An Apple User's First Vista Impressions

If like me, you write reviews based on when you can afford products, some products never get written up.  Others just have to wait.   I am hoping to purchase a Vista laptop sometimes this spring.  I'm going to be buying it to simplify my real estate life.  Buying a PC laptop with Vista does not indicate that I'm abandoning the Mac. It just means that I'm facing up to the fact that the real estate world is PC centric, and I've chosen to deal with it by using a PC instead of Parallels or Boot Camp.

With Vista in my future, I have been very curious as to how it compares to Mac OS X.  The only way that I could figure out to get a good peak at Vista was to head to some of the local big box electronics stores.  So the other afternoon I visited Staples, Best Buy, and Circuit City to play with Vista machines.

Some commentary that I've read indicates that Vista makes Mac OS X look old and slow.   That might be exaggerating the situation a little, but I have to admit that I was impressed in my very brief encounters with Vista and the new Microsoft Office products.  The reviewing environment wasn't exactly great either.

None of these electronics stories know how to properly display and set up personal computers so potential customers can properly evaluate them.  To see systems which are easy to evaluate, you have to visit an Apple store which is a three hours drive for this area.  Maybe the fact that people will buy something for Internet access without even looking at the browser online is a sign of how shallow the PC purchase decision can be for some folks. 

Out of the dozen or PCs that I tried, none were hooked to the Internet.  Now that might prevent people from installing weird stuff, but it also prevents them from properly testing browsers.  Before I buy a Vista system, I would actually like to see how Firefox behaves, but I might have to wait awhile for that or find some better computer stores.

One of the things that I wanted to check on my mini-Vista test was the photo archiving and editing tools. The free photo tool (Photo Gallery I believe is the name) does seem fast.  All the basic tools seem to be there.  It's hard to say how it would perform with 20,000 photos. Still I believe consumers will be easily convinced that Microsoft has made substantial progress in photo and movie handling. The photo tool can also play movies without leaving the program.

What I was most impressed with is the speed with which Excel launches. It's there almost instantly.  Just an initial glance at the new office menus and the way Vista interface is set up gives me the feeling that most people will think the user interface has been greatly modernized compared to Windows XP.

I brought my wife, Glenda, along as a second tester for the last store.   She is a very happy white iMac user who hasn't seen the need to upgrade past 10.3.9.  Her computer usage is email, using a browser, and some minimal word processing.  She hasn't used a Windows machine in about four years and what she used then was an earlier version than XP.

I spent about two minutes showing her Vista and then wandered off to play on another system.  I did find that the included Vista mail program looks a lot like Apple mail.  It isn't nearly as confusing as Outlook.  It's also very responsive.  I didn't take the time to figure out if it was the freebie and there is a more sophisticated mail program, but my guess would be yes.

Glenda found Vista snappy and relatively easy to navigate through, and commented that she could survive on it if she had to.

My conclusions are that Vista is on the surface a well done upgrade to Windows XP which I do use a fair amount.  Vista feels faster, and the Excel launch is very impressive.  The Vista eye candy is very nice, perhaps not as good as what I would expect from Apple, but it certainly is a huge improvement over XP.

Obviously this is a surface glance at Vista, but I doubt many Windows users will spend more time than I did looking at the product before deciding it is a lot better than what they already have.  In fact I was surprised to see computers leaving every single store.  In both Circuit City and Best Buy the isles were busy with people buying computers, and this was on a Monday afternoon at 3-5 pm, the day after the Super Bowl.

As someone who does a fair amount of photography,  I liked the basic digital image program that I saw.  I would probably be willing to give it a try as a repository for some of my photos.  I definitely want the new Excel. Though I don't use spreadsheets as much as I did in the past,  the new Excel looked like an upgrade worth having.  I didn't spend as much time with Word, but I'll give it more of a shot the next time I visit.

So what does this mean for Apple?  Well, I stand by my previous assessment that Vista isn't going to be a huge Mac opportunity and probably will not drive many Windows users into the arms of Apple. 

Roanoke, Va is a little deprived in Mac coverage with there being only one small reseller.  There were no Macs in any of the three big box electronics stores that we visited which included Staples, Best Buy, and Circuit City.  Perhaps it will be different in other places where there are high profile Apple resellers, but here in Roanoke I suspect things are pretty similar to other areas outside the major metro world.  Most people have a better chance of seeing Vista than they do of seeing OS X.

My other thought is that Mac users who talk about Vista without having used it are doing the Mac platform a disservice.  If you are going to compare Vista to OS X, get out there and try it.  Your opinion will carry a lot more credibility if you've actually seen something more than a Vista screen shot.

I think Microsoft has once again done a good enough job to keep most of their customers happy.  I don't see a lot of people being foolish enough to upgrade to Vista without just buying a new computer, but people who use Windows are accustomed to buying a new computer every few years. 

The reality is that the computers they will see are relatively inexpensive.  I could have walked out the door with a respected name brand laptop with 33% more hard drive space than my current 120G MacBook, twice the memory, similar built-in camera  and  close to the same  processor for a couple of hundred dollars less than I paid last summer. There might even be a feature or two that you could argue that my MacBook doesn't have.

Perhaps the user interface wouldn't be as polished as a Mac's but Vista is a big step forward.  Mac users who don't think Vista is progress for the Windows world haven't used Windows enough to appreciate the change.

I believe Apple will continue to make steady progress in computer market share, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a big surge of dissatisfied  Windows users, I don't think that is very likely.  There will be teething problems for Vista just like there will be for Apple's Leopard.

I guess that I've been waiting for over twenty years for all the stars to align for Apple to be a major player in the world operating systems.  With Vista now here, I think Apple might have missed it's best chance.  A few years ago the visual impression of OS X when compared to Windows XP left most people thinking OS X was a huge advance.  I think that time is gone.  Maybe having the same hardware platform make the sell easier, but it a certain sense it makes it harder if the other vendors look more price competitive than Apple which is essentially using the same processors.

Maybe Leopard will surprise me and open some new doors for Apple, but selling computers requires more than stores in the major metro areas and commercials that make fun of the people to whom you're trying to sell.

It takes hard work and the ability to actually show people how much better your operating system is than the next one.  That was really easy to do in 1984 and even when OS X was released. I don't think it is going to be as easy with Vista's release combined with the new Office products.

Getting Apple to 10% market share is going to take more focus on computers than I see from Apple even with an iPod halo.

On another note, Steven Fisher has a second installment of his "Is the Cult of Apple really a Cult?" He closes with the question of whether or not he can donate all his possessions at any Apple Store or does he have to take them to Cupertino?  :)  My guess is Steve Jobs would prefer the Apple Store.

   

Comments

[alex Patsay]

few typos:
"It takes takes hard" - too many "takes"
"how it compares Mac OS X." - how it compares _to_ mac OS X, I guess?

[Joshua Ochs]

To continue your point, your opinion will carry more weight if you've used it more than in a store.

Couple points:
1) Firefox will run the same on Vista as anywhere else. That's kind of the point.
2) Just wait until you either set up a Vista machine and meet "User Account Control". It's like the OS X "We need to do something with elevated permissions - please enter your password" dialog, except it does not require your password, and it comes up every few seconds.
3) The graphic design is top notch, but the OS still feels incomplete. Take a look through the beautiful new appearance control panels, then try to change resolutions.
4) And my favorite, note that most programs in Vista have no menu bars (at least by default) - that makes it really fun to find options not on the defaut toolbars.

Finally, it's still Windows. Same registry with a million hidden places for programs to hide information, same screwed up file system layout that forces you to use the Start Menu if you're to have any hope of using it. Almost the same start menu, similar obtuseness when things go wrong.

[Adam]

I haven't had the chance to use Vista yet, but one thing that comes to mind when you mention all this speedy/snappyness is look what the requirements for Vista is.

For the most part, unless you've upgraded your machine to the latest greatest you're not going to be able to run Vista in an enjoyable performance.

And most things run better when you put enough CPU and memory behind it.

I think a good test would be to run Vista on a MacBook Pro and see how it compares to OS X.

[John Muir]

I used Vista beta 2, RC1 and then RC2 on my (now retired) PC for over six months as the machine's solitary OS. Hey, it was free, and I could learn something before getting my first desktop Mac! (Main machine has been a PowerBook since 2003.)

Overall I have to agree with Joshua Ochs who is spot on. Vista is visually quite nice in a Puma or Jaguar kind of way, and being based firmly on Windows Server 2003 it is quite stable, but it's not the missing link for Microsoft to be able to regain its position before OS X came out.

Actual day to day use feels just the same as XP. Also, I found its indexing to be buggy with a large photo and music collection, though there is a chance that was fixed after RC2 for all I know. It was a problem which persisted between clean installs for me.

The Windows beta crowd made a lot of noise about the immensely lame security management dialogs which (believe it or not) were actually worse back in the earlier releases! I bid you welcome to that particular experience. It's something I do not miss at all in Tiger!

As for speed - you forget to compare like with like. Vista is slower than XP in a constantly noticeable fashion when run on the same hardware. That's irrespective of whether Aero Glass is on or off. The difference between Vista and XP in feel is actually very similar to that between XP and Windows 2000. Indeed I even tried 2000 on the machine just before I put it away and felt its retro speed-boost charm!

Also I think a vital issue for Vista will be its laptop integration. Sleep states, their real use responsiveness, brightness controls, intelligent wi-fi, basically the whole mobile experience. I couldn't explore that on the desktop. I know it to be one of the biggest gulfs between XP and OS X since all the way back to Jaguar when I first came over.

Anyway, Vista is a capable update and brings the NT series closer to OS X in some, mostly cosmetic, ways. But it is no revolution, and doesn't solve Microsoft's long term problem which is how to develop a new system without all the legacy cruft which has plagued Vista's overworked devs.

[ocracokewaves]

Actually Vista has been tried on a Mac Pro. The results were reported in this article.

http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/01/running_vista_o.html#more

"For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been running Vista on a quad-Xeon Mac Pro. ..."

"The Mac Pro is a very fast and capable OS X machine, but it’s an even faster Windows Vista machine."

"Vista really flies on this beast, and feels like it’s faster than OS X – it boots faster, folders burst open and apps launch instantly."

[nikolaus heger]

Hey,

I have been trying to switch to Vista Ultimate on my laptop. Vista found all my hardware and ran in full-on shiny mode. Yes, it's very shiny. But this gets old in about 2 days of use.

I completely agree with Alex, above.

I got around the annoyance of User Account Control by disabling it - better give up security than to go insane. Trust me, neither your wife nor anyone else would "survive" UAC. The phrase "what were they thinking?" comes to mind.

In general, even with UAC turned off I found myself constantly having to answer questions from the OS. These come in form of the new Vista dialogs: They are large, and instead of OK and Cancel offer two or more full paragraphs of text.

For example, every wireless network I connect to in the Cafe or on the road, I have to decide whether it's private, public, or (I forgot the name of the third option, office?). In case you don't know what that means - no problem, there are several A4 pages full of text to explain.

I will pick this as arbitrary example on how Vista has made things worse from XP - let alone OS X.

Task: Connect to wireless network.

OS X:
1 - Click on the wireless symbol, select the network you want. Done.

Win XP:
1 - Right click on the wireless symbol
2 - Select the network you want in the list. Done.

Win Vista:
1 - Left click on the wireless symbol, a little window opens (this is not a menu!)
2 - Find the small blue hyperlink-like text that says "new connection"
3 - In the window, select wireless networks (you don't want dial-up)
4 - Choose the network you want
5 - Decide whether you want to save it and automatically connect to it in the future (mandatory, you are not connected yet)
6 - Decide whether this network is public, private, or something else - I don't know why, I refused to read the explaining text at that point.

Windows XP did a perfectly fine job here, close enough to OS X which has the perfect solution. Vista is a huge step backwards.

Sometimes less is more and that's something Vista does not get - you can see it everywhere, the Wireless is just a good example.

[lookmark]

"I guess that I've been waiting for over twenty years for all the stars to align for Apple to be a major player in the world operating systems. With Vista now here, I think Apple might have missed it's best chance. A few years ago the visual impression of OS X when compared to Windows XP left most people thinking OS X was a huge advance. I think that time is gone."

Oh, I'd wait 'til Leopard is revealed in full before making that statement. ; )

That said, I agree that Vista is indeed a big advance over XP and will undoubtedly be quite successful in the long run. I look forward to giving it some time to try it out.

I don't think Apple will ever beat MS for the desktop PC, by the way; Windows is too entrenched, and if there isn't an Apple Store in the near vicinity the case for the Mac is much harder to see.

Where Apple has a real chance is the new world of post-PC devices, which increasingly will be running full OSes, just like computers. And the battle here has only just begun.

[jwdawso]

"I guess that I've been waiting for over twenty years for all the stars to align for Apple to be a major player in the world operating systems. "

You are still stuck in the age when Apple was "Apple Computer"! Don't feel bad - most are! But Apple's name change is the big news - computers are finally moving away from a box that we conform with, to actually integrating seamlessly into our lives.

Vista is all about reacting to the past. Apple is all about transformations into the future. Vista will be seen in the same light as IBMs punch cards.

[Al]

I have used both Vista and OS X on Core 2 Duo machines with the same clock speed. OS X is, to use your word, snappier.

I have used XP & OS X daily for years. XP sand boxed with Parallels on a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro is only slightly annoying.

Vista on a HP Core 2 Duo is very annoying. I couldn't use it daily. Maybe after SP 1 when they have the permissions nonsense sorted out I will upgrade to Vista and sand box it with parallels on my Mac but that is a year or so away.

[ocracokewaves]

To respond to Nikolaus' comment about "less is more."

That is one of my worries about Vista. This comment in Information Week is one of my favorite descriptions of the differences between the two operating system philosophies.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196800670

"For Mac OS X, it's the classic English butler. This OS is designed to make the times you have to interact with it as quick and efficient as possible. It expects that things will work correctly and therefore sees no reason to bother you with correct operation confirmations..."

"Windows is ... well, Windows is very eager to tell you what's going on. Constantly. Plug something in and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you're on a network that's having problems staying up, you'll get tons of messages telling you this. It's rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout ... who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans..."

"To put it simply, you can work on a Mac for hours, days even, and only minimally need to directly use the OS. With Vista? The OS demands your attention, constantly."

Since I wrote the post, I have received an email alert from another Realtor® saying that the people who run the Multiple Listing Services are recommending Realtors® might want to wait a while before upgrading to Vista.

"Most Realtors may prefer to use what they currently have. If they don't plan to change machines, ....they're better off leaving Vista off for the time being..."

Of course I knew enough to not be in the line for the first machines. That recommendation probably works also for Leopard. There will be some sophisticated things out there that will take time to work well with new operating systems even when they are from Apple.

[Ishan Bhattacharya]

I've been using Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 on a MacPro 3.0 with 5 GB RAM and frankly, there's no comparison in terms of speed of applications opening, scrolling and all the little petty but annoying delays that are part of the computing experience: Vista wins hands down. I could use Vista on this machine, and use it with plesaure. That's hard for me to admit having been Mac only person for more than two decades. I hope the current developer release of Leopard is nothing like what the final product will be. If it's more or less the same, I think Mr. Jobs has lost the user experience battle. We'll just have to wait and see.

[CeactVafNaf]

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