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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 0:15 and is filed under Analysis & Commentary, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Now that anyone can get a copy of Windows Vista Beta 2 (grab the BitTorrent from our friend Chris Pirillo instead), one can see first hand just how much Microsoft admires OS X. I know when I first saw it in all its glory at CES this year, I kept mummering to myself, “That’s from OS X…that’s from OS X…that’s from OS X,” until the Microsoft project manager that was giving the demo told the crowd what hardware demand was needed. Ya, that was all Microsoft.
If you haven’t seen the next version of Microsoft Windows, then Lifehacker has some side-by-side (well, top-by-bottom) comparisons to show you. For those that can remember the ads Apple took out in 1995 against Windows 95 (“if it looks like a duck…”), then you’ll probably be expecting an update to all the papers across America sometime next year.
The irony of Windows Vista isn’t that it uses Gadgets instead of Widgets or Windows Calendar instead of iCal but that all this glass interface and other software applets it uses will have a heavy hardware requirement. While Microsoft will not give out exact specifications yet since it’s still in beta, (it does give suggestions if your PC is “capable”) most estimates are that computers that are of the medium grade released in the last year have a chance. High-end machines from about two years ago could probably pull it off. If you don’t have such a system, start packing it up for the dump now ’cause it ain’t gonna do you no good when Vista rolls out.
As Vista drags on toward its ultimate release date, OS X will continue to grow in market share. With the growing number of daily insecurities of Windows (which has plagued Vista betas as well,) users will soon grow tired of Microsoft and move on. The extra hardware need may be that final straw, to use a cliche. When many see that they can buy a Mac mini at a fairly low price and get all that Vista promises at half the cost of what Vista demands, it may be Apple looking out from the clear mountain tops of Cupertino…well Saratoga at least, in the end.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:09
I would like to believe that more people will migrate to the Mac but i don’t see it happening in large numbers given the cost disparities. Yes I know, if you parse the costs etc. the Mac comes up looking good but the average person doesn’t see that. What they see is they can buy a Dell online or an HP/Compaq/eMachines/Gateway at Best Buy for $549 with an lcd monitor and maybe a printer. Makes $799 for the Mini not look so good.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:38
Of course, Vista is still not UNIX; it is a proprietary, insecure, heap of–feathers.
June 13th, 2006 at 15:04
Tha author said a PC with Vista reguirements, that makes much more than 549!!!
June 13th, 2006 at 16:24
Actually I read something in a windows centric online pub (think it was PC Mag but I’m not sure) that said that they’d run the Vista compliance checker thingie on a Dell tower that was less than a year old, a newer enterprise level notebook and a dual core Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini was the only machine that came back as Vista ready.
This tells me that there are going to be quite a few disgruntled people whenever Vista finally launches…
Mark
June 13th, 2006 at 20:26
Please remember that Microsoft’s REAL customers are not you and me, they are Dell, HP, etc. They’ll sell way more versions of Windows Vista pre-installed than in retail boxes. So, what do you do to make your big customers happy? Help them sell their products! Poor PC people… Microsoft just doesn’t have your best interests in mind. Please try a Mac.
June 14th, 2006 at 5:49
It does appear that the Mac Mini will be one of the lowest priced Vista-capable PCs on the market. The consumer may keep their existing monitor, MS keyboard & mouse, and have an incredibly small PC “box” on their desk, but they do have to buy Vista as a stand alone item. Nonetheless, it will bring many people into their Apple stores, and once they are shown Safari is better than IE, and the whole iLife suite of aps, it running MS Office, and all of that WITHOUT a virus or any virus-checking hassles, they may not want to buy Vista for it. It would be pointless. Just take the inexpensive little mini home, replacing their existing whirring PC, and they are done! A rock-solid system in a tiny box, and it all happened because Microsoft’s steep requirements pushed their existing customers into the Apple stores. The iPod “halo” effect will seem like a trickle when compared to the torrent of “switchers” from the Vista scare. Apple’s TV ads right now are perfect timing. Cool ads here… http://www.apple.com/getamac/
June 14th, 2006 at 6:51
I am a Microsoft fan for the most part, and I do believe they are learning from Apple, however there are a lot of features that Microsoft announced that they wanted to include in the next release of Windows long before Apple beat them to market with their own version. Examples: Spotlight search was a MS idea that apple implemented before MS did. Dashboard copied MS’s idea and beat Windows Sidebar to market.
Just because Apple sold it first doesn’t mean MS is copying them. They learn from each other.
June 14th, 2006 at 7:43
Mike, there are some things Microsoft does well and copying other technologies is one of them. Windows Sidebar was not first. If you look at all the third-party software that’s been out for years doing the same thing, you would know that this is not a MS thing at all. I remember using Desktop Sidebar four years ago, long before Redmond thought of doing this. Further, Dashboard comes from Apple technology that dates back to its early version of Classic OS the pre-dates any one else.
As to Spotlight ripping Microsoft, wow, that’s funny. Microsoft’s Index Search (pre-Vista searching) is a joke. It was being further used in early Vista (then Longhorn) builds until Spotlight hit the scene. Then it was crafted into what it is now. Trust me, Apple didn’t copy MS on that one.
You do mention about features Microsoft announced that they wanted to include in the next release. Someo them, such as WinFS, would have been awesome. But Apple didn’t copy those. In fact, Microsoft ended up dumping all these great features and now Vista is just a minor upgrade.
June 14th, 2006 at 8:54
I agree that the people purchasing shrink wrapped copies of Vista is going to be a very small percentage of it’s sales. The point I was making about the Mac Mini, is that, for the moment at least, Apple is ahead on the hardware front and for once, has a machine that is much cheaper than most Vista capable machines from the major PC manufacturers.
In fact, if Apple does start to take market share (and, as a stockholder, I’m not sure whether I care about that or not), the big losers are probably going to be Sony and possibly Dell. Microsoft actually makes a much larger profit on shrink wrapped copies of Windows than it does on copies pre-installed by OEM manufacturers.
There’s also one problem with the argument that people will purchase a Mac of whatever flavor and decide not to install Windows after they see the wonderful user experience. Legacy software. If you’re replacing a Windows machine with a Vista capable Mac, you stilll need to run your Windows software (Office, CAD, games, etc). In a perfect world, I’d see people running whatever mission critical software in their windows environment, under Boot Camp or Parellels Desktop, and using the Mac OS for their email, web, and fun stuff, the iApps.
We’re all forgetting that, regardless of our religios OS affiliation, the software us usually the largest investment when buying a system. For example, I sitting at a dual G5 tower with a 23″ Cinema HD display, the cost was around $5K for the hardware. Software cost upward of $12K. It would make no economic sense for me to move to another OS environment for the tasks that I purchased this computer for, the cost of migrating software would be too great. On the other hand, if I were to be able to run the software I have now and another OS had compelling additional features, and features that I could replace at little or no cost for great benefit, it would make a great deal of sense.
We all want to think that whatever software platform we choose is superior, but we have to remember the economics beyond the hardware costs.
Cheers,
Mark
June 14th, 2006 at 11:18
Sven, I have never seen a Mac pre-tiger that had any dashboard with widgets, whether the technology to make one was there or not. Windows has been doing active desktop stuff since the Win95 update slightly before 98 came out. I read about the sidebar with gadgets in longhorn around the time XP came out. Apple then decided to do a dashboard. Whether longhorn had a quicksearch prior to spotlight search does not mean that they did not have it planned and announced they would do it before spotlight was done. Independent of whether MS came up with the idea first or 3rd party software maekers did, it doesn’t change that MS announced that it would be included in the OS and then Apple implemented it first. Vista is still an OS overhaul, although the interface may not be completely different, it is a change in the core or the OS. It will open possibilities for future domination in the OS market if they can keep releasing near annual upgrades like Apple, now that they’ve found a solution to recreate windows into the kinda OS that deserves as much respect as OS X.
With all that said, I’m still considering buying a MacBook with plans to install XP or Vista on it, just because I like the hardware better than most other laptop makers. Vista will include most of the iLife type software anyway, So I would be most likely getting the apple for the look and the hardware, now that they are an option for a windows laptop.
June 14th, 2006 at 11:33
Hi Mike,
Actually what the other poster was talking about is that Dashboard (and Konfabulator for that matter) are based on a very old Apple Mac OS Classic tool set. It was called “Desk Accessories” and included games, calculators, etc. This was available in the Mac OS before there even was a Windows.
That’s why everyone says that the Sidebar and Konfabulator are based on Apple technology.
Cheers,
Mark
July 10th, 2006 at 12:04
I think initial cost is the biggest factor when choosing a new computer. I recently had a $3000 budget to purchase a new Laptop. I looked at Apple, Dell and HP. My requirements were a 17″ monitor, 2.16Ghz Core Duo Processor, 2Gb of 667 RAM, DVD Buner and Microsoft Office Basic (free readers downloadable from MS makes Powerpoint un-needed). I ended up choosing the Dell Inspiron E1705. I seriously looked at the MAC, but I couldn’t get what I wanted for under the $3K I had. The same features I got with the Dell @ $2600 (this includes the 4 year full service including accidental damage) would have cost about $3500 for the Mac not including Office. I am not here to say that MS is better than Mac or vice versa, but even if I upgrade to Vista, I will still save money.