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Will Apple release Leopard before or after Longhorn is released?
- Thread starter Gary King
- Start date
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crenz said:BGil, I also don't agree that Tiger has 90% of Longhorn's functionality -- mostly because Longhorn isn't out yet, so the comparision is unfair, for both. Nevertheless, some of your points are rather interesting:
- Fully 64-Bit: Not needed for the average user now. In fact, a full 64-Bit system requires more resources (CPU, memory) than a mixed system. That's why I believe Longhorn won't be fully 64-Bit either.
- Media Center functionality: So far, the "use your computer as a living-room-stereo" approach is not very successful. It's not a big advantage to have that functionality built-in since not many need it. Also, I find it easier to manage my media on Mac OS X than Windows, but that's just a personal opinion. Lastly, there is free software available that will give you some Media Center functionality on Linux, and it would be easy to create a similar software on Mac OS X -- if there were sufficient demand.
- Tablet PC: Look at the sales figures of tablet PCs. Besides that, Mac OS X has handwriting recognition built into the system.
- Virtual File Hierarchy: I'll have to see that in Longhorn to see how useful it is. So far, Windows is not even able to support something as excruciatingly simple as symbolic links.
- RSS notification between applications: Don't know anything about this. Might be similar to Rendezvous/Bonjour.
- Metadata editing: Yes, I really miss that. We'll see how good it is on Longhorn.
- 3D views: Prototypes of 3D user environments have been shown years ago (e.g. by Sun). Their usefulness is vastly overrated. I like Apple's "soft 3D" approach in Exposé -- that is really useful. Apart from that, Aqua is a 3D system, but it doesn't really show it since it wouldn't be very user friendly.
- Window/task managing: I'm sorry, but I just can't deal with the way Windows XP manages windows. I hope Longhorn will be much better. So far, Exposé is the best solution I've seen.
- automatic storage of file versions and history: Depends on how portable it is to be useful. Having local versions is one thing, but as a developer, I need to syncronize things to external repositories. Also, some backups of my system are external and on non-Windows (and non-Mac OS X) systems, so unless this version management system interoperates, it is useless to me.
- FTP and network consistiency with local storage: Not sure what you mean with that. Automatic mirroring of remote network drives/FTP sites? Apart from that, I agree that not being able to mount FTP and SFTP sites directly in the finder (read/writeable) is a major annoyance for me.
- decent file viewer: Preview shows the formats I need it to, the rest the original app takes care off.
- h.264/WMVHD/MPEG-2 HD acceleration: I'd guess H.264/HD support is pretty good in Mac OS X. And I don't need WMVHD
- FULL GUI acceleration: Aqua already uses graphics acceleration on systems that support it.
- any of the features in DX 10/WGF2: Can't comment on that much since I neither play games nor use 3D apps
- natural language interface: Need to see this to gauge how useful it is. Especially for non-English speaking users.
- network and domain indexing: Probably something most network admins are going to shut off
- IIS7: Probably not supplied for all Windows versions. Apache is part even of the normal Mac OS X and can be switched on with a few clicks. The functionality offered by modules like mod_rewrite, mod_proxy and mod_perl for me beats II7 by far.
- virtualization: Not sure what that refers to.
- hot add/remove/replace ram/cpu/gpu/pci-express/sata: That probably depends on the hardware also. Not sure how much Mac OS X supports it; the Xserves have some support for it, but Apple isn't very strong in this area. Doesn't affect me, though, since my servers run neither Mac OS X nor Windows.
- Metro: Not sure how that is going to be more useful than PDF. Even if Metro has so many more nice features -- there are now so many different non-Adobe PDF toolchains available, it will take years for equivalent non-Microsoft Metro toolchains to appear.
- virtual folders: see virtual file hierarchy above
- true resolution/pixel independence: I agree I don't like the way Mac OS X handles this. However, as someone who has developed and deployed Windows software before, it is nowhere near as painful as trying to support the font scaling on Windows. Try setting your fonts to 150% and see how many apps still look nice. MS really has to fix that, and I'm curious to see what it looks like in Longhorn.
- auxiliary display support: Not quite sure what you're missing here.
- true work collaboration: Not a OS, but more of an application feature. See Rendezvous/Bonjour.
- application sharing: not sure what that refers to.
- Remote desktop: Neither Mac OS X nor Windows XP (and I guess also not Longhorn) have/will have true remote desktop functionality, as in: The remote desktop showing something different than the local windows. So far, the only mainstream system that allows for that is X-Windows on Unix.
- Remote assistance: Not an OS, but a software feature. Again, the usefulness of specific remote assistance software is overrated. Even many Windows-using companies just use VNC for that, since it's so much cheaper
.
- volume shadow copy: You mean software RAID?
- WinFS: See virtual file hierarchy/metadata above. We'll see how useful it really is. And how well it'll cope with being mirrored on non-Windows platforms for backups.
- Full GUI acceleration will appear in Mac OS X when Quartz 2D Extreme is enabled by default. Right now, the GUI in Mac OS X is only partially accelerated (due to Quartz Extreme).
- My understanding of virtualization is that it is the technology that enables applications like Virtual PC to work - it allows one operating system to be run inside of another one. It has two main uses: testing software on an operating system you would not otherwise have access to, and as a means of security by using rollback and related features offered by the virtual machine. I would guess that Longhorn will have an option to be run inside an internal virtual machine to make it more secure.
- Application sharing is a feature in Microsoft's NetMeeting program. Here's how it works: You start an application while NetMeeting is running, you enable sharing for that application, and others that are connected to you can see what you are doing in that application. This is useful for instruction and diagnosing problems remotely.
I just read something that detailed how that was true for an OS running on PPC but not running on X86. If you look around the web you can see numerous benchmarks where XP x64 is faster than XP 32-bit. Microsoft already has released a fully 64-bit OS (three of them, in fact) and if you look at the Longhorn Alpha's and previews they've handed out you'll see an x64 version there too. All the API's (.Net, WinFX) are available in 64-bit so there is no doubt that Longhorn will also come in 64-bit (full 64-bit).
Well then Macs aren't "successful" either. In the fourth quarter of 2004 there were just as many Media Centers sold as their were Macs. Now that Microsoft has relaxed the requirements for Media Center and some manufacturers like Gateway and E-machines are releasing these and these, you can expect Media Centers to sell even better. With the Mactel announcement, I wouldn't be surprised if the Media Center platform started to double Mac sales sometime this year.
1. Media Center isn't really for "managing" media but playing and recording it.
2. I think there is sufficient demand. Remember all those rumors of the iHome and all the people who tried to turn Mac Mini's into Media Centers? The fact that such software "could" get ported has nothing to do with my point.
1. Over 650,000 Tablet PC's were sold last year. That's about the same as the number of PowerMacs that were sold. Most analysts expect that number to jump significantly this year especially now that IBM has a tablet.
2. There is much more to a tablet than just handwriting recognition. Ever been to the Channel9 message boards and used ink? Ever used OneNote or MSN Messenger 7? There are also differences in the way a tablet treats dialog boxes, scrolling etc.
Windows has supported symbolic links since Windows 2000. If you want to see how useful a virtual heirarchy is then open iTunes and click the browse button. That's you virtual heirarchy (album, artist, genre), it's tremendously useful. I'll bet you that Leopard has some kind of virtual folder heirarchy in the Finder now that Apple has seen the one in Longhorn (although it's been in every build since 4015). That's my guess as to why they stopped updating the Finder. Now that they are basically moving everything to Cocoa for the Mactel switch it would make sense to rewrite the Finder.
RSS is more widely used and is XML-based (RDF). It also functions to aggregate and describe data. Imagine if you could make a smart folder that output an RSS feed everytime its contents changed. That's what a few search engines (MSN) already do. Or imagine that you could recieve an RSS notification anytime a folder on your network changed (that would help us a lot for our Images folder that is shared by us editors, the marketing department, and numerous others).
Have you seen this app? Or this one?
I like Exposé but I'm a big fan of one click (or action) window switching. IMO there are some Exposé clones that are actually better than Apple's version because they've added features. Besides, Exposé isn't really window "management". It shows you a series of completely unmanaged windows in a fairly random order. Everytime you move a window (or resize it) the place Exposé (F9) put it changes. There's a complete lack of spatial awareness. Addtionally, I'm not a fan of the way it's "envoked". Function keys are weird and screen corners are odd too. I like Exposé but I think window management can be done much better.
http://patrickbaudisch.com/projects/scalablefabric/
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=14319#14319
Scalable fabric looks very good although the demos are somewhat unpolished.
It's volume shadow copy and system restore built directly into NTFS so it's not just a local thing but it is limited to file systems that can be read by Windows.
That's partially it. Windows allows you to even index and fast (instant) search drives that you can't write to (i.e. ftp.adobe.com) and Longhorn treats networked storage as local storage. So when you open up the "All Documents" folder you get all the files that you have access to no matter if they are local or networked.
Sorry, I mean a "decent file browser". I love Preview, I hate the Finder.
h.264/WMVHD/MPEG-2 HD acceleration: I'd guess H.264/HD support is pretty good in Mac OS X. And I don't need WMVHD
Apple isn't hardware accelerating H.264 yet, that's why it takes so much CPU power to playback. That's why most of those 1080p and 720p trailers on Apple.com aren't actually those resolutions (to make them easier to play). It's also why Apple's H.264 doesn't do interlaced content. If you expect to playback HD-DVD's then you'll need to have WMVHD support. For the forseeable future all 1080i content on HD-DVD's and Blu-Rays will be either WMVHD or MPEG-2HD not H.264.
So does GDI+.
QE pretty much only accelerated compositing. WGF accelerates everything. That's means all window drawing, all compositing, all 3D, all video decoding, all 2D, all text, all vector drawing etc.IIRC they support dozens of languages.
I doubt it. Metro will be available for anyone on XP, 2003 or Longhorn (it already is). If the XP SP3 (Avalon, Indigo, Metro) rollout is as successful as SP2 then it'll be installed on over 300 million XP machines within a year, not to mention the 200 million plus Longhorn machines that will ship in that same time frame.
According to the WinHec slides, Longhorn (with Longhorn drivers) doesn't ever use pixels to describe anything. It uses a vector-based unit that can adopt to all different types of screens (wide, normal, split, etc.)
It's built into Windows XP (via a small service running in the background) and through Windows/MSN Messenger and Netmeeting for backward compatibilty. You can share applications, do workspace collaboration, file collaboration, collaboration via RSS ( in Longhorn), and use the built in file versioning system to even collaborate offline.
That was supposed to be a feature of SP2 but it was removed in the last couple of builds. Longhorn has that, concurrent logins, plus application publishing where you can allow someone to use an application on your machine without the windows from that application appearing on your screen (I think that's what you're talking about).
Remote assistance: Not an OS, but a software feature. Again, the usefulness of specific remote assistance software is overrated. Even many Windows-using companies just use VNC for that, since it's so much cheaper
How is it cheaper when it comes with every version of Windows XP (home and pro) and also Windows Server 2003?
According to the WinHec slides you can run virtual file systems (hard drive, ram, and cpu partitions) for a particular app and you can run specific apps or services in a virtual mode.
BGil said:
Actually, it's to preserve their original aspect ratio. HD content is 16:9 and these trailers are wider than that.
GodBless said:
Why would I care if Microsoft sells more copies of Windows?
Apple doing more than enough to sell copies of Longhorn if they allow Mactels to dual-boot into it.I use a Mac nearly everyday and I do tech support for Macs but at home I prefer Windows. There is a ton of misinformation (FUD) being spread about Longhorn and Windows in this forum and I simply wanted to discuss it with people who wanted to have an intelligent discussion. If you don't want to do that then fine. If you want to keep touting Longhorn's release date as "late 2006/early 2007", saying Tiger has 90% of Longhorn's features (even though Tiger's major feature was released by Microsoft in Dec. 2004), that Microsoft copied Apple's desktop search plans, or whatever then fine but I see no reason to discuss incorrect information other than to support some people's mental image of the situation.
dejo said:
Are you sure? Other places have the same trailers in high-def and have no problem putting them in true 1080p and 720p. Plus, why do they call a trailer "1080p" or "720p" if they aren't actually those resolutions. Why aren't the aspect ratios for all the different resolutions of the same trailer the same, if they're so concerned with aspect ratio? Why is the aspect ratio of the 720p Fantastic 4 trailer 2.406 instead of 2.35?
Why don't they just put black bars at the top and bottom so they can get the real aspect ratio?
BGil said:
Why waste space encoding the black bars into the video, when they can be automatically added at playback time?
Actually no. I didn't say that Tiger has 90% of Longhorn's features, but I am bound to think from all the things I've read (and yes I used to be a Windows user until about 2.5 years ago) that Longhorn will have 90% of Tiger's features instead.BGil said:
Why would I care if Microsoft sells more copies of Windows?
I use a Mac nearly everyday and I do tech support for Macs but at home I prefer Windows. There is a ton of misinformation (FUD) being spread about Longhorn and Windows in this forum and I simply wanted to discuss it with people who wanted to have an intelligent discussion. If you don't want to do that then fine. If you want to keep touting Longhorn's release date as "late 2006/early 2007", saying Tiger has 90% of Longhorn's features (even though Tiger's major feature was released by Microsoft in Dec. 2004), that Microsoft copied Apple's desktop search plans, or whatever then fine but I see no reason to discuss incorrect information other than to support some people's mental image of the situation.
Just think Leopard will just top that and leave Long and Horny (yes pun intended and I am referring to Longhorn) far, far behind.
I switched because OS X is far, far, far better than Windows XP. And I can say that from personal experience. I switched when Jaguar (10.2) was out and in that time Apple pushed it even further by releasing Panther (10.3) and Tiger (10.4) to make OS X become even better. Just wait for Leopard (10.5) and you'll see a shift in market share.
Also I don't care that you do tech support on Macs I could say I do tech support for Windows '98. I am not talking about Mac OS 9 and below which Windows beats out by far. Instead I am talking about the greatest and the latest from Microsoft and Apple and let me tell you a fact: Apple is ahead. Way ahead.
I didn't mean you specifically but "you" as in "people on this forum". Sorry about that, wasn't trying to make it a personal attack in any way.
And I have used every leaked and public build of Longhorn since 4015 and I beg to differ. Apple has had 5 OS X releases and they still aren't into what I would call the "next-gen" of desktop OSes. There's no reason that OS X shouldn't blow away XP in everything but it doesn't. When I use OS X there are only 3 features I wish I had on my Windows box:
1. Integrated spell-check, dictionary etc.
2. Usage of saved searches in the open/save dialog
3. Preview
And that's after Apple has been studying Windows XP and Longhorn for almost 4 years. I don't see that as "far far far ahead". When I come back to my Windows boxes I'm greeted by one Media Center 2005 PC (with another update coming in August), a fully 64-bit version of XP flying on a dual core A64 4200+, and one Tablet PC. I'm streaming high-definition content and surround sound all over my house, recording HDTV and radio, remote managing other machines, doing instant local, networked, and internet searches with file previewing, and a ton of other stuff. I'm not seeing Apple as being ahead at all. Apple is ahead in some things (like the three previously mentioned features) but way behind in many others IMO. I see my library of games and software, my custom built PCs, and all the free software I've gotten from Microsoft (including XP x64, Windows Desktop Search, multiple Media Center and Tablet PC upgrades, and the upcoming 3rd update to Windows Media Player) and I feel like I got the better end of the deal. To me switching looked like a great idea before SP2 showed up. But now, I don't get any spyware or adware (I've never gotten a virus) and things are great.
Then I look boot into Longhorn 5048 and see the completely metadata-driven file browser and virtual heirarchy, desktop and internet search on steriods, RSS 2.0 everywhere, and new ways of visualizing data. There's a ton of other encouraging things like Wallop, Scalable Fabric, Phodeo, drag and pop, Tesla, Monad, WinFS, WGF, and Groupbar/Projectbar but there's not a single piece of data floating around detailing what Leopard will have and yet people are championing it as having a ton of new features. As someone else said, each version of OS X basically has 3 or 4 big new features. So far, Tiger basically has Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, and CoreXXX. Automator is really the only one that is light years ahead of other operating systems IMO. I don't really see a ton of innovation anywhere else.
What reason is there to believe that Leopard will have much more innovation than Tiger had? Tiger was in beta testing and developer preview for almost a year because of it's new features and it was still buggy at launch. Do you really think Apple can be optimizing for two platforms, continuing to work on Tiger, writing 64-bit API's, making the switch to resolution independence, and producing a ton of big features for Leopard while only giving developers 6 months to prepare and beta test(assuming they do their first preview at WWDC 2006)? More than likely, Leopard will be a small update with a focus on Rosetta, iLife, and the Intel switch.
Yeah, right lol. Everytime Apple has gone through one of these transitions they've lost about half their marketshare. IIRC the original iMac had them at around 10% marketshare and now they hover around 2-3%. Microsoft gave everyone a huge opening that summer when all those worms hit, Apple released Panther (a much bigger update over Jag than Tiger is over Panther) and came out with new PowerMac G5's and nothing happened. Now you expect me to believe that Microsoft's biggest update since Windows 95 is going to lose marketshare to another minor OS X update while Apple is going through another hard transition? lol
Everyone said Tiger would cause huge shifts in marketshare too but that obviously hasn't happened. Mac heads have been spouting off those predictions since System 7 and it's never come to fruition. Those predictions are no more valid than the Apple Death predictions you see all the time.
The Longhorn Wave is huge an is poised to be a killer especially on the Server/Corporate side of things. I guess we'll see more at Beta 1 (which is said to be the most stable Beta 1 Microsoft has ever released).
BGil said:
Yeah, right lol. Everytime Apple has gone through one of these transitions they've lost about half their marketshare. IIRC the original iMac had them at around 10% marketshare and now they hover around 2-3%. Microsoft gave everyone a huge opening that summer when all those worms hit, Apple released Panther (a much bigger update over Jag than Tiger is over Panther) and came out with new PowerMac G5's and nothing happened. Now you expect me to believe that Microsoft's biggest update since Windows 95 is going to lose marketshare to another minor OS X update while Apple is going through another hard transition? lol
Everyone said Tiger would cause huge shifts in marketshare too but that obviously hasn't happened. Mac heads have been spouting off those predictions since System 7 and it's never come to fruition. Those predictions are no more valid than the Apple Death predictions you see all the time.
The Longhorn Wave is huge an is poised to be a killer especially on the Server/Corporate side of things. I guess we'll see more at Beta 1 (which is said to be the most stable Beta 1 Microsoft has ever released).
thanks for actually bringing some good arguments to this forum, I like hearng from xp users about what they think of os x. I haven't used windows xp for for then 5 minutes and that was just using IE to search for something. I think the truth lies somewhere between your predictions and thoughts and the mac crazy's thoughts.
my thoughts:
-Leopard will be full of some great features, but it wont be anything stellar.
-Longhorn will be surprisingly good, although it will have bugs
-Mactel will luer just enough pc users to gain a little marketshare
-Apple will try to integrate leopard with longhorn
-Mactels may eventually be sold with both longhorn and leopard pre installed for convience and attraction from pc users.
-Leopard will boast a skin for longhorn which allows both OS's to be more consistent and compatible.
-Apple shouldn't expect anyone to only have leopard on their mactel
-There must be a way to have a virtual pc like deal without being as limited and slow.
-I have a strong feeling someday we wont have to boot up in different OS's each time we want to do something OS dependent
BGil said:
Looks like you recall incorrectly. Last time the Mac had 10% market share was 1993. By the time the iMac was introduced in 1998, market share was already down to 2.7%.
Personal Computer Market Share: 1975-2004
Oh, I suppose you don't mind:BGil said:
- Having viruses
- Having numerous security holes
- Not having Exposé
- Not having an option key to do the accent marks as easily as I did for Exposé
- Needing 3rd party software to do simple tasks
- Not having high quality built-in and 3rd party software (or at least not having very many programs to choose from that are high quality)
- Having a very buggy inconsistent OS with freezes and a horrible and inconsistent GUI
- Not having good built-in programs that help the OS experience (Internet Explorer compared to Safari and Mail compared to Outlook Express)
- Not having a built-in automation application
- Not being able to rename or move open files
- Having program files scattered and OS files unorganized
- Not having many screenshot options
- Not having widgets or a widget manager built-in
- Not having smart folders and lists
- Not having a slideshow option built-in to file browsing
- Not having burnable folders
- Not having magnification on the whole screen or on icons
- Not having a metadata instant indexing file searcher
- Not having core image, core video or core audio capabilities
- Not being able to change your icons fast and easily
- Making you take extra steps to accomplish the same thing that can be done with fewer steps
- Not having good programming software
- Not having a 3D graphing calculator built-in
- Not having a Save As PDF option wherever you can print
- Not having icons that are 128X128 resolution independent beautiful icons
- Not having an application switcher keyboard option
- Not having a color inversion option
- Not having a convenient Voice Over option
- Not having a good keychain manager
- Not having a good disk utility
- Having to defragment your hard drive
- Not having a column view
- Much more that I can't think of off the top of my head right now (if I think of more I might mention it later)
Hey I used to be an ignorant PC user like you so I know where you are coming from. The Mac is better by far. I don't want Longhorn which will contain spyware and a bunch of other worthless garbage. That's for sure!
GodBless said:
I must say we are headed in the wrong direction too.
GodBless said:
That's a big thing. I hate that on Windows.
GodBless said:
Windows does have that.
GodBless said:
Those will rock OS X once they're actually utilized by every dev.
GodBless said:
Another thing I miss when using Windows.
GodBless said:
Another big thing. I hated to have to do that too.
As to hot corners... they are the coolest invention ever. This is the first thing I miss when going to a Windows computer. I couldn't ever live without Exposé (the accent was actually written on a Windows PC, so these do work easily) and hot corners.
I only know of two ways to produce accented characters on Windows:
1. Open the Character Map, look for the character you want, copy and paste it where it's needed.
2. Memorize the "keyboard code" needed to type it directly. These are always of the form "hold down ALT and type numbers on the numeric keypad". If you want to find these codes, guess what, they're listed in Character Map.
1. Open the Character Map, look for the character you want, copy and paste it where it's needed.
2. Memorize the "keyboard code" needed to type it directly. These are always of the form "hold down ALT and type numbers on the numeric keypad". If you want to find these codes, guess what, they're listed in Character Map.
wrldwzrd89 said:
Maybe it is cuz I am using a German keyboard but i have the accent key left of the backspace key.
Never had my system comprimised nor have I ever had a virus or worm. I don't even run antivirus software either.
I greatly perfer having one click access to windows, that's why I keep my taskbar at three times the normal height (which is about as big as I like my dock). I can switch between any set of windows very fast because they stay in the same place. I don't like the minimize/hide penalty nor do I like the way Exposé doesn't tell you what app a window is from and how it breaks FCP down into numerous windows even though they basically all act as one unit. The taskbar has it's quirks too but I find making it bigger handles most of them. I can comfortably handle about 18 taskbar buttons, my quicklaunch bar, Windows desktop search, and WMP in there at once.
Fine with that.
I don't use iLife. I'm a video editor by trade so iMovie, GB, and iDVD, make me feel like I'm trying to build a house out of a set of Legos. I do see their value to others though. Beyond that, I use Nero, WMP, QT Alternative/Mplayer Classic, Macromedia's Suite, Adobe's CS + AE, SoundForge, Acid, Vegas, Acrylic, Reason, MS Office, and a few others. Some of those aren't available on the Mac and the ones that are run better on Windows IMO.
Like what? My systems (Mac or Windows) are customized to my usage. I don't use much built-in software on any platform (except Linux). I do find that there are far more high-quality third-party programs for Windows in any particular area than there are for Mac though. For instance, on the Mac you have iTunes on Windows you have iTunes, WMP, Sonique, Winamp 2, Winamp 3, Winamp 5, Real 10, MusicMatch, and a dozen others.
Like someone else said, the Mac is getting more inconsistient everyday. There are at least 5 Apple supplied incosistient themes and UI's in a default install of Mac OS X and iLife-- and there is not skinning to aleviate the problem. 10.4.0 and 10.4.1 are far buggier than any OS I've used in the last 4 years (since 10.1) except for a couple Longhorn Alphas.
Maxthon is the best browser I've ever used and Office (Outlook/Entourage) has been on virtually every machine I've had since 1997. There are many forums, like this one, where Safari (and every other Mac browser) simply doesn't work correctly. Posting to forums and using things like Wordpress are much easier from an IE based browser.
I would probably like that but so far the only thing I've been able to use Automator for is applying Spotlight comments to multiple files, something that Windows can do easily (keywords)
Never cared.
Start Menu? Program Files? My Documents?
Can never remember the cryptic keyboard shortcut and routine for it on a Mac. I do wish the print screen key just made a file instead of pasting it to the clipboard but other than that I feel Windows is much better at this. Windows Media Encoder makes it quite easy to even record the screen (or any part of it) to video.
Nope.
Saved Searches have been in XP since the beginning. Windows Desktop Search puts them in the favorites menu and folders pane
Never cared but I do like the way XP puts images and thumbnails on the front of folders and has "sort in groups" as it makes using the file browser very nice
Indexing Service, ifilters, live queries, and saved searches made their Windows debut in Windows 2000. Indexing Service can search far more metadata than Spotlight can. For a while I used Lookout, but since last Dec. I've been using MSDS/WDS and I feel it's better than Spotlight except for it's lack of saved searches in the open/save dialog.
Never heard of DirectX, huh? DirectX has had a full system-wide image, video, and 3D effect library since IE 4 showed up. That's how Frontpage and IE4 got all those fancy transitions, why Windows Movie Maker can preview in real-time and iMovie cannot, and why virtually every video app on Windows can mix resolutions, formats, and codecs on the timeline and FCP cannot.
Never really cared about changing icons unless I was changing the entire set and usually I find the Mac requires and extra, non-discoverable) step to do most tasks.
Not a programmer but Microsoft did give me a free copy of Visual Studio for watching three short internet movies. Additionally, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are currently free to download from MSDN.com
Don't care
CutePDF
Icons on Windows go up to 256 by 256.
You've seen this thread, right? I can make a Windows/Linux box look like anything I want
Never used any of those
Comes with both Windows Desktop Search and Maxthon, not to mention that XP has built-in Passport identification.
Nero is far better and I hate the fact that the Mac doesn't allow you to erase a rewritable disk from anything but Toast or Disk Utility.
I find that I never have to defragment but I've done it a few times. It beats having to restore/fix permissions and trash preferences IMO.
I hate column view. I need something with sorting, grouping, and metadata-- the Finder is very very poor in those areas.
Feel free. I notice you didn't mention anything pertaining to my Media Center PC, custom built machines, or Tablet PC.
Maxthon can't truly be called a separate web browser because it is nothing more than a wrapper for the IE core. For that matter, neither can any of the WebKit-based browsers, since they're basically wrappers around the Safari core. Such browsers share many of the advantages and disadvantages of their parent browser. By definition, Maxthon can't be much more secure than IE, unless it uses some execution protection technology I don't know about.BGil said:
Those are fine and well when software developers use them as intended. Quite a few of them don't, though - I've used various Windows programs that insist on installing themselves in the root of the C: drive, some that don't properly remove their Start Menu entries when uninstalled, and some that don't obey Windows' My Documents folder redirection and insist on using the default location for My Documents instead (in case you didn't know, you can change the location of the My Documents folder).BGil said:
I'll agree with you that, for Mac newbies, remembering the keystroke combination to take screen shots isn't the easiest thing to do. One thing I like about the Mac OS X method is that it's quite a bit easier to grab only a portion of the screen or a window. Here's a summary of the screen grab methods (all of these do not grab the mouse pointer and make a camera shutter sound when activated):BGil said:
Command+Shift+3: save the whole screen to a file
Command+Option+Shift+3: save the whole screen to the Clipboard
Command+Shift+4: save the selected area of the screen to a file (drag the crosshair cursor over the area you want grabbed)
Command+Option+Shift+4: save the selected area of the screen to the Clipboard (drag the crosshair cursor over the area you want grabbed)
Command+Shift+4, then Spacebar: save a window to a file (move the camera cursor that appears over the window you want - it'll highlight to indicate that it is selected - then click to grab it)
Command+Option+Shift+4, then Spacebar: save a window to the Clipboard (move the camera cursor that appears over the window you want - it'll highlight to indicate that it is selected - then click to grab it))
This may be true (more built-in metadata indexing is ALWAYS good, IMO), but can Indexing Service be extended with plug-ins like Spotlight can? I know very little about Indexing Service, so I'm genuinely curious.BGil said:
Yes. The plugins to extend Indexing Service are called ifilters, they are the same ones that are used in MSN/Windows Desktop Search, Sharepoint, and SQL Server.
Maxthon can also use the Gecko (Mozilla) engine if you so choose. Generally, Maxthon is pretty safe because it has a pop-up blocker, ad-blocker, plugin manager, and its downloads are screened by all the new SP2 security features. I've never had a problem with security on any Windows machine. Most of the time I don't even run a firewall (although we do have a router with a firewall) and I've never had even the slightest problem.
I don't really have one. I've barely used it. I tried downloading Ubantu about a month ago but it never fully installs. Even the live DVD brings me to an empty desktop with no icons and no UI elements and proceeds to just sit there for days.
I've used Mandrake and RedHat in the past but I couldn't help feeling like the default installs were just imitation Windows boxes. I mean, many of the UI elements felt extremely familiar. There was a start-menu look-a-like, a taskbar etc.
I wasn't impressed.
I ran Linux on a few of my HP/Compaq PDA's and it was very impressive there. I could run quite a few applications because everything is so portable. IIRC it ran Qtopia or something similar, it was much better than Windows Mobile 2000 but has since been overshadowed in many ways.
Overall, I'm impressed with the concept of Linux (free software that's extremely portable) but it's definitely has a steep learning curve. The only distros (window managers) I've found that don't have that learning curve are the ones that try to imitate Windows as much as possible. If they could fix that problem and find a way to run FCP, Vegas, Photoshop, Illustrator etc. then I could make a switch.