ctrl.altered.mind

I have been answering questions about Microsoft’s Windows Vista for some time now, mostly coming from friends and family. All the points that I have been trying to make are summarized below in a comment by Enderandrew, posted in response to a Slashdot article.

• UAC - annoying and not remotely secure. People will be trained to always click yes, or just disable it. Further more, it prevented me from installing legit software, and copying files in certain directories.
• Drivers - People say an OS is only as good as the software for it, and I’d argue an OS is only as good as the drivers. If you can’t support your hardware, then software isn’t even an issue. Now all drivers MUST be signed, yet many signed drivers don’t work very well, if at all. I think it would be a good idea to have all drivers in one central repository (like the Linux kernel) so you won’t have to worry about tracking down drivers for old hardware, but make sure the drivers work. And here is an idea, make the drivers modular. Drivers cause more BSODs and crashes than anything else. Don’t let a single driver bring down a system. This is just basic common sense.
• Design for productivity, and not looks. Sexy is sexy, and we all like sexy things. In the long run however, I want my computer to enable me to work, not prevent me from doing so. Usability studies have shown that Vista’s UI slows people down performing the same tasks. Scrolling in the Start Menu? Again, the writing was on the wall here. Look at the UI changes in Windows Media Player, and you’ll see a program that has become less user friendly, while prettier. Why should we expect Vista to be different?
• Performance is piss-poor. Again, people like fast computers. Installing Vista is just a bad decision.
• Vista’s worst enemy is not OS X or Linux (as much as I love me some Linux). Vista’s worst enemy is XP, which post-SP1 has been a pretty decent OS. For the end user, Vista provides no real benefits or new features besides better looks, while slowing your PC down considerably. And with projects like the Vista Transformation Pack, you can make XP look like Vista. Why would someone want Vista?

The Slashdot article was about Microsoft’s next major OS release - codenamed Windows 7 - that is being rumored to have a release date of late 2009. Microsoft might be tempted to follow Apple’s strategy of frequently releasing updated versions of their OS X operating system (which has seen six iterations since late 2001), but they will need to start off with a much more polished operating system first. Attempting to fix the design flaws enumerated above, would be a good place to start.

What’s the definition of a good computing experience? Booting up your operating system and staring at it, with no ability to smoothly run applications or games, according to Dell. I know Vista has elicited a lukewarm experience, and my biggest gripe about Microsoft’s latest OS offering has been that a ton of resources have to be sacrificed to the machine running it if any productive experience is expected.

An operating system should, ideally, allow maximum availability of resources to the applications intended to run on it. Configurations that essentially were used for small servers until a few years ago, are required to power Vista on a ‘home computer’, forcing average users to invest in an insane amount of computing hardware and resources compared to the tasks they would want to achieve.

I found a link to Dell’s product description page via a reddit news article, and quickly grabbed this screenshot to prove my point. Check out what Dell has to say about the uses of a ‘good’ system with 512 MB of RAM that can, at best, provide basic Windows Vista experience (with no Aero, aka resource hogging eye-candy window display system on board) - “Great for… Booting the Operating System, without running applications or games.” Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me. This screenshot has not been modified in any way! Although, the description is likely to change on Dell’s website once Microsoft’s marketing team gets across to them.

The photographer insists this is an original, unedited picture, and I have no real reason to disagree. I believe Coca-Cola would have received some additional attention than what they bargained for. The picture was taken at Piccadilly Circus in London.

(1600×1063 version)

Picture shared by Rosso (afka siamonesti) under a Creative Commons license.

Each time a Mac versus Windows article hits the Web, a maelstrom of comments from each camp is whipped up on forums and discussion boards. It would be an interesting socio-psychological experiment to dissect the average fanboy mind, to understand how some people can, time after time, argue to virtually no limit about the virtues of the operating system of their choice - and enhance the pitfalls of the other in the same breath. Pick any Digg article on Mac OS X that also includes a comparison with Windows (or not!), like this one for example.

While I’m all for healthy debate, one observation cannot be discredited - significantly many (if not most) Apple OS X users are former and/or current Windows users, while very few people fighting the battle on Microsoft’s side have even used OS X for more than a few minutes. I’d guess that they are basing their beliefs about the adversary on hearsay. That said, here’s a picture that I stumbled upon, which sums up my argument on the topic as far as design philosophy for the two companies is concerned.

I snapped this picture at the local big-name retail computer store while casually browsing for computers. While I am not exactly in the market for a new computer running Windows Vista, this particular screen display did pull me towards the laptops section. This screen was running through the entire time I was in the store. It would help if the guys ambling around in blue shirts and khaki pants would take a peek at the displays every once in a while.

I just received a comment on my previous post about Apple’s unfair attitude - disallowing running OS X as a virtual machine, while happily supporting and encouraging the use of Windows on Macs through Parallels and Bootcamp (which might be a bundled feature for the next big OS X release, Leopard).

The prevention of virtualization of OS X has different reasons, in my opinion. The OS has been optimized to run on Apple hardware, which is a tiny subset of computer hardware that Windows has to be able to recognize. If OS X is opened for virtual machines, Apple will have to inadvertently provide support for hardware that they do not make. This is extra effort with no real benefit for them. In fact, it quite possibly would adversely effect Macintosh sales - this is not something Apple would appreciate, especially when they are trying to increase market share with their switcher campaign.

Supporting Windows on the Mac, on the other hand, is a big plus because a significant section of people cite one or more Windows-only applications as their reason to not consider a Mac. Providing this support takes away from that argument and makes the Mac an attractive option.

Apple is careful to project themselves as an experience provider (as opposed to a software vendor) while making the claim that OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system. The concept here is that with Apple, everything ‘just works’. That may not necessarily be true once you have a virtual system with a whole new hardware ecosystem. Microsoft has been battling that for years - hardware vendors’ lack of updated driver support for example, can fuel the angst toward Windows even when Microsoft is not the real culprit. By locking in to a known hardware configuration, Apple can manage to sell a premium computational device that concentrates on usability like no one else does.

The day has finally arrived, and Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to market its brand new offering.

Engadget is hosting their own welcome party with a generous heap of pictures in a Vista gallery. One of the screen grabs did catch my eye: look at the window shell in this particular screen capture. It surely indicates that we may have not seen the last of the classic Windows GUI that has been around since Windows 95. So much for interface redesign from the ground up.

Engadget: Vista Gallery

I had sampled Windows Vista a long time ago when it was still known by its codename, Longhorn. This was a primitive prototype that has undergone significant change in the past few months, as Microsoft gears up for a release (hopefully) sometime before January 2007. However, the coincidence of the first public beta release of Windows Vista a few days ago and my switch to the Mac allowed me to utilize the freed up processor cycles of my notebook for some Vista flavor. While installing a beta OS from Microsoft on a notebook with custom hardware is not recommended for the average computer user, I faced some issues that corroborate this tip as well. Most notably, audio output was not handled well by Vista, with sound levels failing to exceed 1% of their maximum capacity. This, however, was the least of my concerns, as I’m sure Microsoft will ensure hardware compatibilities (atleast within the desktop computer domain) as their release date approaches. The most depressing fact to me is that Vista is a beast of an OS, in terms of the resources one has to feed it in order to make it heed. While the beta that Microsoft has provided, is the future Windows Vista Ultimate edition (read ‘most feature-rich version’), my notebook is fairly high-end as well. In other words, a really large segment of Windows Vista consumers are going to see the need to upgrade their systems, primarily video RAM (Vista needs atleast 128MB dedicated video RAM for a good user experience). This kind of computing power is overkill, and is beyond the requirements of an average home computer user.

Another glaring fact about Vista is its attempt to build a stronger level of security into its processes. While it does a good job, the best it could probably do without complicating things too much and without implementing a Unix-like system, there are minor aberrations in the implementation. For one, blanking the screen and then displaying a security dialog box seems like a glitch. Hopefully, this wont exist in the final release. Secondly, the system even displayed a security dialog when I tried running Internet Explorer 7 for the first time, asking for a confirmation lest I doubt the authenticity of the program. One would think Microsoft could build internal security checks for its own programs.

I do realize Microsoft has a ton of different issues to worry about, such as support for the countless third-party hardware (peripherals and components). However, average computer users who are going to be compelled to buy expensive hardware for basic usage are not going to feel too happy. That is, if they realize this is the case.

On Windows, I generally tend to pick my applications by typing the executable filenames in the Run window (Win+R). However, if you depend on the Start Menu > Applications menu to locate your programs, this will interest you the most. I discovered a very cluttered Start menu today, and decided to get it organized using X-Windows style context groups. Apparently, creating new folders manually within the Start menu folder does not help much, and it is a pain to drag and drop application shortcuts (especially if you have a ton of them). A quick search led me to a nicely written freeware application, called Tidy Start Menu (v2.7), that does the organizing for you in a couple of minutes. The categories are preset, but leave nothing to be desired. The application is complete with wizards to backup and restore start menu shortcuts, delete empty and redundant shortcuts, and import/export menus using XML files. Tidy Start Menu has an extended version (for $19.99 with their special Christmas pricing) if you need to create custom categories, or a context menu to easily uninstall programs, among other features.

Slashdot reported this morning that Microsoft has pulled Robert Fripp on to the Vista development wagon, to compose sound and audio themes for Windows Vista. This is very interesting indeed. A nice next step might be to invite guest programmers to write modules? Too bad Google already hired lead Firefox developer Ben Goodger. There’s also a 25-minute, behind-the-scenes video posted on the Channel 9 forum. Will people refrain from disabling Windows Frippertronics theme sounds now?