ROFL!! its nice to be a problem again :)
well it says that windows longhorn is tageted at stopping switchers... only one problem...
quote from a microsoftwatch article:
If Apple sticks to a yearly cycle of product updates between now and 2005, it will be going on Mac OS X 10.5 by the time Longhorn delivers GUI enhancements and other features designed to take on Mac OS X 10.2. Even if Redmond comes through with all of the capabilities it's predicting, it will still be choking on dust kicked up by an additional couple of Mac OS X revs.
ROFL on a microsoft site!
This is great news. I for one am glad to see that apple is now once again competative in terms of speed and there desktop OS.
I encourage you to read the whole article.
btw my source is:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/
0,4248,1112787,00.asp
quote from a microsoftwatch article:
If Apple sticks to a yearly cycle of product updates between now and 2005, it will be going on Mac OS X 10.5 by the time Longhorn delivers GUI enhancements and other features designed to take on Mac OS X 10.2. Even if Redmond comes through with all of the capabilities it's predicting, it will still be choking on dust kicked up by an additional couple of Mac OS X revs.
ROFL on a microsoft site!
This is great news. I for one am glad to see that apple is now once again competative in terms of speed and there desktop OS.
I encourage you to read the whole article.
btw my source is:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/
0,4248,1112787,00.asp
Comments
Apple sells to a smaller marketplace and on known (Apple standard) hardware. This means that they can very easily test what they want to do on most all known configurations of the hardware they will support. MS unfortunately is in the opposite situation. As such, MS can't really ship multiple rapid monolithic OS upgrades because their hardware situation keeps them from being very flexible.
Aside from the QA aspect, MS also has a culture of single massive updates. This is probably because alot of their customers are businesses which don't like the idea of getting a new OS every year. So MS gives massive updates every 2-4 years in which they totally change how the OS works and force a new user experience on the poor end users. Imagine getting stuch with how Win 2k did buttons on the start bar for two to four years (I was one such user who would have 10-20 little buttons for all my open email messages
Apple's felxibility and willingness to put out frequent updates makes it possible to fix things that were done wrong. I know that people here complain about that, but you could get stuck in a bad windows GUI that can only be hacked into usability through modifying registry keys. Apple's strategy is FAR better than MS's. Apple's strategy get innovation into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible. Apple's strategy uses wanted features as a carrot to lure users into upgrading their system (thus geining security though bug fixes). Apple's strategy is just plain better.
Back to work I go.
Originally posted by Powerdoc
good post yevgueni
I think its great that M$ actuly cares what apple does for once
On a side note what the heck is a unix shell?
They said they changed it to "bash" or something like that in panther. Can anyone help me understand the signifacance of that? Its on the front page of appleinsider.
Linky
More Linky
"What shell am I running?" If you have any version of OS X other than a Panther beta, then you've got tcsh.
To see, run the following in Terminal.app: echo $SHELL
Screed
Originally posted by Yevgeny
So MS gives massive updates every 2-4 years in which they totally change how the OS works and force a new user experience on the poor end users. Imagine getting stuch with how Win 2k did buttons on the start bar for two to four years (I was one such user who would have 10-20 little buttons for all my open email messages
I don't know what this means. Little has changed from a UI perspective since win95. Even without reverting to the classic GUI in XP most windows can revert to formats that resemeble the Win95 look. It even has the program manager if you want to use the windows 3.x look. OSX OTOH bears relatively little resemblance to any previous version.
BTW, if you don't like 20 email buttons filling the taskbar complain to the company that wrote the app, or get another email client. Switching windows versions doesn't affect it.
when you go to turn off your computer, if you wait there and do nothing, everything goes grayscale except the colors in the box asking if you want to turn off, sleep, restart.
Originally posted by xmoger
Businesses don't like upgrading more than every few years, so there's an incentive to slow upgrade cycles. We'll see if Microsoft finds OSX a threat in the coming years.
Correct, businesses don't like upgrading too frequently (until the internet worm de jour comes along).
I don't know what this means. Little has changed from a UI perspective since win95. Even without reverting to the classic GUI in XP most windows can revert to formats that resemeble the Win95 look. It even has the program manager if you want to use the windows 3.x look. OSX OTOH bears relatively little resemblance to any previous version.
Not quite true. For example, MS has progressively hidden the Windows explorer farther and farther away in each version of Windows. XP finally has a usable Start button which displays a listing of frequently used programs and your most recently used programs. Like program buttons are grouped in the same icon. MS font smoothing technology is actually really good. The differences are subtle but actually make for a large difference in usability. The problem of course is that the updates to the windows GUI are so infrequent that they come very slowly.
Another problem is that MS basically looses at chicken. Every future version of windows seems to promise some groundbreaking new GUI idea that gets pulled or watered down in the actual release. In the end, MS plays it safe with the GUI (you don't want to tick off the business folk with a new GUI). So MS wants to try new stuff, but in the end always waters it down so their desktop seems mainstream and doesn't shock people too much. Hence why you have a GUI with 16 shades of grey.
Yet another problem is that when they try something bold, it is just lacking in plain good taste. Anyone remember MS Bob? Yuck. XP's Luna theme is disgusting (I can't take the deep blue overdose and changed it to the XP-ish silver which looks so much better). Why is my start button perpetually green, and a nasty green at that?
BTW, if you don't like 20 email buttons filling the taskbar complain to the company that wrote the app, or get another email client. Switching windows versions doesn't affect it.
The company that wrote the app (Outlook) is MS themselves. Switching windows versions does affect it because in XP you can group like apps into a single group. I can't change from Outlook because it is the mail app for my work. The whole "button for every window" GUI philosophy is fortunately something that MS is abandoning.
Apple has several things going in their favor:
Customers who want new GUI features
Customers who care about what their GUI looks like
Control over hardware and software
Engineers/GUI designers who think about how to make the GUI better
All these things mean that Apple can get changes to market MUCH faster than MS can dream of. There are advantages to be a small, flexible niche market for computer users with taste.
Originally posted by Placebo
The only XP feature that I'd want (mainly if I was a laptop user) is Hibernate. Hiberate is like sleep, but it saves your RAM to HD, so you can resume your work instantly apon startup.
Hibernate is so NOT instantaneous. Actually, it is incredibly slow. Hibernate saves your RAM to disk, shuts down and then when you open your laptop reads back the RAM from disk at startup. So Hibernate is just like shutting down your computer and restarting it with a disk read equivalent in size to your main memory. It does what virtual PC does in saving the PC state (really useful for VPC, not so useful for your actual machine). It isn't fast. It isn't close to fast. In fact, it is mostly worthless.
Originally posted by Yevgeny
Not quite true. For example, MS has progressively hidden the Windows explorer farther and farther away in each version of Windows. XP finally has a usable Start button which displays a listing of frequently used programs and your most recently used programs. Like program buttons are grouped in the same icon. MS font smoothing technology is actually really good. The differences are subtle but actually make for a large difference in usability. The problem of course is that the updates to the windows GUI are so infrequent that they come very slowly.
I just don't see anything that supports, "totally change how the OS works and force a new user experience on the poor end users". Some people like the new start menu, but you can change it to classic if you don't. Font smoothing doesn't force users to learn anything. It's nice on LCD's. Yeah, I think the windows explorer alias has been moved. Users can still hit "Windows key + e", "my computer", or "internet explorer" and get the same thing. Or just drag the alias back where they want it.
The company that wrote the app (Outlook) is MS themselves. Switching windows versions does affect it because in XP you can group like apps into a single group. I can't change from Outlook because it is the mail app for my work. The whole "button for every window" GUI philosophy is fortunately something that MS is abandoning.
The point I was trying to make is that it's not necessary to litter the taskbar with buttons. The source of the problem is the Outlook development group. XP just hides the problem with the grouping feature.
It isn't fast. It isn't close to fast. In fact, it is mostly worthless.
It's much faster than a regular bootup unless you're running XP. It's nice to have all your apps and windows still running when you resume too. Keeping the memory powered just isn't what I want to do sometimes.
Originally posted by Wireless
I think its great that M$ actuly cares what apple does for once
All I can say to that is Duh.
Originally posted by Yevgeny
Hibernate is so NOT instantaneous. Actually, it is incredibly slow. Hibernate saves your RAM to disk, shuts down and then when you open your laptop reads back the RAM from disk at startup. So Hibernate is just like shutting down your computer and restarting it with a disk read equivalent in size to your main memory. It does what virtual PC does in saving the PC state (really useful for VPC, not so useful for your actual machine). It isn't fast. It isn't close to fast. In fact, it is mostly worthless.
I know. I'm just saying that you don't have to re open files, launch apps, and open windows.
ROFL on a microsoft site!
Just for the record, Microsoft Watch is an anti-Microsoft site. So don't get too excited about finding a comment like that there.
-robo
Originally posted by robo
Just for the record, Microsoft Watch is an anti-Microsoft site. So don't get too excited about finding a comment like that there.
-robo
Really? How do you know that? I couldn't tell(no sarcasem).
Is that the reason OS X is less responsive than XP ?
Sorry if these are dumb questions.
There is one qualification: with themes turned on in XP, and both XP and Mac OS X running on modern (2002+) hardware, they both have roughly the same responsiveness.
There are other reasons XP is quicker too, and they are all at the sacrifice of ease-of-use (for a glaring example, see the startup times in Windows, a result of a Windows installation being basically specific to that computer. God help people trying to upgrade that computer.)
Barto
The cover story on this month's Atomic: Maximum Power Computing is the G5. This is a PC mag, all about Intel, AMD, nVidia, ATi, overclocking, case-mods etc.
The article basically said; "The 970 slaughters Athlons and Pentiums, Mac OS X slaughters Windows, and Apple's motherboards are competitive again."
Be excited. Be very excited.
Barto
Originally posted by xmoger
The point I was trying to make is that it's not necessary to litter the taskbar with buttons. The source of the problem is the Outlook development group. XP just hides the problem with the grouping feature.
Yeah, but I run outlook, four or five instances of Visual studio, multiple instances of Mozilla, four instances of windows explorer, WinAmp, Two instances of Visual source safe, usually four or five instances of notepad, tow instances of VisioPro... I have alot of software in RAM at once. The XP tabs really help in this respect. My Win2k start bar was totally worthless before tabs because it was so cluttered. And yes, I need most of these programs in memory at the same time.
I agree that Outlook had its own problems. The multiple window abomination was standard MS office UI policy for a while. Of course, there are also instances where you legitimately want to have multipleinstances of a program running at the same time.
Originally posted by Barto
There are other reasons XP is quicker too, and they are all at the sacrifice of ease-of-use (for a glaring example, see the startup times in Windows, a result of a Windows installation being basically specific to that computer. God help people trying to upgrade that computer.)
XP's quick startup times are actually a sham. The time is the time to get the GUI up and running, but you can't actually do things with the GUI. For example, if I reboot my Dell, the XP GUI pops up and when I try to load MSDev, XP just stares at me. The program doesn't launch. Sometimes the event to launch the program gets lost and the program never comes up. SOmetimes it just takes a looong time to bring the program up. From a usability perspective, I hate this because I never know when it is "safe" to load programs. So I just let my laptop sit there until I am sure that XP has finished loading the rest of the OS into memory. I really hate this aspect of XP.
Don't get me started on how long it takes for XP to switch users... what the heck is it doing with all that time???
Besides, Graphics in XP will get slower in Longhorn when MS adopts the Quartz Extreme idea of having the video card do OS graphics. Of course, by the time Longhorn is here, CPU's will be running at 6 GHz...