“It’s widely agreed that columnist Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal is the ‘dean’ of tech journalists. He’s been at it as long as anyone, and his reviews merit serious attention from almost every corner of the industry. He’s even among the few on Apple’s preferred lists of journalists to get an early look at their new products. That’s why Mossberg, David Pogue and a handful of others manage to get those stories out sometimes before the new Apple gear goes on sale,” Gene Steinberg writes for TechNightOwl.
“When it comes to Mossberg, one of the reasons he’s earned special attention is the result of the calm, even-handed approach he takes in his reviews. It doesn’t hurt that he works for the most respected financial newspaper on the planet,” Steinberg writes. “So you can expect that when he wrote his review of Windows 7, people took notice. When he said that Windows, at long last, comes especially close to the Mac OS in terms of performance, features and reliability, certainly you have to consider what he says seriously.”
Steinberg writes, “On the other hand, nobody is infallible… I am extremely disappointed with the way Mossberg handled this particular piece, and it’s not because I’m a Mac user and consider Microsoft products mostly second rate. When you look behind the conclusions and examine the facts, you wonder if Mossberg isn’t seriously understating his conclusions and the distinctions he found between the two operating systems… This isn’t the first time Mossberg has been a little too enthusiastic about a Microsoft release. You see… he also raved in a similar fashion about Windows Vista back in 2007.”
Full article here.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune (crediting reader Jon T. of Cardiff, Wales) on two quotes from Mossberg’s Windows Vista and Windows 7 reviews:
“After months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced.” — Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18, 2007
“After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced.” — Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 2009
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Windows rots. And we don’t just mean that’s inferior to our Macs, but that also over time, in the hands of everyday users, it clogs up, slows down, and generally deteriorates. Let’s give Windows 7 the time it needs for its inherent issues to begin showing up.
I used vista, I have windows 7.
I see no difference in performance.
Why would I?
All windows seven is is cleaned up vista-not groundbbreaking new tech, same guts as vista.
New OS-same problems(registry, bloat, etc.)
All of this Walt bashing is revealing a bit of the mob mentality that Apple acolytes are all-to-often accused of. We could use a few more boring, level-headed comments here to balance things out.
I can understand how a Mac-savvy reviewer provided with the (then) latest hardware running a clean install of Vista might think it was a more complete OS than XP. Many of the problems with Vista had more to do with upgrades and widespread deployment, aspects that Walt is not in a position to judge.
Most reviewers also consider 7 to be clearly better than Vista, so I have no problem with him there either.
Of course, as a Mac user since 1984 I find his minimal qualitative differentiation between 7 and Snow Leopard to be disappointing, but I honestly haven’t had any experience with either, so it is difficult for me to get all worked up about it.
I see no reason to change my personal policy regarding IT investment (all Apple), but that doesn’t prevent me from looking forward to learning more about 7 on our next wave of corporate machinery. Until then, I am just happy that my new corporate laptop (running XP) is so much snappier than my old one. Yes, I’d much rather be on a new MBP, but that is not an option at my company, so I can appreciate a new E4300. That doesn’t make me a bad person, and Walt being able to find things that he likes about 7 doesn’t make him a bad person either.
Windoze Seven is just a paid service pack for Windoze Vista. It’s still the same old crack whore under it’s skirt. She may have had some liposuction, got a new wardrobe and been to the dentist, but it’s old and tired and probably sick to boot.
(Take That Paul TurdRot)
If someone will fix the Flash Crash issues in 10.6x we’ll all be happy with the best OS for the most people on the planet.
Saying such-and-such version is the “best Windows they’ve ever produced” is another way of saying it’s less crappy than before.
I think Mossberg is overplaying the “fair and balanced” thing because he doesn’t want to lose Windows readers, but you don’t have to be especially clever to read between the lines with statements like that.
What’s good (and interesting) about this review is that he’s saying — in NO uncertain terms, mainly to Windows-using readers — that Mac OS X *was better than Vista and still is better than Win 7.*
Finally, as for WSJ being “the most respected,” I suppose that’s still true in that limited field, but frankly since Murdoch bought it (and perhaps before that) it’s been sliding downhill. You want SERIOUS financial news, you want the Financial Times out of London.