“Vista is a perfectly respectable new iteration of Windows. They’ve even, finally, come up with a decent way to make laptops sleep and wake up again, which XP was never very good at. The fact that it took Microsoft over five years and $6 billion dollars to create Vista is — and I mean this quite seriously — an embarrassment to the good name of American innovation, but it’s perfectly fine,” Lev Grossman reports for TIME Magazine.
Grossman writess, “Two closing thoughts. One, there’s a lot of functionality built into Vista — look at the photo editor, which is integrated with the operating system and which works like a stripped-down version of the already-stripped-down Photoshop Elements. Isn’t that the kind of anti-competitive integration that got Microsoft into anti-trust court last time around? (Not that they ever left: they’re facing hundred-million Euro fines in Europe as we speak.)”
“And two, Vista’s real test won’t be some reviewer checking off features in his lonely office. It will come when millions of Vista users make their way out into the deep waters of the greater Internet ecology, where legions of Internet-based criminals will start banging away on its security features, looking for a way to fool it, break it or hijack it. Translucent borders are all well and good, but out there in the jungle, no one cares how pretty you are,” Grossman reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Vista is a perfectly respectable new iteration of Windows.” Nothing like clearing the bar of no expectations, huh? Microsoft and innovation do not mix. Luckily for the good name of “American innovation,” that Apple’s actually doing it – as usual – instead of wasting time and money playing office politics and doing nothing in their cubicles all day except BS’ing and complaining about towels.
Related articles:
Microsoft: Vista’s ‘speech recognition’ can be hijacked so that PC tells itself to delete files – February 01, 2007
Windows honcho Allchin retires from Microsoft on Vista launch day; now free to buy his Mac – February 01, 2007
No midnight lines for Microsoft’s badly faked Apple Mac OS this time – January 30, 2007
A picture paints a thousand words: Some ‘wow’ for Microsoft’s Windows Vista – January 30, 2007
Bill Gates lists Microsoft ‘innovations’ that Apple has offered Mac users for years – January 30, 2007
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007
Those unfamiliar with Apple’s Mac OS X may be impressed with Windows Vista – January 29, 2007
Digit: ‘Microsoft’s Windows Vista may be the best reason yet to buy an Apple Mac’ – January 29, 2007
Pioneer Press: Windows Vista shows ‘Apple is an innovation engine; Microsoft, not so much’ – January 29, 2007
Windows Vista disappoints, so get a Mac – January 29, 2007
Analyst: Microsoft’s Windows Vista could be an opportunity for Apple – January 26, 2007
CNET Reviews Windows Vista: Is that all? Clunky and not very intuitive vs. Mac OS X; warmed-over XP – January 24, 2007
Security firm: 38-percent of malware already Windows Vista-compatible – January 22, 2007
Mossberg: Microsoft’s Windows Vista offers lesser imitations of Apple’s Mac OS X features – January 18, 2007
Windows Vista disappointment drives longtime ‘Microsoft apologist’ to Apple’s Mac OS X – January 17, 2007
InformationWeek Review: Apple’s Mac OS X shines in comparison with Microsoft’s Windows Vista – January 06, 2007
NY Times’ Pogue reviews Microsoft’s Windows Vista: ‘Looks, Locks, Lacks’ – December 14, 2006
Forbes: Microsoft Windows Vista boss suffers from Mac envy – December 12, 2006
Windows chief Allchin 2004 email: I’d buy a Mac if I didn’t work for Microsoft – December 11, 2006
Unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista, Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard will create no new jobs – December 12, 2006
15-year Windows vet tries Apple Mac: ‘My God! This is amazing!’ – December 04, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: obsolete on arrival? – December 04, 2006
InformationWeek: Now that Vista is the past, let’s look at the future: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard – December 02, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Office 2007 releases generate yawns – December 02, 2006
Dave Winer: ‘Microsoft isn’t an innovator, and never was – they are always playing catch-up’ – December 01, 2006
Harvard Medical School CIO picks Mac OS X over Linux and Windows – November 30, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista vulnerable to malware from 2004 – November 30, 2006
Microsoft Windows Vista developers used Apple Macs for inspiration – November 27, 2006
Apple Macs can run more software than Windows PCs – October 30, 2006
Microsoft’s Windows Vista is basically Microsoft’s version of Mac OS 9.3 – October 11, 2006
Top Windows developer dumps Microsoft’s ‘pile of crap’ for Apple’s Mac OS X – September 12, 2006
$399 for Windows Vista Ultimate?! (Hint: Get a Mac) – August 29, 2006
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006
Microsoft Windows Vista: If you can’t innovate… try to impersonate Apple’s Mac OS X – August 10, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006
Microsoft botches another copy job: Windows Vista Flip3D vs. Apple Mac OS X Exposé – June 26, 2006
Windows Vista rips-off Mac OS X at great hardware cost (and Apple gains in the end) – June 13, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Thurrott: Microsoft going to get eaten alive over Windows Vista’s resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – March 09, 2006
NY Times’ Pogue on Gates’ CES demo: Most of Vista features unadulterated ripoffs from Apple Mac OS X – January 05, 2006
Thurrott: many of Windows Vista’s upcoming features appeared first in Apple’s Mac OS X – September 26, 2005
PC World: Microsoft innovation – an oxymoron – September 14, 2005
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
That’s just not fair. Microsoft innovates all the time. Like for example…..
Um…
Er…
Well sometimes Microsoft Bob was kind of funny.
BAM!!!finally…
someone has the courage to put into print what everyone has known all along.
…. waiting for Zune Tang’s take on this one…….
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Developers, developers, dev….WTF?!
WTF?
The new vista photo program is tied into the operating system.
You mean you can’t remove it without harming the operating system like MS does with their browser?
That makes no sense.
if true, then it is just stupid.
— an embarrassment to the good name of American innovation,
That wins the ‘Understatement of the Year’ award.
Microsoft.
Your Innovation. our Photocopier.
Reminds me of an episode of NewsRadio where Bill receives a review that calls him adequate and he endlessly spins it so that adequate is the ultimate anyone could possible aim for.
New from Microsoft: Windows Vista – it’s “Perfectly Fine”.
I’ve wondered when then question of the anti-competitive monopoly tie-in of the Vista Photo program would come up
That’s an out right business killer for many software companies out there.
Microsoft has to innovate a lot…
It takes quite a lot of innovation to get away with stealing,
every…
single…
time…
, and fool the public that they created it themselves.
That’s were all the billions went, they had to come up with new ideas on how to sell a bad copy of yesterday’s Mac OS as tomorrows'”new” shiny cool (sarcasm) Microsoft Windows. So while the marketing department is loaded with cash, the actual developers were probably underpaid and rioting (how otherwise can one build such a big pile of DRM crap).
MDN magic word: directly, as in, they should be directly banned from selling it.
To all the fools buying it: have fun with all the DRM. I wonder how long it is going to take for the web to be flooded with complaints (class-action lawsuits), as Windows starts block legitamet software or content. Any OS that serves the industry while disadvantages its user should be left alone. In fact, perhaps the industry should be paying users to install it. That would probably be the only way of driving adaption of this rather vile, poorly engineered, loathsome, obnoxious, and pathetic product of Bill’s uninmaginative mind.
Give it a break, guys. The vast majority of computer users can be quite satisfied with “a much improved version of Windows”. Especially if it is significantly more secure than their previous version. When you are used to all the boiled potatoes you can eat, a BK Broiler is a huge upgrade. We Mac users have been spoiled and we should spend more time being grateful for that and less time sneering at the peasants. Be happy for them, their lives have just gotten noticeably better – and yours haven’t, not quite yet. So, take your Big Mac with fries over to your corner and watch silently as they learn to enjoy something better for a change. In a month or two we’ll be blowing this joint for a sit-down restaurant with real waiters.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
We could have Sly Stallone as Rocky doing an ad for Vista.
Hey! Youse guys. Vista is perfectly fine. Like, its ok…know what I mean?
Won’t do youse no harm. Doan worry bout it. Its almost as pretty as my Mac.
Current OSX on the Apple site is $149US for single use, $249US for the ‘family’ pack. Full version. No reduced functionality to confuse consumers. I guess Microsoft forgot to copy that bit!
Good Job.
Gates and Ballmer will be gone from Microsoft within 18 months. The heat on them is going to be unbearable. They can’t go on lying like thay do and be able to sleep at night.
perfectly fine=adequate=barely suitable!
But Microsoft DOES innovate!! Why is everybody else so blind to this!? Name me one other company that made a monkey into their CEO and taught him to say ‘developers’. That’s what I thought. There….innovation.
Lev Grossman really blew it. TIME is an embarrassment to the good name of American journalism. Et tu, Grossman?
How can so many people get it wrong? How pervasive is Apple’s FUD machine? All I ask is Apple play fair. Microsoft would never stoop so low as to manipulate the media in Cupertino’s typically underhanded way. Microsoft has the guts to put Vista out there on its own merits which include innumerable innovations that will be revealed over time. Microsoft is the master of subtlety: Vista’s magnificence will reveal itself over time. The “Wow” is now and forever. Cupertino, start your copiers.
Innovator and visionary Bill Gates’ genuine and electrifying enthusiasm for Redmond’s latest dazzling iteration of Windows in each brilliant interview this past week lets you know Microsoft has a lot of vitality left. I say they’re only getting started. The forces are all coming into alignment: xBox, Zune, and now, Vista.
Your potential. Our passion.
Ballmer is Apple’s most useful ally.
Let the man stay on forever.
Macaday,
They’ve done it for two and a half decades now, I don’t know why it would be any harder for them now then it has been before… That’s really part of the problem.
I think the real question is when are the consumers of pcs that won’t run OS X going to get sick and tired of the same-ole same-ole from MS? I keep hoping that one of these decades there will be a massive shift of public opinion about MS, accompanied by an actual shift in the pc market place. We’re now into the second mature generation, and the third up and coming generation of potential pc buyers, and thanks to the iPod, just about everyone on the planet has now heard of Apple Inc.
Its getting to be a kind of delayed earthquake scenario – The longer MS goes relatively unchallenged, the bigger and faster this hoped-for market shift will inevitably be.
Zune Tang:
Bravo!
I think, more than anything else I’ve read, your statement illustrates why Microsoft is where it is today (and why it will continue on its current course).
Surely without the leadership of Gates and Ballmer, MicroSoft would never have had a chance to claim the space it occupies within the hearts and minds of millions of computer users around the world. I’m talking about the users who spend countless hours with their computers, and come to know what MicroSoft excellence really means.
~M
The requirements said Windows Vista or better, so I bought a Mac
Worth repeating:
Microsoft: Your rut. Our revenue stream.
I wonder if MS would have been a better group of companies if the DOJ had grown a pair and broken them up? We’ll never know.
Zune Tang said…
“The forces are all coming into alignment: xBox, Zune, and now, Vista.”
I think he meant…
The forces are all coming into alignment: xBox, Vista, Peristaltic rush, then…. Zune.
Microsoft.
We are so full of innovation, we could just squirt.
Lev is bang on the button when he says – “What truly makes a great user interface is an ineffable internal logic, a set of consistent internal rules that one absorbs without their having to be stated…”
Apple understand the “interface” between the user and the computer interface, because they understand and have attained the ‘Ness.
Apple Dictionary Ineffable = indescribable, inexpressible, beyond words, beyond description, begging description; indefinable, unutterable, untold, unimaginable; overwhelming, breathtaking, awesome, marvelous, wonderful, staggering, amazing.
If that aint the ‘Ness I’m lost.
Lev mentions the photo editor …”which is integrated with the operating system and which works like a stripped-down version of the already-stripped-down Photoshop Elements.”
Photoshop Elements might be stripped down but IMHO it’s much better for it, most of the time, in the domestic world
Talking about PICS
I am shameless.
Mozfan, you made me spray coffee all over my screen. Brilliant!
Hmmmmm. I liked the article.
“Vista is a better OS than XP … except that it doesen’t… or…… or……”
“Funtionality is in Vista. Look at the photo editor, which is integrated with the operating system and which works like a stripped-down version of the already-stripped-down Photoshop Elements.”
In other words,it has this neat feature, that is not very good and even less good than some other crap… LOL I love it.
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Why is a PC users idea of better, just better than the last piece of crap I was using?????
N.