Snow Leopard and Windows 7: Two flavors of the same GUI?

ZDNet ^ | June 4th, 2009 | Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Has Microsoft, after more than 20 years of work, finally come up with an operating system that rivals the Mac OS? Are the two just different flavors of the same GUI?

Hadley Stern, writing for Apple Matters, thinks this might be the case.

It may have taken Microsoft 20 odd years to figure this one out but there is some pretty big news on the horizon. Of course the market-share battle is lost for Apple, although it continues to chip away here and there. But the innovation-share battle continues. And the big big big news:

Windows 7 Doesn’t Really Suck

…

Unless Apple is hiding something very very very big with Snow Leopard Apple is about to lose the high-ground (and bullying rights) when it comes to its operating system. The blunders of Vista were easy to pick at, picking on Windows 7 will be nitpicking at best, stupidity at worst. For all intents and purposes Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are two flavors of the same GUI.

I’m not so sure. Why?

[ketsu]

They are actually packed in storage containers and every time we get an urge to buy an Apple product we take out the container and remind ourselves not to be that stupid again.

However I am glad to hear Apple has finally solved of their quality problems and have started supporting their customers.

You must have been in hibernation when all the fiasco started with failing iPods...etc...Apple has a horrible reputation in the first few years of selling iPods.

People are confusing 1st and later generation Apple products. Bleeding edge Apple products almost always have issues because of hardware(bad nvidia chips, Taiwanese capacitors etc...) or industrial design(the cracks on the cube case).

Typically later, stable versions of Apple products are quite reliable. This really isn't different from any other company and apple's customer support is usually quite good, although you might have to be persistent. Dealing with humans is nice too.

[McGruff]

Hadley Stern, writing for Apple Matters, thinks this might be the case.

Got Objectivity?

[surfer]

Well my cynical response was mostly intended for the apple zealots on here that are just as bad as the undying Bush, RINO and Obama supporters.

They will never admit something bad could be possibly true about their sacred beliefs.

It takes about two seconds to do some research and see the horror show that Apple was involved in regarding their products.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116537102370441882-vyXiZ8u2PqSWROSqMIEXezQ4ZBY_20061213.html?mod=mktw

http://www.appledefects.com/?cat=7

And of course just like the DailyKOSr’s and Obama supporters and pundits - they can’t handle the truth so they divert and try to attack the character of the messenger - it’s pathetic and doesn’t do anything to enhance or add to the discussion.

[Spktyr]

Er, no. I have a first generation iPod 5gb. It still works fine, though the battery life is getting short. I have a replacement battery I’ll put in it when it finally dies.

I’ve been buying Apple products for two decades now, and like most people I have not experienced this so called “quality lapse”.

[surfer]

Do you keep your iPod in a non-O2 environment and only use on leap years?

Literally every iPod we have ever owned (except the newer nano’s, etc) have only lasted 1 to 1.5 years. Now we were heavy users. We used them literally every day and we travel a lot but we certainly took care of them.

Their battery problem is well documented and the design was the issue - it could only be recharged so many times. I think it is amazing that a 1st generation iPod still charges after 8 years...you deserve an award.

[Mediocrates]

Although I’m not exceptionally geeky, I’ve been using Linux for several years. It’s not a religion or a mark of my personality, just a choice.

To address your examples, I agree that KDE is a bit too heavy on K this and K that. But I also got tired of so many MyThis and MyThat names in Windows.

K3B stands for Burn, Baby, Burn.

[Swordmaker]

industrial design(the cracks on the cube case

There were no "cracks" on the Cube case. What people were claiming were "cracks" were mold markings from the manufacturing process on a small number of Cubes that were sold.

The other issues you mention were also present in a small number of computers that were sold. Apple users expect a certain level of reliability in Apple products and when they run into problems, they tend to be noisier than about it.

[ketsu]

There were no "cracks" on the Cube case. What people were claiming were "cracks" were mold markings from the manufacturing process on a small number of Cubes that were sold.

The other issues you mention were also present in a small number of computers that were sold. Apple users expect a certain level of reliability in Apple products and when they run into problems, they tend to be noisier than about it.

You're being an apologist. I have a perfect condition cube that I worked very hard to find to avoid the *manufacturing defect* of the cracks/mold lines or whatever you want to call them. I've seen quite a few in my day and yes the "cracks" are a problem. Don't pooh on my face and tell me it's ice cream.

"small number of computers sold". Here you really don't know what you're talking about. For example *every* Rev A iMac G5 was a time bomb. It had flawed capacitors in it. *Every* 2.2ghz santa rosa MBP will have its video card blow up(thanks to the Nvidia chipset that unsolders itself). I had both machines and Apple fixed the rev A and refused to fix the pro(they refuse to fix non-exploded dying hardware). Note that neither of these problems are Apple's fault per se, but *every model in a line* is not a "small number of computers sold".

You should really quite while you're ahead.

[coon2000]

Too bad for you. I have a few hundred windows machines that stopped working.

[surfer]

lol...

[Tribune7]

The biggest problems I’ve had with Windows are DRM & malware. I doubt 7 is not going be Unix based so I suspect security is still going to be a bigger concern than on a Mac.

[antiRepublicrat]

Two of my doorstops resulted from the power plug connection breaking off from the motherboard.

I have a PC laptop doorstop for the exact same reason.

[Swordmaker]

Re: cracks in cubes

I have read all the reports on the so-called “cracks” and there were no cracks. I have also owned two Cubes (one is in the trunk of my car right now) and the cases did not have cracks. I have seen some of the “cracked” cases and the cracks being complained about were mold lines.

Re: rev. A G5 iMac is a time bomb.

That’s BS, Ketsu. A subset of the G5 iMacs had the bad capacitors. I have a client with SEVEN of them (bought in the first month of availability) and all seven are still working fine five years later. They are now being retired in favor of new 20” iMacs and are being passed down to a Mac using charity to replace their G4 iMacs which are still working fine after seven years.

Re: “*Every*” 2.2GHz MBP graphics “will” fail.

Every? Then why is mine still working after two years tomorrow? The failure rate for these notebooks is a little less than the failure rate for all notebooks regardless of maker although the rate is higher than other Mac notebooks. The failure rate is in the mid-single digits for that problem. The rate for repairs of that model for all reasons (hardware and software) is under 20% which is similar to other top line maker’s models.

Your claim that “*every*” computer in a specific line is defective is specious. Apple has not issued a general recall on either of these models although they did issue extended warranties. The extended logic board warranty on the G5 iMacs expired in November, four and a half years after the Rev A was first released. There are still hundred of thousands of both the Rev. A iMacs and the 2.2GHz MBPs are still operating without problems. Will they eventually fail? Probably. But they’ve either already exceeded their expected service lifetimes as in the case of the G5, or are on their way.

[antiRepublicrat]

NT is based on VMS which was a very nice multiuser system. In fact they stole quite of bit of it and had to pay for it.

Actually, no. Dave Cutler helped design VMS, and then designed NT. Unfortunately Bill Gates had a change of heart in the middle of the stream and told Cutler to basically make a 32-bit version of Windows 3.1. Ah, what NT could have been had techniclally Gates not decided to ride NT on the popularity of 3.1, and make it compatible.

It's Mach with BSD compatibility built in.

It's a combined Mach/BSD. Instead of using the BSD kernel and userland, Apple replaced the I/O and driver part of the kernel with Mach. This helped make the system more portable across architectures, and it obviously helped Apple immensely.

Windows contains quite a bit of BSD code as well.

Windows has almost no BSD code left. In the beginning NT had the BSD network stack but that was gone by the next version. The only thing left is a few little command line utilities like ftp.exe.

[antiRepublicrat]

One of the central problems of Unix is that it doesn't understand networks directly

By that logic Windows doesn't understand networks directly because it has a separate network stack too,

[antiRepublicrat]

The biggest problems I’ve had with Windows are DRM & malware

Aren't you being redundant?

[Richard Kimball]

What you're whining about is Microsoft building the browser into the kernel. Love them or hate them, building the browser into the kernel let Microsoft kill Netscape and gave them an extra 10 years of life they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Was that a design decision, or a marketing decision, do you think? I've always thought they welded the browser to the OS specifically so you couldn't get rid of Explorer, not because it increased functionality.

[Tribune7]

I remember having some issues with the early G4s too — including a motherboard failure and hard drive failures, and the USB bus does behave in a funky fashion on my Quicksilver.

[Uri’el-2012]

XS> Poor Adrian must be smoking crack. System 7 is NT with this years shade of lipstick.

Mac OS X 10.6 is BSD Unix at its core not some cobbled together single user system with more patches than base code.

You don't know what you're talking about. NT is based on VMS which was a very nice multiuser system. In fact they stole quite of bit of it and had to pay for it.
And OSX is *not* BSD Unix. It's Mach with BSD compatibility built in. Before you start kicking and screaming realize that Windows contains quite a bit of BSD code as well.
I use OSX as my day to day system, but all the FUD and ignorance around here is pathetic.
...........
You have *no* idea what you're talking about. Sockets only made it into BSD in 1983, 6 years after its inception. One of the central problems of Unix is that it doesn't understand networks directly and has the sockets interface(the same sockets interface that windows uses in WinSock) instead of a system that matches the unix "everything is a file" interface. What you're whining about is Microsoft building the browser into the kernel. Love them or hate them, building the browser into the kernel let Microsoft kill Netscape and gave them an extra 10 years of life they wouldn't have had otherwise. Google is killing them now, but that's another matter entirely.
You should *really* shut up before you make even more of a fool of yourself.

Did you miss your starbucks this morning ? Son.

VMS was a radical system in it's day,
but users were not connected by any networks except landlines.

This is the fortieth anniversary of Unix© from Bell Labs.

Unix© was designed from the beginning as a
multi-user networked (arpanet) robust fault tolerant system.

During the DARPA days of BSD development, DOD added requirements
for robustness and resilience against hostile enemy attacks.

Segmentation and fault tolerance was mandated for use in phone switches.

There were API interfaces in Unix© prior to 1983 when
BSD sockets were introduced in 4.2

Just for your education:

Rick Rashid was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon
University in 1983 when he began work on Mach,
a Unix-based message-passing operating system for
multiprocessing applications.
Mach was built on a BSD version of Unix;
it was a "microkernel" that replaced the BSD kernel.

k> One of the central problems of Unix is that it doesn't understand networks directly
and has the sockets interface instead of a system that matches the unix "everything is a file" interface.

You claim that A T & T Bell Labs does not understand networks
What a hoot LOL rotflol

"Everything as a file" allows for standardized drivers and multiple platforms

I'll take certified Unix© with a BenutzerFreundlichkeit interface
over some cobbled together junk from Billie Gates, the huckster from Redmond.

There are some people today who have had too many self-affirmation courses
and have never developed interpersonal skill sets in order to facilitate communication.

As background, I was an Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs all during the eighties.

My boss was Distinguished MTS and an assignee on many patents including Audix©.
For those who are not familiar with Audix©, it was the first voicemail.

I met Kernighan and Richie at conferences.

I worked with F.P. (Ivan) Polensky.

I used both Sys V and BSD 4.3 with kshell and Emacs on BLITs with mice
on platforms from naked boards to multiprocessor mainframes.

I supported the Bell Labs Network(BLN) a combination of uucp and Jes3 store and forwarding.

Spent some time building shell code for typesetting on office lasers.

I was the Project Manager for the porting of switch backplanes
CAD/CAM from IBM mainframes to Sun workstations.

Worked in teams porting IBM System Assembler Macros to "C" for use in phone switches.

I'll bet that's not on your CV

OBTW are you a member of Mensa ?

[ketsu]

Was that a design decision, or a marketing decision, do you think? I've always thought they welded the browser to the OS specifically so you couldn't get rid of Explorer, not because it increased functionality.

Exactly. By building it into the kernel they couldn't take it out, meaning that they could hedge when the inevitable Netscape anti-trust suit came around.