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David Pogue 'proves' Vista is innovative

updated 07:00 pm EST, Thu December 14, 2006

David Pogue on Vista

A new video has surfaced on the NewYorkTimes.com front page featuring columnist David Pogue as he sarcastically attempts to prove to the world that Microsoft's Windows Vista is not a 'rip off' of Mac OS X. As the first major revision Microsoft's operating system since Windows XP, Pogue points out that Vista required five years and 50 million lines of code to create. The columnist covers such features as 'flippy triangles' in Vista which appear strikingly similar to Apple's 'disclosure triangles' -- small icons which open folders that have served as a core feature in Mac OS for numerous years -- as well as Vista's calendar program that appears nearly identical to Apple's iCal software. The video also shows Vista's photo organization software in operation, which appears to work in almost the exact same way as Mac OS X's iPhoto application. Pogue also delves into Apple's Spotlight technology vs. Microsoft's search capability in the Start Menu, Apple's 'Widgets' vs. Microsoft's 'Gadgets,' and both company's 3D chess software.

by MacNN Staff

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tribaltattoos
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Joined: Nov 2001

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12/14, 07:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
heh

that was actually pretty entertaining :)

FastAMX79
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Joined: Sep 2000

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12/14, 07:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
hehe

very funny. after seeing that, i can totally agree that MS did NOT 'copy' OS X =)

lol

l008com
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12/14, 07:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
haha

this is a good video

coldfusion1970
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12/14, 08:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
Ha ha ha

Great video and right on the front cover of the NY Times. His evidence about Spotlight and Windows search was just too convincing :-)

theKiwi
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12/14, 09:33pm | report spam | close Reply |
The Ending

The ending convinced me - X for Vista baby, or was that V for Mac OS X?

Clive
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Joined: Jan 2001

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12/14, 09:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
Disclosure triangles?

I'm pretty sure Apple ripped off Windows with the disclosure triangles thing - not that I'm an MS fan. They also ripped off the idea of aliases, and the fixing of alias paths, which also appeared in Windows first.

jarod
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12/14, 10:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
Clive

Get real! Check Mac OS X 7 or 8 and revise your statement please.

BDLatimer
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12/14, 10:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
not quite, clive

Actually, Windows has had the "+"/"-" characters for expanding/contracting file lists for quite a while; whereas, I believe System 7 (perhaps 6) implemented the animated disclosure triangles for its List view. Keep in mind, Mac OS X uses these disclosure triangles for much more than just the Finder, though - dialog boxes, preference windows, etc. all can utilize such controls to hide/show additional details as desired.

Windows 95 had shortcuts which were purely PATH-based references - meaning, much like Unix symbolic links, if you move or rename the original target, the shortcut/symlink will break. Conversely, System 7's aliases contain a reference to the target file's catalog entry, so it will still point to that item even through such manipulations.

Overall, MS has ... imitated many more features from Apple OSes, than the opposite. But, in all cases, innovations regarding user-friendly behaviors or UI additions benefit ALL computer users. I just happen to believe that Mac OS X does a better job in integrating such features into a coherent whole.

eeboarder
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12/14, 11:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
nicely put

^ |

Raccoon
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12/15, 06:13am | report spam | close Reply |
a riot

if anything, the video showed all of Apples better instituted ideas/programs and innovation. And once again, how MS took 5 yeeeears to copy apple.... [the video is now from the main page by clicking 'more video']

Jeronimo2000
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12/15, 08:46am | report spam | close Reply |
Uhm... not so new.

As much as I like Pogue's articles - what he does here is just another "rip-off" in itself. Apple has done this little humorous comparison (Spotlight top right corner, Windows search bottom left corner and so on) in this year's WWDC keynote. Watch a weird French dude do almost exactly what Pogue does:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc06/

PookJP
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Jan 2001

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12/15, 10:27am | report spam | close Reply |
Here's a link...

The link didn't take me directly to the video today (12.15.06), so here's a YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNuq94Zg_8

ibugv4
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12/15, 10:43am | report spam | close Reply |
hahah

"upper right, lower left, not the same thing at all!"

My new favorite quote. hey, wait, wasn't that the argument over Win95 VS Mac89? ;)

GORDYmac
Mac Elite

Joined: Dec 1999

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12/15, 10:58am | report spam | close Reply |
too funny...

If that video weren't so funny--and biased--it'd be sad.

nat
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Joined: Mar 2002

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12/15, 12:47pm | report spam | close Reply |
hate-mail

I read his review and the thing that struck me was he refers to the hate-mail tsunami. What? Why, according to Dvorak and Lance and those boys, only Apple people send hate mail. You never hear Mac writers whining abou hate mail from PC users. I can't think of one article where they even mention them. Is Pogue pulling our leg? Surely there aren't PC Fan Boys as well! Or is it just that his skin is a heckuva lot thicker than Dvorak and crew? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

Zak Nilsson
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12/15, 01:39pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: gordymac

That video is biased, you say? That's funny, because all I saw in that video were facts. Can you be biased about facts? Is it not a fact that Apple has done all the things in that video before Microsoft did?

Where is this bias you're talking about? Unless you think it's biased to point out where Microsoft is ripping off other people's ideas. In that case, you're just wrong.

GORDYmac
Mac Elite

Joined: Dec 1999

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12/15, 01:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
dude...turn it down...

Zak Nilsson, it's no secret that David Pogue is a Mac Zealot. Right down to the the OS X CD flash at the end when he says 'Vista' the story had an obvious bias. I enjoyed it, but it was biased towards Apple. I'm sure in that 50 million lines of code there's something unique.

I'm not even alarmed about it...after all this is the New York Times.

Zak Nilsson
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12/15, 02:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Er...

How does Pogue's personal computer preference have anything at all to do with it? Pogue pointed out certain truths that some people dont like to hear, apparently.

It's completely irrelevant if Pogue likes Macs or not. If you have a problem with what he said, then I'd ask you to prove any of it wrong. Until you can do that, then there is no point in you whining about bias. Bias has nothing to do with the information presented in that video, or the truths it contains.

If you have a problem with it, that's YOUR problem - not ours, or Pogue's.

wadepeeler
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12/15, 03:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
Bias

Good luck finding anything that isn't biased one way or the other. But just because Pogue has his own personal bias, doesn't make the contents of his video untrue. If we had to dismiss anything that was biased, then we couldn't rely on anything at all.

sehix
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12/15, 03:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: Disclosure triangles

"I'm pretty sure Apple ripped off Windows with the disclosure triangles thing - not that I'm an MS fan. They also ripped off the idea of aliases, and the fixing of alias paths, which also appeared in Windows first."

Sort of missed the whole Unix history thing, did you?

LouZer
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12/15, 04:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: er...

It's completely irrelevant if Pogue likes Macs or not. If you have a problem with what he said, then I'd ask you to prove any of it wrong. Until you can do that, then there is no point in you whining about bias. Bias has nothing to do with the information presented in that video, or the truths it contains.

That's not quite right. Bias isn't just presenting 'facts' incorrectly or the like. It also is bias if you just post the facts that point in your direction, but ignore other facts that would show the other side of the story. (Take the US and the pretext to the Iraq war).

Unless you're just making the argument that there's nothing unique or new in Windows, and EVERYTHING is copied from the mac - but then that's biased. There's been many things added to OS X (and OS 8/9) that was taken from Windows.

h***, a lot of people would argue that the finder's inconsistencies and bugs is a total rip-off of Windows.

wadepeeler
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12/15, 04:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
lol

"h***, a lot of people would argue that the finder's inconsistencies and bugs is a total rip-off of Windows."

Nice. But I think that Poque's piece was supposed to be funny, and not intended to stand up to peer review.

wadepeeler
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12/15, 04:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
Oh...

And there are a lot of things that I like about Windows Explorer. I'm really hoping that Apple comes out with a whole new Finder in Leopard, maybe lifting a few of the nice features in Windows Explorer.

For example, I really like that it lists files and directories separately when you sort by name, and I like the two-pane thing, and cut-and-pasting files.

migs647
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12/16, 12:27am | report spam | close Reply |
aliases, err I mean links

"I'm pretty sure Apple ripped off Windows with the disclosure triangles thing - not that I'm an MS fan. They also ripped off the idea of aliases, and the fixing of alias paths, which also appeared in Windows first."

Actually windows ripped off unix

LouZer
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12/16, 08:25am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: lol

Nice. But I think that Poque's piece was supposed to be funny, and not intended to stand up to peer review.

Yeah, you would think, but then people here are talking about how unbiased it is and all, and I'm just pointing out that unless its being written for peer review, it is biased.

As for origins, you're more likely going to find that most things in Windows and the Mac OS have been taken from Unix then being "original". Its just a question as to how things are pulled and used. For example, while all three have symbolic links, aliases, shortcuts, etc, Apple tweaked theirs to follow the file, not be linked to a particular location.

But, remember, Apple still is way behind in games included with the OS (the Solitaire/Mines gap).

But I like how, if someone comes up with something that's in windows first, it gets pointed out that it really was in Unix first. Don't see anyone pointing that out about features you'd argue was in OS X first...

Tack
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Joined: Jun 2006

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12/16, 12:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
*yawn*

Surprise, surprise; two companies on the west coast have agreed over "good interface" vs. "bad interface" on most issues. And since "widgets" are so blasted easy to do, Microsoft said, "heck, why not." Oh, and by the way, they skipped the original "longhorn".

What I'm looking forward to is a good discussion about more interesting issues: - Let's talk *efficiency* of interface; how many keystrokes? How easy to find? - Goals vs. effects of UAC (it was annoying in Beta 2, but more appropriate in RC1; where did it finish?) - General performance of Vista (speed of UI, speed of task execution, memory footprint vs. impact on speed) - Treatment of security under Vista; goals vs. effects. - Driver performance on Apple machines. - Capabilities of real-time processes on Vista (yay kernely things)

Until then, this is a big snooze.

WindowsWasher
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12/16, 02:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
You might wanna check

...his article. In it he states, "If the description so far makes Vista sound a lot like the Macintosh, well, you�re right. You get the feeling that Microsoft�s managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, �Copy that.� "

;^)

Da Moof
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Joined: Aug 2006

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12/17, 11:38am | report spam | close Reply |
That was awesome

Good one Pogue. Your sarcasm was not lost on this Letterman fan.

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David Pogue 'proves' Vista is innovative

updated 07:00 pm EST, Thu December 14, 2006

David Pogue on Vista

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heh

hehe

haha

Ha ha ha

The Ending

Disclosure triangles?

Clive

not quite, clive

nicely put

a riot

Uhm... not so new.

Here's a link...

hahah

too funny...

hate-mail

re: gordymac

dude...turn it down...

Er...

Bias

re: Disclosure triangles

Re: er...

lol

Oh...

aliases, err I mean links

Re: lol

*yawn*

You might wanna check

That was awesome

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