“The last thing I wanted to do upon returning from Alaska was rip Windows Vista ‘Ultimate’ a new one. I also don’t want to go through my list of Vista UI nitpicks, as several of them still have not been addressed – and likely never will be. Even after installing RC1, I find myself feeling… disappointed and dejected,” Chris Pirillo blogs.
MacDailyNews Note: Chris Pirillo is the founder of Lockergnome. He spent two years hosting the TechTV (now known as G4) television program Call for Help before parting ways from the company. He also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon on TechTV.
Pirillo writes, “Sadly, the first release candidate for Windows Vista feels more like an alpha to me (or early beta, at best). I’m not talking about performance issues, which will most likely be improved upon before this OS goes gold. No, it’s all about a cohesive user experience / user interface for me. Vista fails on most UI fronts. It doesn’t look or behave similarly across any part of the operating system. Even more sad? That’s by design, folks.”
“Vista is schizophrenic, and that disorder has been further enabled by the range of vigilante software development teams who are providing code to the core without cross-checking with other teams for UI consistency,” Pirillo writes. “If OS X had a decent desktop PIM, I think Vista would push me to switch.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “AWidgetIHaveNot” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Chris, you’re not switching because of a PIM?! Two words: Stockholm Syndrome.
And, for Jobs sake, will someone please tell us which version of Microsoft Windows wasn’t “disappointing, schizophrenic, disordered, inconsistent, and sad?” Even Paul Thurrott, Windows fanboy extraordinaire, who’s lately been desperately looking for a way, any way, to get his “SuperSite for Windows” visitors excited about this lump of manure about to be excreted by Microsoft describes Windows Vista RC1 user interface examples as “stupid, stupid, stupid” and asks his patchers, “Does Microsoft want Apple to make it look silly again?”
Why the disappointment exactly? If you keep waiting for Microsoft to finally copy the Mac even remotely successfully, you’ll never, ever Get a Mac.
Macintosh. Because life’s too short.
Related articles:
$399 for Windows Vista Ultimate?! (Hint: Get a Mac) – August 29, 2006
The Age: Switch to Apple Mac; just say no to Microsoft Windows – August 15, 2006
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006
PC World writer’s advice for Microsoft: ‘Stop making crap’ – July 27, 2006
Microsoft about to lose the software business just as IBM lost the PC business in ‘80s – July 26, 2006
Microsoft in decline – July 13, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Pirillo critiques Windows Vista with long lists of mistakes – May 30, 2006
What’s the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X – March 22, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
Get your Outlook info off your PC and onto your Mac – March 05, 2003
In all fairness, many people simply pay attention to other things. Tech, for most people is a nuisance, so they’ve built lives that minimize tech usage. However, younger people embrace tech, and they’re moving to Apple very quickly in some areas, it seems.
It will take some advertising money, but I think it’s really a matter of time. As more Macs get out there, their exposure grows. And if Apple keeps playing its cards well and new iPods are as sweet as people hope they are, our lil’ company is gonna’ e’splode!
MDN “law,” as in M$ fought the law and M$ won.
Does he need POM too? PIM POM…
Where is my iPhone? I need iPhone now!
R just nailed it.
If I bought 10,000 shares of Apple today at $71.20, I’m spending $710,200. How many people do YOU know that can just pony up that kind of coin? No wonder people hate the rich.
There are standalone PIMs… think Palm Desktop (Claris Organizer), Entourage, Now Up-to-Date, etc. … and there are networkable/shareable PIMs, like Outlook. I think THAT is what the writer means. Lots of businesses use Outlook as the backbone of day to day office computing and without that kind of functionality, it becomes difficult to make a complete switch.
Like it or not, and Stockholm Syndrome aside, he does have a point. And whether the point is real or imagined, it’s still there. It’s the same thing we are all witnessing with the PPC to Intel processor switch. Somehow, Macs are suddenly a real choice, the are suddenly real, simply because they now use Intel processors, even though little else has changed for Mac OS X or the Macintosh platform.
As others have noted, Windows has become a state of mind… nothing else exists or is even possible. They fear change because they see and can comprehend no other state of being but Windows.
Poor Bastards!
Okay, silly me… Now Up-to-Date IS networkable.
ACT (Symantec) is another one, and for business, is FAR SUPERIOR to NOW.
Oops I forgot.
No more ACT for Mac.
But another great one, that I WISH was OSX compatabile- Lotus Notes.
Real time networkable.
Does Entourage connect to Exchange or Domino?
Chris it’s time to switch, PIM or no PIM. OSX is simply a better operating system and you have already admitted that.
First: I anticipate additional integration in Leopard that will bring iCal, Address Book and Mail closer to what he’s looking for as a PIM.
Second: he wasn’t disappointed by the earlier Betas … they were just Betas! But, this is a Release Candidate. THIS should have all the major screw-ups cleared away. You look at the Betas and notice that it doesn’t look ‘unified’ so someone who GAF picks one look/style and tells everybody to toe the line. It may well be too late to fix it now, it wasn’t earlier. Apparently anybody with any clout is in DILLIGAF mode – and/or is clueless regarding GUI design. Most likely ‘and’.
IF after all Apple has done to try to remove barriers for Windows users to switch, these people insist on being stubborn, then they deserve this stinkin pile of manure they are about to get served.
Suck it Stockholm Syndrome boys.
MW ‘truth’
That’s news to me. Most people who’ve used RC1 is pretty impressed by it – myself included. It’s certainly no Release Candidate, IMO, but it’s good. (One reviewer even said now they are starting to see the OS’s potential.) It seems you all went straight for the handful of bad reviews instead of mentioning the many good ones.
I guess, since I only have to manage myself, with no inter-office/business scheduling, iCal and Mail work just fine for me. It’s kind of hard to understand everyone else’s reliance and obsession with PIMs. But that’s just me. Prior to OS X Apple didn’t do anything at all, but they seem to be making both programs incrementally better, each release. Perhaps one day they will equal Entourage in the respects that people expect and want; at least I hope they will. I may not need it, but apparently others do, and it would be a shame for that to be the reason they don’t switch.
lets be real…outlook is awful.
UK Jim, yes, Entourage connects to Exchange. Does pretty well, though the lack of complete functional integration [Outlook polling, true Microsoft Project capability] leads one to Parallels [in my case] or Boot Camp on occasion.
Entourage is not bad, though I still prefer Mail for my personal mail and Entourage still suffers from occasional db integrity problems when its db gets large.
If I bought 10,000 shares of Apple today at $71.20, I’m spending $710,200. How many people do YOU know that can just pony up that kind of coin?
Millions of Nigerians. Do what they do, and send emails to people so stupid they don’t know that Apple makes the iPod. You’ll be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
I have to say: When Vista comes out, sadly no more switchers will come.
That OS, apart from being an almost complete copy of OS X, is at least 50 times better than XP, so no more!
john – Chris it’s time to switch, PIM or no PIM. OSX is simply a better operating system and you have already admitted that.
Actually Chris has been covering the Mac since before OSX was a public beta. He bought a Mac laptop 5 or 6 years ago and used it in his Lockergnome articles. Lockergnome even runs (ran) a Mac newsletter and forums. The one thing he hasn’t done is drink the Kool aid, he still looks at both platforms objectively.
Err MLM? Which planet did you say you were from?
Vista is going to be a pile of sh*t forever. If it isn’t half decent now, then 3 years won’t fix it. People will have moved on by then.
DW – No good reviews in this one, but Thorrot said good things about it and it was repeated here a week or so ago. Most PC users will be happy with Vista because they’re happy with Windows. The Stockholm Syndrome is the closest I can come to an explanation.
Microsoft’s problem is its corporate culture, and that is next to impossible to change without a wholesale cleansing of the upper ranks. Microsoft’s culture has never been about innovation, despite what they might tell you. Microsoft’s S.O.P. is to wait for someone else to innovate, copy the innovation, out-market and out-price the original innovator, then lock the customers in.
This goes right back to their earliest origins. Microsoft’s very first product was Microsoft BASIC, a version of the popular public-domain language. They didn’t invent it, but they knew how to market it to business. They also made proprietary changes to their BASIC, ensuring that once a business had critical applications written in this language, they could not easily switch to a competitor’s version.
Microsoft now finds itself in a situation where their usual bag of tricks is failing them, where copying and marketing isn’t enough. They have to innovate. And they don’t know how to innovate.
Windows’ time is over. It will take decades to go away, but its marketshare has peaked. It’s all downhill from here. If Microsoft doesn’t completely reinvent itself, it faces a long, slow slide into irrelevancy.
“But another great one, that I WISH was OSX compatabile- Lotus Notes.”
It is.
Uh, the US has been around long before Microsoft and will doubtless outlive it. Microsoft’s problems are not the U.S’s writ large. Microsoft’s problems are those typical of any big company that is a victim of its own success. Think about it. Once you lose your hunger, you get fat and lazy and then you’re just resting on your laurels. Companies since the beginning of the Industrial Age have made the same mistakes.
Microsoft is failing not because of the lack of smart people, but rather institutional inertia. Come on, guys. How many of you work at large companies? Apparently not many. If you did, you’d recognize just how helpless most of the smart people are in the organization. They have to go through this channel, talk to these people, then push it up the chain, then convince those people, and on and on. The organizational structure of most businesses simply stifles innovation and prevents quick action — the two things necessary for a company to keep succeeding.
LordRobin,
Its market share has peaked?
Of course it’s peaked; they have 95% of the market. The only way they could grow is if ALL other OSes just vanished.
The sad thing is that the day this goes gold and ships it will immediately have the second highest market share, pushing OS X and all flavors of Linux down a market share ranking notch.
And if it’s good enough it’ll be number one in a couple years or so. PC’s are still cheaper. Even if the Dull workstation is a little more than the MacPro. Most people aren’t buying $3000.00 computers, they are buying $300.00 ones.
As I’ve stated before; they want a monitor, keyboard, mouse, more RAM, printer, years supply of ink, a ream of paper and a Hawaiian cruise with a coupon for a trip to the Moon base when it opens. Plus they can play Doom a year and a half before we can. And sad but true…they get it. The mini just can’t compete with these people in its lone shoe box for $599.