“The highlight of opening night–OK, the only light–was the annual keynote presentation by Bill Gates and his team,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times. “The best part was a demonstration of Windows Vista, the next version of Windows, which Microsoft still says it will ship before the end of 2006. The audience in the standing-room-only auditorium was treated to a show of some features that hadn’t been previously demonstrated.”
Here’s an annotated blow-by-blow by Pogue:
• Transparent window edges. They’re cool, sure; but exactly how many times, in your work life, have you muttered, “Darn! If only I could see just the part of the background window that’s currently obscured by the 1/3-inch margin of the foreground window”?
• Widgets. It’s a lot like the Dashboard in Mac OS X (or the shareware Konfabulator that came before it), except that apparently, you can’t put the widgets anywhere on the screen you like.
• 3-D application switcher. It’s a lot like the Exposé feature in Mac OS X, except that you don’t get to see all of the windows simultaneously; you have to walk through them one at a time with the mouse or keyboard.
• Global, fast search. Vista can now find words in any of your files, quickly and easily, just like the Spotlight feature of Mac OS X.
• Photo organization. Vista’s couldn’t look more like Apple’s iPhoto program if you ran it through a copying machine.
“If I seem to be laying on the ‘stolen from Apple’ language a bit thick, you’re darned right. Ordinarily, I’m careful about making accusations like this, because I know I’ll get hammered by Apple bashers. But in this case, there’s not a shred of doubt: most of the features Microsoft demonstrated last night were pure, unadulterated ripoffs from Mac OS X. I could hear actual whispers of recognition from the audience around me,” Pogue writes. “Anyway, all of this will be nice to have, if it works and doesn’t require us all to buy new computers to run it. But I think that what most people want from the next Windows isn’t more stuff added, but rather stuff to be taken away–like crashes, lockups, viruses, error messages and security holes.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Whit” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: The fact — which is plainly obvious to anyone who’s used a Mac and Windows at any time in history (Classic Mac OS and now with Mac OS X) — is that Bill Gates and Microsoft are frauds, of course. And more and more people are finding it out with each passing day. People who only use Windows are as happy as pigs in you-know-what, which is a perfectly appropriate analogy; and, no, we’re not calling Windows-only sufferers outside of RealNetworks’ corner office “pigs,” we’re referring to the what-Windows-is portion of the analogy. Windows-only users will swoon for Vista, unless Apple finally decides to properly educate them first. Everyone else will continue to disdain Gates and Microsoft for being such rampant charlatans.
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Bill…have you no shame? No self-respect? Oh, that’s right, we knew you didn’t have these attributes way back when the Dead Sea was still only sick.
OH MY GOD, peoples eyes are finally opening……
MDN word Police
CAll the the police, a theif is in the house.
An addition to John’s post.
Windows VISTA
W hy
I ‘ll
N ever
D ileberatly
O wn
W indows
S ystems
V irus
I nfections
S pyware
T rojans
A dware
—————————————————————–
MAC OS X
M any
A pple
C omputers
O perating
S uccessfully
X traordinarily!
One of the PC’s here at the bank I work at is currently being hijacked by a virus and I can’t seem to figure it out. But, that’s another topic all together. But the person that uses that computer is obviously beyond frustration and is ready to throw it out into the street. I politely informed her that she should come upstairs and use my Mac if she wanted to get any serious work done because there were Zero viruses or spyware or any of that other crap on the MacOS. She had no idea and thought I was just pulling her leg. So, I had to reassure her that I was serious and she then proceeded to ask me a million questions about Macs. This is of course for her was after she had spent about 15 hours last weekend debugging her computer at home too! She may be a potential switcher.
And to top it off, her brother-in-law is a manager of an IT consulting firm in the town over from us, and he couldn’t figure out what was completely wrong with her computer at home.
Oh yeah. I believe it.
Many, many Windows people think that all there is is Windows, and it’s the best. Period.
And if Apple doesn’t get off it’s duff and advertise OS X, when Vista does come out, these Windows Weenies will think that Microsoft invented all these features and Apple copied them
Can’t say that I care for the NYT, but this writer is right on the money.
Glad to see Apple get some good press!
So say we all!
Hey, Mr. Pogue, I am not a crook, oh, that’s right, that’s what Nixon said, man, I can’t even come up with original fight back words…
Rip Off or Knock Off
Average Windoze users will still want
MORE of
Steve Jobs knew it when he introduced Tiger as a preview of LONGHORN VISTA…
It’s not just Windows. People used to think that Microsoft was all there is. I got some web developers at one of my clients to download and try Firefox. They were really pro-Microsoft, but did it to humour me. Now they can’t stop raving about it, and regularly slag Microsoft products off. Google, Apple and Mozilla are between them hammering away at all the spin M$ has pushed over the majority of computer users’ eyes.
Those cracks in Redmond are appearing on all sides. Their best developers are leaving, and their customers aren’t just searching alternatives, but finding them.
Sell MSFT. Microsoft will half in value if Vista doesn’t take off.
Microsoft has some great ads. Their product may not be the best but you can’t tell that from the ads. Apple, on the other hand, has great products but NO ads. What is the guy on the street going to do?
Ads work, so he’s going to buy MS. Pity.
MW-waiting–as in waiting for some Apple ads.
That’s the point MacDoctor… people don’t think Windows is ‘the best’, they just think everything else must be just as bad as Windows…
Time for Apple to advertise, quoting Pogue if necessary.. no crashes, no viruses, minimal maintenance, maximum usefulness.
Time for Windows and Mycrowsoft to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Frauds they are indeed.
Pogue mentions Stacking as an example of something original from MS, but although I haven’t seen any images of it, wasn’t that something they dreamt up at Sun with their 3D-project for a new GUI to their OS? Project Looking Glass – you can read more about it here:
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
So, what they haven’t copied from Apple, they may have found elsewhere…
Did Bill wear a white t-shirt, black vest and a pair of jeans, too?
rstrb8r
Did the applications freeze up during the presentation? Was it attacked by a trojan before it ended? Sadly enough, you know most people will ooh and ahh over these ‘new’ features and not care where they came from…
Microsoft…when you care enough to steal the very best.
Patience my friends, you think Steve hasn’t got the next year planned, squillions to promote the mac, just buy the shares now, I feel a split will happen in February. The better mousetrap is only a few days away.
Thanks to Mr Pogue, we need a lot more honest words like his.
Get ready, it’s gonna be a great ride.
OS X had those YEARS ago and Apple removed them… because they sucked!
Here M$, you can have this feature!
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I’ll wait to see what MS actually ships before passing judgment.
Steve does keynotes on what Apple has today. Bill does keynotes on what MS hopes to have a year from now. BIG difference.
“Time for Windows and Mycrowsoft to be consigned to the dustbin of history.”
One great way to the dustbin is to promise the Holy Grail, then utterly fail to deliver. MS is consigning itself.
Enjoy Vista now, windows fans, ’cause that’s all you’re gonna get for a loooooooong time!
Pogue just pwned Gates.
“Steve does keynotes on what Apple has today. Bill does keynotes on what MS hopes to have a year from now. BIG difference.”
Except for the 2000 keynote, when he previewed OS X a year early!
Byte magazine said it best well over a decade ago, “If you want to see what a PC will be like a decade from now look at a Macintosh today.” (or something extremely close to that)
I don’t have the copy in front of me. Anyone have an exact copy of the quote?
MACDUDE……good one!!!
Bill Gates can go to hell
And they called them innovative?
Innovation by copying?
Through out the computers history, we can clearly see that there is alwasys the one who innovate, and the rest are just simply following.
Proud to say that, Apple is always innovate, and the rest is just copying.
MISCROSOFT, SIMPLY COPIED
The sad thing is that all those Windows users out there are going to believe that Microsoft actually invented these things… They won’t even know that Apple was there years ahead.
When was it that Apple had the banners that said “Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers.” ? Was it this time last year?