Yes, Apple presents its products in the best possible light. That’s what marketing is. That’s what Microsoft does too, and I’ve never noticed Microsoft crediting any other company for its OS features, either.

And calling XP’s very buggy workspace PowerToy “Microsoft’s innovation” is just ridiculous.

John, got a battle going on here. It’s best to stay out of the OS war.

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. But still, I felt like I needed to come to Vista’s defense.

I think though John, that you’re being a bit precious about what Apple are doing here.

I think part of it was that I had slowly grown a respect for Apple and its products. But when I noticed that they were using deceptive marketing like this, my opinion of them just deflated like a balloon, and this blog post is where it came out. (I realize it’s probably “normal” for companies to do this, but I still don’t think it’s right.)

If I saw Microsoft doing this sort of thing, I’d probably be just as upset.

“Spaces”, or the concept of multiple workspaces, has been around forever. The implementation is where innovation comes in (for instance, Solaris uses multiple workspaces in CDE, and CDE sucks arse).

I think though John, that you’re being a bit precious about what Apple are doing here.

Forbes magazine leaves the OS wars out of it, and sums it up nicely; “Vista is a fading theme park with a few new rides, lots of patched-up old ones and bored kids in desperate need of adult supervision running things… as Bill Gates winds down his roles at Microsoft, Windows Vista may be the chief software architect’s swan song. It’s a shame his legacy is something so utterly unimaginative, internally discordant and woefully out of tune.”

Your depth of knowledge and history of computers is seriously lacking, though I suppose that’s understandable given your youth.

I’ve been using computers for about 10 years (about half as long as personal computers have been around), so I don’t think my knowledge could be that lacking

You just PROVED that it is lacking, 20 years? the Mac is 31 years old this year, the internet has been round, in some form, for about 50. Computer Development and research has been going on for more than 60 years. Sorry my young friend I will not visit this site again,

I have been using Vista for the last two months since I am an MSDN subscriber and for Microsoft they have made some great improvement and finally an interface that doesn’t suck. They have paid much more attention to detail on little things and I am glad they have looked at OSX and realized they had a long ways to go.

I don’t much care when OS vendors steal stuff from each other since who in the world thinks that these platforms must never include new good ideas. Apple bragging about widgets without mentioning Konfabulator is rather silly and I wish they would realize sticking with a one button mouse is stupid.

As an old geek I have suffered through many Microsoft products from Windows 2.0 on and would certainly like to forget Windows ME. Running Vista I am pretty happy with what they have done.

Your depth of knowledge and history of computers is seriously lacking, though I suppose that’s understandable given your youth.

I’ve been using computers for about 10 years (about half as long as personal computers have been around), so I don’t think my knowledge could be that lacking.

Third, the backup feature of 2003 server is pathetic compared to time machine, and is not available in the consumer versions of Windows.

Yes it is. Windows ShadowCopy (a.k.a. Previous Versions) is included in Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

First, the point is that Apple has the features MS just added by way of Vista, plus more.

I do agree, Apple has every right to point out the features in their OS. However, as stated in my post, they imply that Vista has none of the features that make OS X “cool” and “great,” which is obviously not true.

First, the point is that Apple has the features MS just added by way of Vista, plus more. In other words, they list Spotlight because it is an important part of the OS, which MS clearly recognized, albeit late.

Second, virtual desktops have been around forever in other OS’s. It’s available on Windows or Mac via third party products, but has long been around in varous Unix flavors. (The Apple implementation, though, will be pretty slick.)

Third, the backup feature of 2003 server is pathetic compared to time machine, and is not available in the consumer versions of Windows. If you watch the video demo of Time Machine it crushes traditional backup methods. Server 2003 uses the traditional method of full, incremental, etc. style backups. The only innovation there was volume shadow copy. TM, on the other hand, uses clever file structure techniques to have continuously rolling backups without taking up too much space. (Unix does this too, but TM makes it easy and accessible.) TM will find data within files, not just files, so if you delete a record (for example), that record by itself can be restored. TM is also space efficient.

The shuffled deck view of open applications is just dumb. I much prefer Apple’s approach of seeing full thumbnails of all applications, or (within an app) the files in an app.

Sure, Windows catches up in some aspects (search, “gadgets,” for example), with this release after 5 years. Too bad a new version of Mac OS X is coming out in a couple of months that will incorporate even more innovation.

You also should know that Apple has never been about inventing (though it does from time to time). Rather, Apple looks over the world of technology, picks and chooses the right components, and, when the time is right, packages them together in a way that makes computing accessible to the masses and easy and fun to use.