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Vista is even more like Mac OS X

This past semester at school, a Microsoft employee gave a presentation about Vista and some of the new features. I found that even while he was discussing it, many of the "new" features were simply ones that were designed to catch up to OS X. Even during the talk, he admitted that some of the features were specifically designed to "catch up" to other operating systems or applications. I didn't find anything in his presentation that jumped out and made me want to swich over.
 
timmillwood said:
im watching the Microsoft Keynote, and Vista seems to be more and more like Mac OS X.

http://metahost.origindigital.com/microsoft/20070107/ces_20070107_500.asx

They have Spotlight, iPhoto, iDVD and Time Machine and i bet there will be more things the same as the keynote goes on.

It's a good thing Steve kept some things secret.
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To play devils advocate.

"Spotlight" or instant search was announced by Microsoft before Apple implemented it.

Apple beat them to market, but the idea may have been borrowed from Microsoft.

Technically iPhoto and iDVD, although once part of Mac OS X, are now separate applications, they are not built into Mac OS X.

Furthermore, both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Xp have backup capability built right in, which Mac OS X lacks (currently).

I prefer the Mac OS over Windows, but you do have to give Microsoft some credit.
 
timmillwood said:
Vista seems to be more and more like Mac OS X.

.
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except better. Vista will have the features that are awesome about tiger without actually being a mac.
it's app switcher is better, its spotlight is better, and its version of iPhoto could not be as awful as the real thing.
 
I agree with Elppa... I think that Microsoft does deserve credit for some of the clever ideas they have, even if they end up implementing them poorly. The "social" feature of the Zune is a perfect example. It's a great concept.
 
elppa said:
but you do have to give Microsoft some credit.
Click to expand...


well, ok, I guess they do deserve some credit.........for actually getting Vista out da door........ even though it is several yrs late, and turns out to be an over-glossified refabrication of XP :p

And YES, I have used the business version since it was released (as well as W95-98-ME-2K-XP). And YES, Vista has some serious "eye candy", but underneath, where it should count, it's STILL just friggin windows!......... an obtrusive, insecure, un-intuitive and downright crappy p.o.s., IMHO, of course :D

Obviously no one has figured it out yet, or wont say it publicly..... M$'s main motivation here is to help peecee vendors sell more boring beige boxes, which in turn means selling more copies of Vista etc etc etc
 
stevento said:
except better. Vista will have the features that are awesome about tiger without actually being a mac.
it's app switcher is better, its spotlight is better, and its version of iPhoto could not be as awful as the real thing.
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Unless I missed something, just because something is made my Microsoft doesn't automatically make it better, especially if they're copying someone else. I'm not saying that things are automatically bad if they're made by Microsoft, either; the Xbox is a great example of what MS can do if they get their asses in gear. I've tried Vista, however, and MS didn't even start to get their asses in gear on it. It's pathetic at best.

Now you can just take your paid-by-MS grassroots crap elsewhere thank you.
 
stevento said:
except better. Vista will have the features that are awesome about tiger without actually being a mac.
it's app switcher is better, its spotlight is better, and its version of iPhoto could not be as awful as the real thing.
Click to expand...
Couldn't disagree more. :)
 
vista's app switcher lets you pick which window of the program.
th mac switchers just switches to that program and doesn't let you specify which window.
its like vista combined app switcher and expose in one.

as for iPhoto, you may have seen my harangue about it in the digital photo section.
MS's iPhoto will probably have all the basic controls you get in iPhoto, as long as pics dont get saved 3 times, then its better as far as i'm concerned.
and generally i think MS lets you do things your way which macs dont, and iPhoto is just one example of that.

i'm not trying to be a troll, just because its a mac board doesnt mean everyone here has to swear by them.
 
lol, what kind of attitude is that? u can't just call any pic organize app "iPhoto", any DVD maker as "iDVD", any desktop search as "spotlight", and backup app as "time machine",

apple doesn't invent these ideas, apple didn't invent "organizing photos, making DVDs, searching local files, or backing up personal file", wanna talk about the similarity or difference between OSX and Vista? go to core, talk about their architecture.
 
stevento said:
vista's app switcher lets you pick which window of the program.
th mac switchers just switches to that program and doesn't let you specify which window.
its like vista combined app switcher and expose in one.

as for iPhoto, you may have seen my harangue about it in the digital photo section.
MS's iPhoto will probably have all the basic controls you get in iPhoto, as long as pics dont get saved 3 times, then its better as far as i'm concerned.
and generally i think MS lets you do things your way which macs dont, and iPhoto is just one example of that.

i'm not trying to be a troll, just because its a mac board doesnt mean everyone here has to swear by them.
Click to expand...

Exposé allows you to view all open windows and choose which one you want, if it's from another application then it switches to that application upon selection. Vista's Flip3D doesn't allow you to see all open windows at once, you have to flip through them because the design places windows behind other windows -> less efficient, not as good as regular exposé.

iPhoto doesn't save your photos 3 times, it saves them once in the originals folder and creates a tiny thumbnail database file in the Data folder. It's not two copies of the same photo. If you edit a photo THEN it saves a copy allowing to to revert back to that original image at any time. You can delete the copied image at any time.
 
stevento said:
i think MS lets you do things your way which macs dont, and iPhoto is just one example of that.
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No one is forcing you to use iPhoto, just because you have a Mac, are they?

If it doesn't work the way you want it to use something else and remove it from your machine.

In many ways the "choice" you are saying you like about MS apps above can be one of their most infuriating things. You don't know what to expect on another PC because they have things set up differently from yours.

Macs (and Apple in general) are very good at hiding complexity from the user, and with this comes a bit of a feeling of surrender of control, but what you get is a simlpe largely consistent "user experience". I know I fought like hell with iTunes, until I gave in and finally decided to let it do its thing. I'm much happier for it.

B
 
stevento said:
vista's app switcher lets you pick which window of the program.
th mac switchers just switches to that program and doesn't let you specify which window.
its like vista combined app switcher and expose in one.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna have to agree on this one a bit. I have never used Vista and I will be thrilled if I never have to boot it up or look at it at all, but I have used Beryl on Ubuntu quite a bit and there is a similar feature. Basically, Beryl lets you do expose over all your desktops and see all your windows instead of that on your current desktop. Maybe I am the lone virtual desktop user in this thread, but that kills me.

However, on the current window, expose is an app switcher and window selector all in one. F9 shows all the windows in every app and selecting it switches to that app. How is this functionally (not formally) different from Vista? Sounds the same to me, but then I have never used Vista...
 
interesting, looks like Vista has an option to use video as desktop wallpaper, wonder how much system resource that would need.
 
elppa said:
To play devils advocate.

"Spotlight" or instant search was announced by Microsoft before Apple implemented it.

Apple beat them to market, but the idea may have been borrowed from Microsoft.

Technically iPhoto and iDVD, although once part of Mac OS X, are now separate applications, they are not built into Mac OS X.

Furthermore, both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Xp have backup capability built right in, which Mac OS X lacks (currently).

I prefer the Mac OS over Windows, but you do have to give Microsoft some credit.
Click to expand...

Spotlight as a concept was in use well-before 10.4. It's the same technology that powers the search feature in iTunes which has been around since before Vista was a twinkle in Redmond's eye. iphoto and idvd were never part of the mac os, you always had to download them seperately. I suppose we could quibble on that point though.
 
clevin said:
interesting, looks like Vista has an option to use video as desktop wallpaper, wonder how much system resource that would need.
Click to expand...

OS X can do this too, Apple just doesn't give instructions how. But honestly, how useful is this? I used it for all of 5 minutes and then realized how annoying it was! :eek:
 
stevento said:
vista's app switcher lets you pick which window of the program.
th mac switchers just switches to that program and doesn't let you specify which window.
its like vista combined app switcher and expose in one.
Click to expand...


alt+tab switches programs,
alt+~ switches windows within that program, very similar to windows' alt tab doing both I find.

The only thing of Vista that I think is a little too copying is their sidebar gadgets instead of dashboard widgets.
 
'Vista looks like OSX!' :

This statement shows that many people compare OS's mainly by their features, and this I consider very dangerous. In my opinion an OS should first be judged by its technical design. According to technical design we are talking about two totally different OS's (modular verses integrated ). As a job I do maintenance on Windows systems and from that knowledge I would never voluntary choose for a Windows system.

Just don't look only at the skin, OSX truly rules.
 
stevento said:
except better. Vista will have the features that are awesome about tiger without actually being a mac.
it's app switcher is better, its spotlight is better, and its version of iPhoto could not be as awful as the real thing.
Click to expand...

it's fair enough to have your opinion, but at least back it up with some evidence rather than just saying "is better"....why is it better? what makes it better?
 
Shotgun Pete said:
alt+tab switches programs,
alt+~ switches windows within that program, very similar to windows' alt tab doing both I find.

The only thing of Vista that I think is a little too copying is their sidebar gadgets instead of dashboard widgets.
Click to expand...

Doesn't F10 do the same thing?
 
stevento said:
vista's app switcher lets you pick which window of the program.
th mac switchers just switches to that program and doesn't let you specify which window.
its like vista combined app switcher and expose in one.
Click to expand...

I try to never feed a troll, but this little tip may be useful for people who haven;t realized about it yet; press f10 to activate Exposé for a particular app, then press tab (just tab, not cmd-tab) to switch to the next app from within Exposé.
 
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