Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MS still playing catchup by the looks of the feature list in my opinion.
Actually its the other way around. Windows 7 has leap frogged apple in terms of functionality, UI and usability.

Apple needs to play catch up by adding some features to OSX.
 
What I don't like about Windows 7 is the registry.
Realistically how often have you needed to go into regedit to alter the registry. At my company they restrict access to the registry and it has not impacted my users one bit.

I maintain about 30+ windows servers and while I have needed to go into the registry on occasion its a rarity. While I agree that the usage of the registry is a weak point for windows, its not as bad as some people make it out.

Apple has similar issues that need to be fixed from the terminal, like rebuilding the launchservices database.
 
Actually its the other way around. Windows 7 has leap frogged apple in terms of functionality, UI and usability.

Actually, it depends on what you use your computer for, what your expectations are, and where your priorities lie.
 
Actually, it depends on what you use your computer for, what your expectations are, and where your priorities lie.

You can say that about any consumer product.
Speaking in general terms, MS has added more to windows, improved performance and reduced the bloat with win7.

Apple has gone the opposite direction, adding bloat and no major feature since 10.5
 
You can say that about any consumer product.
Speaking in general terms, MS has added more to windows, improved performance and reduced the bloat with win7.

Apple has gone the opposite direction, adding bloat and no major feature since 10.5

+1. Hopefully Lion will be worth the added system requirements.

Anyways, he features I've heard that are to new to Windows 8 so far is:
  • Mount disc images natively.
  • Change the colour of the Aero glass to suit your desktop automatically.
  • Live integration.
  • PDF reader inbuilt.
  • Some thing where you can enclose programs into one package...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can say that about any consumer product.
Speaking in general terms, MS has added more to windows, improved performance and reduced the bloat with win7.

Apple has gone the opposite direction, adding bloat and no major feature since 10.5

So 10.6 is bloated?

I would say that Windows 7 has very few new features, compared to Windows Vista. It was a performance/stability upgrade.

I would say that Snow Leopard has very few new features, compared to Leopard. It was a performance/stability upgrade.

Now, one of last-gen OS' actually needed a big boost in the performance/stability department. One didn't.

I simply don't agree with you. Snow Leopard was a few GBs smaller than Leopard, and was faster... and yet you say it is bloated?
 
Realistically how often have you needed to go into regedit to alter the registry. At my company they restrict access to the registry and it has not impacted my users one bit...

That's not the point. the bad thing about Registry is that it even exits. What a dumb design to have a single file that multiple different applications can access. It tightly couple things that should be 100% independent. Every other OS works hard to avoid this problem. It should be the case that even an intensionally malicious program can effect the operation of another program. Windows works only because you work hard to keep intensionally malicious software off the computer. This effort should not be required

What I'd like to see in Lion is not only the cosmetic changes to the user interface that everyone talks about but a big change to say the security model to for example implement discretionary access controls in a way the both works and is easy for the user to understand. Something like that could even prevent most Trojan horses from doing damage. What about a cryptographic file system? Of a file system that looks more like an iPhoto or Aperture library than a tree? What about building the entire OS using a compiler that automatically parallelizes code at a fine scale? Lots of things could do. But maybe those are still 10 years away?
 
There is no beta of Windows 8 yet so it is hard to say. MS can add million new features to make it sound good on paper and then fail it like they did with Vista. In the end, the most important thing is stability. Windows 7 is great and I really hope W8 will take it even further.

I'd like to see Windows 8 use a Linux kernel underlying the GUI itself.. Microsoft could have some potential, but should not copy from Apple.
 
I'd say 10.6 had a ton of new features; they just weren't in the UI.

So what are the ton of features that apple introduced in 10.6?

That's not the point. the bad thing about Registry is that it even exits. What a dumb design to have a single file that multiple different applications can access. It tightly couple things that should be 100% independent. Every other OS works hard to avoid this problem. It should be the case that even an intensionally malicious program can effect the operation of another program. Windows works only because you work hard to keep intensionally malicious software off the computer. This effort should not be required
I agree with that assessment. The single point of failure design was a major misstep by MS, that has hampered consumers and administrators for years. Things have gotten better and more stable, but you're right, the design is the problem.
 
I think I know why OS X has had less great features then previous versions. Scott Forstall was a big designer for Leopard and helped create some of the major Lion features like Time Machine. After Leopard Forstall was moved to the IOS team. Perhaps Mac OS X needs Forstall back.
 
Both companies are overly focused on shoehorning their mobile experiences into their desktop operating systems. Both Lion and Windows 8 will see some new features, however, I think (for the most part) they will be releases with a view to long-term unification between mobile and desktop, rather than being focused on an extensive list of features.

While some people are unhappy with some of the steps that Apple have taken in 10.7 toward this, and are judging the new feature list as being somewhat limited, I believe Microsoft will do much of the same for Windows 8.

Windows 7 is to Vista as Snow Leopard is to Leopard. As a result, I believe their next releases will follow a similar trajectory.
 
-Apple is using iOS' popularity to promote Lion while Microsoft is doing the opposite.

-Lion has Arabic support. They're targeting the Middle East.

-Some Lion changes are welcome and long-awaited but I'm still not impressed. Jobs better be at that WWDC presenting some awesome stuff 2 months from now.

-Windows 8 will support ARM and tablets. => Getting farther away from good Software-Hardware integration.

-Windows 8 is getting a PDF reader... that's so 2005! I can even open .ppt (Microsoft's format) on a Mac without additional software.

-Windows 8 is catching up to Snow Leopard and maybe a bit more but nothing new to Mac users.

-Metro UI will look really bad on PCs.
 
So what are the ton of features that apple introduced in 10.6?

I guess it depends what you call a "feature." They're not user-facing, and Apple didn't advertise them as features, but frankly I don't see how they're not features, even if they're under-the-hood. Anyway, here's 22 pages worth of new and improved stuff.
 
One thing that bothers me about mac os is that iTunes and apple tv (both great products) are almost becoming a conflict of intrest..

It seems like mac os has been moving backwards in the multimedia department. QuickTime was hacked to death in snow leopard... Now they are getting rid of front row... And no one is even mentioning Blu-ray support.

I'll be honest front row doesn't surpize me... I was actualy expecting apple to make a software version of apple tv for mac... Something they can charge for... But no word.


Digital media may eventually kill blu-ray... But it isn't happening yet... Apple is not going to be able to move people away from optical media the way that they did with the floppy... If you stop putting floppy disk drives on macs... Mac users will have no use for the floppy disk.... But there are millions of Blu-ray and DVD players in use... It's not going away that easy... Building devices like the apple tv might help change the market... But holding out on standard features that windows users enjoy is not.
 
Last edited:
I guess it depends what you call a "feature." They're not user-facing, and Apple didn't advertise them as features, but frankly I don't see how they're not features, even if they're under-the-hood. Anyway, here's 22 pages worth of new and improved stuff.

I know they made lots of under the hood stuff, but nothing that entices the consumer to upgrade. Look at 10.5 and that had lots of stuff for the consumer.

Now with the all the under the hood stuff that was changed, many of us were expecting more then just the "magic of the iPad" as they call it.
 
I know they made lots of under the hood stuff, but nothing that entices the consumer to upgrade. Look at 10.5 and that had lots of stuff for the consumer.

I don't really care whether it enticed other consumers to upgrade. I thought they were pretty exciting new features. Yeah, there were no consumer-oriented features, but you didn't say "consumer features," just "features." :)
 
As an Apple user, I'm thrilled that I'm not afflicted with the need to put down Windows in order to boost my ego.

That's the difference between an apple user and apple fanboy ;)

I use the tool that best suits my needs, up till now its been apple hardware and apple software for me but that doesn't mean it will be the case in the future.

The cost of apple computers is such that I need to be sure it actually solves a need before I plunk down a lot $$ on it, just so I can show off that cool apple logo on the back
 
Believe it or not, neither Mac OS X nor Windows suits my needs best right now - hence why I've migrated to something altogether different: Ubuntu Linux.

That said, I will continue to use Mac OS X and Windows for development/testing purposes, so I am very much looking forward to both Lion and Windows 8.
 
Lion will contain Mac OS X Server. So there, there's your new features.


As an Apple user, I'm thrilled that I'm not afflicted with the need to put down Windows in order to boost my ego.

He's not putting down Windows. He's simply talking about the Windows NT version, which (for Windows 7) is currently 6.1. It is unknown as to whether or not MS will go to 6.2, or maybe to 7.0.

So, when you insult someone, have your facts straight. A simple Google search usually suffices.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.