More Vista nastiness
Jan. 6th, 2007 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenInteresting comparison from Information Week. This time, it's a reasonably deep comparison of Vista and OS X, rather than the usual "oh, look, the icons are quite similar" or "both do 3D flippy stuff!" which is what most articles have come up with. Instead, this article focuses on the consistency and feel and design of the UI, of window frames and controls, of authentication mechanisms, of the layout of the admin tools, comparing them both to previous versions of the same platform as well as to the competition.
Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista
A mildly interesting aside, which only ocurred to me last night. In the last couple of days, I've spent some time chatting about my (OK, really![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dougs's) new Windows-based smartphone with both daveon and if42. (Who I don't think know one another, but ought to.) Both Dave and Ian have considerably more experience with prior iterations of Windows CE and Windows Mobile than me, and thus tend to assume that I know nothing at all about them and so lecture me. :-)
(By the way, Ian: mine really is - amongst other things - a Qtek 9000 and yours a 9100. Look.)
This is fine and entirely understandable. However, I have been watching the field really quite closely from the outside in, as it were, while for a long time remaining a happy and contented Psion user, and later a rather less happy and less contented Symbian user.
As I have mentioned previously, although I am delighted with the functionality of the Universal, the software horrifies me with its extreme lashed-together unstable kludginess and the actual implementation of the Universal's design is terrible, as opposed to the overall concept, which is really very clever.
(After using WinMob 5 for a while, honestly, Symbian feels really very "together" by comparison. I ought to be less critical of them.)
Both Dave & Ian, almost needless to say, use newer, smaller but slightly lower-spec WM5 devices. Smaller matters a lot:zenmeisterin's comment when she first saw the Universal was "My God, it's a brick!"
What only struck me later was certain similarities in what Dave, in particular, said, not so much with Ian's comments but with the overall outlook (haha) of 'Softies in general. Which is, broadly, "if you think WinMob 5 is bad, you should've seen 2003 or even v3 before that! Actually, no, you shouldn't - it was awful. Really terrible. V5 is so much better by comparison! To be honest, the next version isn't much different - it's just a facelift. But the version after that - version 7 - that's going to be something else. That's when they really get it to work. It's going to be lovely and Symbian and so on won't know what's hit them."
It didn't strike me at the time, but this is a version of the eternal Microsoft apology, isn't it? It's better than before, but just you wait for next year...
Whereas the difference is that the Linux mob just get on with releasing new and improved versions as fast as they can. It might be version 0.3 and still buggier than an anthill, but it's here now and you can use it if you want or need it. No big-bang, "wait 'til the next release", annual marketing driven programme.
And Apple, which for 7 years or so now has been releasing a new wave of products every year to 18 months, attracting complaint and condemnation for charging full-whack no-special-upgrade-price each time, but every time, delivering real measurable improvements. Some incremental, some big-bang, but every time, a bit better than before: a bit faster, a bit stabler, a bit more polish, a few more features. No backward steps. Continuous improvement. Kaizen.
It really is a difference of philosophy so very deep that it is hard to explain.
Dave finds it hard to believe that Apple can do anything genuinely new and interesting in the world of mobile phones. I think it can. It will be interesting to see.
Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista
A mildly interesting aside, which only ocurred to me last night. In the last couple of days, I've spent some time chatting about my (OK, really
dougs's) new Windows-based smartphone with both daveon and if42. (Who I don't think know one another, but ought to.) Both Dave and Ian have considerably more experience with prior iterations of Windows CE and Windows Mobile than me, and thus tend to assume that I know nothing at all about them and so lecture me. :-) (By the way, Ian: mine really is - amongst other things - a Qtek 9000 and yours a 9100. Look.)
This is fine and entirely understandable. However, I have been watching the field really quite closely from the outside in, as it were, while for a long time remaining a happy and contented Psion user, and later a rather less happy and less contented Symbian user.
As I have mentioned previously, although I am delighted with the functionality of the Universal, the software horrifies me with its extreme lashed-together unstable kludginess and the actual implementation of the Universal's design is terrible, as opposed to the overall concept, which is really very clever.
(After using WinMob 5 for a while, honestly, Symbian feels really very "together" by comparison. I ought to be less critical of them.)
Both Dave & Ian, almost needless to say, use newer, smaller but slightly lower-spec WM5 devices. Smaller matters a lot:
zenmeisterin's comment when she first saw the Universal was "My God, it's a brick!"What only struck me later was certain similarities in what Dave, in particular, said, not so much with Ian's comments but with the overall outlook (haha) of 'Softies in general. Which is, broadly, "if you think WinMob 5 is bad, you should've seen 2003 or even v3 before that! Actually, no, you shouldn't - it was awful. Really terrible. V5 is so much better by comparison! To be honest, the next version isn't much different - it's just a facelift. But the version after that - version 7 - that's going to be something else. That's when they really get it to work. It's going to be lovely and Symbian and so on won't know what's hit them."
It didn't strike me at the time, but this is a version of the eternal Microsoft apology, isn't it? It's better than before, but just you wait for next year...
Whereas the difference is that the Linux mob just get on with releasing new and improved versions as fast as they can. It might be version 0.3 and still buggier than an anthill, but it's here now and you can use it if you want or need it. No big-bang, "wait 'til the next release", annual marketing driven programme.
And Apple, which for 7 years or so now has been releasing a new wave of products every year to 18 months, attracting complaint and condemnation for charging full-whack no-special-upgrade-price each time, but every time, delivering real measurable improvements. Some incremental, some big-bang, but every time, a bit better than before: a bit faster, a bit stabler, a bit more polish, a few more features. No backward steps. Continuous improvement. Kaizen.
It really is a difference of philosophy so very deep that it is hard to explain.
Dave finds it hard to believe that Apple can do anything genuinely new and interesting in the world of mobile phones. I think it can. It will be interesting to see.
