Briefly About the Show

Paul begins his article, "Sometimes I wonder how Apple CEO Steve Jobs can sleep at night." The title? "Apple Mac OS X Leopard Preview: Who's the Copycat Now?" This sets up Paul's point of view fairly well. He goes on to discuss Steve Jobs and his recent WWDC keynote, "...he announced ten new features for Leopard, the next version of OS X, most of which will seem more than vaguely familiar to Windows users."

At this point I'm thinking, "I can't wait to hear what Leopard is going to offer that seems familiar to Windows users. I can't think of a thing." So let's see what he's talking about. I'm going to discuss Paul's points one at a time. You can assume that if I don't mention a particular point he makes, I agree with him on it or I don't think it's important enough to make a fuss about. Yes, let me be clear, I'm not innately against Paul Thurott's article. I simply disagree with a large part of it.

Let's begin with this:

I have to admit to being a bit shocked by how childish Apple is about Vista. Say what you will about Microsoft (heck, I do), but the company is at least deferential to its customers in public, about as far from smug as is humanly possible, and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition.

Now this is a simple matter of opinion, but I don't see Apple's jabs at Microsoft as being childish. I see it as basic trash-talking and bringing some fun to corporate competition. Why is this childish? To me it shows spirit, passion. When teams compete in a 2-on-2 basketball game, they talk shit. Do you call them childish for it? For me, I think companies should behave this way more often. Why? It just makes life a little more interesting and as long as it's not genuinely cruel, then it's fun. I'd love it if Microsoft started jabbing back. Come on folks, it's entertainment.

...to the last moments of the keynote, Jobs and company unleashed a never-ending, tireless diatribe against Microsoft and its upcoming Windows Vista release.

A "never-ending, tireless diatribe" ? I think there was a total of 4 minutes of trash-talking in a presentation that totalled around 65. Is that really "never-ending" and "tireless"? Sorry, I just find this to be an exaggeration.

Jobs was quick to tout the progress Apple has made with its OS since 2001, when both Windows XP and the first version of OS X shipped. "What have we been doing for the last five years?" he asked. "We've been putting out releases of OS X." He claimed that Apple shipped five "major" updates to OS X, including Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger, though I'd argue that virtually none of those were major updates at all.

I find it fascinating when people claim that the OS X releases aren't major updates. Why is that? It's a version update of an operating system. To me this means, tons of bug fixes, security updates, feature enhancements, new software included, and new OS features introduced. That's precisely what every release of OS X provided. Can you really say that Tiger was not a major update to Panther when it introduced some of the following... Spotlight (fully indexed meta search), iChat with video conferencing, Automator, Dashboard (widgets), Core Video & Core Image, not to mention full updates with tons of improvements to over a dozen included apps. If that's not a major release, then neither is Windows XP when updgrading from Windows 2000. Operating systems aren't supposd to transform completely when you update them, they're supposed to change and improve enough so you notice. And if you didn't notice the difference between Panther and Tiger, then you're not doing anything but checking email and browsing the web.

What are the major features/updates introduced with Vista (which I love by the way)? According to Microsoft here are the new Vista features of note...

• Aero - a new UI
• New Vista explorer - an "update" to Windows explorer
• Instant Search
• Taskbar thumbnails - yeehaw!
• Windows search - basically instant indexed meta search
• IE7 - something that should have been out years ago
• New Media Player
• Windows Flip & Flip 3D - really an improved Alt+Tab

Heck, according to Paul himself, most of Vista's "features" are merely improvements. Although I'd disagree. I think Vista is a major upgrade across the board. I consider Vista to be a MAJOR update and yet, most of what has been done is under the hood, security improvements and so on. And yes, Aero is very nice. Finally MS gets a slick(er) UI. But is there any "major" new feature that we should get excited about? Not really. And is there any new software included that makes paying for an upgrade worth it in Paul's book? Well, there's Windows Defender, which is available as a free download anyway. And they actually removed Windows messenger completely with no replacement foreseen. A quick look at a Wiki on Vista features shows pretty much the same laundry list of improvements that Apple showed off when they released Tiger.

At this point Paul goes after features that came out in Tiger that he claims Microsoft had first?...

He said that Microsoft was ripping off Spotlight with Windows Search in Vista, which in fact, had been developed and publicly discussed long before Spotlight ever saw the light. (To be clear, Apple borrowed that one from Microsoft, but implemented it much more quickly.)

Really? Now I recall Gates talking about what he "wanted" to do with desktop search years ago. They gave this idea a name (WinFS) and failed to implement it the way they wanted to... as a relational databse file-system that allowed for instant searches of local machines. And because Microsoft talked about it publically means Spotlight is a copy? How's that work?

Apple released this feature first (Tiger Spotlight) but they didn't do it with a file-system upgrade (like WinFS), they did it with indexed meta-search (Spotlight). That is not the method Microsoft wanted to use and regardless, Microsoft wasn't the first company to talk about instant search on the desktop either.

Hell, when I was in college, our Computer Science professors would ramble on about this theoretical system for hours. And considering Apple's veil of secrecy regarding such features, how can Paul know who was studying this possiblity first?

Curiously, Serlet did not bring up Dashboard, Apple's environment for widgets, and Sidebar, Microsoft's environment for gadgets. That's good, because Apple stole Sidebar idea wholeheartedly from Konfabulator and other widget environments that predated Dashboard.

I agree that Apple's Dashboard was unjustly similar to Konfabulator, but what's your point here? Apple ripped off Konfabulator, but Microsoft's not ripping off either Dashboard or Konfab?

Thanks to the 64-bit Xeon chip that will be shipping in the new Mac Pro systems, Leopard will be fully 64-bit enabled (unlike Tiger, which is only partially 64-bit and then only on certain Power PC systems). That means that OS X will finally do what Windows XP x64 Edition did last year: Run 32-bit and 64-bit applications natively, side-by-side. Good for them.

Oh, yes of course. Windows XP x64 - the basic consumer-grade OS that Microsoft replaced the 32-bit XP with. Wait, no... XP64 was a separate release and also has a lot of limitations, which is why it wasn't used to replace XP32. In fact, XP64, uses a translation technology called WOW64 to allow execution of 32-bit code. If you listened to the keynote, Leopard uses NO translation or emulation of any kind to allow 32-bit code to run. Furthermore, in XP64 "A 64-bit application cannot link against a 32-bit library (DLL) and similarly a 32-bit application cannot link against a 64-bit library. This may lead to the need for library developers to provide both 32- and 64-bit binary versions of their libraries." Starting to sound like Microsoft's idea of a 64-bit operation system differs a bit from Apple's. Get your facts straight, Paul. These OSes are not the same and Microsoft only released XP64 in April of 2005 (with its limitations).

What Apple has done here is notable, it is a big deal.

Time Machine is a truly good idea: It helps you automatically back up everything on your system and restore earlier versions of files at any time. But this was a great idea over three years ago when Microsoft first added it to Windows Server 2003 as Volume Shadow Copy (VSC, or "Previous Versions" to end users). In fact, VSC is such a good idea, Microsoft is adding it as a purely client-side service in Windows Vista as well.

Oh, I see... so now we're comparing a Leopard feature to Microsoft's server OS. Let's be clear though... VSC lets you take volume snapshots and you're limited to 512 simultaneous per volume. You also can't access this data over a network without client software and although Paul finds the interface "over the top" - I'd say that it's the most intuitive UI for a complex service I've ever seen. My grandma could use Time Machine and get it, but VSC? I don't think so. Also, let me point out that Time Machine works for "everything" on the system individually or as a whole. Obviously I haven't seen all of what Time Machine can do, but from the short demo, I don't really see how you can compare it with VSC. Although they do both provide a backup feature. And yes, Vista has something similar built in, but will it be easy to use? We'll see.

Apple's version of Windows Search will now search other Mac clients and workgroup servers, functionality that Microsoft will add to Windows Vista with the release of Vista SP1 and Longhorn Server in late 2007. It will also support advanced search features, like better search syntax, just like Windows Search. And, as with Windows Vista, you'll be able to launch applications and find recent items with Spotlight. Gee, Spotlight still seems an awful lot like Windows Search.

If Paul's comparing Spotlight to Windows XP search, it's a huge mistake. Try searching in Windows XP for files on a 250 GB hard drive. Tell me how long it takes. Meanwhile, I use Spotlight to search 3 drives, totalling over 700 GB and it's almost instnataneous. I'll give Paul the benefit of the doubt and assume he "only" means the Windows Search introduced in Vista.

So Leopard (shipping Spring 2007) has the same search features coming in Vista SP1. Okay. Vista's finally shipping sometime in 2007 and Paul thinks SP1, extending a complicated technology like instant search, will be out shortly after? Interesting theory, but regardless Apple has had Spotlight integrated for well over a year now. Vista will catch up in 2007. Then apparently catch up some more with Vista SP1. The way he writes about Spotlight, it's as if he thinks Spotlight itself is brand new. Sorry Paul, Spotlight came with Tiger, it's just getting improved in Leopard, so how is it a copy of something that's new to Vista? Oh wait, it's a copy because Microsoft was thinking about it first. Right, I forgot.

The end result is that Core Animation will not directly effect end users in Leopard until developers take advantage of it. Clearly, it was thrown out as a bone to the developer-heavy crowd.

Um, yes, that's correct. A development frmaework usually doesn't effect anyone until someone uses it. And yes, since the WWDC is a "developer's" conference, Apple "threw them a bone" with this one.

The voice feature seems like a decent improvement, but didn't sound any better than Vista's voice synthesis to me (Jobs played both side-to-side during the keynote).

I couldn't agree more. I thought Vista's text-to-speech engine was just as realistic. Although the feature itself is a very welcome improvement in both OSes.

Leopard will include an enhanced version of iChat that includes multiple-logon support, invisibility, animated buddy icons, video chat recording, and tabbed chats. These are the types of features many free IM applications already include, so it doesn't sound particularly compelling... Cool, but again, not what you'd call a major OS feature.

I don't think OSes are simply the UI of a computer anymore. These days they come with additional software and when that software gets a major improvement and you can only get that software via the OS, then it's an OS feature. Windows Messenger shipped with XP. I considered that a feature of the OS. Anyway, Paul points out that fee IM clients include these features already. Really? Which ones? The big IM companies like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo often include ads with their clients and they can only connect to other people using the same clients. None of them allow multiple "simultaneous" logons or video chat recording though. And free IM clients can't even handle video or audio chats very well (if at all). I use IM every day and although I'd love to have one account, I'm forced to have multiple to ensure privacy or keep in touch with people who don't choose the same service as me. When a company decides to let me connect to multiple usernames at once and adds unique features, I find it to be significant. The same would be true if Windows Messenger introduced these things, and of course was bundled with Vista.

I get a lot of flak from the Mac community and no doubt this article will start another round of name-calling. (See how Apple's childish behavior rubs off on its fans?)

Let me make something clear to all those who read this. I am not some Apple fanboy. I love their products and their OS, but I have plenty of complaints as well. There are people out there who defend Microsoft, Apple, and Linux with such a blind fury and ignorance that it amazes me. Paul, if you're reading this, I hope you have not felt that I've called you names or set out to insult you. I simply feel that a number of your points are incorrect and I, like you, voice my opinions when I have them.

I haven't read a lot of Paul's stuff, but I know that he's someone who's due respect, and I grant him nothing less.

My quick summary on OS X vs Windows? OS X is a slick, rock-solid, modern-day OS that I enjoy more than any other I've used so far. Windows XP was great when I had only 2000 and ME to compare it to, but it's showing it's age and it's badly in need of an overhaul. I think Vista will be a welcome change and I have high hopes for it. I still think Vista is only going to be catching MS up to where others are today though. To me Microsoft has been making a lot of mistakes a lot lately, but I don't get joy from this. I criticize because I feel they can do better and users should know that they have options.