Re: What are Vista's problems.. really?

"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> stated in post
XKWdnYwuBtnrdJDUnZ2dnUVZ_vudnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on 11/2/08 10:55 AM:

....
They do. They also don't integrate very well with the host environment, and
they always sacrifice compatibility.

For instance, I think you will find your Parallels VM won't do modern games
very well.

Correct... but if you have such a layer for older software that is not really
an issue.

But this is not for "older" software, but for "current" software.

When OS X was released, the vast majority of software that would run on it,
ran in Classic. Some of it was quite recent.

So it would have been if Vista had stuffed the old software into a similar
compatibility VM.

Sure... so people wait a year and then upgrade. They are doing that anyway.

[snip]
Vista's compatibility record is rather better than OS X, and not really a
"train wreck".

But clearly, people expected more.

Many people are wanting XP still. That does not speak well of Vista.

No. This is what happens whenever MS releases an new Windows. Don't get fooled
by your own FUD: there were always going to be people rejecting it because
they don't like the color, and there was never going to be immediate uptake by
businesses.

I have never heard so many people shunning a MS OS... I talk to a lot of
people and they just do not like it.

Maybe if MS changed the task bar to be pretty much like the Dock... then
people would like it. I should send that idea to MS. :)

Same thing happened with OS X 10 when it was new, but Apple was wise enough
to have both OSs available - and OS 10 was not even the default at first.

That situation was different in many respects, to say the least.

Re-reading what I wrote, um, just assume OS X when I wrote OS 10... and with
OS X 10 I was going to put a version and then decided against it. I figured
I would point this out so those who follow me around trolling me can find
the error more easily. :)

To judge by the available numbers, Vista is doing about as well as XP did in
its day. Perhaps a little better, perhaps a little worse- depends on whose
numbers you believe.

The "word-on-the-street", though, is not good... not where I am, anyway.

It's a good illustration that the old maxim "perception is reality" is a
perception, and not a reality. :D

With Vista, they are putting a new face on it... pretty much adding the
Dock, too. Curious what you think of that.

I think it's depressingly typical of Microsoft to assume that whatever comes
out of Steve Job's bum must be chocolate.

Dark or milk? I prefer dark.

Making the Taskbar more 'application centric' is not an improvement. I hope
it will not be as wretched as the Dock, but I rather expect it will be a
worse window-switcher than we have now in Vista- at least by default.

There are advantages to the windows-centric view of the taskbar, but then -
at least by default - if you get a number of items on the bar it starts
grouping them. Might be cool to do that with your own groupings - but by
application? Not as much value. Some could say that about Exposé, by the
way.

In any event, reports indicate that there are greybeard switches to mitigate
the problem. You can get proper labels back, and there are screenshots out
there showing a taskbar buttons for individual windows; whether that gives
you single-click access to your windows I can't say.

Depending on how this plays out, it could well be that Flip3D will become a
very valuable feature: it will still let you switch windows, even if the
taskbar won't. :D

Still, if it makes Windows 7 "feel" different enough, it might help with
MS's PR problem. A lot of people can't admit that they swallowed a load of
FUD about Vista; if they can pretend Windows 7 is a fundamentally different
animal (which is plainly isn't), that'll help MS.

Once applications and hardware work well with Vista, which is happening now,
its problems are less severe. The UI, however, still looks grossly overdone
to me.

But it's not clear to me that taskbar changes will be enough to do that.

On the plus side, they did make a song and dance about improved High DPI
support in one of their keynote presentations. I always like to hear that. I
can tolerate little scaling glitches, but I don't like them.

"scaling glitches"... little glitches that scale up well? j/k

[snip]
Well, "need to be updated" = "didn't work".

Yes, in many cases it mostly worked, or worked with workarounds. But
that's
true of Vista too.

With Vista, machines shipped with hardware that was not compatible with it.
Total mess.

I had not heard of this. What are you referring to?

When it first came out, at least, often computers would be bundled with
printers that were not Vista compatible... and others were but the CD that
came with them did not have the drivers. And the video card fiasco that MS
was sued for.

If you just mean that Vista shipped on RAM-starved 512 MB machines, well,
that's not much fun- but it's not like Apple doesn't skimp on RAM routinely.
:D

Yeah, at least the arm and leg Apple charges to boost it are a little
smaller than they used to be.


--
"For example, user interfaces are _usually_ better in commercial software.
I'm not saying that this is always true, but in many cases the user
interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial
company..." Linus Torvalds <http://www.tlug.jp/docs/linus.html>

.

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