OS X Vs. Vista — In Spandex

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK compares Vista Vs. Apple OS X in a Romeo and Juliet, spandex-wearing, Shakespearean English style. Two guys dress up as their favorite operating system and fight with swords, guns, and fists, while a third guy, dressed as a woman, awaits the winner. 'Usability - Act 3, Scene 2: Swords clash, sparks fly and men grunt, but the showdown ends in stalemate ... [Vista] has a far better user interface than XP -- the file and application search facility is vastly improved and the cascading Start menu has been banished, but it only takes a few moments of use to discover pointless idiosyncrasies. Microsoft constantly reminds us of how great Flip 3D is, but this feature doesn't help us find the right application window much faster than Alt-Tab did. It's very time consuming when you have many application windows to flip through, and it's in no way as efficient as OS X's Exposé feature ... We're calling this one a draw. They're just as good as each other, and in some cases just as bad -- a pox upon both your houses! Score: Mac OS X - 2, Windows Vista - 2'"

Win2K had better searching than XP.

[by Anonymous Coward]

[Vista] has a far better user interface than XP -- the file and application search facility is vastly improved and the cascading Start menu has been banished, but it only takes a few moments of use to discover pointless idiosyncrasies.

XP's searching capabilities are shite compared to Windows 2000. What the hell is up with that stupid dog image when using the XP search? So it's better to compare Vista's searching with that of Windows 2000. At least then you're comparing Vista's capabilities against something that's usable.

Same with the Start menu. It's really simple and sensible under Windows 2000. But then XP came along and made it really awkward to use. So again, don't compare against XP, since it was a step backwards. Compare against Windows 2000!

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[Cygfrydd (957180)]

You are, of course, given the option of turning off the animated character and enabling advanced search behaviour, which makes for a far more 2k-like experience.

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[by Anonymous Coward]

He shouldn't have to turn it off. It just shouldn't be there in the first place!

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[Cygfrydd (957180)]

To be quite honest, I would argue that Windows shouldn't be there in the first place. 3... 2... 1...

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[R.Mo_Robert (737913)]

I happen to like XP's Start menu a lot better than 2000's, particularly the list of the most frequently used applications. (Yes, I know you can put stuff at the top level of the old Start menu ... but not automatically--and there are no shortage of applications that abuse this privilege. XP intentionally doesn't let programs do this on the new Start menu. Plus, XP's Start menu provides easier access to My Computer, Network Places, and all that jazz without having to dig out the desktop.)

That, and you can go back to the Windows 2000-style Start menu anyway if you like in XP In fact, I think I could do that in the Visa beta I tried, unless my memory is just failing. Either way, I wouldn't call XP's Start menu "awkward."

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[bussdriver (620565)]

>I tried, unless my memory is just failing.

Thats ok, my memory failed to contain Vista as well.

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[xlsior (524145)]

I wouldn't call XP's Start menu "awkward."

It all depends on how you use the OS -- as someone who pretty much lives by keyboard shortcuts over the point & click stuff, I find the default XP start menu extremely awkward simply because it's two-column design is near impossible to navigate with the keyboard. You can't easily switch between the columns, since half the options expand into submenu's instead. Luckily one can still switch to the classic mode to make it usable again.

As far as 'Win2K had better searching than XP' is concerned: the old-style Win2000 search ability is still present in XP as well, but it does require some magic to get back. You can also speed up the XP search tremendously by some registry tweaks preventing it from looking inside of zip files.

(Kind of ironic though, that to make the OS usable, step #1 is to turn off all the 'enhancements')

Who knew

[commodoresloat (172735)]

That it would take XP and Vista for people to understand that Windows 2000 was "simple and sensible."

Re Searching in Windows sucks any way you slice it

[Jahz (831343)]

There is so much discussion about Windows 2000/XP/Vista searching here... but they all three really suck! Windows Vista sometimes wont even find "easy to locate" files when I search for them by name AND its painfully slow. Its really quite pathetic! I run Vista, Ubuntu Linux and Mac OSX. Anybody who uses all three would definitely rank them from best to worst as OSX, Linux, Windows. OSX takes the cake because it has Spotlight, Locate, Find and Grep.

My grandmother could work Spotlight. Its fast, accurate and searches for files based on content and name at once. Its availible at the flick of your wrist and does pretty well. Though, personally I prefer Quicksilver to spotlight because I usually just search by filename and its *instant*. There are also smart folders that you can set up for searches that are done really often.

Linux comes in second to OSX only because OSX *includes* all the nifty decades-old command line tools that Linux has. The command line utilities are not for everyone... but if you know what you're doing, you can find anything quickly. Locate will instantly find anything that has been on your computer for about a day (usually). For newer stuff, its useless. Find (find / -name blah.txt) is about as fast as Windows search and much more flexible. Then you have recursive grep for locating instances of some term inside arbitrary files.

Now Windows: After using the above platforms, searching on Windows is just painful. Sometimes it finds what I was looking for... but it can be quicker to just mount my windows drive on my Mac and do it from there :)

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[MobyDisk (75490)]

What you say has a technical basis: The XP search is a step back from what Windows 2000 offered. In Windows XP, suppose you have a text file name read.me containing "Hello World" in it. Do a search for *.me containing "hello" and you will find nothing. This is because the .me extension does not have a shell search object assocated with it, so XP won't open it. Windows 2000 would do what a normal tool does: open any arbitrary file, determine the encoding, and search it. This mis-feature makes the XP search useless, which has created a small market for free and cheap search tools.

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[phozz bare (720522)]

Yes, but it doesn't just pop away. No no. It licks itself, barks, wags its @*#!ing tail and walks away into the sunset, taking its time... Ah, those little things that can drive a man insane...

Re:Win2K had better searching than XP.

[StarfishOne (756076)]

And let us not forget that this is man's best friend! Just imagine what would happen if mankind had any affection for say, ehm, paperclips! :D

No three way stand off?

[Hennell (1005107)]

And yet again poor old linux if left alone in the corner with only a lute for company..

---
At what point can you call a spade a shovel?
---

Linux v Vista has already been done

[MarkByers (770551)]

Ubuntu vs Vista was on the front page yesterday:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/27/ 1337246 [slashdot.org]

Re:No three way stand off?

[D-Cypell (446534)]

Richard Stallman offered to fight provided that his team be referred to as GNU/Linux but this idea was abandoned shortly after he donned the Spandex.

What?!

[Yvan256 (722131)]

it's in no way as efficient as OS X's Exposé feature ... We're calling this one a draw.

If one is "no way as efficient" as the other, how can it be a draw?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

If one is "no way as efficient" as the other, how can it be a draw?

Because of the three paragraphs between "it's in no way as efficient as OS X's Exposé feature" and "We're calling this one a draw."

Re:What?!

[MouseR (3264)]

The entire article is bullcrap. It goes on to decide a draw based on Vista's and it's app's crashyness and the featureless aspect of OSX's Front Row application.

That's complete nonsense.

Re:

[gumbi west (610122)]

I agree. My reading of the above writeup appears to be, "evidence: Vista is better than XP in some ways and not as good as OS X in some ways. Conclusion: Tie between OS X and Vista." Am I missing something?

C|NET maintains status-quo

[bill_mcgonigle (4333)]

Am I missing something?

Microsoft buys more ads than Apple at C|NET?

Actually, it's more complex that that - C|NET can't go recommending OSX over Vista, even if they want to.

They depend on people thinking they're in-touch, relevant, right, have some foresight, etc. If they truly love the Mac (and it appears they do), let's think about what would happen if they recommended OSX over Vista. First, 5 years from now, I don't expect OSX to have over 50% marketshare in the commercial PC OS space. So, Vista will be what more people use. If C|NET starts recommending OSX, people will start to think that nobody listens to their recommendations, that they pick the wrong racehorses, that they don't 'get' what their readership wants [to hear], and that's going to affect their bottom line. Part of this is recognition that even with their industry presence, they don't have enough power to influence something this big.

But declaring a tie -- that's the strongest possible recommendation C|NET can give to OSX and by using their prose to point out its advantages, while ignoring them in the executive summary - read between the lines. Just don't expect to find what you're looking for on the lines.

Re:What?!

[hxnwix (652290)]

It's political.

Just like, "McCain voted for torture and lives in a self-manufactured reality, but Edwards got a haircut ... We're calling this one a draw."

Delete Key

[stewbacca (1033764)]

Why can't you delete a file in OS X with the delete key? Because you need to use a modifier key (in this case, the command key) so as not to inadvertently delete items. Anytime you make a critical key stroke (such as deleting), a modifier key should be used to avoid unintended consequences. What happens if the user isn't paying attention and they hit the delete key to remove a string of text, but actually where clicked on an important document? With the command key, the USER is telling the system that he or she REALLY wants to do something. It is simply sound interface design...something PC people never seem to understand, as they continually pound the "del" key on a Mac, then bitch that their Windows-centric mentality doesn't work on a Mac. This goes for nearly EVERY niggling complaint I've ever heard from a PC user about Macs...."Why doesn't this thing do it like Windows???"...um, because it is decidedly NOT Windows.

Re:Delete Key

[by Anonymous Coward]

You dolt, that's because Windows users have to constantly delete spyware and other junk files. Remember to consider the context first.

Re:Delete Key

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that makes sense. The PC people should pick up on these little usability things and put the eject button directly next to the power button, which doesn't require holding the command key to turn the machine off. Or they could have you eject by deleting the drive. That makes perfect sense. Or, even better, don't put an eject button anywhere and only have an eject button on the keyboard. That's exactly where I'd expect to find it. Opening the drive when it doesn't have media in it should be a scavenger hunt!

Just because you happen to be used to the stupid idiosyncracies in the Mac interface doesn't mean that the Mac method is in any way better.

Re:

[earnest murderer (888716)]

You left out the part where pressing the eject button isn't enough, you have to hold it. Nor the fact that most of these shortcuts are so numerous and obscure that you may as well just print them out and tape them to your display rather than try to memorize them.

And don't get me started with iTunes, a media player that doesn't even let you adjust the brightness when watching a movie. Oh you get a ten band equalizer with 20 some odd presets, a "preamp" and volume leveling. But if your movie is too dark you'v

Re:Delete Key

[Tickletaint (1088359)]

The reason iTunes is shit is, quite frankly—and I'm sure I'll be modded down by offended PC users—because Apple has had to cater to you troglodytes ever since 2003, which is when iTunes was first released for Windows. Every other iApp has advanced by leaps and bounds in the interim. iTunes is the only one that hasn't been retooled in Cocoa, for example, since that would make cross-platform development (in the literal-minded sense) more difficult.

It's sad to see things get to the point where you PC users are retarding progress not only on your own platform, as has been the case for decades, but now for us Mac users as well.

Re:Delete Key

[stewbacca (1033764)]

I love it! iTunes is an insanely successful program. The PC crowd just can't stand the fact that Apple makes good stuff. To some extent, iTunes on my PC can be a resource hog, but this is hardly Apple's fault. Afterall, the Mac version has been nearly flawless in every iteration for years now. I'm still waiting for boolean searches, but each new version of iTunes is awesome.

Every PC zealot I know will claim some other jukebox software is somehow superior, yet everyone I try is trash. For average consumers, iTunes + music store has NO competition...period.

Maybe you anti iTunes guys should try it on a Mac for a month, and your opinions might change.

Re:Delete Key

[Coryoth (254751)]

What happens if the user isn't paying attention and they hit the delete key to remove a string of text, but actually where clicked on an important document?

Then the document ends up in the "Recycle Bin"/"Trash"/Whatever-you-call-it and the user can easily recover the file. I actually think GNOME handles this quite nicely. If you hit delete it simply gets sent to the Trash, and you can quickly recover it when you spot your mistake. There is also a modifier key version (shift-delete) which lets you by pass the Trash and permanently delete a file -- the brings up a warning dialog about permanent deletion of course. Seems to elegantly combine the best of both approaches to me.

Re:Delete Key

[by Anonymous Coward]

So you mean precisely in the same way that Windows does it.

Re:

[oyenstikker (536040)]

"What happens if the user isn't paying attention and they[sic] . . ."

. . .hits the gas on his car instead of the brake and drives through a building?
. . .sets the toaster to dark and burns his toast?
. . .holds his knife by the wrong end and cuts his hand off?
. . .hits the hang up button on his phone instead of the answer button, and hangs up on his mother?
. . .sets the pressure on his compressor to 120psi and breaks his 90psi impact wrench?

When you use your things wrong, things break. That is what happens.

O

Re:

[stewbacca (1033764)]

And this is why the science of UI is so important. Users WILL make mistakes. Why is everyone so quick to blame the user? To the UI designer, this is like blaming the customer. If the users are making mistakes, it is the UI designer's job to make mistakes less likely, or less damaging when they do happen. Based on the posts so far, most of you don't understand this, which also explains the lax attitude and willingness to accept such poor UI choices from Microsoft the past 10 years.

Re:

[bob.appleyard (1030756)]

O.T.P.S: When did people start replacing "his" with "their" and proceed to screw up all the verb conjugation? Is it an attempt at political correctness?

1400s at the latest. Chaucer did it, for instance. It's intended to describe a set of people of unknown gender and number. The number may be one. So it isn't really a replacement.

I am somewhat amused at your query, though. There appears to be the tacit assumption that girls aren't supposed to use computers. Which, I'm afraid, isn't very politically correct (or accurate).

Re:Delete Key

[gobbo (567674)]

As is "their"--look up the word "they" in the dictionary, you lexically challenged quasi-grammarian.

Control + Click for contextual menus.

[stewbacca (1033764)]

since the command key is so overused (thank you, unimouse),

Sorry to address the same post a second time, but I have to correct more misinformation. Again, the 1-button mouse argument hasn't been relevant since the mid 90s. Even if you have a one button Mac mouse, it isn't the command key that is used to access contextual menus. For that, you can either click and hold for a moment, or hold down the CONTROL key (not the command). Therefore, there is no risk, since the control key is used much less than t

Re:Delete Key

[Divebus (860563)]

Right after they stole everything from Xerox and co.

Here we go again... Apple was given the technology by Xerox and Apple hired some of the design team from PARC. Xerox actually invested in Apple and invited them to view their work on the GUI. Xerox wanted out of the computer business which is why they didn't think these inventions (which created the modern personal computer) had value. They gave this stuff away. HP had the same shortsighted issues with Steve Wozniak's silly little machine. Xerox didn't sue Apple over the GUI stuff until it looked like they could benefit from the Apple-Microsoft "Look and Feel" suit. Nothing came of that. The only reason Xerox went into the computer business is because IBM started making copiers. Xerox Corporate wasn't serious about it and dumped everything shortly before the Mac came out. It was Microsoft who plain flat stole it from Xerox or Apple or whoever.

Re:Delete Key

[stewbacca (1033764)]

Well my "ghetto" consists of other educational technology specialists, many of whom have written books, all of whom have published works and ALL of whom who recognize the importance of Apple Human Interface Design guidelines. If it is so outdated, then why then, do the majority of professionals in my field use it as THE authoratative reference? Why do such mundane items like cash registers and ATM machines refer to it? Why did every graduate level course I took in System Design require this document? In Tom Kelley's book The Art of Innovation (2001), he references Apple's innovation 11 times. Microsoft is mentioned once, and even then, it mentions Microsoft Word for the Macintosh. To deny Apple's continuing innovation in the field of personal computing while simultaneously lauding Microsoft, shows a stunning lack of historical perspective.

When there is a devoted science to UI, backed by years of academic research, it cracks me up to see every random hack on slashdot claim they know what is better. Why should anyone listen to some 20-year-old slashdot "power user" that has spent half their life meddling in MS operating systems?

Unlike your cirlces, I LIKE my cult of well paid educational technologists. We speak of what we know, not what we think.

Forged from Linux?

[Shaiken (743878)]

Count OS X, by comparison, is counting on his few enemies to see him through. His armour is forged from the fires of Linux, which he hopes will keep him safe from the common viruses that plague the land.

Clueless reporters. They're either unable to clearcly express that OS X is a unix-like system _like_ linux, or they simply don't know. My money is on number two.

Re:Forged from Linux?

[lawpoop (604919)]

Even better -- his armor was forged by the fires of the BSD daemon!

bad facts

[jcgf (688310)]

Count OS X, by comparison, is counting on his few enemies to see him through. His armour is forged from the fires of Linux , which he hopes will keep him safe from the common viruses that plague the land.

Everyone knows OS X is derived from Mach and BSD and has nothing to do with Linux. But then anyone who would consider Vista equal to it probably spent more time dressing up and playing with swords than reviewing the products anyways.

The summary is misleading

[Dr. Eggman (932300)]

What should have been a quote from a specific part of the article, is actually summarized in a way that indicates it was an end result. The actual article affords Vista the victory. But, maybe the article should have stopped at a tie, it seems Vista won because Mac OS has less standard acceptance and because Greenpeace declaired PC's to be more green than Macs.

Fitts' Law

[Egotistical Rant (42993)]

Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls?

It's called "FItts' Law." The edge-of-screen menu is a much easier target to access. This has been covered to death before. Who wrote this article? A million monkeys with typewriters?

Re:

[egomaniac (105476)]

Indeed. Before I switched to Macs, I assumed that (after ten years of exclusive Windows use) the single menu bar at the top of the screen would be annoying. It was annoying for maybe ten minutes, and then it felt completely natural -- and now when I have to use Windows, I find the Windows mechanism far more annoying.

They're basically complaining "But... but... we're used to the way Windows does it!". It really isn't at all hard to get used to, and once you're used to it I don't see a downside to the Mac

Re:Fitts' Law

[taradfong (311185)]

Also means less real estate is wasted having menus on each window.

On the other hand, on my 30" monitor I now find the menu is now often ridiculously far away from the window I'm working in.

What's the the wo .. man?

[signore pablo (544088)]

What's it say about these guys if they can't find a real woman to play the part of the woman? ;P

Initial Setup/Installation- MAC kills Vista

[TibbonZero (571809)]

Today, I had to get a new Mac Mini. Turning it on and getting to the desktop took all of 3 minutes. I had it updated, and configured to my liking in about 45 minutes (most of which was taken up downloading a ton of updates, as his Mini had been on the shelf for a while at CompUSA.

In contrast, a few weeks ago I was working for a company that needed a new laptop. The laptop we got was very similar to the Mini I purchased today. Intel Core 2 Duo, and it actually had much more memory stock in it (still need to crack open the Mini and upgrade to 2GB). It took a full 45 minutes to get Vista to boot for the first time. Between just getting the software updated (which was a super painfully slow process in comparison), it took over 3 hours to get it even usable, let alone the hour it took to install Microsoft Office 2007, and then update it. Then it took another few hours to figure out how to Vista actually, well, less like Vista. This was some Acer laptop BTW.

I liked Windows XP in comparison a lot, and still think that Windows 2000 was super-stable in comparison to XP. I still haven't figured out what Vista does for the end-user that XP doesn't do- asides from being a PITA and making you purchase new hardware. In fact, I'm going to do a Bootcamp install of XP in a few minutes.

Bitch-o-meter should judge

[edwardpickman (965122)]

The real issue is user complaints not head on comparisons. Most people aren't objective in head on comparisons so they tend to be more about reviewers preference than which is a superior OS. There have been significant customer complaints about Vista where as few if any about Leopard. It's impossible to tell until the final release but all looks good for OSX Leopard. In comparison people are more and more comparing Vista to ME. What other standard is there than customer satisfaction? Comparing the OSs is completely pointless. It'd make more sense comparing OSX and Linux. Vista isn't all bad I'm sure but it's hardly all good. The very fact large numbers of users especially businesses are resisting the shift to Vista and plan to use XP as long as possible is a bad sign. I think you'll find no resistence to Leopard. Which is better will be argued until the next Microsoft OS is released when the arguments will begin anew. The real decider is who is happiest. The vast majority of Mac users are happy where as Vista users seem on the whole very unhappy. You decide.

Re:Performance = Compatibility?

[zappepcs (820751)]

I believe you are hitting a sore point for many. The tireless ability of people to call MS products the 'standard' that all other products should emulate is, in a word, tiring.

Even if you invent something better than Windows it will still be compared to Windows and declared lame because it isn't Windows. This is what Apple and the Linux distributions are up against. As pointed out, it's arguably fair to say that Vista isn't the best product that MS has ever rolled out, yet it's the new 'standard' that people will use.

Reviewers shouldn't be comparing OSs head to head. They should be comparing them to a neutral set of standards that judge ease of use, performance, stability etc. If the top score possible on such a test is 10, and Vista only gets an 8 it is no longer 'the' standard, at which point people can make the decision for themselves. If both Apple and Microsoft only get an 8, then the choice between them is one of taste, not perceived performance.

In that vein, if a Linux distro only got a 6, well, it lets the community in general know what to fix next.

Re:

[Holmwood (899130)]

To a degree, but the more interesting argument was that new hardware tends to be released with windows drivers first. Apple also doesn't offer anywhere near the range of choice in (say) powerful video cards.

Finally, next generation video cards are being designed for ... yes... DirectX10, and, ultimately, Vista. It's conceivable that Apple will persuade AMD or NVidia to design for some next-generation Apple video standard, but it doesn't seem likely.

I find all that persuasive. What I didn't find persuasive w

I use XP in Win2k legacy mode

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

... and I bet I'm not the only one.

I find the XP level of eye candy pointless and destracting. More sugar coated pixels in Vista are unlikely to be a Good Thing.

Re:The reason MacOS X lost

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Actually the Vista dude would have a chaperone too.

"You are attempting to take off her bra. Cancel or Allow?"