Microsoft’s Vista Operating System Breaks The Mold?
In many recent articles posted around the web, such as in CrunchGear’s post and over at Ars Technica, it seems that Window’s new operating system, Vista, is just a poser, bluntly copying away at Mac’s features on it’s OS X.
Ars Technica’s post even suggests that 75% of the Vista reviews found online “oddly” reference Mac’s Operating System X, which certainly doesn’t come as a surprise, Mac’s OS X is very nice indeed, and also, Microsoft has a tendency for doing what they do best in my opinion, which is copying or buying out their competitors. Even when I received the beta version of the Vista OS cd a couple of months ago, it did seem pretty darn familiar. Strangely enough I didn’t find anything which I strongly felt broke the mold for future operating systems to come, just features I’ve seen before on the Mac OS X or other operating systems. Now don’t get me wrong, they did improve the look and feel for their OS but other then that I didn’t find anything compelling enough to say, “WOW, look at that!”.
There is a lot of discussion concerning this issue but the fact of the matter is that when you set out to create something “new”, you should always strive to break new ground and set new standards for future products or services to come. Of course this is my view on all of this, but sadly enough there are far too many individuals that feel the same way and that’s not something I would want from my customers if I were Microsoft, not to mention all the incapability issues the operating system comes with. The bottom line is that they have not “broken the mold” and if you are thinking of purchasing and installing the “new” Vista OS onto your computer, you should always conduct your own research on this topic and find out if it’s right for you.
Jun 16th 2007
For years in the making, I personally think Vista was a letdown. I think that besides the higher res icon support, and integrated OS search engine; a lot of the other features are just ‘theme-like’ eye candy. I was hoping for a more virtualized environment IE (virtual desktops/better remote desktop software/integrated desktop widgets) — We’ll see where it goes; A part of me thinks that there is more on the horizon, and Microsoft is really just trying to get everyone on the new OS first.
I do hear alot about how they rip off of Apple OSX, but Apple has been saying this ever since Windows 3.11 supported Mice; saying that MS was ripping off them for using Mice…I mean, some stuff you just gotta let slide because it is essentially middle-ground tech; like the search support, higher icon resolution, sidebar and widgets. You have to keep in mind that these make sense for an easier experience on the computer. If you’re going to play the blame game on who’s copying who; lets take a look at OSX, and how it is basically a sugar-coated version of UNIX and how many of the OSX features existed in Linux before OSX came out.
Hopefully MS will put out more updates to Vista before the year is up. I’d like to see some nicer small applications or features that currently aren’t there. As for the performance of Vista, well my system runs extremely well for being over a year old; and the compatability hasn’t really been an issue since I installed it. Maybe i’m one of the lucky few who was able to use all existing hardware with Vista. =)