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Correction, by 2003, you mean 1995. And in 1995, they were still just following the crowd. An OO database filesystem has been "just around the corner" for a decade or so. It wasn't new, even when Be did it in the early 1990s.

And if Microsoft announced these things in 2003 (presumably already having designed and started work on these things), and Apple beat them to it by more than a year, despite their head start, then what does that make Microsoft? No matter which way you argue, you're arguing that Microsoft is either a copy-cat, or is incompetent!

What is not disputed is that MS announced system wide searching first.

What IS purely speculation is whether this somehow "caused" Apple, Google and Yahoo to follow suit.

Another quite feasible possibility is that these other companies were already developing these technologies and being (by the looks of it) 12 months behind in the race, Microsoft "announce" that it will be in the next version of Windows. "Announce", big deal.

Take Apple for example, Steve Jobs goes to great lengths to conceal future plans until they are ready to show. The first we heard of Spotlight was when he demoed it, up and running, at WWDC. This is typical of the Apple approach since Jobs return.

When was the first we heard about OSX on Intel? On stage, up and running. How long had they had this? Since OS X 10.0! No pre announcement, here it is!

The conclusion that Apple quickly cobbled together spotlight in reaction to a Microsoft announcement is pure speculation, and to be honest, fanciful.

I had systemwide searching back in the 1980s. It was a utility that came with Wordstar 4 for DOS.

How is it not fair? A beta is meant to test a products final features for bugs before release. So, it stands to reason that what you see in the beta is either the final product or the final product plus some stuff that won't make the cut.

Usually, you would be correct. However, Microsoft has done things different for a LONG time. Anyone who expects a Microsoft Windows beta to be feature complete is kidding themselves and needs a big smack to the back of the head.

It's been clearly explained many times before that betas are not feature complete, but more akin to alphas, and that RCs are more akin to betas. Yes, it's odd, but it's how MS does things. There is nothing wrong with it.

Well, that is just silly. It should be called what it is.

Usually, you would be correct. However, Microsoft has done things different for a LONG time. Anyone who expects a Microsoft Windows beta to be feature complete is kidding themselves and needs a big smack to the back of the head.

In every instance in the past, Microsoft has removed features in the beta when the OS is finally released ... not added more in. (Note: I am not including bundled non-system level parts such as Plus.)

It's been clearly explained many times before that betas are not feature complete, but more akin to alphas, and that RCs are more akin to betas. Yes, it's odd, but it's how MS does things. There is nothing wrong with it.

It doesn't match how they handled things in the past.

Why do you think that this time it will be different?

You have anything to back that up?

So that means the shipping product is more akin to a release candidate? You are telling me there is nothing wrong with that?

One is a product you can use now. The won't won't be for sale til sometime in the future.

What is your point? I never said the features might not be buggy. In fact, I said they might not even make it into the final product. I did say that the two products can fairly be compared, though. Vista is Microsoft's next generation operating system and OS X Tiger is Apple's; thus, the two can be compared if consideration is given to the fact that the features in the beta OS will have some bugs adn may not even be in the final product.

IIRC Aero Isn't being added till Beta 2.

That's what I kept on hearing too.

Yeah, to the best of my knowledge that's what the plan has always been. I at least hope the B1 UI isn't a form of Aero.

Don't try to justify GNOME/Fluxbox/Windowmaker's ugliness as the true paradigm in simple/easy UI design.

Thanks. ;-)

Ugliness is subjective, and ultimately, rather unimportant. If you do Real Work (TM) on your computer, ou don't want a blinky-blink interface. There is a reason corporate and technical users cling to Windows 2000 --- its got most of the advanced features of XP, but its Win95-esque unnattractive interface is quite livable. GNOME's look might not be attractive in the same way as Aqua's, but like Aqua (and unlike anything Microsoft has put out since Win2k), it's livable. It's something you can stare at all day and not want to kill yourself by the time you finally clock-out at 8pm.

Far more important than look, however, is usability. This is an area in which GNOME excels. It has a minimalist design that takes a lot of cues from MacOS Classic, and that makes it a pleasure to use, even if its not a pleasure to ogle.

Yea... Actually I just wish metacity would put in middle and left click options on the maximize button already... Like every other wm has it now.

You actually use that old thing? I hate maximizing windows; I can't stand not being able to see (at least some part of) all the windows on my desktop. Pretty much the only window operations I use on a regular basis are shading, which I find to be much more elegant than minimizing, and closing.

-bytecoder

The way I see it, I like to use all my screen space (or as much of it as possible) on the current task.

I use gnome with workspaces. So I have web stuff in workspace 1 (email and FF), gaim and bmp in workspace 2, eclipse in ws 3, matlab in ws 4, kile (i know...kde...but its the best) in ws 5 and nautilus in ws6.

Of course, any of those apps can have a bunch of windows open at the same time but I generally maximise the window in the current workspace.

That's a very subjective opinion. I'll offer my own: you know that feeling you'd get as a child when your mom would put you in too big of a winter coat? How you couldn't move properly, and your arms just didn't have the range to reach where you wanted to reach? That's exactly how I feel using Windows. Years of not using it will do that to you.

What isn't subjective is that, from an academic point of view, GNOME does a lot of UI stuff right. UIs are products of engineering, and well-engineered products are either products of inspiration, or the result of following best practices. GNOME does the latter, but does it with good results.

Using GNOME feels like using a UI designed by people who have no idea how to design flowing and non-aggravating UIs -- because that's what GNOME is.

KDE is too much like Windows, plus 10x the clutter. GNOME just feels plain retarded.

wow... stop the presses! the guy who's name is 'Linux is Poo' says that a linux desktop is retarded. who woulda guessed?!

i find using a mac very frustrating because i'm very accustomed to windows and linux. but this doesn't make me think that OS X is poorly designed. i just realize that i'm not used to it.

i personally find gnome very productive. it's there when i need it and out of the way when i don't.

Hey! Don't go bringing common-sense into a GUI discussion!

Seriously what you say is exactly right. Many times when people have these arguments about what is "better" in a GUI it actually comes down to familiarity.

Good post.

I'm sorry but I disagree. I use both Windows 2000 and KDE daily, and I find that I'm more efficient with KDE. And I've been a Windows user since the 3.0 days.

But then again, why do I expect someone whose nickname is "Linux is poo" to be objective? Looking at your comment history, at least I take comfort in the fact that reasonable people see you for the troll you are and are modding you down accordingly.

Thanks for unbiased input Linux is Poo.

perhaps it is because i have not had the opportunity (or taken, depending on your view) to use GNOME or the other desktop environments available for linux much, but it seems to me that they tend to borrow from Windows and force you to work the way it dictates.

for me, os x allows me to work and does not force me to follow any type of defined manner of using my computer. i can set up the dock to show the apps & windows i want and lets me get to my files and applications in the way that i prefer; windows does not. (i use windows 8+ hours a day at work and my mac at home and find myself much more productive at home and able to get access to my files and apps much easier than my PC at work).

i would propose that there are more than "minor" differences in the 3 OS's and their windowing environments--though from my experience, windows and GNOME are close to each other than windows & os x or os x and GNOME.

Windowmaker is pretty good. Ironically, it's based on a reimplementation of the same GUI Mac OS X is based on. It's a shame that more of the free software developers don't target GNUStep instead of Gnome or KDE. It's smaller, faster, and it brings with it a lof of the stuff that makes the Mac work so well.

Let's look at what's involved in installing Firefox on my home free UNIX box, my Windows box, and my Mac.

Linux: Download an installer package, debian package, or RPM, plus in some cases additional libraries. SU/SUDO to root and run the installer. In some cases, you need to back out a previous version. Wherever you install it, it's gotta stay there.

Windows: Download an installer package, run the installer. In some cases, you need to back out a previous version. Wherever you install it, it's gotta stay there.

Mac: Download the application, put it in any directory, and run it from there. To move it to a different location or disk, just move it. It will continue to work...

Appdirs/bundles... mmm-mmm, they're mighty tasty and expeditious.

Let's look at what's involved in installing Firefox on my home free UNIX box, my Windows box, and my Mac.

Linux: Download an installer package, debian package, or RPM, plus in some cases additional libraries. SU/SUDO to root and run the installer. In some cases, you need to back out a previous version. Wherever you install it, it's gotta stay there.

Funny, all I do is open my package manager, click on the latest version of Firefox in the list of available packages, then click on apply. The package manager will remove the old version, download any other packages that Firefox needs, then installs the new Firefox. Even keeps all my old prefs and extensions.

If I need to go back a version, or uninstall it completely, the package manager will do that to. People who whine about how hard linux apps are to install are either trolling, or never bothered to look at the MANY different package managers available. Personally, I use the Smart Package Manager. It's really good.

I agree entirely about the "M$" thing that is prevalent in the "wannabe h4x0r" community.

M$ is i quite valid considering there business pracices and there love of $ over security has been very obvious, although not so much lately. Is it not childish to tell others how to speak and act?

I don't recall anywhere in the article where he said that because OS X had certain features in it MS could not implement them. By the same token I didn't read any M$ sillyness into it. To me it looked to be a pretty straightforward attempt to make a few comparrisons. Methinks we sometimes tend to read to much between the lines.

As for innovation, big companies tend towards the status quo while real innovation tneds to come from small companies. I know that is a generalization, but it is a reasonable accurate one.

Bill

Yes companies need to make money but some seem to be a bit more greedy than others.

Exactly my experience. Exactly why I sweared to me I'd never buy an apple product anymore

What? The OSX for Intel has been in development along with OSX for PPC for years, and they are identical except for the processor they run on.

I don't think he was implying that at all. I can't entirely vouch for what he meant. However, I do believe you took what he said out of context.

What "I think" he was trying to say was that Microsoft isn't the coroporation that many make it out be: one that lacks innovation and is ultimately some "evil empire." In essence, several companies will scope out the competition, and in some cases reap the benefits of a company's publicly announced plans by implementing [it] before [they] do.

I'm know company's (i.e. Apple, Yahoo, Google) gambled on the fact that Longhorn wouldn't be released for a substancial period of time, and thus took it as a market opportunity. Those are my thoughts.

Come on, this is what jobs said because he felt like he had to justify the idea of having this technology.

Search existed long before iTunes you know. Ever tried BeOS live queries?

Yes, and so did Dominic Giampaolo...

And what pray tell, is the "Linux Desktop" to compare OSX to? Gnome? KDE? XFCE? FVWM? *box with GTK, *box with GTK+, *box with QT, ....

You get my point, I hope.

Hehe, I get your point all too well. And that's part of the problem for "linux on the desktop".

it's a problem? some people like myself think strength lies in diversity.

sure it doesn't do much to appeal to the homogenized consumer culture of modern day america, but study any biological model, and you'll find that diversity is a strengthening characteristic in an evolutionary system. computers have definately followed an evolutionary style of developement.

for example, pretend kde bites the dust some day because they take the wrong path, but say the XFCE developers hit it on the head with something they're working on... then you've still got a viable linux alternative.

linux on the desktop is gonna be pretty hard to destroy in that sense.

it's a problem? some people like myself think strength lies in diversity.

It's not a problem, except for the linux newbs that have an obscene obsession with Linux becoming relevant on the desktop.

Fanboys can scream about choice all they want, but Linux will never be relevant until there is at least a standard toolkit, and that's just the start of linux's problems.

"Fanboys can scream about choice all they want, but Linux will never be relevant until there is at least a standard toolkit, and that's just the start of linux's problems."

Uhh...ok. And Windows apps all use the same toolkit right? There's just as much, if not more diversity on the Windows side. The number of toolkits used will have nothing to do with the adoption rate of Linux on the desktop.

How about putting it this way:

"Windows will never be relevant until there is a standard toolkit."

Funny, Linux has the same market share as Mac OSX and yet OSX has a standard toolkit? How could that be? I guess OSX isn't ready for the desktop...

It's so easy to demolish the anti-Linux FUD, and yet the trolls keep posting it. I guess they're a) gluttons for punishment or b) paid to do it...

1) Windows does have a standard toolkit
2) OSX is tied to it's own expensive hardware. It has nothing to do with its toolkit.
3) Valid criticism is not FUD
4) You honestly think there are people here paid to defend Microsoft? HAHAHAHAHA. I'm sorry, but some of you guys are so paranoid and delusional. Why can't you simply accept that some people actually use and like MS products? Get over yourself. Freedom of choice, right? Yeah, right, freedom as long as it's nix.

1) Then why aren't Windows applications visually consistent? Why are file open/save dialogs all differents? Why are widgets (such as menus) different from one app to the next? Which one is the standard toolkit? MFC? Windows Forms?

2) Apple newest PCs are price competitively with "brand-name" Windows PCs. Anyway, if price was a factor it should play in Linux's favor, so your argument counters Lumbergh's original one.

3) Criticism is FUD when it's based on false premises, such as "multiple toolkits hamper Linux on the desktop" when there's absolutely no indication that there is a cause/effect correlation between the two.

4) Prove to me there aren't. Oh, and not only do I accept that some people actually use and like MS products, since I'm one of them. I use MS products everyday, and I even use MS Office on my Linux PCs. However, that doesn't mean that I have to turn into a MS fanboy everytime someone posts something critical of MS.

Freedom of choice, whether it's Unix, Linux, Mac OSX or Windows. I respect it - it's the anti-Linux camp that doesn't, resorting to lies to spread their FUD.

Perhaps there are no astroturfers here - in that case, it's even more sad to see people voluntarily provide free PR for the abusive monopoly...

I agree with you on that point. Vista will be a more mature product at the time of release, but it will not be competing with the same OSX we are looking at today either.

Though I think that Mr Thurrot is just rabble-rousing when it comes to his comments about Apple copying Microsoft, I have to admit that I found it a little too much of a coincidence that Apple hired the creator of BeOS's database-like filesystem at about the same time as Microsoft announced they'd be trying to integrate some database features into the windows filesystem in Longhorn.

Check this register article where it mentions that Dominic Giampaolo was hired by Apple about a week after it came out that Microsoft would be trying to integrate a database with the filesystem.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/29/windows_on_a_database_slice...

Apple went through the same "overdone transparent" stages as well. Windows in pre 10.2 had a transparent title bar that made them really hard to use. The transparencies for things like dropdowns was also higher in regular versions.

Good thing that some one at apple woke up and realized transparencies just make things hard to read and look cluttered. I am really disappointed in the vista ui shown so far. You would think that microsoft would have learned from apple's mistakes.

The examples with transparency are perfect. Note how slight the transparent effect is in OS X's menus compared to Vista's titlebar. It is obvious that the former was designed by thinking "a hint of transparency here would add a little something to the overall look), while the latter was designed by thinking "look how cool this transparency is!"

Well as mentioned OSX did go through it's own "look how cool this transparency is!" stage, but that by no means changes anything. I'm not looking forward to explaining to my grandmother that she can see the window but can't click it because there's "glass" in front of it.

If that's the case, then NeXTSTEP/Openstep should have won the UI War long ago. That OS allowed the user/developer to get more work done hands down. Even if it were released into the Open Source World, it would still not win.

You may think of OSX as cheesy and full of useless effects but many people that have to look at their computers for 8 hours a day would much rather look at a pretty desktop rather than an ugly gray/blue and square desktop that windows of old had. If I had to look at windows 2k for 8 hours a day I would get a headache.

Main point of this post is that a lot of people care about the aesthetics of the things they use. (And no OSX isn't all about the aesthetics)

I pretty much agree with altair. While functionality is the key to efficient work some elegance really never hurts. It makes me feel more confortable to use my mac laptop. Somehow I don't want to install extra eye-candy software when I run my PC -- because of the additional load -- but I still do feel a bit down when looking at the aspect of XP's interface. It really looks like a cheap theme. I have seen dozens of ugly themes in KDE (especially in the early days) but many of them today are far more elegant than the default one in WinXP.

Oh, and I don't mention the default background in XP, come on, what are they afraid of.. that we may not be able to see colors if they are not 200% saturated? The first thing I do upon installing XP is changing that vulgar background. I simply can't stand it. It's an agression. The default OSX background is simple, but elegant. I used it for like one year before I changed for some black and white picture.

There is a snow-ball effect with style on OSX. If you release an app that looks even semi-ugly people will throw rocks at you (think of the comments about Apple's Mail in Tiger and the lousy icon-set). Many mac users will not be glad to try your app is the icon looks ugly in their dock. Is that bad? No. It just forces developers to get the best they can instead of just accepting the default.

Something is going really wrong if you are looking at the OS all day. There should be application windows open to look at....

Well, if you copy it and then claim you invented it or revolutionized it or that "since you included it in your plans it's now a legitimate idea"

I wondered about that myself. I don't think it would look very good if you promise all these features, and then remove a couple because you can't impliment them in the time given... yet your competitors read your press release and manage to?

It sounds kinda like something I read in history class where the Soviet Union kept announcing and parading powerful new space rockets and planes around, which prompted the US to research and build competitive new designs to keep up...
Except Russia couldn't actually BUILD some of the rockets and space planes; occasionally the rocket paraded through Red Square was made of wood.

Doesn't look very good for the Soviet Union if their fake progress can be outmatched by our real progress... well, their PR people come out looking good for managing to fool the US into thinking plywood was real.

Yea, I'll take the dos prompt over the terminal any day

yup, we use Tiger. i find it much more efficient than XP. i have no problem with scrolling, resizing windows, etc. my desktop experience is smoother and more effective with os x. i am guessing you are thinking that the desktop search coming with vista is the same POS and not worth it? however, there is much more to Tiger than just spotlight and dashboard. i prefer the way Tiger works and that it actually does work.

how does terminal choke on accented characters?

Those are not really toolkits [for windows]. They are wrappers for the win32api. They all use the same toolkit in the end, and the same widgets.

Windows Forms could be argued as it's own toolkit. It mostly extends the win32api, but still uses the windows themeing engine if you tell it to.

Wow, you're stupid. I hate to be mean, but if you can't understand how vector graphics are resolution independent, that is pathetic.

Uh, weren't you the one complaining how rude I was earlier? You could learn some manners yourself...You could have simply said: "it means that the icons will always have the same relative size on-screen, independent of the screen's resolution."