Leopard VS. Vista – Part Two – The Heat Is On

June 12, 2006

Leopard VS. Vista – Part Two is the second article of the “Leopard VS. Vista” series:
Leopard VS. Vista – Part One
Leopard VS. Vista – Part Two – The Heat is On
Leopard VS. Vista – Part Three – Secrets an Photocopiers

Leopard VS. VistaLately, the next-generation Windows operating system has been receiving a lot of press due to Microsoft’s decision to publish .ISO images of Windows Vista Beta Two on their website, available as a free download for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Due to reports, this version of Vista is much more stable and is much more refined compared to Vista Beta One. The new Windows Vista Aero interface is more than what telephone systems can do, it is the most publicized feature included in Vista and is receiving most of the attention in the tech rumors, lately. The reason for this big hype and commotion over Aero is a result of the entire Windows user-base being deprived of an appealing OS environment. While the new glass window interface is quite impressive, there is nothing drastically different or better from the Aqua environment.

Two months away from WWDC, new rumors are speculation about the new Mac OS X operating system are showing up. One of the speculated larger updates in Leopard is the new Finder, with a streamlined interface and integrated Spotlight and meta tag organizing and searching. Other new features include animated icons and animated desktop backgrounds, transparency options for the dock, speed increases for Spotlight and Dashboard, ability to place Dashboard widgets on the desktop, iChat with tabbed conversations, iPod integration within the operating system and Finder, a new VNC application, full-screen applications (Safari, iTunes, iMovie), VOIP integration, and improvements to speech recognition, Universal Access, and Inkwell. There are also rumors of a new kernel, many speed improvements to the entire OS, collaborative features of documents over the internet, a newer version Front Row, and Boot Camp dual-booting.

Aero VS. AquaIt seems as if this majority of this competition between Leopard and Vista seems to be focused on the graphical user interface. Tiger’s GUI is far more superior to Windows XP’s GUI, but Microsoft has raised the bar with the new Aero interface and Apple has a lot of work to do to refine and perfect Aqua. Apple has a very strong reputation of making the most beautiful operating systems and hardware available to consumers, and if Vista were to make a better-looking user interface than Apple, Apple would lose that priceless reputation. I expect Apple to look into the glass window interface and make the UI more interactive and “alive�. If Apple were not to choose to use the transparent glass look, they will at least unify the entire windows to a solid, sleek metal look similar to the iTunes 6 appearance.

Vista seems to lack new features not found in Tiger, even though Microsoft has been working on Vista for almost six years. Vista’s new features include the sidebar and widgets (Dashboard widgets), Flip and Flip-3D (similar to command+tab app switching and Exposé), improved searching (Spotlight), a window preview in the taskbar (similar to the dock), new (annoying) security features, speech recognition, software updates in OS, and Internet Explorer 7. Absolutely no new features in Vista that aren’t available for use in Tiger. This shows two things: Microsoft can’t innovate and Apple has a great advantage for time and experience to innovate and develop more features into Leopard.

One of the primary features in Leopard will be dual-booting, and I’m sure Apple is working hard on getting Vista to run under Boot Camp with no issues. Apple now has an advantage over Microsoft that Microsoft cannot get from Apple, and that is the ability to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows on the same piece of hardware. They both can compete to innovate and develop the best OS, but in the end, Apple users have the opportunity to use both of the OSs, while Dell and Hewlett-Packard owners cannot enjoy the luxury of dual-booting into both OS X and Windows. That is what is so great about Boot Camp, we all have the opportunity to choose what OS we want on our system, whether it be Vista or Leopard. We can all use the strengths of both operating systems to get our work done, and eventually there will be no reason to use Vista when Windows programs can seamlessly run within OS X. It was a very smart move on Apple to include this option in Leopard, and it will definitely pay off in the long-run.

And as the WWDC gets closer, the future of where Leopard will start to become clearer. Windows has come back as a decent operating system in Vista, and it is up to Apple to really amaze everyone with an amazingly fast, secure, fully-featured, beautiful new version of Mac OS X.

11 Responses

  1. Andy Merrett says:

    Well it will be interesting to see how things shape up. Fact is I will never trust Microsoft near my computer, and so it doesn’t matter how nice their new OS looks (even if Vista actually ends up looking better than Leopard) – I’ll never use it (not on a Mac anyway). I’ll still end up farting about with it on some PCs now and again, I guess – goes with the job. I just hope I’m not too poor to get Leopard when it arrives! 🙂

    July 6th, 2006 at 2:32 am

  2. Chris Belena says:

    And somewhere over the Vista, a substandard operating system is trying to launch.

    July 7th, 2006 at 9:34 pm

  3. paragonconcept says:

    to bad the author seems to have taken recent 3rd party plugins and submitted them as features for leopard (full screen windows) http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/21275

    give it up – compare them both when they come out……

    July 7th, 2006 at 10:27 pm

  4. Michael says:

    I don’t see why Apple’s ability to dual-boot Windows/Vista on its hardware is an advantage over Microsoft. If this feature converts somebody, he’ll still need to buy a legal copy of Windows from Microsoft.

    July 7th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

  5. person with a clue. says:

    first, anyone else think it’s just plain stupid to compare 2 products, 1 which isn’t released and the other which -noone- has any idea about, except baseless rumours ? hello mac fanboy.

    lately ? betas have been available to msdsn subscribers for how many years, 7 ? i guess you’re talking about the cpp program and are just too clueless to know anything.

    entire windows userbase has been deprived ? where is your source for this, or is this more dribble based upon your own assumptions and some outcries on the interweb where the majority of windows users are -not- found.

    different ? have you even looked at the backend of aero (avalon/wddm) ? do so, than you’ll realise how dumb and clueless you sound.

    apple wasn’t the first to have a gadgets-esque system, they have been around for -years- before apple created the dashboard.

    flip/flip-3d are ‘similar’ – is that all you have to say ? wow, nice argument there buddy !

    live preview – does the dock have -live- preview ? nope.. and besides that, how is it similar to the dock, oh wait, it isn’t.

    uac – it’s being refined and if you had used the first builds with it in you would say that it’s 100x time better and each build it’s being fine tuned.

    ie7 – features not available on osx; protected mode, parental controls, non-archaic ui, decent printing from a browser, rss/favourites centre, cross domain barriers, int. domain anti-spoofing, admin kit and so on.. and that’s -JUST- the browser.

    you totally ignored pretty much everything in vista (that is new, changed and improved) and made some comments about rumours for leopard — congratulations, you’re a blind mac zealot.

    if you can address -anything- i have raised, do so, but i bet you can’t.

    July 8th, 2006 at 12:34 am

  6. Appleologist says:

    @ person with a clue.

    First of all, I am a Mac fanboy, obviously, and I included some of my own opinions in the article. You, being a MS fanboy know nothing, obviously. You wanted me to address your points, and I will one at a time.

    1. The column “Leopard VS. Vista” was not meant to be a comparison of the two OSs, it is a column that describes the progress of both the operating systems and their rumors that come from reliable sources.

    2. You obviously have never seen a switcher or ever been to an Apple store. I’ve seen countless amounts of people who are awed at the beautiful GUI in Macs, and say “Why doesn’t Windows look like this?”.

    3. I have done some research on Aero, I didn’t just write this article without doing any research at all. I wrote that point because I think Aero is just transparent windows. Big deal! OS X has had transparency in its OS since day one. When I heard of Aero, I was expecting a drastic overhaul of the GUI, not just transparent windows, round corners, and 3d effects that are annoying.

    4. I never said Apple was the inventor of widgets, I know very well that Konfabulator was really the first popular widget software.

    5. Flip is exactly the same as OS X’s application switcher, both triggered by the tab button. You have to admit that Microsoft got the idea of Flip3D from Exposé, they both do the exact same thing. You can’t tell me they aren’t exactly the same.

    6. The dock does have live preview. If you minimize a window in OS X, it goes right in the dock, offering a live preview of the window right in the dock. In Vista, you minimize a window and it goes right in the taskbar, offering a live preview of the window right in the taskbar.

    7. You don’t know anything do you? Safari has all of these features and more. Safari has Private Browsing (protective mode), a gorgeous UI, RSS news-reader and notifier, parental controls, the best printing-support of any browser, it doesn’t need cross domain barriers because Safari isn’t vulnerable to malicious scripts and ActiveX, modern CSS support, print to RSS, tabs, bookmarks bar, user agent control, and autofill. I am a web developer and I have handfuls of experiences when Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc. display my websites correctly, but IE just can’t display websites like they are meant to. Internet explorer makes my website work twice as hard because I have to install hacks, scripts, or rewrite my code to accommodate IE. And I’m testing in IE7 Beta 3. Microsoft still can’t get it right.

    8. What else is there in Vista? You didn’t even tell me, besides a new GUI that is impressive, but nothing to get excited about. Vista is just a lame imitation of OS X, and all Microsoft can implement into the OS is something they stole from OS X. I want to see one decent major feature in Vista that isn’t already in Tiger. I would like to know.

    If you can address, anything, I have raised, do so, but I bet you cannot. In the meantime, I suggest you watch this video.

    July 9th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

  7. bluj91 says:

    I think both macos x and vista will be equal in preformance. Personally just use FreeBSD or a linux.

    July 20th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

  8. Matt says:

    I wonder if the live previews will be shrunken versions of what the application would normally be displaying, or a separate subroutines.

    Vista is going to be very, very cool when it comes out. No question about it. OS X up until now has been so far ahead of Microsoft they could loaf like the little hare who fiddled while the turtle caught up and now the finish line is ahead …

    WHO WILL WIN?

    One thing, though, is that Microsoft gave away any surprise they would’ve had, and that was a very, very stupid move IMO. Now, at apple, it’s like “tweak this, tune that, and vista!!!” so I expect Leopard will be very, very nice and probably better than Vista in general coolness. Add Parallels and we’re rockin’ baby. (If you have the Intel)

    What’s the best point, about Leopard?? That I get to keep my Sawtooth (1999) with the latest and greatest OS on earth [awright, I’m giga’d to 1.8Gz I’ll admit]. What’s the worst point about Vista? That everyone’s gonna be back onto the hardware upgrade train, er, gravy train for the manufacturers that is!!

    August 7th, 2006 at 3:05 am

  9. EVE Player says:

    Haha, this is funny. Anything posted at a website from one side is going to get this sort of responses. I mean, really people, come on.

    Competition is competition. I don’t know if you know, but some of the largest businesses that you use every day do the exact same thing, but you just don’t notice it as much.

    Take cell phones for example. Sanyo, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia – all of them – are literally neck-to-neck in the latest gadgets, technologies and cool features. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one feature come out for one manufacturer that it didn’t come out on on the other guy’s.

    So relax, seriously. Who cares if one is mirroring or mimicking the other, they’re in business to make money. And if one company sees that the other is doing something that is generating business, you’d better believe they’re going to copy it as best they can to make themselves money.

    I am going to be completely impartial to this, but I will say that a few nights ago, I installed my copy of Vista beta onto my PC. It looked really neat. I said to my girlfriend “hey, come check out Vista!” and she looked at the mouse pointer and said “that looks like a rip-off of OS X.” I said “oh, doesn’t suprise me, Apple has some really good stuff going on with their new OS.

    That’s all I’m going to say.

    August 22nd, 2006 at 5:38 pm

  10. Ted says:

    Just to point this out, Apple and OS X have a lot of extra protection not only because of its built in and CLEARLY superior-to-Windows security, but its price. Normal Apples that don’t require displays ussualy cost around or more that $1000, and no cheap virus code writer person wants to spend that kind of money. Dell computers costing half the price are the logical choice for those people, providing Apple with a little protection in how few buy they’re computers. Even with Vista, if Apple becomes unpopular, it wont get worse, because people will write virusses for windows only.

    And Aero? Hmm… coming 5 years late with a familiar glass look. Where have I seen that before? It looks like a plain RIP-OFF of Aqua, a respectable and beautiful GUI.

    Just a thought in this montage of pointlessness. If Apple’s iPods are white and black and their macbooks are white and black, a black GUI would go along with the pattern very nicely…

    August 24th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

  11. Cesar Duarte says:

    Just 3 words : microsoft PDC 2003

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

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