Cogs can think.

David Pogue,

You complained about Vista stealing stuff from Apple’s OS X. You were at the keynote at CES, and THUS you now are completely educated and experienced in using Vista. Sure, my friend. Let’s recap the things you complain about:

Transparent window edges. Well, it’s true that Vista looks nicer than any previous version of Windows. But I’m just not sure about the value of transparent window edges. They’re cool, sure; but exactly how many times, in your work life, have you muttered, “Darn! If only I could see just the part of the background window that’s currently obscured by the 1/3-inch margin of the foreground window”?

I have been using Vista on my machine for a few weeks now, and even though I was the first to say, “what’s the use in transparent borders??”, I now completely understand Microsoft’s point. They wanted to do 2 things in the Vista Aero UI: 1) create a sense of depth, and 2) put the actual repeating UI elements (window borders, etc.) out of focus; make the user focus on the actual content. It takes USAGE to figure out they’ve succeeded in doing just that– you cannot understand that by watching a keynote.

Widgets. Vista will let you summon, at the right edge of the screen, widgets: single-purpose, single-window little programs. One’s an egg timer, one’s a news ticker, and so on. It’s a lot like the Dashboard in Mac OS X (or the shareware Konfabulator that came before it), except that apparently, you can’t put the widgets anywhere on the screen you like.

The whole concept of the sidebar is much older than Dashboard in Tiger. You would be right as to say that in effect, Apple has invented the idea of widgets (in pre-System 7 environments), but that wasn’t because Apple had this cool idea of widgets; no, it was a nescesity. Because those early systems lacked multi-tasking, Apple needed a hack to give a sense of multitasking. And as such, they created this idea of ‘desk accessories’– small applications like calculators, that weren’t really calculators, but drivers, so they could run simoultaniously, giving a sense of multitasking.

Apple ditched this concept with the advent of multitasking in I believe System 7. Then, with the advent of OSX, we had Konfabulator– the same basic idea (mini-apps) but done in acompletely different way, and this time ’round not as a hack, but as a feature. Apple blatantly ripped the creator of Konfabulator off, and implemented an exact copy of it, renamed it, and squealed innovation.

But, before Apple did Dashboard, the earliest builds of Longhorn in 2003 and maybe even 2002, already had the sidebar, in which you could load, well, plugins (widgets) that did the same as Dasboard widgets do now. Who’s ripping off who here?

Other than that, BeOS had replicants. Also very similar (but replicants had much more potential). I believe os/2 had widgets too, thanks to Stardock (and thus Windows too, also thanks to Stardock).

3-D application switcher. With a keystroke, Vista can present you with a stacked deck of every window that’s open on your machine, making it easier to hunt through them for one particular window. It’s a lot like the Exposé feature in Mac OS X, except that you don’t get to see all of the windows simultaneously; you have to walk through them one at a time with the mouse or keyboard.

I do not really see the point in this 3D application switcher either. But to call it a rip-off of Exposé? Are you serious? Exposé as well as this 3D switcher are just a logical step forward from the ordinary alt+tab switcher, just two different ways of doing the same. Hey, Apple has a two-button mouse now, a total rip-off of all other mice since 1267! I mean, not every tiny insiginificant feature even deserves to be looked at in the sense of a rip-off.

Vista has icons. It is such a rip-off of BeOS– BeOS also has icons!

Global, fast search. Vista can now find words in any of your files, quickly and easily, just like the Spotlight feature of Mac OS X.

Spotlight is nothing more than an improved variant of BeFS from BeOS– illustrated by the fact that ex-Be engineers now work at Apple. It is clear to everyone who has even the slightest understanding of the operating system business where Spotlight came from. Apple took BeFS, improved upon the concept by adding searching inside documents and squealed innovation.

Other than that, Vista’s search also started somewhere in 2002/2003. I even remember using it in 2003.

Photo organization. Some limited photo editing is now built into Vista’s photo browser, which couldn’t look more like Apple’s iPhoto program if you ran it through a copying machine.

I’ll give you that. Then again, there were a thousand iPhoto-like apps before Apple. Should now suddenly no one be allowed to make photo managers anymore, just because Apple made one of those thousands?

I’m sorry David, but by reading your article I have only come to one conclusion: you are an obvious pro-Apple, anti-MS troll. Nothing more and nothing less. And yes, I use two Macs on a day-to-day basis, and I’m really happy with them. But at least I don’t have my distortion field up.

Good day,

Thom Holwerda
Managing editor of OSNews.com