I got bored last night and decided to try putting Vista on my MacBook Pro. What a pleasant surprise to find out it was even easier than the online how-tos said it was! All of them say you have to install XP first, but after I partitioned with Boot Camp, I went straight to Vista with no problems. Hopefully having some first-hand experience with Vista, and Windows in general will help me make more productive comments when we talk about upcoming releases.
So far, I’ve actually been impressed. I still don’t like the interface, but I attribute that more to my distaste for the Windows UI philosophy than a lack of quality. This is really the first Windows release that feels like a polished product to me. Nearly every previous version of Windows has had a lot of leftovers from older releases; for example, half of the text in XP is anti-aliased, while half of it isn’t, a good number of icons haven’t been redone in the XP style, applications and even system utilities don’t use XP interface elements, etc. So far in Vista, everything I’ve seen matches and looks good. The overall look and feel is much more serious than XP’s Fischer-Price color scheme and cartoon search dogs. I personally can’t stand “task-based” interface components, but Microsoft has really cleaned them up and made them presentable for Vista, having them waste less screen space and use more concise wording. I still think features, and particularly configuration utilities, are poorly organized and scattered in too many different places, but the whole things looks coherent when put together, which I couldn’t say for Windows XP.
There’s nothing revolutionary in Vista, but I can see why it’s a major improvement for Microsoft. The quality of the Windows user experience will go way up when this hits the streets. Will I use it? No, but I can respect this OS much more than Windows XP. Anyway, I just started this thread to share what I did and see if anyone wanted to chat about what it’s like to use Vista. Comments?
There’s nothing revolutionary in Vista, but I can see why it’s a major improvement for Microsoft
The really neat stuff is the stuff under the hood so to speak
Windows Presentation Foundation is really cool, haven’t seen anyone else with something quite like that.
The ratings tool is brilliant. imagine in the future you pick up a game to see if it plays on your computer. You look at system requirments and see a 3.. All you need to know is if your system rates a 3 or higher, and no worry about processor, GPU, ram ,etc
There’s nothing revolutionary in Vista, but I can see why it’s a major improvement for Microsoft
The really neat stuff is the stuff under the hood so to speak
Windows Presentation Foundation is really cool, haven’t seen anyone else with something quite like that.
The ratings tool is brilliant. imagine in the future you pick up a game to see if it plays on your computer. You look at system requirments and see a 3.. All you need to know is if your system rates a 3 or higher, and no worry about processor, GPU, ram ,etc
I really hope that game developers use that is the system that they use to express system requirements, especially if they give the individual scores as well as the total score. It needs to be able to detect a few more things (like drive speed), but for the most part it is good.
There’s nothing revolutionary in Vista, but I can see why it’s a major improvement for Microsoft
The really neat stuff is the stuff under the hood so to speak
Windows Presentation Foundation is really cool, haven’t seen anyone else with something quite like that.
The ratings tool is brilliant. imagine in the future you pick up a game to see if it plays on your computer. You look at system requirments and see a 3.. All you need to know is if your system rates a 3 or higher, and no worry about processor, GPU, ram ,etc
I think that game developers should work to innovate and optimize the software side of computer games so you don’t have to constantly buy new hardware. That’s how consoles work, there is a fixed hardware configuration and that’s all you have to work with, you have to optimize the game until it fits in the system. Sure an upgrade happens every once and a while but you still get good gaming for a few years. The problem with consoles, and specifically the XBOX is the total lack of control in FPS games. I am formidable in FPS games with keyboard on mouse but roadkill with the joypad.
It will be interesting to see how the rating system works out. Apparently Microsoft claims it is only intended to help you gauge how well your computer will run Vista, which makes more sense. If it was intended for general application compatibility, the measurements would have to be changed frequently to remain useful. Then again, that could work; we’ll have to see.
For what it’s worth, my computer scored a 3. Every once in a while something will take longer than it should, but the system runs very fast 99% of the time, so I assume this is just a Beta problem.
So far I’ve installed the Office 2007 Beta and Civilization IV. The graphics in Civilization are kind of glitchy, and I’m wondering whether this is a Beta issue or an incompatibility with the new OS version that will have to be solved by an update.
It will be interesting to see how the rating system works out. Apparently Microsoft claims it is only intended to help you gauge how well your computer will run Vista, which makes more sense. If it was intended for general application compatibility, the measurements would have to be changed frequently to remain useful. Then again, that could work; we’ll have to see.
For what it’s worth, my computer scored a 3. Every once in a while something will take longer than it should, but the system runs very fast 99% of the time, so I assume this is just a Beta problem.
So far I’ve installed the Office 2007 Beta and Civilization IV. The graphics in Civilization are kind of glitchy, and I’m wondering whether this is a Beta issue or an incompatibility with the new OS version that will have to be solved by an update.
That’s most likely not a beta problem, as it isn’t just a straight out average of all scores. It takes the lowest score and rounds because in a real system, bottlenecks can hurt the system. My system gets a 3 too, and it isnt exactly old and slow. They have redone the tool sincce beta 2, but the same logic still remains.
It seems like Vista or whatever is catching up to OS X Tiger. I wonder what the next cat out of the bag will inspire MS to produce
Tiger was just catching up tp XP in many ways. FAX support (logs and a way to access old ones), Core video (check out VMR), web page archives, viewing all the meatdata and some editing of it, simple editing tools in the image viewer for FAXes, Core Audio (check out DirectX Plugns)
I just hate when people makes staements like “it’s finally catching up” when tiger itself “is finally catching up” with XP in many ways. Why can’t people just say “it’s looking good” or something like that, but always have some sort of urge to say “it’s been done before”
Well, I personally think that OSX was catching up XP until Panther. From there, to me OSX is superior in many ways. Of course, there were things that OSX did better from the beginning, like desktop composition, icons, fonts, unified display-printing system, better account privileges system… etc, but overall, XP was a more convenient-fast-useful OS until Panther. Also, Tiger was very buggy in the beginning (rushed out if you ask me) so is not like that was an incredible good version.
Vista also raises the bar in many ways, so is not like Leopard will start from a “tied Tiger-Vista” scenario.
I just hate when people makes staements like “it’s finally catching up” when tiger itself “is finally catching up” with XP in many ways. Why can’t people just say “it’s looking good” or something like that, but always have some sort of urge to say “it’s been done before”
When I talk about what’s more advanced, I’m almost always referring to interface, not technical aspects, considering that the interface will have much more effect on my daily use than some obscure under-the-hood feature. I would rather use a technically inferior OS with a good interface than the most powerful OS ever created with a bad interface.
That’s most likely not a beta problem, as it isn’t just a straight out average of all scores. It takes the lowest score and rounds because in a real system, bottlenecks can hurt the system. My system gets a 3 too, and it isnt exactly old and slow. They have redone the tool sincce beta 2, but the same logic still remains.
What I was talking about was how something will occasionally take longer than it should, and how Civilization IV’s graphics are a little messed up.
There’s nothing revolutionary in Vista, but I can see why it’s a major improvement for Microsoft. The quality of the Windows user experience will go way up when this hits the streets. Will I use it? No, but I can respect this OS much more than Windows XP. Anyway, I just started this thread to share what I did and see if anyone wanted to chat about what it’s like to use Vista. Comments?
I think that MS is doing well with Vista too. Among the things I would like to see inproved in Vista are:
- I like the menu-less environment, but I wish they can make the use of pseudo tabs+menus a little more consistant. The search bar on the right is often placed on random places form app to app.
- I like the “orb” menu entry in Office 2007. Now that MS is getting rid of menus it would be cool if they standarize the use of the Application Icon on the top bar with menu entries in a similar way Office 2007 does (something like the App Menu in OSX), specifically putting the application preferences there, instead of the current useless app menu with “move” “resize” and all that crap.
- Currently, all apps are requiring restarts just as often as on XP. I wonder if they are indeed going to reduce that as promised some years ago. Also, nobody is talking about the “keep aplications state between reboots” feature they were supposed to implement on Vista. Will that be just another droped feature?
- I’d like if they allow to dock the sidebar on top and bottom of the screen also.
With Leopard unveiled in a couple of weeks these are indeed exciting times for computer enthusiasts.
It seems like Vista or whatever is catching up to OS X Tiger. I wonder what the next cat out of the bag will inspire MS to produce
Tiger was just catching up tp XP in many ways. FAX support (logs and a way to access old ones), Core video (check out VMR), web page archives, viewing all the meatdata and some editing of it, simple editing tools in the image viewer for FAXes, Core Audio (check out DirectX Plugns)
I just hate when people makes staements like “it’s finally catching up” when tiger itself “is finally catching up” with XP in many ways. Why can’t people just say “it’s looking good” or something like that, but always have some sort of urge to say “it’s been done before”
Sorry for the jab. You had not written for awhile. I was sure my comment would elicit a response from you.
I guess that means vectorized icons are also no longer a possibility. I wonder if Vista gives resolution independence at all, as promised
I doubt we’ll see vector based resolution independent UIs in a long time. Here’s an article about why it won’t make it into OS X by John Siracusa and I’m pretty sure most of the reasons would apply to Windows as well/
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the link. It certainly does apply to Windows or in fact any OS. It also makes it very clear that Mac OS X will be the first to implement higher resolution icons, windows etc.
“I would rather use a technically inferior OS with a good interface than the most powerful OS ever created with a bad interface.”
Thats understandable, I think Linux is suprior, but any deep configuration inolves icky unlear text files.
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the link. It certainly does apply to Windows or in fact any OS. It also makes it very clear that Mac OS X will be the first to implement higher resolution icons, windows etc.
I just hope “higher resolution” doesn’t end up meaning “larger” as it has in the past.
Very interesting indeed. Thanks for the link. It certainly does apply to Windows or in fact any OS. It also makes it very clear that Mac OS X will be the first to implement higher resolution icons, windows etc.
I just hope “higher resolution” doesn’t end up meaning “larger” as it has in the past.
I don’t understand what you mean. The size of screen elements depends on your display’s resolution. Icon size has been adjustable up to the largest size that looks good.
I think he’s saying that as resolution has gone up so has the size of the elements on the screen, so instead of a big high-resolution screen providing more workspace it is just a larger and finer, which is functionally like operating at a low resolution.
