I kicked the tires of the new Vista machine. They used a very dark theme on it; in retrospect it reminded me of Redmond weather. Perhaps that is because the weather “gadget” on the demo machine still showing the weather at Microsoft’s HQ.

Now, I’m a mere 3,000 miles away from Redmond, so Redmond weather doesn’t interest me a lot. And since there was no internet connection there, the weather couldn’t be updated anyway. It was, of course, cloudy with rain, because that’s Redmond’s weather for you.

Not a good start for Dell.

So I played around with the machine, and noticed something interesting. The translucent effects are simulated by blurring the image below the window. As an added bonus, even when there is no window on top, the window title is blurred so much it was difficult to read.

I compared this to the XP machine next to it. It was easy to read both window titles on the XP machine.

Over in the Apple store I tried the same thing and although the text was slightly blurred on the inactive window, it was still easy to read.

I can only conclude that after you’ve recovered from the WOW! of the Vista look, you’ll find it less usable than XP, which in my view should be a huge embarassment for Microsoft.

D

As much as I agree with the Macalope’s analysis of the marketshare argument, I have to point out that “whitty” isn’t in my dictionary; unfortunately, the closest match it gave started with “s.”

You are absolutely correct. Leopard is what I meant. I always get the cats mixed up. 10.5 is the next one, right? I’m okay with numbers. Maybe I should stick to math. I hate cats anyway. I liked the OS naming back when it was all about butthead astronomers.

Yes there are different kinds of gnocchi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnocchi ;)

And one might make the argument that Vista is good enough to cause some Mac users to switch back to Windows.

There are no words…the really sad thing is he seems to actually believe this. Sad, delusional little man.

I assume you mean Leopard. Tiger’s been out for 2 years now.

to name but a few…
- Homebuilders / gaming hobbyists
- Corporations and institutions
- Mom ‘n Pop looking for a computer for the interweb

The vital thing to remember is that these are very different populations, and their needs will make them react in distinct ways. I know enough people still on Windows (I’m in Britain, it’s an uphill fight here) to provide a simple rundown of how I expect things to go:

- Some homebuilders, I know ONE in total, will buy Vista itself. My friend proceeded to install the latest MS Flight Sim, was shocked and awed by how slow it was, and downgraded back to XP which he’d kept on a different hard drive. Not a happy customer! But he’s not switching - yet - either. Because he loves swapping graphics cards so much and is wedded to DirectX gaming. Many more hobbyists will pirate Vista like they’ve run “Corporate XP” for the last five years, and I hear it’s trivial to do. And some more will wait until OEM licences from new computers turn up on eBay and so on, probably only switching “by Service Pack One” as seems to be the general advice. There are a few from this group who have switched, the gaming webcomic duo at Penny Arcade are one high profile example, as the Intel transition has opened many a geek’s eyes to the Mac, especially with Boot Camp and Parallels. But they remain an interesting but small group.

- Corporations and institutions are NOT in a hurry to upgrade to a new platform, whether it be Vista or the Mac. They typically hold out for ages, and we all know some still use Windows 2000 or even older, albeit on newer machines. Tough nut to crack. Apple are showing signs of taking them seriously, as people’s work machines often dictate their choice in home machines, but there’s a long way to go.

- Non-technical home users are actually what’s really in question right now. Vista is NOT something many of them are going to buy from a shelf. Good lord: installing your own operating system!? These people, and they exist in vast numbers, use a computer with the software that came on it from purchase to dumpster. Some are “lucky” enough to have technical relatives (children) who will upgrade their software occasionally and may even be able to clear some of the spyware from their drowning computer. But in all, how it works for general users is that they buy a machine when they feel they can’t get their tasks done any more. If MS weren’t trying to push Vista on the world, this next computer would likely be another XP machine because these users also fear change. But it’s going to have to be Vista now! And this is the opportunity. Their current XP rig is going to die a Gator Corp. death sooner or later and it’s a choice then between a dozen different flavours of Vista machine, or that other thing they’ve seen in commercials and almost comes over as humane. Now, most of these people will not switch. It is a fair leap for a technical user, and you have to scale that up for all those who barely grasp such concepts as “internet explorer != the internet”. My point is that *some* of them will. And they’ve been herded up into a nice peak by Microsoft. I expect their effect to be felt during the next 2 years, as that is pretty much the life expectancy of their current XP SP2 boxen without some serious techie TLC.

So in conclusion, it’s a complex picture out there. I’ve used knowingly coarse stereotypes of users, stirred in many an anecdote, and let it to simmer over a flame of Leopard expectation. But you get the idea. Vista is having a hard time “wowing” anyone, anywhere, on anything less than Ballmer’s salary. I used the betas and release candidates for a while on my old box and can see why. By leaving XP out for so long, MS have essentially created the perfect environment for utter disinterest in their new wares. XP is “good enough” so long as all you expect from a computer is clunky functionality which slips away in proportion to the amount of malware it attracts like a magnet covered in pesky iron filings. Geeks can Spybot and Adaware and a hundred other things, as much as they want, and keep their systems in a hard fought neutral state. But every Mac user I know has all the benefits, with none of the work! Comparing like with like is a troublesome task when MS deliver oranges to compare with our Apples… Anyway, if MS had wanted my advice, they’d increase Vista appeal by artificially tying Office 2007 to it. As is, I can run mine just fine on my old computer’s XP licence, safely in sweet Parallels.

As for Mac people switching back to Windows. The last time I heard any such thing was when Apple were going through their mid-90’s doldrums and Windows actually had a technical lead as unimaginary as multitasking. Gimme a break!

Mind you, the version of Vista I was looking at was Beta 2, but that was really all it took. I saw that the OS still had pretty much all the problems that XP had as far as users installing software on it goes and ultimately, Vista was just a glorified XP update with fancy graphics and hardware requirements that meant that only 2 of the 5 Windows boxes in my house would actually be able to run.

I’m still going to be updating to Vista at some point in time, when a game I want to play requires it, but until then, I’m going to blissfully plod right along and enjoy ever second I have with OS X and my Mac Pro. :)

One easy thing to forget is how short-lived PC manufacturers are. Remember Compaq? IBM? Gateway? Toshiba? Tandy? Epson Computers? Packard Bell?

Yes, they still exist, but they’ve either quit the PC market, merged to survive, make a sliver of Apple’s net income, or otherwise have had their day in the sun, never to shine again. The problem is like FSJ said, “[They've] won the race to the bottom.” It’s the pets.com, xBox, AOL, race for market share, at any cost.