Mossberg: Windows 7 narrows the gap with Apple's Mac OS X - Page 9

As good as Windows 7 is is STILL has many of the problems Vista had evne in the begining.Under the Hood, Windows 7 Is Vista's Twin InfoWorld Nov 2008

Early reports of the soon to come out finished product are not good:

Windows 7 boots slower than Vista, says study: New OS starts up 42% slower than Vista, PC tune-up vendor claims Computerworld

A Windows to Help You Forget WSJ

In the gaming arena it is a toss up varying wildly depending on the game v and you still have to have a machine able to handle Vista to get the biggest gain out of Windows 7.

I am not surprised. Would you really expect something good to come out from the company that produced nothing but crapware for the past 10 years? From MS Office "updates" to Winblows Vista it has been nothing but one fiasco after another.

That "study" is FUD. If it weren't, why would they intentionally delay the full report for practically a week? The reason is link bait - put a shocking headline with no real context, then wait until after a weekend when everyone's forgotten to check the follow-up. The result is the headline "Windows 7 slower to boot than Vista" is stuck in your head forever.

As far as the comment that you have to have a machine that can run Vista to get the biggest gains from Windows 7, the opposite is true, actually. Windows 7's biggest gains in performance are on SLOWER hardware, where Vista could barely run at all. Netbooks are soon going to be loaded with Windows 7, loosely because of its lower hardware demands. If you have a PC that's capable of running Vista, Windows 7 will perform even better.

Update: Quoting a comment made on ComputerWorld:

'This test was conducted by iolo Technologies, which makes apps designed to "speed up your PC". Windows 7 boots much faster than Vista and XP on numerous laptops and desktop PCs that I've tried. I suspect Iolo wants to continue to have a reason to sell these "speed up your PC" apps."'

You still haven't commented at all about your post that's been completely debunked, yet you continue to believe all this false FUD?

This is to teckstud and all the others who participated in the rather heated debate over where Mac OS X's Dock and Windows' Task Bar originated.

Who cares which predates which? If a company is too proud to see that some other company's idea is too good not to use (you may call it copy), then said company is pretty blind and stupid, if you ask me. Sure, Microsoft took NextSTEP's Dock idea and made the Task Bar. And sure, Apple took a cue of both and made it into today's Dock. Just as there are countless other ideas that get carried over from one company's software offerings to that of another company. It's the way things work. Really, in this day and age, who cares which company first thought of the Dock idea? It's a proven concept and any software company writing and operating system that doesn't make use of the concept is missing the boat.

Even with good behavior everybody has to have antivirus and even then you are exposed. We all know this. Even if you don't get a virus you are doomed to the constant update cycles every few days. Windows may have an update every month but the other 50 third party software you need to achieve the same of functionality as a mac are all update-happy. The end result is that you will be updating something every day, restart or not. Some of these updates are bound to break something else since 50 applications can't live together for a long time if nobody follows software guidelines.

Etc, etc... Time machine puts everything Windows will ever come out with to shame. It is not even close. Every application written for PC is crapware because of the underlying OS structure.

That's because they all comment without actually reading Mossberg. Here they need to Read the full article here in case they missed my earlier posting.
http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20091007...lp-you-forget/

But be careful the WSJ uses flash!

I use Refworks myself (bizarrely enough I am 3 years into my thesis), which is almost entirely platform agnostic. I also use Scrivener, as it's the only writing tool I can stand for anything over 10,000 words or so. I knew very well the point you were making and was simply returning your flippant comment in kind. Of course suggesting that desktop ubiquity not being guaranteed does not mean people will have to write books or journals on a freaking phone - implying that was the logical conclusion of what I said was dishonest.


Apple disciple? I am typing this using FireFox on an AMD Windows7 box I built myself. Sorry, carry on...


Actually, just HTML 5, x264 and a full OS costing less than $200 would do me fine.


Can't compete? You mean in terms of numbers sold, or in terms of quality? Please explain? That's like saying Ferrari can't compete with Toyota... numbers don't mean anything, but what is for certain is that in terms of overall market success, the Personal desktop Computer is not the only battleground. Why do you think MS was willing to lose billions of dollars on the Xbox, and why will they now keep pushing Zune (with 1% market share)? Because they know that soon enough, smaller devices will drive content sales, and content sales will be where the real cash flow is.

And by the way, if you're trying to dilute my position with argumentum ad-hominem, that's fine (this is tEh interweBz after all), but at least try and address what is being said, rather than what you want me to be saying, that is easier to knock down.

How does Windows 7 handle running apps on multiple monitors?

Does it still work like this?

--Programmatic-ally, the registry is actually easier to add/remove application settings per user than a .plist xml file.

I wrote a program that makes use of the Registry extensively and I find the Registry to be organized in a logical sense. All be it that it may look confusing and all jumbled together but it really does have logic to it.

True, it is not for the average user to be mucking around in the Registry but for what I do, it gives me the ability to add/remove app settings to the registry to many people quickly.

I don't feel one is better or worse than the other, there's just pluses and minus to how both MS and Apple implement personal settings.

On one aspect, I do like how Apple does the .plist files because when they do get corrupt, it's easy to delete it and watch it re-create a new one. That's nice.

But I like the fact of having a Registry because all the settings are contained in that database and are easily edited programmatic-ally.

Whew! Some of you have definitely had your coffee today!


Well, I most certainly am giving my opinion - I never claimed otherwise. As the title of my post indicated, it was part of "my $.02", meaning that it's my opinion. I listed it as a "con" because - in my opinion - it's bad.

Also, I have to disagree with the idea that the Windows Taskbar isn't used for application launching - Windows 7 has clearly changed it to do so.


Yes, I am saying that a little white dot on the OSX Dock is clearer than tiny vertical lines next to a button on the Windows Taskbar. I made this observation as I am running Win7 in Classic mode, so it's possibly easier to see the difference when the eye candy is enabled, and I suppose that's what you're referring to.


I stand corrected - I was working in a locked-down environment, so drag/drop wasn't working for me. This seems to have been a result of our group policy settings, not the default behavior of the OS. Thanks for pointing this out so that others aren't misinformed.


Here's where your comments start getting sort of silly. I am no troll, and I actually rarely post at all, but I wanted to share my actual experience with the actual Windows 7 software from my perspective. You and all that read here are free to take it or leave it.

FYI:
Instant Search - Replicated by the free Google Desktop
Aero - Replicated (without proper GPU support) by Windowblinds for years now
UAC - Haven't looked for a free solution since we turn it off, as it's cumbersome and not very useful for savvy users.
IE8 - Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are all free, and more compatible with Web standards.


First, I never said that "no one will want to upgrade", I said that "I don't see why anyone would upgrade", because I simply don't see why it's worth paying for. There is no half to the truth that upgrades will cost over $100. This article actually specifies the amounts - $120 for Home Premium upgrade, $200 for Professional, and $220 for Ultimate.

I can't answer why Apple "worshipers" as you call them (it should have two "p"s, by the way) are happy to pay for their OSX upgrades, but my best guess is that each upgrade is compelling enough to warrant a purchase. Personally, I only paid $10 for Snow Leopard (Up-To-Date program), and I've definitely gotten more than $10 out of it so far. I just can't say the same for Windows 7 and $120 or more.


You, my friend, are being hilarious. Of course I'm quite sure that I've used Windows 7, and I am in fact running two instances of it in my test lab at this moment, automating my test application. The confusion here seems to be the fact that my company's deployment of Windows 7 (Professional, in case you're interested) disables the Aero look by default. This means that the taskbar icons aren't changing obviously at all. Basically what you get is a little vertical line next to your taskbar "button" to indicate that there is an additional window within that application. The icon change becomes even more obscure when the application in question is selected - at this point, the little vertical bar that indicates a different window is indented along with the rest of the button, and you really need to look quite close to see how many windows might be associated.

Like I mentioned before, I guess I'm just spoiled with Snow Leopard. I now have higher expectations for a UI, and an OS in general. Windows 7 is much less broken than Vista, so it will probably see wider adoption - I just wouldn't pay for the upgrade, personally.

So Avid is crapware? Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and the rest of the CS4 suite is crapware? Hell, what about iTunes and Safari? They were written for the PC. Guess that makes them crapware too. (Actually, on Windows they are, but that's another argument xD)

Yes, one needs an anti-malware solution for their Windows box. There's no denying that the virus penetration for OS X is almost non-existent compared to Windows. But again, so what? Microsoft has released a (VERY GOOD) anti-malware tool that sits quietly in your taskbar and never bothers you unless there's a problem. I've had the thing running on all my machines since the beta was released months ago, and I've never so much as got a single popup or warning from it. It does not bog down my system in the slightest, and often times I forget its even there.

Time Machine? As I said, Microsoft has had automatic backup tools integrated with the system since Vista, which was released almost a year before Leopard. In Windows 7, they've expanded its capabilities to make it so incredibly simple and easy that a caveman could do it. Seriously, the only thing Windows does not have is the flashy "travel through space and time" animation that Time Machine does. Other than that, they're IDENTICAL.

As far as updates, again, Microsoft releases updates ONCE A MONTH. Anything else can't possibly be Microsoft's fault any more than Apple's fault when applications on Leopard want to update as well! Hell, its worse on the Mac, because they all use Sparkle, which never lets me bypass it.

Listen, I love the Mac, but I also love Windows 7. Both operating systems shine where the other fails. If you're more inclined to use a Mac, then use a Mac. If you want a low-cost PC that functions well, Windows 7 is the way to go. There's really nothing to argue about.

The screen grabs of the interface look strangely like OSX.

Amazing how people who talk about machines forget a factor that I and many Apple users deem essential : user comfort.
I had to deal a few times with M$oft for Office X, Office 2004 and Office 2008. The amount of crappy informations, time lost and fallacious deals M$oft proposed to me is simply overwhelming, after all those years. For example, when Office 2008 spellcheck has NEVER properly worked, M$oft proposed to reimburse the amount of the software. I said OK.
They sent me MAILS proposing me this and inviting me to contact their customer service to close the deal. When I did so, I never received any reply. When I insisted, after several weeks and a level 2 confused customer representative apologies for the behaviour of his on company, they proposed to me ONE support question free, value 75 $, to solve my problem.
I replied to them : it's a bug, you know it, everyone knows it, and instead of solving it, you propose some counselling which is nothong else than another couple of hours lost. You'd better make your homework and iron out your sad Office. My time is too precious.

Instead, using more than 20 Mac machines since 1992, each time I had a problem (3 in all), Apple
has been absolutely fair, repairing two Macs out of warranty, graciously extending the Apple care.
And it even offered to me an iPod Nano after a defective DVD problem.
That comfortable relationship with Apple Support is priceless and reliable.
No other IT company offers this in the industry (I could speak volumes about HP's strange ways too…).
This is saving you TIME.
Meanwhile, M$oft and some others invite you to pay twice : first by buying their products,
then by losing hours and buying crappy solutions to make them supposedly work.
Windows 7 ? Not in a million years.

The screengrabs from Ubuntu look strangely like Windows. It doesn't mean its bad.

Been an Apple user since lle, (very nearly a Lisa owner) also one of the very first UK Mac owners in 1984. Now I think my time with Apple is over.

Apple wont miss me, but I will miss Apple.

Well, seems MS are introducing low cost office, supported by ads:

http://gizmodo.com/5377481/bloatfest...ave-fcking-ads

Nice...

I totally agree with you and that was my point to begin. I was merely responding to someone who stated that MS copied Apple's whatever. To me it doesn't matter. Competition is great and if one improves upon the next- we're all better off for it.
Sorry to everyone if my writing was far from perfect, I was at work and extremely busy today.

You're upset by this? In the wake of Microsoft Office Web Applications and now, a FREE version of Office, why is this a bad thing? Google Docs is ad-supported, Gmail is ad-supported, Bing, Yahoo and Google ALL have ad-supported searches... doesn't bother me in the least.

Hell, this SITE is ad-supported. You have to pay the bills, somehow. And if you don't want it, guess what? You don't have to get it.

That has more to do with which OEM you do business with. In this case, Microsoft wouldn't be of any help to you regardless. The ones you'd have to compare to with Apple are the Dells and HPs of the world.

I do agree that Apple's technical support seems to be one of the best in the industry. As long as you're under warranty, they'll fix just about any issue you have with no questions asked. I love how they swapped out my original iPhone 3G last year after I complained about poor cellular reception. I didn't even need to turn the phone on to show them - they just replaced it on the spot! That's good customer service.

However, since I'm capable of building my own systems, I've found it more cost-effective to build the machine myself and service any replacements myself. I've saved money, but at the cost of me figuring out all my issues. That works for me. And what you do works for you.

In the end, its just a matter of who you're comfortable with. I'm personally more comfortable knowing the exact parts in all my machines and what to replace them with, while you're more comfortable not having to worry about it at all and pay the premium for that luxury.

Something is only as good as it is when something goes wrong. The main problem is that most users have no idea what to do with the registry, and walking someone through how to fix it on a support call is difficult at best. It's not programmatically more difficult to read and write from and to an XML database and it's a lot easier to tell a user to just delte that plist file.

Or you could get Open Office... for free, with no ads.

Besides Office 2010 Starter Edition ISN'T free.

You could also use Office Web Apps or Google docs. They're free as well.

I should be corrected that the suite is only available to new PCs that comes preinstalled by the OEM. But it is free to those users. Better to have something that works forever than crap trial software:

"Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs."

MS Works was "free" (OEM installed), no ads there.

I'm not sure why you're so quick to defend it. It's bloatware, pure and simple. Even Gizmodo had a crapfit over it.

I agree... But as an X-Platform developer... It's not all bad. Well, maybe you weren't talking about it that way...

only on Ultimate

for the memory randomization there was a security researcher who said that SL doesn't go as far as 7 and that Windows does it better

I'm not sure why you're so quick to denounce it. And besides... its Gizmodo! They have a crapfit over everything, you know that.

I didn't denounce it. at least not until that last post.

I just can't stand ads... whoever's doing them. I got rid of Cable for that very reason.

And NEXT stole the dock idea from OS/2

I would hazard a guess that Steve Jobs is a lot less greedy now than he was when he rejoined Apple 12 years ago.

No demise yet. 12 years and counting.

Amen.

of course he was bribed to say good things about windows 7

he forgot to add that unless you have 4 gb of ram in your computer, it's unbearable to use, and aero peek is horrendous and confusing if you have many open windows

all those that think that he's a "fan" and that he wasn't bribed, really, what do you think santa will bring you this christmas?

I decided not to comment in this discussion until this guy open is mouth again. You love Apple, I understand, so do I, but you make me look like what was the word extremeskater used 'elitist'.

When you comment provide actually factual data, know who you are talking about and understand the subject clearly. before making a comment.

One more important thing,at least be fair in your comments, I hate uninformed Apple or MS Fanboys because just make all of us look bad.

I am a die hard Apple guy, not because I hate MS, but I found that Apple provide the level of service, which suits my needs and feel comfortable that any issues will be fixed in reasonable time.
I hate OEM business because there is no accountable and MS have a poor record of customer support/service for consumers (just my observation over the years).

I would like windows 7 to work, simple because I am also a avid gamer and majority of games are released for windows platform. With intel Macs, now EA and others are founding easier to release Mac compatible version without too much re-work. Still I need windows 7 via bootcamp or parallels.

I would prefer Windows 7 to be successful and actually may cause Apple to raise the bar again with their next operating system release, competition means innovation in Apple's case and always good for the consumer.

Accusing a man of bribery when his job depends on expected credibility is a serious accusation, my friend. Doubt you'd ever had the guts to say it to the man face to face, where there are actually consequences to your words.

In any case, what are you blabbering about? I have a machine that's running Windows 7 that's nearly 5 years old (Dell Dimension 2400), and it only has 1gb of ram in it. Though the hardware is showing its age, Windows 7 runs just as beautifully as it does on my modern desktop! For someone like my mother, who just wants a reliable computer that surfs the web, plays her music, and checks her email, its perfect.

Obviously if you choose Macs as your favorite, that's fine. But don't go spewing lies about other people and the product itself. Careful what you say - they'll bite you back someday.

No, I must disagree. Windows 7 is vastly better than Vista, on almost every front, and it is really quite nice to use. I have it running in a VMWare 3 VM on a low end iMac and it is quite performant - not bad at all.

If you will forgive my use of the term, you must not think like a fanboy. Is it true that there are certain folks who will never ever consider windows? Yes, of course. But for every one of them there are dozens (if not hundreds) of consumers that will look at windows 7, and look at OSX, and ask themselves "what's the difference?" Windows 7 has the potential to bring the PC world back to 'close enough' territory, and that has not historically been good for Apple. Am I predicting that Apple will stop increasing market share? I will not go that far, though I suspect there is some risk of that, failing anything significant on the OS front from Apple. Regardless, Windows 7 will make the competition a lot more fierce, and I think there is a reasonable probability that the new M$ stores will also begin to drive the value proposition message more than Microsoft previously has.

Whenever I watch Balmer speak, I'm always struck with this feeling that 'Man, this guy is arrogant.' That's bad news in business. Gates was acutely aware that his company had to keep improving or it would soon be overtaken by other companies. Balmer hasn't been that way; he has spent more time dismissing trends than addressing them, and look where MS is now: they have virtually lost the smartphone market to Apple, and they are a day late and a dollar short on Win 7. That's what arrogance does to you; as the Good Book says, pride goeth before a fall.

Anyway, I make that point because I see a lot of folks in these forums who are eager to dismiss anything that a competitor to Apple might put forth. That's arrogant, and may I say just a little bit ignorant as well. Harboring that kind of hubris is only possible, in my opinion, when you don't have a very significant grasp of history. Those wishing to dust off their history books might look back to the mid 90's, just before Jobs came back to Apple. Apple had become arrogant and complacent, and the company escaped destruction by the skin of their teeth. Even Jobs has gone on record affirming that he didn't initially want the job as CEO, because he wasn't sure the company could be saved. He had doubts throughout the early part of his reign as to whether or not the company would survive. So, the lesson in that is that even companies that create beautiful, elegant, empowering technologies that sometimes even shape our world and modify how we live our lives... even those companies can fail and fall apart if their leadership becomes complacent to the challenges their competitors present.

I hope that the people milling about 1 infinite loop each day don't share in your attitude, at least as exemplified by this particular post. Rather, I hope they carefully examine the challenges presented by Android, and Win 7, and whatever other new tech development appears on the scene. I hope they study these issues and I hope they craft strategy to remain dominant, because frankly speaking, in this business if you are not advancing, you are retreating. Arrogance almost universally leads to complacency, and that cannot have good outcomes.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't even work that way in Vista.

Great comments and well written!

I was trying to found newest quotes from SJ (Apple) and SB (MS) to show that arrogrance causes more harm than good. Unfortunately I spend over hour trying to found something this year for SJ and found nothing (does not mean it is not there, but he has been sick), but SB Ohboy see his latest comments http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv...5974OZ20091008.

I think tablet will be a big hit, if it is marketed right by Apple, I am certainly do not believe what Ballmar says,simple because he has history of saying opposite of what happens in consumer market.

Said this in January when msft gave it away free.
Runs old hardware very fast, IT wil upgrade which meanss consumers will too.

This is going to be very big for msft. Search my post back in Jan.
If courier turns out to be true and controled by msft and no oem's, watch out, this will change everything.
Peace.

Sir, I congratulate you for easily the best post on this entire topic.

Apple do need to be wary of Microsoft. They have both vast resources, and more importantly, a vast incumbent installed base which is of huge value, and if these things are leveraged correctly, they will remain a force. The thing that Apple need to be most concerned about though is that whilst Microsoft have a frankly dismal CEO, they now have a really world class Chief Software Architect in Ray Ozzie. If you think, this is the first time Microsoft have had a guy in charge of software who is qualified to be there - Bill Gates had no qualifications in computer science (for Apple, Bertrand Serlet has a doctorate in computer science) and that will make a difference in how they put products together. Under Ozzie, their software could well get good.

As an Apple fan however, I do think that they will be OK and again, you touch on why. I believe the people at 1 Infinite Loop do not think like many of the people on this board, and understand that they need to make the absolute best product possible, not merely something better than Microsoft.

I mentioned this in a previous post, I hope Microsoft do get good, because Apple will probably get even better, and for us consumers, that's fantastic news.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10370369-56.html

"As is often the case with Windows, Iolo found that things only get worse over time. It found that a three-month-old machine can take up to a minute longer to boot, or 2 minutes and 34 seconds. Windows 7 did outperform Vista at the three-month and six-month marks, Iolo said, but it generally "trailed the older version significantly" in its boot-up tests."

Looks like Windows 7 users will still be thinking about a clean install every few months... and wondering why they didn't switch to Mac.