Vista, the osx wanna be....?

[fryke]

... and suddenly, Mac OS X is not too graphic-intensive anymore. Maybe Apple was on to something with that "Aqua" thing they introduced with, er, some Mac OS X Developer Preview version in 2000, when everybody thought it was too much for the hardware. :P

[Mikuro]

It was too much for the hardware. 7 years later it's not such a big deal, but then 7 years from now I don't suppose Vista's glitz will be too much, either. It took at least 4-5 years before Apple's consumer machines could run Aqua really well. Even my 2005 model Mac Mini leaves a little to be desired. It doesn't support Core Image, although thankfully Apple has not Core Image that much, so it's no biggie. (I wonder if that will change with Leopard.)

Anyway, to answer the original post, in a word: yes.

As with OSes past, Microsoft has made many small changes to Apple's designs, and most of them are for the worse. That's to be expected. I mean, we're talking about a company that didn't consider that when they moved the Apple menu to the bottom of the screen, they had to reverse the order of the items so that "Shut Down" was not the first item. That's pretty dense. (Of course, it's possible they weren't copying. They might have come up with that little gem of interface design all on their own.....but that's even worse.)

That said, I'm impressed with Aero. That said, I've never actually had to use it...

[Timotheos]

I have a friend thats just started his first year at uni and decided to get a laptop.

I thought I might have a little go just to see what it was like in person and I was pretty disgusted. I dont know how to describe it, yes it was all flashy and that but it almost looked as if a disco thru up on it. The colors were intense.

He didnt really have any software of value on it, since he doesnt really use the computer (thank god) so I didnt get to play around much. all I really did was open the trash bin and it seriously took at-least 10 seconds to load it.

Argh, that OS makes me angry and I dont even know why.

[powermac]

I tried Vista out and have to say, it has nothing innovative. Sure the interface is much improved, although when you think about it they just put aero glass around XP windows and added more annoyance and pop-ups.
As much as they try to copy Apple, OSX is still king. Day-to-Day use, I still appreciate the feeling of OSX. Windows, whether it is XP or Vista does not know how to get out of its own way.

[knight885]

Originally Posted by stevenyc

Looks like Apple's copying MS now.

"Apple megapatch plugs 45 security holes"

Apple on Tuesday issued a security update for its Mac OS X to plug 45 security holes, including several zero-day vulnerabilities.

The megapatch is the seventh Apple security patch release in three months.

What, so plugging security holes is a bad thing? I really don't see what you're on about...

Originally Posted by Satcomer

Everyone that I know that have upgraded to Vista (just two people so far) say Vista has really slowed down their machines that were top of the game line just about 10 months ago. They both say Vista is huge memory hog and they both went back to XP Pro for gaming. One thing I have say though, they were both using the last beta version of Vista.

I've read that on a 1Gb machine, Vista is substantially slower than XP on the same machine. And a heavily-used XP is bad enough already. Rendering a less-than-one-year-old PC as obsolete isn't exactly progress, is it?

They both wonder how my Dual 1.8 G5 (first Dual 1.8 generation ... see my signature) can run 10.4.x so well.

It's called efficiency - something MS employees have surgically removed before they start work...

[Lt Major Burns]

Originally Posted by Mikuro

It was too much for the hardware. 7 years later it's not such a big deal, but then 7 years from now I don't suppose Vista's glitz will be too much, either. It took at least 4-5 years before Apple's consumer machines could run Aqua really well. Even my 2005 model Mac Mini leaves a little to be desired. It doesn't support Core Image, although thankfully Apple has not Core Image that much, so it's no biggie. (I wonder if that will change with Leopard.)

Anyway, to answer the original post, in a word: yes.

As with OSes past, Microsoft has made many small changes to Apple's designs, and most of them are for the worse. That's to be expected. I mean, we're talking about a company that didn't consider that when they moved the Apple menu to the bottom of the screen, they had to reverse the order of the items so that "Shut Down" was not the first item. That's pretty dense. (Of course, it's possible they weren't copying. They might have come up with that little gem of interface design all on their own.....but that's even worse.)

That said, I'm impressed with Aero. That said, I've never actually had to use it...

my 7 year old ibook runs the very latest, edge of the knife-blade Apple OS very very smoothly (10-4-9 went on this morning). the problem was just that 10.0 was just insufficiently optimised.

[Tommo]

The last beta version of Vista would be slow, it still had an awful lot of debug code in it. The release version is running on my 4 year old Compaq with 512MB RAM with no problems or speed difference to how it runs XP. Maybe I got lucky.

The who copies who argument is getting a bit tired, isn't it ? Is OSX better than Vista as an operating system, no. Is Vista better than OSX as an operating system, no. They are both very good at what they do in different ways, which you either prefer or not.

Plus if you want VIsta to really fly, put it on a Macbook Pro.

[fryke]

Well, we're not completely objective here. So: "Is OSX better than Vista as an operating system?" - My answer is a very loud and clear *YES!* here. Plus: As what _else_ would we see it. The question almost implies that Vista is not generally viewed as an operating system. (j/k.)
But if you take _away_ 3rd party applications (plus 1st party apps not shipping as part of the OS), then I'd say that *VERY* clearly OS X is the much better operating system. "Depends on personal preferences?" Really? Who has the personal preference of an OS always getting in the way, using mushy eyecandy to cover the fact that the UI hasn't really been _improved_ any? (That was rhetorical, but I guess answers will appear nonetheless...)