“After years and years of waiting, we finally have a reasonably stable Windows Vista beta build to work with. Windows Vista Beta 1 doesn’t feature many end user features per se, but it does include a nearly complete next-generation Windows shell, instant desktop search, a preliminary version of the new Aero user interface, and other useful functionality. For Windows enthusiasts, Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt,” Paul Thurrott writes for Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows. “For Mac OS X users, however, Windows Vista Beta 1 engenders a sense of déjà vu. Isn’t a lot of this stuff already in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?”
In part one of his comparison, Thurrott looks at:
• Look and Feel: “In short, though there are some bizarre inconsistencies in the Tiger UI, it is far more elegant looking than Aero in Windows Vista Beta 1. That makes sense, as Vista is still in a very early beta version and will likely be improved dramatically in future releases.”
• Desktop Search: “Overall, the search functionality in Windows Vista Beta 1 is very similar to Tiger’s Spotlight.”
• Data visualization and organization: “Even in this early Beta 1 release, Windows Vista far outstrips the data file visualization and organizational features in Mac OS X Tiger. It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with for Leopard, the next OS X release.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Comparing a beta version to a shipping product that won’t even be the shipping product (that’ll be Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) when Windows Vista ships is an interesting exercise. The two products likely won’t ever be competing against each other (unless Microsoft is early and Apple is late), but Thurrott’s comparison gives us a sense for where both Apple and Microsoft are today and where they might be heading with future OSes.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Thurrott: Apple Macs offer a safer computing experience than Microsoft Windows PCs – July 20, 2005
Thurrott on spyware: ‘we should have paid more attention to those Apple Switcher ads after all’ – July 08, 2005
Apple to unleash Leopard on Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn; Mac OS X 10.5 due late 2006 – early 2007 – June 07, 2005
Windows tech writer Thurrott: ‘In many ways, Mac OS X Tiger is simply better than Windows’ – May 07, 2005
Thurrott: ‘Longhorn is in complete disarray and in danger of collapsing under its own weight’ – April 27, 2005
Thurrott: Longhorn ‘has the makings of a train wreck’ – April 26, 2005
Thurrott: Longhorn demos ‘unimpressive, fall short of graphical excellence found today in Mac OS X’ – April 26, 2005
Ah, Mr. Thurrott we all know and love is back.
Anticipating many brand new Vista Viruses ASAP!
“Mommy, what is Data File Visualization and Organization?”
Is he talking about data files like documents and MP3s versus application files like mail.app? Okay, so the visualization and organization of those documents is better than in Tiger where smart folders can auto-build their content and I have thumbnails of images and can play music and video in the Finder? WOW! way to go MS, sounds like they’re on to something!
But I will have to see it to believe it…
And what about Spotlight? MS has gotten the same features in Vista? Is the author CERTAIN because where I read about vista, I don’t read about being able to have stuff like contextual spotlight help in the Tiger control panel that exposes the help system to spotlight and uses automator like workflows to the highlight which parts of control panel are applicable to what the user is typing AS THEY ARE TYPING!
Microsoft cannot innovate for feal of alienating their existing customer base and cannot coddle their existing customer base for fear of falling behind in innovation. Glad I own a Mac!
MDN: cut
oh, yikes, I’m like so scared of Windows… If Paul says that the Beta is worth a look I suppose we should all seriously consider why we are using such an underdog system.
Was M$ ever able to “churn out valuable Windows releases”?
MDN MW=”mass” Critical has been breached…
…”Even in this early Beta 1 release, Windows Vista far outstrips the data file visualization and organizational features in Mac OS X Tiger”…
This says it all, a very early Beta build is already outperforming the 5 year old Apple OS.
The MS developers are the real “Pro’s” when it comes to building a robust enterprise class OS. Apple is going to have a lot of catching up to do!
The soon to be released Windows Vista is going to be the most elegant and secure OS ever and the integration of digital assets into the daily productivity workflow of ‘all’ users is something Apple can only dream of achieving…
©
MDN, I hope you have an old Pentium II machine that you use just to go to Paulie’s site, so that his stats don’t show as many mac users. He doesn’t deserve to taint a Mac with his bile…
Microsoft have built their entire business on what is coming according to their beta releases. I’ll wait and read the reviews when if FINALLY ships, and then compare how it fares up against Tiger.
That is, if I haven’t died of old age.
Wow the trolls are out early.
in his article, thurott talks for a while about speculation, then sums up his arguement by saying that OS 10.4 has bizarre inconsistencies. He has not actually talked about what these inconsistencies are or why they are bizarre. can someone please tell me what he is talking about?
Time to change your nappies sputnik.
when vista is released you’ll see a lot of comparisons to tiger and anticipation for leopord. lets face it, that what the media did when tiger got released.
i think it’ll be interesting to see how many dells and compacts sell due to vista as they’ll have to jack their prices up to handle the ram and mhz requirements. i bet they’ll still offer xp units as the bate and hook, dells usual m. o.
time will only tell.
i can tall you right now, where i work, we’ll probably stay with xp for a long long time. i’m having a hard enough time getting bumped up to 512 ram just to run the amount of app i have to work with on a daily basis.
Well, i don’t understand. The Windows Fanatics (note: fanatism is not a very good thing, regardless which side are you) when hear something about Tiger featuring future Vista-features say:” don’t compare, Vista is still in beta stage”. But hey, now that Mr Thurrot made the comparision, all is fine. Oh well, i guess that’s the way it works.
Tiger, regardless who don’t want to understand, WILL NOT be Vista’s competitor. Period. Of Course, Mr Thurrot pronounced the name of the cat which is going to fight against the MS product. But well, he cannot compare one thing to another which still doesn’t exist.
About the fact that Apple, has not introduced more features than the ones announced in 2004, i can say that’s the way it works for Apple. These were the biggest stars in the product (and that is what Apple shows). The rest was under the hood work, which results (in my opinion) in the best Apple OS ever. Anyway, seems MS made some promises that later had to forget at some point (new file system,….). No word of it?. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and wait and see WHAT EXACTLY they fit into the final product.
Tiger certainly has some inconsistencies (see http://www.macintouch.com/tigerreview/tiger2.html). However, Windows has more than its share. Thurrott is really reaching if he is claiming that Windows has a more consistent interface.
Where Spotlight offers various ways to find-tune search results using groupings and sortings (Figure), Vista Beta 1 lets you fine-tune the search with various stackable filters (Figure). To get this kind of functionality in Tiger, you need to first create a Smart Folder, which provides the same kind of filtering (Figure).
What the hell is he talking about? Command-F in Finder does what he is talking about without creating a Smart Folder first. When someone misses functionality like this I can no longer rely on them for any sort of analysis.
As long as we are speculating about unreleased operating systems, I would like to speculate that OS 10.5 Leopard is going to be revolutionary in its extention of the Spotlight interface. I think that Apple has a lot of ideas that they are not ready to disclose yet that will make Vista look old before its time. I think that Apple will release the new version just before or just after Vista to make a point.
As long as we are speculating. ; )
Are there really Windows enthusiasts?
“Are there really Windows enthusiasts?”
Steve Ballmer seems way too enthusiatic to me.
Oh, you probably meant enthusiatic users. I don’t know any myself.
Thurrott talking about Vistas meta data search,
….In Tiger, there is no easy or obvious way to edit meta data for the documents and other data files you create, and you have to rely on document processing applications (such as Microsoft Word) to add and edit this information….
As in the Spotlight comments field in the ‘more info’ info window. Type in a phrase/word/client project/ whatever and Spotlight picks it up…
Is this the same or not?
I CAN’T WAIT. I WON’T WAIT. I WANT MY VISTA VIRUSES NOW! NOW, DAMNIT!!!
Sputnik
Thanks for the laugh !
The MS developers are the real “Pro’s” when it comes to building a robust enterprise class OS. Apple is going to have a lot of catching up to do!
Uh huh …. and all those viruses are “enterprise class” as well
They’ve taken all sort of of enterprises offline (13 plants of various car manufacturers, NC DMV, etc)
NONE of the Unix machines was affected and … oh my … the mac OS is also Unix … gee !!!!!!
Brought to you buy the MW Black … as in MS is fading to black
• Look and Feel: “In short, though there are some bizarre inconsistencies in the Tiger UI, it is far more elegant looking than Aero in Windows Vista Beta 1. That makes sense, as Vista is still in a very early beta version and will likely be improved dramatically in future releases.”
Really. And we know this how…?
• Desktop Search: “Overall, the search functionality in Windows Vista Beta 1 is very similar to Tiger’s Spotlight.”
Really. Wasn’t this cut from Windows not too long ago? Isn’t this really just a work-around search that they are calling “instant” search?
• Data visualization and organization: “Even in this early Beta 1 release, Windows Vista far outstrips the data file visualization and organizational features in Mac OS X Tiger. It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with for Leopard, the next OS X release.”
Really. Isn’t this all just a bunch of hand waving. Visualization is nothing more that ways of organizing data, and, oh yes, Steve says now you can just do a Spotlight search, and there is all your data in the results, catorgorize in any way you specify.
And, oh yes, since we are talking about software that is coming out in 2006 why don’t we just get the Leopard Beta that’s in Cupertino and go ahead and compare against an OS that is two more versions ahead of Vista.
Dvorak has gone and started showing some small measure of common sense, but a least Thurott is his usually moronic self; not everything has turned upside down.
Also, I would like to know how many Windows users use “obvious” ways of editing meta-data on their files. I guess I’m just too organized; I KNOW where I put stuff, so I don’t have to rely on meta-data to find it.
Thurrott back spreading disinformation again. Comparing what is the best and most technically adavanced OS (on the desktop) bar none with vaporware.
He’s just a shill for Microsoft. He has no independence and no integrity.
What’s he’s been doing recently is to try to set up a bogus reputation for fairness by knocking Microsoft a bit. No one is deceived. He’s a proven liar and we all knew it was just a set up for turning round and saying, “Well, now we have Vista it is the best thing since …” The fool is even saying it in advance.
The “review” is just a load of crap. Let him get on with his virus and spyware infested kiddy OS. He’s the one that’s got to use it.
Windows is consistent…
You can get viruses on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows Server 2003, Windows Tablet Edition, Pocket PC and, now, Windows Media portable media players.
You can’t get more consistent than that…
Data Visualization and Organisation on Windows… 200 icons on your Win Desktop, that will not change.
Fact is, Vista is very similar in features (as long as they are not vapor ware) to Tiger. But then, that is what Microsoft can do: Copy badly.
And what? Vista is an early beta? Whatever happened to Longhorn??? Early beta, my fanny!
“Bizarre inconsistencies” in Tiger means:
No easy way to find and launch apps. Dock is clunky, apps folder is hesitant and awkward, desktop icons is a pain, Finder means opening window after window after window followed by hierarchal navigation.
Windows Start menu is much better. Apple just doesn’t get it in this regard. If the BLUE APPLE ICON on top-right bar could perform the START function (recent items doesn’t cut it so don’t bring it up), we’d be in business. Ah hell, at least I finally got my freaking multi-function scroll mouse 50 years after the one-button mouse was conceived. Patience, patience…