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.'"
Sorry but we are a Microsoft shop (Score:5, Interesting)
Filesystem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Warmed over MacOSX (Score:3, Interesting)
"Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. 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.
Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth."
Microsoft has really fumbled the ball over and over with the development of this OS. It's nice to see them get called out for it.
Resistant to change (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course the Linux and Mac activists will always hate and find negative aspects with anything MS related. But there are still a lot of people looking forward optimistically to the new features in Vista.
It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this so?
Simply, it is because for a very large number of people, Linux just works damn well. It's flexiable, fast, secure and when things break, they usually get fixed pretty quick. It's the Un*x philosophy that makes it work so much better and that's a philosophy that no matter how much MS try to copy, will never quite be there in Windows. They may have a new swanky command line interface, but it'll simply not beat any Un*x shell or scripting language for getting stuff done.
Sure Vista will look pretty, but I bet itll still bork and need driver disks when you plug your USB thingy into a differant USB port..
In reality of course every OS sucks, but Linux sucks a lot less than any Windows release.
Oh and whilst you're at it, you can stick yer DRM up yer IPC$.
Re:Vista will dominate (Score:3, Interesting)
I think XP is gross and from what I hear about Vista so far, count me out. Especially if it includes *any* DRM.
View from a non programmer (Score:1, Interesting)
Bottom line is, Vista will over new levels of creativity and originality in application design that will be unmatched by any other system using any other development platform.
Windows Presentation Layer (Avalon) represents a different approach to GUI design. While some operating system like Java Desktop or OSX may use 3D hardware acceleration to render GUI, Windows will take it to new levels. Almost every physical property of a Windows control can be animated, its size, position, transparency. This includes transforming the control by rotations, shears, scaling, etc, all in 3D.
Does this just mean more eye candy. Well, yes. Windows Vista will promote a slew of new visual bells and whistles that many might enjoy and others will want to turn off. But basically Microsoft will bring Flash like GUI programming for real programs, not little applets on the web.
I can already imagine hundreds of ways I can utilize this level of power and control of GUI elements and I am looking forward to using Microsoft's new tools for application design and development.
For the most part, Vista is like Tiger, it is representing a different approach to developing applications on the system. OSX Tiger, asside from its obvious bells and whistles like Spotlight and Dashboard, improved its foundation for application design, including release of a new version of XCode and other Core components. Microsoft will do the same with Windows Vista.
What most people are not understanding is the level of creativity and power people will have developing applications for Vista. While I too am dissapointed that WinFS and other key OS technologies will not make it into Vista for release, it still represents a new platform for application design which I think will change the way we write and use applications.
I am considering Vista analagous to Windows 95. Windows 95 was a new approach to the Windows OS, and while it had many significant flaws and problems, it represented a firm foundation for a decade of OS design. Security holes and issues asside, Microsoft worked from the foundation which lead to Windows XP, which is easy to use and stable, regardless of what many of you think. XP is an OS where I can run my computer for months with BSOD's or crashes, and with the proper security apps in place, I can leave it running without worrying about all the security exploits. I don't think that Vista is a continuation of that line, but a break in that line, and by offering a new foundation hopefully built with far better security then currently along with a dramatically new way or presenting GUI applications, while Vista might ultimately suffer its setbacks and have a less dramatic release then anticipated, it will provide a firm foundation for another decade of OS design.
Like Windows 98, I expect a new release of Vista 2 - 3 years later that will work in WinFS and other modern OS technologies. This will be the OS to anticipate.
I am not hoping for much out of Vista, but from a developers standpoint, it is exciting to see where this new Windows Presentation Layer will go. I am tired of static applications with dull grey buttons. I am looking forward to full 3D hardware acceleration and bringing rich, robust and dynamic GUI into my OS design.
Insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
Leopard (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Vista will dominate (Score:3, Interesting)
And who's to say in 2010 Vista will be "current" anyway?
User interface blunders (Score:2, Interesting)
The first one - http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_
First of all - "File access denied" - you havent been denied access, you been denied the right to delete the file (or so it seems), THEN it says "You don't currently have permission to delete this file" - Okay, but THEN it says "CONTINUE" and allows you to delete it, but only through ANOTHER dialogue!
I mean that's bizarre! COMPLETELY against any principles of interface design that I was taught.
The second/next dialogue in the series - http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_
I though all this stuff about MS getting in a tangle was just exaggeration, but now I seriously think they must be. Wow!
Cutterman
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers will still be sold with the latest Windows has to offer. Computers still sold when ME was available.
People can walk down the computer aisles and see 8 feet (16 feet on some stores) of Apple computer offerings, 4 feet of Linux preloaded offerings (in some stores), or 48 feet of Windows offerings.
If Vista is an abonimation like ME was, then MS will simply create a patch, call it Vista SE (Second Edition), and sell it.
Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Windows took the initial desktop market (think OS/2 times, pre-OS X, Linux had little to nothing)
2. The next generation grew up with Windows
3. With dominance applications are built for Windows
Linux/OSS aren't just trying to catch up with Microsoft. They're also trying to catch up with just about every developer of commercial applications in the world, since hardly any produce commercial apps for Linux. Personally I think Windows peaked around Windows 2000 - it's solid, stable and runs almost every application to date (currently my favorite is Oblivion - running on a 6+ year old OS). Vista looks remarkably unimpressive.
The Microsofties like to say that Windows is ten years ahead of Linux, I think it's ahead. Even if that was true at the release of win2k I say six down, four to go. But there's a thousand little hooks and a few big ones that have kept me from using Linux as a desktop. I use it via remote X and have tried to use that as my main desktop, but well... Like I said, it's not Linux vs Windows, it's Linux platform vs Windows platform. The latter is far greater than Microsoft and a real juggernaut to battle.
Re:Filesystem (Score:5, Interesting)
I've karma to burn, so just a couple of points:
Vista doesn't look vastly different...
This is such bollocks it's hard to know where to start. As Thurrott laments, one of the most fundamental features of a windowing system - the idea of depth in a 2D space and so marking out the active window - has been thoroughly fucked up by a team whose sole goal seems to have been to chase the teh pretty crowd. Those screenshots were damning. Usability has gone to shreds.
Do you actually have any evidence of this? Judging by the icons in some of the dialogue boxes (try here [winsupersite.com]), some of the stuff hasn't seen an update since Windows 95. There's a reason it "'appears' to not be different to push away current Windows Users".
Evidently not. Evidently they are so poorly implemented that even fanboy Thurrott is banging his head on the table.
Vista is a new OS with the first radical change in Windows since Windows 3.0.
You're a fucking idiot. A first class fucking nutcase.
Then I read the rest of your post, where you start talking about this fire bollocks, or something, and I realise that you actually are a fucking nutcase...
OK, I'll give you that. Apple brought decent search to Mac OS X in 2005 after Microsoft announced it would implement it in Vista, then Longhorn. Alas, Windows users will get their hands on it in...2007. Hmmmm...
iqu
(And, just one thing, moderators, before modding me down, take a moment to read and consider the parent's post. I am normally a rational and controlled type, but sometimes things just have to be said...)
Re:Resistant to change (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.
The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.
Re:Resistant to change (Score:3, Interesting)
True, if we just knew which version had which features. MS needs to take another page from Apple's book here. With Apple, there's OS X, and OS X Server.
But no, MS thinks we need the lite, medium, large, extra-large, huge, and super-sized versions, all at different price points, with the versions worth using being more expensive, of course.
Re:Filesystem (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
"run as" and login as an Administrator should be reserved for administrative tasks like managing users and devices, not running standard applications.
Re:Filesystem (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's Paul Thurrott... (Score:3, Interesting)
The main issue I had with that review is that its essential purpose was to highlight two features - Spotlight and Dashboard - one which could be safely explained away as being in Longhorn and one which could be dismissed as relatively pointless eye-candy.* It ignored advances like Core Data (probably too technical for Thurrott, and not particularly interesting for his readership, but some developers have been literally wanking over it. OK, not literally, but...) and, more obviously - until he later edited it in response to criticism - things like Automator, which is a wonderful way to make scripting more accessible. At the same time, he found himself able to devote a whole page's worth of text to the most cursory of updates to DVD Player! There are other things, but I'm not going to review 10.4 here as it's not relevant. In any case, the effect is not to praise the product at hand, but to trivialise it. It's quite clever, I'll give him that.
It's the subtle digs that nark me, as I said in the grandparent. I know he loves Mac OS X - the design of his Internet Nexus blog demonstrated as much, as for a long time it was awash with graphics lifted from Tiger - but he cannot resist taking a poke at every possible opportunity. For example:
In the previous version of Mac OS X, version 10.3, Apple introduced a feature for power users called Exposé that seeks to help manage the multiple applications and windows one typically opens in the course of using a Mac.
It's the "power users" dismissal that irritates me. The bit that says "Macs are for elitists, rather than for you and me." In fact, power users use Command+H and Command+Tab. Exposé is for people like my sister who want/like a simple visual representation of all their windows. Thurrott gets it totally wrong, and I can't help but wonder whether the misunderstanding is deliberate. And although he doesn't on this occasion, he is wont to bemoan its lack of keyboard shortcuts - this one I always love, because it makes me think of Windows Explorer and how you have to press Alt, F, W, F (separately) to create a new folder because there is no shortcut key. But I digress...
As to a couple of your quotes:
"Windows Vista will still include pervasive index-based searching features modeled, apparently, after the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X."
I'm not sure where this came from, but it's highy amusing. It's well-known that Apple copied Microsoft over Spotlight.
"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"
And herein my point is illustrated beautifully. In the Tiger review - in fact, in the bit that you quote - he can't help but include a little dig at Apple's marketing, or smoke and mirrors, as I like to call it. It all adds to the negative perception of Apple one takes from the article. But when it's Vista we're talking about, "Apple's marketing materials" is the fount of all Microsoft's innovation, and the negative connotations simply aren't there. He's schizophrenic.
But I think that the most succinct way to sum it all up is with numbers. After thoroughly savaging the current Vista, he awards it 5 stars. And Mac OS X 10.4 which, whatever you want to say about Windows XP SP2, was a far more significant update**? 4 stars.
Piffle.
iqu
(* I was dismissive of it at first, but with sufficient RAM, the dictionary and weather widgets are remarkably useful.)
(** Remember, as I have noted above, Thurrott's review is not a useful review of Tiger. If your opinions on Mac OS X are based on his review, then I cannot blame you for your conclusion, because, as I said, his purpose is to trivialise rather than to provide objective comment. Otherwise, consider Spotlight, RSS, Automator, CoreData, CoreI
Re:Insightful (Score:3, Interesting)
At the time (1993), there was talk of the fabled database-based file system that would revolutionize file storage. This was going to be integrated with a fully object-oriented interface: afer all, get rid of a typical file system and back everything with a database and objects just fall into place. Right, Gnome? :)
In the end, the closest we got to Cairo was Windows 2000/XP. No object-oriented interface, no database file system. In the interim, Linux started to get the same buzz that OS/2 was in 1993: growing mindshare on the desktop and highly useful in the server space. So what does Microsoft do? The exact same thing they had done a decade ago: start bringing up that advanced OS goodness "right around the corner." The embarassing part is that they used the *exact* *same* features, just a decade later!
Of course, the ones who should be embarrassed are the ones that belived the hype...
Sigh.
Me? A bitter ex-OS/2 user? Never! :)
Re:My Vista sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't care. Don't want to care. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not a big GUI hacker (services and components are where I shine,) so the new chrome in Vista will have no impact on my code anyway.
Even once I do get into .NET development, the .NET 2.0 framework is going to continue to run on XP for a long time to come, as is Visual Studio. That's one of the positive aspects of .NET -- it's not bound to the OS.
That's why I'm not likely to switch my main home machine over to any of the flavors of Linux any time soon; although with mono approaching 98% feature completion it may become a possibility. I don't want to rule out any options, but at this point there is nothing in Vista to attract me and plenty to repel me.
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
Worse (for MS): It has nothing to do with Debian or stuff. We are running XP on a Duron 800 with 256 MB of RAM just fine. Not even slow. No need here to upgrade.
Except, and this is the bad predicament of Microsoft, they add so-called great new features that require advanced hardware. But when they do so, the very same moment, the uptake of new hardware (and subsequently Vista) will be slow.
I don't envy them. But their karma is self-inflicted and so there is no need to pity them, neither.
True victim of Monopoly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple spent years and billions of dollars redesigning their operating system around the idea of DRM (TPM)... designing their operating system around a CPU architecture (Apple-Intel) that not every consumer wants... and that makes you have to buy only what Apple wants you to buy.
Champion... money well spent.
See how easily the FUD flings?
Oh yes, Apple has DRM, ever try and play a song off itunes on another computer?
That nice DRM for HDCP compliant computer monitors? That's the RIAA..... guess what either OS X will adopt it or no hidef DVD playback in OS X...
Try in the future to not let your hatred of MS cloud your ability to think somewhat logically it really makes you look like a fanatic/cultist/zealot and reasonable mature logical people just tend to ignore you......
Now what I said contains some truth just like yours, but over all its bullshit and you know it
Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
NT4 had SMP and supported up to 32 processors on paper. Which does not mean it ever scaled. Support and scale, not the same thing.
Linux was just starting to get SMP, but got it better (and no, it was still not right, but better) than NT4 already.
Linux was not even scaling well to 4 processors, but was starting to be used far more than NT4 on these kind of setup.
And I don't think cost was the sole reason, especially when you use such architectures.
It must have to do with the fact that the number of processors is not all in these setup.
If you can't manage your memory correctly between processors, supporting 32 processors is often useless.
It had native threading, which Linux only got last year
And Linux non native threading was already way faster than NT4 native threading.
And Linux got native threading 2 years ago, increasing the gap with Windows even more.
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
Youhave not seem is not an evidence of anything.
At the time, ACL were considered unnecessary because too complicated to manage (that's still the case), and complexity is enemy of security.
Well, it has finally been implemented and more, for nearly every FS Linux supports.
But it still is not used a lot, because for most people, the base system is enough.
It had a GUI with a single, consistent, user interface toolkit. Linux got one of those in 2030?
Linux got that with KDE 2 and Gnome 2, which was in 2001 I think. Except that the GUI was not just like NT4, they were more advanced in lots of fields : i18n/l10n, multi user, multi session, cross platform, customisation, look, resolution agnostism,
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
And of course, this has nothing to do that 3DFX was king of 3D until the end of 1999
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]
I don't understand the advantage
Did NT4 kill Linux? No. It was, however, a long way ahead of the competition
Sorry, but NT4 was the "Unix killer", and it didn't kill anything. On the other hand, Linux is way more on the way to kill Unix than NT4 ever was.
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
It would be an improvement then. My perception is that WinXP was already behind the Linux GUI when it launched, and if Vista maintain the gap, I will already be impressed.
I'm one of the rare people that never caved in to all the rants of stupid people thinking that MS would deliver, and that Vista would kill Linux.
It's amazing, a few months ago, it seemed like Vista was going to kill everything. The tune has changed so fast, that the head of a lot of people must be spinning like mad.
When Microsoft originally announced Longhorn, people thought they might actually deliver
I never thought that, based entirely on past behaviour. It seems a lot of people never learn from history.
I do, and computing is the first field where I feel like a psychi