Comments on: Vista Views: What Vista can learn from Leopard

Readers say what features from the Mac OS X update they'd like to see in the next version of Windows.

[oludir]

has anyone thought of asking...

how exactly does Mac OS X leopard store those personal files it restores? The HD drive will take a huge hit. Oh yes! you need two drives! Nice.

Why don't we wait to actually use the two OS's?

[mad4max]

I've thought of asking

Why would you have your backups on the same disk as your
originals. But I'm a Mac user (now), so I must be stupid, I suppose.
Not like you, of course.

[ewelch]

Sorry Robert

But you got just about everything wrong about OS X. You're right
that Apple does its own share of borrowing ideas from others,
including Windows.

To say Time Machine is a rip-off of Microsoft's restore feature is
nonsense, as other panel members have said. Still, the comment
was silly - as if Microsoft invented backups in 2003. Apple just
made it comprehensible for everyone, and guarantees it will be
used by a lot of people who never backed up in their lives.

You CAN hook an X-Box 360 to a Mac. Didn't you see that? Heh,
guess not.

The only smugness and zealotry I'm seeing here is old Windows
fans who don't know what's happening in the Mac world and
spouting off about how Macs were five or six years ago.

The bottom line is that my Mac Pro can do everything your PC
can, Robert. But your PC can't do as much, and doesn't have as
many applications available to it as my Mac Pro does. See, my
Mac can run Windows, OS/2, Windows 3.1, Linux, UNIX, Solaris,
DOS - all at the same time! Your PC can't run OS X. I doubt it can
even run OS/2 or Windos 3.1!

How's that for turnabout?

[iceykola]

Re: Sorry Robert

ewelch,

There are cracked versions of OS X x86 floating around to allow them to run on non-apple PCs.

Windows CAN do everything Mac OS X can do. If you disagree give me one example and I will prove you wrong, unless you are right.

And of course any x86 PC can run OS/2, Windows 3.1. What the heck does that comment even mean?

[iceykola]

Kevin F.: Microsoft had 'Time Machine' first

Windows Vista has an implementation of time machine. I tried it out in beta 2, it's called previous versions. If you right click on a file or folder and go to the properties there is a previous versions tab. It shows them listed by date, and if you select one and click open, you can see what was in there, and restore it. I have also tried it out on my Windows XP SP2 machine at work; it only works on network drives that are controlled by Windows Server 2003. It is now in the workstation versions of Windows Vista.

[da_bombdiggidy]

Rob and Wallance, look past the graphics

Time Machine has one huge advantage you can't get from Window's restore. If your hard drive fails, forget Windows Restore. By using a second drive, it can back up any new drive installed. BTW, how many basic users to advance user know how to use Window's Restore, you can probably count them on fingers and toes. Most Window's users I know use something 3rd party. Time machine is extremely easy.

[MTGrizzly]

Windows Restore...

Personally, I like Windows Restore. I cannot tell you how much
money I made when people called me in a panic, because they
trashed something and couldn't get it back in Windows. It is only
too late that Windows Restore lets you know it only restores the
system. Most people believe it restores everything - WRONG.

The other day, when I was putting XP on my Intel Mac, I realized
that I just ran out of excuses to keep buying the "latest" Dell
system. Kind of shot myself in the foot..........

[bluvg]

David Price doesn't know the history of NT

Microsoft did EXACTLY what he said, actually. They DID start from scratch. There is no DOS, no UNIX in NT. Do a search on Dave Cutler, the lead behind VMS and later on NT--NT is "VMS re-implemented." And VMS is a darn fine OS.

Spaces was designed into NT, and the consumer option for enabling that is the free Powertoy so many others here have mentioned. Heck, this was available on the Amiga way back when. But Apple releases it, and suddenly it gets attention? And nobody sees the hypocrisy in them calling attention to Microsoft "copying" them (which, honestly, came off a bit unprofessional--and after awhile, more like an inferiority complex), even though they went on to demo so many features already available for Windows?

People love to bash Microsoft. Most know very little about it or its products, nor bother to find out--including most of the responses in this summary.

McLaws is totally correct. As someone else aptly put it: "As always, they slap together a product with ideas stolen from other people's betas, take potshots at other operating systems, and then claim everybody is copying them. Typical." But this time, it's so obvious (Stationery? C'mon, who can't see the copying in that???). Honestly, I wouldn't really care about the copying, but Apple is obsessed with it, and then they go out and do it without batting an eye. Of course, will CNET point that out? Obviously not.

[Penguinisto]

Yes and no...

NT was written from (almost) scratch, but compared to VMS? Not. Even Close. VMS was stable. VMS was (relatively) secure. For its time, VMS was miles above even what NT/2k/2k3 turned out to be.

Price did get part of it right, though - MSFT needs to start from scratch; no legacy app support, no having to remain stuck with the inefficient and ungodly abortion of a microkernel architecture that we're stuck with today. And maybe, just maybe, MSFT can pull their heads out and stop inbreeding massive security holes like IE into the thing.

Hell, MacOS v.9 -> OSX was painful if you were a developer, but Apple managed to pull it off just fine w/o losing hordes of 3rd-party app developers (sure, Adobe whined like a little punk about it and dropped FrameMaker for Macs, but you'll notice that they busted their butts to make damned sure that Photoshop worked in OSX, no?)

"Spaces" is new to a lot of people in the Windows world. OTOH, I've been playing w/ virtual desktops since the mid-90's in RedHat, and in Slackware before that. MSFT [i]is[/i] the last major OS to implement what is otherwise a damned fine concept. It's been available to *nix at the command line for eons (multiple tty/pty's, [i]screen[/i], and the like)... but then, with a BSD core, Apple is a lot closer to the real source of the pty for GUIs than MSFT is...

Now there is a lot that Vista did obviously rip off directly from OSX [i]and[/i] Linux/X11 that can be seen by even the most casual OSX user, from UI design to UI format, right down to the eye candy (OMG! Transparency! - bah. Too bad I've been playing with that on my GUI console windows in Linux for nearly a decade or so)... I have to admit, it's pretty funny to watch.

Besides, considering that Microsoft literally swiped source code printouts from Apple back in the early days of the PC, one cannot help but think that Apple has more than earned the right to point it out, no?

/P