Windows Vista Beta 1 Review & Screenshots

[Imran Siddiqui]

http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5130

NPD Techworld, a division of the retail sales tracking outfit NPD, said Microsoft sold 250,000 retails copies of Windows XP in November and 400,000 copies in October. NPD Techworld reports that Windows 98 sales were 580,000 copies in its first month on the market and 350,000 copies in its second month.

Retail sales, as defined by NPD, include new and upgrade versions of Windows XP but not software preinstalled on PCs, the Journal noted.

How many does Apple sell a month of its Tiger?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
What is it, like 5% of the market now? Wow... people really think Apple is so much better

It's half of that.

Apple would be extremely happy to be even 5%...

[Asher]

As for the iPod, I still think Apple lucked out on that thing. For all I hear about how userfriendly it is, it always seems to lag behind the competition.

One of the other interns at work had his iPod out and I was playing around with it, one thing that frustrated me to no end almost immediately on the iPod was how it wouldn't auto-scroll long song names...a lot of the MP3s he downloaded were titled Artist - Song. So a lot of the song names were like "Kaiser Chiefs - B...", "Kaiser Chiefs - G...". On my Zen -- and my Zen is an oldschool Zen from the first gen iPod era, if you leave that song selected for a second it'll slowly scroll across in-place so you can read the rest of the track. On the iPod you have to play the song to get it to display the whole thing...wtf.

It wasn't until a few years that Creative had dynamic playlist generation that Apple thought they'd allow users to create playlists on the iPods.

The iPods still don't support gapless playback either...?

These are pretty basic features, I thought, for an MP3 player. Creative has had them for a long time...

[Asher]

And the OS X interface is a toy. It's a functional and usability nightmare.

Its workflow sucks and it's all about eyecandy over functionality. The Finder especially is literally a textbook example of what not to do, and Apple manages to make it worse with every release. It's truly astonishing.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Don't cry for apple, cry for innovation. You're the one paying the big bucks for 3D minesweeper and a games interface...that no one but manufacturers will buy to "stay current", whatever that means.

Microsoft makes more money per quarter from Windows XP sales alone -- an OS released in 2001 -- than Apple makes each quarter from iPods and iTunes combined, by a huge margin. What was your point, I seemed to have missed it.

And I don't see why we're the ones paying the big bucks for 3D minesweeper...you guys are the ones paying $129 3 times over in the single period most of us paid $99 for a single copy.

And what did you get...? A Desktop X/Object Desktop/Konfabulator clone in Dashboard (free on PC), and a desktop search tool ala Google Desktop Search or MSN Desktop Search (free on PC)?

You really shot yourself in the foot if you're arguing about upgrade value.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Asher

It's half of that.

Apple would be extremely happy to be even 5%...

Apple, too, increased its share of the U.S. PC market during the second quarter, rising to 4.5 percent from 3.7 percent a year ago, as global unit shipments rose more than 37 percent, IDC said.

Link

Not that this matters.

I'm ambivalent towards Longhorn, and will remain so until more concrete, useful information is out and it is closer to its final form.

[Asher]

Apple's worldwide marketshare was under 2.5% last I heard.

Its US market is higher.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Wiglaf

http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html

Beats hi-res minesweeper and 115% startup times anyday. No wonder nobody buys Windows off the shelf.

I'm surprised they didn't mention the color changes

[Verto]

As if anything outside of the US matters.

EDIT: And it does appear my numbers refer only to the US.

EDIT2: Which still is not too shabby, as they are not far behind Gateway and its absorbed eMachines marketshare.

[Asher]

It is pretty amazing that they added Access Control Lists about 8 years after MS added them to its OS.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Verto
As if anything outside of the US matters.

EDIT: And it does appear my numbers refer only to the US.

EDIT2: Which still is not too shabby, as they are not far behind Gateway and its absorbed eMachines marketshare.

What's your point? Gateway's been struggling for a long time now...

[Agathon]

This is a joke. What cretin had the idea of making the whole titlebar transparent? I''ve seen pics where you cannot read the stuff behind it and it gets all gummed up. Expect that to be fixed for the final release.

You could have had most of this, and a far more secure system to boot, if you had bought Mac OS X four years ago. You can have pretty much all of it now, if you bought OS X today. By the time this hunk of crap comes out, Apple will be leaps and bounds ahead again with its next operating system.

Microsoft is a lame company that relies on its virtual monopoly to sustain production of sub-par products.

Even Paul Thurrott is uneasy about Hasta La Vista or whatever it is called. That's a bad sign.

Apple's marketshare numbers are easily misinterpreted. The company only competes in a few markets (education, science, domestic use and design). Go to your local supermarket and you'll see 100 cheap Dells. Apple doesn't sell sub $400 computers either, which is a large section of the market (although the idiots that buy those should have their hands cut off).

Overall

[Agathon]

Why wait....

[Nostromo]

One cannot have enough of Jessica Alba

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
This is a joke. What cretin had the idea of making the whole titlebar transparent? I''ve seen pics where you cannot read the stuff behind it and it gets all gummed up. Expect that to be fixed for the final release.

You could have had most of this, and a far more secure system to boot, if you had bought Mac OS X four years ago. You can have pretty much all of it now, if you bought OS X today. By the time this hunk of crap comes out, Apple will be leaps and bounds ahead again with its next operating system.

Microsoft is a lame company that relies on its virtual monopoly to sustain production of sub-par products.

Even Paul Thurrott is uneasy about Hasta La Vista or whatever it is called. That's a bad sign.

Apple's marketshare numbers are easily misinterpreted. The company only competes in a few markets (education, science, domestic use and design). Go to your local supermarket and you'll see 100 cheap Dells. Apple doesn't sell sub $400 computers either, which is a large section of the market (although the idiots that buy those should have their hands cut off).

Overall

This is one of your worst posts ever. Can't you do any better? You spend a sentence or two on various subjects bouncing around without ever really discussing anything aside from a flippant fanboy remark.

The simple matter is not everybody thinks the same way of OS X as you do, and that's why less than 2.5 out of every 100 shoppers will actually buy a Mac. When you realize this and understand this, you'll be better off.