Corporations can be heinous places. All day, people wander around, playing politics like so many Lindsay Lohans in "Mean Girls."
So today, one wonders just what machinations are being endured by Simon Aldous, the Microsoft Partner Group manager who was Wednesday quoted by PCR as suggesting that Windows 7 was rather inspired by the simplicity of the Mac OS. Indeed, Aldous declared that Microsoft's new operating system was designed to "create a Mac look."
In what appears to be a somewhat hurriedly written post on the Windows Team blog titled, "How we really designed the look and feel of Windows 7," Microsoft showed that perhaps some of its underwear is currently a little twisted.
The post read: "An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was 'borrowed' from Mac OS X."
This would suggest that Aldous was, in fact, misquoted.
However, the post, written by Brandon LeBlanc, continued, "Unfortunately, this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed."
"I'm Steve Jobs, and Windows 7 was my idea?"
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)Some would therefore now conclude that he was quoted accurately, but he didn't quite get his facts right. This is entirely possible, though one might wonder why he would have made comments with a ring of such endearing honesty.
However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this Windows Team post is a comment left by someone with the handle "i-dont-do-tat".
This commenter wrote: "I know Simon Aldous, having worked in the same U.K. subsidiary as him for a few years. He's a good guy who, for me, is telling it like it is. He's paying testament to the common view that a Mac is cool and a great template to copy."
As many in the world of business will tell you, copying happens all the time. The competition is scrutinized religiously, and the best articles of faith are taken and sometimes even improved. This happens in every product category.
The "i-dont-do-tat" poster concluded that perhaps honesty might not be such a bad thing: "Denying this to your customers just makes you look stupid because the very look and feel of Windows 7 is desperately trying to look like a Mac OS--just admit it."
Oh, of course one mightn't expect honesty in the mass-market arena. It is a very dangerous place in which to say anything at all. Equally, though, in a tech world interview, perhaps a little nod toward the opposition is not such a bad thing. It might even lull it into a little complacent smugness.
One can only hope that Simon Aldous had a good breakfast Thursday and that he hasn't endured any untoward communications. Unless it's a job offer from Apple, of course, which he should accept only if the company gives him a better deal and appears to come from nicer people.
That's how the corporate world works, you see. Like high school, it's all temporary, so you have to make the most of it while you can.
Sometimes you take a wrong turning in life and, Wednesday, a slight concussion led my eyes to fall upon the pages of PCR.
It is a little more intelligent than my normal reading matter, but I am very grateful for its interview with Simon Aldous, Microsoft's partner group manager.
He was quoted, for example, as saying: "One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it's very graphical and easy to use."
You're waiting for the punchline, right? You know, the one about how he was kidding.
Wait away because he continued: "What we've tried to do with Windows 7--whether it's traditional format or in a touch format--is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics."
I know that such words might cause some entrenched foot soldiers in both of the fanchildren camps to hoot, hiss, sigh and reach for the nearest farming implement.
However, isn't it rather charming to hear someone admit that a competitor's product isn't overly expensive or overly pretentious, but that it has something about it that is good and that real people who buy real products actually appreciate?
Parallels on Wednesday released Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, a new version of its virtualization software that allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows and Linux alongside Mac OS X.
According to Parallels, the new version of its software is up to 300 percent faster than the previous version, Parallels Desktop 4. The company also hired Crimson Consulting Group to do performance testing on Parallels 5 and said it was 22 percent faster than its nearest virtualization competitor when running Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro.
While the competitor wasn't named by Parallels, it is widely thought the virtualization market is ruled by Parallels and VMWare's Fusion for Mac.
Speaking with CNET, Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov said company had three main goals when making Parallels 5 for Mac: make it faster; make it smarter and easier; and make it more powerful.
Beloussov said the company achieved those goals by adding support for gestures, supporting a broader range of 3D features, and optimizing Parallels to handle virtual hardware and drivers more efficiently.
Parallels 5 also adds a new viewing mode called Crystal, which is similar to Coherence, where Windows completely disappears from your desktop. However, Crystal adds the Windows taskbar items on the top of the Mac OS X menu, allowing easy access.
Apple also offers a way to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. It's called Boot Camp, but it requires the user restart the computer and run Windows separately from the Mac OS. While that may be inconvenient for many users, the native speed of running on the hardware was always seen as a major advantage. Parallels says they can now beat that.
"Parallels is faster than Boot Camp," Beloussov said. "Most slow downs with Windows is not because of computational problems, it's handling drivers. We offer optimized virtualized hardware and drivers, making it faster."
Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is available for $79.99 or $49.99 for an upgrade.
Microsoft appears to be getting relatively strong early adoption of Windows 7 in the 10 days since its official launch.
According to Net Applications, more than 3 percent of PCs accessing the Web in the past two days have been doing so using the new operating system. Usage of the operating system has been growing strong in recent days, though Windows 7 already accounted for 2 percent of global Web traffic in the days ahead of its formal launch.
"The early adoption of Windows 7 looks very strong, and I don't believe Vista enjoyed the same early success," said Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at Net Applications. "Plus, we've seen surges the past two weekend days, and Windows has historically seen much higher usage market share on weekdays than on weekends."
However, weekends tend to see stronger usage by consumers. And consumers are more likely to move quickly to a new version of Windows than businesses, which tend to do extensive testing before adopting a new operating system.
The news is not all positive for Microsoft, though. As a whole, the Mac OS continues to gain on Windows. As of October, Windows had 92.5 percent of the worldwide operating system market, but Mac OS reached 5.27 percent, up from 5.12 percent in September. (Past numbers from Net Applications showed the Mac OS with significantly higher market share, though the market research firm says it has changed its methodology to better reflect the relative traffic of the countries from which it is getting data.)
Apple's recent anti-Windows 7 advertising has touted that if users are going to upgrade their Windows XP machines and have to transfer their data anyway, they might as well move to a Mac. Vizzaccaro said the early numbers suggest that the Mac might indeed be benefiting from such a trend but said it is too early to know for sure.
"We'll know much more in the months ahead," he said.
Was Apple going to keep quiet about the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7?
Do raccoons know how to get at the leftover spaghetti in your garbage can?
So, indeed, here is an immediate retort starring Messrs. John Hodgman and Justin Long.
Apple's appeal is a very simple one. It is one that you have heard this before, often late at night, often inebriated, sometimes over the telephone.
Surely you remember the script: "Your lover let you down before? You went back to her. She was unfaithful again. And still you went back to her. Now she comes a-callin', telling you things will be different this time...and YOU'RE GOING TO BELIEVE HER? WHAT ARE YOU? NUTSOID?!!!"
However, this time, it doesn't stop there. Because Apple also specifically asks XP users whether it's terribly wise to go with Windows 7 when Mac is No. 1 for customer satisfaction. (The XP user, naturally, decides she doesn't need "pain and frustration.")
Apple has decided to create this little surge of communication, more examples of which you can watch here, designed to prick at your conscience while Microsoft tries to pick at your pocket.
Which suitor should you trust? The one who's supposedly let you down before or the cool, allegedly costly one?
In a tough economy, what may be most telling is how many people decide to bide their time and hide their money, until Windows 7 is deemed to be worthy of at least a steady relationship.
Programmers have mostly overcome a crucial hurdle to releasing a beta version of Chrome for the Mac, printing support, but several Windows 7 features won't make the cut for the present 4.x version of Chrome.
The Mac printing support is now added, according to the Google browser's issue-tracking system, though there are "minor remaining issues" and the new features aren't yet distributed with the software.
Google has cited Mac printing support as one holding back a Mac version of the browser. Mac support is important for the company's ambitions to spread the browser and its fast-Web philosophy to mainstream users. The Linux version, while less mainstream now, also is important since it's the foundation of Google's Chrome OS project to build a browser-based operating system for Netbooks.
But on the Windows side of the shop, a number of planned features to support Windows 7 were pushed back to the next version Chrome on Wednesday. That includes support for showing thumbnails of open tabs on the task bar, showing "jump lists" for quick actions such as links recently or frequently visited pages, pinning thumbnails to the task bar, and overlaying a download progress status bar on the Chrome icon.
The present beta and stable releases that Google issued Monday, Chrome version 3.0.195.27 (download for Windows only), are members of the 3.x family. The developer preview is in the 4.x family (download for Windows or Mac OS X). The Windows 7 features had been slated for the 4.x series, but now are planned for version 5, according to the issue-tracking system.
The change doesn't indicate the features have retreated into the distant future, though; Chrome version numbers change relatively rapidly, as evidenced by the move to version 4 in just over a year.
Also pushed back to the 5.x series is built-in support for discovering when Web pages have RSS feeds, one of Chrome's most-requested features. Its absence is ameliorated by a Chrome sample extension for RSS, though.
Extensions remain a work in progress. New ones are arriving steadily, and existing extensions such as Lastpass for filling in passwords and forms and AdSweep for blocking ads is progressing. But Google recently switched interfaces, dropping the use of a toolstrip across the bottom of the browser with pop-up "moles" in favor of browser actions, small icons along the top of the browser.
OS X 10.6 includes Boot Camp 3.0, a new collection of software drivers that make Windows run much better on Mac hardware.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)Every time I see the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads on TV, I can't help but wonder, "Why not both?" And it has never been a better time for that.
Overall, personally, I found that while the new Mac OS doesn't warrant a "wow," it's still definitely worth the $29 upgrade price. Snow Leopard offers an even more streamlined Mac experience than Leopard and noticeably faster interface responsiveness. The application performance, however, is slightly slower than it is with Leopard, at least on the MacBook Pro we used as our test machine. As the OS is now a pure 64-bit operating system, expect the application performance to improve over Leopard as you add RAM or use it with a high-end desktop.
Mac users can read more about Snow Leopard in my colleague Jason Parker's full review. On the other hand, for Windows users, especially Windows 7, the release of Snow Leopard is straight-on great news.
Boot Camp 3.0 enables Windows to read files from OS X's partition.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)I recently blogged about running Windows 7 on a 15-inch Unibody Macbook Pro, which required some tweaking with Boot Camp 2.1. Snow Leopard comes with Boot Camp 3.0, which makes installing and running Windows on a laptop a much more pleasant experience.
First of all, the new Boot Camp includes all the drivers necessary to run both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 smoothly on the Mac hardware.
(Note that you only need to run the Boot Camp Assistant, BCA, if you want to dual-boot OS X and Windows on the same machine. The utility will then create a new partition for the installation of Windows. In this case, make sure you run the BCA first when the computer boots up to avoid file errors. If you want to run just Windows and skip OS X altogether, you can boot from the Windows 7 install DVD and start the installation the way you would install the OS on any PC from scratch.)
After the installation is done, Boot Camp 3.0 can be installed from the Snow Leopard DVD. Then, without further ado, you got yourself a great Windows computer.
... Read more
Windows 7 rates my unibody 15-inch MacBook Pro at 5.3, which is very high for a laptop.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)I have had Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (release to manufacturer) for a few days. This is, of course, a legitimate copy, not the leaked copy that you can download from the Internet. That's the good news.
The bad news is I have had to test it, which has been lot of work. We tested the new operating system against Windows Vista SP2 and Windows XP SP3. Overall, Windows 7 offers a much more pleasant experience than Windows Vista. Everything works more smoothly. The new OS takes less time to launch applications, and it's nice just to browse around its functions and features. It's also very pretty. However, it is slower than Windows XP, except for the boot and shutdown times, where XP has always been a drag.
... Read moreApple and Microsoft are fighting for the mindshare of consumers as both companies prepare to roll out upgrades to their operating systems later this year.
Apple on Monday showed Worldwide Developers Conference attendees Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X. Apple has been very open about the fact that Snow Leopard is meant to be an under-the-hood maintenance release, focusing on performance enhancements to the operating system.
Windows 7 is essentially Microsoft's maintenance release for Vista, that according to many accounts was a failure for the company. Putting aside all of the back and forth between the two companies, one industry analyst feels it comes down to the consumer.
"It's really immaterial the degree of the rewrite in the operating system," Ross Rubin, director of analysis for market research firm NPD, told CNET. "The key is the consumer benefit."
Apple introduces Mac OS X Snow Leopard at the WWDC.
(Credit: Jim Dalrymple)While early testing of Windows 7 seems to bear out improvements in the operating system, Microsoft is coming off a very bad consumer experience with Windows Vista. That is not a trivial obstacle for it to overcome.
Microsoft will have to fight the industry perception that Windows 7 is just Vista with a few fixes. That could certainly lead to slower adoption of the new operating system out of the gate.
Apple on the other hand is coming off one of the most successful operating system launches in the company's history. Mac OS X Leopard was a solid release, packed with features. Overall, Leopard had relatively few problems throughout its life cycle.
Apple doesn't have to fight off that negative perception from its users or the industry. Macs have been selling better than ever and there is no sense that will slow down anytime soon.
Typically, Apple sells its new operating systems for $129. That's a flat fee. Everyone gets the same version that includes all features and enhancements. However, Leopard users will be offered an upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29. Microsoft has yet to release its upgrade pricing, but it is expected to be much higher.
"The OS war is on in a big way," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Strategy and Analysis at Interpret. "Charging $29 won't win Apple any converts, but Microsoft is going to look really bad with its upgrade pricing."
It's clear that Microsoft has a much bigger channel to push Windows 7 to customers, but we've seen with the Vista release that doesn't always mean success for an operating system.
Apple is coming from a strong position with Mac OS X Leopard, so upgrades to its newest Snow Leopard release should be very strong.
Apple said Snow Leopard is expected to ship in September. Microsoft will release Windows 7 in October.
Updated 10:50 a.m. PDT: Added pricing information.
SAN FRANCISCO--While Microsoft is trying to position Windows 7 as an exciting new version of the operating system, Apple on Monday tried to characterize it as the same old Windows.
In a keynote speech at the Worldwide Developer Conference here, Apple's Bertrand Serlet said the underpinnings of Windows 7 include the same complexities that have been in the past versions of the operating system.
"That's Windows 7," he said. "Fundamentally, it's just another version of Windows Vista."
Bertrand Serlet speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Serlet tried to draw a contrast between Windows and what Apple is doing with Snow Leopard, the next version of its own operating system. "We've come at it from such a different place."
But while his rhetoric suggested a fundamental difference, Serlet actually characterized Snow Leopard in some of the same ways--as a better version of the existing Leopard operating system.
"We love Leopard," he said. "We are proud of Leopard."
The goal of Snow Leopard, he said, was really "to build a better Leopard."
There are other similarities between what Apple's and Microsoft's efforts. Among the new features in Snow Leopard is a feature that adds the Expose window--previewing feature to the Dock--not unlike the Aero Peek feature that Windows 7 has as part of its new task bar.
In fairness, there are some key differences between what Apple is doing with Snow Leopard compared to what Microsoft is doing with Windows 7.
Windows 7 is largely focused on improving the look and performance of the core Vista engine, while Snow Leopard goes more under the hood, aiming to better handle 64-bit processing and multicore capabilities.
Apple is also trying to boost its Windows compatibility story by adding Exchange server capability to Snow Leopard. According to Apple, all the user has to do is fill in an e-mail address and password, and the software will "auto-detect" the Exchange Server and make the user's calendar and mail available in Mac OS X's iCal and Mail programs.
The biggest pressure from Apple, though came on the pricing front. Serlet said that Apple will ship Snow Leopard in September and charge just $29 for Leopard owners to upgrade.
Microsoft has hinted that it will offer a cheaper upgrade for Vista users to move to Windows 7, but has not announced details.
