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Windows 7 Versus Mac OS X Leopard: The
Feature-by-Feature Showdown
Oh, I know: the Mac versus PC debate is so played out. Perhaps, but dumb commercialsaside, if you're deciding between buying a Mac or a PC in the coming months, it helps to
know what you're getting from one or the other. I use both a Mac and a PC every day of
the week, and both systems have their strong and weak points.
Note that I'm basing my observations on the Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 1
(Build 7100) and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7. You could argue that I really should be
comparing Windows 7 to the upcoming Snow Leopard, and you'd be right. If I had a
copy of Snow Leopard to run I'd do that. Alas. As always, take all comments salted witha few grains of "this is all one person's opinion" and "what I should get depends on what I
need." Also, remember to breathe. Let's do this.
Mac Finder versus Windows Explorer —A Draw
I've always thought that the default interface for dealing with files in every major operating system could improve, and given both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Leopard, I
still feel that way. Both Finder and Windows Explorer offer pretty much the same
features, with a few exceptions (like Finder's Sidebar and Places, and now Windows 7's
Libraries). Still, I want a tabbed interface and Quicksilver-y file manipulation built intomy OS, and neither Explorer or Finder offers that. Since I'm pretty "meh" on both of
these, we're calling this one a draw.
Leopard's Quick Look versus Windows File Preview—Winner:
Quick Look
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The onefeature of Leopard's Finder which is super-useful for most common document types is
Quick Look. Select a file, tap the keyboard, and bang, you're peering into the contents of
a file, whether it's a Word document, PDF, or image. In Windows 7 Explorer you can hitthe Alt+P keyboard combination to preview the contents of a file in an embedded panel
inside the Explorer interface (too small). This preview feature doesn't support nearly the
amount of filetypes that Quick Look does and lacks Quick Look's separate windowresizing and paging capabilities.
Windows Taskbar versus Mac Dock—Winner: Windows 7 Taskbar
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The new Windows 7 taskbar is no
doubt the best improvement interface-wise to your system. Now you can pin programs to
your taskbar (ironically, Dock-style), but you've also got jumplists and Aero Peek
rollover previews (which work for multiple windows AND tabs) and the ever-handyShow Desktop button that pulls the taskbar ahead of Mac's Dock. In the Dock's defense,
the Windows 7 taskbar does lack a Stacks equivalent.
Windows System Tray vs Mac Menu Bar—Winner: Windows 7
System Tray
The Mac menu bar is an odd bird:it's fixed to the top of your Mac's screen with no easy way to hide it, and programs affix
their icons there without asking you (or by burying the option to hide them somewhere in
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the individual program's preferences). The default date and time display isn't that
informative, either. Compared to Windows 7's one-click full calendar , and your ability to
easily customize what icons live there in one place, Windows 7 takes this one. (See moreabout that icon customization in item #6 in the top 10 things to look forward to in
Windows 7.)
Leopard's Time Machine vs Windows Backup—Winner: Leopard's
Time Machine
Not too much has changed withWindows 7's built-in backup utility: it's a plain old wizard that asks you to choose a
backup drive, choose the files you want to back up (along with an option to make an OSsystem image), and set the schedule. It's buried somewhere in the Control Panel and thewhole business of using it is boring and easy to ignore. But Leopard's Time Machine?
Nothing beats its dead-simple setup and over-animated but really-fun restore interface.
Windows 7 Aero Peek versus Exposé—Winner: Aero Peek
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I admit it: I'm currently deep in a
love affair with Windows 7's Aero Peek feature, which does all this beautiful thumbnail previewing and window clearing and docking—but not in an overwrought, show-offy
way, more in a smooth, utilitarian, why-doesn't-every-computer-do-this way. Currently
Mac OS X doesn't offer a feature that one could compare to Aero Peek. Update: Reader OMG! Memez! (Dafrety) rightfully points out that you could kinda-sorta compare Aero
Peek to Leopard's Exposé. Even doing that, Aero Peek still wins, hands down.
Update: Here's a quick screencast of Aero Peek in action when you're using Windows 7's
Alt+Tab feature.
We Could Go On...
We've hit on the biggies already, but the list of items one could compare between
Windows 7 and Leopard goes on. There's Safari 4 versus Internet Explorer 8, WindowsMedia Player 12 versus iTunes/Front Row, Leopard's Boot Camp versus Windows 7 XP
Mode (though that's not exactly apples to apples), Windows User Account Control versus
Leopard's user security, and Windows Search versus Spotlight, update: as well as
Bonjour versus Windows Homegroup (thanks mynamesafad).
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Also, both operating systems boast more features that don't have direct parallels, like
Leopard's extra utilities (e.g. Preview and iChat), Spaces, and Windows 7's themes, built-
in software uninstaller, games, and multi-touch support. Of course, no Mac versusWindows article would be complete without mentioning that more games and viruses
exist for Windows than for Mac.
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Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: competitive origins
By Prince McLean
Published: 11:00 AM ESTThe tech media is working to pit Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 release against
Apple's new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but the two products aren't really
direct competitors.
The operating system most users end up with will depend upon what hardware theychoose to buy, not the specific feature details of the software that system happens to run.
History reveals that the hardware decision isn't going to be based primarily upon features.
The following presents a historical overview of the competition between Apple and
Microsoft in the operating system market leading up to this year's face off between
Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. While modern Macs can now also run Windows, Appleis the only PC maker to refrain from actually licensing it from Microsoft as an OEM; in
contrast, Apple's Mac OS X only legally runs on the company's own premium PCs. That
has enabled Mac OS X to differentiate Apple's hardware from other PC vendors using
easy to demonstrate software features and tighter hardware integration, winning back some of the ground Apple lost during the decade of the 90s.
How Microsoft inherited Apple's crown in the 90s
In the 90s, Microsoft and its entourage of Windows PC
makers came to largely view Apple as nearly irrelevant,
but once Mac OS X arrived and began to catch the attention of users with its slick andsophisticated graphics compositing, its malware-free computing experience, and its
unique and consistent interface features, Microsoft was pressured by its licensees to catch
up so they could offer a competitive product.
Mac OS X essentially reset the clock for Apple, turning back time to 1990, when the
company commanded a greater than 10% share of the entire PC market and dominatednearly all graphical desktop computing. Back then, the remainder of the PC market was
running DOS, making it fairly easy for Apple to distinguish its graphical, easy to use
product. Windows 3.0, the first version to ever ship installed on a new PC, hadn't yetarrived.
Perhaps things were too easy for Apple; rather than aggressively competing against DOSPCs, Apple used its technical superiority to extract higher prices for its machines. The
problem was that Apple's boutique market lacked a boutique outlet for sales. The
company was forced to sell its Macintosh models next to cheaper DOS PCs in computer
stores and general retailer such as Sears, where they sat at the mercy of retailers who hadno incentive to sell Apple's product, as they were making higher margins on the DOS
PCs.
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Microsoft's command-line DOS operating system.
As Mac sales remained flat, PC sales began to climb rapidly. Microsoft's continuous,
incremental updates to Windows also began to blur the line between the Mac experienceand that of DOS PCs with its Windows shell installed. Additionally, while Microsoft was
building Windows from a relatively clean slate, Apple's Mac OS was tied up with early80s legacy issues, including a simple cooperative multitasking model and a complete lack
of modern operating system features such as protected memory, secure user accounts, andfile permissions.
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Windows 3.0 was the third major release of Microsoft Windows, released on May 22nd1990.
Rather than delivering a technology overhaul, Apple released a series of code names for software that never materialized as promised, including Taligent, Copland, and Gershwin.
By the end of the 90s, Apple had lost its position as the leader in graphical desktop
computing to the point where many observers had forgotten it ever had definedinnovation in the industry. Fortunately, the company had a comeback plan thanks to its
merger with NeXT and the homecoming of its CEO, Steve Jobs.
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A diagram of Copland's runtime architecture based off of one from Apple.
The tables turn in the 2000s
At the beginning of the 2000s, Microsoft had just released Windows 2000 (aka Windows
5.0), a mature and stable revision of its new Windows NT operating system that was
developed to replace the DOS Shell version of Windows it had sold as Windows
95/98/Me. Microsoft's competition was all but gone, with Apple down to a roughly 2%share of the worldwide market for all PCs and servers, and IBM's OS/2, NeXT, BeOS,
and other desktop operating system competitors out of the picture entirely.
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Windows 95, released Aug 24, 1995 (left) and Windows 98, released Jun 25, 1998
(right).
The company's worrisome monopoly trial was about to be set aside by the new Bush
Administration, and Microsoft was close to releasing a fusion of Windows 2000 and its
consumer hardware-friendly Windows 98 as Whistler. Beyond that release, the companylaid out a roadmap including Longhorn and Blackcomb to guarantee that the company
could remain at the forefront of desktop PC software innovation as long as it could
continue to repress any legal actions challenging its rise to the top through exclusivecontracts with OEMs that prevented competitors from entering the operating system
market.
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Windows 2000 was released February 17, 2000 and targeted business desktops, notebook computers, and servers.
Microsoft was ultimately able to successfully pay off or scuttle any significant legal problems, but it was hit by a new challenge: a festering rash of high profile security flaws
tied to its early 90s, pre-Internet legacy. Suddenly, the company was finding itself in the
position of Apple a decade prior, with a complicated software roadmap riddled with potholes, a product that was facing increasing price competition (thanks to Linux and
other free software), and new competition from Mac OS X that rivaled its position as theleader in desktop innovation.
Windows XP vs. Mac OS X
Microsoft's Whistler, delivered as Windows XP, was internally Windows 5.1, a minor update to Windows 2000. However, with the security work Microsoft had to assume, XP
would end up being the company's primary OS throughout the decade. Even two years
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after the release of Windows Vista (6.0) in 2006, which sprang from Longhorn but took
far longer to complete than planned, nearly 80% of Microsoft's installed base remains on
XP, and the company's hardware partners continue to advertise their systems' ability torevert back to XP as a feature.
Released on Oct 25, 2001, XP was Microsoft's first consumer OS built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture.
In contrast, Mac OS X 10.0 debuted along side XP but was then updated in a series of
major reference releases, including the free 10.1 update in 2001, the mainstream 10.2
Jaguar in 2002, 10.3 Panther in late 2003, 10.4 Tiger in early 2005, 10.4 Tiger for Intel in2006, and 10.5 Leopard in 2007. While Microsoft released some "service pack" updates
for XP during that time, only XP SP2 contained any significant feature updates, mostly
related to patching up its security issues. Each of reference releases to Mac OS Xdelivered major new features, applications, and services for Mac users, in addition to performance enhancements that made the new software run faster even on older
machines. Apple has also released dozens of free "service pack" minor updates to its
reference releases of Mac OS X.
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Mac OS X 10.0 "Cheetah," released Mar 24, 2001 (left) and Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma,"
released Sep 25, 2001 (right).
Another factor that changed the relationship between Windows PCs and Macs was
Apple's development of new retail stores, both free standing outlets owned by the
company and "store within a store" locations run inside retail partners' locations. Theseallowed Apple to showcase its differentiated machines isolated from Windows PCs that
competed primarily on price, not on features and usability. The result was that Apple
could now sell its machines' features on their own merits, rather than just struggling tomatch prices with lowball PC makers.
Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar," released Aug 23, 2002 (left) and Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther,"released Oct 23, 2003 (right).
That retail strategy also shifted the pricing pressure of store brand and no-name PC
makers against name brand manufacturers such as Dell and HP, forcing them to race to
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the bottom the the barrel in pricing, which subsequently resulted in poor product quality
that further differentiated Apple's products from those of the other PC makers. Apple's
retail stores are now allowing the company to experiment with new manufacturingtechniques such as those used in the new unibody MacBooks, as well as higher end,
environmentally friendly materials and customized silicon designs.
Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," released Apr 29, 2005 (left) and Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard,"
released Oct 26, 2007 (right).
All of these integration enhancements fuse Mac OS X into the Mac hardware, making it
increasingly less comparable to Windows as a retail product. Apple doesn't advertise MacOS X as an alternative to Windows, it pits the Mac against generic PCs in more general
terms.
Vista vs. Mac OS X
In contrast, Microsoft has had to keep Windows a general purpose, one-size-fits-all product that it can license to every PC maker on earth apart from Apple. Microsoft's
business interests often fail to align with those of its licensees, resulting in skirmishes
with its OEMs. These broke out particularly with the release of Windows Vista in 2006.For example, Acer was irritated by Microsoft's price hike on Vista and its strategy to sell
the OEMs a crippled Home Basic version that users would have to upgrade directly with
Microsoft in order to get the same features they had with XP. Dell and HP pushed back
when Microsoft tried to cancel XP and make Vista the only option.
Vista ended up a colossal failure due to the way it was sold by Microsoft, its problems
with existing hardware, incompatibilities with software titles, and its poor performancerelative to XP, despite offering new features and, in particular, strong new efforts to
bolster Microsoft's security reputation. Not even Microsoft's most loyal pundits could
defend the release of Vista after months of sales data proved beyond any doubt thatconsumers didn't care about the new operating system's features or its security
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advancements; they were only upset that their existing software and hardware ran worse
under Vista than it did under XP, and that Vista cost more.
Windows Vista was released Jan 30, 2007 to horrid reviews.
Those events set up circumstances that favored Apple's strategies: all Apple has to do isdeliver incremental improvements to Mac OS X and its already happy and expanding
pool of Mac users will remain loyal customers, while Microsoft is tasked with rethinking
Vista to make it palatable to OEM licensees, suitable for existing users, and yet alsofeature competitive enough to compare with Apple's offerings. Additionally, Microsoft is
running out of potential new customers as the PC market matures into a slow growth
phase. Apple has lots of potential for growth, as it is now very profitable with less than
10% of the market, leaving it plenty of Windows users to woo over to its own platform.
Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard
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With that background, the game is set for a rematch between Apple and Microsoft, with
the Mac maker's latest Snow Leopard due in the first half of the year and Windows 7
aggressively scheduled to arrive shortly afterward. The next segment will look at howApple plans to reward loyal Mac users while tempting Windows users to switch with
Snow Leopard, and how Microsoft plans to correct its mistakes with Vista to regain the
upper hand with Windows 7.
Did Microsoft copy Mac OS for Windows
7? Yes ... uh, wait ... no ...
Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 4:04 am
Categories: Apple, In the news, Marketing, Microsoft
Tags: Apple Mac OS, Apple Macintosh, Operating System, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft
Windows 7...
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23
Yesterday there appeared an interview with a Microsoft group manager who claimed thatMicrosoft copied the “Mac look and feel in terms of graphics” in Windows 7. This was
later denied by Microsoft’s communications manager. So, which is it?
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The row erupted over comments made by Microsoft’s partner group manager, Simon
Aldous to PCR . In response to the question “Is Windows 7 really a much more agile
operating system, in terms of the specific uses it can be moulded to?” Aldous said:
“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. What we’ve tried to do withWindows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a
Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the
graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology,
which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.”
[emphasis added]
Later that day Microsoft’s communication manager Brandon LeBlanc issued a statement which simultaneously dismisses the comments and blasts Aldous for his indiscretion:
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 MacOS X. 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. If you’re
interested in learning more about the design of Windows 7, I suggest reading thisAP story with Julie Larson-Green as well as these WSJ (membership required)
and Fast Company articles. And here is one of many blog posts on the E7 blog
discussing the design process of Windows 7. [emphasis added]
Now, I’m sure Microsoft would have had no problem at all with Aldous’ comment aboutWindows 7 being far more stabler that the current Mac
platform, but to even hint that Windows 7 is in any waya clone of the Mac OS touches on an area whereMicrosoft is sensitive. After all, back when Apple
introduced Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” at WWDC 2004
there were banners hung from the ceiling with thefollowing poke at Microsoft printed on them:
“Redmond, start your photocopiers.”
Personally, unless someone wants to go to court over
patent infringement, this whole “who copied who”
debate is little more than fanboys howling at the moon.Does it really matter? I don’t think so.
