaned out multiple times and are just fed up with the whole experience. A new Windows OS is not going to wipe away the poor experience people have in their heads about Windows and are more apt to trying something else which in this case would be a Mac. Every family member and friend who used to bug me about fixing their PC's so they can at least boot up have never called me since buy a Mac, they just love the OS X experience.

 

[Eidorian]

Ha, so interesting that you would try and make an excuse for how stupid the Windows UAC is. What's the difference between typing in a password and simply pressing OK? Are you serious? Well think about that the next time someone sits to your computer. Spare me with the commentary of, "I'm not foolish enough to allow someone to use my computer", it's reality, many people do. Also people do make minor mistakes by pressing the wrong button, they can just as easily press OK instead of cancel. Please accept the reality of the everyday end user and not the geek world of reality.

Is the sudo warning enough?

 

[AidenShaw]

Ha, so interesting that you would try and make an excuse for how stupid the Windows UAC is. What's the difference between typing in a password and simply pressing OK? Are you serious? Well think about that the next time someone sits to your computer. Spare me with the commentary of, "I'm not foolish enough to allow someone to use my computer", it's reality, many people do. Also people do make minor mistakes by pressing the wrong button, they can just as easily press OK instead of cancel. Please accept the reality of the everyday end user and not the geek world of reality.

You say: 'Spare me with the commentary of, "I'm not foolish enough to allow someone to use my computer",'

I'm not, nor do I allow random people to stick their USB drives into my slots.

Anyone who would give a system logged into an admin account to another person is a fool.

And, as we've shown, if a "User" account is logged in the "visitor" that you've loaned the system to has to enter an admin password - same as UNIX.

Windows 7 is NOT Windows Vista.....BUT it's more like Windows 95, a step in the wrong direction

What is this nonsense supposed to mean? Windows 7 is like Win95? Completely absurd....

Your signature is nonsense, like most of your posts.

 

[blackhand1001]

They say it's good but then again they said the same thing about Vista before it was released.

Vista didn't get the kind of reviews that 7 got prior to its release. I think when you use it, with an open mind of course, your expectation will be blown away.

 

[cumanzor]

Why do you post without checking to see if there's any basis in truth to what you're typing?

Windows UAC is almost exactly like that of Apple OSX and other unix-like systems.

Q: What happens if a normal user tries something that needs privileges?

A: The screen darkens, a system modal dialog box appears, and she's asked to provide an administrator's password - JUST LIKE OSX/UNIX​

(see attachments)

Sheesh, the blind leading the blind....

Just a small thing here. Password is only prompted when the user is not in the Administrator group. Other than that, yes, both Linux, OSX and UAC models are fundamentally the same. (on a technical level I wouldn't know tbh but the paradigm is the same).

 

[Eidorian]

(edit) Since most people seem to be dismissing it without trying it, it's worth noting that anyone who wants to can download a final 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 90-day trial legally from Microsoft Technet. This will work via bootcamp, or your choice of virtualisation software, or even perhaps on that n year old PC in the closet. If you don't want to activate for 40 days, because activation annoys you or whatever, just slmgr /rearm every 10 days.

Thanks for the link. There's a secondary tower that I have that is started acting a little weird under the RC in late August. I wanted to see if it would be corrected in RTM. Now I don't need to commit to a copy just yet.

I'll get on before the pre-order deals expire though.

 

[Masa Mac]

Thanks to XBox 360, I'm not anti-MS like I used to be.
Due to few Windows-only apps, I am going to make my Windows debut with 7.

Meanwhile, Apple needs to get the bugs out of Snow Leopard which killed my account and iPhone OS with Podcast menu problems asap.

I love Apple and all, but defending and covering up Apple's problems and attacking Windows is counter-productive in the end. Spoiling an apple will only give you a rotten apple.

 

[HLdan]

You say: 'Spare me with the commentary of, "I'm not foolish enough to allow someone to use my computer",'

I'm not, nor do I allow random people to stick their USB drives into my slots.

Anyone who would give a system logged into an admin account to another person is a fool.

And, as we've shown, if a "User" account is logged in the "visitor" that you've loaned the system to has to enter an admin password - same as UNIX.




What is this nonsense supposed to mean? Windows 7 is like Win95? Completely absurd....

Your signature is nonsense, like most of your posts.

GREAT!! Now that I know that all you are capable of are insults, I will not waste another post to you after this one regardless what you say, I now know who I'm dealing with.

Obviously you didn't comprehend what my signature is saying so that's good enough for me and that makes me truly understand who I'm dealing with.

You and many others on this forum need to stop thinking like a geek and understand that most of the computing world are made up of average users and they have NO clue what an admin account is let alone that they are in an admin account or even the difference between an admin account and a guest user account so your defense on that is a fail.

Here's a realistic and true scenario for ya;
Friend, "Hey, can I use your laptop to check my email, myspace or my facebook account"?
Computer Owner, "Sure, go ahead"
Friend, "Do you have any viruses on this thing"?
Computer Owner, "Uh, I dunno, maybe, I guess, it's hella slow, I guess I do, who cares?, "F' it.
Friend, "Cool, I'll just use it for quick minute, I won't do anything"

Here's an UNrealistic scenario for ya;
Friend, Hey, lemme use your laptop to check my facebook acct".
Computer Owner, "Um, dude I don't let people use my laptop when it's in the admin account". Lemme set up a guest user account so you can use it, if a message pops up asking you to install something, press cancel"
Friend, "Do you have any viruses on here"?
Computer Owner, absolutely not, I do weekly Registry cleaning, keep up with the latest anti-virus and I always press Cancel when the UAC asks my permission to install something so my PC is perfect"

The first one is the average users reality, not the reality of many computer geeks. Just another reason why Windows is not a good choice unless the person just wants to buy cheap and could care less about risks and frustration.

 

[AidenShaw]

GREAT!! Now that I know that all you are capable of are insults, I will not waste another post to you after this one regardless what you say, I now know who I'm dealing with.

Obviously you didn't comprehend what my signature is saying so that's good enough for me and that makes me truly understand who I'm dealing with.

OK - so your signature equating Windows 7 to Windows 95 is nonsense, but you won't waste your time explaining what that is supposed to mean.

Works for me... Fewer discussions to follow.

 

[Eidorian]

Here's an UNrealistic scenario for ya;
Friend, Hey, lemme use your laptop to check my facebook acct".
Computer Owner, "Um, dude I don't let people use my laptop when it's in the admin account". Lemme set up a guest user account so you can use it, if a message pops up asking you to install something, press cancel"
Friend, "Do you have any viruses on here"?
Computer Owner, absolutely not, I do weekly Registry cleaning, keep up with the latest anti-virus and I always press Cancel when the UAC asks my permission to install something so my PC is perfect"

I wouldn't let anyone else use my account on my Mac.

 

[Macminiintel]

OS X is still a niche platform, and one that is incompatible with almost everything that has the words "enterprise" or "business" on it.)

Your wrong there, Macs can run more software than a PC fully legally too. Ever heard of Crossover:Mac & Darwine. Also its PC's what have the issues not Macs. Every PC at my college cant read a MacOS formatted drive, but Macs can read a FAT/NTFS formatted drives. Microsoft office 2007 cant read pages documents yet Apple's iWork reads MS office documents fine.

Its a certain more people started using macs in enterprise world more software would be available as an actual Mac version rather than just creating a fake windows environment to run it inside of OS X using crossover