How Vista Disappoints 731
MCSEBear writes "Writer Paul Thurrott has given Microsoft a verbal dressing down for what has become of Windows Vista. He details Microsoft's broken promises over the years since Longhorn/Vista was first previewed back in 2003. He demonstrates where current Vista builds fail to live up to Microsoft's current hype of the much reduced feature set. From the article: 'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'"
You Have to Have to Have to (Score:5, Informative)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-41344461
I've always been of fan of each OS borrowing from one another, but this is just sad. MS ripped everything out of Vista that was truly innovative and we are left with XP rethemed and few nice subsystem tweaks. Frankly Vista is a decent update if it had be released in 2003. WTF have they been doing for 6 years?
Re:Vista will dominate (Score:5, Informative)
Then they relented and let *some people* install Windows 2000 on their machines, if it was determined that they really needed it. That's not an uncommon practice with very large companies. All the PCs we had had license stickers for more recent versions of Windows, but we still had an OS which had been released back in 1996.
I've nothing against using Windows, as long as someone pays me for it...
Re:You Have to Have to Have to (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My Vista sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Filesystem (Score:4, Informative)
OS-400 comes to mind as being the original (probably was not). Of course, that was YEARS ago.
Re:Filesystem (Score:1, Informative)
Caught up? What consumer level OS has a Database engine for a File System?
NTFS is the bar of which Linux and other *nix FS concepts have measured themselves against for a longtime. From the security, extensibility, inherent compression, journalling, inherent encryption, etc etc...
Heck Vista even uses the NTFS encryption layer to allow you to LOCK your Hard Drive to the point MS itself or the FBI couldn't even view the files on it.
Wait nevermind, I don't even want to argue this, go read what NTFS is on Wikipedia. Of all the thing people poke at Microsoft the features, functions, and realiability of NTFS are NOT ONE OF THEM.
Then read about WinFS as well. WinFS is something no other OS in the consumer market is even close to...
And if this is the reason you lost interest in Vista, guess what, just download WinFS. It is even available NOW...
As for Paul's reflections on Vista, I'm sure he is diappointed, there are a lot of people disappointed that development of Windows 2003 Server and the NT fork for Vista didn't get split off early so a lot of the core development for Vista could have actually been in the box sooner than late 2004. (Yes 2004)
Also take Paul's comments from his viewpoint, he gets inside information from Microsoft from his friends and that is how he made a name for himself. He is NOT a technical person or has ever been known for it. He also doesn't see things from a developer's perspective.
Vista doesn't look vastly different, even though most of the OS has been rewritten and has tons of new protections and features that just work. It does things in new ways, even though it 'appears' to not be different to push away current Windows Users.
From a developer's perspective, Vista is a new OS with the first radical change in Windows since Windows 3.0. I know this is hard for the average user to see, espeically when most people don't have access to it. However, not only when Vista releases, but when people see the new level of functionality that can easily be developed and the new applications, it will become more clear what Vista really is. Vista is a new base for technology.
As one MS developer said, (paraphrased) - Vista is not apparently radical, we are giving people the tools to create fire, and that is what you will see at first, just fire. But just like fire has evolved from the caveman days, as developers see what Vista can really do, you will see applications that go beyond fire, and use the fire we are providing to propel a rocket into outspace using this fire.
Kind of a strange analogy, but Vista is giving the development world a new form of fire, and even though Vista just demonstrates fire with some sparkles at first, MS and other developers will harness the new APIs in Vista to do some really amazing things. If you look at some of the demonstrations or products like www.microsoft.com/max and realize how little programming is done by the development team to achieve some really impressive applications, you will begin to see the whole programming paradigm change with Vista technologies.
I'm not trying to trumpet Vista so everyone here will love it or use or buy. I am telling everyone here what I know about Vista and development on Vista is that if you are NOT a Microsoft Fan and use alternative technologies, you need to prepare, learn and even USE some of the ideas Microsoft has recreated in development, and bring these to other OSes.
If not, Microsoft will leapfrog the rest of the industry by everyone saying, "Aw Vista sucks," and under-estimating Microsoft once again...
He overlooks the biggest crime of all. (Score:5, Informative)
In case you don't get it its making a decarative statement and then presenting options that have no correlation to the statement, I'm a professional in computers, and have been using them for well over 15 years and couldn't possibly even guess what each of those options should do. Continue what? if I dont have permission to do it how can I continue. Cancel what exactly?, as far as I can tell it just said it wasn't going to do anything anyway. Skip? skip the delete I was just told I can't do? I am baffled... based on the article I guess that it should have said something like "You currently don't have permission to delete this file, what would you like to do?" and given choices like "Grant Permission", "Don't Delete" etc...
I haven't really used windows extensively in a very long time so maybe if I did I would be used to figuring out these obscure dialogues, but I don't think I would ever stop cringing when I saw them. It reminds me of the dialog windows used to put up when you went to access help for the first time in an app, it would ask how big the search database should be (or something) and give you three choices similar to "small (recommended)" "medium" "large" and no other info, not even a clue as to how this would effect your help at all. do they still do that nonsense?
Re:On the Programmers View (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Resistant to change (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh? (Score:5, Informative)
I was using NT 4 back in 1996. Back then, it has SMP (scaled up to 32 processors, although the cheap version was limited to two). Linux was just starting to get SMP capability.
It had native threading, which Linux only got last year.
It had full support for ACLs in the filesystem. Linux got that in, what, 2000? Does it even work with the standard filesystems? I've been using ACLs with UFS2 (the default FS) on FreeBSD for a couple of years, but I've not seen them in common use on Linux.
It had a GUI with a single, consistent, user interface toolkit. Linux got one of those in 2030?
It had support for hardware accelerated OpenGL and later DirectX. I can't remember the first time I got 3D acceleration of anything other than GLide working with Linux, but I don't think it was before 2000.
It had a stable ABI and component system that allowed some basic introspection and management of reference counted objects. These objects still work on current versions of Windows[1].
Did NT4 kill Linux? No. It was, however, a long way ahead of the competition. Now, let's look at MacOS of that era; it had the consistent UI toolkit (and a set of HIGs people actually used), but no security model, no memory protection and no pre-emptive multitasking. NT4 was pretty far ahead of that too. Apparently OS/2 was in a similar place, but I didn't use it so I can't comment.
Now, let's look at Vista. It's got the same VMS-lite kernel. A nice architecture - much nicer than UNIX, in my opinion - but they haven't really done anything interesting with it for a decade. It's got a 3D accelerated desktop, which may be slightly better than OS X 10.4 (although 10.5 will probably be out before Vista), and fairly similar to Cairo on something like XGl. It will have a horrible mish-mash of visual styles and behaviours that will make a GNOME/KDE hybrid look like the paragon of usability. It will have...uh...
Vista may be ahead of the competition when it launches, but if it is then it will be by such a small margin that it will be the last release that is. When Microsoft originally announced Longhorn, people thought they might actually deliver. Their competitors were worried. They started developing the same sorts of features Vista promised and eventually came very close. Meanwhile, Microsoft started dropping the same features from their version until Vista became so anticlimactic that even Windows fanboys stopped caring.
[1] I think. I haven't actually used Windows for two years, but I haven't read anything to the contrary.
Re:Another Windows OS... So what? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Filesystem (Score:2, Informative)
As I understand it (and I may not), WinFS -- if it is ever released -- will ride on top of the current file system and will be released for both Vista and XP. Keep in mind that WinFS was originally scheduled for Windows 95. Clearly, it's not so easy to do. If it were, we'd have gotten it in Windows 98 or W2K . While accessing data by content rather than file-directory heiarchy (I think that's what it is supposed to do) sounds like a nifty idea, I suspect that the idea might be fundamentally flawed. Basically, I suspect you need pretty good metadata to make WinFS work, and that it's hard to get metadata that good for all the files that people might want to find.
We'll see how right I am if WinFS is ever released.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Posix and security (Score:2, Informative)
Re:You Have to Have to Have to (Score:2, Informative)
You must have missed the stories last year where Microsoft said in multiple interviews that their development process for Windows was so screwed up that they had to do what they called a "reset" and start over from the Windows Server 2003 code base. So, yeah, a lot of time was lost, and Micrsosoft admitted that.
Also during those "6 years", XP SP2 was being developed as was
Transparent Windows: learn from Apple's Mistake (Score:5, Informative)
You'd think MS would learn from Apple's mistake... instead they took it to the next level of ridiculousness. When OS X first came out it was littered with transparent menus, menu bars, dialogs, etc. A lot of the elements have either been removed, or brought up to about 98% opacity. You might not even notice the transparency unless you really look closely.
Drastic transparency looked -awesome- in marketing screen shots, and it was promoted as a way to know if content existed behind something such as a window bar. However, it was really annoying. Interface elements become difficult to distinguish and it hindered the speed in which it took to accomplish a task.
But, at least MS gives users the option to turn this crap off. Apple never did that. Mac users needed to wait for Apple to slowly remedy the UI elements we were complaining about.
Re:It's Paul Thurrott... (Score:4, Informative)
"Microsoft is working on similar, if further-reaching, technology for Longhorn. Apple's solution, however, is here right now and it appears to work quite well. Score one for Apple."
"Overall, I've always been a big fan of Safari, and I'd use it rather than Firefox or IE if it were available on Windows. It's an excellent application."
"Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is, in fact, a minor upgrade to an already well-designed and rock-solid operating system. It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we've had since the first Mac debuted in 1984. That isn't a complaint about Tiger, per se: It's a high-quality release. My issue here is with marketing, not with reality."
"Apple Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP"
"And unlike Longhorn, it's shipping any day now. What a concept."
"The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials"
"Windows Vista will still include pervasive index-based searching features modeled, apparently, after the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X."
My Wife is Switching to the Mac [winsupersite.com]
Yes, it definitively sounds like the typical Windows who can't write non-biased opinions about other products
One memorable line from his review of 10.4 had it that Windows XP SP2 was a more significant update than was Tiger, yet elsewhere in that review he just casually pointed out how 10.4 was little more than a large collection of bug fixes
Maybe because it may very well true? Sorry if it doesn't means the same for you, but the addition of applications to get the time, weather and stocks (nice, but "revolutionary"???), spothlight, quartz 2d extreme (an optimization to an already good graphics subsystem) and core image looks to me like a light addition compared with all the internal features microsoft touched/add in SP2 (rewriting part of the IE UI, rewrite part of the IE internals to handle better the security objects, the add-on manager, the much-improved firewall, the much improved wireless support, the reworked RPC internals, updated directx, the non-executable stack protection. You may argue that Mac OS X already does all what those XP updates do but for XP SP2 is a HUGE jump, much bigger than what 10.4 for mac os x 10.3
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Biggest Problem with Windows... (Score:3, Informative)
I know, I know. ACLs (you are using NTFS, right?) are a bit complicated to someone used to standard UNI* rights managment. If you cannot find ACLs in Win XP Pro, just turn off simple rights managment in your explorer preferences.
I can also be logged in as a user, and then also log in as root if I need to make some system changes, without logging off as a users. In Windows, I must go through an annoying process of switching accounts to log in as an administrator.
Discover "runas" or "Fast user switching".
Finally, the system doesn't have a coherent way of managing permissions. For example, if I install a program as root/admin, it will create a directory in Program Files, and assign the permissions as such, that when a non-root user logs in and the program installed tries to write it's data to that programs directory, it will cause an error.
That's not the fault of Windows, it's the fault of the installed programm. A simple, but not very secure, workaround for me is to give write access to problematic files/registry values to a user who needs these.
Why can't Microsoft just borrow the Unix permission system, it is not like it is patented or anything?
The standard UNI* permission system is way more simpler than ACLs.
Until recently i only used Linux. But my new shiny hardware unfortunately isn't supported (sata_sil issues). So i had to use Windows XP Home (slightly extended through a registry hack). The last Windows i used was Windows 98, and i must admit that current Windows XP is not that bad, after all.
Re:Biggest Problem with Windows... (Score:3, Informative)
You can do this in Windows too.
I can also be logged in as a user, and then also log in as root if I need to make some system changes, without logging off as a users. In Windows, I must go through an annoying process of switching accounts to log in as an administrator.
They've finally fixed this in Vista from what I've heard. They've named it User Account Control [microsoft.com]. Basically it will only run the programs that needs admin access in the context of an administrator account, after asking you first.
I know that modern applications are not supposed to write to the Program Files directory and are supposed to write to the Application Data directory under the users specific directory... unfortunatly, the majority of software programs are not created to do that!
So it's Microsofts fault that application writers ignore Microsofts advice for how to write "proper" installers for Windows? Yeah backwards compatebility is an issue, but it's been like 6 years since the "Documents and Settings" directory was born.
Why can't Microsoft just borrow the Unix permission system, it is not like it is patented or anything?
It already has a superset of the Unix permission system, so I don't see how this is neccessary? For a file (or registry key etc), you can set permissions for any number of groups and users, and in a much more fine grained manner than the standard Unix way (unless you're using POSIX ACLs).
Re:Don't care. Don't want to care. (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the complaints I hear along these lines are usually referring to the 1.x versions of OOo, and were true at that time. However, the 2.x versions of OpenOffice are very stable, not as resource intensive, and much more mature than their 1.x counterparts (Sun had a big hand in that). Document conversion from MS Office is a problem still, but even Microsoft has problems converting between various versions of MS Office, so it's hardly a showstopper.
Bottom line: employees are usually retrained when an office upgrades to a new version of MS Office anyway, so why would this be any different? And because the native format of OpenOffice is OpenDocument, once you make the costly conversion from MS Office formats, you will not have to worry about conversion again (not necessarily because OpenDocument is the end-all of formats, but because it is open and documented, so that third parties can easily write batch converters for whatever new formats might pop up).
Admittedly, third party Windows-only software can be a problem. But just work that $200-a-seat savings into a contract with some software firm to get electronics or drafting software ported to Linux. Many CAD programs exist for UNIX and can be easily ported, and the Windows-only programs could run through an emulation layer such as Wine. The long-term cost savings would be quite high.
The bottom line is that there are absolutely no technical barriers to switching to Linux/OpenOffice on a workstation computer. There are only human resources challenges such as training, fear of change, and complacency, and perhaps budgetary concerns during the initial switch.
Re:Posix and security (Score:3, Informative)
If you meant something completely different then say so - I only have the incorrect blanket statement from before to go on. Yes, so the new version of MS Windows may be cool - but please consider that other systems may have solved the same problem in different ways.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Your computer is a tool and for certain things you need pretty specific tools, like Quicken, Adobe CS2, Premiere/Final Cut/Media Studio Pro.
While there is Inkscape, Scribus, The Gimp, Ghostscript, and Krita on Linux, they don't match up feature-for-feature with Adobe CS2. They do their jobs "Good enough" but. . .
Image editing/digital painting: Every time I use The Gimp, I just cringe at the UI, I hate its window management (when I bring one Gimp document to the foreground, so should ALL of the palettes), and it only does about 95% of what I need. It does not have ANY vector support.
Illustration/drawing: Inkscape? It does its job fairly well, but its PDF support is horrid. If you use alpha blending, export to TIFF or PNG and use another program to convert to PDF. Also, printing directly from Inkscape stinks.
Accounting: Quickbooks? There IS no replacement. Folks will quickly suggest kmymoney or gnucash, but not having ever owned a business, they naively think that the Linux equivalent of MS Money or Quicken will get the job done. Hint: it won't.
Video NLE: Cinelerra is a bear to build, configure, and learn. Hell, you're lucky if you can resolve the 3,129,812 dependendencies and get it built.
With that said, I use Linux on my work machine >99% of the time. If I need Adobe CS2, I go to another workstation and do my work there, then copy it over. If I need to access Quickbooks, I remote desktop to the office manager's desktop and take care of what I need, but otherwise, we're running mostly Linux. Windows (and OS X) will always be around on at least one or two machines due to certain applications being unavailable on Linux, and no real suitable alternatives to those applications being available on Linux.
If Adobe CS2 and Quickbooks were to come out for Linux tomorrow, we'd be able to punt Windows for the most part, booting to it only when we need to develop a Windows solution for a client. Until the tools we need are available on Linux, it's not the complete solution and there is still some room for Microsoft at my office. In fact we're in the process of punting Exchange right now and hopefully by next Monday the cutover will be complete.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
The reason it's setup this way is so that administrators can be held accountable in an audit log when overriding security settings, so that it's obvious when a file's access control has been forcibly changed. It's a good policy... for high security multiuser systems that Windows rarely runs on. It's not so great for your mom's desktop.
Re:Posix and security (Score:3, Informative)
D.F. Ferraiolo and D.R. Kuhn "Role Based Access Control" [nist.gov] 15th National Computer Security Conference (1992) - the original RBAC paper. and,
Re:Resistant to change (Score:3, Informative)
1: Legacy ICD's - These are the ICD's that are available today for use on Windows XP. These will continue to work on Windows Vista, but will disable the DWM when they are loaded in to the process of the application that's using OpenGL. The reason for this is that Legacy ICD's operate directly on the GPU without going through Windows at all, and we have no way of redirecting application's output in a stable, predictable manner.
2: Windows Vista ICD's - this is a new path for 3rd party ICD's introduced for Windows Vista that will work in a way that is compatible with desktop composition. Essentially allowing direct access to the GPU for hardware accellaration, but then having the final surface that appears to be the front buffer to the application actually be a shared surface that gets composed by the DWM
From: http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2006/02/
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
---John Holmes...
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)