“Let’s take an in depth look at the basic usability of these 2 OSes. Is it no longer true Macs are easier than PCs? Has Windows XP finally caught up with (and maybe even surpassed) Mac OS X? To get a little more clarity on this topic, I decided to look at the 2 OSes—Mac OS X 10.2 and Windows XP— in depth, and cover usability issues such as networking, windows and keyboard controls, voice feedback and voice recognition, the Dock vs. the Taskbar, Find/Search, Help, and much more.” OSX scores 23 points against XP which scores only… 10. Read the article at WebMaster Mac.
Usability Shootout: MacOSX vs. WindowsXP
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Before even reading it … the URL says a lot already. webmastermac.com/macintosh/whymac/xvsxp – why am I not surprised that the Mac wins?
Okay, first off, I am not a Windows fanboy. In fact, I detest Windows. If Mac would put out some decent hardware for the price they charge, I’d go with a Mac, because from the small amount that I have used it, I love OSX.
But come on. Did we really expect a different verdit from a site titled “WebMaster Mac?” Had this appeared on a Microsoft owned and operated site like CNET, or from the rag Maximum PC, I would have would have been really shocked. Reading this article was like going into Coca-Cola world headquarters and hearing them say that they think Coke tastes better than Pepsi.
Give me a break.
The part about ctrl-alt-del is not true in XP that was
win 2000…. XP has a login screen where you click
on your name (if you share your computer) or just login
automatically…
and it boots faster than macosx
The activation part is true and it sucks bigtime.
… or just login
automatically…
It’s actually possible to get “auto login” i w2k too…
Not that I really care what you can in Windows…
Though I’ve never looked into the true reason for the the Ctrl+Alt+Del deal when loging in, I’ve always considered it as a measure against a program fooling a user into entering their username and password. This is by no means a flaw in the operating system’s security, if you ask me.
“Ok, so it’s no surprise that a Mac user rated OS X more usable than Windows XP.”
Well, alrighty then … I’m convinced. Guess I’ll have to go and pick up one of those snazzy iLamps after today!
I meant, after WORK today (damn typos!)
powertoys with tweakui lets you change most of windows
behaviour, after a while you will hate all the slow eye candy and in windows there is still an option to turn it off.
1) author can’t spell: “OS X will modify it’s behavior” – we had that one recently.
2) author doesn’t check facts: “XP also requires that every user log in, even if you are the sole user of the computer.” Wrong.
3) author fails to notice that OS X does ignore Fitt’s law by making all four screen corners inactive where in XP the lower left corner opens the start menu and the upper right corner closes maximized windows.
4) grammar gets worse: “user’s must click”
5) again, presenting lies as facts: “* 5 menus are displayed on the screen, even though only one is usable at a time.”
6) I stopped counting. It’s getting ridiculous.
The author is starting with a wrong approach: Measuring usability by # of features. Honestly – XP scores a point for enabling Window resize on any edge? Then KDE had to win over anything, as it clearly has the most features and the heaviest configurability.
I an not saying XP was better than OS X – IMSO, both of them suck. But the article is really bad and the author obviously doesn’t understand usability to its full extend.
For example, he does not mention at all (hardly anone does) the different policies on dialogs: While Windows is asking you a question (e.g.”Are you sure you want to delete xzy.abc?”) and giving you “Yes/No” as options, OS X gives you actions as options (“delete/keep”). I believe everyone of us has been in a situation where we weren’t able to not understand what some dialog was not trying to tell us without no double negation – not?
How come essential usability questions were not mentioned at all – MDI vs SDI – multiple vs single mouse button – quest for a task-oriented vs application-oriented UI?
This article is on the level of a cheap hardware review: “Computer #1 comes with 2.4 GHz, 512MB RAM and a 64 MB graphics card – Computer #2 comes with 2.2 GHz, 512MB RAM and a 32MB graphics card – result: Computer #1 wins hands down.”
I gave up on this article after section 2, Drag and Drop: “Moves the text (In Terminal, copies the text). Some apps do not support this: Stickies, Mail, TextEdit.” Actually, drag and drop is supported in all these programs. It’s just that, for some mysterious reason, in Cocoa apps you have to highlight the text, click it, and hold for a second before you move it. I read so many inaccuracies in nearly every article about OS X, even from favorable reviews, and it’s driving me nuts. If you’re trying to write about this stuff, you should do a little research.
Also, tune in at 10:00 for our late breaking story: “Linux user refuses to pay for software”.
It would have been great if they kept this feature… that is a feature I like a lot from CDE and WindowMaker!
My oh my. There’s a lot of sh** in this review. I’m certainly no Windows fanboy (neither am I a Mac fanboy or a KDE/Gnome fanboy – what OS to use depends on the applications available for it; currently, I have to use Windows because of this), but the points the author tries to make mostly don’t make any sense to me. I think he’s extremely biased. To try to persuade the audience by obscurity, that’s not what I call good journalism. 🙁
Activation. Like many, I don’t like the idea of Activation, but in reality, it is one freakin mouse click if you are connected to the internet. Not a big deal UI wise.
Login. XP pro logged me in as the primary user just fine. But on the Mac it wiggles! Oooooh.
Feedback. I’ll give him that one with regards to Outlook. IE opens just fine for me though. And I wouldn’t be crowing about the spinning beach ball o’ death (still common in 10.2 from what I’ve seen so far). Feedback indeed.
Move resize at borders. Mac OS X wins? WTF? Watch what happens when that bottom right corner gets stuck behind (or even too close) to the dock. As for whether move or resize is best for the border, it is at best a “what you are already used to” kind of thing.
Cursors: XP Wins. Yes it does. As for the move/resize cursor: this may be an XP thing/bug, but on W2K you can’t pick Size on a minimzed window as he claims.
Context Menus: Yep.
Fitt’s Law:
A) Windows menus don’t benefit from Fitt’s Law when thier windows are maximized. There is still a title bar in the way (though the min/max/close buttons do
. Therefore maximizing has no impact here. Plus you still have the taskbar for switching
B) With Fitt’s law, the most efficent place for a menu is under the mouse cursor (context menu’s). The next most efficient positions are the corners of the screen (infinite depth in both directions). Unless this changed in 10.2, the Apple menu (and the App menu in classic) do not extend to the corner of the screen. Wouldn’t it be logical to have these two heavily used menus activate from the corner?
C) I accept that it can be proven that pull down menus at the edge of the screen can be proven (even semi-mathematically) to be more efficient due to the “infinite depth” effect of banging you mouse up against the edge of the screen. However, I have a problem with the separation of the menu from the app windows concept. I’ll go into depth about this in another post later if anyone cares.
Damn, he really went all out here. I’ll have to address the rest later, unless the rest of you beat me to it
Even though the article is biased (even though I own a Mac, I couldn’t stand reading MacOSX help system beating Windows), it shows that Mac users evaluate a system differently, with usability as a center theme. If this was a MS biased review, we would be hearing about speed and raw power, FLIPS, FLOPS, and the likes.
Eugenia: How come we don’t see no “our take” on this item? You know as much as most of us readers do that this article is hopelessly biased, shouldn’t you at least give a hint to readers that do not know that? After all, you don’t want to appear in a MacNN-thread with the caption “OSNews sez OS X is lightyears better than XP!!1”.
I would love to see you do a better comparison, if you have the time. It’d rock if you included KDE and Gnome as well.
The part about ctrl-alt-del is not true in XP
Yes it is. Hook your XP Pro box up to a Windows domain and the ctrl-alt-del login screen is exactly the same as in WinNT and/or Win2K.
>How come we don’t see no “our take” on this item?
Read between the lines: “OSX scores 24 points against XP which scores only… 9.” 😉
> It’d rock if you included KDE and Gnome as well.
Trust me, you don’t want that. 😉
OSX and XP, both, are indeed light years UI-wise from both KDE and Gnome. The problem with KDE and Gnome is that they are not integrated to the OS. This really makes them look like half-assed clients to me, and not incorporated with tools that allow me to install new drivers or do really OS-specific jobs. And even if they fix their UIs, the problem of OS integration still remains.
As for this review at WebMaster Inc, yes it is biased. In some of his points he is correct, but problem is that the guy mostly picked categories that OSX is better, while on others he is just not correct.
>>I think he’s extremely biased. To try to persuade the audience by obscurity, that’s not what I call good journalism. :-(<<
Unfortunately that’s how it goes. Last year PC Magazine picked Windows XP over Mac OS X in a review soon after XP was released (Mac OS X was at 10.1), go figure huh?!
It all depends on the user. I was a Windows user (still am at work I guess) and when I switched and learned the Mac OS IU, I felt it to be more flexible, but then again I also use Solaris and I like the CDE UI as well (some people don’t). It seems with me that when I jump from one OS to another, I naturally switch (unconsciously) to the OSes functional habits, so in other words I do things one way in Windows, another way in Solaris and etc.. I try to take advantage of the OS’ strengths from a UI level. I can say that coming from the Windows world that it was culture shock when I first ‘switched’ to the Mac, but after ridding my Windows habits (as default) and actually learned the way Mac OS does things. I prefer Mac GUIness for my own personal preferences, but there are things to Windows that make it nice and powerful like the contextual menus, Mac OS X still has some growing up there. Of course CDE takes it overboard, so I prefer keyboard shortcuts available for most menu items (contextual included) when using Solaris!
I think BeOS still probably has the most functional GUI around, so OS X and XP both lose he he 🙂
Wait till OBOS gets past R1!
Read between the lines: “OSX scores 24 points against XP which scores only… 9.”
I noticed that, but it’s a little too subtle I guess. Not everyone will get that.
Trust me, you don’t want that. 😉
OSX and XP, both, are indeed light years UI-wise from both KDE and Gnome.
I am not anti-Linux but: That’s why I would love it. 😀
I was participating in the KDE and Gnome usability mailing lists, and after a few months I gave up hope. If we should ever see usable Linux desktop, it will not be from KDE or Gnome. It might be Ximian or Xandros, but even those are far away.
IMSO, KDE makes the same mistake as the author of the article we’re talking about: Usability is not measured in number of features. Adding features is very likely to not improve a UI.
But what do you expect? This is done from a personal perspective, which in some ways can be much more valid than all those benchmark tests.
What it always comes down to is a simple, but highly objective question.
“What do you like?”
He forgot that You can use a macintosh to easily upload a virus to the mothership of an alien race that is attacking the earth. This in turn shuts down their shields long enough to for Americans to lead a successful international attack on the invaders. And its so simple even an ordinary Joe can that works for some satellite tv company can do it.
I’m not sure how many posts there will be by the time I finish this; but even as a MacOSX fan this piece struck me as bad propaganda. As far as I can tell this piece evaluates whether Explorer XP or Aqua does a better of implementing the Aqua human interface guidelines. I certainly would hope Aqua wins that.
The “Navigating the file system” is one of the most extreme examples of this. “XP cannot natively view the contents of nested directories” what about “tree <directory name>”? Even if you don’t count command line (where after all OSX has ls / find which offers incredible high power features) the detail view definitely deserves some points, if you weren’t comfortable using ls how do you sort by size in OSX?
Other places like ctrl-alt-delete are simply wrong. Screen take over is a problem in all OSes and OSX is no more immune than others. Frankly I consider that a feature not a bug and not a failing.
Areas like the “Dock vs. Taskbar” show what this article could have been:
1 – List the features of both
2 – Compare the way they are used
3 – Explain why one is better than the other
What the article is good for is point out differences between the two systems for people switching from one to the other. It is detailed; if it wasn’t such an unfair hatchet job I’d recommend it.
One area she was really odd about was in her included apps, in this area she seemed quite unfair to OSX. She doesn’t count the developer tool kit which is like bundling visual C++. Again she excludes command line tools like emacs which has very strong HTML features.
Same with her power user features — since when is screen capture a power user features?
The treatment of two scripting languages was IMHO totally on base. Applescript is vastly superior to Windows lineup for simple scripting offering a really nice full featured gui version of shell scripting. For example VBA is harder than just extracting the data and using Perl which makes it essentially worthless for anything other than adding cool features to Office apps.
Her comment about spaces in filenames… I wish Microsoft had held the line here now even Windows users do this which means Unix is going to have to change… Blech, what’s wrong with underscores or periods?
Well, i think this guy needs a reality check. Jaguar takes over 2 hrs to install.. XP about 40 mins. Xp feels very responsive and has all the App and hardware support that you need. Jaguar.. well I haven;t been able to get my old Umax Astra 2400 SCSI scanner – guess what the solution is boot into 9.2 !!
I’m no windows lover, but MAc OS X jaguar isn’t really all that either.
>>He forgot that You can use a macintosh to easily upload a virus to the mothership of an alien race that is attacking the earth. This in turn shuts down their shields long enough to for Americans to lead a successful international attack on the invaders. And its so simple even an ordinary Joe can that works for some satellite tv company can do it.<<
there you have it, OS X wins hands down. That’s Unix (based) power under the hood killing those invaders 🙂
>>Well, i think this guy needs a reality check. Jaguar takes over 2 hrs to install.. XP about 40 mins.<<
You should load all the supported languages and other garbage, then you’ll see it only takes about 40 minutes as most Mac users have reported over the weekend!
I agree with CattBeMac. I miss BeOS.
What it always comes down to is a simple, but highly objective question.
“What do you like?
Usability is exaclty not that. It is about cognitive psychology, and like in most psychology areas, people do not know what is best for them.
I should have chosen better words; make my last comment end with “…people are not aware of what is best for them.”
>>Her comment about spaces in filenames… I wish Microsoft had held the line here now even Windows users do this which means Unix is going to have to change… Blech, what’s wrong with underscores or periods?<<
Nah, though it’s a pain to deal with open strings in file names, you just get around by placing the following;
$ ls /folder/file” “name.txt
I usually skim through the Windows directories on the terminal since I have it up have the time. I guess this is what separates Windows and Unix users when it comes to naming files!
>>Well, i think this guy needs a reality check. Jaguar takes over 2 hrs to install.. XP about 40 mins.<<
>>You should load all the supported languages and other garbage, then you’ll see it only takes about 40 minutes as most Mac users have reported over the weekend!<<
I meant to say you >shouldn’t< load all the supported languages… sorry 🙁
>I agree with CattBeMac. I miss BeOS.
What are you talking about? It’s still there…unless I’m using scotch mist.
Zenja,
Me as well, helk I even miss ole BeNews and those good ole days. But I think once the OpenBeOS group get further along with the project and it reaches ‘beta’ status, then the fun should begin.
What do you think of Stuart McCoy’s work on the proposed GUI work?
Nah, though it’s a pain to deal with open strings in file names, you just get around by placing the following;
$ ls /folder/file” “name.txt
ls does a pretty good job. The problem is most command line utilities that if the program is just reading the arguments stack it gets broken on whitespace. So simple piping breaks. Instead you have to end up escaping everythign then pipe it which turns a one line command into a shell script.
me making typo after typo, I need to get to bed. Good luck beating on this debate all night.
Just remember… use what fits you best, not everyone agrees on what is best for all, helk not even the British and Americans agree on which side of the road to drive on, so why worry about it now?!
🙂
>>ls does a pretty good job. The problem is most command line utilities that if the program is just reading the arguments stack it gets broken on whitespace. So simple piping breaks. Instead you have to end up escaping everythign then pipe it which turns a one line command into a shell script.<<
I agree that more complex Unix tasks would fall victim to this, but what can you do? The Unix community is probably the most stubborn, so I doubt the Unix way will change anytime soon!
I have to say that some things about OSX are impressive, but I must say that some things I have trouble agreeing with. I have tried the help before in OSX and I must say that I’m not really impressed. The amount of help topics in OSX seems spartan compared to XP. XP will link people to the MS knowledge database when there isn’t anything similar which I think at least for those with always on connections is pretty neat. At least they fixed some of the bugs in OSX’s help system. I remember in an earlier edition that the help on the dock would link to nothing and simply show an error dialog because the link to the system preference was bad. BeOS was certainly up there for ease of use.
The problem with KDE and Gnome is that they are not integrated to the OS. This really makes them look like half-assed clients to me, and not incorporated with tools that allow me to install new drivers or do really OS-specific jobs. And even if they fix their UIs, the problem of OS integration still remains.
And I hope they stay “half-assed clients”. Network transparency is Unix’s killer app. The same way the rise of networking gave IS to Unix the rise of multiple devices could well end up with Unix owning the whole shebang. The whole country is trying to figure out a way to use their cell phone, PDA, laptop and desktop share the same data and use the same apps that is to make their environment network transparent. Unixs apps don’t have that problem because all Unix graphical apps run as “clients” even on their local machine. Once the network infastructure is in place Unix is done with this grand project.
It will take XP years to catch up. Hell XP doesn’t even have network transparency on file systems yet, mounting a networked file system on XP isn’t much different then getting a 2nd floppy for a CPM box. Citrix metaframe, terminal server… are terrible and most apps don’t run very well. Worse yet they require a lot of compatability between client and server.
So let the distribution makers create apps to allow you to manage your OS; heck even write them in QT or GTK. But keep Gnome and KDE as “half assed clients”.
Well, I am really a pro Mac person. Eugenia knows.. 🙂
But this test is a very poor compare of both Operating Systems. It is so Mac-pro it’s disconcerting. Both OSes have their advantages and disadvantages. OS X is fun to use if you are willing to invest in a (Big)Mac. If has some deficiencies but, hey, it is a very young OS. Jaguar is a step in the right direction but can’t solve all things. Well, there must be something left for 10.3, 10.4, 10.5…
XP on the other side has, for its huge history:
NT3.1 -> NT3.5 -> NT3.51 -> NT4.0 -> W2k -> WXP
some very bad disadvantages left and the world’s largest OS manufacturer isn’t able to clean the things up. That’s a shame.
But this article… LOL….
Ralf.
XP will link people to the MS knowledge database when there isn’t anything similar which I think at least for those with always on connections is pretty neat.
Actually Help in OSX does this too. Though IMHO http://discussions.info.apple.com/ is better than the knowledge base.
This is from the conclusion:
Ok, so it’s no surprise that a Mac user rated OS X more usable than Windows XP. However, I acknowledge that different people will feel more comfortable–and therefore more productive–with different OSes. By all means buy a computer (and an OS) that feels best to you.
Eugenia, with all due respect, I’m curious as to why exactly you chose post this article. It’s bias, and clearly pro-OS X. It didn’t reveal anything particularly eye-opening and I doubt anyone in this audience would give it the least bit of credibility. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for OS X and Apple, but surely you must have known that everyone would have immediately looked at this article (if you could call it that) as another apple propaganda piece and dismiss it.
Normally I wouldn’t question what you post on your site, its your site and you can do what you want, but I wonder what it was in this article that lead you to post it.
I agree that more complex Unix tasks would fall victim to this, but what can you do? The Unix community is probably the most stubborn, so I doubt the Unix way will change anytime soon!
Start by requiring a rename for office (or other apps) to open the docs and move on from there. Within a few years throw an invalid file name when you try and open a file with a space in the file name. That’s the same thing that happens if you try and save a filename that has a backslash in it. 🙂
>Reality distortion field on OS News?
You should have known better…
>>ls does a pretty good job. The problem is most command line utilities that if the program is just reading the arguments stack it gets broken on whitespace. So simple piping breaks. Instead you have to end up escaping everythign then pipe it which turns a one line command into a shell script.<<
You don’t really think the GNU folks would tolerate a problem like that over the long haul, do you?
If you’ve got a directory tree with lots of space-containing filenames that you want to process somehow (say to cat them all together), do this:
find . -print0 | xargs -0 cat
Find separates the filenames with nulls, and xargs expects the piped in names to be separated by nulls, and everyone’s happy. The GNU project at your service.
As many pointed out there is much bias here. One thing in reaidng this is that come sot mind and will always be around is what is a good way to have things can be completely differant from person to person. Some thing in this artical made me mad for sure.
One thing that got me was that he doesn’t mention he is using XP home. Unless you are familure with Pro you would think pro requires to be registered. When as everyone knows it doesn’t, the author should have said he was using Home.
When he starts talking about fits law he goes down hill. The biggest complaint I know of about macs, maybe only beat by 1 button mouses and poor keyboards is how each app is depenent on the desktop in macs, in windows every app is self contained. On macs having to use the deskbar or whatever it’s called to use a app is extremely anoying and confusing. I can’t think of one thing that causes new mac users to struggle more and hate macs. To make things worse he points to say that mac has this right when i think most people would agree this is completely wrong.
He does make the point to point out the flaw of one button mice. I have to belive apple will change at some point , but i won’t hold my breath.
Also i fail to see how windows file navigating is bad. Having to many views is a bad thing? thumbnail view is great.
No such review will ever be fair because the reviewer will always be biased and will think something is good when the next person thinks the same thing sucks. This is the way it is. I firmly belive windows is lightyears easier to use and learn. Just looking at market share would tell you there is something going on there. But mac people will never agree and say that “it’s been proven mac is easier” well i don’t know how one can make a true study to prove this and two i don’t know how long ago this was. I’m sure at one time mac was easier, but at one time mac made up a huge share of the market and now they don’t. I’ve watched countless people try to use a mac cause they hear they are better and they soon are hitting the computer and cursing the OS or the hardware. People are differant, their os’s will be different. I think Ms has the upper hand when it comes to this, and if apple ever wants to gain market share they need to look at what their doing because what their doing is going no where.
I can’t believe the stupidity of it. XP is the easiest and friendliest OS out there. And not with Jaguar out, it’s frankly the least buggy OS.
Brad said:
One thing that got me was that he doesn’t mention he is using XP home. Unless you are familure with Pro you would think pro requires to be registered. When as everyone knows it doesn’t, the author should have said he was using Home.
Yes, XP Pro requires activation just like XP Home edition. The only version of XP that does NOT require activation is “Windows XP Pro Multi-License” (also known as “corporate edition”) and is only available to those who buy multiple licenses in bulk for mass installs (like our school does here).
Ok well thats my bad, I guess have only ever used Pro multi-user then. My copy was from my university. Though i thought people had mentioned this before, but i see that was incorrect, thanks for the update
Articles like these are fun to read – you just shouldn’t read too much into them or take them so seriously. The guy pretty much says he’s biased and even says his viewpoint is from a totally creative type postion, the big are where Macs excel. Anyway, these are fun reads, not anything to get upset about. Actually, I learned some good features about XP Pro I wasn’t aware of. It is naturally grating to read things you know are errors or just totally wrong. I’ve given up on getting grated by that kind of stuff though – it helps your digestion if you give it up, I’ve found 🙂
It’s basically agreed here that the WebmasterMac botched the job, put suprisingly only almost no one told this guy off. Only stew went to the forum to try to straighten him out. Stew was ignored, naturally … but at least one can try ..
A couple of other things that the author got wrong (in addition to what’s been mentioned here). There may be more, but I’m only half-way through, and dreading the end.
1. IE is Dock aware (at least a maximized IE window has never covered my dock).
2. XP’s command line is cmd.exe. command.com was the DOS command processor, while cmd.exe is the NT command processor.
3. It may not take one click to change your resolution in Windows, but at most two. You can turn display settings on in the taskbar under the advanced settings of the video card on the display properties.
4. The ctrl-alt-del login procedure was not only about having other programs/virii replace your login, but also from remote logins. Having physical interaction is just another safety precaution.
5. There is no such thing as “high-ascii”. ASCII is 7-bit. Windows uses ANSI or CP1252, which is their encoding. Macs usually use MacRoman. (That’s why Unicode is so nifty, or UTF-7, UTF-8, or even Latin1.) And the Ñ (that’s a capital N with a tilde in case it doesn’t come out right) is Alt+0209 — you need the initial 0, or you’ll get a different character.
6. In the review of drag and drop, why was there a section on Photoshop if he wasn’t reviewing third-party apps. It would seem that how an application deals with dropped items/messages is dependant on the app, and has nothing to do with the OS.
7. Likewise as above, the naming of photoshp.exe isn’t something that the OS’s search facility has power over, but rather the application’s manufacturer. NTFS, XP’s native FS, fully supports long filenames, but the 8.3 format is kept for compatibility with DOS based OSes and FAT filesystems. The same is true for some carbon apps needing to be on HFS(+) partitions because of the resource forks, whereas OS X supports UFS.
8. I thought FrontPad, or FrontPage Express or something was Windows’ built-in HTML editor. Who would use OE to do HTML? And she complains that Mail.app doesn’t do HTML mail, but rather RTF encoded mail (IIRC). All mail messages should be plain-text anyway!
9. If this is on installed applications, why were points added for QTSS and the like?
10. Even when applications pollute the filesystem with their files for installation, OS X still comes out ahead. And, the recommended method for application installation on OS X is a bundle … one that can be run from any location. MS had yet to give us a preferred or recommended program distribution method.
11. I know XP Pro has an AppleTalk client to allow viewing of AppleTalk shares from the Network Neighborhood, but does XP Home? Not sure, but since it’s still XP, the author got that point wrong, too.
12. How is comparing VS.NET to AppleScript part of the OS. AppleScript offers XML-RPC, so you can do web services.
13. Why talk about the way Excel accepts pasted tab-delimited info? This isn’t about third-party apps. (Which reminds me, was the MDI nature of the Excel window due to the fact that they were all sheets in the same workbook. I’m not sure, just asking.)
OK, I finished the article, and there’s my rant. Horribly written piece, if you ask me!
— Rob
XP: XP stops working after 2 weeks unless you obtain your activation key by registering with Microsoft. It may also stop working after performing a serious hardware upgrade, forcing you to register again. Read the sorry details at annoyances.org.
Most of the people using Windows XP is using the OEM version bundled on their PCs. So guess what? They never have to see this. Also, most users don’t like to upgrade often and massively – this is in fact an Mac excuse.
XP: If automatic login is turned off, XP displays Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to login with a brief sentence, “This makes your computer more secure”. XP’s Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence is guaranteed to always bring you to THE official Windows login screen. This is apparently because Windows has been historically extremely vulnerable to viruses that take over the boot sequence and steal your login. Microsoft’s answer to OS deficiencies is to require the user to adapt a new behavior.
That sounds a lot like Windows 2000, but we have a nice login screen in XP ( ). Plus, the author neglected to tell about other features in Windows like Switch Users. For example, say I’m writing my thesis, and my dad wants to get a phone number. All he has to do is click Start, Log off and then Switch User, then dad would log on, get the phone number, then log off, then I login, and I continue where I lefted from.
My conclusion: XP Wins here.
Dragging text from WordPad to Word cuts the text from WordPad and pastes it into Word as a WordPad object, with bounding boxes, that can only be edited by double clicking the box to open it up in a ‘mini WordPad editor’, thereby prohibiting the full range of editing tools found in Word.
In Office XP, after you paste, you get to pick a few options, whether to keep formating or not and others. If you keep formating, the mini WP window stick. If not, it doesn’t.
Dragging from Word or WordPad creates a scrap object, that can only be dragged back into either app. (Dragging scrap objects into NotePad displays garbage text.)
This is because Notepad doesn’t understand either Word Perfect nor Word formating.
Besides, on drag and drop, they mentioned a lot of OS X-only features, but no Windows XP only features.
Icons: OS X Wins
They may be technically better (which is what this whole section was about), but on the UI, it is terrible. Why? It uses photorealistic icons. Ever wonder why roadsigns don’t use photorealitic pictures? It is to convey the information faster to the brain.
Dock vs Taskbar: Tie
Uhmmm, why didn’t this section mentioned the Start button?
Alt-F,C (not available at the command line)
IIRC, it is Alt-F4.
Notably, Windows Media Player lacks free MP3 encoding. Instead, Windows Media Player’s default encoder is the Microsoft’s proprietary .WMA format.
Tell me again, how does this sucks concerning usablity? Besides, WMA is faster to encode, and takes far less space than MP3. Also the fact that Microsoft doesn’t want to pay royalties for a competiting format never crossed your mind?
XP: XP comes with a free WYSIWYG HTML editor: Outlook Express.
IIRC, it is Frontpage Express.
XP: Microsoft’s official server OS is Windows NT 2000, so XP does not ship with any web server software.
Actuall, XP Pro bundles IIS (though IIRC it doesn’t install it by default), while both XP Home and XP Pro come with something called Personal Web Server.
Applications, Installation, Uninstallation: Tie
I would actually put OS X as the winner, but I can’t tell why, because of the 8,000 char limit. I wrote about this I think in some other threads.
—
I would give XP a higher amount of wins, but OS X would surely win. Microsoft is getting there fast. One day our children would probably diss Apple’s OS because it is so hard to use compared to Windows, LOL.
But one thing I like to mention is the Fitt’s law. Apple had sued anyone who copied their ideas about their menubar placement, which is why it is the only OS that does it that way now.
“OS X does ignore Fitt’s law by making all four screen corners inactive where in XP the lower left corner opens the start menu and the upper right corner closes maximized windows. ”
the top left of the screen is the apple menu, and the top right is…well another menu(don’t know its name) also, when maximized a window also uses the corner(not that exact corner i believe) with the red yellow green buttons…i havn’t used a mac in a long time, but still. osx does use the corners…also, doesn’t the 4 corners when the mouse if left there, activate different things(screensaver, sleep, etc) i believe this was true in macos9….
Eugenia said:
> OSX and XP, both, are indeed light years UI-wise from both KDE and Gnome. The problem with KDE and Gnome is that they are not integrated to the OS.
Hm, KDE and GNOME should sing “no future, no future, no future for meeeeeeeeee”? 🙂
Rob stated:
> MS had yet to give us a preferred or recommended program distribution method.
Isn’t supposed to be %systemroot%Program Files ?
Here http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html is a good explanation of what Fitts’s Law is all about. It is not enough to be near the edge of the screen to gain advanatage from Fitts’s Law. You need to be in contact with at least one screen edge. Two is better because it raps the mouse in the corner. The exception is the pixel that is under the mouse cursor. That one is fastest to get to because you are already there.
Mac OS gets the advantage of Fitts’s Law because the menus are flush along the top screen edge. But it doesn’t go as far as it could to make the Apple Menu (and in classic, the app menu) even ewasier to target by putting them completely in the corner. They are both a few pixels away from their respective corners horizontally. I suppose this could be so that things like screensavers can be activated by leaving the mouse here. But I would say what is more important, two very commonly used menus or a secret trigger for a screensaver or some 3rd party utility?
Windows didn’t take advantage of Fitts’s Law on its taksbar until Windows XP. From Windows 95 to Windows 2000, the start button and task buttons were always a few pixels away from the edge. Considering the questionable utility of dragging the taskbar to another edge of the screen with these few pixels (a problem I’ve often seen both reported and first hand is users who do this by accident and don’t know how to get it back where it belongs. Witness the WinME/W2K option to lock the taskbar in place).
Windows XP now puts the start button fully in the lower left corner and the task buttons completey against the edge. This is a great improvement! Of course they ruin it if you stretch you taskbar to two rows. The start button gets elevated a full row from the bottom of the screen! Two sterps forward, half a step back.
While were are on the subject, Gnome 2.0 registers mouse clicks in the top corners on its App menu and window list, applet even though they graphically don’t extend there. OF course, they then ignore Fitts and leave a pixel or two gap on the taskbar at the bottom. I believe KDE leaves a gap under its taskbar buttons . I know some of the developers on these projects are aware of Fitts’s Law, but this kind of thing seems to get broken on a regular basis with these two projects. Hopefully they will be more mindful in the future.
Freshly compiled OpenTracker and highly modified WorkSpaces app.
BeOS rocks…
“B) With Fitt’s law, the most efficent place for a menu is under the mouse cursor (context menu’s). The next
most efficient positions are the corners of the screen (infinite depth in both directions). Unless this changed
in 10.2, the Apple menu (and the App menu in classic) do not extend to the corner of the screen. Wouldn’t it
be logical to have these two heavily used menus activate from the corner?
C) I accept that it can be proven that pull down menus at the edge of the screen can be proven (even
semi-mathematically) to be more efficient due to the “infinite depth” effect of banging you mouse up against
the edge of the screen. However, I have a problem with the separation of the menu from the app windows
concept. I’ll go into depth about this in another post later if anyone
cares.
”
The problem with the Mac is that every program runs on the Finder
screen. To make proper use of a menu bar at the top of the screen (as
per Fitt’s Law), the application has to have a complete screen (or
workspace) to itself, with nothing visible on the monitor that is not
a part of that application. If you are going to have applications
sharing a screen display, they will “fight” for the menu bar.
The extreme top right pixel is a good place to click to bring up a
screens/workspaces menu, listing the applications that are currently
running. A left click can just take you to the next screen on the
list, but if the mouse has only one button, the menu should take
priority.
Neither Mac nor Windows has this right, yet it is so simple.
It is true that %systemroot%/Program Files (or some other system variable, not sure right now, as I’m reinstalling Win2K) is the preferred place to _install_ your programs, but what about methods to distribute them. Many programs use InstallShield or something similar (Mac’s have VISE as the closest I can tell). However, Windows’ programs litter the registry with random and cryptic keys, often times with the parent key something other than expected.
OS X has programs keep their preferences in ~/Library/, and distributed with an application bundle. For programs that need to have settings made system-wide (and not for the current user), the Installer.app is used, with packages prompting for the Admin password. The application is then usually installed to /Applications/ where it is accessible to everyone, and it’s default settings are in /System/Library/ or similar, which is readable by all.
— Rob
From Windows 95 to Windows 2000, the start button and task buttons were always a few pixels away from the edge.
Luckily, there is a tool to fix that:
http://www.stereopsis.com/bumper/
I appreciate the volumes of feedback here! Many people have corrected me on inaccuracies (Fitt’s law, Login, IIS comes w/XP Pro, etc), and I get these fixes up on the site ASAP. There are lots of people w/lots of good points that prove me wrong or naive, and I appreciate that and will modify my article accordingly. And I fully acknowledge that I am a biased party in my article, though I try to be fair.
As people chime in, please leave the flames out, as they don’t serve anyone.
Thanks,
Dan Pouliot
Pat yourself on your back, it isn’t everyday someone admits he/her’s mistake.
Dan, You have a good idea, but I would recommend coming up with a set of universally unbiased objective criteria and then record a users experiences on both OSs. For example, find someone who can be considered an “average joe user”, who has never used MAC OSX.x or WIN XP and have them perform certain tasks based on your criteria. I think a systematic and objective review such as this (or any that you may come up with) will give more validity to your review. It also might be a good idea to test more than one person, as that can only strengthen your arguments. All in all I would have to disagree with you review, as it is too subjective and biased…
Dustin
Sorry about the spelling and grammar, I haven’t had my morning coffee yet….
Dustin
>It is true that %systemroot%/Program Files (or some other system variable, not sure right now, as I’m reinstalling Win2K) is the preferred place to _install_ your programs
Well you should not use ‘Program Files’ as it’s different in different parts of the world. It’s called ‘Program’ in Sweden. There should be a variable for that part too.
(I hate hardcoded stuff, especially when it’s not correct)
MSI packages are the preferred bundling method. Look for Windows Installer in your XP service list.
The preferred installation location (as pointed out) is %systemroot%/program files.
Your MSI packager (should) take care of required system DLL’s but including the correct MSI dll distro in your installer. Your own DLL’s, keys, and so forth are your problem, but there are enough rules for these too that you can figure out where to put them.
Installshield and most other installers use MSI now (or their own kludged together junk as an alternative).
MSI sucks BTW. Try deleting a DLL required by an MSI-installed package and see what happens. And then imagine that you have lost your install CD. Let the reboot festivities begin!
Inno Setup still wins for me.
First the guy sets out to compare the usability of these two operating systems, then says it will be from the standpoint of a video editor (may not be exact words, but it was close). Talk about slanting the test in favor of Mac.
Beyond that, a lot of this review felt so arbitrary, you wonder he wrote most of it down. Stay tuned for my usability comparisons between Big Macs and Whoppers.
my last post was pretty light on the content and I felt a little badly that it was mostly a flame so let me respond to the author’s request for more objective feedback.
The author states that of course he is heavily biased toward the mac but this type of review requires you to approach the OS with an open mind, almost as if you’re looking at it for the first time. I’m not really sure how anyone fairly compare the usability of operating systems. Both OS’s strive to be entirely mouse driven GUI’s… do they succeed? In their own ways, yes, but having to click through one set of menues as opposed to another doesn’t seem to make that much of an objective difference.
Which is why I think a lot of the more technical terms were brought in, something to concretely put one OS above the other. I honestly had never heard of a lot of the terms mentioned in this article (like Fitt’s law), I’m sure they’re important to GUI construction, but it doesn’t really tell me much about the usability.
My comparison would have to go something like this. My 1.2 gig Athlon with 512 RAM running XP is faster in the day to day use than my dual gig G4 running OS X 10.1.5 (maybe this will change when I get 10.2 this weekend). I play a lot of games so the wider range of the latest titles makes a difference. As for video editing, I greatly prefer my Apple with Final Cut Pro over my PC with a DV Raptor and Adobe Premiere 6.0. I could go into the reasons (stability, speed, ease of use) but I think I’ve made the point I wanted to try and make. Most other comparisons, short of boot time tests and things like that, are subjective. And even the boot time may not really impact the usability of the OS (as long as the OS doesn’t crash in such a way as to require a hard boot). Is the dock more usable than the start menu or the quick launch bar? How can that be decided.
I think the usability of the OS really depends on the software for that OS. A lot of people feel that Office v.X is better than Office XP. There’s a viable usability test. In my example, Final Cut Pro 2 and 3 are far more usable than Premiere 6.0.
Again, I apologize for the flame and for the long-windedness of this post.
The problem with the Mac is that every program runs on the Finder screen. To make proper use of a menu bar at the top of the screen (as per Fitt’s Law), the application has to have a complete screen (or workspace) to itself, with nothing visible on the monitor that is not a part of that application. If you are going to have applications sharing a screen display, they will “fight” for the menu bar.
IRCC, the earliest versions of MACOS were actually like this. Only the built in utilities like the calculator could be viewed simultaneously with an app. Later they gave it the ability to show windows from multiple apps.
The main problem I have with the mac style interface is the mess of windows and bits of the app spread out accross the screen that it creates. It would seem to me that having all the components of each program within a single window (and each instance of a program has its own window) would be easier conceptually for a novice user (it is easier for me as a non-novice user), even if there is a small loss in efficiency of space and mouse targeting speed.
Another problem I have with it is that a number of apps I’ve tried on current store models don’t close when you close the last document/main window. I end up leaving alot of stuff open by accident (so do others trying these machines out it appears). Maybe this isn’t much of a problem with virtual memory and all (just let them swap out), but I guess the “when I’m not using it any more it is not running” concept appeals to me.
One more problem, alleviated to some extent in Mac OS X, is that many program’s menu bars look the same (ie: File Edit View … Help). It makes it hard to tell what program you are actually in without searching for the other clues. One clue in Classic was the right hand app menu, but that could have its text hidden. Now, with MacOS X, they’ve added the app titled menu to the left of the file menu. This helps alot, but you are still left to look up and read that text to figure out where you are. Note that this is mostly a problem with those apps that stay open without a document window to make it more obvious what app is active.
I think the problems with the mac menu bar will become more interesting as screen sizes get larger. Supposedly, Fitts’s Law is not significantly affected by screen size (with proper mouse acceleration), but I think the user having to switch eye focus between increasingly large distances is going to impact usability. I can’t even imagine how Mac users can stand multiple monitors (with only one having the menu bar). Maybe they use the secondary monitors only for reference displays and do the work in the main display. One question I have is where will the menu bar go when we have wall-sized displays like that in the movie Minority Report or Sun’s Starfire Project http://www.asktog.com/starfire/starfireHome.html . The one app to a window design will still be valid here.
Well… you CAN have ctrl-alt-del on WindowsXP, if you chose High security level.
Another problem I have with it is that a number of apps I’ve tried on current store models don’t close when you close the last document/main window.
This is not a problem, it’s a feature! Just because I close the one photoshop file I had opened doesn’t mean I don’t want to use photoshop anymore. That’s one of my beefs w/XP, is that it makes assumptions about my behavior, and those assumptions are often wrong (even spell check, when it refuses to let me type a lower case i to represent a variable).
As for another post mentioning the possibility of comparing boot times, they correctly pointed out that I specifically didn’t mention boot times and OS install times because they really don’t affect usability. Just because it took me 40 minutes or 2 hours to install jaguar doesn’t make any difference to me after 12+ months of use. Also, since the OS (and even apps) are intended to be left on/open, boot and launch times become inconsequential.
As for posters bitching that I only picked features that OS X excelled at by saying that I focused on Graphics Professional type goals, what’s wrong with that? In fact I think any such OS comparison would be highly flawed if it tried to assume a one-size-fits-all approach to computers. Different people will have different needs from their computers and should buy the compter and OS that fits their needs. That’s exactly the problem I have w/my IT department. They don’t understand that my computer needs are vastly different than the needs of most of the rest of the employees in the company. They assume that since XP is good enough for everybody else, then it should be good enough for me. Wrong.
So maybe I should change the title of the article to “A Graphics professional’s comparison of XP vs X”, that way readers expectations would be set right there. If someone still has a problem w/that, they need to take the stick out of their butt and get over it.
This is not a problem, it’s a feature! Just because I close the one photoshop file I had opened doesn’t mean I don’t want to use photoshop anymore.
I can understand that advantage. Too bad large programs like Photoshop don’t open quick enough to jump in and out of, even after ending up in the disk cache. I tend to do this quite a bit with IE and Office on Windows. It is one of the places where these multi-GHz machines do come in handy for common office work.
Come to think of it, IE and Office both preload, so you get the advantages of leaving the app open, like on the Mac, without the added UI clutter (extra windowless menubars to accidentaly select). Maybe more large apps should offer this as an option (not a default).