Where does Windows Vista fit among many of the PC-based operating systems of today and the last couple of decades? With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability. It's hard to beat Apple's top-notch GUI design grafted onto an implementation of Unix variant BSD. Mac OS X has excellent reliability, security and usability. That isn't to say that the user interface wouldn't gain if Apple adopted some other best ideas of the day, but Apple has the best operating system this year, last year and next year. It'll be interesting to see what the company delivers in its 10.5 Leopard version of Mac OS X.
Meanwhile, I'm placing Windows Vista as a distant second-best to OS X. I see Linux and Windows 2000 as being roughly tied another notch or two below Vista, with XP being only a half step better than Win 2000.
So, why is the year-old Mac OS X Tiger so much better than Windows Vista, which Microsoft won't even ship before January 2007? It isn't that Apple has put more effort into its operating system; Microsoft has mounted a gargantuan effort on Windows Vista. It's that the two companies have very different goals. I've come to believe that Microsoft has lost touch with its user base.
1. Little originality, sometimes with a loss of elegance.Everywhere you look, Microsoft has copied things that Apple has offered for quite some time in OS X. The User Account Control features, especially with the Vista Standard log-in, look a lot like Apple's user interface design. Too bad Microsoft doesn't let you lock and unlock things (leaving those settings permanent) the way Apple does. More than 15 years later, Microsoft is still following Apple in operating system design and bundled materials. With some notable exceptions (including IE7+, where it copied Mozilla, and the Windows Sidebar, where it bests Apple, Google and everyone in user-interface design), Microsoft is belaboring the point by reinventing the wheel, often with an overall reduction in productivity and usability.
I have no problem with Microsoft copying Apple's or any other company's best interface designs. We all win when that happens, and I wish Apple would steal the best things Microsoft does right back. What's really strange is when a company lifts good ideas and makes them worse, not better.
The bitter end
After more than 15 years reviewing Windows operating systems, I didn't just suddenly begin hating Microsoft or Windows. (Although I have to admit, OS X is looking better and better of late.) Windows Vista has plenty of good aspects to recommend it. In a future article, Computerworld will make plain the many good things about Windows Vista. When the product ships, we'll also make some final recommendations on the new operating system.
In all fairness, if nothing else, Vista fixes what's been wrong with Windows for years; IE system integration, for example.
The issue is that Vista only fixes those problems. It's the ultimate Windows service pack in that regard; it just fixes everything that's been wrong with Windows. Now it needs to start doing things right... good luck, Microsoft.
In the meantime, I hope to get a MacBook Pro by or just after Leopard debuts.
Is this what you call FUD?
Linux may outpace Microsoft before next summer. Novell is releasing its next Linux Desktop OS, based on the SUSE platform this summer for home users. If it delivers, people may have no reason to wait for the arrival of Vista.
These kinds of pre-reviews are really quite useless. MS has already said that the UAC stuff he spends so much time bitching about is going to be heavily revised before release, for example, so it's less intrusive. Really, more than half his complaints are what I would classify as UI issues rather than complaints about core functionality, and that's the most useless sort of complaint of all at this point, because the UI is the thing most likely to change between now and release.
In terms of eye candy and ease of use...well, judge for yourself -
Windows Vista is not necessary...one doesn't even necessarily need a new machine - this is on a laptop that's 2 1/2 years old, and it's running very, very well now.
Regards, Ivan
bttt
While not explicity part of Vista, I think one of the best things to come out of the Vista/Longhorn effort may be PowerShell (aka Monad).