Vista Beta 1 - Stuff copied from OS X
Virtual Folders (Smart folders)
Search bar (spotlight)
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Leopard or Vista?
- Thread starter xisforextreme
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Moria said:
The Avalon Graphics Engine... err, the Windows Presentation Foundation *chuckles a little* as it is now known, basically just lets Windows do what Quartz lets OSX do. I don't know why there is talk about Vista being better than Leopard... I know neither one is near release so it's difficult to really judge... but as far as I can tell Vista is just Windows XP with Spotlight and Quartz. (And Vista IE... which may be good for Vista users, but will be bad for the rest of the world cuz i think it will make for websites that are only compatible with Vista).
iMeowbot said:
there is no such thing as semi-transparent. it either is transparent or it isn't. if it's an almost-see-through surface, then it's TRANSLUCENT. oh, well... this comment is semantics, really; however, there's nothing more distracting than using wrong terms
BGil said:
in what? the number of virii it allows to run? does it look like i can run my macintosh audio plugins better with it than the current osx? will it run better on my apple hardware than apple's own operating system?
BGil said:
so YOU would want apple-the-hardware-company be more innovative than their software division? do you think that the past 1990's apple (that innovated on the hardware side which lead to proprietary systems) was better than today's apple (that co-operates within the rest of the industry)?
if apple sees fast firewire (their innovation) more important than double-layer dvd burning (not their innovation) to really expensive media, are you judging apple for their priorities? they have to be quick to adopt their own tech to let the rest of the industry a reason to consider supporting their tech, whereas on the other hand the rest of the industry releases their innovations and give apple a reason to consider whether and when to support that tech not-invented-in-apple-headquarters.
it's common sense, really.
i find it amusing that while apple (the hardware company) is more innovative in the software domain, microsoft (the software company) is more innovative in the hardware domain. we'll all have to admit that microsoft's greatest innovations are their ergonomic mice&keyboard whereas apple's greatest innovations are their great software.
and guess which is better? even microsoft admits it's all about software. (developers, developers, developers...)
BGIL said:
you seem to completely miss the point about the 30" display. it's out there to give professionals more screen space and to allow running multiple full-sized windows at the same time. i myself would just love to have one, but so far have not been able to justify the price.
apple laptop screens on the other hand, their displays are great. and i'm talking about the quality and colour accuracy, which is for me the most important factor. the imaging is perfect and i wouldn't change that for a million megapixel display that cannot represent accurate colors. really.
up to this point i have been very satisfied with the 72dpi screen resolution. i can however see the future where desktop publishing professionals use press-calibrated 300dpi screens to proof the finals before sending to press, but for the rest of the general public, that all is just an eye-candy - it will not add usefulness, it just makes it prettier.
BGIL said:
you really cannot blame apple for doing that. they have their format to promote - and as their format kicks wma ass quality-wise, nobody should even complain; except the poor guy that has tons of wma files and doesn't want to re-rip everything.
anyway, why don't you blame microsoft by not installing aac codec by default? the whole windows user-base has been locked in a crappy format and not supporting aac by microsoft is a perfect example of microsoft fearing the better option would gain user preference over wma.
BGIL said:
so? apple allows osx users to use the pre-osx apps via "the classic". almost all old apps work fine, and the only exception i know is protools which is very low-level programmed system. i have heard pre-ppc apps don't work either, but can you blame them for changing cpu architecture a long time ago? all dos-apps don't work with windows, either.
BGIL said:
why on earth doesn't microsoft let their (vaporware) IE7 run on windows 3.11 or earlier? haven't you thought that some OS upgrades might actually bring something NEW to the table, which makes releasing some software impossible for older systems. did you know that brand-new pc hardware doesn't work without drivers either? of course, drivers can be installed, but what would be the point of installing panther to a brand-new imac that has tiger pre-installed?
BGIL said:
all this just shows how much microsoft is afraid of the aac and apple's DRM. aac is open standard and the DRM is proprietary. it's only a way to sell music, and you should really give apple some credit for pulling the itunes music store together. surely you have noticed that it has become very popular.
BGIL said:
what the effing thing are you talking about? the only intel-inside-macs so far are those developer boxes that are on rental for a limited time. nobody knows what apple will use for the boxes that will be for sale in the future. we know they plan to use intel cpu's but that's all. no specific information has been released, other than "apple will not actively restrict other OS installations". this palladium scenario exists only in YOUR head, dude.
HiRez said:
why on earth would it be painful for an older ppc-mac user to use the ppc-compiled software natively in the future, if it's not painful to use ppc-compiled software today? "rosetta" emulation is only needed when using ppc-complied software with an intel cpu, which is painful NOW when the software has not been intel-compiled.
of course, some apps will never be intel-compiled and therefore will require "rosetta" in the future, but that future hardware is surely fast enough to handle such old software that somehow is not feasible to port anymore.
so...
owners of a ppc-mac will be fine with the ppc-purchase now and in the future, and owners of a future intel-mac will be fine with the old sowtware too, and even more fine with the current re-compiled intel-native software.
BGil said:
surely you understand that only EXECUTABLE BINARIES have to be re-complied, and the multiple gigabytes of support data are universally compatible. how different it is to open a jpeg file with an intel hardware than with a ppc hardware?
no, the companies will only have to upgrade the binaries. that will not be impossible amount of data.
Moria said:
The search bar is already in Windows. Next time you're on an XP or 2000 box hit the search button and you'll see a search box right in the Explorer Window. Apple putting their search box in the upper-right hand corner of their file browser was Firebird and Opera inspired to be sure. Likewise, IE and the psuedo-web browser/Document Explorer follows the trend of other web browsers. The search field in Tiger is fundamentally different to... for one it's actually a search field whereas in Vista it's just used to filter the current view.
Spotlight and Smart Folders were copied from XP/Longhorn anyway. Apple knew desktop search was coming with Longhorn and they wanted to beat them to the punch. That's what those WWDC 2004 posters were about. It said, "We stole your desktop search idea and released it first". Ulitmately they were still beat to the punch by Windows 2000/XP and Microsoft/Windows Desktop Search.
You can go to Paul Thurrott's site and look at Longhorn builds and talk from January 2002 and see the stuff about WinFS, Searching, Virtual Folders, and a Direct X based GUI. Then Microsoft showed all that stuff again at WinHec in early 2002 BEFORE JAG INTRODUCED QE. This was just before Microsoft released Direct X 9, which first made it possible for developers to build standard apps with hardware acceleration. See Picasa for more details.
Direct X 9 also included a fully hardware accelerated (pixel shaders) image, video, and modeling system. The Mac version is called CoreImage and CoreVideo.
Still in 2002, Microsoft release high definition video codecs, hardware acceleration of those codecs, and next-gen audio codecs (WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, 5.1, 7.1 etc.). The Mac version is called QT7 and was released in 2005.
and on and on.... (File system Encryption, FUS, Built-in Faxing, Subcriptions, Multitasking (kernel/FS), QT7, Apple Lossless, CoreData, Built-in ZIP compression...)
Since OS X came out Apple has copied more from Microsoft technology than the other way around. Microsoft, on the other hand, can't make a UI to save it's life so they tend to copy Apple's UI's (but rarely technology).
MacVault said:
now i'm really confused. how on earth four small pieces of colour SUCK so big time when XP's huge areas of plasticy colours looks nicer? the scroll bar might be the only decent-looking (grey) element in the whole XP interface whereas the apple interface uses that aqua-blue colour in multiple places consistently.
and the colored buttons... well, even a 4-year-old child learns the difference between red, yellow and green buttons.
but microsoft's... they are all the same color (grey) so -agreed- they look like they won't distract the user in anyway. but as the colour isn't any indication of the function behind, the user must look into the symbols they carry. and what are those? closing symbol i think is an "X", which is generally a "don't press here" symbol. minimize and maximize? err, a line and a box? they don't tell the user a thing, not anything at all. you just need to know what they do.
and why is it that microsoft must always do the same things apple does, only doing it the opposite way? desktop icons for example, microsoft copied the desktop but placed the icons to the left side as if the world would have more left-handers. or those three buttons, which apple has always (besides close-window-button) had on the left, microsoft just had to place on the right. again, as if we would be lefites or something. or the start menu? apple has the apple menu on top and microsoft just had to put it on bottom, like most of us would got used to read from down to up instead of from up to down. i just don't get it. what are they thinking?
anyway, enough ranting. if you really don't like the aqua-blue, you can always use graphite-grey colours. some people even install a 3rd party theme apps, but i never recommend those hacks. the bottom line is that apple's gui is A LOT better than microsoft's, and no amount of aqua-blue isn't going to change that
BGil said:
oh yeah? requires at least two clicks starting from an empty desktop, and even when you search something, it only then begins to search through your hard drives or network. spotlight search results are instantly available, so you really cannot compare those two searches. or, you can, but apple's beat microsoft's utterly.
BGil said:
sigh. you just cannot know when either side has began developing the feature. only fact we have is that apple released it first, and i'd say at least two years before microsoft. nothing changes that, ever.
BGil said:
multi-channel audio has been supported since at least jaguar (2002), and that means out-of-the-box without any extra installs/upgrades or 3rd party apps. i do you a favor and not comment on WMA crap, as while it may be a next-gen codec, it's not a high-quality one. apple's audio tech is just sooooooo much better than microsoft's that you have really hard time comparing the two. and i mean out-of-the-box installations, because if you install a digidesign protools HD system for a mac and pc, the two protools systems sound identical. point being there are always 3rd party installations that are better, but supporting such 3rd party installations doesn't count when you compare microsoft's audio tech to apple's.
video on the other hand, well, we all know WMV has only lately catched up the quicktime MOV format that has been available since forever. and that there is little difference between mpeg1 and mpeg2 between a mac and a pc, only that encoding either is way faster with a ppc processor. hardware acceleration on the other hand belongs to the 3rd party category, and i can always point out that high-end AVID video workstations have the same amount of dsp inside no matter where they are installed.
the HD video however, that's up for debate. show me the off-the-shelf microsoft product that even knows about HD and i point you to any current apple hardware that has tiger installed, and that thing just eats HD mpeg4 video for breakfast. agreed, current mac software is current and microsoft's is from 2001 if i remember correctly, but hey... that's the last time microsoft has released an operating system. you can blame them, but don't blame apple for it.
BGil said:
only tech apple has copied is the fast-user-switching feature, which XP has had before. the difference is that i know nobody that actually uses that XP feature, but almost every mac user i know are just thrilled of the apple's implementation whic is useful and pretty. apple even admitted they copied the feature, and that's fair - let microsoft have credit for the one thing they have innovated during their 20 years in business.
you surely don't seriously think that it's "copying" when apple makes its operating system more friendly with windows technologies, do you? windows sharing and connectivity to active directory is hardly copying - i would call it "co-operation with established standards".
what is UI other than technology? if microsoft would get rid of UI, what's left? an automated server? everything that interacts with the user is a UI, and apple's just happen to be so good tech that microsoft has been copying it for ages and still doesnt' get it. it's easy to build machine-to-machine protocols, networking for example, but it's very hard to build human-to-machine interaction, as human brain tend to process data quite differently than just zeros and ones that computers process. have you ever heard of "fuzzy logics" in contrast to binary logic? human interactivity is all about fuzzy logics, and that's a fact microsoft will just never understand. copying is not creative, and it requires creativity to know how humans interact.
ok, enough already, you just don't seem to notice the value in the great tech that apple has. or maybe i fail to notice the greatness of microsoft's?
When Apple chose to put firewire 800 and sudden motion sensors (things that the majority of folks have no use for) above 512mb's of ram standard, faster and larger hard drives, scrolling, media card readers, better GPU's, PCI Express, and better screens. Damn right I'm gonna judge their priorities-- I'm a consumer that's what I'm supposed to do.
You completely miss the point. Most Apple customers by laptops and having more screen space on a laptop is a much bigger need than on your typical PowerMac because PM's support far larger displays already. Apple just did the 30 incher because no one else had done it. It's a niche product that's way to expensive for most people to take advantage of, high resolution laptop screens (or better screens in general) are not.
Better laptop screens were already around and ready for implementation and chose to develop something else instead of going for what most people want.
I'm not even going to adress that on because it's complete BS.
So what happened to you saying that a 30 inch screen is to give people more screen space and room for windows? How would a WSXGA+ screen not do the same thing on a Powerbook?
OS 9 had nothing to do with a cpu architecture change.
DOS apps do run on Windows.
ProTools, DP3, and every other audio app I've used for Classic doesn't work well. Quark, FCP, Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc. all ran much worse in Classic than they did in OS 9. Lots of things in Classic simply did not work. Likewise, Tiger is not compatibile with many older OS X apps. One couldn't even know that Tiger didn't work with those apps until they bought Tiger and took it home or knew where to find that information in an enthusiats forum. Microsoft handles the situation differently (better).
You aren't helping your case. Win 3.11 is something like 13-14 years old. Panther is 3 months old. The day Tiger came out Safari 2.0 would not run on Panther. That's one day. There's nothing in Tiger that prevents Safari 2.0 from being ported to Jag, period. Using a web browser and a chat program as incentive to upgrade is just cheap IMO.
Did you know my 5 month old PC can boot Windows 3.11 and Windows 95?
We installed Panther on a Mac that came pre-installed with Tiger because we work in a corporate setting. We keep all our computers running the same software until we chose to upgrade. We need to run lots of tests, build new images and retrain staff when we roll out new OSes and software. Apple basically told us, the day Tiger shipped on iMac G5's, that we would have to upgrade if we wanted to ever buy another iMac. Because we always roll out new machines and replace old hardware we are in constant need of new machines. THEY FORCED US TO UPGRADE BECAUSE OF THEIR LACK OF SUPPORT.
iTunes AAC is not better than WMA standard, they are about the same. WMA Pro kicks the living crap out of Apple's AAC, period. Up to 7.1 surround sound, 24-bit etc.
1. The iPod supports WMA by default, Apple doesn't have to do anything to support it that's not the same has having to build in support for something (which MS would have to do).
2. Windows users aren't locked into any format. Directshow/WMP was built to allow for expanision to other formats. That's why you can go to Nero, Free-codecs.com, or Mpegable and download other codecs (including AAC) so they will work in WMP and any Directshow app. Not only can Directshow support other codecs but their DRM's as well (Harmony for example). Go look at those sites and notice that Windows users have more choice of codecs and formats than any other OS on the planet thanks to Microsoft and Directshow/VfW.
3. Don't try to argue about Lock-in when you're trying to argue for iTunes-iPod. It's a complete oxymoron.
Okay, yeah, sure
Wrong. AAC is proprietary just like WMA. In fact, AAC actually costs more to license. Apple is also not licensing their DRM to the general public, while Microsoft always has (even before the ITMS showed up) so Apple is the one scared.
The Apple using Intel's built-in DRM (Hypervision/Palladium) story has been reported by many major sources, try again.
BGil said:
I don't really feel like taking apart your post but I'd really like a link for those "sources". Apple will only lock the OS onto Macs not do anything else as I understand it.
Hmmm
Anything new and different is often reacted to in one of two ways
1) I like it - because it's different
2) I don't like it - because it's different
Honestly, I don't see much other than some GUI tweaks, but I'll admit I only looked at some of the screenshots linked.
What I did notice is that the status bars are lickable (a la Aqua), and certain areas have highlighting that looks suspiciously like a spotlight highlight.
Like many, the interface is only a small piece of the experience. I'm interested in how this thing works.
I recently was helping a friend of my wife get her laptop setup on my Airport Express while they were visiting. It was an absolute joke. We tried no less than 20 times - it would say it was connected, but it wasn't. When we did get connected, the taskbar icon had a red X through it. I couldn't believe how frustrating it was. I eventually completely had to deinstall the wireless card, update drivers, re-install, and we still had bizarre behaviour (sometimes asking for the network password,other times no). My work XP laptop links up fine, although I had to reinstall the drivers on it too at one point.
Screw Windows. After using it for more than 6 months, my machines always bog down and can't deal with what I throw at them, which is frustrating because I like to work quickly and have many things on the go at once.
My poor two year old 933MHz Powermac keeps on chugging no matter how much I am doing or have open. It amazes me that I can burn a DVD successfully sometimes with all the other crap I'm doing concurrently.
This is why I hate using XP - the frustration factor not because the GUI is less lickable. I pitty people that haven't eXPerienced both Mac OS X and XP. My wife's friend said that she couldn't open some attachments from my wife becasue they were "mac". It turns out that my wife is sending her Word files, but her friend only has Word 97 - the sweetness in replying that it was Microsoft's fault, and not Apple's was great. Apparently she can't open pictures (.jpg) from my wife either because they're "mac"... I gave up at that point.
Sorry, that turned into more of a rant than I anticipated...
Anything new and different is often reacted to in one of two ways
1) I like it - because it's different
2) I don't like it - because it's different
Honestly, I don't see much other than some GUI tweaks, but I'll admit I only looked at some of the screenshots linked.
What I did notice is that the status bars are lickable (a la Aqua), and certain areas have highlighting that looks suspiciously like a spotlight highlight.
Like many, the interface is only a small piece of the experience. I'm interested in how this thing works.
I recently was helping a friend of my wife get her laptop setup on my Airport Express while they were visiting. It was an absolute joke. We tried no less than 20 times - it would say it was connected, but it wasn't. When we did get connected, the taskbar icon had a red X through it. I couldn't believe how frustrating it was. I eventually completely had to deinstall the wireless card, update drivers, re-install, and we still had bizarre behaviour (sometimes asking for the network password,other times no). My work XP laptop links up fine, although I had to reinstall the drivers on it too at one point.
Screw Windows.
After using it for more than 6 months, my machines always bog down and can't deal with what I throw at them, which is frustrating because I like to work quickly and have many things on the go at once.My poor two year old 933MHz Powermac keeps on chugging no matter how much I am doing or have open. It amazes me that I can burn a DVD successfully sometimes with all the other crap I'm doing concurrently.
This is why I hate using XP - the frustration factor not because the GUI is less lickable. I pitty people that haven't eXPerienced both Mac OS X and XP. My wife's friend said that she couldn't open some attachments from my wife becasue they were "mac". It turns out that my wife is sending her Word files, but her friend only has Word 97 - the sweetness in replying that it was Microsoft's fault, and not Apple's was great. Apparently she can't open pictures (.jpg) from my wife either because they're "mac"... I gave up at that point.
Sorry, that turned into more of a rant than I anticipated...
wrong. The address bar has always been an option for the taskbar. You can perform searches directly from it.
2000 and XP have an indexing service just like Spotlight. You turn it on and you get instant results, just like Spotlight (and even faster if the search includes networked items).
The main difference between Spotlight and the search in Windows 2000 and Indexing Service is the interface. The technology underneath is very similar although Indexing Service is much more robust.
Indexing Service in 2000/XP, Fast Find with Office 97 and Windows 95, Office 2000/XP/2003 and Windows 2000/XP, Microsoft Desktop Search, Lookout. All those things are from Microsoft, all of them do desktop search (contacts, emails, files, tons of metadata etc.) and all of them were released before Spotlight.
No, not multichannel audio but multichannel audio codecs. To this day there isn't a MAc on the market that can output multichannel PCM without third-party hardware or software so you're flat out wrong. The only thing OS X could do by default was pass multichannel DVD codecs (AC3) through to a decoder. Windows XP SP1 shipped with WMA Pro which is a 5.1 or 7.1 enabled, high-fidelity, compression codec. QT7 has no such codec.
If you bothered to look up even half that stuff you'd see that Apple's AAC is not superior to Microsoft's WMA (which FYI comes in numerous flavors including 24-bit 7.1 surround which Apple simply can't touch). WMA Pro is far better than Apple AAC, period. WMA Standard is about the same as Apple AAC, Nero's AAC, etc. You can go look at the listening test and hydrogen audio if you want.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? I do video production for a living, dude.
AVI is the format that competes with MOV (both just containers). WMV, since at least version 8, has always been better than Apple's competing QT codecs (Sorenson 3 and MPEG-4). You can go look around the net and see that Apple's MPEG-4 codec is the worst implementation around. All other MPEG-4 implementations (Divx, Xvid etc.) and WMV 8 are far superior in quality and size. Sorenson 3 isn't much better.
Likewise, Apple's H.264 implementation is one of the last HD codecs to make it out the door. WMVHD, VP6/7 and numerous other H.264 implementations came first and are all better (except for VP6). Apple's H.264 is by far the most resource hungry and is, so far, the slowest to encode. Remember, they shipped WMVHD DVD's in 2002. You can go to Target today and buy the Terminator 2 WMVHD DVD for like $14.99. Apple's H.264 still doesn't even support the HD format completely. It doesn't support interlaced content at all.
I don't know which encodes faster but I do know that FCP and Compressor encode very fast. I'd like to see some benchmarks with something other than Sorenson to prove that though. MPEG-2 decoding is far superior on Windows though. Just trying to get QT to properly de-interlace on playback is nearly impossible and the hardware acceleration on a Mac is skimpy at best. DirectX Video Acceleration is responsible for the very innovative Fusion HDTV cards which can fully decode MPEG-2 HD on the GPU. Look at the system requirements for decoding full stream HDTV and show me a Mac that can do anything even remotely similar. Likewise, look up Nvidia's PureVideo and the ATI equivelent and you'll see that Microsoft's DirectX is light years ahead of Apple in terms of hardware acceleration of MPEG-2, MPEG-2HD, H.264, and WMVHD.
Feel free to take some of the videos from here and compare how they play on a Mac versus a PC (with decent video cards).
Sorry but look at the specs you need to play back HD videos (at full framerate and res) on a Mac. 1080p requires a dual processor G5. That's sad. I can playback 1080i/p on my A64 3000+ (1.8ghz) and never see the processor usage jump above 25%.
The Mac Mini doesn't even playback 720p HD at full framerate. The current iMacs can barely do it and they can't even dream of 1080 at this point.
You don't remember correctly. The current Microsoft OSes are Windows XP 64-bit (April 2005), Windows XP SP2 (Aug 2004), Windows Media Center 2005, Tablet PC edition 2005, Windows Server 2003 (2003) Windows Server 2003 64-bit (2005). Windows Media Player 10 and the Wave 10 MSN stuff was released last year IIRC.
I don't even feel like debating this with you because it seems you don't know enough about Apple, Microsoft, or the computing industry to make it interesting. You're talking like a complete novice.
Diatribe said:
That's how I understand it too. From what I've read, the plans are to use Intel's built-in DRM to lock the Mac OS to certian hardware.
What's funny is that I remember seeing Spotlight at WWDC and thinking that it looked like WMP 10 and Media Center 2005's theme.
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/wmp10_preview.asp
That preview was in early June and that's when I first saw the glass highlights ans such (outside of glass in Longhorn). I think the bright blue Apple menu and Spotlight icon were a very Microsoftish thing to do and by that I mean they're ugly.
There is a lot of... misinformation coming from (oddly enough) a single poster.
I really don't have the time to address everything, but I thought I would draw some attention to the beginning of one post:
You are claiming that the search box in the Finder windows since Mac OS X v10.2 (released August 2002) was inspired by Firebird and Opera.
Well, I can't find any evidence of that feature existing in either browser before 2001 (in fact, I don't think Firebird was even around in 2001... first release was 2002 as Phoenix). On the other hand, the search box in the upper-right hand corner of their file browser made it's first appearance in Mac OS X in Developer Preview 3 (released February 2000).
I think that that statement can be changed to something like:
Many of the things that were part of NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and the Developer Previews of Mac OS X have been slowly released into successive versions of Mac OS X since the Public Beta was first released in September 2000.
Just because things are popping up now doesn't mean that they didn't exist in some previous incarnation within Apple/NeXT.
A few examples...
Anyway, there is more misinformation like that in those posts... but I don't have the time to address all of them.
I really don't have the time to address everything, but I thought I would draw some attention to the beginning of one post:
Well, there is a wonderful term in the patent industry called "prior art", which means that if you can find an example of one idea before those that are claimed to be where the idea originated... then you have shown that the original claims were false.BGil said:
You are claiming that the search box in the Finder windows since Mac OS X v10.2 (released August 2002) was inspired by Firebird and Opera.
Well, I can't find any evidence of that feature existing in either browser before 2001 (in fact, I don't think Firebird was even around in 2001... first release was 2002 as Phoenix). On the other hand, the search box in the upper-right hand corner of their file browser made it's first appearance in Mac OS X in Developer Preview 3 (released February 2000).
I think that that statement can be changed to something like:
Firebird and Opera putting their search box in the upper-right hand corner of their browsers was Mac OS X inspired to be sure.
Works for me. Most of the features/concepts in Spotlight are direct descendants of the Digital Librarian from NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. Given that, the only way Apple could be accused of copying this from Windows is if these features existed in Windows 3.0/3.1.
Many of the things that were part of NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and the Developer Previews of Mac OS X have been slowly released into successive versions of Mac OS X since the Public Beta was first released in September 2000.
Just because things are popping up now doesn't mean that they didn't exist in some previous incarnation within Apple/NeXT.
A few examples...
The Dock: removed after OPENSTEP 4.2, returned in Mac OS X DP 3
Dictionary: removed after OPENSTEP 4.2, replaced by OmniDictionary for Rhapsody 5.3 to the current version of Mac OS X, returned as part of the OS bundle in v10.4
File browser shelf: removed after OPENSTEP 4.2, return (as the sidebar) in Mac OS X v10.3
And so on... There are tons of new features that have popped up in Mac OS X since the first public beta that were actually not new at all, they just hadn't been seen by much of the general public before.Dictionary: removed after OPENSTEP 4.2, replaced by OmniDictionary for Rhapsody 5.3 to the current version of Mac OS X, returned as part of the OS bundle in v10.4
File browser shelf: removed after OPENSTEP 4.2, return (as the sidebar) in Mac OS X v10.3
Anyway, there is more misinformation like that in those posts... but I don't have the time to address all of them.
I was wrong about FireFox but not about Opera. Opera has existed since the beginning of time.
Here's an article about Version 6 that appeared in Feb. of 2002.
http://www.the900thdimension.com/reviews/computersoftware/reviews/opera5.shtml
That's a review of version 5 that is date 2000.
http://www.pcplus.co.uk/reviews/def...leid=4462&subsectionid=373&subsubsectionid=60
Another dated 2001. Note the search box in the corner.
And last but not least;
Feel free to download a copy of Opera 5 for PC or Mac and note the Google searchbox in the upper-right hand corner.
http://opera-fansite.de/wiki/Download+alte+Versionen
Please show me what the Digital Librarian had to do with Desktop Search (emails, contacts, tasks, saved searches etc.)? AFAIK it dealt with dictionaries, thesuaruses and the like.
Windows NT did in fact have Indexing Server built into it as to provide networked and desktop search. It's the same engine that has been built into SQL Server, Sharepoint and other products since , well , a long time ago. Like I said, Microsoft pioneered desktop search with Office 95.
If you can beat Indexing Server and Find Fast showing up in NT 4.0 and Office 95 then I'll concede. BTW, Indexing Server did full-text indexing, all office compatible documents, email, contacts, tasks, IIS searching, automatic updating (instant) when a file was created, changed, or deleted, had an API for developers, had a platform for extending the file types it could search (ifilters, protocol handlers), networked searches and indexing, and provided a way to save searches. 2000/XP also allowed for live queries that update without having to run a search again (not sure if that came before Windows 2000 or not).
Yeah, there's a Steve Jobs video somewhere online with him showing off the NeXT OS cicra 1992 or so. I was blown away at all the technology it had. Of course, the lowest priced system was something like 10 grand but he is a visionary IMO. He's still an arrogant liar though.
You cannot accurately compare OSes based on screenshots alone - in other words, you can't judge a book by its cover. Let me use them and then I'll judge. Furthermore, we haven't even seen ANYTHING to do with Leopard yet, so there is nothing to compare to.
Ask me in about a year and a half, then I'll be able to give you a fair analysis and comparison.
P.S. Leopard is better.
Ask me in about a year and a half, then I'll be able to give you a fair analysis and comparison.
P.S. Leopard is better.
But the feature didn'tBGil said:
Opera 4.0 (beta) was released in March of 2000 and didn't have the google search. And you pointed to an article from December 2000 on Opera 5.0... unless you read dates differently than most people February 2000 still predates those.
See, that is where using this stuff daily (and I still use OPENSTEP daily) comes in handy...
The Digital Librarian had nothing to do with dictionaries, thesuaruses and the like (that would have been Digital Webster)... it was a search and indexing tool for files on your system or other networked volumes.
You should watch it again, Steve does a wonderful demo of the Digital Librarian (at about the 11 minute mark... didn't you say something about conceding if something like this predated Windows NT 4.0 and Office 95?
).As for somewhere online... the video was put together by friends of mine at the NeXT Information Archive.
On price points... the lowest priced NeXTstation were not $10,000.00. Lets look at the actual prices of both NeXT and Apple systems from 1991:
NeXTstation (68040 at 25 MHz, 8 MB of RAM, 105 MB hard drive, 17" display at 2 bit, Ethernet): $4995.
Macintosh IIsi (68030 at 20 MHz, 5 MB of RAM, 80 MB hard drive, screen 8 bits of 12" display at 8 bit (monochromic), LocalTalk): $5097.
NeXTstation Color (68040 at 25 MHz, 12 MB of RAM, 105 MB hard drive, 17" display at 16 bit, Ethernet): $7995.
Macintosh IIci (68030 at 25 MHz, 4 MB of RAM, 80 MB hard drive, screen 8 bits of 13 " (color), LocalTalk): $7897.
This is why people shouldn't argue on subjects in which they have no background.Macintosh IIsi (68030 at 20 MHz, 5 MB of RAM, 80 MB hard drive, screen 8 bits of 12" display at 8 bit (monochromic), LocalTalk): $5097.
NeXTstation Color (68040 at 25 MHz, 12 MB of RAM, 105 MB hard drive, 17" display at 16 bit, Ethernet): $7995.
Macintosh IIci (68030 at 25 MHz, 4 MB of RAM, 80 MB hard drive, screen 8 bits of 13 " (color), LocalTalk): $7897.
Now see, if I didn't know that all your claims were based on a complete lack of knowledge on these subjects, I could have come to the same conclusion about you.
But fortunately ignorance doesn't conclude malice... so I hardly think that you are a liar.
That having been said... where did Jobs lie about something?
I, personally, would like you to be a little more careful before you make these wild claims. I don't care that you are a flaming Windows lover... but at least do us all a favor by doing a little research before you start posting these outlandish claims of yours.
BGil doesn't have all his facts straight. I'm not even going to fix everything (there's really no point), but I have to comment on Spotlight and AAC/h.264 since those are the two I know most about.
In XP, the searching is nothing like Spotlight. Sure, it's indexed (something I've personally been doing since Mac OS 8 I believe, with Sherlock), but it's not nearly as responsive as Spotlight. It's definitely not the same.
AAC is an open format. Take a look at this on Apple's website, and follow the links if you need to.
h.264 is an open format too. Take a look at this PDF, and you'll learn something about the format.
BTW, at the same bitrates, they do kick WMA's ass. Sorry.
-Chase
In XP, the searching is nothing like Spotlight. Sure, it's indexed (something I've personally been doing since Mac OS 8 I believe, with Sherlock), but it's not nearly as responsive as Spotlight. It's definitely not the same.
AAC is an open format. Take a look at this on Apple's website, and follow the links if you need to.
h.264 is an open format too. Take a look at this PDF, and you'll learn something about the format.
BTW, at the same bitrates, they do kick WMA's ass. Sorry.
-Chase
iDM said:
Very very good point. Just about any average user who doesnt build there own computer doesnt know how to open up a computer let alone to install there own RAM
xaphonyx said:I cant wait to see what Ad-aware looks like in Vista, PC users are going to love the updated aqua styling rip off when the PC freezes and crashes
Sorry, I'm a Mac user, what's this Ad-aware you speak of?
BGil said:
Sorry to burst your bubble man.. But the Quicktime AAC codec supports both 24bit audio, 96kHz and multichannel. (up to 48).
And WMA pro only has an advantage at low bitrates (eg 64kbps), its very similar to HE-AAC.
"Improved compression provides higher-quality results with smaller file sizes
Support for multichannel audio, providing up to 48 full frequency channels
Higher resolution audio, yielding sampling rates up to 96 kHz
Improved decoding efficiency, requiring less processing power for decode"
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/aac/
You're either just a troll, or know nothing... Maybe both.