The First Look
While Vista has numerous new features Microsoft is hoping will entice users to upgrade, the most immediate and visible change is the new Aero interface that will be the preferred look for Vista. Since Microsoft is making a big deal of it both for reasons of eye-candy (whether we like to admit to it or not, eye-candy sells) and productivity allowed by using GPU-acceleration, this is where we will start our look.
One disadvantage of Microsoft's long cycle time between releasing XP and Vista is that their main competition in the consumer space, Apple, has had the chance to release several OS revisions in between the releases of XP and Vista, and will likely release one more before Vista ships. Given this lead, it shouldn't come as a shock that certain elements of Aero/Vista end up looking like Mac OS X, and while Microsoft isn't going to admit to it any time soon, we're not going to ignore it. Mac OS X implemented several good ideas both in terms of eye-candy and usability/productivity, so we're certainly not going to complain if Microsoft has borrowed some of these ideas for Aero. However, we expect that they'll try to improve on the design of Aero over Mac OS X as well.
In general, Microsoft has ditched the traditional Windows blue for a white color that wouldn't be out of place in Mac OS X. As with colors in XP, this is all user-configurable, and several different template colors are included, but the resemblance is none the less uncanny. The entire interface is more or less streamlined, with more curves, and the semi-transparent windows are immediately visible. To some extent, it can be argued that transparent windows are helpful for productivity reasons by letting the user see through the window to whatever is below, but since this only applies to the borders, it's more along the lines of functional eye-candy. At any rate, we're a bit skewed towards eye-candy around here (Mac usage has shot up immensely since Anand started covering that market, with at least 3 of our editors admitting to their Mac addiction), so we don't really have any complaints about it. Aero is an aesthetically pleasing UI that doesn't decrease usability.
With that said, the eye-candy covering every window can only distract for a moment; we need to talk about some of the interface changes Microsoft has made to Vista in general. Vista is the biggest change in Microsoft's human-computer interaction (HCI) guidelines since Windows 95 launched, replacing several methods with new designs. The menu toolbar is gone in many applications, including Explorer itself, and frankly it's very disorienting at first. The "classic menus" as Microsoft calls them can be enabled for those who miss them, and indeed we did enable them shortly after we installed Vista, but as they'll ultimately be removed entirely in some future Windows version now that they've been deprecated, users will need to get used to the new system at some point. After spending the better part of a week forcing ourselves to use Vista with the classic menus turned off, we can get around about as well as we could with the classic menus in the first place, though there's a fair bit of keyboard shortcut usage thrown in. For a glimpse into the direction Microsoft wants to take us, the Beta 2 version of Microsoft Office 2007 implements a navigation system Microsoft calls "ribbons". These large, tabbed, icon filled menu+toolbar replacements are designed to make it easier for a user to find what he or she needs in an application chock full of options.
Other, less immediate HCI changes include using Explorer to browse folders, where Microsoft has moved even farther away from using the old hierarchical sidebar in favor of a more abstracted system based on virtual folders. Search is also much more pervasive in Vista, as there's a search bar in nearly every Explorer window and in many other Microsoft applications too; it has a very strong resemblance to how Apple implemented Spotlight on Mac OS X. Last but not least, one no longer needs to "start" Windows to shut it down; Microsoft is keeping the start menu, but has replaced the Start button with a Windows icon.
While Vista has numerous new features Microsoft is hoping will entice users to upgrade, the most immediate and visible change is the new Aero interface that will be the preferred look for Vista. Since Microsoft is making a big deal of it both for reasons of eye-candy (whether we like to admit to it or not, eye-candy sells) and productivity allowed by using GPU-acceleration, this is where we will start our look.
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| Click to enlarge |
One disadvantage of Microsoft's long cycle time between releasing XP and Vista is that their main competition in the consumer space, Apple, has had the chance to release several OS revisions in between the releases of XP and Vista, and will likely release one more before Vista ships. Given this lead, it shouldn't come as a shock that certain elements of Aero/Vista end up looking like Mac OS X, and while Microsoft isn't going to admit to it any time soon, we're not going to ignore it. Mac OS X implemented several good ideas both in terms of eye-candy and usability/productivity, so we're certainly not going to complain if Microsoft has borrowed some of these ideas for Aero. However, we expect that they'll try to improve on the design of Aero over Mac OS X as well.
In general, Microsoft has ditched the traditional Windows blue for a white color that wouldn't be out of place in Mac OS X. As with colors in XP, this is all user-configurable, and several different template colors are included, but the resemblance is none the less uncanny. The entire interface is more or less streamlined, with more curves, and the semi-transparent windows are immediately visible. To some extent, it can be argued that transparent windows are helpful for productivity reasons by letting the user see through the window to whatever is below, but since this only applies to the borders, it's more along the lines of functional eye-candy. At any rate, we're a bit skewed towards eye-candy around here (Mac usage has shot up immensely since Anand started covering that market, with at least 3 of our editors admitting to their Mac addiction), so we don't really have any complaints about it. Aero is an aesthetically pleasing UI that doesn't decrease usability.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
With that said, the eye-candy covering every window can only distract for a moment; we need to talk about some of the interface changes Microsoft has made to Vista in general. Vista is the biggest change in Microsoft's human-computer interaction (HCI) guidelines since Windows 95 launched, replacing several methods with new designs. The menu toolbar is gone in many applications, including Explorer itself, and frankly it's very disorienting at first. The "classic menus" as Microsoft calls them can be enabled for those who miss them, and indeed we did enable them shortly after we installed Vista, but as they'll ultimately be removed entirely in some future Windows version now that they've been deprecated, users will need to get used to the new system at some point. After spending the better part of a week forcing ourselves to use Vista with the classic menus turned off, we can get around about as well as we could with the classic menus in the first place, though there's a fair bit of keyboard shortcut usage thrown in. For a glimpse into the direction Microsoft wants to take us, the Beta 2 version of Microsoft Office 2007 implements a navigation system Microsoft calls "ribbons". These large, tabbed, icon filled menu+toolbar replacements are designed to make it easier for a user to find what he or she needs in an application chock full of options.
Other, less immediate HCI changes include using Explorer to browse folders, where Microsoft has moved even farther away from using the old hierarchical sidebar in favor of a more abstracted system based on virtual folders. Search is also much more pervasive in Vista, as there's a search bar in nearly every Explorer window and in many other Microsoft applications too; it has a very strong resemblance to how Apple implemented Spotlight on Mac OS X. Last but not least, one no longer needs to "start" Windows to shut it down; Microsoft is keeping the start menu, but has replaced the Start button with a Windows icon.
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Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Excuse me, what? How about this then: http://www.macworld.com/2006/05/reviews/osxfirewal...">http://www.macworld.com/2006/05/reviews/osxfirewal..."The emphasis is on incoming. As it ships from Apple, the firewall does not monitor traffic that may be originating from your own computer. If your Mac gets possessed by a malware application that then attempts to attack or infect other computers via your Internet connection (a not-uncommon trick), OS X’s firewall won’t, by default, pay any attention. And, there’s no way to change this default setting from your System Preferences. To force the firewall to monitor outbound traffic, you must use Terminal’s command-line interface."
See - IT CAN monitor and block outbound traffic, contrary to what you say. It's just a matter of configuring it properly. You should at least correct your article and stop saying OSX ipfw CAN'T track outbound connections. You can say this: it's SET UP not to monitor outbound connections BY DEFAULT but anyone can CONFIGURE it to monitor outbound connections either through third party GUI like Flying Buttress or via command line. Then you won't look like a liar to any Mac guy who cares to read your review.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
I see your point, but I believe there's nothing in the article that needs changing. Tiger's firewall can't block outbound connections without having to drop to the terminal to muck with IPFW, I do not classify that as an ability any more than I classify Vista x64 as being amateur driver programmer friendly(since you need to drop to the terminal to turn off the x64 integrity check). When a version of Mac OS X ships with a proper GUI for controlling outbound firewalling(as is the Apple way), then it will be capable by a reasonable definition. Right now it's nothing more than a quirk that results from using the BSD base.Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Excellent point! So, when (and if) Mac OS X will see its share of virii and malware, THEN Apple will incorporate outbound connection settings in OS X GUI - right now it's not needed by Mac users, and the rare exceptions are easily treated with third party apps and command line.OK, got your point, agreed, issue closed. Thanks :)
bjtags - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Vista x64I have been pounding on it for 4 days never crash or even farted once!!!
Have all HalfLife 2 and CS running Just Great!!!
Had at one time 10 IE windows open, MediaPlayer, Steam updating, download driver,
updating windows drivers, and 3 folder explorer windows open, and tranfering
4gig movie to HD!!!
Still ran fine... I do have AMD 4800 x2 with 2gigs...
Poser - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Two questions:1. What's the ship date for Vista supposed to be? Q4 of 2006?
2. I seem to remember that speech recognition would be included and integrated with Vista. Is it considered too much of a niche toy to even mention, not considered to be part of the OS, or am I just plain wrong about it's inclusion?
It was a extremely well written article. Very nice job.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
1. Expected completion is Q4 with some business customers getting access to the final version at that time. It won't be released to the public until 2007 however.2. You're right, speech recognition is included. You're also right in that given the amount of stuff we had to cover in one article it was too much of a niche; voice recognition so far is still too immature to replace typing.
ashay - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
"Dogfooding" is when a company uses their own new product (not necessarily beta) for internal use.(maybe even in critical production systems).Term comes from "eat your own dog-food". Meaning if you're a dog food maker, the CEO and execs eat the stuff. If they like it they dogs hopefully will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one%27s_own_dog_f...">Wikipedia link
fishbits - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Yes, I know it's still beta, we'll see. The UAC and signed drivers schemes sound like they'll be flops right out of the gate. Average user will quickly realize he can't install or use anything until he adopts a "just click 'Yes'" attitude, which will reward him with a functioning device/running program. I've lost count of how many drivers I've installed under XP that were for name-brand devices, yet didn't have the official seal of approval on them. Again, get trained to "just click 'Yes'" in order to be able to do anything useful. Without better information given to the user at this decision point, all the scheme does is add a few mouse-clicks and no security. Like when you install a program and your security suite gives a "helpful" warning like "INeedToRun.exe is trying to access feccflm.dll ... no recommendation."As expected, it looks like the productivity gains of GPU-acceleration were immediately swallowed up by GUI overhead. Whee! "The users can solve this through future hardware upgrades." Gotcha. For what it's worth, the gadgets/widgets look needlessly large and ugly, especially for simply displaying things like time, cpu temp/usage. Then it sounds like we're going to have resource-hungry programs getting starved because of GPU sharing, or will have an arms-race of workarounds to get their hands on the power they think they need.
Ah well, I've got to move to 64-bit for RAM purposes relatively soon. Think I'll wait a year or two after Vista 64 to let it get stable, faster, and better supported. Then hopefully the programs I'll need to upgrade can be purchased along the lines of a normal upgrade cycle. Games I'm actually not as worried about, as I expect XP/DX9 support to continue for a decent bit and will retain an XP box and install Vista on a brand new one when the time comes.
shamgar03 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
I really hope that will mean for BETTER GPU performance not worse. I would really just like to be able to boot into a game only environment where you have something like a grub interface to pick games and it only loads the needed stuff for the game.darkdemyze - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
beta implies "still in developement". chances are very high performance will see an increase by the time of release. I agree with your seconds statement though.