Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard: Microsoft's comeback plan

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
As the previous segment detailed, Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard aren't competing directly; instead, each is part of competitive strategy to either grow the Mac user base at Microsoft's expense, as Apple has been doing, or in Microsoft's case, to stop the hemorrhaging market share losses and reclaim leadership of desktop operating system development.



How big is Windows 7?



Microsoft's goal with Windows 7 is to lift Vista's derailed train and put it back on the tracks. Windows 7 itself is internally called Windows 6.1, essentially Vista Service Pack 2 (Microsoft is also preparing a scaled down Vista SP2 for delivery shortly before Windows 7 is released). Microsoft's executives have made no secret of the fact that Windows 7 is an incremental improvement to Windows Vista, with CEO Steve Ballmer calling it "Windows Vista, a lot better," and saying, "Windows 7 is Windows Vista with cleanup in user interface [and] improvements in performance."



Mike Nash, Microsoft's vice president of Windows product management, called Windows 7 "evolutionary" but also a "significant" improvement upon Vista. The company has oscillated between describing it as either a major or minor release, depending on who the intended audience was. In October, Computerworld wrote that at the release of Vista, the company's roadmap suggested a series of alternating releases between major new operating system developments (like Vista) every four years, and minor updates in between.



To impress downloaders of the Windows 7 public beta, Microsoft has numbered the release 7000.0. It also refers to Windows 7 as a monumental release, and of course, the "best Windows ever." However, it would be hard to imagine Microsoft (or Apple) releasing a new version of its operating system and saying it was not quite as good as the previous one.



Before Microsoft had released any real details on the new operating system, some fan sites initially described Windows 7 as being "completely rewritten from the ground up," thinking that a massive rewrite was exactly what Microsoft needed to get around the problems associated with Vista. However, an actual rewrite would really just create massive new compatibility problems, just as the company discovered during the years of development delays that plagued Longhorn and Vista.



Post-haste refresh



It would also take a very long time, and time isn't on Microsoft's side. In 2007, the company set a goal of getting Windows 7 to market within three years, and now the company is pushing to get it out well within the year. Part of this effort is to remove the market-tainted Vista brand and bury the bad press that the company first tried to ignore, then attempted to deny with the Mojave Experiment, then cover over with feel good advertising in the Seinfeld campaign, and finally to distance itself from in the "I'm not a Mac, just a generic PC" ads.



Microsoft is now pulling out all the stops to get early positive reviews of Windows 7, but it also used the same strategies to push Vista two years ago: mailing free, fast hardware to reviewers; offering a public beta to get early adopter enthusiasts talking about the new product; and full feature leaks from every pore (albeit subject to change). Both then and now, the early beta reviews were enthusiastic and optimistic. In part, that's because the public beta represents Windows 7 Ultimate, not the stripped down Home Basic version users will find on their new PCs from Costco and Walmart.



Borrowing a page from PETA, which attempted to refer to fish as "Sea Kittens" in order to change public perception, the new Windows Vista SP2 (or perhaps "Second Edition"), now called Windows 7, will both distance the new software release from the tarnished Vista name and enable Microsoft to charge a full update fee for it; the company typically delivers its service pack updates for free. Whether the new branding alone will actually help change people's minds still remains to be seen, but it's in stark contrast with Apple's new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which quite obviously builds upon the existing 10.5 Leopard brand.



The Windows 7 strategy



When Windows 7 arrives, it won't carry a long set of new features dreamed up inside Microsoft as Longhorn intended to do, but will instead aspire to meet the demands of users, particularly those who were disappointed by Vista. Microsoft is primarily focusing on making Windows 7 faster and easier to use, according to the company's early marketing.



Previous features associated with Windows 7, including a "componentized" new architecture and the new "MinWin" kernel that Microsoft began talking about back in 2003, are now being pushed off into the distant future along with the relational database WinFS concept from Vista. Instead, Windows 7 will simply repackage today's Vista so that people will buy it without complaining. That means an interface refresh, reduced layers of nagging message popups, and basic performance enhancements.



Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't have to convince users to buy its operating system; that happens automatically when they purchase a new PC. Microsoft only has to keep users from removing Windows 7 and backing down to Windows XP, which typically runs faster on the same hardware due to its lack of a sophisticated graphics compositing engine and the overhead it demands.



Apple debuted its Quartz Graphics system in 2001, making translucency and shadows a differentiating feature for Macs. But when Vista brought similar graphics technology to the PC in 2007, users complained that the system demanded too much RAM and ate up too many processor cycles. In addition to Vista's higher demand for processing power Windows 7 will continue to use Vista's kernel too, which will carry forward the hardware driver issues that irritated many users and sent them back to the familiarity of XP.



Microsoft has to herd more PC users into the latest version of Windows, not only so it can collect upgrade fees, but also so it can actively leverage its monopoly position to prevent competition in media players, browsers, search services, and other new emerging markets. If PC users stick with XP, they're also likely to stick with Google, Firefox, QuickTime, and other competing products rather than moving to Windows Live and the next version of Internet Explorer with Silverlight.



Familiar user interface features in 7



To disassociate Windows 7 from the Vista brand, the new release will sport a subdued, simplified, more conservative appearance. One example of this is the new Taskbar, which sheds layers of complicated and inconsistent cruft accumulated since Windows 95 and now simply presents one icon per running application, similar to the Mac OS X Dock (below). When selected, the Taskbar application icon displays previews of each of the application's open windows, similar to using Mac OS X's Exposé, albeit with much smaller views of the app's open windows. Like the Mac OS X Dock, app icons can now be reordered in whatever position you want, although there's no obvious mechanism for resizing the Taskbar.







The Taskbar handles half of the features of the Mac OS X Dock; actually launching an app or document still requires navigating the Start Menu. To speed things up, Windows 7 now gives users a recent and frequently used "Jump List" for each application (below). Jump Lists also appear when you right click on a running app's icon in the Taskbar, just like the Mac OS X Dock.







Other new features include windows that resize automatically in response to what the system thinks you want to do; expand a window to the top of the screen and it jumps into a maximized view, assuming that's what you had in mind. Microsoft has also changed its "view desktop" feature, which hides all open windows, to one where the windows only become transparent, leaving behind outlines that semi-obscure the desktop being viewed (below). This is depicted as a significant new feature of Windows 7 on Microsoft's preview website.







Microsoft is also borrowing a few other ideas from Leopard, including Web Clippings (Microsoft calls them "Web Slices"), Apple Data Detectors (which Microsoft calls "Accelerators"), Smart Folders (which lack Leopard's smart query functions, but are nonetheless called "Libraries"), and Apple's Bonjour-style simplified local networking and file and device sharing (which Microsoft refers to as "HomeGroup", pictured below).







On page 2 of 2: Live Leverage; Streamlined device management; Out of Touch; and New: Less Vista.



Live Leverage



Reminiscent of iLife, Microsoft has also taken Photo Gallery and Movie Maker out of the Windows package and will now offer the apps as a separate downloadable package, albeit free, called Windows Live Essentials. The package also includes the formerly bundled Windows Mail, Live Messenger, and Writer. This may help shrink Windows 7's disk footprint profile in comparison to Vista for review purposes, but it's not clear why this is listed among Windows 7's core new features in the company's marketing.



Rather than attempting to sell these apps as Apple does with iLife, Microsoft is hoping to direct attention toward its Live offerings, which include the company's email (Hotmail), Messenger IM, and other online services that primarily compete against Google's products. By making Windows 7 users sign up with Live to download their basic apps, Microsoft hopes to better leverage its operating system monopoly to increase its web services audience at Google's expense.



This may set off new controversy in monopoly abuse, just as Google filed complaints earlier when Microsoft attempted to do the same thing by tying Vista's desktop search in to its Live Search service. Lackluster adoption of Vista muted Microsoft's ability to make major inroads into search and online services, but the company remains targeted on "killing" Google, an intent Ballmer famously announced back in 2005.



Streamlined device management



A more significant improvement in Windows 7 is the new "Devices and Printers" control panel (below), which lists all of the installed devices graphically, from printers to scanners and cameras to MP3 players to displays to mice and keyboards, as well as an interface window for handling driver setup called Device Stage.







Products that support Device Stage install options that let you work with that device (below), and also pop up as icons in the Taskbar, similar to how Print Center handles printers in Mac OS X. Microsoft has more to do in this area than Apple because Windows is expected to work with a wider variety of often oddball hardware. Still, it remains to be seen how many devices will arrive with special support for the new feature, and how many manufactures will write support for their existing products. At CES, Ballmer demonstrated Nikon's D90 camera with Windows 7, as it has special support for Device Stage.







In contrast, Apple itself builds all of the video hardware that can be used with Mac OS X, and most other peripherals use autoconfiguring USB or Firewire. Apple also delegates some device configuration for cameras, iPods, and the iPhone to applications such as iTunes and iPhoto, leaving all the technical details on attached devices compiled within the more utilitarian System Profiler, accessible from the "About this Mac" menu. Rather than navigating a special screen to take pictures off your camera, you use your regular photo application or access them directly in the Finder like any other storage device.



Apple's tight integration between its operating system and its hardware means there's often less to configure. It also makes it possible for Apple to quickly roll out new features that have both hardware and software components. With Vista, Microsoft attempted to release a specification for adding a secondary LED panel to the back of laptops to enable users to access some information while the system was asleep, to mitigate the long resume from sleep times associated with Vista. However, OEMs didn't rush to support the new idea, dubbed SideShow, and a lack of interest among consumers ended up scuttling the concept.



Out of Touch



Microsoft jumped on the multitouch bandwagon as the iPhone launched in 2007, and made some bold predictions about how it would deliver multitouch user interfaces on mobile phones and consumer PCs by 2010. After euphoria about the Surface kiosk table demo wore off, it became obvious that nobody would really want to trade their mouse or trackpad for the opportunity to keep an outstretched, fatigued, and oily hand on their screen.



Even so, Microsoft notes on its Windows 7 website that "if you've got a touch-screen monitor, you can just touch your computer screen for a more direct and natural way to work," adding, "large touch-sensitive areas on the Start menu and the taskbar make it easy to use."



Windows 7 now positions touch features as part of Media Center (depicted below, from Microsoft's Windows 7 website), noting that you can use touch to record your TV shows, if you also have a touch sensitive television screen or a huge touchscreen monitor that you use to watch TV or as your DVR programing station. On its website, Microsoft notes that "the ability to watch and record live TV or navigation through the use of 'touch,' may require advanced or additional hardware."







New: Less Vista



Other enhancements Microsoft is touting in Windows 7 sound similar to Vista's marketing, including faster startup, shutdown, and resume from sleep speeds. But the company is also focusing attention on new performance and usability improvements over Vista, essentially marketing Windows 7's departures from Vista's originally touted features as a feature in itself. There's much less attention on gloss and a new effort in place to present fewer system interruptions due to warning messages like those associated with User Account Control.



Users will be able to configure a threshold for system warning and notification popups, and those messages will be consolidated within the new Action Center, rather than scattered around in "ten Windows features" that previously presented system alerts of some sort. In Vista, for example, anti-virus and malware messages and warnings might appear in Security Center or in Windows Defender, which Microsoft had acquired separately. Now they are all listed in Action Center's central location (below).







Actual new consumer-facing features in Windows 7 are slight enough for Microsoft to refer to "screen dimming" as significant new feature related to battery life. The Windows 7 website notes, "Bright idea: With a display that dims automatically, you get longer battery life" (below). This feature has been in Windows for at least fifteen years, so it appears the company is rather desperately scraping the barrel for features it can promote in its new operating system release.







Apple's approach to developing and marketing Snow Leopard couldn't be more different. Last year, the company introduced the new operating system by suggesting it would have no new features at all apart from new support for Microsoft's Exchange Server, following the push messaging support Apple had integrated into its iPhone 2.0 software. However, the company later filled in details that indicated that Snow Leopard was more than just a minor update with some performance enhancements and push messaging. The next segment will look at major features Apple is sneaking into Snow Leopard, along with other big differences in strategy between the two companies and their upcoming operating system releases.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 124
    Quote:

    Microsoft's executives have made no secret of the fact that Windows 7 is an incremental improvement to Windows Vista, with CEO Steve Ballmer calling it "Windows Vista, a lot better," and saying, "Windows 7 is Windows Vista with cleanup in user interface [and] improvements in performance."



    Why don't they just fix Vista?



    That'd make the most sense, but then it wouldn't get them $$$$$$$.
  • Reply 2 of 124
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dontlookleft View Post


    Why don't they just fix Vista?



    That's what they are doing...
  • Reply 3 of 124
    Interesting post. Made for a good reading. Looking forward to the next one!
  • Reply 4 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by paxman View Post


    That's what they are doing...



    But this way, they can charge users yet another upgrade fee for making the software work like it should have worked the first time. Evil, despicable, and BRILLIANT!
  • Reply 5 of 124
    erunnoerunno Posts: 225member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dontlookleft View Post


    Why don't they just fix Vista?



    That'd make the most sense, but then it wouldn't get them $$$$$$$.



    Warranted or not, Vista's name has been tarnished by ongoing bad press and instead trying to fix the broken image it is far easier to associate positive publicity to a new product. And so far Microsoft's strategy seems to work out, the Windows 7 beta is getting good reviews in print media as well as in the internet and blogosphere although it is still in said beta state. If Microsoft fixes the remaining bugs before release, and there is little indication that they won't, I assume that 7 will be a huge success.
  • Reply 6 of 124
    Microsoft is pathetic. Announcing features that were already in there, charging users... And the worse is that a lot of the people I know want to buy Windows 7 but would never ever buy Vista. Microsoft is fooling its consumer base...



    The reason I get to not to switch to Apple is price, they rather buy a $999 computer every year and spend some $100's in support then buying a $1299 Mac and keeping for two.
  • Reply 7 of 124
    You could be a little less bias in this article. Using your logic Snow Leopard should be called Leopard SP1.
  • Reply 8 of 124
    If they charge for this I sure will not be buying it. I bought Vista "Ultimate", I kick myself for it. They need to stop making the 5 different versions. I remember when Jobs mocked them for it. From the pictures I am not impressed with the interface.



    If they want a wide spread adoption of 7, they really need to know to lower the price and make it something that really is fresh and new, not bragging that a dimming screen feature is new!!!
  • Reply 9 of 124
    WTF are you talking about? Do you even have a clue? A new computer every year for 999? Just stop it.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eduararipe View Post


    Microsoft is pathetic. Announcing features that were already in there, charging users... And the worse is that a lot of the people I know want to buy Windows 7 but would never ever buy Vista. Microsoft is fooling its consumer base...



    The reason I get to not to switch to Apple is price, they rather buy a $999 computer every year and spend some $100's in support then buying a $1299 Mac and keeping for two.



  • Reply 10 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight View Post


    WTF are you talking about? Do you even have a clue? A new computer every year for 999? Just stop it.



    Ok, maybe not 999... But my point is an old PC is slower and needs more support than an as old Mac. Therefore doesn't last as long.
  • Reply 11 of 124
    I passed the article on to my son. After he read it, all he said was, "Well dad, the only time a 7 is better than a 10 is in golf."
  • Reply 12 of 124
    The number of "borrowed" features from OS X is staggering. It's a joke. Surely Apple can find at least one patent to sue with.
  • Reply 13 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Abster2core View Post


    I passed the article on to my son. After he read it, all he said was, "Well dad, the only time a 7 is better than a 10 is in golf."





  • Reply 14 of 124
    phizzphizz Posts: 142member
    Interesting article. Windows 7 does actually look quite good. Yes, it is basically "Vista fixed", but isn't that what everyone has been wanting? They are just improving what they already have and "borrowing" ideas from others. If they tried to innovate and do something brand new, I think they know from experience that they would fail miserably. For this reason, they don't get much respect from people with technical knowledge, which is why so many of us don't use Windows, but I think it is the optimal move for them to make for business reasons alone.



    It will be interesting to see how W7 vs OS X 10.6 pans out. It could actually backfire at Apple if W7 gets glowing reviews about its "new" features and good performance, while OS X 10.6 is presented as "nothing new".



    Personally, I'm not sure Apple should have publicly announced that the next version of OS X would have no new user features. They should have just called it OS X 10.6 Cougar and made "Grand Central" (and the other new elements) out to be the amazing new features that everyone needs. You know they could have.
  • Reply 15 of 124
    lafelafe Posts: 252member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jdawg View Post


    You could be a little less bias in this article. Using your logic Snow Leopard should be called Leopard SP1.



    Welcome to AI, jdawg. I actually like the tongue-in-cheek tone of Prince's articles.

    They tend to be very informative, educational, somewhat sassy, a bit biased without

    being insane, well-researched, peppered with well-crafted phrases that surprise

    and delight . . .



    He must have had some marketing experience before coming to AI, and he uses

    it in a strange anti-marketing way when it comes to some products. I enjoy it!



    It's a rumor site after all -- not the BBC. He writes for his audience.



    Keep up the good work, Prince!
  • Reply 16 of 124
    I just bought a netbook with XP on it and for PCs I honestly couldn't be happier with XP. I will never be paying to "upgrade" to Windows 7.
  • Reply 17 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Phizz View Post


    ... It will be interesting to see how W7 vs OS X 10.6 pans out. It could actually backfire at Apple if W7 gets glowing reviews about its "new" features and good performance, while OS X 10.6 is presented as "nothing new"...



    I've been worried about this also.



    Apple usually pulls the rabbit out of the hat at the last minute, so it's not a *big* worry, but it sure looks like (on the surface at least), Apple is making some marketing mistakes here. People are generally idiots, so the perception of the product is at least as important as the actual product, perhaps more so.



    For instance to the general public "multi-touch" is a big deal, even if techies are aware that adding it to a regular desktop set-up is less than ideal. Sales of HP's touchsmart computers is fairly brisk despite their being hard to use and basically a solution to a problem that doesn't even exist. Folks seem to buy them just because they are the latest futuristic touch-screen device, not because they have any actual use for those features. For Apple to come out with Snow Leopard (which as far as we know does not support touch-screen technology or include it as a "feature"), at the same time as Windows 7 will be having a big marketing blitz about it's touchy goodness feels like a mistake to me.



    Likewise, for all of us techies to laugh at Windows 7s new UI which is obviously a crude copy of OS-X is fine, but it won't have any bearing on the perception of Windows 7 among the general public nor will it affect sales of the product. The end user will just see the "all new" Windows 7 with touch screen support and a "fixed" more Apple-like interface.



    The percentage of people "switching" to Macs has already dropped off recently, with Windows 7 it will likely come to a halt. As they say, "once you go Mac, you never go back" so it's likely Apple will keep the recent market share gains, but all indications are that the growth will shrink or stop completely with Windows 7, irrespective of it's craptastic design.
  • Reply 18 of 124
    Why didn't they just go and call it Windows Mojave anyway?
  • Reply 19 of 124
    Quote:

    Other new features include windows that resize automatically in response to what the system thinks you want to do; expand a window to the top of the screen and it jumps into a maximized view, assuming that's what you had in mind.



    Oh dear.... I can see that backfiring.
  • Reply 20 of 124
    I know this wasn't the main focus of the article, but...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    After euphoria about the Surface kiosk table demo wore off, it became obvious that nobody would really want to trade their mouse or trackpad for the opportunity to keep an outstretched, fatigued, and oily hand on their screen.



    The solution to outstretched, fatigued arms seems so simple to me. Just take your flat panel LCD monitor and lay it down flat on your desk. much like the Neanderthals used to put quill to parchment all the way back in the 20th century. This is one thing Surface did right, even if the overall product was too expensive and inelegant. The solution to oily fingers is the same as for the iPhone/iPod touch.



    I don't think keyboards are in any danger of being replaced, but touch screens aren't as bad as some people make them out to be.
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