Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard
THE RIVALRY between Apple and Microsoft has been good for computer users. Each has borrowed ideas from the other to the benefit of both, and inevitably there has been some convergence in the way their operating systems function.
Microsoft fell behind with the release of Vista early in 2007. Apple had made a big advance with Mac OS X, offering a consumer-friendly graphical interface on a battle-hardened Unix core. And now it was running on Macs built with the same Intel processors, chipsets, graphics cards and I/O devices and ports as the x86 PC, eroding some of the price and compatibility advantages of Windows machines. Vista improved with time but Mac fans still had a lot to crow about.
New versions of both operating systems, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), have been released in the past few weeks. So how do they stack up against each other? I've picked out a few of the highlights that differentiate the two operating systems for me.
Snow Leopard wins hands down on price. The upgrade costs just £25, compared with between £80 and £200 off the shelf for Windows 7. True, Windows 7 is a more substantial upgrade but users can argue that they are paying the Vole to correct Vista's faults.
My impression, after using both side by side for some time, is that Windows 7 easily holds its own with Snow Leopard on usability - something Apple has always claimed as its strong suit. The Windows 7 task bar has borrowed features from Apple but for me it works better than Snow Leopard's Dock. This is partly a matter of habit and taste.
A major function of Apple's Dock is to launch favourite applications. I tend to do this from desktop icons, which works well with the Windows 7 taskbar because it is designed primarily for managing rather than launching tasks. Its snap-up preview boxes are excellent for keeping track of multiple Windows, and less cumbersome than Apple's Expose system. You can, of course, create desktop launch icons under Snow Leopard but they will duplicate rather than complement Dock functionality.
One very useful Windows 7 feature that Snow Leopard might take on board is that if you right-click a taskbar icon you get a list of files recently used by the related application.
Snow Leopard deals more gracefully with the safe ejection of plug-in storage, an operation that Windows 7 still relegates to a barely visible taskbar item - though it has abandoned Vista's annoying habit of vetoing an eject simply because a listings box is open.
In both operating systems I find myself using the search boxes far more often to access applications and files, breaking an old habit of ploughing through file or program listings.
One niggle with Snow Leopard is that given a choice of two known WiFi access points it uses the first on its profile list. You can change the default but Windows 7 avoids the need by picking the one with the strongest signal.
Snow Leopard feels more secure than Windows 7 in the way that you feel less threatened in a relatively safe area of town - Windows, still running on nine out of ten consumers' computers globally, clearly gets attacked more often. Yet some analysts rate Mac OS as less secure than Windows 7 and it is certainly not invulnerable, especially because its users tend to be less on their guard.
Both platforms therefore need anti-malware software, which is now available free from Microsoft in the form of Security Essentials. This has yet to prove itself, but if effective it amounts to a points win to Windows 7.
Security measures have bought the two platforms closer together in how they operate. The days of roaming Windows PCs at will are over. A Windows 7 machine feels as locked down as a Mac, with access to system files strictly policed - and far less obtrusively than under Vista.
In one respect the platforms have swapped structure. The Mac interface was born graphical, whereas Windows began as a bolt-on front-end for the DOS command-line operating system. You could always drop down into DOS for tasks such as running batch files.
Now it is Snow Leopard, or rather its Unix underpinning, that has a comprehensive command interface, though relatively few Mac users will even be aware of the fact, while the command-line box in Windows 7 has the feel of a bolt-on.
The adoption of Unix was a clever move by Apple, making Macs more credible for enterprise use. But in other respects the company seems cussedly set on cutting itself off from that market.
Snow Leopard, unlike its predecessor, will read files on Windows NTFS disks but it will not, out of the box, write to them. The feature was apparently disabled shortly before the release of Snow Leopard, a baffling decision that is hardly going to increase its chances of corporate adoption.
The official reason is given implausibly as "security", but it is a poor class of security that stops people from doing their work. A high proportion of Mac users have to work in a Windows environment and many will also own Windows machines or at least need to share data with others who do. Oddly, Snow Leopard will write to a networked NTFS drive, presumably because it is the file server that soils its hands with the Windows disk.
Could it be that Apple got cold feet about encouraging people to run the two operating systems side by side? In some ways Windows 7 is patently better - it can use virtually any peripheral going and it will run on any modern make of PC. Many problems under Windows are caused by third-party drivers, so this could be at the cost of some reliability. But Microsoft now takes great care to validate drivers and the greater choice in hardware makes for lower machine prices. Businesses in particular do not like single-source products - a major drawback of Macs, which are of course exclusive to Apple. The same can be said about Microsoft software, however.
And Mac OS X is not infallible. I got delayed for hours, preparing to load Snow Leopard, because the earlier version hung trying to read one of its own disks to allow me to change a forgotten password. There was no error message or explanation given.
The fact of the matter is that for workaday use there is little to choose between the two operating systems. You may quibble that one is fractionally faster at this or that operation, but for most users the performance differences would be trivial.
Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are much more than operating systems. Each is a marketplace and comes with a bundle of software and services. The Mac's software suite, including Iphoto and Itunes, is more consumer focused than Microsoft's and more tightly coupled to the Apple selling machine.
Microsoft, with its legacy of antitrust cases, is more circumspect about using Windows 7 as a marketplace. You do, however, have to sign up to its free Windows Live service to get some of the bundled software, which includes Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and the blogging applet Writer. Live has other useful features that, for the moment at least, are free. These include 25GB of online storage, and the ability to synchronise files across machines. In general Windows comes with far more freebies.
None of this will influence the kind of person who would not be seen dead with a PC. Apple's hardware designs may tempt Windows users to swap platforms but there is no compelling reason to do so because of the operating system. This is no reflection on Snow Leopard. It means computing is blessed with two user-friendly, mature, and very good consumer mass market desktop operating systems. And yes, we can thank Apple for that. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I see on Windows 7 more features "inspired" by KDE 4 of the Unix/Linux system than MacOSX Leopard.
The reason Leopard will not write directly to the NTFS disk is because of potential corruption issues with the *nix NTFS driver. Writing to an NTFS disk over a network does not involve the use of the *nix NTFS driver on the Leopard, so it is much safer.
Interesting article!
Just a quick note, I'm under the impression that no version of OSX yet will write to NTFS formatted media. Certainly this G4 PowerBook running Panther, and the Leopard Mac Pro in our media lab can't.
Unless, you're suggesting that the option was in place in earlier Snow Leopard builds then removed at RTM?
When Apple releases a version of its OS that will run on any hardware (meaning a PC I've built) I would actually buy a copy. Until then, they'll always be just a bit player on the world OS stage...
From where i am sitting windows 7 is the same as vista with the rubbish taken out. Leopard should do the same.
There is a reason to use OSX over W7. The DRM system employed in W7 is not something I in good conciousness as a media professional can risk running my media through. It gives Microsoft access to my media yet they will not sign a Non Disclosure Agreement with me nor can they guarantee that third parties use their system to access my data. The system is also flawed, on one test Windows Media Player told me I did not have the rights to play a file. A file I had just created, that I own the copyright for.
Vista and W7 is utterly useless for the media professional.
Apple's moving OS X to a BSD based platform wasn't just clever, it was brilliant. They suddenly appropriated a well-established, stable platform's credibility and made it "pretty" with their eye candy.
Windows 7, for all its flash, is still just Windows NT with features added to it. And NT is just extended OS/2.
Great Article! Nicely balanced showing the pros and cons of both.
A real pleasure to read.
For once there is a decent article on the Inq that doesn't have silly sarcasm to make a reader lose interest. I thought it was good across the board with valid points considering a lot of it was based on subjective opinion.
If only every post on the Inq was like this then the reputation of this website would be much different.
On a side note... Don't pay any attention to the poster by the name of 'B'.
No version of Windows on its own will share any of its media with MS unless you are explicitly using some kind of service for it. Then it becomes like any other service. You are willingly putting your stuff in their hands. I assure you, no one is going to take any of my media.
Also, any experienced Windows user would know not to use Windows Media Player. Either that or you did not properly set your permissions.
In either case, your argument is quite vague.
You haven't needed to "Safely Remove" USB devices like thumb drives since windows XP. MS changed the caching so now when the light stops flashing on the drive its OK to pull it out. I do it multiple times a day and never had a file corruption.
OSX and the boxes it runs on is way to sterile for me. I'm a hands on guy who like to fiddle with an operating system and use the latest and greatest in hardware and accessories. That's what Windows 7 is to me. It's an OS that gives me more than just a tool to work with.
"A Chevy Malibu has better gas mileage a 'comparable Toyota Camry". Somebody has to explain to me the word "comparable." To compare Windows 7 with Apples' OSX is like comparing apples with bear and noticing that both are fruits and the bear has a bigger surface area at the same weight of an apple. That's how much I think of this comparison. There is more to an OS than this and as mentioned other people have different objectives with their feel and facts. The actual issue is merely perception. The Apple ad on TV gets it pretty much right. Microsoft has often released software not ready for prime time and then asked us to trust them with their innovations and service packs and user friendliness for a good price. Vista was not ready but released in midst of a internal Microsoft power struggle. The company seems to focus more onto their internal struggles then creating innovative useful software. And why should Microsoft really care since they own 80% of the market. That's how they treat us now. Squeeze out as much money as you can with nothing that is attractive or new or just a huge gain in performance. I have fought so hard to convince customers from early on to switch to Microsoft products. Now Microsoft does not need to honor their promises any more. However the giant goes the path of all powerful entities to prepare for the enormous implosion. Microsoft is not a software company anymore, it is a news and media organization.
I wonder why the whole wide world uses Windows if it is such a bad product Fruit and Penguin fanbois make it out to be.
There is no comparison here. It is like comparing a cheap Ford to a far superior BMW.
Oh noes Windows coppied OSX, Microsoft stole ideas from Linux... Oh noes! You fat imbeciles need to realise copying/stealing is an every day occurrence. The true engine of innovation is emulation. This is exactly why Windows dominates the OS market, they don't just emulate, they emulate to such an extent that it becomes superior!
Munch on your rotting Fruit and stinking Penguins you fools, I am happy with Windows 7 all the way.
Everybody talks about the upgrade price of snow leopard, but if you cannot upgrade you pay $169.00 not much less than buying Win 7 which is the better OS.
Underneath the prettified surface, it's still the same mess.
Ever try to run scheduled backups? They've "fixed" the file backup (as in restored it to XP capapbilities), but they still can't use it to restore the system (because you'd need all kinds of funny rights to access all those obscure files). Too bad, since the image backup isn't incremental and can take days to run over ethernet - every time.
You still need to store your data twice so you can
1) restore individual files and
2) restore the system
And occassionally it'll tell me some partition is corrupted and won't be backed up - after it's sent all the data to the server. Nice. I have to run chkdsk /r to fix that - takes about 3 hours. YAY ME.
Although Time Machine is a little harder to set up for use with a linux server, it DOES work flawlessly after that.
For that reason I use the Mac for the serious work. It works and I'll lose at most one hour of work if things go wrong.
Remember how I said Windows is still a mess underneath? In fact, it's such a big mess that - even in 2009 - Microsoft can't figure out how to do upgrades of their own operating system.
Firstly, one can only upgrade a Vista installation to a corresponding version of 7. You can't upgrade from Home to Ultimate and vise-versa.
Secondly, from my experience, it still fails most of the time and needs ridiculous amounts of storage.
Jason, windows NT is not OS/2 with bits ADDED it is in fact OS/2 with almost everything REMOVED.
All the desktops at the moment are passive and nothing like the active OS/2 desktop.
Many Windows vs Apple reviewers overlook how necessary the Mac and it's software applications have always been to the artistic community. If you are a professional musician, photographer, or artist; the Mac wins hands down.
Alvin
Hey Balance!
IS the Inq getting its act together?
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.
Picasso
@Alvin:
If you are a professional musician, photographer, or artist; the Mac wins hands down.
Unfortunately this is not always the case anymore. There's no 4-point source-destination music editing software for the mac equivalent to Pyramix or Sequoia (which are both PC-only). This kind of software is essential for editing classical music. I know there used to be "Sonic Solutions" and now there's their soundBlade, but it's quite pale in comparison with the above.
As for being a photographer, all photo-editing and raw-development software exists has existed for both platforms for many years. I'd also risk the statement that Photoshop on PC has a much larger ecosystem of plugins.
Same for DTP.
So unless you meant "wins hands down" as "is necessary to be shown off by a properly trendy artist", than you're wrong.
I have to desagree with the comment about expose. It is MUCH easier and practical than the little thumbs on the taskbar. I enables full visualization of ALL apps at the same time. It is WAY faster than thumbs. I use Ubuntu with compiz and its own expose on the right-bottom of the screen. There's no comparing, compiz also features thumbs, but you can choose the size, windows won't let you choose even that. Anyways. Windows holds majority for historic reasons, as well as it's marketing. It's got nothing to do with the system itself. Compatibility shifts with share. Linux is quite compatible with everything and macs don't need to be. Games are shifting too. People are slow to change, that's all. The name 'windows' has a lot of strength, but it is due to society's difficulty in changing from one thing to another very different (even if in name only).
If you have a look at this comment thread, note the higher quality of commenter, apart from a couple of trolls. Now, imagine if Farrell had written the original article. We would have another dull as ditchwater flame war.
Better quality articles make for more interesting reading and comments. Alas, it probably doesn't get the same pageviews.
Macs do not write to NTFS, but:
Macs can read/write FAT32, read NTFS, read/write to *NIX file systems and read/write HFS/HFS+(Mac) file systems, with the ability to scale to other systems if developers wish to do so.
Windows can read/write FAT32/NTFS.
Can't read/write *NIX.
Can't read/write HFS/HFS+
Ususally requiring third party tools to just see the filesystem.
So if i were in a corporate environment ? would i want a system that only supports a properietary format ? or would i want the system with the widest(albiet incomplete) compatibility of filesystems.
GILGAMESH,
Unfortunately for you longhorn fanbois, us 'fruit fanboys' have been using MacOSX since 2001. So while you were prancing along with antiquated technology WindowsME/2000/XP...we were already trailblazing. Welcome to experiencing something that vaguely resembles(superficially) a 10 year old Mac.
Your attitude towards piracy/theft of intellectual property is appauling, although not surprising since you are patronizing the ones doing the copying.
Funny then, that your cow company, despite all it's financial success is incapable of any original thought/idea whatsoever, whether it's menus, buttons, drag-n-drop, cut-n-paste, a Dock, transparent menus, etc,etc... and above all, is constantly 5-10 years behind the Mac..
1984: MacOS 1.0 vs DOS
1991: MacOS 7.0 vs Win3.1
2001: MacOSX 10.1 vs WindowsXP
2007: MacOSX Leopard(10.5) vs WindowsVista
Congradulations for getting upto speed with what the Mac *looked like*(cause underneath it's the same Windows since the early 90s) 10 years ago.
Thanks, but no thanks, i dont pay my hard earned $$$ for low-quality-outdated-derivative rip-offs of 7-year-old-repackaged Apple ideas. I'll stick to the cutting edge and support those who actually make an atempt to innovate.
As opposed to a company whose business mode is, embrace(copy)-enhance(+1)-extingish(the competition).
Cheers
In times of economical crisis there is no need (seriously) to spend hard earned money paying royalties to big names in the software industry. Paying for Win7 is as foolish as it was paying for Vista, I know neither of us can avoid to be forced to pay an original license for this crapware when trying to get a new rig, but installing Debian or Fedora in top of it is a wise decision. I respect all the work that Apple has done with ther BSD-derivative OS, but is the same that Canonical has done for Linux with their Ubuntu distribution. If you want to try a Windows-Mac-like Linux (remember, it's free, Debian derived and rock solid stable) I recommend you to try Ubuntu (Fedora if you like more experimental software and cutting-edge technologies).
Some people want to be spoon fed, others just like to write. Personally, had NO choice, Had to write until Tomorrow, when get Terminated by Lethal Injection.
Yet In meantime, We can Look at How intel did some simple making cpu video & link pages here:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/chipmaking/index.htm
Next. to Upgrade Old apple system is ~(A.proxi.Ultee')$30. Yet thers plenty of upgrades, like charging for Service pack. new O/S X Snow Lepord is $129. So NOT Much Difference. Apple Has Less Problems, As Only Apple equipment Must be compatible. while Microsoft has World of Pain & Malvoently made hardware to figure Out. Good Luck. Unfortuneatly EarPlugs to Stop Listening/Hearing Whining Teen didn't help, BackFires' InDeed!.
drashek
This is yet another biased toward Windows article cloaked in objective pretense. The single greatest feature on the Mac for me is Spaces. I can have up to 16 virtual desktops where I have a group of related applications and I can jump from one virtual desktop to another with ease. This is taken from Linux's choice of 4. No review mentions Spaces on the Mac as compared to what on Windows 7?
Exposé is cumbersome? Tapping a single key to see every open window where you can then click on one to make it foremost is cumbersome? Please explain that.
I'm sure that Windows 7 is a wonderful boon to Windows people who refuse to look at other options. I've done the Windows thing, I've done the Linux thing. I've done them for a couple years exclusively each. There is nothing that compares with the Mac experience.
Apple owns the $1,000+ USD market for a reason. Those that want a superior computing experience buy a Mac. Those who want an under $1,000 deck of cards buy a PC. For this reason it doesn't matter which OS edges out the other, Mac users have a superior experience overall because they have drastically superior hardware overall. Most people who spend over a grand for a computer buy a Mac. And like I they don't bog down their hardware with anti-virus software.
I'm curious if Windows 7 slows down as much over time as every other windows system(I have Vista) They're great in the beginning but two years later they stink!
My 2 year old Mac is as fast as the day I bought it!
I think Win7 is a nice upgrade to Vista. The familiarity, the nice graphics, the software, and the ability to speck my own hardware make me all warm and fuzzy. Not to mention that there is great software on windows that just can not be easily replaced on the Mac.
With that being said; Once I bought a MacTel (The first Mac I've owned since an Apple II), I have realized that Windows is like an old copy of Linux. It's pretty, but just a big play thing. I had not realized the self inflicted pain, and aggravation, that I had suffered all these years by using a PC. Now when I need work done I can hit the power button and in incomprehensibly less time with less stress I complete my assignments. It truly was amazing to me to save literally hours every week doing the same tasks using similar hardware. This even gets better the longer I use the Mac, where the very machine I'm typing this comment now has crashed three times today already.
In short Win7 is nice, and I can not replace it for some of my needs, but when I must rely on a computer to actually get the things I need done. The Mac is my only choice.
"Mac users have a superior experience overall because they have drastically superior hardware overall"
ROFL can't stop laughing
You mean a 3GHz Core 2 Duo + HD 4670 is "drastically superior" to a 4+ GHz Nehalem + HD 5870? No thanks.
Oh, and we're talking about the same price here.
Ok. This was a decent piece That the writer tried and succeeded in keeping fair and unbiased.
That being said. I am constantly amazed at the number of self righteous, too full of themselves Monday morning "experts" who STILL don't get it.
Really. Some of you ppl couldn't spot a joke or tongue-in-cheek news piece if it sat in your lap and called you Mama.
It's SUPPOSED to be sarcastic. It's SUPPOSED to be biased. It's SUPPOSED to be tongue-in-cheek. That has been the whole point of The Inq all along. Didn't the name "The Inquirer" give you a clue?? If you want CNN or BBC, go to their sites and let the rest of the world that DOES have a sense of humor enjoy the best damn news site on the internet.
Bah! I think some of you have your tin foil hats on too tight.
PS To the guy who compared NTG/XP/Vista/7 to OS/2. Dude, you couldn't tell an OS Kernel from a corn kernel.
An article which tries to be balanced yet still attracts all the same partisan bullshit in the comments.
People who pick fights about computer operating systems are pathetic virgin nerds. And likely fatties.
All this "my operating system is better than yours" is PUERILE. You guys sound like naughty 7 year olds. Its totally childish. GROW UP!!!
Not just that, the argument is totally SELFISH. It's PATHETIC. Now go to bed and play with yourselves. I have more important things to do that waste time arguing over which OS or hardware is better. Why don't you think of other people for a change instead of your own prejudiced and polarised selfishness.
Human Wasters.
@HawkA
You might be the stupidest person I have ever seen on the Inq!
Apple didn't invent the GUI and that's just the start - you are obviously not a computer professional nor have a decent working knowledge of computers or their history.
You have actually made me a bit angry by your quoting things you simply do not understand/have no actual basis for and have made up.
Only the image of Steve Jobs publicly thanking Bill Gates for bailing out Apple has calmed me down.
"I'm sure that Windows 7 is a wonderful boon to Windows people who refuse to look at other options. I've done the Windows thing, I've done the Linux thing. I've done them for a couple years exclusively each. There is nothing that compares with the Mac experience."
fully agree, after being hackint0shing for some time i found myself using win less and less (partly because i don't play games as often as i used to, partly because mac just does everything i need and does it nicely) i bought a mbpro and that's it. not looking back.
with this "In general Windows comes with far more freebies."
that's not true. on mac out of the box you can view psd,pdf,doc,xls and all other files + you've got iLife package which comes preinstalled with every mac which gives you nice set of apps for music/video/photo/web editing. You've got out of the box exchange support in the mail app. you've got perl php preinstalled for you to use. you've got everything you need for good start and later you can decide if you need more advanced apps for photo/music/video editing. i bought only two sw packages for mac - iWork (fuck the office, expensive and iwork handles everything) and vmware (i'm a coder and need to test my code on win) and i paid for these two together £100, that's all.
Since XP, the Windows UI has been tolerable and I managed to get by with a combination of XP and virtualized (or dual boot) linux for many years.
What pushed me to OS X was the unreliability and slowness of Vista. I have lots of machines with Windows on them. Some simply never worked properly as shipped. Doing a clean install of Vista helped, but there were still problems. Moreover, all of my Vista machines got slower over time at an alarming rate.
Now I've installed W7 on a fairly vanilla Dell box. It mostly sits in my office and does nothing (because I use my MacBook Pro for most tasks), but it still gets BSODs regularly. This is amazing: A clean install of W7 with vanilla hardware gets BSODs just idling! The same box previously ran Vista increasingly sluggishly but, at least, stably.
I don't like paying 2-3X more for my hardware, but Macs are looking better and better.
You are obviously a delusional dimwit dwelling behind dark fruity doors.
I made no remarks about intellectual property nor indeed did I condone piracy. Do you understand what "to emulate" or "to copy" means or entails? Please go educate yourself about this first before you decide to have a jab at me.
You spuriously detail how great Mac is because it can read x, y and z file formats. What is so great about them that makes it far superior to systems such as NTFS, EXT4 etc? Are industries reliant upon Macs? Last I checked companies are inclined to use Windows or a certain Penguin flavour moreso than resorting to Fruity trash.
Fruity Mac costs more for the same sort of hardware but is catered towards self professed artists, musicians and most likely intellectuals such as yourself.
I will stick to my BMW, you can enjoy driving your Ford, surely the Ford business model is the one that is emulated worldwide now, yet Ford is pale in comparison to a BMW.
Of course you Fruity people probably worship Steve Jobs as a deity even though his company wouldn't be around till this date had it not been for Microsoft.
In fact I would go so far as to say that you probably think that the IPHONE is a product that is so unique and innovative that every other product in the market tries to emulate it. Delusioned indeed.
I'd keep that holier-than-thou opinion to yourself if I were you. And while you're at it, Google something called RiscOS. It's the OS that Apple pinched most of their 'innovative' ideas from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS#RISC_OS_3
The recycling of ideas is nothing new, and Apple are as guilty as anyone else.
'Oddly, Snow Leopard will write to a networked NTFS drive, presumably because it is the file server that soils its hands with the Windows disk.'
Oh wow, a real connoisseur...
Anyway, for you fanbois out there:
I manage a small network with 50+ Windows-PC (old Hardware, Windows XP, latest patches), and 10+ Macs (dual G5s, Tiger, latest patches). Now keep in mind that the Mac's price was closely 8x the price of the PCs (not making it up). Absolutely fantastic case, Sata connectors a bit of a mess, though.
In the last few years, we had to reinstall 5 (out of 10) of the Macs because they wouldn't boot anymore. Each time, the hard-disk was not defective and could be reused. Still we had to reinstall the whole OS, all updates and some applications. At least we could re-import most of the files and settings - that is a real plus. During the same time, we had to reinstall 3 (out of 50) PCs, each time the hard-disk was really defective and had to be replaced.
Obviously we manage our PCs through AD-policies, which I wouldn't know how to implement with OS X.
So altogether, even though I think OS X (whatever flavor) is a really nice OS, it is definitely not superior to XP, more the contrary.
Now if you have the same kind of setup and other experiences, feel free to flame me. If you're just wetting your pants because someone dared to criticize products from the Great Leader... flame me anyway, what do I care.
I think it's really funny how all the aspects of Windows 7 that you love in this article are the same as the ones I hate. I hate that the interface has borrowed more from Mac/Linux. If I wanted a Mac/Linux like interface, I would run Mac/Linux.
I hate the new Windows 7 taskbar. It's very chunky, kinda like the XP styled taskbar. I have never liked the grouping. It takes too much time to look through the list for the instance of the application you are looking for.
Pinning the applications to the taskbar is horrible as it only allows you to launch 1 instance from the taskbar. I much prefer the Quick Links taskbar instead.
I usually have 30 - 80 windows open simultaneously and find it much easier to navigate when the tasks aren't grouped.
I hate the way the preview boxes show you the previes of all instances of an application. I'm only interested in the one I'm hovering over.
I like that when you right-click on a taskbar item, it doesn't show things you can't do, but I hate that it shows the recently opened files.
The main benefit of 7 over Vista is that it is a bit quicker, but I found it took me a lot longer to set it up to my liking than Vista did.
7 also tries to do a bit too much thinking for you.
Another bugbear of 7 for me is that it's far more difficult to find options in the control panel and it's frustrating that some of the screens don't follow basic IUI (intuitive user interface) principles.
When I look at 7, I see Microsoft trying to placate the Linux fanbois and Mac worshipers. This is probably because one of the main reasons Vista failed was Linux fanbois writing poor reviews about an operating system they never planned on using and trying to run it on hardware that could only run a basic OS.
"to Upgrade Old apple system is ~(A.proxi.Ultee')$30. Yet thers plenty of upgrades, like charging for Service pack. new O/S X Snow Lepord is $129." - drashek
Not being a fanboi, but you are factually incorrect.
Snow Leopard is simply $29, there is no "new" version for $129.
The 'upgrade' works just as well on computers with no OS on them as it does with old Leopard installs, having Leopard installed is not a requirement; if you want to upgrade Tiger or earlier you simply need a empty drive, although I will admit that I don't know what happens if you try and 'upgrade' an older OS X with Snow Leopard.
If you want to talk about cost, the 'family pack' of Snow Leopard which is five licenses is $49, and has no serial key checks or activations; whereas the Microsoft 'family pack' has three licenses of 'Home Premium' with separate serial numbers and activations and costs $149.99 and is available for a limited time only.
Here we are again. with the some old comments. Let's face it. Its been proven that any system can be hacked and hacked bad, be it Lunix, Unix, Apple's OSX, or Windows. If the tables were turned and Apple had the dominate OS (80% plus of the market) than the hackers would be causing all the problems that they do with Windows. I've seen and used both Operating Systems and in the current forms neither has a real advantage over the other. The Apple OS has an advantage in upgrade price but the upgrade ability is limited. Windows could have a better upgrade system but greed got in the way. There are a lot of people on both sides of the argument giving false facts to support their arguments. In the end I look at it from this view. Since I assemble my own PCs it is a lot easier to use Windows that any other OS. It really comes down to the fact that it is like buying a car or TV or any other machine, personal preference is the name of the game.
I saw within the comments a nice timelined comparison between Apple's OS and M$ OS...Macs have always been ahead, in terms of ease of use and reliability. The arrival of Vista was the worst, as it was less reliable than XP and gave a shitty user experience...
BUT, I'm afraid to be obliged to admit than W7 can be compared in terms of reliability to the last OSX, AND also in terms of ease of use...
I'm also a fan of touchscreens/tablets/etc. and there are only some Hackintoshes (with touch screens) which may give users the ultimate data handling experience... what Apple has done perfectly with the Iphone, has been forgotten within Macs...
Apple is not innovative anymore... it's a pity... I really hope they will wake-up soon...
Well balanced article! Apple faces a difficult decision in the coming months as Windows 7 receives rave reviews. Windows 7 essentially out-Apples Apple.
OS X is a relatively nice GUI over Unix, though to me it feels almost toy-line in its appearance. Windows 7 is more businesslike in keeping with Microsoft's need to retain the business market.
Apple is now big enough that they can consider doing, officially, what's been going on unofficially, and sell OSX for all X86 platforms. It won't diminish the value of Apple hardware, it will enhance it if they do this right.
If they don't decide to market OS X outside of their own hardware they'll be making a big mistake. There's no real advantage in terms of the OS for OS X versus Windows 7.
The author clearly has a bias towards MS. MS invests all its money in copying the Mac, barely comes up to equal it while Apple keeps moving on. MS is generally 5 years behind Apple, which is more than a generation in today's age.
"Mac users have a superior experience overall because they have drastically superior hardware overall."
Complete nonsense. The hardware compares to a 3 year old PC (at best), yet you pay 6- 8x the price for it.
The only thing Apple have going for them in terms of the hardware, is the case it sits in.
Sir, obviously you don't have any real tech skills. If you had you would have noticed that the problem with your systems is not the OS but rather the hardware/drivers.
A fresh install of any OS that crashes just sitting idle has problems in hardware or device drivers. In your case you either have defective hardware or a badly written driver that doesn't agree with standby/sleep-mode.
@HawkA, love this piece: "So if i were in a corporate environment ? would i want a system that only supports a properietary format ? or would i want the system with the widest(albiet incomplete) compatibility of filesystems."
It is pure unadulterated irony... lol. You like Apple yet complain about systems supporting proprietary formats? Wait, while I rofl, let me grab the latest copy of Snow Leopard and install in this PC I jusy built... Oh wait I can't.
Articles like this show that to most reviewers, an OS's beauty is only skin deep. What has happened to real technology reviews?
@Mosschops,
Thats it ? that's your comeback ? An ad hominem/insulting comment? Read up on the history and pay specific attention to the dates products were released(fyi, the lower the day = earlier product release). As far as
Microsoft investing $150m in non-voting shares in Apple in 1997. If you are remotely familiar with that time period, you would know that, had Apple gone under, that would have made Microsoft the sole provider(ie monopoly) of consumer desktop operating systems, thus dealing Microsoft a severe blow in court proceedings during the anti-trust cases it was dealing with against the US DOJ.
@GILGAMESH,
I'll take a new innovative fresh 'fruit' from Apple any day over 10-year-old fruit-substitutes riddled with bugs and worms from Microsoft.
You're the one who's paying for a bad copy of software technology that came out almost ten years ago from the company you seem to hate so much, not me. So apart from ridiculing the company for it's icon/name which is an iconic brand up there with 'Nike' and 'Mickey Mouse' and other great American Brands, and complaining that they charge too much for cutting edge technology they pioneer you don’t have anything to stand on. And you failed to mention what the point of having a beefier system, which is driven by out-dated software. In case you haven’t noticed, a 'system' is only as good/fast as the software that drives it. I’m happy you got a faster processor/HDD for cheap… congratulations. I got a faster system.
@Gilbo,
RIS OS 3 ? According to your link RISC OS 3 was released in 1991, the same year that MacOS 7.0 was released. Risc OS 2(the first version of this OS was apparently released in 1988/1989). So pardon my confusion.... how did Apple copy/steal it's ideas when the MacOS came out a full 4/5 years before the first version of this OS ? Also, MacOSX's foundations were being laid from a company called NexT which debuted around 1989. So maybe point to some specific technologies?
I never claimed Apple was entirely innocent of copying/stealing ideas. My point is that Apple has pioneered a whole lot more in terms of innovation/ideas/technologies in both hardware and software technologies, than Microsoft or any other hardware PC vendor ever had. And they do it with a system that can be used by first time computer buyers, developers (such as myself who use both systems), and high end users (*NIX users, VA Tech(PPC G5 supercomputer),etc. And in case you missed it, we don’t need to bother our creativity (be it in the fields of graphic design, music, motion pictures, software development, mathematics, etc) with DLL conflicts corrupt registries, fragmented drives, worms, viruses, spyware, etc... and that makes the drive so much more worth it.
So let's see, what has Apple pioneered (that you guys take for granted) and that Microsoft "took" ...
1983/1984: point-n-click, drag-n-drop, drop-down-menus, buttons, desktop publishing, fonts/type faces, trash can, folders, Apple menu, audio synthesis, AppleTalk(first consumer grade LAN networking before Windows or Linux or RISCOS existed), etc
1991: overlapping windows, real-time desktop video playback(Quicktime), The Dock(Next)
1999: consumer grade video editing software
2000: Aqua UI ("shiny"/translucent)
2003/2004: GPU accelerated vector based graphics subsystem via Quartz/QuartzExtreme, iTunes Music Store, Spotlight
2007: iPhoneOS...something every single other handset manufacturer is still trying to emulate 3 years later.
2008: iTunes App store
2009: OpenCL, GCD
And then there's the entire application structure...MacOSX has had Mail, iCal, 'stickies', widgets, The Dock since 2000 ...and then Microsoft splits up Outlook and makes "Windows mail" and "Windows Calendar" and it's own version of 'stickies'(debuted in the original MacOS) and let’s not forget "gadgets" lol
So, those are just the things off the top of my head that Microsoft copied/stole/emulated that first pioneered on the Apple platform.
And no, inverting the colors of the mouse pointer, moving and renaming the Apple menu from the upper left to the lower left of the screen, changing the direction of the magnifying glass in spotlight, renaming the trachcan to 'recyclebin' do not count as 'original ideas' or 'innovation'.
BMW actually innovate in that industry, and so cannot to used as an analogy to Windows (more like Hyundai) which essentially copies off the BMW of the computer industry, Apple.
I’m happy for you that you Windows users can finally experience what the MacOS was like 9 years ago, but unfortunately what ur using is still Windows underneath. Face it, you’re supporting a derivative OS that blatantly ripped off the Mac and even a Microsoft employee admitted it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/182080/windows_7_inspired_by_mac_heres_the_guy_who_said_so.html
So let's have it,
What did Apple copy/steal from Microsoft? A nice chronological list of technologies/ideas/processes would be nice...and if all you got is more personal attacks, I’ll take that as meaning you came up with nothing in response.
@Magilla
People buy 'systems'(hardware + operating system + software)... not just hardware. those who judge the value of a system based solely on hardware are obviously ignorant of the purpose of these machines to begin with.
@Magius
Pray tell, is the 'hardware' or the 'device drivers' part of the 'system', or are they elements of a that are not classified as part of the system a person buys.
In case you missed it, many projects at Apple are industry-standards based.. Darwin(kernel) opensource, WebKit, Display Port, MPEG, PDF, OpenGL, etc... as opposed to Windows, IE, WMV, DirectX, etc. As far as filesystems(since ur painfully uninformed about it) Apple has a plug-in-type architecture for supporting filesystems. Thats why, with my Mac...i can read any windows filesystem(among ohers)...but unfortunately for your closed-propreitary-system, you wont see anything except for the filesystems developed by that company(Microsoft). Unless yo've been living under a rock for the past 9 years, u'd know that MacOSX is a lot less "proprietary" than the classic MacOS(which also btw, could read Fat32 formatted disks :) and thus making even that better than any flavour of Windows EVER lol in terms of reading filesystems)
Hey here's an idea, if you want to use MacOSX(and you can afford it, cause it's so much more expensive for some people) go buy an Apple computer, instead of building a system from scratch. I know its cheaper, but you get what you pay for...and if you can afford an Apple computer, u'll be getting a better "System"(hardware, OS, software). And with the time you save from 'building' your system, you can get a job to justify pays a few extra dollars for a better system, or goto the beach, or....welll you get the idea.
I'll take a lower spec'ed mac any day over a higher spec'd Windows machine cause i know at the end of the day, i'll be getting a system that lets me get the job done faster and better, and by the end of the life of the machine..it'll end up costing less and saving more time than any machine running Windoze.
For all the bickering back and forth from faithful on both sides, I dont care. I started with PC i still use PC, I cant comment on Mac as I haven't used one, but there isn't much difference these days in my opinion. Got to wonder why if OSX is the greatest why do they need to boot to windows? If PC is so good why doees anyone buy a Mac? I just want to know WHERE IS THE VOICE RECOGNITION on par with say the main computer in Star Trek????? Why do i have to type when talking to my computer would be so much easier???
I've been a windows user since 93 and my trusty windows 3.1, gone through years of upgrades until Vista finally encouraged me to bit into a mac and I'll never go back. As good as windows is/could be the best way I've found to run windows is inside of parallels!!
w2k wasn't really good until sp3,
XP was horrible until sp2
Ran Vista for about 2 weeks then finally gave it up
From day 1 on my mac running Leopard, things just work, the system is fast and for the first time in my life, an OS upgrade to Snow Leopard actually made my system faster!! Windows has always touted it's next OS is faster than the last, sure after you upgrade the hell out of it to get mediocre performance. Windows is designed to keep approx. 50% of your available memory, available, which means that it pages like crazy or you have to have a large memory footprint. Mac, like any good OS, makes use of all available ram and only pages when absolutely required. Its a solid product and something even my 80yr old Granny could use out of the box.
Accessing system preferences within 2 mouse clicks for everything is amazing, saves going through all the right click here, left click there bs with microshits just to change simple settings. I'm also glad that I don't have to worry about cheap hardware getting into my system. Yes, I had to pay more $$ for my mac book pro but I know it has quality components, and it's one of the lightest one's out there.
Let's face it, we live in a world where many applications will be OS specific. Running windows on a mac works like a charm and if it's a game you want to play that's where bootcamp comes into play, Oh, but you'll want to buy a second or third copy of that windows OS to run everywhere vs just one family pack from mac.
Plus, one of my biggest beef's with windows is that they have made it as hard as possible to backup and restore the OS onto new hardware. Mac has been one of the easiest OS's I've used to replicate itself onto a new disk and actually be usable on the first boot.
At my work, in a world of PC desktops's and laptops, people stop by and gaze at my mac, but a PC is just another PC in the 80% penetration world of PC's. If your happy with PC then be happy, I'm happy with my mac and I'm glad I won't have to worry about windows performance or upgrade problems again!!
Microsoft Security Essentials is just a cut down version of Live One Care,which is now history.
I use Essentials,why would anyone want to pay for third party bloatware?
I've never had any problems with infections from either application.
Removing a USB stick is now much quicker & cleaner under W7,no more 'device still in use' messages,W7 kills the app's better.
I like W7, it's a great OS,the only thing I don't like is things can be a bind to find,such as creating a system restore point,which is now in Control Panel-System.
Apart from that,I think that it will become increasingly popular,more than XP was & I liked XP Pro,but this is by far much better.
Mac fanbois...suck eggs!!1
All versions of MacOSX(and even MacOS 9) cam with voice recognition software built into the OS. With AppleScript(and now Automator) you could create scripts, save them, and launch them using your voice...so you can immagine the possibilities. In addition to the operating system supporting voice recognition and scripts, third party apps could take advantage of these features as well, with minimal effort from developers, as most of he 'heavy lifting' was done by the OS.
I remember in 1999/2000 when i got my first Mac(Mac OS 9 i think) (and Windows was only upto Windows98(aka Win95 SP2)) i could ask my Mac:
-Launch web browser
-Hide this application
-Eject this disc
-What day is it
-What Time is it ?
-Empty trash can
-tell me a joke
And many other things i cant recall. In addition, being a multi user OS (unlike any other consumer OS availible at that time), i could use my voice to login to my machine instead of having to type a password.
There was no "training", as the system adapted to your voice the more you used the voice recognition.
All that at no extra cost... not bad for 10 years ago eh ?
PS When you asked the Mac a question like "What time is it", the reply was synthesized as a voice(of your choice) and play through your speakers.