CrunchGear

Good analysis. But there are a few points worth mentioning. Vista is a multiplatform OS where as OS X will only even run on a Mac. And security comes into play here as well. More sensitive data used by companies are stored on windows based PCs, making it a target for attacks. Besides having fun with a user’s computer, there is no reason to attack a Mac, and hence attackers just don’t bother…

OSX can now be run on windows based pcs, check it out. Its called OSX glass I believe, it just recently came out.

Well that is a great trick if it works. Mac has been able to run PC applications and handle PC files since system 9. Now that the dou processor is on the market, a Mac cand run both OS X and Windows at the same time, or boot in either platform. The PC world has been locked out for a long, long time.

Wrong, Chris. While there are some “Hackintoshes”, none of them are Apple-supported as yet and have to go through some rather elaborate hoops to get each of the software updates once they come out.

wrong, osx had tons of viruses. OSX has twice the market share as os9. It just these OSX is to much for these wannba windows hackers. It takes a true hacker to crack the Big Cat. Not a typical windows hack.

Good article. I think it will be good to see this comparison again when Leopard comes out. Vista will have been out for a few months so we can test its speed and security a bit more and we can test the new features OS X has added.

As a windows user (yet to upgrade to Vista yet), I am glad to see Windows rival OS X in a long overdue upgrade. No matter which OS you use, when you have competition, the product will become better.

Here’s to an open intelligent discussion and no flaming. We will see how long it lasts.

Achinda99…that last comment is just shamless trolling, or you are simply ignorant.
‘course, my mac wouldn’t be worth hacking, much as I’m sure your pee cee wouldn’t but what about a casino….
http://www.apple.com/itpro/profiles/mgm/
I’ts not just happy clappy home users in mac land ya know….

Interesting comparison. I too appreciate unbiased review, though I don’t think most mac fan-boys will fully appreciate that most PC exploits are driven by profit, though I certainly do hope security has been improved in Vista. So far my experience of Vista is lacustre, it’s fancy and easier to navigate around, but the bugs, my god, can they stop it crashing please (video problems). It doesn’t even install on my second computer and has now left XP partially damaged as a result.

Over all decent article but a few spots missed….I would have mentioned the driver issues with vista vs OS X…..Many people are having problems with the drivers and upgrading video cards to properly use Vista…not needed on the Mac. The way OS X handles drivers is just light years ahead!

Also, I think the comparison on the kernels where only surface deep. The NT kernel has never been very secure, that’s one reason why XP has so many holes in it. Unix has been hardened over the last 30-40 years and is an industrial strength operating system and can do things that windows will not ever be able to do as long as it continues to lug around all of that insecure legacy code.

Also the comment that no one targets the Mac because no senstive data is held on there has already been debunked. On the surface it appears to be true, but underneath there is a more fundamental reason why hackers also choose not to target the Mac. Its Unix. It is structurally way more difficult to hack than windows. Especially as a home user platform….

Come on….when was the last time you hacked a Unix box! It’s very difficult. So they target the low hanging fruit available with Windows instead. That’s the truth!

That means we Mac people love the existence of Windows as an easier target, since it draws the attention of those bored-but-lazy hackers! I wonder what the optimum (higher) market share would be for Apple? Apparently we have not gone past it, anyway. Buy Apple stock!

Bumfight?

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Read that, then decide if Vista is for you.

Cannot agree with you abou Safari. I’ve been using it for years now, and to say that “sites fail to load properly almost by default” is a load of rubbish. You either don’t use it, or haven’t for many years. I spend nearly the whole day on the web as pasrt of my job, using Safari. I cannot rememebr the last time it did not load a site.

I think the evaluation criteria are weak and are more impressions than real difference. To paraphrase, ‘I just like this better’. Certainly not criteria that would lead me to say ‘Vista pounced all over OS X’ Also, from what I have heard Vista performance is pathetic compared to XP are you trying to say that OS X is even worse? That is certainly not my experience.

Interesting article. I’m suprised to see Vista win on UI.

shinobi -

Some of the things you say are simply incorrect.

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Many people are having problems with the drivers and upgrading video cards to properly use Vista…not needed on the Mac.
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The above isn’t precisely true. People are having trouble with the drivers from NVIDIA and ATI, as the drivers aren’t yet finalized, but graphics cards typically work ‘out of the box’ with Vista’s generic drivers: certainly well enough for most people. Furthermore, NVIDIA and ATI’s problems are rather temporary.

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The way OS X handles drivers is just light years ahead!
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This is simply wrong. OS X has drivers because it’s a closed system. However, that has nothing to do with the “way OS X handled drivers.” That was re-done in Vista to be more stable than in XP and so on. I believe that Vista now has a more robust driver system, architecturally, then OS X.

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The NT kernel has never been very secure, that’s one reason why XP has so many holes in it.
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No, the reason why Windows is so insecure is because of all the old, bloated, unnecessary, and insecure code in Windows. The NT Kernal is _very_ solid, and pretty damn secure.

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Unix has been hardened over the last 30-40 years and is an industrial strength operating system and can do things that windows will not ever be able to do as long as it continues to lug around all of that insecure legacy code.
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The above isn’t exactly untrue, but it’s worth pointing out in all the glory of misconception….

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Also the comment that no one targets the Mac because no senstive data is held on there has already been debunked.
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Really?

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It is structurally way more difficult to hack than windows. Especially as a home user platform…
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That’s probably true. Of course, you can also point out that a majority of Windows malware is installed with user permission. Well, the initial malware… until you allow a trojan in.

I’m not going to debate on your interpretation of each feature comparison. However, where I would debate you is in the weighting of each feature. That weighting has to be done individually based on the use of the computer.

If a person spends hours in a browser on the web, then security is far more important than the UI. And yet, you seem to weight each equally.

I know many users who rarely interact with the UI at all. Rather, they simply use one or two programs all day. Again, the UI will make little difference unless it is constantly interrupting the user in some way instead of fading into the background.

Without such weighting, your conclusion is questionable.

Further, you call Vista “peppy,” but do not give any data to support that conclusion. How did you judge that? One thing I’ve noticed is that Microsoft applications open very fast on Windows-based computers, but then go no faster than their Mac cousins. Further, is “peppiness” the main thing that results in more productivity as you imply? If you’re interrupted several times with nag screens, on a faster computer, even a slower computer results in more productivity.

Your final analysis may be correct. I dunno. But it seems to me that it is not based on anything measurable, just personal opinion. You could have saved yourself a lot of space by saying, “I like it!”

Saying Apple can handle drivers better than Vista is like saying Ford can handle Ford engines easier than Chevy can handle Ford engines.

Apple controls the system. Vista HAS to work with millions upon millions of different hardware and software setups. To see vista successfully install as succesfully as it does with all the variations out there should be applauded, not condemned.

WOW you really crawled up Bill’s ass on this one. Hope you were paid well.

I realize you had to be VERY selective and EXTREMELY biased to give any of Microsoft’s imitations of Mac OS old features a win and I’m sure those who have any experience with both OS will recognize this as a paid puff piece.

In Microsoft’s defence if they didn’t have paid shills to lie they wouldn’t have a single article that says positive things about their 6 billion dollar boat anchor virus magnet.

Enjoyed your non-inflamatory comparison between Vista and OSX. It is clear that M$ has improved enough to give Apple some serious work to do. Leopard awaits….
One area you did not compare in Vista which is such a joy in using a Mac is software installation and DLL management. My XP box at work is forever having problems with DLL conflicts when new software is installed. Macs do not have this problem so users are “relatively” free to install software as desired. This has been thoroughly explained by other websites. Has Vista implemented a new architecture for DLL’s to solve this problem?

I’m sure that is the ultimate version of Vista, and not the home edition, you are comparing to OSX. How many PCs will come preloaded with the two most basic Vista editions which do not match up in any significant way to OS X? I think it will be most of them. So now, which Vista experience will the average Joe have? probably not a great one (see latest Get a Mac ad).

How old are you?

This must be the dumbest most useless review done by someone with clearly no clue. For starter, you don’t compare ANYTHING from Apple to that garbage from MicroSHIT. Then, if you insist on doing so nonetheless, and actually find something good about Vista, then I recommend you don’t open your mouth in public in front of people that actually have a clue. Vista is a piece of shit in the exact same way that every single Microcrap product is.

Why is it Apple vs. World! Apple is not fighting the World. It is giving soul and brains to Window’s Zombies. It is showing a path to freedom to Window’s slaves.

The Macintosh user environment is document-centric, while the Windows user environment is application-centric. Therein lies the fundamental difference in the ease of use of a Macintosh as compared to the extremely painful user interaction with a Windows PC.

Just because a Raven (ugly Microsoft’s Windows) has stuck a few colorful peacock feathers (Vista’s Technicolor look) in its tail does not mean it has turned itself into a Peacock (Apple’s Mac OS X).

6 billion dollar boat anchor virus magnet….
That is a good one. I am playing with Vista right how as we speak. It’s not good to be honest. I worked on Windows all my career. I hate that eveything that I do give me a security prompt. Like I wasn’t sure the first time that I want to do it.

I read the entire article as well as all of the comments thus far.

While I have not yet used Windows Vista, I have gained a decent perception as to what it is like to use. I have also researched many of the features that it comes with.

When reading this article, the first thing that I noticed (which has already been mentioned) was how the author bases most of his comparisons on sheer opinion. Clearly statements such as: “I prefer Vista’s sidebar over Dashboard,” are statements of personal opinion and are not based of fact.

Second, why not include some of the features in OS X Leopard? Surely there is plenty of information and facts on the apple website to include in the debate. You are essentially comparing an old operating system against a new one? This is the equivalent of comparing Vista against XP. You should compare XP to Tiger and then see where they stand., or else include features in OS X Leopard.

Third, wouldn’t a user prefer to have more “widgets” available for use than the small number of gadgets that are available for the PC? In addition, Dashboard is an ingenius way of presenting Widgets. Becasue there are so many widgets available, wouldn’t it make sense that a user have more running at one time. In this case, it is important to have the widgets displayable through a button so that they do not clutter the desktop. When windows develops more “gadgets” where will they go? If some of them use considerable desktop they will be less desireable becasue they cannot be hidden with a button.

Finally, you barely scratched the surface on many of the features that Macs have which Windows does not. An example of this would be Microsoft’s amazing video chat capabilities. What about Spaces or Time Machine?

I conclude that this article is inconclusive at best, and may even prove the opposite.

@ Viswakarma: Wow you are exactly the kind of Mac douchebag that most of us can’t stand. In what world does it make sense to compare your computer to birds? Lay off the LSD son…

I tried the betas of Vista. I bought my first Mac the day Micro$oft released Vista. All I can say is ……. “Thank God for Apple!!”

My favorite quote from the article:

“Whereas OS X still has a number of strange Mac-isms stuck in its craw (red, yellow, and green window buttons, anyone?), Windows is extremely straightforward.”

Okay, here we see the background of the author as a Windows user. Mac OS X has these “strange” things which Windows doesn’t. As a long time Mac user, Windows Vista appears to have these strange Windows-isms stuck in it’s craw. The Mac is extremely straightforward.

I was surprised you handed the “Widget vs. Gadgets” to Vista. You showed Dashboard with 12 widgets running and the panel for adding more. Yet in the Vista shot, you show four Gadgets and in no way show how to add more. I would task you to have 12 Gadgets running under Windows and see whether you like it as much as Widgets.

In regards to Safari, I use it every day. Perhaps you could give me an example of web sites which you discovered do not work with Safari. After all, since you must have used it for this comparison, you obviously came across one or two, right? Or are you just repeating the FUD? Because I can’t say that I’ve seen one in ages.

Hey, this is the internet and you’re entitled to your opinion. That’s cool. But I’d argue this is more of an opinion piece than a review. Still, an entertaining read.

Michael Griffiths, you said:
OS X has drivers because it’s a closed system. However, that has nothing to do with the “way OS X handled drivers.”—can you provide clarification. i don’t quite get what you say, thanks.

He is saying that OS X handles drivers fine because you can’t change anything about your Mac. There are hundreds of companies that make components that you can fill your PC with. So if I want a graphics card I go out and buy any of them. If you have a Mac you just use what it came with, so of course it works. If no one ever updated the hardware in a PC all the drivers would be fine for PCs too, but then it would be a Mac, and who wants one of those?

I just want to point out that while a Unix box is more difficult to hack it comes down to a cost/benefit relationship…If something is more difficult to hack and there are MUCH fewer potential targets it really isn’t worth hacking…If Macs were 80% of the PC market, they would get hacked…it may be a little more difficult but it will happen

Pilster:
There is a huge difference between a some companies that use Macs to power their multimedia applications and large scale institutions that use PCs to back significant financial information. I work for a fortune 100 company with $30+ billion in revenue and the only Macs you will find here is in the design department. With that kind of money in play, it doesn’t matter what system you are using, hacks will be created.

BTW, the iTunes platform has already been hacked by the same guy who broke the DVD encryption. Why? Because there was serious financial gain for doing it.

Brian, that’s not true. There is a whole slew of graphics cards that run on a mac and they’re not by Apple. Try nVidia.

I’ve got a NEW nVidia card running on XP. The problem is that it works like the poop XP came with. I periodically have to disconnect my digital cable from the PC and connect an analog cable then reboot to get the card to come back. I bought both XP Pro SP2 and this card only after I found out that Windows 2000 sucks on high performance LCD monitors.

I have an nVidia card on my mac which is connected to the same monitor. I’ve never had any problems with the mac using this card. never. Oh, yeah. And my mac is over 6 years old.

I could go on and on with PC driver problems. I have more than a few right now on my PCs. I have NONE with any of my macs. none.

here’s my opinion:

if you want to play games or use very specific software (to run work programs at home) get a PC

if you want to just surf the net, download music, and upload pictures/video/ do normal tasks - get a mac.

I don’t play many games anymore and switched to mac a year or so back, great decision - I can surf porn sites without worries and never have any malicious crap to worry about. The PC I used before seemed like I spent half my time trying to get a casino game or some other crap off of my computer because one of my friends was on the internet for 5 minutes and somehow managed to obtain something that took seemingly forever to eradicate, even with all the software in the world to remove it. Will vista fix these problems? Who knows.

And for the dumb argument that hackers just target PCs because of market share, get a clue. Sure, they sometimes will target pcs for that fact, but most viruses are meant to piss you off not do anything productive. I’m sure there’s many super PC douches out there that want to end apple’s existence and have given their left nut to bring them down but were unsuccessful. There’s enough macs out there to make it worth it to screw them with some sort of virus, and if it was easy enough it would have been done by now.

The new macs can run windows XP under boot camp anyway so you can get the best of both worlds. Macs aren’t for everyone, but for someone like me who wants to just be able to do the everyday tasks of screwing around and sending email without having anything to worry about, they’re ideal.

who gives a crap anyway.

Speech Recognition…Hands down Vista??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeC7HpsHxo

Don’t make me laugh.

“Peter, I use Macs every day. I still have no idea what the green button does except move my window around a little.”

John, I’m going to help clarify this for you but shame on you for not knowing this! Back to macgeek 101 for you. The color choice was one of the touted features way back in OS X 10.0. I use the graphite appearance therefore I don’t see the colors and tend to forget they exist.

The specific colors were chosen to mimic colors of a street light.

Red(X): Traffic Light-Stop, OS X- if you highlight it shows an “x” to close a window. Pretty straight forward to me.

Yellow(_): Traffic Light or Traffic signal - Slow, proceed with caution/give way to pedestrians etc. They are common in cross walks here meaning yield for pedestrians. OS X- Minimize, or “yield” screen space to the desktop or another application.

Green(+): Traffic Light: Go. OS X- Maximize window size to make the app take full advantage of the screen.

A usage example might help: When you click the green button it maximizes the screen, when you click it again it shrinks it down to the last smaller size it was in the past.

I use multiple desktops but also like to group my windows within desktops. When I build a site I may use 3-4 different browsers to check compatibility. I will first maximize the browser by clicking the Green(+) button. I will then drag the window down to a smaller size, say 1/4 of the page. OS X will remember the size and window position until you change it again. I’ll do the same thing with the others and can leave them all on the screen at one time (I know I can use the dock but this allows me to look at the apps side by side at once, and yes I know about Expose). Clicking on the green button allows me to expand whatever app I wish to full screen, work with it then shrink it and grab the next one. Works great for copy and pasting as well as the small windows still have their scroll bars visible to locate graphics, text, links etc to drag from one app window to another.

Hope this helps!

Stephen S.

Dude, what are you saying??? You’re speaking exactly opposite of what the whole world is saying. That Vista is a brand new “unexciting” product.

How can you prefer the good old Mac Dashboard over Vistas copied gadgets??
How can you say that Vista’s UI is better than a Mac’s ??

Even CNET gave a higher rating to Mac OS X.

And to top it all up you have been a Mac user since 2 years!!! This is the first comparison I have seen on the web which gives the Vista a higher rating than a Mac.

I think you should reexamine what you just wrote. And maybe its not true but Microsoft recently gave out (bribed) free Acer Ferrari Vista laptops to bloggers around the world. Were you on that list?