Walt Mossberg: A Windows to Help You Forget
Think about that for a minute.
Windows is the most popular desktop operating system by a long shot, and Windows XP, most of which was designed and written ten years ago, is the most popular version. In other words, most computer users are running 10-year-old technology.
To most computer users, overall industry progress has seemed stagnant for nearly a decade. It’s as if the majority of computer users in 2000 were using Windows 3.0.
Way to go, Microsoft.
The rest of this review is odd. Mossberg says OS X’s advantage over Windows is “no longer true”, the comparison has become a “toss up”, and “Apple will have to scramble” to become better than Windows again. But then, after praising a few shallow features, he mentions many massive shortcomings and headaches. It sounds like Windows 7 is a lot better than Windows XP (which, based on my brief time using it in VMware, seems accurate), but is still in a different league from OS X in many important areas. Has Mossberg always been the king of trumpeting diminished expectations, or is this a new thing? Is Microsoft a major Wall Street Journal advertiser?
(via marco)
I’m a regular user of XP, Win7, OS X, and Linux. There’s honestly not much difference in the actual operating systems anymore. You can make them all do pretty much the same things one way or another. To say one is “better” than another is largely opinion based anyway. Some operating systems perform better than others in certain tasks, but fall short in others.
The true measure of a system now, IMHO:
- How easy is it to use? Although this is largely circumstantial since you can modify and customize your OS as well as add tools that make tasks easier.
- What software is available? This requirement is disappearing too as more and more software packages are available on all three platforms ~ or as more software moves to the “cloud”.
- Can I share data with the other platforms? Again, largely moot as most software is available on all platforms, or an equivalent package is. Plus, file standards are (mostly) followed by software developers.
Just my two cents. I honestly don’t have a favorite, except by task. I prefer the mac when editing video or day-to-day use (I really dig the macbook hardware). I prefer Win7 for my development needs, as Visual Studio and the Office tools are all just integrated so nicely. And I prefer Linux for my server needs and because it’s FREE!
(via teejayhanton)
This mirrors my two cents pretty accurately. OS X is still my favorite desktop OS, but the gap has been narrowed substantially. And really, what’s so bad about XP? So what if most of it was designed ten years ago? Has OS X really changed that much from a user’s perspective in the past nine years? I started using OS X with 10.3, and since then, I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of change from a user’s perspective (other than Dashboard in 10.4 and Time Machine in 10.5). I’m all for improvement, but let’s not pretend that Apple has some huge advantage over anyone else out there right now. No OS is perfect, and every single one of them has room for improvement. And arguably, Microsoft is doing more work to improve their desktop operating systems than Apple is these days…
