CNET has a video online that shows Microsoft’s Windows Vista beta 2 release, including Widgets, er… “Gadgets,” Spotlight, er… “Search,” Exposé, er… “some sort of Aqua, er… Aero Glass ‘parade’ effect, annoying, intrusive, and constantly-in-your-face “User Account Protection” dialog boxes, and how Microsoft has automated the task of finding a device driver on a Windows Vista system. Be still our hearts.
See Microsoft’s Windows Vista beta 2 release in action here.
MacDailyNews Take: What we can’t figure out is why it’s taking Microsoft so long to ship this unimpressive warmed-over version of Windows XP. They’re probably waiting to see what’s revealed at WWDC like the rest of us.
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Yea, I agree with Mike… I was gonna comment on the need to search for drivers too… how amusing. And pop-ups? My, my, this will annoy users so much. But will they defect to Apple? Ha, that’s the $64K question.
If anything, this is another repeat of history… no doubt all the Windows users will be lovin’ it, and say how great things are (just like they did with Win 95), and Mac users will be left with the (up to) 10% market they’ve pretty much always had.
Split Enz were wrong. History DOES repeat.
All Vista looks to me is like XP but with a re-designed gui.
Nothing new and nothing innovative.
The stacking windows thing just wont work – compare it to Exposé and you will soon realise why Apple patented Exposé so thorughly.
What happens when you have 30 of 40 windows open???
Are you gonna scroll through EVRY BLOODY window to get to the one you want?
Nope.
I can see most windows users turning off that function.
ha ha OS X is toast. those aero glass effects kick ass. sayonara, apple.LOL
MMMMMM that is some mighty fine lipstick on that pig!!!
And as far as that marching parade of windows goes, doesn’t the apple button+ tab button do pretty much the same thing on a mac?
Is it just me or are windows videos always jerky and unresponsive. Quicktime is always smooth and I can drag the slider around reliably. Even after playing the cnet movie and expecting it to be cached it would not play smoothly.
Worth watching to see the search fail to find word. On my Mac searching for Word finds 3278 files, MS Word is 3rd on the list
kind:app word
puts it second and
kind:app “word”
puts it first
i wouldnt’ expect this board to be familiar with ‘drivers’ since there are only about 6 hardware devices for OSX and 20,000 for windows. so yeah, they have to be updated and searched for.
76 days until the preview of Leopard!
(Thank you Countdown widget!)
preview screen on the task bar – might help a little, but I don’t see how that is much faster than just opening the window and looking at it. Maybe if the Window switcher showed a preview of the window, you wouldn’t need the preview screen. Or, how about just use expose and see all the windows at once. Oh wait, they have Parade….
Parade – you can’t even see the whole window. How is it any different than the app switcher? It takes just as long, but you get to see a little bit more of the window. Given the choice between the two, it wouldn’t make any difference which one I used. Expose is at least a different way of switching apps/windows – you see them all at once and choose the one you want.
full screen transparent windows – Can you say unbelievably annoying. I was using GeekBind a while ago (still do occasionally) to make windows transparent, but it makes everything so hard to see, particularly when you get more than one window in a stack.
Tutorial show me how to – Don’t show me, just do it. I want my device to show up, I don’t want to learn how to set it up myself. Do it for me.
I’m going to feel incredibly sorry for anyone I see actually using that interface. If I ever have to use a Windows machine, I am going straight back to the Classic Windows 2000 interface.
Big friggin’ deal!
I have a new Macbook coming tomorrow! Windows SUCKS!
Windows free for 6 years and loving it!
The only thing I liked was the transparent/translucent windows. Which, I’m sure there’s a Mac equivalent already (WindowShade?). There rest was a blatant kype of OSX.
Where’s Ampar’s take? You always make me laugh…and then pee a little.
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Reason why this is a video??? Live presentations are way way way too risky.
Bill Gates: “MS latest OS Vista! – Copied, er I mean imitated, no no, evolved from…… gentlemen excuse me for a while, thanks”
30 minutes later……
Bill Gates: Ladies & Gentleman, MS Latest OS Vista. Our most ORIGINAL & Innovative OS ever. Setting a standard for other OS to follow………”.
—————————————-
Mecrow$oft – Always inspired by Apple
—————————————–
Bill: ” Hay monkey boy, did I get it right this time?”
Monkey Boy: ” Perfect, you should continue to brain wash 90% of the people that we are the one who came out with these ideas first.”
Monkey Boy: ” One thing you have forgotten to do, that is to jump and scream around on stage like me.”
————————————–
Vista – Photocopied from Tiger
————————————————
getting full 3d/translucent effects via yer video card in the OS UI
Mac OS X 10.3
starts you up and gets you running on all the devices you want
Mac OS 9
gadgets
those guys that came up with the Java applets/Mac OS X 10.4
All apps in a tree structure
Mac OS X 10.0
Type in a word, and the OS pulls up the app
Mac OS X 10.4
Aeroglass application switching effect
Mac OS X 10.3
Preview app windows in a small preview
Mac OS X 10.0
OS takes you around the computer and shows you how to do something by moving the mouse for you
Mac OS 8
User account protection
Mac OS X 10.0
A lot of PC users will go ga-ga over this. So let them. Who cares? As long as I’m using OS X and having a blast, what do I care if losers continue to use Windows?
The fact is, people ARE switching. We can’t help it if the bumblef***s like my mother-in-law who has no idea why when she types in google, a porn site comes up, can’t understand the reasons to. And the ultra Gates geeks who love to endlessly tinker with BIOS settings, or whatever the hell those idiots mess with, let them ooh and ahh over their Vista. It doesn’t change the fact that Apple IS continuing to make computers, continuing to make OS X, and making nice bank doing it. As long as some people keep switching, we keep buying, then we’re all good.
“Once markets are mature and established nothing but an outside 3rd force (govt. intervention, new market changing technology) can alter them. Microsoft has 95% of the market; Apple 3%.
It will be nearly the same 5 years from now.”
What do you guys keep comparing OS % of sales. Apple is a hardware company and makes over 90 % from hardware sales.
Applel is the third largest PC hardware vendor in the US. Only behind Dell and HP. All under 20% of the market. Apple market share is growing every quarter, Dell and Apple are the only profitable hardware vendors.
BTW almost 20% of web users are from a Apple. Opps your 3% is only worldwide OS purchases per year.
what a joke. Its like a rip off of OSX
The only reason it doesn’t look like the crappy Windows is cause they copied Mac.
I feel like I wanna be the kid in class that stands up and says, “That’s no fair! He cheated off my idea!”
This was expected by all Mac users. Come on! Since Apple created the first personal computer, Microsoft has played copycat. That is what Microsoft does best! Period! I don’t think anyone, including I, would expect anything less from such an “ordinary company.” 2004 was the year I decided to do something different and I stopped using Windows and began using Mac OS X. The rest is history. I am sure Windows users did not like hearing CNET compare there new Dull Boxes to Macs. But the truth sometimes hurts.
That area windows thing looks cool, but it probably isn’t as easy to use as expose’. Windows people will love it.
Viruses will plague Vista.
I remember when Microsoft first put up it’s Vista site showcasing all these “new” features, I had a good laugh showing my girlfriend “hey look at this..oh wait OSX has that but better, hey what about this “amazing”…oh wait OSX again” showing her as I went along. Normally she gets sick of my computer talk, but even she had a good laugh at this, while we were both surprised that it was such a blatant ripoff. (well, actually sadly, I wasn’t all that surprised). Now I’m sure my PC loving broher will be blown away by Vista, and he’ll tell me all about it, so I’ll have to show him my sarcastic A-B as well. It really is hilarious when you make the comparison visually.
“and keep current mac owners from defecting to new vista.”
What do you take us for — brain-dead zombies?!!!??
If this brief public revelation of Vista was intended to highlight the most innovative, most important, or most awe inspiring features of Vista then all I can say is that Microsoft has exhausted half a decade and hundreds of thousands of hours to achieve little of significant originality or functionality. Microsoft’s mimicking of 10.4 seems stodgy and awkward without introducing any improved function or utility. Even the vaunted security features of Vista are criticized by its most loyal fans as being both inconvenient and obtrusive. I suspect that not only will Vista not be made significantly more secure, but it will be more frustrating to use and diminish individual productivity. Beta Vista is a mere shadow of the mythical cryptid Longhorn and any comparisons to OS X are shamelessly dishonest and deceitful. In spite of Microsoft’s faltering steps forward in OS development I believe that Microsoft’s advertising campaign for Vista will be a well-funded exercise of hype and hyperbole.
Watching Windows boot-up. There’s 5 minutes of my life I won’t get back.
It was like watching grass grow. Come to think of it, wasn’t that grass growing on the Windows desktop?
Oops! That was suppose to be posted in the other Windows story.
There goes another two minutes.