Anandtech - Vista pretty good...Tiger still pwnz3r

[oldsk00l]

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780

I'll highlight my favorite parts...

Vista vs. Tiger

Although Microsoft may not consider itself to be in direct competition with Apple, this is the match-up most people have been waiting for. Vista implements a good deal of abilities that are suspiciously similar to abilities Tiger has, so the score card is not nearly as lop-sided in Apple's favor when Vista is taken into account. However, many of these new abilities feel more like poor imitations of Tiger than good copies.

As we've mentioned before, Microsoft's answer to Exposé, Flip3D, is clearly inferior in what we assume is Microsoft's attempt to not be so blatant in their copying. By overlapping windows in a rolodex fashion, Flip3D destroys much of the purpose and usefulness of such an organizational technique in the first place. Similarly, out of the box, Vista's quick search abilities are similar to Tiger's, but lack the smaller nuances of Spotlight such as the grouping results by type, understanding metadata, or even putting the results in a separate box (quick search temporarily uses the current window to show results).

This isn't to say that everything about Vista that it shares in common with Tiger is necessarily inferior. Microsoft gets points for their refinement of Alt+Tab, which by showing the contents of the applications makes it much more useful than Tiger's Cmd+Tab system, and users who are prone to Alt+Tabbing on Tiger anyhow in spite of Exposé are clearly going to be impressed. Similarly, IE7+ finally vaults ahead of Safari, and while we're more apt to use Firefox than either of those browsers, users who end up using the built-in browser will find IE7+ the more effective of the two.

Security is an aspect that we're not sure where to put either operating system, as we know the current beta implementation of Vista's UAC will be different from the final version. As currently implemented, UAC surpasses Tiger's security features by giving more information about what application is requesting privilege escalation and can give the user a chance to prevent malware from getting away with system changes, but at the same time most enthusiasts and likely even many normal users will find it's too overprotective and overbearing. There's a point that exists for UAC where it's neither underpowered nor overbearing, and if Microsoft can reach that then they'll clearly have a tighter core security system than Tiger. Even if Microsoft can't get their UAC implementation correct, though, Apple would be wise to learn from it for better ways to communicate with the user. While we're on the topic of security, the new Vista firewall should not go unmentioned; it's time for a full featured firewall for Windows and Mac OS X alike, and only the former has it. Apple likes to talk about how they don't succumb to virus attacks, but avoiding problems in the lack of a threat is not the same as being fully secure.

However, even with the massive improvements Microsoft has shown with Vista, we still feel they aren't quite ready to beat Tiger in a fight. Tiger still offers a more refined experience that doesn't come with nearly as many quirks as Vista does (beta quirks or otherwise), and there's a great deal of functionality that Tiger has that isn't replicated by Vista at all, such as drag and drop application installation or a Unix shell. Ultimately switchers are going to find that Vista is similar to Tiger, but it's not enough to surpass Tiger and cause them to switch back.

And then there's Leopard...

[Nitz Walsh]

Agreed, especially on Flip3D. I've been saying how utterly useless it is compared to Expose since it was introduced.

[a12ctic]

wtf? thats not even a fair comparosin, windows isnt even in the same legue as osx in eye candy/usability/security...

[oldsk00l]

This isn't putting down Vista at all either. I'm looking forward to a few things it does.

I also have this sinking feeling Leopard won't be such a huge leap, hoping it will be. I just don't see how Apple will pull it off without a heaping helping of bloatware. The UI effects already tax the hardware as it is, and it will be sad to see the G3's put to rest as far as OS support goes. Hopefully, this assumption is incorrect.

[a12ctic]

if you want to see a really good GUI look at XGL, coolest bloatware ever (why in the hell would you need a 3d desktop is beyond me, but none the less, its far superior to anything eles around, and its still only about as resource hungry as vistas gui in its beta state), theres some good deminstrations of it on google video, the one with the monsters inc. background will give you a quick overview

[Tuork]

Personally, I'm not looking forward to Vista THAT much. Albeit, I haven't even seen the Beta, but the fact that an OS demands more raw computational power than modern games is somewhat of a turn-down for me.

There is of course a significant time difference between XP and Vista, which would partly explain the savage increase in recommended requirements, but I just think this is a bit too much.

For the time being I can only tell that Vista will be pretty, and guessing from all the jazz people keep talking about it will be a better OS, but I'm still iffiy on the subject. If there is a way to dial down the madness and reduce the amount of resources it needs, I'll be all over it.