What is Leopard Up Against in Vista?
Before too long, Vista will be released upon the world. Will it be a match for Leopard which will follow a few months later? What will Leopard be up against? What will it take for Apple to convince people a Mac running Leopard is better than a PC running Windows? Can Apple do that?
Let me present an email I got from a techie friend in the Windows world:
Well, I can actually say, I really like Vista.
Really fast, prompts with security crap all over the place which I like too.
Hmm, MS have released some good software finally
Of course, Mac users will be gagging on the coffee and it’ll be spluttering out their nose all over their pristine white/black/silver (or white & black) Macs. Especially that line about liking all those security prompts.
I wonder what those prompts say? Maybe:
Hi. Whoops. Hang on, don’t panic. I’m not a virus, this is Vista talking to you. Just a friendly reminder that I might look pretty hot but I’ve actually got more holes in me than Albert Hall. So I’ll pop up every now and again just to reassure you that installing every security program on the planet is a good thing. See you soon!
A few minutes later:
Hi, me again. Am I still running? Huh!! That’s pretty good! You must know something about computers. Anyway, just popped up to say I’ll leave you alone for a bit.
Another few minutes later:
Hi! Guess who? I hope you don’t get sick of me, coz it’s really important I keep popping up and reminding you about all the risks of using me. Next time I’ll tell you a few. Bye-ee!
Just when you’re taking a sip of coffee:
Panic! Panic! Abandon ship! BWARRP! BWARRP! BWARRP! Hey I hope I didn’t scare you. Just testing the ol’ warning system. All part of the security. I am here to serve.
And much too soon:
Hey dude. Can I call you dude? We are old friends now. What you need to know is, basically, I’m totally crap. Looks can be deceiving. But hey - you’re the one using me. Chortle, chortle. Oops, back soon, gotta give some resources to Aero - he needs all the resources he can get. Between you and me, he’s a . . .
Not much later at all:
Smart alec Aero cutting me off before. Anyway, what’s he know? Security’s what’s important. And the best prevention is lots of messages. Me popping up. Lot’s of reminders. That’s the way to go. Coz you gotta be really careful. There’s lots of viruses, infections, spyware, trojans & adware out there - let’s just call it VISTA for short, eh? I kinda like that name. Catchy, eh? Well, better go. See ya soon.
And so on.
It’s funny you know, after installing Windows on my Mac, the thing that struck me most was the pop ups. The little bubbles reminding me to do stuff. They started to drive me nuts. And it seems Vista is going to have more because Windows users like them - and even need them.
I use Growl on the Mac and it’s wonderful. Apple should buy it and integrate it. Growl tells me something has happened that I want to know about.
Windows just nags. The messages in Windows all seem to be reminders. “Don’t forget to get a virus checker” “Don’t forget to activate” “Did you put the cat out?” “Have you got that huge pimple between your shoulders checked out yet?”
So what is Leopard up against?
So okay, we had a bit of fun, but now to the main question.
The other part of that email is that he likes Vista and is impressed. Sorry Leopard. Game over. This scenario is going to be repeated all over the place. Every magazine that reviews Vista, every IT manager that sees it, everywhere you are going to hear how great Vista is. Why? Because it is better and looks much better. (Ironically, it’s better because MS cut so much out of it.)
That’ll be enough for them. I tried telling him it was all copied from OS X but it was as if I hadn’t spoken. No acknowledgment of all. To Windows users, the copying OS X issue is irrelevant. Vista users aren’t going to give a rat’s brass monkey (no I don’t know what that is but it sounds good). They don’t care who invented things first. All that matters is that their system, Windows, does it now.
It’s a good thing that Leopard is coming out after Vista, after the gushing has abated. Otherwise Leopard will be lost in Vista’s adulation.
Lastly, I got an email from him a few days later that simply said:
First bug found. Hard disk corruption for no apparent reason.
The casual acceptance is what strikes me about that. No cursing, no name calling, just an acceptance. Hey, it’s only a hard disk corruption.
Although this is just one guy, it’s a reasonably safe generalization to say it’s fairly reflective of Windows users. We know Mac users stick to Mac because of a sometimes blind devotion, but Windows users are just plain apathetic. Whether it’s a plethora of messages or a behind the times OS or bugs that crash the system or even all the possible infections, it just doesn’t bother them enough. They’ll switch when it hurts enough. And Vista is not going to hurt enough.
And that’s what Leopard is up against.
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Comments
I must be just as big and clever as you are.
You wish.
Honestly, that Dashboard vs. Konfabulator is one of the weakest arguments that John Gruber ever wrote. To argue Konfabulator “ripped off” Desk Accessories is akin to arguing that the time applet in an OS menubar/”system notification area”/[whatever they call that place in the Gnome/KDE desktop in Linux] rips off the wall clock in your office. The desk accessories was a solution to one of the fundimental problem of the original Mac OS—it could only run one app at the time. Truely. If you were typing a letter in your word processor, if you wanted to calculate some figures you would otherwise have to quit your WP app and launch the calculator. A desk accessory was not simply “a little app” as Gruber asserts, but a special app that was written as a device driver in order to get around the limitation of a single-task operating system. The smallness of these apps were a consequense of having to fit these running apps in the space designed for code to run things like the keyboard and mouse.
Eventually, as Mac OS evolved to allow more than one running program, desk accessories became regular programs because—well they were still useful as regular applications.
Desk accessories really have little in common with the idea behind Konfabulator/Dashboard which is to have a continuously running easily accessible web environment for little background tasks.
In fact, one can make the case that both Dashboard and Konfabulator’s lineage is actually from PointCast which lead Microsoft to develop “Active Desktop” in Internet Explorer 4.0 for Windows 95! For anyone who doesn’t remember that, IE 4 used to install with a component that altered the desktop (and the Windows file manager) to act as a webpage, with the ability to display a website, or display little web channels (which can also be seen as a precursor of today’s RSS).
Now, Pointcast and Active Desktop failed because they were introduced at a time where 33.6k was considered a fast connection to the internet for most consumers.
Anyway, I think John Siracusa at Ars Technica did the best rebuttal to the John Gruber “Dashboard = Desk Accessories” argument in his review of OS X Tiger.
Thanks, Sterling. My point wasn’t specifically about Konfab, or even DF for that matter. I could have just as easily mentioned Roughly Drafted, the Ann Coulter to DF’s Rush Limbaugh.
I was simply defining the Mac-tard and why “relucant windows user” didn’t appear to be one.
What I find amazing is that you’re slagging off someone who is like the mac blogger on the internet, with enormous respect from the development community, and positioning yourself as superior, more intellligent, balanced, reasoned, reasonable etc. Well please excuse me if on balance I disagree with you on this point.
In my view reading both the articles of John Gruber and John Siracua I find Siracusa’s asks more questions than it answers, and many of these are well addressed in Gruber’s article. At worst I find Gruber’s article somewhat confused as it is not really about a specific thing (for instance whether Dashboard is a Konfabulator rip-off, or both are inherited from Desk Accessories) but a more general, and pretty good, discussion of why apple did what they did, that brings in these partisan issues somewhat unconstructively.
Heh… I misread the argument that was forming. I thought there was actually an argument over Dashboard and Konfabulator in here. Anyway, I don’t think John Gruber is anywhere near as bad as Daniel Eran (Roughly Drafted—eternal distorter of markershare data)—he even managed to defend Microsoft once. He does slip into the obnoxious Apple booster that Apple Computer seems to cultivate in its fans (demonstrated ironically by this post criticizing Apple on its virus press release). But he is capable of criticizing Apple when it falls down—though not as much as my favorite ex-blogger who used to write the DrunkenBlog.
That said, with regards to reading the Apple web (others of you may have noticed this), I try to dial the enthusiasm down from 11. Basically I treat all the sites as I do politicians and partisans. I thank Washington for giving me my overdeveloped sense of cynicism.
I’ve just realised in general after writing the above that I do find Gruber’s articles sometimes lack cohesion. As in, the structure seems a little random, leaving you to do the work to tie his points together which can seem separate. I’ve been taught that a good essay does this for you.
By the by I’d definitely and genuinely like to see some examples of where you perceive “double standards”, “bullshit” and lack of objectivity, you self-hailed uber-genius you.
Actually, I read it as an attempt to argue that Dashboard isn’t a rip-off but which shifts midway into Apple’s history as he concedes that Dashboard does plagerize the idea of Konfabulator.
Ignoring the fact that Konfabulator came out before there was a WebKit that came with the OS. He criticizes Konfabulator for rolling their own HTML/Javascript engine rather than extending on the OS’s HTML/Javascript engine even though such an engine didn’t exist at the time.
Interestingly, John Gruber shifts into the very arguments used by Microsoft for integrating IE into the OS—i.e. Netscape was making noises about becoming more than an application, but a platform, but Microsoft kicked them in the kneecaps by developing IE and creating an OS integrated HTML platform layer.
Then jumping from that, he starts to argue why it is good for OSes to copy good ideas from each other and that they were just victims of spirited competition, albeit a competition between a minnow and a shark. That’s a worthwhile argument to make, but not the one he started his paper on. Honestly, we’re left with various unanswered questions? He doesn’t prove that WebKit did in fact get developed in order to run a Dashboard, rather than get extended after seeing how popular Dashboard was. So did Apple copy Konfabulator? Gruber hasn’t the answer to it.
I think blogging does that to you. I don’t know what his educational background is, but before he became a full-time blogger, he was a software developer for Joyent. I also presume he did design as well. I don’t think he was trained as a writer, so he writes much more stream-of-conscious than say a professional writer would. I could be wrong on this though.
DrunkenBatman of DrunkenBlog also writes in that same stream-of-consicous way. Of course, I have no right to complain, as I am not a professional writer, either.
What I find amazing is that you’re slagging off someone who is like the mac blogger on the internet, with enormous respect from the development community, and positioning yourself as superior, more intellligent, balanced, reasoned, reasonable etc.
Look, I’m sure fans of Rush Limbaugh, who is like the premiere conservative voice on radio say the same things about him. Does that prove something about his balance or reasoning that I’m not aware of? Or do they call them ‘ditto’ heads for a reason?
And while I may not be more intelligent than Gruber (intelligence either way seems kind of irrelevant), I’m a damn sight more balanced. To that much I will unabashedly claim.
I would add, and not at all in the interest of kissing ass, that I find some (not all) of the authors of this side much more balanced than Gruber. Which is one of the reasons I come here.
Perhaps, our mild-mannered homies on A.M. can give us answers to these perplexing questions as to the true conlusions to the Dashboard vs. Konfabulator heredity and lineages. That would certainly pacify endless debates about some useless topic.
Who really cares who stole whom? I use both and both look and act exactly the same (besides the ripple effects of Dashboard, a sugary eye-candy at the most and that I can care less after a couple of sip).
Personally, I like Gruber’s writing style. Incoherence in his article’s logic flows are trademark styles. It neither bad nor great, but a style.
Check his argument about Adobe’s snub of the PPC G5 with LightBooth release. Very good analysis mixed with his personal touches.
Much like any other great writer out there blogging, he does have days offs too. A.M. writers are not exempt in this, as you’ve seen.
Correction: Soundbooth not LightBooth…although, that also is a very nice sounding name for a photo-centric product.
So, do you guys think Apple confirming Leopard release to end of Q1 2007 a strategic ploy to upend Vista?
Leo Laporte (Macbreak Weekly Netcast) says that this is to give Apple some time to adjust Leopard to exceed any features stolen from Tiger and Leopard builds.
The Macbreak folks goes on to say that Apple has a real opportunity to capture another 5% of market share as a result of the proposed Vista licensing.
If you are an avid do-it-yourselfer, upon shelling out $395 for a full Ultimate edition, you will be entitle to reinstall that copy on that same machine only ONCE! Yes, folks. That’s right. Here’s hoping that Vista will be rock solid as OSX that DITYers won’t face the possibility of reinstalling Vista more than once, or you’re Balmered (a new verb for getting shafted for reinstalling Vista too many times). I can’t wait for those lawsuits to come.
And what of the new Windows Genuine Disadvantage, err WGA? We know exactly how that’s going with XP even when you are an MSDN subscriber. Vista will be much more fun to watch and those bubble pop-ups? At least the Aero effects will subtle those a bit, eh?
I am very long time Windows user, who switched to OS X at home about half-a-year ago. I love my iMac. And my better one loves her iBook. My private support effort declined to zero since I’ve got her that iBook. Instead of calling me and asking how to do this or that, she’s actually helping me to find the stuff as OS X is much more intuitive then the whole MS Intellisense crap. I’m thinking of founding my own company, I’m sure Mac would be my platform there. Not because I just like it, but objectiveley, it’s just better and I can understand how and what would I have to setup to cover the small/medium business tasks.
Now, today OS X has no chance for a massive change whatsoever and there are objective reasons for it. First and basically the only reason is Apple’s marketing strategy. They give a $shit about corporate customer. I was at Apple Expo in Paris this year and I was really really disappointed. I would love to sit with someone and discuss couple of serious questions, relevant to the corporate word, see how they see Apple office operating, understand TCO etc. etc. but I couldn’t find anyone! There was also nobody to talk on the systems questions and explain me what components are included into the OS X Server. At the end, there was nobody to discuss streaming video, my particular subject of interest. Just a bunch of low-skilled primitive salesmen, that pushed me between themselves until I got tired and gave up. Instead, I’ve seen there pretty impressive number of small software companies with mainly personal use type of things and yes, big way creative computing.
After some additional investigation and reading, I’ve come to the solid conclusion that Apple is not investing a bit today, in order to build it’s market share in the corporate world. And there are reasons for it. Objectively, OS X isn’t ready to meet today’s office usage style demands (synchronized network folders for example - works terribly slow on PC but the concept is brilliant) or redefine it with something different and I’m sure much more efficient and better in case of Apple. Office applications are suffering: MS Office for Apple is just a lousy copy for a home use. And apparently, it’s not native => slower on Intel Macs. Freware versions seem to be better and already native on Intel Mac but incomplete - I have failed to find a spreadsheet with more then 65K rows - that’s critical for me. There is certain incompatibility of the office scripting language with the PC-based offices, that undermines the switch a bit - you want to be compatible with the others.
I have just given you couple of examples creating real technical limitation and I’m not even mentioning the other unreal ones like availability of applications, for example. PC users have no idea how much it is already embedded and built-into the OS X itself but they have no comparison or educational material to learn it. They do not realize that all those millions of applications available for PC they would never need for Mac because most of them are just naturally built into the Operating System. And yes, back to the same point again - Apple is not interested at this point, they do not invest there, they do not develop this market at all right now.
...not really. Hadley Stern came down on the side of “stolen”, and that hasn’t ended the argument one bit.
But the issue is the double standard there seems to be here against Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft gets slagged endlessly if it even looks like they copied something from Apple—“they can’t innovate” etc… but it’s OK if Apple is inspired by others. I think Arlo Rose had a poster made saying “Cupertino, Start Your Photocopiers” when they saw Dashboard in the OS X previews.