Quote from Joe Willcox article:

"By contrast, Vista carries baggage: Unfriendly reviews, blogger complaints and the aforementioned complicated buying process. But, as I've repeatedly stated, Vista isn't a bad operating system. Vista will succeed, if for no other reason than volume and a strong supporting partner ecosystem."
----------------------------------------------------
Vista will succeed, of course, just depends on the meaning of the word succeed, doesn't it? It by succeed, you mean that Vista will make lots of money for M$, than yes, it has already succeeded. But if you measure Vista success by lost market share and customer satisfaction, then Vista is a failure. With all its lock in and virtual monopoly of the channel, M$ is starting to lose market share on the desktop.

Talking about M$ lock in, here is a link titled;

"The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency has referred Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading for alleged anti-competitive practices in the schools software market"

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/FrontpageRSS/DAA62C94AE654B7F80257379003BDE67!OpenDocument

It really makes me laugh to see a list like this. You focus on the feature set but aside but say nothing about the actual usability of the features. Yes Vista is 64-bit, if you install the 64-bit version. And 64-bit apps have a different install directory than 32-bit apps and over all it's clumsy and horrid. Apple handles this nicely with Universal binaries. Not only do you have 32-bit and 64-bit but the same file presented to the user can be PowerPC or Intel. To give Windows credit, Shadow copy has some functionality Time Machine lacks. But even there Apple focuses on the user and forces them to backup to a second drive in case the primary fails where as Shadow copy does nothing for you if your drive dies.

Joe , you have tabled a list of comparison.

But you are comparing the name of the different features in two different OS rather their funcionalities

The comparison is meaningless

Surely, the Joe hasn't learned new tricks

http://www.trustedreviews.
Quote:"Nicknamed 'Gutsy Gibson', v7.10 is the latest in Canonical's clever system of bi-annual updates and - like all Ubuntu releases - is free".

"Major additions in Gibson include:

* Hardware management improvements with improved plug-and-play configuration for printers, as well as automatic firmware installation for Broadcom cards
* Improved support for display systems - For laptop users, full support external VGA (projector) support is available out-of-the-box with easy reconfiguration when hardware is switched. For power users this release includes the ability to manage multiple monitors
* Windows compatibility - Users with a dual partition can read from and and write to files that are on located in a Windows partition (including NTFS)
* Enhanced user interface - Simple 3D screen effects and graphics to enhance the user experience
* Desktop search - gives users the ability to search their entire desktop, whether for files, folders, chat logs or photos. This capability includes the deskbar applet, a central location on users' desktops for all local and web search operations
* Firefox plugins - automatic installation of popular Firefox plugins validated by Ubuntu.

As someone who was initially impressed, then frustrated, then infuriated by Microsoft Vista I crossed over to Ubuntu for some time and have to admit it is a rock solid, lightening quick platform which just works out of the box. Everything you need to get up and running is installed already and you really can tell it comes from a labour of love".

'By contrast, Vista carries baggage: unfriendly reviews, blogger complaints '

Sounds familiar , "unfriendly reviews" by Mr Joe Wilcox

Quotes again from Joe Willcox's article:

"Vista isn't a bad operating system." and his previous line; "Vista carries baggage: Unfriendly reviews, blogger complaints and the aforementioned complicated buying process."
----------------------------------------------------
Sounds like a "bad" operating system to me, even by your own description Joe. But first hand experience working on repairing/replacing Vista for customers, had convinced me that Vista is worst than ME2. How about Train Wreck as a description?

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=44868
Boycott Windows Vista
Quote:
AMSTERDAM – The Consumers’ Association (Consumentenbond) has called on consumers when purchasing a new computer to explicitly ask for the operating system Windows XP.
After a survey conducted by the Consumers’ Association showed that the performance of Microsoft’s latest operating system was very poor, the Association set up a registration centre for complaints about Vista. In less than five weeks 5,000 users filed complaints about the functioning of the system. "The product has many teething problems, it is just not ready," a spokesperson for the association said. Printers and other hardware reportedly failed in combination with Vista, computers crash regularly and the peripherals are very slow.

Vista: Cat-Scratch Fever? or “vista crash” Fever

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vista+crash&search=Searchhttp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vista+crash&search=Search

Joe,
You forgot viruses: Windows-100K+, OS X-0.

And there is alot to be said for Leopard being Unix/POSIX compliant. There is no comparison to Windows when running a Unix OS. Far better stablity and security. And the whole 64-bit comment made by Mike is spot on. Apple made transitions, like 68K to PPC, OS9 to OS X and PPC to Intel look like a cake walk. MSFT should have gutted Windows and started over. They didn't, or couldn't. There is something to be said for running a lean company. Look at what Apple does with 18K employees. Unbelievable. Compare their market cap to Dell, HP or IBM and see why those companies struggle to make money. They have way too many employees! Apple probably works their engineers to death, but they make awesome products and software.

Windows may have the greater market share. So what? Is that what every MSFT fanboy wants to hang their hat on? Apple will rule the home in the next few years, and then they will start to seriously enter the workplace. Just look at the iPhone.

Vista Cat scratch Fever? or Vista crash Fever

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vista+crash&search=Searchhttp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vista+crash&search=Search

States Ask for Microsoft Oversight Until 2012

http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18793/States-Ask-for-Microsoft-Oversight-Until-2012
----------------------------------------------------
It would actually help if instead of just oversite, they actually did something about M$.

Vertical Computer Systems Inc (BB: VCSY)

By: morrie33
19 Oct 2007, 09:38 PM EDT
Msg. 200689 of 200689

Per Portuno: Injunction in SaaS

DC-Steve's post
http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=VCSY&read=200673

"Leaving aside the speculative nature of porto's case, I'm not sure his conclusion makes sense even if we assume most of his speculation is on target:"

I think DC believes the speculation is quite accurate.

"Sounds like porto is implying that an injunction could only cause harm to MSFT if it stopped MSFT from selling something it already has on the market."

Microsoft will not be in the SaaS market until 2009 per their own statements early this year. In fact, VCSY could use Microsoft events to show MSFT made announcements about the value of the SaaS business with no valid business or market in SaaS at points immediately after VCSY announcements.

Here are two events that show Microsoft's strategy to deal with VCSY:

1, Microsoft announced building a SaaS in Texas Microsoft To Build New Data Center in San Antonio January 19, 2007 ... the day after Verizon announced NOW Solutions SaaS January 18, 2007.

2. Microsoft closed the deal on the Texas site land property the same day April 19, 2007 after MSFT were sued by VCSY April 18, 2007.

Looks pretty clear what the intended view Microsoft wants to telegraph to the market. I would think the court would look at THAT with narrowed eyes.

"Wouldn't an injunction also harm MSFT if it stopped them from bringing something to market after they've invested in doing so?"

The problem with Microsoft SaaS is, they've announced their "intentions" and put up money for physical assets but they haven't shown any real progress with their software. Microsoft SaaS demos and efforts have been described by industry experts since May 2007 as "Microsoft SaaS sucks".

NOW Solutions has announced their SaaS tests have gone well and they are ready to take on the SaaS business... far before Microsoft has even shown in demonstrations they can achieve the SaaS goals.

This is the same tactic Microsoft has used before to muscle smaller players out even though the smaller players had done groundwork and delivered far sooner than Microsoft.

This is a textbook case where the court owes protection to a small company threatened by a larger company that can scare the markey away from the small company's solutions, even though those solutions are superior and already available to the market long before the larger company will be able to provide a footprint.

Add to this the possibility Microsoft has sucky SaaS because they are reluctant to show the kind of technology VCSY is able to use because Microsoft may be infringing... and you see a perfect example why a preliminary injunction against Microsoft use of infringing software in the SaaS business is not only reasonable and appealing to common sense, but is good for the public interest as it spreads innovation beyond what would remain "sucky SaaS" software should Microsoft be allowed to continue their SaaS efforts with a work-around.

64 bit needs some expansion.

Microsoft:
32 bit
or
64 bit with 32 bit compatibility OS.
Drivers:
64 bit drivers are still lacking, and require signing
Different binaries for 32 and 64 bit applications

Apple:
32/64bit OS. (32-bit UI Layer; some 64bit UI).
32 or 64 bit drivers.

Single Binary: 32/64 bit Intel and PPC (and ARM) binaries possible.

Joe, you always assume Microsoft is in danger when it comes to Apple. Why?

"Leopard will have the advantage of being the new thing, and it comes at a time of great Apple brand resurgence."

Last year before Vista went on sale, you were predicting how Vista was going to miss its target and Leopard was going to be on sale before Vista. Now that Leopard is late to market, you are saying thats a good thing in contrast to Vista which was early to market. You need to stop comparing 25 million Mac users to 1 billion Windows users, its just not sensible. The two are different, Microsoft meets the needs and complexity of a wider audience.

Folks in IT are not going to jump in anticipation next week and cause a mass exodus from Windows to Mac OS X. It just not possible, factors include training, investment, new hardware, ROI, and Windows is already working Vista also works well in the existing infrastructure and cost is little by just upgrading since a lot of Company's are already on Microsoft's flexible volume licensing programs.

Yes, Leopard is a modern operating system that surprisingly copies a lot of technologies in Vista in addition being late to the game with others that Vista brought mainstream such as ASLR.

"Leopard's feature set bears striking similarities to Vista."

If you look at a few of the features, yes Leopard's feature set bears striking similarities to Vista. But have a look at this.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html

Now I'll admit 300 "new" features may be stretching things a bit, but if you even take half of these new features it's still amazing. Throughout the development of Leopard, Apple was adding new features. Throughout the development of Vista, MS was shucking out features right and left, just to get the product out the door. Don't just blow off the new features in Leopard as marketing fluff. Take the time to read through all the new features.

But the most interesting thing is too look at the differences. Vista comes in how many different versions? And then double that for 32 and 64 bit versions. Leopard comes in exactly two versions, client and server.I won't even begin to detail the difference in costs.

Let's look at some of the features that don't get so much press. Consider screen reading. The popular screen readers for Windows, Windows Eyes and Jaws. These screen readers cost over $1000.00 a copy. Leopard's screen reader comes with every copy of the OS. A blind user can walk up to any machine running Leopard, hit CMD-F5 and the screen reader is there and waiting.

Now if you really have to run a Windows program that just ain't available for OSX (and you've got an Intel based Mac) there are at least 3 mainstream ways to do it. Leave these Windows alternatives disconnected from the network and you can forget virus, spyware, et al detectors. Think of all the time and effort (and cost, yet again) you can do away with. Load it up with XP and your good to go.

This could go on all night.

Supreme Court rejects appeal by Microsoft, Best Buy

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/335588_msftbestbuy16.html

Quote from the link: "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Microsoft Corp. and a unit of Best Buy Co. Inc. to dismiss a lawsuit alleging violation of racketeering laws through fraudulently signing up customers for Microsoft's online service."

"Yes, Leopard is a modern operating system that surprisingly copies a lot of technologies in Vista in addition being late to the game with others that Vista brought mainstream such as ASLR."

ROFLMAO!!! Good one!

Hey Joe,

Tiger had the same feature set as Vista a year and a half before Vista's release. Compare Vista to Tiger and Vista comes off second best.

Just imagine how much further ahead of Vista that Leopard will be when it is released next Friday.

Thank your lucky stars that Leopard will not work on just any generic PC. Imagine the Microsoft monopoly up against viable competition.

This is a pretty weak table of comparisons. Comparing Time Machine to volume shadow copy demonstrates a profound understanding of the two features and more importantly - how they're implemented.

I agree with the other poster - check out the 300 new features. 300 is a bit of a stretch but they're going to make this a great OS that will allow developers to create even greater apps.

I know for a fact VCSY will soon be on the Nasdaq-Today it's under 2 cents a share.

I'm not here as a pump and dump scam. The truth is with VCSY stock, if you buy in before the BIG run then the MM's and Shorters will immediately have you holding at a loss in hopes that you'll sell at a loss before it runs, that will help them cover some of their many millions of shares they are short. But if you buy at under 2 cents a share and ignore all the posters who call VCSY a scam and that claim Portuno and myself pumpers, then you will become wealthy!!imo
Why do you think those posters are constantly trying to scare off new VCSY investors? It's because that's what their bosses pay them to do!(common sense)

If you read the information Portuno Diamo has been providing you will see that VCSY is the best investment in the market.
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_M/threadview?m=tm&bn=12004&tid=1305449&mid=1305449&tof=12&frt=2

VCSY is currently suing Microsoft for patent infringement:
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2007

Vertical Computer Systems, Inc. Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Microsoft Corporation

Fort Worth, TX, April 20, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE)? Vertical Computer Systems, Inc. (OTCBB: VCSY) announced today that on April 18, 2007, Vertical Computer Systems, Inc. filed suit for patent infringement against Microsoft Corp. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. VCSY claims that the Microsoft .Net System infringes U.S. Patent No. 6,826,744.

Andre Da Costa wrote: "Last year before Vista went on sale, you were predicting how Vista was going to miss its target and Leopard was going to be on sale before Vista."

Andre,

You're mistaken. It was clear long before Vista shipped Apple wouldn't release Leopard until 2007. I reported two shipment delays to everyone else's one delay. Apple used some sneaky math with the delay to October from summer. Actually, Apple had indicated in 2006 that Leopard would ship in spring 2007.

Vista didn't hit its targets. There's rumbling inside Microsoft over Vista's launch, which hasn't gone as well as expected. Vista has gotten a bad rap, which isn't really deserved.

Joe

Vista is a good system. if you have the desire to deal with all its demands. yes, MS finally caught up - to Tiger.

Leopard/iLife 2008 leaves Vista totally in the dust. suddenly it looks so old. and everyone except the MS shills is going to notice that. the real comparison table will need to be a whole lot longer to be accurate with much better definition of the features being compared, not just captions like you did in that throwaway chart.

get ready.

Joe , in fact we caught you bad mouth on Microsoft : " Vista didn't hit its targets. There's rumbling inside Microsoft over Vista's launch, which hasn't gone as well as expected. Vista has gotten a bad rap, which isn't really deserved"

4 More States Seek Microsoft Oversight

http://www.newsmax.com/science/microsoft_antitrust/2007/10/19/42415.html

Quote; "WASHINGTON -- Four states concerned about Microsoft Corp.'s market power are pressing a federal court to extend by five years its oversight of the software company, which began in 2002 as part of a landmark antitrust settlement.

The request, filed late Thursday, represents a turnabout for New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida."

If Microsoft double and triple-counted features like Apple does in its marketing of "300 features", I could come up with 1,000 new features in Vista. Overinflated feature lists exist to fool rubes into thinking the OS is more worthwhile than it is.

One of the listed 300 features is that Leopard understands FAT32. WTF?!!! I thought most every OS could understand FAT32 since sometime after 1995! I thought Tiger, Panther, even Jaguar for cripes sake could read FAT32 partitions.

Another one of the 300 features -- DVD player has a new full screen interface. Way to go, whoo hoo!

Get down to it, there's probably only 10 or 20 moderately compelling features in OS X, and that Vista and OS X is more alike than different.

From user point of view, I get a new notebook with Vista few months ago and it simply show me what crap means.
Find no usability improvement, things just getting slower and paying for a faster machine simply do not justify !
Weeks later demands to downgrade to XP which at least works.

What a bunch of crap from a windows boy!!!!

Several things:

- The start menu has nothing to do with the dock, those are two totally different interface elements, what's your point?

- Flip3D is a bad ripp off of Expose to navigate trough open windows. CoverFlow is used to navigate trough files and preview them, you don't know what you are talking about.

-Preview pane/Live Icons are limited just too give a preview of a file, nothing more. Quicklook allows to view the entire content of a file without opening it, you don't know what you are talking about.

-Download folder? And what? What is your point? The implementation in leopard is based on stackes and it belongs to the new new dock feature called stackes. Where a hell vista offers this? Nowhere......

- Improved search? And what? Vista is playing catch up with Tiger concerning search, and it is not even there!!! An example, in tiger you can edit metadata to any files or folders which are then searchable by spotlight. Vista only allows to assign metadata only to photos and office documents. Also the search in Vista is slow.

- Home Network search? And what? Vista implementation is slow anyway.

- Shared computers? And what? OS X had this for ever, Leopard brings a much better implementation. Vista implementation looks just horrible and it is slow.

- 64 bits? And what? Most of windows sold are 32 bits versions. 64 bits windows is just a joke. Incompatible drivers, slow 32 bits applications, incompatible 32 apps. Leopard is a 32/64 bits os with one single kernel that runs both 32 and 64 bits applications. Users don't have to wonder it their apps are 32 or 64 bits applications, all applications comes in one universal binary, which can include 32 bits/64 bits PPC binaries and 32/64 bits x86 binaries. The os will run everything..... That's a world of difference between Vista and leopard when it comes to 64 bits computing. Leopard is the os where 64 bits applications can become common, windows not....

- WPF is a catch up to Quartz that OS X has since 2001. Core animation goes well beyond that as it allows to really build rich animated user interface not only some 3D effects that have nothing attached to the user interface.

- Shadow copy? You don't know what you are talking about. You are just trying to find a feature that can be compared to Time machine. Shadow copy is a versioning feature not a back up feature. Shadow Copy is not in itself a backup system, although it can present a listing of duplicated files that were captured by the shadow copy service. Without a dedicated backup system, Previous Versions only shows local shadows of a file. It does not copy files to an external disk for safekeeping, and its shadow copies can't be browsed through by the user in the file system by date or by query. There is nothing to do between Shadow copies and Time machine.

Should i also say the things that Vista does not have, well

- speed
- user interface quality.
- Spaces.
- Time machine.
- Mail with to dos, notes, rich templates, data detectors.
- Ichat with effects, ichat theater and sharing desktops.
- Automator with automatic scripting of user interface.
- Ical
- Web clip to create own's widget.
- Dashcode.
- Stacks
- Dictionary with wikipedia, japanese.
- Back to my mac
- Fonts auto activation
- Preview for viewing pdfs.
- Photobooth
- Printer Drivers via Software Update
- Calculations in Spotlight
- Dictionary Definitions in Spotlight
- Web History Search
- Help Menu Search
- Grammar Check for all apps running on Leopard.
- Far better universal access.

Also i should had
- Better support for multi cores.
- XRay
- Build in OpenMPI
- Unix certified

And there are more, more....

So why don't you just keep silent, windows boy????

Here I am on my "old" OS X Tiger install on a PowerBook G4. I never log out and just close the lid to sleep/wake it multiple times per day every day. I haven't rebooted it in over 4 months. All of last year I rebooted around 4 times for the security patches that requested it.

By comparison, my Dell work laptop runs Vista and it won't run reliably for more than a week of sleep/wake transitions without slowing down and/or the wireless crapping out, black screen on wake, etc.

I don't care about Vista transparency and animations until the OS can run more than a week straight without a reboot. The quality of code between the two operating systems is night and day.

There are certainly many similarities between Leopard and Vista, but there's also a ton of differences.

I'm also not sure about "The differences between Leopard and Vista may not be all that obvious to average consumers....". If you actually take a good look or even (gasp!) *use* each OS for 10 minutes, the differences will be very obvious.

You're certainly correct that Vista currently has some teething problems that will take a few months and a service pack or two to sort out, and Apple has a lot of momentum and a great store experience, while the Windows PC buying experience remains often depressing and awful. That's a huge factor right there. The combination of beautifully designed hardware + beautifully designed software + very good buying experience remain a killer combination, even before you factor in the so-called iPod (and now iPhone) halo. It's well worth the "Apple tax," and hence the recent explosion of Mac sales.

Joe starts to glorify the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5, or Leopard even though it has yet to hit the street

Perception over reality ?

"C`mon Microsoft, where's the pit bull that mauled IBM, Lotus, Netscape, Novell, WordPerfect and so many other high-tech companies in the 1990s?"

Pitbull? It's no dog, Joe, it's a cat, a copycat... *lol*

Heavy Leopard Pre-orders Caused by Vista

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/10/19.8.shtml

Quote: "Chris gear, the marketing director for Macforce in Portland, Oregon concurred that poor reviews of Vista have created a strong sales environment. "More than anything, it has to do with the biggest growth coming from 'switchers' -- people switching from the Windows platform,"
----------------------------------------------------
Vista=train wreck in progress. Both Mac and Linux are gaining market share as users concur that Vi$ta is not an upgrade from XP. What were Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer thinking when they dumped Vista on the public?

Apple's Missed Opportunity With Leopard Delay

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/20/1042222
-----------------------------------------------------
Have to agree with the comment posted by by brass1 (30288) on this link, quote:

"The lesson from Vista is that releasing a broken and incomplete OS so you can fix it in the field is no longer acceptable. Ignoring your testers complaints on usability and performance issues will no longer get it done. I suspect that the disaster that was Vista's release is one of the things that caused Apple to reassess their Leopard release date."

Quote from Joe Willcox article:
.....The differences between Leopard and Vista may not be all that obvious to average consumers or even small business owners....

...but I guess that fact that Vista can be on run on virtually any hardware costing about half the price of Leopard hardware IS VERY OBVIOUS TO EVERY CUSTOMER

@Andre da Costa:

What are you going on about??? I've read Joe's piece carefully and it's obvious that it's focused on consumers, not IT. He's saying the MS's marketing to consumers is woefully inadequate compared to Apple's. And he's absolutely correct.

I agree with everything he said in the piece. And in particular, I agree that Leopard does have the advantage of being the new thing this holiday shopping season. This psychological factor should not be underestimated.

Moreover, I also agree with Joe's statement about Apple's resurgent brand. Unless you've been living in a cave (or living in serious denial), it's obvious that the Apple brand has grown tremendously in recent years. Jobs' marketing has been exceptional and ingenious. You don't have to be an Apple fanboy to acknowledge that reality.

Finally, nowhere in the article does Joe compare Apple's user base to Windows'. The fact that there are a billion Windows users doesn't mean a whole lot. We all know that Windows is deeply entrenched in IT. We also know the power of Windows' brand. Joe is not dissing Vista. On the contrary.

But we need to realize that Apple is making gains in the marketplace, especially among consumers. The Mac has already established itself as a strong alternative to the Windows PC. Leopard can only improve on Mac's fortune.

Agree with Evan.

WinTel hardware /software combination is far more cheaper than Mac.

Mac is over-rated as there is Mac and Linux fanboys

With a single purchase of MAC, I can buy two Wintel whiteboxes with Vista

Third world countries full of Wintel whiteboxes with huge volume

hey the world is full of hardware. not windows hardware anymore. Vista has screwed that. and for MS now. 90% now, was 85% before Vi$ta, the worm is starting to turn. It has to start at some point folks, face it, Vi$ta really is a a TRAIN WRECK!

Move on, why pay the Robber Barons of the like of the Billoriares of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer? These people care squat about you.

error correction was 95%

A world full of hardware but majority only run Windows Vista that CHIPS hates

Can I run Leopard in ASUS,MIS , INTEL and other cheap and excellent Taiwanese motherboard ?

Please face the reality , Mr CHIPS

"Selling Vista-Ready Hardware"

"Nearly half of business PCs are unable to meet the minimum hardware requirements for Vista, and 74 percent cannot meet the new operating system's premium memory requirements, according to a study conducted by solution provider Softchoice. The VAR surveyed 472 North American organizations last summer and fall.

That spells a golden opportunity for VARs to sell lots of hardware and consulting with project management services over the next two years Many VARs already saw strong hardware sales in fall 2006 in preparation for the move to Vista. BeckITSystems, for example, has seen an increase in sales of high-end PCs, as well as memory, storage and motherboards with Vista-ready CPUs.

In general, any computer older than two years will be unlikely to support Vista, according to the Softchoice study." http://smallurl.co.uk/?1733

When is Microsoft going to reboot Windows Vista advertising?

Simple. When you are selling an inherently defective Bloatfarm bloat driven dungpile, you keep it quiet.

If you market your worst product and the user experience is a dud, you actually HARM your other products because your potential customers think all your products might be Oldsmobiles.

Right now, given the miserable user experiences of Vista, it is NOT the right time to market Vista. Naybe MSFT would be better off aggressively marketing the Vista upgrade: XP.

Yeah, that'll do it,

Microsoft is the fat lion, fat and happy. They do not need to bother with marketing. The fat and happy lion just sits there, Microsoft knows Vista will sell and will sell a large number of copies. Microsoft does not have to try, good enough is enough for them and the consumers. Think of McDonalds.

Apple is the Starving lion and is always on the hunt to ensure its survival. This is good since it means Apple has to be better technology wise and product wise VS the PC/Windows commodity market. They have to produce better work, market it and keep at it 24/7 or else they starve. People are at thier best during times of struggle, they are forced to improvise and learn.

I have used PCs since the XT. All variations of DOS, Windows386, Windows 3.1,XP,NT,2000 etc.. Built my own custom Desktops and I knew windows inside out, how to troubleshoot it etc..

Last year was build a new PC time. I decided to give Apple a try I figured worst case, I can reformat and make it a fancy XP tower. So I purchased a Mac Pro tower, 23inch display 2.66 package. 12 months later and I would never go back to XP or PCs running Windows. Tiger is so much better than Vista or XP you really need to experience it for a few weeks to really understand what I mean. I highly recommend giving Apple a try and I used to make fun of Mac zealots in the past. I guess now I ended up on that camp but I do understand why they love the platform so much.

yes, mike if I only used a computer for email, internet browsing and some music, photo stuff (cause that about exhaust the list of software you can find for a MAC) and was willing to spent twice the money for hardware/software, then maybe, I would have given apple a try... Apple fanboys should face reality. Apples restrictive hardware options makes it far easier to build an OS for it and a lot less attractive. The < 4% Apple's market share just proves my point...

When's Apple OS going to work on non Mac systems?
I'm tired of Windows, would like to be able to install OS 10.5 on my PC. When I configure a Mac system on Apple's site, I then configure one on the HP site, the Hp with Windows Vista is about $1000 cheaper, common sense tells me to stick with Windows.

Jeeessh, so this is where you Apple fan boys are hiding out these days, on the Microsoft watch site of course! One would think you would be iTinkering all night long but it seems you need to get something out of your systems.

I only have one comment regarding this feature comparison never ending story. If Flip 3D is so bad and Previous version is so retarded (being right click n all), how come Apple combined these too features into something you think is absolutely genius???
"Switching through apps, retarded ...traveling back in time? Awesome man and check out that twirling star vortex behind the folders, makes you totally understand what you're doing.."

I think that you all need something new to nag about now that Microsoft is doing security the way you thought Apple was doing it, OSX has something like 42 CVE references since August and Vista around 7.

When it comes to marketing: I think why Microsoft doesn't need to spend that much money is simply spelled, Crysis, BioShock or Gears of War (yes coming to Windows). An operating system isn't anything without its applications and when it comes to consumer? Gaming is King!

Why is Linux, Mac OSX, BSD, Unix, and other nix operating systems better than Windows? One reason is sercurity.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2195730,00.html

link is titled: In millions of Windows, the perfect Storm is gathering

Quotes from the link: "A spectre is haunting the net but, outside of techie circles, nobody seems to be talking about it. The threat it represents to our security and wellbeing may be less dramatic than anything posed by global terrorism, but it has the potential to wreak much more havoc. And so far, nobody has come up with a good idea on how to counter it.

It's called the Storm worm. It first appeared at the beginning of the year, hidden in email attachments"

"Storm has been spreading steadily since last January, gradually constructing a huge botnet. It affects only computers running Microsoft Windows, but that means that more than 90 per cent of the world's PCs are vulnerable. Nobody knows how big the Storm botnet has become, but reputable security professionals cite estimates of between one million and 50 million computers worldwide"

"And last month Storm began attacking anti-spam sites focused on identifying it. It has also attacked the personal website of a malware expert who published an analysis of how it worked."

"At the moment, nobody knows who's behind this."
--------------------------------------------------
Isn't it time MS cleaned up its act and delivered secure software, instead of making all their efforts on DRM? Shouldn't the government mandate that they do so?

JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION
The end of Microsoft as we know it?
Commentary: A holding company in the mold of KKR, Berkshire Hathaway

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/more-evidence-microsofts-going-way/story.aspx?guid=%7B440BADC1%2D5825%2D482B%2D8976%2D153BEF719233%7D&dist=TNMostRead

Quotes from the link: "Bungie may not be an anomaly, but a test of the mechanism to break up Microsoft."

" Everyone has noticed that Microsoft is most successful at copying other people's ideas. This transformation into a holding company is a tribute to Warren Buffett.
Bill Gates is close friends with Buffett and one of his biggest admirers. Gates has everything within his personality to do what Buffett has done, and in much the same way."
-------------------------------------------------
By breaking up the company, selling parts of it, and holding a percentage of the stocks of the spinoffs, MS could beat the government, should it decide to break MS up. Or for that matter, the EU.

"We believe that we are only at the beginning of an inevitable turn in the way people perceive a Linux OS"
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4371228443.html
Quotes:"We are delighted to see a number of top local OEMs adhering to the program on a global basis," Bonnefon said. "We are very satisfied with the progress made thus far, and believe there is still a long way to go."

In particular, Bonnefon noted, "The number of first-time computer users within emerging markets is huge and acceptance of an operating system that is different more viable. Also, these are users that would be more sensitive to pricing."

Looking ahead, "We believe that we are only at the beginning of an inevitable turn in the way people perceive a Linux OS," she said. And, as for the business side of delivering Ubuntu-powered desktops and laptops, "We will continue to listen closely to the channel, conceive and adapt services per demand, and develop solutions that best fit the needs of our partners," Bonnefon concluded.

Marco , the wwww.desktoplinux.com is written by the Linux jihad , Mr Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

To analyse the trend and future of Linux, one can not base on Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols report.

"Fallout from Office Open XML Vote Continues"
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2202404,00.asp
Quotes:"The committee's rules state that at least 50 percent of the voting members must participate in order for a standard to move on to the next step in the process of being adopted. All that voting members need to do to be seen as participating is to cast an abstention, but the new P members have failed to even do that, Updegrove said."

"SC 34 is a vital committee for the IT industry, with many important existing and potential standards under its care," he said.

This situation underlines the vulnerability of the traditional standard-setting process to those who want to manipulate the rules, which are based on the assumption that participants are acting in good faith, he said.

"The rules are also biased toward making participation easy, in order to allow everyone affected by standards to have a voice in their creation. As standards become ever more important to vendors as well as to the rest of the world, it appears that those rules will need to be overhauled," Updegrove said. uotes:

Ubuntu 7.10 ... OS X Leopard ... Must I Choose?
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/ubuntu_710_os_x.html
Quotes:"As you're no doubt sick of hearing by now, this week heralds two major events in the personal computing world: the release of Apple's OS X "Leopard", and Ubuntu Linux 7.10. Guess which one I want? Both."
"So, in the meantime, I've got to settle for Ubuntu 7.10 to feed my alternative-to-Windows tinkering habits. That or break out the credit card ..."

Macro, MAC leopard OS X is yet to hit the street.

All you decisions to buy Mac OS X is based on perception and anti-Microsoft sentiment.

Buying OS X will definitely break your credit card

Whats hilarious is people driving 60K vehicles buying a 400 dollar PC filled with bloatware. We see them walk in the store and they will look for the cheapest PC possible then they whine about it not having the Aero. Lol. PC users are so stingy, now I know why apple ignores that segment who looks for cheap at all cost.

Chips
"Figures don't lie ....but liars can figure!"
Chips (the Skype liar) uses a lot a worthless figures and never tells anyone the "Flip side" of his argurements.
Leopard is near enough to a copy of Vista that no one can dispute, but ... Leopard has how many drivers compared to Vista ??... one hell of a lot less !!!
You (chips and marco) are grasping at straws while you sink into the quicksand further and further.
What no adds for Linux this time chips ?? I see Marco has tried though !
And why does Marco and Chips want people to buy a MAC ....simple ...less people using Windows, they would do anything to achieve that, including turning people to Macs, who would then (they hope) turn to Linux after they didn't like the restrictions of a Mac.
Mind you people would then find themselves in a dilema ...when they found they didn't like Linux either !!!!
The "grass is greener on the other side of the hill" except it never is !!

Paul said: Sounds familiar , "unfriendly reviews" by Mr Joe Wilcox

And from a whole lot of other people too. If you think Joe was the only blogger who dissed Vista, then you've got to take your head out of the sand.

Vista has become a horrid experience for many people. It is also a security nightmare for corporations and that's why quite a number of them have prohibited employees from installing it.

Neil said: Leopard is near enough to a copy of Vista that no one can dispute, but ... Leopard has how many drivers compared to Vista ??... one hell of a lot less !!!

Leopard also has to drive less hardware! What's the matter with you, Neil? Can't you drop those Micro$oft blinders and try to THINK for once?

Leopard is for comsumer market but Vista covers from consumers to enterprise .

Since when your CEO use a Mac connect to Active Directory and run SAP client while synchronize his Nokia E90 with Leopard ?

Is Maddog and Chips living in this planet ?

Paul, you seem to be out of touch with reality.

Vista is a mess and wasn't ready for prime time when released. Many Windows XP users haven't switched. Some aren't even allowed to because of grave security concerns. The internet is full of Vista horror stories. Do you deliberately avoid reading them? The bad reviews are hardly from Joe (or his eWeek colleagues) alone.

By the way, the boys use mainly BSD and Linux over here. We ain't no Mac shop. And most of the XP users here aren't going to be switching because Vista is a security nightmare.

But the software development company down the street, well, *THEY* are a Mac shop. And they seem to be doing fine without any Windows versions on any PC, thank you.

Evan wrote:

"yes, mike if I only used a computer for email, internet browsing and some music, photo stuff (cause that about exhaust the list of software you can find for a MAC) and was willing to spent twice the money for hardware/software, then maybe, I would have given apple a try... Apple fanboys should face reality"

Let's get the fact that I have never owned an Apple out of the way so you are unable to accuse me of being an Apple fanboy.

Second thing is that the consumer is fickle. Third thing is those things in your post that you sneer at are the majority of the things that majority of the consumers who walk into a high street store will be doing with their computers. Web browsing, emailing, listening to music, viewing their videos and digital photos.

If Apple makes those tasks easy and Vista makes them awful, and you couple that with the current excellent brand recognition that Apple has you can easily see that MS has a problem with Vista. Apple is a cool brand where Microsoft is not.

If your Apple PC looks (both hardware and software wise) better than your neighbours then [the consumer] feels they have got their moneys worth [even if they spent twice as much]

This is how market forces work. There is no point trying to deny it.

Expanding on what William said, Evan is spreading some BS about Apple. First, if you look at a variety of Mac websites, you will find long lists of varied applications for the Mac platform. It is not so easy to "exhaust the list of software" you can find.

Second, Evan focuses too much on price. It's true that Mac computers cost more than Windows PCs, but Apple is selling to a more upscale market. The Mac's selling points are style and ease of use, and for that Apple charges a premium. Infiniti owners don't complain that they pay twice as much as a regular Nissan--for that price they get great styling and luxurious amenities. Ditto for the Mac.

If you are price-sensitive, then you won't buy Apple. Period. What's there to argue about?

Just like Infiniti, Apple makes good profit from selling upmarket. This is not a reason to criticize Apple or the Mac.

BTW, I went to Dell.com and Apple.com and priced two similar systems...

The only "stylish" PC you can find at Dell today is from the XPS series. So I priced an XPS 720 ($1,789).

At Apple, I priced an iMac 20" with 2GB memory: $1,649.

To be fair, the XPS is aimed at serious gamers but putting that aside, the two computers are quite similar.

Apple is not interesting in serving the Walmart crowd or the cheap misers who end up costing the company money in support costs. Look at DELL stock, it is in the toilet. Apple was smart restricting themselves to the a higher quality customer base who is willing to pay more for a premium product. Bigger profit margins, lower costs and shareholders doing well.

Most of the Misers pirate thier software anyways, I wonder how many Vista copiers are downloade via torrents and cracked. If they balk at paying over 399 for a PC do you really think they are willing to pay 150 dollars to buy windows vista home premium upgrade which costs almost half the price of the DELL cheapo box?

Microsoft will not appeal EU monopoly fine

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/microsoft_europe_agreement/

Quotes from the link: "The vanquished vendor will not attempt to overturn the European Court of First Instance's September verdict. It'll now have to open up access to APIs to let other developers, including open sourcers, interoperate with Windows servers."

"Neelie Kroes said: I told Microsoft that its royalty rates were too high for the patents they claim are applicable to the interoperability information."

"It'll (M$) now levy a one-off charge of €10,000. The royalty on related patents will also be slashed from 5.95 per cent to 0.4 per cent."
--------------------------------------------------
Why am I looking for the hidden delaying tactic or motive here on the part of M$ ? THat IS their standard play book.

AAPL UP AND UP AND UP!!! UP UP UP!!!

One more comment about Evan's ignorant statement regarding the price of Macs vs Windows PCs...

I went to Circuit City and CompUSA, and compared the prices of their all-in-one integrated PCs from Sony and HP--these machines try to emulate the iMac--and found that they actually cost more than a similarly configured iMac!!! That's utterly astonishing.

As Cool pointed out, if you're shopping for cheap PC boxes, then you can't consider Apple. But, then, if you're really so tight, you have no sense of style anyway, so who cares?!

I do not know why people bring up Leopard vs Linux vs Vista.
Each one is different!
Besides Leopard can only run on an Apple Mac !
And notice that the people who bring this up are Linux ! They are using Leopard as a smoke screen for their real objective ...trying get people of Vista and onto Linux.
But which Linux do you go onto "supposedly" free UBUNTU where you have to pay for help, or Novell where pay up front and then still pay for help !!
Leopard is for Mac users ONLY, and does not work on a PC so you would have to buy a MAC if you already owned a PC !
Most people who were pc users who open minds did not mind the changes in Vista (I know I didn't), most of the people complaining about Vista are Linux people (Chips, Marco the main two, both Linux Zealots).

Chuck wrote: "apple made transitions, like 68K to PPC, OS9 to OS X and PPC to Intel look like a cake walk. " ... except that it didn't make the transitions for the applications that run on them or the drivers that link devices to them look like anything but a disaster.

It only takes a point release of a recent Apple OS for one to have to go scrambling for new drivers for common devices like printers and cameras.

Why are there so many Mac Fanboys on a Microsoft related website?