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381 Comments
- pr3d4t0r, on 10/12/2007, -38/+141I'm a Mac dev (at WWDC) and even I am getting tired of the nanny nanny boo boo mentality.
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -29/+112I personally found nothing wrong with what Apple is doing by jabbing at Microsoft about Vista.
This is just nonsense trash-talk between two giant corporations that both know that nothing will come about it. There won't be any lawsuits over "look-and-feel" or anything like that. These two companies are WAY past that. They are both older and wiser, and any trash talk between these former nemeses is just talk... a joke, practically.
Bear in mind what Steve said in the conference... there are 1000 Apple engineers attending the WWDC this year. If anything, the jabs at Microsoft are for their benefit, not meant as a battle cry against Microsoft, like all you people are interpreting it. These Mac OS X engineers deserve a morale boost, and deserve to know that the work that they do is worthwhile... and like they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Make nothing of it. Apple hardly ever talks about Vista, and when they do, it was for comic relief, not serious bashing... you guys need a better sense of humor. - TGMD, on 10/12/2007, -74/+147He may be a Microsoft bigot but he has some good points, it's about time someone calls apple on their *****.
- chrisgeleven, on 10/12/2007, -21/+80He's got Time Machine all wrong:
1) System Restore is not even remotely close to Time Machine. System Restore allows you to meerly move your system back to an earlier date on the OS/Software side. You can't selectively restore, it does not back up any of your documents/files, and in my experience, hardly ever works.
2) That's nice and swell that Microsoft had Volume Shadow Copy in Windows Server 2003. Oh wait, what is that keyword? SERVER. Meaning no consumer got close to that feature. Meaning that feature had an interface that only an admin could figure out and realistically use.
3) While I haven't used Vista, I have seen nothing about support for application history like Time Machine has. Show me the demo of Outlook being able to unerase a contact from 5 days ago and we can talk.
To me the killer feature of TIme Machine is the ability for a normal every day user to do backups without worrying about it. Then when they do need to retrieve a file, they have an interface that allows them to visualize what they are doing. Apple identified a major area marketing point here and they appear to have nailed the feature, assuming it works as the demo shows.
The only thing Time Machine does not protect against is fire taking out your computer and external hard drive. - Grub, on 10/12/2007, -28/+80@hidebehind
the point of the article wasnt that people copy stuff and impliment other ppls ideas, but rather that when Microsoft does it, Apple makes a ***** fit of it. Now that Apple does it, its "innovating" - Gardenhead, on 10/12/2007, -13/+46I feel like Apple actually snipes a lot of the 3rd party developer's projects and integrates them into the OS, rather than Windows projects. It's like free R&D from people whose trust you've gained.
I feel things like Spaces and Time Machine take ideas that have been around forever and just implement them on an OS level. There will always be room for a 3rd party to fill in the gaps to whatever Apple missed, I suppose. - himey, on 10/12/2007, -7/+40Actually Xerox came up with the first GUI in PARC....Apple was the first to commercialize it. Not trying to nitpick....Just sayin'
- Phatt138, on 10/12/2007, -18/+48Despite hating all the talk of 'fanboys' as a new and relatively infatuated Apple user, it is truly ridiculous to blatantly mock the company's largest and most successful competitor. Not only does it contribute to the smug, holier-than-thou Apple user image, it also makes Jobs look positively obsessed with Microsoft. I mean, I'm sure he IS, but they have a great image as an 'independent' company...no need to stoop to those levels. Makes him look like an angry child.
- kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+33Who cares who copies who. Honestly, as long as the best of the features survive, better for the consumer.
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -17/+43Grub... i didn't see a ***** fit over "copying." If Apple was really serious about taking Microsoft to task about Vista, they'd take them to court, but this is just trash-talk. Harmless.
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -7/+32To be fair, Thurrott has favorably reviewed Mac OS X Tiger, and in a lot of cases, his articles on Vista point out the very same fact that a lot of Vista is "borrowed" heavily from Mac OS X. For the early betas of Vista, you get the sense that he wants to like Vista badly, but because of a lot of reasons, he doesn't fawn over it, and thinks it needs a lot of work.
He's probably got a slant one way or another, but he can be fair. - BenClueless, on 10/12/2007, -9/+33Redmond talks, Cupertino ships.
- Jeffrey903, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27He does make some good points, but I still think that Microsoft is going about a lot of the stuff they do all wrong.
The biggest problem that I see can be summarized like this:
Windows Starter 2007
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic N
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Business N
Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows Vista Ultimate
Here is the Mac version of that:
Mac OS X Leopard
Mac OS X Leopard Server
If Microsoft just released Windows Vista (the equivelant to their Ultimate), and then a server version, and then to comply with EU law (only because it's the law), a version for Europe without WMP (or how about if the computer is told that it is in Europe, it automatically disables it?) - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -6/+26Time Machine looks like it is a take on VCS, but goes beyond it because it provides APIs for applications to back up and roll back their own databases. An application like Delicious Library, for example, could add Time Machine support so that a user can roll back and version control the addition of DVDs to his shelf.
As this is a developer conference, I'd say that's the more interesting part about Time Machine... not the file saving part, but the power handed to the app developer. - prax, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26Spaces.. yawn. Maybe a lot of people will like it. I've tried virtual desktop apps before and while it sounds nice in practice I can't get into it. Expose, I use. Often.
Time Machine.. Wow. Backin' up for everybody. Maybe, finally, regular joe will back up.
But.. this was the most disappointing keynote from Jobs that I've ever seen. Once we get closer to "Spring 2007" we'll hear more about those "top secret" Leopard features. - defectDS, on 10/12/2007, -11/+29Interesting points, but would it kill you to just use a period after sentences?
- sshack, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19This so reminds me of middle school girls.
Jen: "Becky is such a copycat. She copies everything I do. But you know what? I don't care about her"
kristy: "uh huh."
Jen" let me tell you what becky did, she is such a little bitch. She was flirting with kevin.."
Apple is in this guys head. and no matter what this guy says, it's clear he's envious of their success and mindshare. - gitarrenspieler, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26They won't take Microsoft to court because there is nothing to take them to court for. Apple is just executing a Public Relations maneuver. Apple is trying to get people to feel that they are the innovators, what they do is the original, the best, and those no good Redmond copy cats are just trying to make money off of their ideas. Apple is just trying to make Microsoft look bad, and make Apple look good.
The truth of the matter is, all companies copy ideas. It makes products better. Apple sees that Microsoft has made a feature that works well and that consumers like, so they implement it in their own product. Microsoft sees that Apple has made a feature that works well and that consumers like, so they do likewise.
That's why I have absolutely no problem with companies "copying" one another. I wish people and companies would stop whining about it.
It's called a free market. It's called competition. It's how capitalism works. Get used to it. - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18@estvir
No... Time Machine is more than "Previous Versions."
Vista's Previous Versions is a file system extension that allows for versioning of files like Time machine, but its limited to just the file system.
Time Machine can do that, but also version and index in *Applications* as well. A photo library application like iPhoto keeps its photo library in a database file, but also stores the images in a location. Deleting a photo album from iPhoto results in the database file being updated, and the photo files deleted from the file system. Previous Versions does not deal with the loss of information in the application's database.
Time Machine provides an API that allows developers to make their apps versioned. To the end user, its more useful than Previous Versions because its not limited to just the file system... most of the time, users will be working within an application, not directly on files in the FS. - Jeffrey903, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17But why not just make the Ultimate edition like $149 upgrade or $249 new and then allow people to disable the features that they don't want? Why make it so complicated for the end user with 8 different versions (pretty much 4 or 5 though usable for people in the US - but still).
Microsoft did such a great job with the Xbox 360. How can they be so bad with Vista? - bloqmon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16do0m3? I hope you're kidding with the vaporware comment because last time I checked, Vista is seeming more and more like vaporware with all the delays and Apple actually ships on time and rarely drops features.
- prax, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21I used to live/breath/exist in the Microsoft camp. Can't go into more details than that. Then I bought a Mac (two years ago). Woooooweeee! Yeah, yeah, Ubuntu is nice too. But OSX is what Ubuntu wishes it was. Er, that is, except for it being open source, etc. Which is a big, huge bonus. In the end though, at this time, unless you're a broke student OSX is where ya need to be. Ubuntu is gaining on 'em though.
Thurott was writing for attention. Yeah, Spaces is a yawner. So is Spotlight 1.1 and Mail 3.0 but.. however, when the OS is this good, Apple can't constantly announce drastically amazing new features for it. - omaryak, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Spaces will be very useful for me because it will eliminate the need for multiple monitors to keep track of multiple projects. Time Machine will save me from the times I accidentally click "save" instead of "save as" (something Windows System Restore can't do). And unlike third-party apps, Apple's implementation works out of the box. Apple's focus on design and end user ease of use make any feature, even if borrowed, an improvement over the original (unlike Microsoft, which at the moment is in catch-up mode and ends up feeling like a cheap copy, right down to the inferior ClearType display when compared to PDF).
When I switched to Mac this time last year, I paid close attention to the WWDC Keynote and made a conscious decision to adopt Tiger at that time, knowing that it would have Longhorn's features before it was annoucned as Vista, and by the time Vista came out Leopard would be there to surpass its features. Even without the "top secret" features that weren't discussed, I am highly excited about the user experience Leopard will have to offer, right down to the notes feature in Mail. I'm glad I became a Mac user, and I haven't regretted it since. Apple just gets it right, and (at least for now) before its competitors. - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15"Not one.all the updates to os x are just ***** other people thought of years ago, and that i've had access to on my freebsd desktop"
You have Expose on your freebsd desktop? Before October of 2003? I'm pretty sure that Apple invented that feature straight up, and it's one that has single handedly changed the way I manage my windows. - lennon2600, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Who cares if they're copying? Would you want the systems TOTALLY different than one another? How would you choose then? They'd provide for much different consumers. As for stealing ideas, if they didn't do it, we as customers would lose out. We all know brilliant ideas are a once-in-a-while thing, and the rest of the time it's just competition, often dirty. Really, WHO THE F__K CARES. I just want what I want. Whoever can give it to me, that's who get's my business.
- superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Why? Lots of people have external hard drives. My mom has an external hard drive!
It may also only require anther partition... - zang74, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16@shucklak
Mac OS X has cron built in, and always has. There are plenty of GUIs for cron as well (Cronnix is a good example). Time Machine is a much different beast, likely initiated by cron but running under it's own steam. - bloqmon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16These articles need to get it straight that no one claims that any of these features are brand new to computing! They are new, however, to Mac OSX. Another major thing he left out is the fact that these are just SOME of the major new things coming in Leopard. There is more coming, but Steve doesnt want the "photocopiers" taking Apple's ideas just yet. One more thing about Apple's implementation of these not-so-new ideas. Apple has a way of making things "just work". You never have to fuss with anything to get it working and no one can beat Apple's integration between applications.
And for the "potshots" Apple is taking at Windows, dont take it so freaking serially! These ads are Apples way of having fun, they are not meant to do anything but give you a little chuckle. Apple and Microsoft have been rivals for a very long time and I think these harmless jokes are very justified. I mean, after all, Microsoft has taken their sweet time in releasing the next edition of Windows. Not to mention the fact that many of the features that are going to be included in this new release can already be found in Mac OSX Tiger. But like I said, dont take the ads so serially! - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Panther... was like 3 years ago.
- hidebehind, on 10/12/2007, -25/+38Why?
I think the mud slinging both ways is a bit uncalled for. Isn't that what people do?
Apple is simply adapting their operating system to seem more familiar and usable to the household user. People say that Microsoft stole Mozilla's ideas when they integrated tabbed browsing into IE7. In retrospect, who invented tabbed windows? It was only a matter of time until someone put it into a web browser.
I think what's really important is who can attract the customer base, but that's a whole different issue, regarding monopolies and some such stuff ;). But seriously, does it matter who came up with what first? What's important is that there's progress being made, and instead of bashing the opposite, choose which suits your needs and live your life (and get a real OS like BSD :-P). - davidod87, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17"The voice feature seems like a decent improvement, but didn't sound any better than Vista's voice synthesis to me"
This guy is a moron. - luxx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16That's what I like about Apple and features like Time machine. They are practical and work well. Sure the idea of backing up has been around for ever, but a quick and convenient way to get at one file from yesterday, a month ago or a year ago. That's cool.
- einsteindesign, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17FTA: "It's too bad they feel the need to exaggerate so much." and "...2 percent of the market..."
Who is exaggerating here?
FTA: "Spotlight (er, sorry, Windows Search)"
Had it right the first time, bub. The Mac OS had a simple "Find" feature, then Sherlock, which were more akin to the built-in Search of Windows. Spotlight is a further evolution, not a ripoff.
FTA: "Jobs and company unleashed a never-ending, tireless diatribe against Microsoft and its upcoming Windows Vista release"
Marketing 101. Exploit your competitor's weaknesses, buttress your strengths. Especially at a time when many of the new Macs being sold are to Windows refugees. You gotta capitalize on that fact; keep the word-of-mouth going. To criticize Jobs for this is just sour grapes.
FTA: "By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame..."
I think the ignorance of that statement should be apparent. I loves my Win2k3 server, I loves/hates my XP clients, and I loves my OS X production machine. But I dont run into too many XP users evangelizing about how secure, stable, and trouble-free their machines are. Instead I hear war stories about running 4 kinds of malware detection concurrent with AVG and Fprot just to remain operational.
FTA: "...Apple stole Sidebar idea wholeheartedly from Konfabulator and other widget environments that predated Dashboard."
Erm, no. Go back to the earliest Macintosh OS and you'll have the Widget model in place: tiny, single-minded apps. Like Stickies, the Calculator, that stupid puzzle game, and more. The only thing separating Widgets from those 1.0 apps is the way you access (and hide) them. The debate will continue of course. Perhaps the idea of using JavaScript to build mini-apps was new (or even overdue) but the core concept of mini-apps is old skool ***** from the original Mac.
I'll skip the 1-10 duckshoot but I can't let his comments on #6 slide, Core Animation.
FTA: "A low-level graphics technology aimed at developers, Core Animation will usher in a new generation of graphically animated application.....Clearly, it was thrown out as a bone to the developer-heavy crowd."
So, the author has a problem with a software developer demonstrating a development tool, in front of a crowd of developers, at a World Wide Developer's Conference? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, mate. - rye425, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18Just to be fair to both sides
----------------------------------------
Where Vista Fails
http://winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14DEVELOPER CONFERENCE
this isn't for you end users so you can have a couple new features on your desktop, this is crap built into the os taht should be interesting for DEVELOPERS.
with that said I agree with a guy above who said the keynote wasn't as good for developers as it could have been, but time machine, ichat stuff, core animation, 64-bit capabilities and so on are for DEVELOPERS.
Just wait until the expo and/or macworld early 2007, that's when you'll see your fancy new toys and such. - pjludlow, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17"By that measure, Microsoft has improved Windows by a far greater degree. In the same time frame, it has shipped Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (and 2005 UR2), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Windows XP Home and Professional N Editions, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2, absolutely a big Windows upgrade), Windows XP Embedded, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, and Windows XP Starter Edition in various languages."
This part just bugged me. XP Home Edition is a stripped down Professional Edition. Windows XP Starter Edition is even more stripped down. He spouts off a million versions of essentially the same thing, and none of them are major except for XP in general. All the people I know have either XP Home or XP Professional. He may discard all the OS X updates as trivial, but they brought more new features than he credits. I've always enjoyed a new OS X release for what it gives me. - Jorg, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19hidebehind: "I think the mud slinging both ways is a bit uncalled for. Isn't that what people do?"
Did you RTFA? A major point of the article is that *It doesn't go both ways*.
Microsoft *DOES NOT* spend marketing money slamming Apple or OSX. It is completely one sided.
If you are talking about Paul slinging-mud at Apple then you are confused. He does not work for MS and actually spends much of his time slinging-mud at Microsoft.
Jorg - morcheeba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11LaughingMan - I agree. I'm guessing the Time Machine is integrated in to Core Data.
For people that haven't heard of Core Data, it's standardized application data management, with automatic file save/load & undo. http://developer.apple.com/macosx/coredata.html - addicted44, on 10/12/2007, -13/+24I really hate the way Porsche's drive. Yeah, I have never been inside one, but the feel of the handling is terrible. Personal preference, I guess...
Nonetheless, Thurrot does make some good points about how Apple goes over the top with the copying business. Everyone borrows, which makes everyone else better. Yet, instead of Core Animation being a bone to the developer crowd, the Mail.app and ichat stuff was a bone to the analysts in the audience. Some of the stuff he showed, was really great for developers. e.g. Core Animation (which Thurrot brushes off, because it goes against his theory) or the way developers can leverage time machine, or Dashcode which he dismisses with a straw man talking about dashboard's syncing abilities. Even ichat shows a lot of what os x is capable of with all the stuff Jobs says it can do.
Some of his complaints to improvements are that the only difference is that they are more apple like. However, it is this apple likeness that makes these products popular and usable by the general public. gleaming example, ipod. Also garageband and imovie etc.
Really, he makes terrible arguments, in his attempt to show Apple as purely evil. However, had he focused his article on how the keynote was not really good for developers then that would have been far more valid. Although some of the other stuff Digg has been showing for developers really sounds great. - r3zonance, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12"Volume Shadow Copy is in XP as well."
But it isn't exactly user-friendly is at, as in for the "Average User".
Apple's innovation has come in the ease of use and power provided to developers, as well as the integration into applications (as usual). - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I'm holding out for the "secret features." I have no idea what to make of that announcement. That was the part of the keynote that caught me the most off guard... that says a lot of the rest of the keynote : mostly predictable... but Steve just showed us that he has a wild card that he's not going to play until, I suspect, January. That may or may not change everyone's entire outlook on Leopard.
- UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12vista= real late
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13windows 2000 was awesome, esp compared to xp, have you been asleep for the past 5 years?
- serpicolugnut, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Look, I'm here at WWDC and there is a clear reason why Apple is picking on Microsoft with their banners and the keynote - justification. They want to justify to their developers (whom this conference is for, after all), that they are making the correct decision developing for the OS X platform, and not developing for Windows. With smaller marketshare comes a smaller developer base, and Apple has to work hard to keep the developers interested and happy on the platform.
That being said, I really wish Apple hadn't broadcast the keynote. The developer preview of Leopard that we have been given still has a long way to go. The really amazing stuff is in the developer tools and the changes to the APIs and frameworks. These are things I can't talk about because of the whole NDA thing, but suffice to say, Leopard will be the biggest update to OS X since it became OS X. The underlying technology modifications/changes are HUGE.
The consumer-y stuff like iChat, Time Machine, Spaces, etc... Those are nice and all, but I guarantee you that isn't everything slated for the final release. The Finder will be overhauled, and other improvements will be made in other consumer parts of the OS. There's little need to show that now, as it only gives the competition time to copy it.
Apple needed to put these tools in the hands of their developers 9 months before the release so they can have their apps ready when Leopard ships in the spring.
As a developer, I am totally excited at the new tools I've been given to soup up my app. - andyduncan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Sure there are features that appeared in OS[n] first, windows second, and vice versa. I think it's obvious that Apple doesn't come up with all of their ideas independently, and they've certainly been taken to task for coming out with things that were originally popularized by Microsoft or even third-party mac developers.
But I think the difference between "copying" and "re-implementing" is whether or not the copy comes out better than the original.
Generally when Apple steals a features from windows (or wherever), the end result is superior to the original, in a sort of "well, that's a great idea, but here's how it should be done" kind of way.
When Microsoft steals from Apple, they usually (but not always) end up with something that is a craptacular half-assed bizzarro version of whatever they were trying to imitate that makes it painfully obvious they didn't "get" the point of the original.
Apple is all about implementation, Microsoft is all about feature lists. Both strategies have their benefits. - JonGretar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@timmarhy:
Dude... As a Linux user of 7 years and as someone that has worked extensively on most major unix systems.... You have never tried anything remotely like Expose.... I'm not biased here... I use win, macos and linux equally so all I can say is that you are totally misunderstanding what the feature does. - nullview, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Well, if Apple is pulling a few ideas from the MS camp then its about bloody time. It can only mean good things if we finally have a good competition with OS innovation.
I don't own a mac, and work for 8-10 hours a day on my XP machine. I used to love XP but it is a 5 year old OS now, and that is damn near geriatric as far as OS's are concerned.
Let's hope that both Leopard and Longhorn (vista) come into the ring swinging, and go toe to toe with cool new innovations.
No blind allegiances to corporations that see you as dollar signs. Loyalty is not enviable trait when it comes to buying into whatever marketing crap they feed you. - Dari, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10For those of you who are unimpressed by the keynote, and Leopard's current state.. Remember how much Tiger changed between the WWDC in 2004 and Macworld 2005? :)
- LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Excellent point DarkElf... The Keynote demo for Time Machine used an external firewire hard drive which was visible on the desktop...
Time Machine gets a leg up over Vista's Previous Versions file system and ZFS because it's a complete backup on separate media. If they do it right, potentially you could wipe your boot drive clean, boot from the restore DVD, and restore from the Time Machine archive on the firewire disk... even install a specific snapshot as well. - LaughingMan11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you had to read about Expose on Wikipedia, you've clearly never used it. And I guarantee you you've never used anything like Expose, and don't manage your windows this way right now.
I have 17 windows open right now, all stacked on top of each other, all obscuring each other, in an order I don't know or care about much at all... I can go to any of them quickly without alt-tab, without meticulously organizing things by hand into virtual desktops, or without going down to my Dock or "taskbar" equivalent.
If you really think you manage windows this way right now, you need to at least try it once with a busy system with at least a dozen windows all stacked on top of each other. -
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