Windows Vista

gus

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DavidTO

They're playing catch-up with OS X, from what I've read. Plus, they just pushed back the release date yet again. It's been years now.

Granted, my news sources on this can be biased, but has anyone heard of anything major that will be available in Vista that you can't already get in OS X? I'm not being facetious, I really want to know.

marlof

Support for all those Windows applications that are not available for the Mac? Like Rawshooter. Like Asksam (full text retrieval we use at work). Like native Windows Mobile support (it is the main mobile platform now). Like dedicated online banking (which sometimes still won't work when on the Mac). I wouldn't mind it a bit if my Windows box (which I use out of necessity) would get some of the elegance of my iBook. But knowing Microsoft, the initial great ideas might be sacrificed to legacy support yet again...

gus

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DavidTO

marlof wrote:

Support for all those Windows applications that are not available for the Mac? Like Rawshooter. Like Asksam (full text retrieval we use at work). Like native Windows Mobile support (it is the main mobile platform now). Like dedicated online banking (which sometimes still won't work when on the Mac). I wouldn't mind it a bit if my Windows box (which I use out of necessity) would get some of the elegance of my iBook. But knowing Microsoft, the initial great ideas might be sacrificed to legacy support yet again...

No, I don't mean any of that stuff. Of course there's apps that won't run on Mac. (Never bothered me, obviously, but it's also obvious that it could be a major problem for others). I mean in the OS itself, is there anything that they're going to innovate that hasn't already been done in OS X?

bwg

DavidTO wrote:

No, I don't mean any of that stuff. Of course there's apps that won't run on Mac. (Never bothered me, obviously, but it's also obvious that it could be a major problem for others). I mean in the OS itself, is there anything that they're going to innovate that hasn't already been done in OS X?

based on my experience (albeit limited) thus far with OSX....no.

the only major thing off the top of my head is the sql server based filesystem (winFS) but that is due to ship after vista now anyways...and be backwards compatible with XP.

there are smaller things like rss integration and xml out the wazoo, but i would agree in your assesment david, they are playing catch up to OSX...not like that's any big revelation though.

DavidTO

bigwebguy wrote:

not like that's any big revelation though.

It's what I've been hearing over and over, but like I said, my sources are not exactly unbiased. They're all Mac news sources.

Shay Stephens

DRM up the wazzo, more expensive hardware, "trusted computing" that locks up the hardware with the software, and the continuing path of incrementally tighting the activation scheme to get everyone buttered up to renting their OS from Microsoft.

Humungus wrote:

Whats your idea of what we will see here with Vista ?

System

The Beta version is aweful. Way to many bugs.

Shay Stephens

That's no surprise...
That's what beta's do best

SnowWhite wrote:

The Beta version is aweful. Way to many bugs.

DavidTO

Shay Stephens wrote:

That's what beta's do best

Bugs Entitled To Appear

Andy

SnowWhite wrote:

The Beta version is aweful. Way to many bugs.

Your spelling is awful. Do you go to college?

System

DavidTO

Andy wrote:

Your spelling is awful. Do you go to college?

He must mean that he's full of awe when he uses the beta of Vista?

bwg

yeah, i forgot about the trusted computing.

i couldnt even get the beta to install....i'll try the next official release they put out...although i've heard the latest CTP is a pretty usable build.

DavidTO

bigwebguy wrote:

they are playing catch up to OSX...not like that's any big revelation though.

Sounds like the assimilation has begun...

David_S85

The consumer editions of Vista will be delayed. The business versions (three I believe) will appear Nov./Dec. 2006. The readiness of IE7 has been much of the delay. Code has finally been separated from Windows Explorer for security reasons (gee, why didn't they think of this before?? ).

As many as eight versions of Vista are rumored to be offered. Now that's going to be a lot of service pack updates to track, isn't it?

Jamoke

David_S85 wrote:

As many as eight versions of Vista are rumored to be offered. Now that's going to be a lot of service pack updates to track, isn't it?

I heard it was six, and they were eliminating the 64 bit versions all together at this point (Don't believe everything you read). Renting an OS though doesn't sound fun. Renting a computer doesn't even sound fun, much less the OS. I'm interested to see their consumer level product though. I wonder if I'd recommend it, rather than telling people to buy an imac for simplicity...

bwg

DavidTO wrote:

Sounds like the assimilation has begun...

blah blah blah blah blah.

at least not until photoshop and firefox are universal binaries.

wholenewlight

DavidTO wrote:

Sounds like the assimilation has begun...

Khaos

Isn't OS X a proprietary OS?
When you program for a known, unchanging piece of hardware, wouldn't it be easier to make the OS work right?

Shouldn't a proprietary OS on proprietary hardware allow for instant boot?

Do apple fans get many insects lodged in their nostrils from keeping their noses held up so high?

David_S85

Khaos wrote:

Do apple fans get many insects lodged in their nostrils from keeping their noses held up so high?

:lol4
:lol4
:lol4
:lol4

Jamoke

Is that what's efffecting my breathing? I thought it was the air up here...

DavidTO

Khaos wrote:

Isn't OS X a proprietary OS?
When you program for a known, unchanging piece of hardware, wouldn't it be easier to make the OS work right?

Shouldn't a proprietary OS on proprietary hardware allow for instant boot?

Do apple fans get many insects lodged in their nostrils from keeping their noses held up so high?

Khaos, what are you on about?

Khaos

DavidTO wrote:

Khaos, what are you on about?

I feel that apple is over priced and that a PC solution with windows gives you more bang for your buck and it isn't that difficult to maintain. Since Windows 2000, I have had about zero issues. Most my issues come from Microsoft trying to idiot proof their OS for the masses. Ask any IT guy worth his salt what he feels about SP2 for XP.

Microsoft can do a lot more to make the OS better, but what they have done is pretty impressive. ActiveX is an amazing thing that allows consumers to mix and match graphics and audio options and not have to worry about stability. When apple allows it's OS to work with more than its own proprietary hardware, then I'll be impressed. Until then I'll build myself a better solution at a cheaper price.

To my ears it sounds like apple fans brag about their systems only to try to justify to themselves the high cost and the lack of scalabilty of an apple product. Apple makes good products, but they're overpriced and limited.

DavidTO

Khaos wrote:

I feel that apple is over priced and that a PC solution with windows gives you more bang for your buck ...snip....scalabilty of an apple product. Apple makes good products, but they're overpriced and limited.

OK, that I can understand. That first post was completely obtuse.

triangle

Hello,

Imho WinFS seems to quite an interesting one filesystem. If you are interested, I can recommend giving a look at this source, it contains some really useful info on that subject
http://www.ntfs.com/

luke_church

Humungus wrote:

Whats your idea of what we will see here with Vista ? Can they really make it better security (& virus/trojan) wise. They are talking about a much better GUI.

I don't have time right now to engage in the usual tit-for-tat with Apple.

I have used Vista already (I was coding against the CTP 2 year ago, I routinely code against the WinFX core)

I expect it will have better security yes.

However, the main security problem with Windows, is not the OS. The problem with Windows security is Windows users. The other problem is that the majority of people who develop software for Windows can't be bothered to read the windows developer documentation and therefore make hideous assumptions, like their code is running as System Admin. This presents Microsoft with an interesting challenge. Their end users don't actually want security, they want to run software that opens 4 mile wide holes in their security system.

Run Windows as a low-priviledge user account (yes, it is possible, I do it every day), and you will be in a highly secure environemnt, as all the c*** that hids Windows machines typically assumes that it is running as God, and so tries to write to protected areas of the registry, modify executable files etc. Windows will simply tear such software down with security violations.

So, if you want security, learn how to use Windows, don't buy an upgrade. The same would apply to OS X if it was a majority OS. (Justification: It applies to Linux + FreeBSD, on which Apple is based and hasn't substantially improved technical security, arguably I gather they've made it worse)

As for the GUI, I don't really care. It seemed nice enough, at least it didn't have the 'you put something on your desktop, so I'm going to make ripples come out of it, just to make you feel ill and drag your visual attention back to something that you no longer care about' effect that some genius in Apple's UI department seemed to think was a good idea. Beyond that, it's a UI, a tool. Nothing more.

I expect IE 7 will be a lot more secure. This will help as much as anything I suspect, esp. as it will run in decreased priviledge mode.

So in summary:

-> Yes it will be more secure, but only as secure as the person sat in front of it

-> No it will not solve all the universe's problems.

-> GUI? Buy an Apple. They'll be ahead of MS with cuddly UIs about 10 minutes after Vista anyhow. GUIs are so 'user interpretation' anyway, that what you need to have a nice GUI is someone who is fanatical about it.

-> Buy Vista early? Feel free, early adopters get all the pain and the early rewards :-)

-> Like it or not, the world will buy Vista.

Incremental improvement as always.

I disagree that they're playing catch up with Apple, that may be the case with the UI, I very much doubt it is the case with the actual OS below the skin. As far as I can tell OS X is lagging in many areas, e.g. managed language support. When I get one (maybe this summer), *perhaps* my opinion will change.

Luke

luke_church

luke_church wrote:

So, if you want security, learn how to use Windows, don't buy an upgrade.

Incidentally, there is nothing I would love more than the be able to say, 'if you want security, buy an upgrade'.

or 'If you want security, buy a Mac'

I would love a product that gave security without knowledge to end-users.

However, I do not believe such a product currently exists, nor do I believe that we will see one anytime soon.

It's a real shame, if I did, then I could go out and take more photos instead of trying to think about how to design one :

Luke

Khaos

luke_church wrote:

However, the main security problem with Windows, is not the OS. The problem with Windows security is Windows users. The other problem is that the majority of people who develop software for Windows can't be bothered to read the windows developer documentation and therefore make hideous assumptions, like their code is running as System Admin. This presents Microsoft with an interesting challenge. Their end users don't actually want security, they want to run software that opens 4 mile wide holes in their security system.

Run Windows as a low-priviledge user account (yes, it is possible, I do it every day), and you will be in a highly secure environemnt, as all the c*** that hids Windows machines typically assumes that it is running as God, and so tries to write to protected areas of the registry, modify executable files etc. Windows will simply tear such software down with security violations.

So, if you want security, learn how to use Windows, don't buy an upgrade.

Luke

Thank you. It's nice to hear from someone that actually gets it.