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Windows 7 Kills Snow Leopard and Eats It
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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I wonder if it tastes like chicken? You can't go out and buy a copy of OSX for a PC, Apple is the one limiting it's market potential and popularity. I maintain that when Job's goes then OSX will be generally available for PC's. Apple could be so much more then they are but they have this pigheaded need to remain on proprietary hardware. If companies like Quo become successful with the current Apple crowd then Apple will be under serious pressure to finally let people use it's damn software.
guitarslingerchris
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I lol'ed pretty hard last night at the pic from the article.
There are several things going on here. But numbers wise... macs don't matter compare to Windows when looking at install base (homes, schools, corporations). Also anyone who has given Windows 7 a fair shake and tried it... will tell you the have freaking nailed it it is great.
Mr. Bluntman
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Mmmm. Snow Leopards are tasty.
spacetrader
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yeah its about time they freakin nailed an os, because vista was shit and im so glad they made a whole brand new os to fix all of vistas problems.
randomdean100
Gawd
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Have you tried vista after sp1?
rat
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Hint. Windows 7 is still Vista. It's not all brand new. They just finally released it as how it probably should have been released last year. In the past year, base hardware spec generally caught up to what Vista required. (Mainly because of Vista's existence, but then that makes it easier for Win7 to be on hardware for it to run better.)
Windows 7 = Vista SP3.
SamuraiInBlack
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I will be honest and say that vista even after sp1 did not impress me. I tried it both on a desktop and a laptop that people in my family own. neither experience offered anything awe inspiring, but to be fair, I gave each about an hour doing normal everyday tasks, rather than diving in and seeing what made it tick.
however, with windows 7 on my desktop, first impressions were pretty good. I know windows 7 is still vista based, but for some reason I felt more impressed with it initially than I did with vista. i'm uncertain as to why this is, but my overall experience thus far on the same level of usage is still along the lines of "it's better than vista". might be placebo, but I have to say that I might actually pick up a copy before an sp1 release. I couldn't say the same of vista.
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Most of Vista's problems was fixed after SP1. You sound like to me that you just pirated Vista, tried it out, and go "LOL this sucks, I'm heading back to XP!"
TechieSooner
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I'll just re-iterate what I've stated earlier: Anyone who thinks Windows 7 is some magical remedy to what Vista was is a complete moron.
Sorry, but Windows 7 doesn't change much at all in the kernel (We're going from 6.0 to 6.1, people)... The interface is largely the same. Sure we get some new apps (like the problem solving step by step thing, WMP12, etc) but all in all, the biggest change is the taskbar and initial snappiness.
DeathFromBelow
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Vista didn't have problems to begin with. It took awhile for drivers to mature, but once they did it was actually faster than XP. 7 is a relatively minor change.
It's funny to see people who were pissy about Vista (and obviously never used it) talk about how wonderful 7 is.
chinesepiratefood
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The comments on gizmondo are just like spacetrader
"Vista sucks, OSX just works"
"Vista sucks, OSX just works"
Huh? This is not a "whole brand new os." IMO, it's mostly a UI update to Vista. I like vista, I like 7. I used to like XP, but at this point, I'll be glad when I've gotten all my work programs moved to vista....from then on, I'll just use XP in a VM to change my password (because our IT department won't set up a vista machine on the network, but will set up an XP VM running on a different OS.
Dumb, but it just means they're less likely to touch my machine....and IME keeping them out means your machine works better.
while I mostly agree, there were some issues with Vista when it came out (e.g. copying large files was painfully slow), but most of those were fixed by the Summer of 2007 via hot fixes.
I do think the UI on 7 is better....that's what happens when you release something... you learn what people like and what they don't like. MS does massive user testing during development, but you never get everything perfect, no matter who you are. Hell, look at the problems Apple had when Leopard was released. I suspect it was far less widespread than the press made it seem, but the same is true with Vista. The problems weren't nearly as bad as most people think they were and most were fixed within 6 months (and I bet that's also true for Leopard).
Except the point of the article is that SLs popularity stayed flat where W7 peaked and climbed? It's not about "zOMG more people use windows!!" but "Windows users are more excited about Windows 7 than Mac users are excited about the new Mac OS."
I'll just re-iterate what I've stated earlier: Anyone who thinks Windows 7 is some magical remedy to what Vista was is a complete moron.
Sorry, but Windows 7 doesn't change much at all in the kernel (We're going from 6.0 to 6.1, people)... The interface is largely the same. Sure we get some new apps (like the problem solving step by step thing, WMP12, etc) but all in all, the biggest change is the taskbar and initial snappiness.
Try using Windows 7 exclusively for a month or so... then format and do a fresh install of Vista will all current service packs and updates. After everything is updated it still feels (comparatively) like you're walking through a giant pile of sludge. Up hill. With extra gravity (darn that extra gravity!).
I realise you mention initial snappiness, but in my experience it goes much further than just "initial" snappiness. After a month of heavy usage it was still much quicker and more responsive than a fresh install of Vista.
The biggest complaint I have heard about Vista is its sluggishness and in my experience Windows 7 hits the ball out of the park on this issue.
My machine specs just FYI:
Asus P6T-Deluxe
Core i7 920
6GB RAM
Radeon 4850 Crossfire
2x WD3200KS in RAID 0
I use Win 7 on my main machine. It's great, but it's buggy. Needs a lot of fixes.
vsboxerboy
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Like what if I may ask?
I get graphics glitches in some games and very occasionally on the desktop that weren't there with Vista. Also, the DirectX 9 (specifically dxdiagn.dll) causes a problem with another game of mine that makes it so that it won't run unless you replace it with some other Vista version of the dll (common problem for Neverwinter Nights 2 if you look around). The first may be caused by graphics drivers not being mature enough, but the fact remains that a few things need to be taken care of. Generally speaking though, I guess I can say that Win7 hasn't caused me much grief.
TechieSooner
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Good points pointed out by previous poster.
Also, are you telling me that folks searching (IE: Expressing interest) in a product doesn't turn into sales???
The file copying was the #1 thing that I'm aware of that was actually a problem with Vista.
Multiple UAC prompts would be #2 (IE, prompting multiple times for the same action).
But those were fixed within a few months of release.
That's interesting, to be honest. In day to day usage (I'm using Vista full-time at the office and Windows 7 full-time at home now) I don't notice any speed variances.
Vista still, IMO, sucks at networking compared to XP. Not that it's bad, but there's just minor things about it that rub me the wrong way.
Windows 7 just seemed a bit snappier on initial install. Can't explain why. I don't know if Microsoft knocked back the indexing to an extremely low priority or what the heck they did. There might just be that much optimizations in place now.
That's pretty interesting though, sounds like you did your homework
I cannot honestly think of anything that would change it. Microsoft left the kernel version 6.X to maintain compatibility, and to my knowledge nothing new changed as far as DirectX goes...
I was one of Vista's most ardent defenders when it came out on these boards (in a "it's not so bad" sort of way), buuutttt...
Aero gestures are great, but for every "big new feature" in 7 I can liken it to something already present in Leopard. In my opinion Expose is far less annoying than Peek, Time Machine has 7's backup beaten by 6 miles, and so on. Stacks on the Dock in Snow Leopard give you the ability to move through your folders as though you're in Finder, functionality which the Taskbar is missing in 7 (you'd have to be able to move through Windows Explorer on the taskbar to match the UI functionality). Sure, 7 seeks and downloads some drivers for things like printers from the Internet, but didn't OSX do that all along?
Device stage was cool the first time I used it, but I really haven't had a pressing need to do so since.
When was Microsoft going to add multiple desktops again?
I think 7 has done a lot to improve the overall functionality of Windows itself, but in a tit for tat functionality debate OSX and 7 still leans slightly in favor of Apple. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Windows products.
I just don't see how you can get 7 eating Snow Leopard for breakfast from search results, and in a feature for feature 7 really doesn't offer too much more.
Unless you wanna get into the multi-hardware platform debate of course
Aero gestures are great, but for every "big new feature" in 7 I can liken it to something already present in Leopard. In my opinion Expose is far less annoying than Peek, Time Machine has 7's backup beaten by 6 miles, and so on. Stacks on the Dock in Snow Leopard give you the ability to move through your folders as though you're in Finder, functionality which the Taskbar is missing in 7 (you'd have to be able to move through Windows Explorer on the taskbar to match the UI functionality). Sure, 7 seeks and downloads some drivers for things like printers from the Internet, but didn't OSX do that all along?
Device stage was cool the first time I used it, but I really haven't had a pressing need to do so since.
When was Microsoft going to add multiple desktops again?
I think 7 has done a lot to improve the overall functionality of Windows itself, but in a tit for tat functionality debate OSX and 7 still leans slightly in favor of Apple. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Windows products.
I just don't see how you can get 7 eating Snow Leopard for breakfast from search results, and in a feature for feature 7 really doesn't offer too much more.
Unless you wanna get into the multi-hardware platform debate of course
TechieSooner
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Honestly I haven't used OS X since Leopard came out so I'm not familiar with it much anymore, but you've got to remember Microsoft has other markets in mind than Apple does. Business is the obvious one, but you've also got different cultures who expect things in different ways in the international world.
I've watched a visiting guy from China set down to use a US-based computer and he thought the way the interface was setup as confusing as could be. Microsoft has to cater to that and provide more customization and capability. They won't throw the international market out the window just for glitz.
Frankly, Apple doesn't give a damn about much outside of the US when it comes to their operating system (<1% of market), so making stuff "pretty" or doing what "The boss" thinks isn't as big of a deal...
Hope that makes sense...
And FWIW, even XP downloaded drivers from the internet, too...
True, but it didn't pull automatically from quite as extensive a library as you see on the Apple side. 7 is the first one I've been able to plug in an HP Photosmart and get full functionality without having to feed a disk or head to HP for.
I'm going to just do
to the customization part.I can buy the cultural interface thing, but at the same time don't buy the business argument in the slightest. Faster navigation through commonly used folders which you can specify yourself- more seemless filesharing and network device sharing. Hell, even the licensing scheme is better (999.99 for unlimited licenses for OSX Server)
I was one of Vista's most ardent defenders when it came out on these boards (in a "it's not so bad" sort of way), buuutttt...
Aero gestures are great, but for every "big new feature" in 7 I can liken it to something already present in Leopard. In my opinion Expose is far less annoying than Peek, Time Machine has 7's backup beaten by 6 miles, and so on. Stacks on the Dock in Snow Leopard give you the ability to move through your folders as though you're in Finder, functionality which the Taskbar is missing in 7 (you'd have to be able to move through Windows Explorer on the taskbar to match the UI functionality). Sure, 7 seeks and downloads some drivers for things like printers from the Internet, but didn't OSX do that all along?
Device stage was cool the first time I used it, but I really haven't had a pressing need to do so since.
When was Microsoft going to add multiple desktops again?
I think 7 has done a lot to improve the overall functionality of Windows itself, but in a tit for tat functionality debate OSX and 7 still leans slightly in favor of Apple. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Windows products.
I just don't see how you can get 7 eating Snow Leopard for breakfast from search results, and in a feature for feature 7 really doesn't offer too much more.
Unless you wanna get into the multi-hardware platform debate of course
Get out of my brain.
Seriously though, I 100% agree with you. I run both side by side, as well as one OSX/Windows installation on the same hardware, and my preference is to OS X even though I like Windows 7 (and Vista) a lot. Better windows and workspace management, fewer drilldowns in submenus, OS X Smart Folders that blows away Windows Saved Search and Libraries, search that actually works (they finally fixed this in Win7), these are all things that keep my Mac for my main work machine, even outside of Final Cut Studio.
The thing is that even among the Mac community, there is very little hype going on with 10.6. I think its because most of the improvements are under the hood, things like Grand Central to simplify and automate multicore processing for applications, and OpenCL for built-in GPU processing among normal apps. Its nothing like all of the workspace and UI improvements that were in 10.4 and 10.5.
What's coming in 10.6, cool as it may be from a technical, performance, and developer standpoint, isn't nearly as sexy to the average consumer.
As for Windows 7, well, everybody loves a comeback story, even if Vista got a bad rap solely based on a rough first year out of the gate. The fact that it is so much faster out of the box (Vista takes a while to get up to snuff), has actual UI improvements that don't suck (the crummy UI was my biggest beef with Vista, not performance since I was running it on a new box), and runs well on slower hardware, these are all things to be very excited about.
I will be surprised if this ever happens. Apple was doing very well up until around 1996, over ten years after Steve Jobs left. You know what turned it around and sent them careening towards bankruptcy? Opening the platform up to clone makers. It diluted the brand with lower quality hardware and ate into Apple's profits.
I do wonder why this is the case though. Licensing operating systems is a much higher profit margin business (80% in Microsoft's case) compared to selling hardware (about 25% with Apple, obviously even lower with sub-$1000 Dells, HPs, etc).
Maybe it would require Apple selling OS X licenses for double the $130 they currently sell it at in order to bring it up to Microsoft's pricing so that they could make similar profit margins, I don't know.
TechieSooner
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I'd say Microsoft has a hulluva lot bigger driver database than Apple does.
First question "You can specify yourself"???
What I was meaning is many things for businesses. Businesses use tons of propriety applications. Said applications all pretty much use the classic menus. Windows can't revamp the entire interface, they've got to leave the APIs in there for the old stuff too. That's just one example, you can use your imagination and think up many more.
Microsoft doesn't have the option of throwing out some backwards compatibility like Apple does, just to get a "cool" new feature stuck in there. They've got to provide support for Applications designed 10 or 15 years ago.
Thankfully they started breaking this trend a little bit in Vista in order to get systems more stable, but the chances of you using 8 year old Application A on Vista is much higher than 8 year old Application A on OS X.
As for the rest of your examples though: Expose??? How many actual OS X users I've seen use that doing actual work? 0.
In a business environment, people aren't going to be using Time Machine/Windows Backup, either on the client side.
You've got Windows beat on Stacks, but honestly, hit Windows key and type the folder name you want and you're done. It's still faster than using a mouse cursor to open a menu.
Your licensing example really doesn't hold up for all businesses, either. People flat out don't want to pay for stuff they don't use. Hence all the variations on Windows and Windows server. Microsoft gives the users OPTIONS which is something Apple does not, they just offer a flat out all-inclusive package. This doesn't work well for companies who want a new server to do _____ but don't need all the other enterprise stuff in it. IE, for Windows they could pay for a lesser version but they'd still be stuck paying the $1000 fee on Leopard Server.
Also look at it this way. Windows CALs are what, like $30/pop? You can run that same CAL across all servers in a Windows environment. So if you've got 20 servers, you just need one $30 CAL to get that client connected. In the Leopard model you'd be paying $1,000 for each server, regardless.
All that's aside for the superior networking capabilities in almost every single way that Windows Server gives you to Leopard Server.
The entire Apple licensing model is based off simplicity, and I'd say along with that comes a price premium.
I would put money that you haven't seen an actual OS X user working then. I know lots of Mac users and every last one of them uses Expose. Increase the likelihood if they're on a laptop and using it with hotcorners.
Spaces, now that's a lot rarer. I use it pretty regularly but I'm pretty hardcore with using multiple applications at once (Final Cut, Sorensen Squeeze and Compresor, FTP, Photoshop, on top of web/email/IM) so I like to keep that all as segregated as I can to keep my workspace in order.
Reading comprehension little boy, that $1000 is for unlimited licenses.
Or $500 on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Version-10-5-4-Leopard-Server-Unlimited/dp/B000BX7JM8
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Yeah, on the Mac its called Spotlight, it came out all the way back in April of 2005, and it took Windows 7 for search to actually work predictably and consistently.
Boy, its been a while since I picked apart one of your posts, fun!
heatlesssun
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Search in Vista works just fine. The problem with the search is the horrible configuration applet. Getting search setup for all of your various types can be a little tricky, I guess on a Mac its a no brainer for different types.
Once it is setup, the serach capbilities are pretty awesome. Searching email across various online stores, local and networked documents. Hook it into an online file system and that would be too cool.
No, you're the one who needs a course in Reading Comprehension. That's a license for ONE server that an unlimited number of machines can then connect to.Reading comprehension little boy, that $1000 is for unlimited licenses.
Or $500 on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Version-10-5-4-Leopard-Server-Unlimited/dp/B000BX7JM8
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Last one.
Its no secret that Apple regularly moves forward at the expense of old software and hardware. That said, they don't immediately leave their legacy customers in the dust. To ease the transition from PPC to Intel CPUs, OS X includes a PPC emulator called Rosetta. It helped to maintain backwards compatibility while users gradually transitioned over to Intel hardware.
Years before that, there was a "Classic Mode" that was included with OS X. It emulated Mac OS 9 for older applications while users and developers transitioned over to OS X. It was supported up until the Intel transition, since they aren't emulating Mac OS 9 on Intel hardware. That's over six years after OS X was released, plenty of time for people to get their stuff migrated over.
Windows is now basically doing the same thing to help Windows XP backwards compatibility by including a full version of WinXP SP3 that runs within Windows 7. They arguably should have included this with Windows Vista, since the major stumbling block to Vista adoption among businesses (after the driver and bug shakeout) was backwards compatibility issues with mission critical Windows XP software.
Including Windows XP in Windows 7 Ultimate is pretty genius as far as easing customers that still need Windows XP applications over to a new OS.
Sonofabitch, you're right!
Either way, its not as bad a deal for a server package as TS is implying. Yes you can configure for more options with MS Server, but you have to consider that you're getting everything in the box, whereas you are nickel and dimed with MS Server.
BTW, I'm not knocking MS Server, if I was running a business primarily on MS Office I'd likely go with that instead of OS X or Linux. Keeps it simple and in the family.
GoldenTiger
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Reading comprehension little boy, that $1000 is for unlimited licenses.
Or $500 on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Version-10-5-4-Leopard-Server-Unlimited/dp/B000BX7JM8
Reading comprehension, kiddo... PER SERVER not per client. It is $1,000 per server which can each have unlimited client access licenses, not $1,000 for all servers and clients. Also, that link is to a third-party Amazon seller, the actual Amazon price is $999.
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
There's that, plus indexing takes forever in Vista. I believe it is because of the file system OS X uses, but even if I drop a new mailbox with thousands of emails in it into OS X mail app, it'll be searchable via Spotlight immediately. I do the same with Outlook in Vista and it takes forever while everything gets indexed.
Fortunately Windows search works out of the box much better with Windows 7 (like, exponentially better and more predictably). And you can also get Spotlight to search within networks and online file systems, pretty cool!