What is Digg?125 Comments
- shmatt, on 10/12/2007, -10/+65better grammar than you..
- thejadedmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+37Vista isn't even released yet, and OS X 10.4 is over a year old!
- LordVoldemort, on 10/12/2007, -8/+38"OSX 10.5 is like OSX 10, service pack 5 - I doubt any big changes are going to come about that are worth my attention."
You don't own a mac, do you. - Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3110.5 is going to be released before vista anyways, and we still havn't heard of what it is going to have, so i agree, this article brings up a moot point.
- ronaldpoi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Sometimes we found old things but they're still interesting... Good read
- BeatBox, on 10/12/2007, -26/+38Different results? Is this a joke? Vista is a bad copy of OS X. Just when you thought MS learned their lesson: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3QdGt3ix2CQ&search=the%20real%20windows%20vista This movie should be in everybody's mind by now.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19if you guys are going to start correcting people, it should be...
"Better grammar than YOURS."
and it's spelled 'Nazi'. - sumrandommember, on 10/12/2007, -8/+17Right. Only stories less than 1 hour old should be on the front page.
[/sarc] - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12It's pointless to argue about who's copying whom. The bottom line is that OS X users have been enjoying this technology for YEARS now, while Vista is still over 6 months away from even shipping and years away from making a significant dent in the market. Not to mention the fact that most Windows users will need to buy new machines to fully take advantage of Vista.
I bought a Mac 18 months ago not to switch but to explore the technology. It was only later that I realized how much of my computing needs weren't as platform dependent as I originally thought, at which point switching was a no brainer. Yes, my PC is still around, but it's used almost strictly for Windows development. My point is that about the only thing the Windows platform has going for these days it is that it runs old Windows software, and if you're locked into the platform there isn't anything anyone can do for you. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9He's wrong about one thing: that people scan dialog boxes. Sure, experienced people who do lots of computer stuff scan.
But ask any IT guy who's stood over some one's shoulder while walking them through a process. The person reads the WHOLE message on the screen, asks "What does that mean?", and then complains that you move to fast when you say, "Just click OK." - shadytrees, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I disagree. It's a listing of points made by two designers at a panel in one of the most respected conferences, SxSW that worked at different companies (Apple and Microsoft). Their commentaries are both insightful and informative, and the points they make are part of a constructive debate. Short of being at the panel, this is the next best thing. How often is it that an Apple designer and a Microsoft designer get together to compare notes? The website is twofold better than the normal crap people on the Internet spew when comparing Vista and Mac OS X.
- Giever, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"Hey guys, look at all this gold I found, we'll be rich!"
"Forget that man, what is it, like, a thousand years old? No thanks." - aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@iSEPIC: You do realize that OS X is based on NeXTStep don't you? That OS had a dock with docklets and Mac OS had Opendoc (Copland project) and desktop accessories.
Alll of those were around long before Windows NT reached 4.0. When Apple bought out NeXT, they inheritied all of the NeXT technologies including the dock and the docklets. - kolywater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5++digg for this article for allowing me to block some of the most idiotic trolls on digg.
- ThankTheCheese, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10it's not very well structured. Some of the 'answers' didn't seem to relate to the question.
- subneural, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10BeatBox - thats awesome, I havent seen that before, great satire! big digg for you.
- macslut, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7"If you didn't have proof before, here it is now: Apple didn't do user testing on OSuX AT ALL."
What proof? Some page riddled with other errors? Apple had a half year of public beta:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta
Prior to that it was available to select press and select developers. I had a copy about 1 year before its release. Even when 10.0 came out, it was clear that OS X was still in transition as Apple wasn't shipping it on new Macs as the sole (or even primary OS).
OS X became "ready" when 10.1 came out, which is why owners of 10.0.x could upgrade to 10.1 for free. It wasn't until Office and Photoshop went native that Apple completed the transition. In other words, for anyone considering upgrading, OS X was beta until 10.2 and didn't take over as the OS until 2003 when Apple started shipping Macs that no longer booted in OS 9. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5By the way, this guy is the reason Digg came up with the "Block User" feature. Try it now! It works like a charm.
- kamaru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yup far as im conserned those guys are long gone :D
- zoltanthebold, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7I think you give them too much credit. The Beta's seem to imply (to me at least) that GUI elements were an afterthought. A series of relatively disjointed OS elements "brought together" under a Windows look doesn't really cut it in the 21st century. Evry OS has slightly off elements, but Vista B2 really does look stuck together.
I doubt they care. They simply expect to amaze you with the "security enhancements". - fabeetz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5My wife (a life long windows user, non-technology professional) was handed a dual-boot MacBook Pro a month ago as her only computer. She liked the idea of being able to learn OS-X on the side while running Win XP as dictated by the world at large. The first boot came up in OS-X. She mentioned today that she hasn't booted Win XP yet. So what has she done in OS-X with no training? Seemlessly moved to Mail and the Office suite with no loss of capability. Mastered iPhoto for work related projects. Learned to design and host www sites. Performed one-button video conferencing. Installed and utilized unix software.
What's next? Maybe creating public multi-screen displays to replace static photographs with real-time mission-relevant photos, graphics and analysis?
What-the-? Isn't patching and keeping up with virus definitions the main function of a computer?
Anyone want to start a pool - how long will it take to try a Windows Boot? - meatmcguffin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5any chance you two apple-bashing idiots are the same person?
i smell the block button - zoltanthebold, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Good point, the article was pretty badly put together despite being potentially quite insightful. A missed opportunity.
As for the plenty of blogs on Microsofts efforts - so what? MacOS X, whether people love it or loath it, has been out there for years already. So far all we've had are a few BETAs of Vista; an OS that is beginning to seem like XP in drag. Even for those who dislike MacOS at least they have a commercial product to actually dislike. No amount of blogging can compensate for the fact that 5 years on things in Richmond haven't really moved on.
The apparent openness of Microsoft is really just an attempt to cover up for the fact there has been a great deal of sliggishness as part of the process. - kolywater, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5apple doesn't cater to power users? oh wait, except i can open up terminal (installed by default) and can compile my applications from source if i like. anything you can do with the osx interface can be done using the terminal and text commands. or hey, just run x11 and dont even use the os x gui!
the idea that os x doesn't support power users is ju.... oh wait, you've never used os x, have you? sorry, my mistake. don't let my well-informed opinion, stemming from my experience using and owning windows, linux and mac machines bother you. - shmatt, on 10/12/2007, -17/+18so what.
- hookid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3that is also what i have come to beleive
OSX-Everything Else
Vista-Gaming
When i bought a mac mini, i realized i didn't like macs unless they were in laptop form. I'm not sure why.
Everyone should have a mac and a pc :) - iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14903 - nuff said - hell we can pull up sites debunking each other all day long.
- clickmyface, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I am surprised the article didnt make mention of Apple Human Interface Guidelines...
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000894
I assume Microsoft has something of the like (although then again, maybe not...) - aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah go head and mod me down but Tiger is called 10.4 instead of 11 to signify that it is highly compatible with software third-party written for 10.3, 10.2, 10.1 or 10.0 whereas software written only for Mac OS 9 or earlier will not run natively.
I'm sorry if I shattered someone's illusions but that is how developer like me version the software we write. Version number can be completely arbitrary but usually signify backwards compatibility rather than how much it has changed. Tiger had added new APIs over what was available in 10.3. While this may not have been readily noticeable to end users at first, we are now seeing new software that take advantage of this new power the OS has to offer.
Regardless of what new APIs were added, Tiger did offer Dashboard and Spotlight as significant new features. - highpass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Ireland
I know what you mean. Months ago I posted a story titled "AppleOSuX is a complete spanner", and yet he still doesn't quite get the message. I was banned, appealed, and allowed back in, yet still that annoying ***** is here.. arf.
Mod me down, this was obviously offtopic and purely in response to the growing crisis Diggers are faced with known as only "The AppleOSuX disease". Hopefully the NHS provides a cure sometime. - kolywater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2why did aristotle get modded down for providing informative links and non-insulting, clear descriptions that rebut the previous poster's argument? sigh.
- aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Nice troll there a-hole. There was no outside user testing. If you had read about the Software Stockholm Syndrome on the MS Office 12 blog site, you would know that sometimes outside users are not the best testers because they are afraid to appear rude.
OS X was tested and evaluated by Steve Jobs and other executives. It is generally accepted that executives are usually not the most technically oriented computer users. Rather, they view computers as a tool for getting the job done. The UI of OS X is designed in such a way that even a technophobe exec can use it without any difficulty. That is a hallmark of "good" UI design, not bad design. Nerds like yourself only seem to think of your own petty needs and seem to be completely oblivious to the needs of the average user.
If you want another example of a product designed with an exec in mind, take a look at Keynote. That UI has been praised by the press because it is so easy to use. Guess who was the beta tester for that project? Steve Jobs used the product for year to do presentations before it was released to the public.
Have we all forgotten about expert systems and designing software for the domain? Are we all obsessed about cramming as many features as possible into the UI without concern for usability and relevence to the avearge user? - vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Your rant was bad the second time.
- spazzedout, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'll tell you why I found this article interesting. I am sitting in front of this OLD Windows 98 computer right now at a friend's house. I normally use a fast XP machine and a second OSX computer too.
This thing brought back some old memories, and the article walked me through step by step of the history of the years and the philosphies behind what motivated them to make changes to each operating system,
Apple is aiming for prioritizing tasks, and wants to be a media hub so it tightly integrates your pictures, movies, and music ect and is generally a lot more slicker and easier to use for new users or people who just don't want to be presented with a lot of options they don't feel like be bothered with. (prioritizing tasks),
Windows, just like the article says, is a 'pull-out-all-the-drawers-at-once' and gives it all the options you could need, so it's just a matter of what the user wants... as in, do they want a lot of options at once (which is good) or do they just want to get a few simple tasks done... (ie: just do a few system tweaks...) it just depends on what tool you need for the job...and how much the user wants to tinker with their computer. Or some BS like that, I don't know. I've just been sitting here watching someone play Halo 2 on Xbox live... for like the past 45 minutes. This computer keeps freezing. OMG there's so much spyware on this thing....umm. Anyways, I'ma go... - bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Christ, this thread is full of trolls. I swear to god.
ANYONE who says Ubuntu is somehow "slicker" shows their fanboyism. Ubuntu, while a great achievement, is very much visually WindowsXP Media Center edition.
Vista isn't cluttered. It isn't ugly. It isn't a "OSX" rip-off. It's Vista. It's the natural progression of Windows. The biggest problem I've found in my weeks of now using it is that the sidebar isn't auto-hide capable.
MS spent a lot of time and effort rebuilding the OS so that it is more intuitive. And it is. The only issue is we're all used to doing things in a diffrent way, and it takes time to get used to new ideas. Intutive doesn't mean "instantly understandable," especially when you're so used to going to the FILE menu. It's a habbit you have to break with Vista. Once you do - it's great.
Mac keeps releasing "updates" some of you are saying should be whole versions, but because of backwards compatibility capability "aren't." So would you say we're won Windows95.775665?
New full versions happen when you have a major upgrade/change in your operating system. Not simply whether or not b ackwards compatibility still exists. OSX has been adding small tweaks, and charging for them, for years. Still looks the same, still works the same, just a few baubles here and there. Big whoop.
If you like Mac? Stick with Mac. If you like PC? Stick with PC. I for one LIKE the concept of multiple windows, and would NEVER buy an operating system which switched to SINGLE FULL SCREEN views. If I wanted that, I'd just click the maximize button. THat'd be a nightmare.
Savvy users multitask. Windows Vista does this beautifully, as does XP. - Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2By the way, they're called Bill Gates and Steve Balmer in real life.
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ahh... I see the fanboys are out in force...
- pauldonnelly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Where did I advocate single-tasking?
Have you used a tiling window manager for any significant length of time (or at all)? It sounds like you're just posting a knee jerk reaction based on your gut feeling that everything is okay and that tiling could never possibly work. I've used both tiling and non-tiling interfaces quite a bit -- and stuck with the tiled one -- as have many other people. Don't be so quick to say that we're full of *****.
Your only real point here is that tiled windows don't always fit the shape of the data. This is much less of a problem than you'd think. Sometimes a window will be too small to show everything it needs to, but that's no problem, because it's simple to resize it. Same as with a non-tiling WM. Exept a tiling WM also resizes the other windows to make good use of all the screen space.
I haven't asked the average user. Much like yourself, the average user wouldn't have useful input without experience. I have, however, *watched* the average user. The average user doesn't make use of their ability to move and resize windows. Generally they use one program at a time, going to the menu to copy and paste, then switching to the app they want to paste in, then pasting. They don't painstakingly arrange the windows on their screen so as to make their source and target available for drag-n-dropping. Extremely often I see a user working with a misshapen window that isn't large enough to hold the info it needs to display (which you say is a problem with tiling), not because they're making room for something else on the screen, but because they're not comfortable enough with the computer to shape it to fit the way they use it. Windows that move all around and obscure each other are completely unneeded by the average user, and have dubious benefits. - Magadass, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7Copying technology has been around since the dawn of technology itself. Why would you reinvent the wheel when in reality most of the time you will only come to the same conclusion with only millions of dollars spent to get there, while some innovation can be determined, most of the time the best approach is to borrow ideas from competitors and is the most cost effective strategy usually since the first engagers usually spend the most money implementing and tweaking the new technology. The prices reflect that as well...
For example in the cold war the United States and Russia independently and secretively were designing rockets under their space programs. Each one was solely independent of the other, while in reality it was a German Scientist in the United States and a Russian one in Russia both of them came to the same basic design principals, while some innovations launched them into space first they spent much more money on it than we did, they also lost much more life than we did but they were the first to put a human into space with the Space Suit design and etc. My point is most design perfection is going to be the same, a wheel is round because that's the perfect design, while it could be another shape to make it unique or innovative it still wouldn't hold its same stature. Many of you focus on this innovation strategy to much, its a mute point because innovation and functionality do not relate to each other unless each one is at the peak of its design. - gugaoliveira, on 10/12/2007, -12/+12Mac OS X is years ahead Vista, secure, stable, and with the best UI. I have a Pentium D with a Vista and the OS X 10.4.6 installed
- jamelt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3The article is useless.
- ShyGuy91284, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4ThinkFr33ly: I'll admit my opinion on the "cluttered" look could just be a matter of taste, but the new control panel is going to prevent timid users from ever touching it to install/uninstall something http://www.wirecatcher.com/images/vista_control.jpg (not sure if it's Beta 2, but it looks identical). I think they are trying to show way to much on the screen at once by showing three levels of a single menu, having a similar effect to a tab full of tabs (A GUI design that should traditionally be avoided I have been taught). Explorer isn't that bad I guess, but it still seems to have too many options in plain site by default that most users that casually use a computer won't even want, and anyone that would would probably know how to turn on. XP had less plain-sight options, and people seemed generally happy with some questions that wouldn't require more plain-site buttons. If they ship it with more things hidden so they aren't jumping out at you when opening a window, it won't be bad. Oh, and show me XP Beta 2 screenshots, because all the ones I found (yes, they were from Beta 2 reviews) looked almost identical to XP's final form.
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9"OSX 10.5 is like OSX 10, service pack 5 - I doubt any big changes are going to come about that are worth my attention."
Are you human? - combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Interesting coming from somebody who has, by my last count, posted the exact same link 3 times, only one of which was in context. Microsoft and Apple copy each other constantly. They also copy from other companies, buy up IP that they think will make their product better, and blatantly steal ideas. Defending one and pointing out the evils of another is self-defeating, because there's always some putz who thinks he's got something more important, more evil, to counter with. Kind of like you, actually.
- meatmcguffin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5isepic - You are an idiot and certainly not capable of accepting the truth.
If you're after an example of bad design in Vista, then the control panel is perfect. Cluttered, confusing and very counter-intuitive.
The fact that you even HAVE to use a search box proves this. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Dam digg editing system. It says we have 3 minutes editing time. I wish! Please bury the above comment. My grammar really isn't that bad, I promise!
My post should have read as follows:
The only 'concept' behind Vista that I can see (and don't kill me for saying it guys as I am using it and probably have used it for a lot longer than most people here) is to run with Windows XP and then do a mash-up between this and (what MS view as) the best features of OS X and KDE (and possibly some other Linux type environments too) in the hope I presume of attracting users from all three of these camps.
You would think that having the best of all three worlds would be pretty neat... But currently what you end up with isn't much more than a mangled mess, where none of it really seems to fit together very smoothly and where it looks like the level of copying - the all out burning imperative of copying - has overwhelmed the engineers common sense.
All you end up with is Windows trying to do a very poor impersonation of a lot of features from other environments, features that they have spent so long (and a lot of money) ridiculing in the past, so that the result is a very poor combination of these; which only serves to leave you with the distinct impression that MS engineers did not quite understand them, and/or exactly what it was that they were attempting to achieve. It's almost like MS hired some really bad engineers, who interpreted their brief badly and who decided to give up on any attempt at innovation at all and who advised MS that the best route to success was through straightforward unabashed all out mimicry. The OS simply lacks coherence - and it is very difficult to see how MS will get things back on track in time for their stated release date of January/February 2007. This is it seems the strange direction they have said they intend to go in - so I don't see them changing course this late in the game. But from what I have seen so far, Vista is nothing more than Windows suffering from what seems to be an identity crisis. It just doesn't seem to know what it is. - Quix, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3"*must... resist.. urge to insult isepic's intelligence*"
What intelligence? - mrpink.137, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Linux: No apparent goal; continues to gain in popularity.
- aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2"These intrigue me, since they mirror my own thoughts. The current "draggable windows" paradigm is terrible. Most users would be better served by a full screen interface, yet they aren't savvy enough to use the "Maximise" button, so they end up with a window that's not big enough to display what it needs to. The only advantage that draggable windows have is the ability to see more than one program at once, but they require obscene amounts of attention to arrange them without wasting space. Tiling is better."
In your opinion, they are terrible but have you asked an average user? Have you ever used drag and drop or do you prefer the Windows CUT and PASTE method? Why would the user be better served by a maximized windows that does not fit the shape of the data and obscures other programs?
Should we all go back to a single tasking environment to avoid confusion? I don't think the Apple guy is suggesting abandoning mulliple windows in all cases but rather that functions appear when they make sense to the context that you are working with. I believe that Apple software reflects that today. - starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4i had no problem reading it. seemed perfectly clear... and it may be from march but i just now read it.
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