A Vista perspective from a Mac user

Actually I like to think that I am more than just a Mac user.  I have been using Windows XP for over four years, and Linux for nearly the same amount of time.  I have also seen operating systems come and go since 1982 when I got my first Apple II+.

First off I suspect that Microsoft will work hard and eventually get Vista to be the operating of choice for most of the planet.  The reason that it will have that honor has more to do with inertia than engineering prowess.

The inertia comes from two sources, Apple and end users.  People do not like to get out of their computing comfort zone, and switching operating systems is a sure way to get a few headaches no matter how good the new system is.

After a few months of using Vista, I have some opinions on the product. 

It is almost deadly slow when it comes to booting, shutting down, and waking from sleep.  A Powerbook running OS X is an instant on machine compared to a Vista machine.

Second wireless networking on Vista is a work in progress.  While I will admit that my Airport Express network needs replacing, a number of laptops visiting us including multiple XP ones have had no trouble using it.

in the mornings I often get to the point of having to reboot my Vista laptop before it will connect to the wireless network.  In its defense, I do not have that problem at our office or at our other home which has a standard Airport network.

I have found Outlook to be a fairly capable email client, but it also is slow and somewhat prone to stopping if I click once too many times.

I have seen far fewer 'Firefox has stopped working" problems on Vista than I do on the Mac.  I still do not like Internet Explorer though the 64 bit version seems fast.

I also find Google Desktop search integrated into Outlook by far the most productive search engine that I have used.  I like Google Desktop search better than Apple's Spotlight, but I am only speaking from OS 10.4 Tiger experience.  I have not used Leopard (OS X 10.5).

Google Desktop as a side panel hangs regularly on Vista usually after the machine awakes from sleep.

I have had far fewer problems than I anticipated using Vista to hook up the wide variety of printers that I have access to at home and work.

I am not particularly fond of Windows Live Messenger, and I try to use Pidgin when chatting.  I find that I keep wishing for Adium on Windows.

I have the latest version of Microsoft's Office Suite.  I have had little trouble with it, and it seems to do whatever job that I throw at it.  Here I have to admit that I am no longer someone who is a power office suite user.  I have used Excel more than the other applications.  The new user interface took some getting used to, but now I find it more productive.

I also miss Fetch, the FTP Client that I use on the Mac.  I use FileZilla but it is not as nice as Fetch.

One of the best applications that I have found on Vista is SnagIt which does screen capture and a lot more.  I certainly do not mind paying for it.

On Vista I miss the ability to turn something into a PDF from any application at the operating system level.  I think it is a huge feature advantage for OS X.

In general most of the applications done for Vista do not look as good as Mac applications.  However, there is so much flexibility in Windows, that you can build a very productive work if sometimes painful work flow.

The combination of a built-in photo memory card reader, Picasa and SnagIt do almost everything that I need in the world of graphics.  I find it faster than iPhoto and  Photoshop.

I  have yet to do much web work on my Vista machine.  To be fair, I think I will wait until I have some more time with the Vista products.

So would I recommend Vista as a main operating system to anyone who had other choices?  The answer is probably not.  It just doesn't have the high quality feel that I thought it would after all those years of development.

Vista is not unusable, it is just disappointing.

But I am also disappointed in Apple.  It continues to amaze me that a company with Apple's financial resources and popularity cannot seem to fight its way out of the paper bag of Windows.

Bill and team have done everything possible to hand over the market to Apple, yet Apple does not seem to want the opportunity.  Back when XP was having unbelievable security problems, Apple was so insecure about their own security that they would not market it.

Apple has changed chips, and Macs can run Windows natively and in virtual machines.  Still Apple's market share even in the US is barely half way to double digits.  As we have heard  from some international visitors to Applepeels, Apple is not exactly rolling over the competition selling and supporting computers in other countries.

Apple might have a few bumps with Leopard, but I seriously doubt it is the anything like the pain in the rear that Vista is.  With Vista languishing while waiting for a service pack, the best Apple can do is a few funny commercials.  Even with the best retail chain in the nation and  a stock price that is headed over $200, it looks like the majority of the computing world will remain Windows centric for the foreseeable future.

I guess there is not enough pain in the Windows environment or enough innovation in the Apple world to get consumers moving on their own.  Steve Jobs apparently was serious years ago in his concession to Bill over desktop operating systems.  He certainly does not appear to be interested in winning that war even with his superior weapons.

I would love to see the innovation of the Zonbu computing  model married to the better than anything else user interface of Apple and the nearly unlimited choice of the Intel hardware world.  If you could integrate it into better bandwidth and a choice of server providers that would store and protect our data, we might get people to try something else.

Right now I guess I am stuck with Vista for my real estate world,  and Macs for my website work with whatever computer I am using being the repository for my photos.

I managed to get a batch photos into my Zonbu machine, but I do not see me using it for the 100 photos or more a day that I do until we take another leap in bandwidth.

So maybe Apple will surprise me and take the next leap forward at MacWorld this year.  If it is iPhone II, pardon me if I yawn.

_____________________

A Real World Update

_____________________

I had to work this afternoon so I lugged my Vista laptop into one of our offices.  The wireless network was down so someone rebooted it.  The Windows XP machine on my desk connects immediately.  The Vista laptop which had successfully connected to this network several times before, cannot see it either before or after the wireless reboot.

So I decide to reboot the Vista machine.  I joke to one of the administrative assistants that the best thing Microsoft can do is to buy OS X from Apple and replace Vista with it.

While my Vista machine is still in the process of rebooting, I pull out my spare computer, a MacBook, and bet that I can be surfing the net before the Vista machine is done booting.

I count out loud and in eight seconds from the time of opening my MacBook, I am surfing the web.

While I am logging into Typepad, the Vista machine finally gets to the point of needing a password for login.  Even with the reboot, I still cannot see the network which the MacBook sees and the Windows XP desktop beside it also sees.

I would be embarrassed in the year 2007 to ship an operating system that cannot reliably and without failure hook to wireless networks.

As I said long ago, Windows, This is nuts.

 

Comments

[Ruhayat]

I think the reason Apple is reluctant to push OS X too much into the mainstream is pragmatic.

1. Given the company's obsession with control, it is safe to assume that it would not give other companies licenses to build Mac clones -- in fact, taking back the clone license was one of the first things Jobs did when he came back to Apple.

2. And since one company can only do so much before things really start breaking at the seams (with the spate of bad user experiences with some Apple products, it seems we're already seeing that event horizon), we'll probably not see Macs break into more than, say, a 10 percent marketshare.

Steve Jobs probably chose not to chase after the mass market, and I think it is a prudent business decision. Even so, I'd say Apple has to expand to perhaps twice its current size if it wants to pursue the things that it seems to be pursuing (ie, "the four legs of the chair" thingy that Jobs was talking about).

As it is, the consumer gadget half of Apple is sucking away resources from the only part of the company I care about: the Mac division.

[Milbs]

After reading the article ... Yawn!

[kynefski]

I'm disappointed to learn that Vista doesn't do the print to PDF thing without third party software. Before Vista was released, I had been under the impression that feature would be included.

So my colleagues will be sharing documents as fat Word files indefinitely, eh?

[ocracokewaves]

Actually a friend sent a link about a PDF creator for Windows.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

That is unlikely to be the path that Microsoft has in mind for you.

They have created a new "PDF" type format which is called "XPS."

I had not heard of it until I saw it as a file type save option for Word 2007.

I created and saved a simple XPS file. Then I sent it by email to my MacBook which is running 10.4.x.

I tried opening it with everything including OpenOffice. Nothing on the Mac would open it.

I did some Google research and came up with a program called NiXPS.

http://www.nixps.com/download.html

I downloaded the trial version and confirmed that it will let you view XPS files on the Mac.

Unless Apple has some way good way of reading XPS files, we should all pray that it disappears since NiXPS costs $99.

[JonJ]

I haven't had much experience with big corporations (I'm a freelancer), but I would think that the big corps (who are probably mostly responsible for the huge Windows customer share) aren't stampeding to the Mac because 1) it would cost them enormously to make the switch, given the installed Windows base, and 2) they don't care that Windows, especially Vista, has lots of problems because they just hire IT professionals to deal with them as they come up. No big deal. And of course hardly any IT people want to make the switch to Apple.

Corporations have lots of operational problems; they just hire people to solve them. It's the individuals, like freelancers, who get incredibly frustrated by them. Even so, in my field almost all the freelancers still stick with Windows, mostly because of inertia, as you say. Though in the last couple of years I see some increase in the tendency to switch, which I think Leopard will probably accelerate.

[Tom]

That's very odd about the Vista machine not wanting to connect via wireless. My HP laptop connects in about 8 seconds to my home wireless system. It does it every time. I also travel with it, and have never had a problem unless the signal is marginal. I leave it hibernate mode and it wakes up in about 5 seconds. I suspect that the issue may be the hardware, not the OS.

[ocracokewaves]

Again I have the most problems with my home Airport Express network which I am going to replace, but I have had it in other places.

Since I rarely travel without my MacBook and I am usually surrounded by people with XP notebooks, it is pretty easy to check.

I also had a friend who works at MS tell me it was a known problem that they hope to fix in Service Pack 1.

If it were not a problem I doubt Microsoft would have posted this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

[Pecos Bill]

All your postings are about how you now hate Macs. You're a "reverse switcher" and can no longer claim that you're a Mac user.

That said, you're right about Vista being inevitable. You have to go through much pain to get a new computer with XP installed and sometimes pay extra for the favor.

Glad to hear that Vista was painfully slow for you as well. I had it on the cheapest new laptop (Centrino) and figured it was the cheap hardware to blame.

Snag-It is the only way to come close to what Apple offers via it's cmd-3 and cmd-4 built in options (I've not revisited Grab). At least you don't have to pay for those.

I suffer on XP every day at my office. I long for a way to make money on strictly Mac hardware to alleviate my pain.

Picasa's not bad, but I don't like their collection "management" anywhere near to Apples. Your iPhoto may run faster if you rebuild your thumbnail cache. Both are missing some critical features in Photoshop Elements for retouching.

I'm having challenges with Leo on my MacBook at home. I have a Trendnet g router and Leo loses it's mind so I have to reset AirPort (off then on) which is fast, but frequently needed. That's my only problem at this point. Am headed to a Genius to see if they have ideas. Other than that, Leo wakes from sleep even faster than Tiger. I can't finish opening the display before it's ready for use (network not included as AirPort needs time to log into WPA).

[Pecos Bill]

Also, keep in mind that market share is a percentage of ALL sales. Not installed base. It does include every embedded and POS (point of sale and Piece of ....) out there. And it includes the laptop I bought to play back mp3 files for square dancing and nothing else. That would be a tragic waste of a Mac.

Over 50% of all sales in Apple Stores are to switchers. It will take a LOT of time to increase market share, too.

I hate to disagree with you Pecos Bill, but I don't exactly see where my post says that I hate Macs.

I carry a Mac in backpack for times when my Vista Laptop won't do the job for whatever reason.

Not counting the older Macs in the closet, but counting the ones that I have bought for my kids, I probably have eight Macs running various versions of OS X. I use four myself in three different locations.

I do all my website work on Macs, and my Vista laptop would be MacBook Pro, if I could have gotten one for less than $1999 with XP or Vista installed on a 160 gig hard drive with 2 gigs of ram.

It is possible to like Macs and not care a whole lot about Apple.

It is possible to like Macs and still offer some valid criticism.

I have been pretty specific about my criticism of the new iPhoto. Cropping a photo takes far more steps now, and I find moving through the photos more of a pain than it used to be.

iWeb is a piece of software that has great potential if you didn't have to move around 50 megs of files to use it on a second computer.

Safari just doesn't work with most blogging software probably because Apple has few if any bloggers inside their North Korean technology world.

.Mac is overpriced, under featured, and has a lot of loose ends hanging since there have been so many different ways to manage photos and web pages.

The Mac Mini is overpriced and there is no reasonably priced desktop between the iMac and Mac Pros.

None of that stops me from using Macs and praising them when praise is due.

As to raising market share with Apple Stores, I agree that it will take forever. There are too few stores and their revenue numbers for computers are likely too low to make much of a difference even if 50% of the people who buy Macs are switchers.

I stand by this quote that I made in October of this year.

"Those of us who just want to get our work done and enjoy computing a little while we are doing it run Macs. What we do with our computers matters most to us. The world won't collapse if our computers don't work. We would actually be the ones left to run the world if all other computers died."

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2007/10/what-this-about.html

[ocracokewaves]

Snag-it, by the way, is far superior to Apple's simplistic screen capture.

You might want to check out the features before you knock it.

http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

Sometimes Apple's model of including basic stuff for free backfires. After using Snag-it, I would have to say that screen capture is one of them.

I would actually like to buy something like Snag-it for my Macs so if anyone knows of something that fits the bill, let me know.

$39.95 is a reasonable price to pay for what Snag-it does.