Thursday, March 29, 2007
Today I was on a Mac site, and there was an advert for Vista on the page. Finding this slightly offensive, I thought I'd click on it and see what Microsoft think they have to offer me.
I have two things to say:
1 - Microsoft still have their own special way.
It's interesting that the link from the advert took me to a page that doesn't work in Safari. It says "Experience Windows Vista", and then when you click the link, the flash hangs.
Irony, anyone?
To be fair, the page does work correctly in Firefox, and the next interesting thing is the interface that it uses when loaded - it's very reminiscent of Front Row (click on one of the four option icons to see what I mean).
I don't know if this is resignation, arrogance or non-compliance on Microsoft's part; maybe they've given up trying to convert Mac users (we're a lost cause as OS X is a far superior O/S and/or we're all too smug and/or they know they've ripped off our favourite O/S), they're not bothered about trying to convert Mac users (there aren't enough of us to be a worthwhile target market) or they just didn't bother to write the page in a way that is compliant with all major browsers (they still think that IE should be the only browser in the world).
Perhaps it's all three. Whichever, does it make me want to look at Vista?
No.
2 - My Initial Take on Vista.
As a systems engineer, I have been running Vista on a Dell PC for a few weeks now, just so I can familiarise myself with it. My view so far is that it is Windows XP with a spankier GUI and some useful changes under the hood. That said, it's still Windows. Once the eye-candy excitement has worn off, you realise that it's actually done nothing much to enhance productivity or user-friendliness (note that I am not discussing Office here) - a prime example is the flip3D application switcher that rolls all your application windows past you like a roladex. It's pretty, but this is absolutely nowhere near as useful as Expose, which really is a great and intuitive way to navigate many open applications, as you can see them all at once. Oh, and Beryl can do the Expose-type thing for Linux, too (I am really enjoying Beryl on my Ubuntu machine at the moment, btw - it's the maverick of 3D desktops; generally good, sometimes a bit insane, and occasionally awesome :) ).
OK, Microsoft have made some pretty good (and long-overdue) enhancements that aren't as obvious, particularly in the area of security, but they have also done some pretty scary things in the area of DRM. Overall, they have taken many of the features of OS X and copied them, usually pretty badly. They just don't get it somehow, you know?
Anyway There's lots of info on the net about this, so I won't bang on too much here (just Google Vista vs OS X, for example). Suffice to say, I won't be switching back to Windows, and that's based on a personal assessment of Tiger vs Vista, so I reckon Leopard will really put the nail in the M$ coffin as far as I'm concerned.
