# Reactions to Vista



## Lt Major Burns (Jul 29, 2005)

what are your reactions to Vista now we can see something a little more concrete, a little bit more like a finished OS. this will dominate the world for the next five years, so: thoughts, please!

my reactions are:  it does look powerful, a lot more like we want an OS to be.  yes it borrows a lot from MacOS, but seeing as this is the future we use, it was inevitable.  my hope is that the extra time it's taken to build Vista/longhorn may mean that the things like index search and smart/virtual folders will be better integrated and more logical than the (rushed, IMO) apple counterparts.


----------



## RGrphc2 (Jul 29, 2005)

M$ Can't seem to do anything original, IE 7 looks like firefox with a theme to it, the transparent windows have been around for a while for Windows XP, and now spotlight...jeez

~wanting to leave the world of MS and get a mac desktop to replace my dell~


----------



## Decado (Jul 29, 2005)

where do you find pictures of it?


----------



## fjdouse (Jul 29, 2005)

mmh..

Fascinating question, not sure what kind of answer you want from Mac fans but....

To me it looks like a lump of ****, a load of stolen ideas from Sun's JDS, Sun's Looking Glass, Mac OS X, KDE and cobbled together with the same old lack of innovation which plague all of Microsoft's Windows operating systems.

Uninspiring, uninteresting, bland, dull, grey, bloated and typically Microsoft.  That's what I honestly and truly, truly think. I thank God that I don't have to rely on it.   

I'll leave it to the secretaries and game kiddies that HAVE to use it to decide how good it is or whether it has any merits, but a lump of **** is what I will gladly and un-apologetically pre-judge it to be.


----------



## sirstaunch (Jul 29, 2005)

Decado said:
			
		

> where do you find pictures of it?



http://news.com.com/2300-1016_3-5805994-3.html

Looks like a hack has been put through the system appearance already


----------



## Mikuro (Jul 29, 2005)

Where is this concrete info to which you allude? Any links?



			
				sirstaunch said:
			
		

> http://news.com.com/2300-1016_3-5805994-3.html


The first picture on that site looms interesting. Are those dynamic folder icons? That's been talked about for years (and I listed it in the "What would you like to see in Leopard" thread). Dynamic folder icons that actually represent the folder's contents would be great. But I can't tell if that's what I'm looking at or if it's just a few pre-made icons like we've had since...well, always.

Aside from that, I see nothing interesting. It looks like MS is going to pile on even more needless glitz than Apple. *shrug* Apple tried the whole "translucent title bar" thing before; they rightly decided it was retarded after Jaguar.


The important thing to keep in mind is that Longhorn isn't really comparable to Tiger. People have been comparing it to every version of OS X since _Jaguar_. By the time it comes out, we'll be at least up to Leopard. That gives Apple plenty of time to refine Spotlight and Smart Folders. And call me crazy, but I really doubt MS will pull off a better implementation the first time around. That's just not the way they do things, historically.


----------



## MrNivit1 (Jul 29, 2005)

Mikuro said:
			
		

> The first picture on that site looms interesting. Are those dynamic folder icons? That's been talked about for years (and I listed it in the "What would you like to see in Leopard" thread). Dynamic folder icons that actually represent the folder's contents would be great. But I can't tell if that's what I'm looking at or if it's just a few pre-made icons like we've had since...well, always.



Dosen't look like dynamic folders, just the stock folder icons for the folders that would be the equivalent of what's in the users folder in OSX.


----------



## RGrphc2 (Jul 30, 2005)

> The Pictures and Video folder in Windows Vista contains new information about a picture, including the type of camera used and a user-assigned rating.




Uhm, doesn't iPhoto and iMovie do that already???  Correct me if i'm wrong about the iMovie doing that, i have NEVER imported movies onto my laptop, mainly because i have no movies, because i don't have a camcorder...yet


----------



## Lt Major Burns (Jul 30, 2005)

they are dynamic folders - folders and icons that show the actual contents of the file, not just a stock icon. but i would agree with you. macOS is just a much better way of doing things. the registry is still present in Vista


----------



## Satcomer (Jul 30, 2005)

It is the next version of NT with a pretty GUI theme. That is it!


----------



## Decado (Jul 30, 2005)

but what would happen if you filled up the folder with 10 or 100 objects? the icon would look very strange 
the sad part about the transparent windows is that they will probably be used as amunition when windows users want to take a stab at macosx (sorry for the incorrect mix of two metaphors).
sure, apple could do it, have done it, and is currently letting the user decide if they want to do it (terminal), but that wont help. people will se transparent windows in windows and then see heavy metal windows in osx and think that Windows have a lot lighter feel to it.
and if apple would implement transparent windows in Leopard it would seem like they were copying Windows.


----------



## RGrphc2 (Jul 30, 2005)

the transparent windows thing is pretty neat, but it's a plug-in for xp.

http://www.actualtools.com/transparentwindow/


----------



## fjdouse (Jul 30, 2005)

Transparent windows?  I can't believe people are hyping over windows which are only half visible.  I may be wrong but I'm sure I've seen transparent windows appear on my Mac before, not that I gave it much thought.


----------



## Mikuro (Jul 31, 2005)

I've hated window/menu transparency since day 1. It's a cool ability to have, but it absolutely should not be a common standard in the UI. There's no reason for my brower's toolbar to be semi-transparent; that's just silly, and slows things down. It doesn't matter if "we have the speed now"; no matter what system it's on, solid windows will be faster than semi-transparent ones. Even OS X's dynamic window shadows come at a definite price, which becomes painfully apparent if you have a ton of windows overlapping.

I miss the old static-UI days of platinum and....whatever the System 7 interface was called.

It will be interesting to see how MS's design philosophy will differ from Apple's. I've long criticized Apple for being a little too concerned with style at the cost of performance (animated progress bars being high on my list of pet peeves). Will MS be more conservative, or even wilder?


As for dynamic folder icons, I doubt the icon will show every single file inside the folder. Rather, I think it will (or at least should) analyze the contents of the folder and display a few icons representing the dominant types within. For example, a folder with 50 movies, 50 pictures, and 1 text file would probably just show a picture and a movie.

But who knows? There are many different ways you could go about designing such a system, and call me crazy, but I doubt MS will pick the best one.


----------



## sirstaunch (Jul 31, 2005)

Mikuro said:
			
		

> Where is this concrete info to which you allude? Any links?



Those images on that link I posted, just an XP task bar with a new appearance, mainly this one http://news.com.com/2300-1016_3-5805994-4.html


----------



## fjdouse (Jul 31, 2005)

It looks like a rip-off.  Also looks like the kind of dark style Apple have started using on their site.

I wish Microsoft would surprise me JUST ONCE by innovating instead of buying out others and ripping off ideas.  The only half decent product they've EVER made is Office for the Mac. Apart from that, they just turn out crap.


----------



## Shookster (Jul 31, 2005)

Ironically, the real innovators have ridiculously small incomes and market shares. Economic theory always assumes that consumers make rational decisions, which isn't always the safest assumption to make (especially not in this case).

I don't think Apple is particularly worried though. If Microsoft are copying Apple, then Apple will always have the upper hand as they will be the ones that always make the first move.


----------



## Qion (Aug 1, 2005)

Oof. Vista. I'm almost speechless.

I just don't understand MS's stand on either "innovation" or "design philosophy". I think the techs in the "design philosophy" department had one too many Hot Pockets. I don't see anything really new in this Vista system, besides an outrageously high amount of computing power needed to run it. (Even though the writer for the system requirments page acts like it could run on a Commodore)

Also, the "NEW SEARCH FEATURE!!!!!!!" is a blantant ripoff of Spotlight, which I find disgusting because they can't even come up with an original icon in the search menu. It's the Spotlight glass backwards. (Hell, it's even blue) 

MS is seriously disgusting me right now, as I have read every lacking page they have to offer on Vista, true to heart searching for something that's original and have found nothing. (And to think the PC users I know will be gloating about it to me.... excuse my hurling)

Edit: I did a small article about my thoughts on Longhorn about a week ago, and that is now the second article down on my homepage.


----------



## fjdouse (Aug 1, 2005)

Actually, in a conversation I had earlier, I asked someone what their thoughts were about Vista, the reply was the best so far..

"One word.  Nausea."

Qion, like your site, but a GUI runs on an OS, not vice versa


----------



## Lt Major Burns (Aug 1, 2005)

the windows search icon is a magnifying glass. so is the spotlight logo. this is because it is, graphically, the easiest way to describe search. microsoft have always used magnifying glasses, as have apple.


----------



## Qion (Aug 1, 2005)

fjdouse said:
			
		

> Actually, in a conversation I had earlier, I asked someone what their thoughts were about Vista, the reply was the best so far..
> 
> "One word.  Nausea."
> 
> Qion, like your site, but a GUI runs on an OS, not vice versa



I know this well, fjdouse. Did I make a gramatical error in my article? I can't find one.... unless you're talking about "The way that the OS looks can be described as being like flowing through water." And even with this statement, I clearly said "that the OS looks". Hmm....


----------

