654 replies to this topic

[Swad]

The Debate

As a part of our continuing Great Debates series, we're asking a question today that'll determine computing trends for several years to come:

Is Windows Vista enough? What advantages does it have over OS X and where does it fall behind? Will it be enough to push the Windows platform ahead or does it begin the slow death of a once (ok, very shortly) great operating system?

The Positions

In many ways Windows Vista is a release that pushes the computing industry ahead. (And although I realize it's still in beta, we've got enough info to form opinions). While not as progressive as OS X tends to be, it does bring several new and/or improved features to mainstream computing, including greater SVG support, a tightly integrated media center (which it beat Apple to the market with), SuperFetch, Tablet PC integration, and increased collaborative access for users. All of these are important innovations for the industry, and Microsoft is leading the way in many of these areas. Some folks, like extremetech, take this view.

On the other hand, one does get the sense that Vista is the release that Microsoft had to make... not so much because it had so many features to empart to the world, but because it needed to "catch up" with OS X and Linux. XP was showing its age, and although the initial introduction of Vista promised truckloads of new features, few made it into the final product. The final product, delayed countless times, will be a shell of the original idea and will be years later than it should have been. Indeed, there are a lot of things not to love about Vista.

What say you?

[Colonel]

I think Windows Vista will be a big failure and Bill knows it will be, too. He left Microsoft before Vista was release because he didn't want to take most of the blame when Vista turns out to be less stable and more buggier than Win 98 was. I predict that Vista will fail, and when it doesn, Apple will take it's marketshare, and all will be good.

[Superhai]

I think still Microsoft defines what is a failure and a success in the business computer world.

And still will when they start developing next Windows even-longer-horn with codename from-a-obscure-wa-or-bc-village.

For me, I want just an OS. I will get Vista, but I don't want aero, media centre, internet explorer, media player, live etc etc. I want a OS like the core kernel, core systems, directx and the drivers. That way I can run the software I need. Aero is only nice when it uses resources like the basic gui. I rund XP with the old ui, and it is fast, somewhat resourcefriendly and snappy.

I haven't decided yet how good the .net frameworks will be, but they are nice for quick development, but I tend to see often problems rooted to them.

[Pippin]

I think MS will continue to win although Mac OS X is better than Windows Vista.

[Victor Gil]

The problem with Vista is that Microsoft is trying to make it compatible with every hardware in the world and that's a problem when it comes to compatibility and stability, that's why Windows sucks sometimes.

Besides the are keeping software compatiblity with Windows 2000 and you can see it while installing this Beta version, they have to get rid of it because this is the major problem with security and bugs. They're innovating in some aspect of the new OS but it's looks like they are upgrading XP to work with 3D hardware and taking some *nix ideas to make Windows more stable and secure. In short words I tested it and finally don't like Windows Vista still.

[MacSpaces]

I dont understand the whole logic on taking sides between software (apple vs microsoft)
i know its bussiness a battle for turf is part of it, but i find out so stupid when somebody says yay for apple their gaining marketshare are you gaining anything from it?
will i affect any part of your life? if windows fails that means the whole world will have to make a transition to apple do you know the consequences it will bring? (stock market etc) come on people its very f***ing obvious on what apple is trying to do their just simply trying to take back what rightfully belong to them..and thats the home bussiness
they already inked deals with many schools so that share belongs to apple but when it comes to bussiness i can say at least 100000 reasons why windows is 1000x better then mac in a bussiness enviroment. some of you need to stop being self centered and see the big picture..if apple increases their market share tomorrow do you think you will recieve a goody bag from apple?

hell the f*** no at the end of the day apple is microsoft when microsoft was coming up...REMEMBER HISTORY IS VERY REPETITIVE.

[bwhsh8r]

I think that it will be successful but buggy and a recource hog.  I have tested alot of the betas and they have a long way to go before they will be worth installing.  I will stay with server 2003 until vista sp1 at least because server 2003 is the most reliable and best windows so far and by far.  Oh and xp is getting old...


max

[other]

Windows Vista is a major overhall of the windows OS as you can see from the huge delays, they're working on something huge! However windows vista is slowly getting stripped of certain awesome features such as the recent removal of WinFS which was meant to be one of the pillars (a SQL like filesystem).

While it will no doubt be a success, the question is how much of one

[Swad]

Quote

While it will no doubt be a success, the question is how much of one

I'm not really sure that it will be. One question is this - how does one gauge success with an OS like this? XP would probably be considered a success, but a huge portion of the world (especially business) is still running 2000. Do we measure it by percentage of PC users? Increase in hardware sales?

Also, it'll likely be a success (in terms of unit sales) just because MS has such a monopoly tight grip on the market, meaning that tons of people will adopt because they have PCs.

[AppleLegal]

MS is trying to do to much with the Vista platform and the Live platform at once.  With Vista, they're trying to revolutionize the GUI, the Kernel, the way we browse the Internet, and computer security all at once.  Not to mention they attempted to change NTFS, and a bunch of other things.  Add in integration with Office 2007, and a bunch of other things, and you have a huge mess known as Vista.  The security added in will hopefully prove to be successful - Windows Defender has already proven to be one of the best antispyware program's out there.  Microsoft can only hope that User Access Controls doesnt fustrate to many people - asking 7 times to delete a desktop shortcut is sure to get on anyone's nerves.

However, MS is plagued by the promises they made years ago.  They tried to do to much at once, they forgot to pick one thing, make it the best, and work from there.  That's what made them the best - the GUI in win 95 was amazing at the time, the NT kernel was great,  active directory in 2000, and so on.  They do know what they're doing, the only question is if they can remember what they're supposed to be doing.  

With the Live, MS is doing fairly well actually.  They're using hotmail for email - old, but proven.  Add in their maps feature, their search, and you've got something that will be a semi-serious competitor to Yahoo or Google.  But their major success with Live lies in gaming.  They've managed to integrate games with the cell phone, Xbox 360, and PC all in one.  This is huge - imagine being able to watch replays of games on your cell phone that you saved on your xbox 360, or check the scores of tournaments while your not at your xbox or PC.  In Microsoft's next-gen(or current-gen, depending on how you look at things) platforms, this one is most likely to succeed and safe Microsoft from failing completely.  Live is definitly something to keep an eye on.

As for how you would define "Success" with Vista.  In this case, the only success with Vista, from Microsoft's perspective, is slowing down the switch to Firefox from IE, slowing down the switch to OSX or Linux from XP, and a slow down of viruses and malware writing for the Windows platform.

[naddy69]

Quote

I think Windows Vista will be a big failure and Bill knows it will be, too. He left Microsoft before Vista was release because he didn't want to take most of the blame when Vista turns out to be less stable and more buggier than Win 98 was. I predict that Vista will fail, and when it doesn, Apple will take it's marketshare, and all will be good.

Keep dreaming.   Gates isn't leaving for 2 more years, anyway.    So you're wrong about that too.

Vista will be a success - eventually.    It took XP 3 years to overtake 2000 and 98.   It will take Vista at least that long, if only because of the huge installed base.

[Colonel]

naddy69, on Jul 9 2006, 09:55 AM, said:

Keep dreaming.   Gates isn't leaving for 2 more years, anyway.    So you're wrong about that too.

Seeing how Vista is progressing, I wouldn't be suprised if it took MS until 2008 to finish it.

[bofors]

If Microsoft had a clue about operating systems, they would have thrown Windows out with the trash and started with a clean slate.   Then they should have simply followed an OS X or NeXTSTEP-like architecture pattern.  Specifically, they should have started with a well developed, secure Unix-like operating system, like a BSD, then bought something like BeOS for the GUI, and added some advanced Cocoa-like application development environment and perhaps a high performance kernel like maybe L4.  

Just like OS X's Classic emulator, Microsoft could have provided a sub-system for backwards compatibility with Windows.  Then just like Apple's Carbon they could have provided a porting API.  Of course, Microsoft should have kept the few decent aspects of Windows like perhaps DirectX, C# and .NET.  But Gates, Ballmer and company just do not "get it" and frankly, I am not sure if they even care about doing things the "right" way.  Moreover they clearly suffer from a gross inability to manage their grand plans for Window development.  

It is quite obvious that Vista is and will continue to be a failure.  With respect to previous Windows releases, Vista appears to be less significant than 2000 Pro when exactly the opposite is called for.  I mean, Vista might as well be called "XP 2".  While there is no reason for big-business and institutions to move to Vista, they have plenty of reasons to stick with there current versions of Windows, they already "work" (sort of).  This means that Vista options rates will be very slow.  

Make no mistake about it, there is only one way for Microsoft to go and that is down.  Its profound lack of innovation and inept management certainly do not help the matter either.  If Apple licenses OS X once the transitions to x86 is complete in the next year or so (when Adobe finally releases all its Universal binaries), Vista could very well become historically associated with the inevitable downfall of Microsoft.

[Metrogirl]

  Almost the first thing I do with a new Windows installation is drag a command prompt to the desktop, change it to start in C:\, edit the path to point to new utils, bin, etc and temp directories off root and dump all my old DOS and Unix-alike utilities in them.   Then I install a 'command here' powertoy and proceed to turn off most of the Windows features that really annoy me, like autoplay, hiding files or extensions and so on.  That command window gets used a lot - mkdir, ren, del, ndel, attrib, move, grep, vi, sed, need I go on?

Although this isn't the place for a diatribe on modern technology not living  up to the hype and promise (and I'll put something to this effect on my personal site very soon, because it's a big issue for me at the moment) - it's almost the place, because Vista promises a lot and from what I've seen so far, it's not delivering.   I somehow doubt that it's going to satisfy a lot of users.

I'm going to break down computer users into four groups.  (I'm reminded of the old joke - "Here is a list of our members - they're all broken down by age and sex...").

Group A - Mom, Pop and the kids who want to click something and lots of pretty things happen, but they don't want to understand how it all works, far less change anything.

Group B - People who want to run applications to do real things, design, paint, write, edit, create.   The computer is a tool, but the OS and 'experience' are not critical as long as the apps work as desired.   For these people, it doesn't matter if  it's W98, Linux, OSX or Vista underneath.

Group C - People who want to do the things in Group B, but want to modify their systems to be faster, learn how they work and change things so they like them - they tend to settle on one OS, if only because it's less easy to become nuts-and-bolts proficient in several.

Group D - People who run computers for others - sysadmins and the like.

Personally, I'm somewhere between Groups B and C, and leaning more and more to Group B as time goes on.   I've grown tired of toys and flashy stuff,  I just want to get on and use the computer.   For me, helpful popups, "are you sure?" restrictions and spinning coloured eye-candy are just an irritation.   I think the fact that I remove or disable a lot of stuff in both XP and OSX, and frequently resort to C:\> or Terminal says it all.

So in my opinion for what it's worth, I think Vista will delight Group A, be largely irrelevant to Group B and provide hours of "entertainment" to Group C;  Group D will avoid it like the plague until they're forced to use it.   I don't imagine big business will embrace it for quite a while.

I've played with the Betas of Vista.   There's nothing there for me that OSX doesn't already offer and in my brief flirtation with the OS I spent more time trying to disable 'features' than using it.   I expect I'll be forced to use it when my main power applications require it, like Photoshop and Cubase did for XP, but until that day I'll stay well clear.

[AppleLegal]

bofors, on Jul 9 2006, 10:42 AM, said:

If Microsoft had a clue about operating systems, they would have thrown Windows out with the trash and started with a clean slate.   Then they should have simply followed an OS X or NeXTSTEP-like architecture pattern.  Specifically, they should have started with a well developed, secure Unix-like operating system, like a BSD, then bought something like BeOS for the GUI, and added some advanced Cocoa-like application development environment and perhaps a high performance kernel like maybe L4.

bofors, check out Vienna, it's the code name for MS's next OS.  It's supposed to do pretty much everything you said MS should do.  Was originally supposed to be the Next OS after vista, but they pushed it back cause of vista being delayed as well.

bofors, on Jul 9 2006, 10:42 AM, said:

If Apple licenses OS X once the transitions to x86 is complete in the next year or so

That's a big if.

[REVENGE]

Vista will be shiit filler material between what I would describe as the 'legacy generation' Windows XP, and the 'next generation' Windows Codename Vienna.  As the concepts being developed in Vienna are "advanced" and "complicated", Microsoft needs something to fill the gap between the transition from what everyone knows as good ol' windows (start bar, desktop, etc...) to what the voles are calling the product to "revolutionize" desktop computing as we know it (yeah, lets see how they work this one out..).  In parallel, the hardware world is also undergoing a time of transitions (ie PCI+AGP >>> PCIe, PATA >>> SATA, BIOS >>> EFI, 32 bit >>> 64 bit, VGA+DVI >>> HDMI+Display Port, DVD >>> BluRay v. HD-DVD, etc...).  Vista, being developed and released during this transitional era, will be limited by concerns for legacy hardware compatibility and new hardware standards support.  In my opinion, this period of time is bad for both upgrading operating systems and upgrading hardware.  Instead of rushing out to acquire the latest "cutting edge", people should wait until the period of transition is over and legacy is sealed in its grave and new standards are firmly established.

[Joe The Dragon]

Pippin, on Jul 8 2006, 04:04 AM, said:

I think MS will continue to win although Mac OS X is better than Windows Vista.

IF osx would run on more hardware then it will have a better chance of taking over windows

[kevin_4e]

Anyone who says Microsoft is a failure is obviously very very cofused. Although most people on this site would agree that OS X is better than XP or Vista, we are a very small handful of people who think so. The computer industry is totally dominated by Windows and it will stay that way for probably forever. In the end Vista will be a succsess because there really is no alternative. It may let some people down but it will still be a great product. I don't believe it will surpass Tiger or the future Leopard but i'll most likely be dual-booting it within a short amount of time after release.

[buglamp]

I would say that OSX is a move that Apple 'had' to make.  Software companies 'Have' to make software.  Companies 'Have' to make money.  People 'Have' to eat small furry animals.  Ethics are subject to ignorance & Apple is just as good at selling crap as Microsoft.  The Fact of the matter is:   Vista will make OSX its bitch.  I dig OSX and at the end of the day I'll love to see OSX bitchslap Vista (could happen),  However Vista is the 600lb biker that OSX doesnt want to mess with.  Bottem line is its crap.  So you have to buy more crap to use it (note.  some crap my be well designed).  On the Bright Side ->  now the other %95 of the computing industry has somthing other then gray to look at.

Edit:  I would be interested to see what would happen if redhat or novell actually spent 50 million on a 3d accelerated GUI.

[MrDee]

Of course Windows Vista will be a success, the many brand OEM's who have backed Microsoft have proven so. Dell, HP and Gateway all told Microsoft to delay the product to do more testing and preparation for releasing consumer PCs with it next year. Businesses who signed up for Volume Licensing will get it in November and will gradually upgrade their PC's to it over time similar to XP currently. Usually its the IT departments who move onto the latest release then gradually upgrade other departments.

But, the major OEM's are the ones who will make Vista successful, coupons to upgrade to it, every PC starting in January 2007 preloaded with it. The usual upgraders (and trust me, there are a whole lot of them). A proof of this is the recent Public trial, if 2 million persons are willing enough to give a pre-release a try, there are millions upon millions more out there willing to upgrade to Windows Vista RTM.

The big question is, which editions will most users choose, Home Premium or Ultimate. So far based on my research, a lot of persons are in awe when I show AERO Glass to them. The roledex (Flip 3D) window switching generates ooooohs and ahhhhhs, its so funny. These two least productive features get people asking 'Where can I get this?', 'Is it out yet?', 'Can you come over tomorrow or later and install it on my system?', 'Tell me what I must do to upgrade my system to get that?'

At the same time, I show them OS X x86 and the response is 'Whats that, Apple?', 'What does that do? 'Oh, Zeen'. Aqua just does not generate the level of interest as AERO Glass, just the fact that you are able to create such an effect has caused a deep connection with many users based on my experience.

Of course, Apple beat Microsoft with Search a feature that was greatly touted at PDC 2003, but Microsoft did make up for it in the interim with Windows Desktop Search. Vista is coming with many consumer features, from a Consumer and Developer perspective, Windows Presentation and Communication Foundations, better search and organization capabilities, applications that help you better manage and create content, Photo Gallery, MovieMaker 6.0, communication through Windows Meeting Spaces, an awesome media player and a whole lot more. Security is one aspect by itself, out of the box you are more secure because of the Standard account, no one runs as root Admin. Other features and technologies you can add to the list include Media Center, Tablet PC and 64-bit, those three have yet to prove themselves on OS X.

So, millions of users will see these as great incentives to upgrade and Microsoft's marketing campaign will ensure the 200 million users they expect to be on the OS with the 24 months the predict.