Vista very OS X like

Guys. check on Internet Explorer 7 & Windows Media Player 11 on www.microsoft.com, which i think they will be in Windows Vista later. from my opinion, IE7 has a mix features from Safari & FireFox shortcut. and i'm not surprise. WMP11 is like another dejavu. its just like iTunes. Now i know how microsoft works. Hate them!! :(

I for one am just glad that the thing looks better than XP if it happens to be a copycat of my favorite OS then so be it. I have to use Windows at work coz the IT folks would beat me out of there if I suggested getting a Mac. To keep the peace I welcome the upgrade which is what Vista is to me an upgrade not a major release to wait 5 years or for. I have to go find a PC somewhere now so I can try it out, only there is none at home anymore and I can't put Betas on the one at work. Anybody got a PC they wanna donate to moi let me know. I still don't like the new look of the Start button.

I have been an Apple user for 17 years and windows (because of my job) for about 5. I must say that Apple have been making some very clever decisions which is reflected in their innovation. Simply innovation is what drives mankind and Apple seem to do this best. It is going to be a task i think for MS to respond to the latest offering in OSX. I work with both and the OSX and MS platforms once OSX is set up one can leave it in the hands of people who have never used OSX but the same is not true for MS. The latest thing to put all this into perspective is the new Intel based Macs. I write this from my MacBook running XP Pro. Who would have guessed this would be possible 6 months ago. Here we have quality hardware that runs a bullet proof OS and for 'fun' it will run MS windows with little changes to the firmware. Apple have been running their own hardware solutions since inception and to be able to run MS on the turn is quite an achievement. I look forward to seeing the final release of Vista or whatever it will be called when it is finally released.

I love OSX. But let's be honest. XP's windows explorer multitasks better and doesn't have network hangs like the Finder. The Spotlight interface in OSX sucks. Vista does offer more annoying hand holding but it is catching up in many OSX offerings. I recall when Win95 came out and it had 80% of what Sys7 did at the time only was more stable. Even if most of Vista does replicate OSX features, there's plenty of room for MS to make the claim that one needn't move to OSX.

So I think Apple better have some great new features for 10.5 and fix some amazingly outstanding problems with the Finder and with new features like Spotlight.

You can paint a turd pink but that doesn't make it a rose.

Of course Dashboard widgets, in the sense of being colorful JavaScript weblets, are derived from Konfabulator. That doesn't mean that Apple didn't do absolutely the right thing in building a much better architecture into the OS itself, giving it an Exposé like integration layer in the process.

But Konfabulator was heavily influenced for forerunners too: its creators were Macs guys back from the 80s. 1984's Macintosh System 1.0 Desk Accessories would have looked like widgets if the technology of the day had supported 32-bit alpha channeled net connected applets which have 1000x the RAM and processor power available to them as the entire OS did!

(I always thought of widgets as "Desk Accessories with alpha channels.")

And Desk Accessories were influenced by both Lisa designs, and Smalltalk designs before that.

The Konfabulator guys have done pretty well - Yahoo bought them for an undisclosed amount, rumored to be at least $5 million.

But did you know that the Konfab guys were former Apple employees anyway? I think a little of the "Apple secret sauce" rubbed off on them and helped their careers just a tad.

@Liquidmark:

Yes, I know that there is always the possibility of a comeback:

That's why I don't want Vista to succeed! That was the whole point of my post.

The original post said that he hoped that VIsta would succeed because competition is good, however, CURRENTLY, even with crappy products, Microsoft OWN the computer market and it's not even close.

Not exactly competitive.

So, if Microsoft continues to FAIL and not make good products, Apple stands to make some ground, and perhaps get back a lot of what they lost in the early 90s.

Your all missing the Point :) We all want what the packaging says. And in my Experience Apple delivers a much more reliable solution. I still find it hard to believe that MS did not see all the security implications coming, but then again maybe that was market driven rather than research. Ithier way MS was and still is unreliable and what can clearly be seen is a grasping at straws approach. Sorry MS most valliant effort, but still does not cut with me.

"We have the advantage of being in 90% of computers worldwide... let's ruin it!"

Apple is all about "we do less, but we do it exceptionally well". Windows is quite the opposite, trying to do everything in the form of "let's add a little of this, a few more of these, some of that and put it in the oven".

Windows can run on any custom made PC, it has tons of software titles and tons of tiny (or not so tiny) problems. Microsoft could focus on improving security, fixing bugs, driver support and system stability, and we'd be happy with Windows.

Don't include a Windows Calendar, a Sidebar, an iTunes-like Media Player and other eye candy, unless you have previously fixed the most important stuff. And even worse, don't force all of us buy new machines in order to be able to experience Vista.

And a last thing: Don't bring glossy buttons when I'm already tired of them! (but mostly because you can't make them look right)

I have to say, after a few days with both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista, I'm not that impressed. First off, I had to turn off the "feature" that brings up the authentication dialoge box each time I attempt to do an administrative task. If they were trying to be more OSX or Linux like requiring "root" authentication when you're trying to do something potentially dangerous, then just bring a dialoge box up, don't change the display mode, causing my monitor to go black, then to a greyed out desktop with a warning box, then black, then to the task I was trying to accomplish in the first place... A simple dialoge box is all you need... That is by far the most annoying thing aside from having to press F10 to get file menus to appear. Does anyone know if there's a way to them to appear for good? Nice try, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be buying a MBP or iMac soon to make the full switch to OS X.