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I was surprised to read this article from Paul Thurrott. He's one of the biggest MS fans on the net, and has been a constant thorn in the side of Apple fan sites (although he has mellowed in the last couple of years). FTR I read his blog, as it is one of the better Windows sites out there.
Some choice snippets...
That's pretty harsh...
Ouch..
...with extreme prejudice...
...wtf... I hate Windows, but it was never this bad...
I actually wondered about this when I saw the screenshots...
nuff said
This is surprising from such an MS booster as Thurrott. It looks like Vista might suck even worse than XP does.
Some choice snippets...
Two and a half years later, Microsoft has yet to ship Windows Vista, and it won't actually ship this system in volume until 2007. Since the euphoria of PDC 2003, Microsoft's handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal. Promises have been made and dismissed, again and again. Features have come and gone. Heck, the entire project was literally restarted from scratch after it became obvious that the initial code base was a teetering, technological house of cards. Windows Vista, in other words, has been an utter disaster. And it's not even out yet. What the heck went wrong?
That's pretty harsh...
Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.
Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.
Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.
Ouch..
Virtual folders seemed great, but as it turned out, they confused a lot of people. So now I can (and eventually will) document several major changes to the virtual folder technologies found in Windows Vista, and these all occurred between the September 2005 CTP (see my review) and the May 2006 CTP, which we'll supposedly get late next month. (Anyone care to bet whether that will happen?) At first, virtual folders replaced the special shell folders like My Documents and My Pictures. Then, they simply augmented special shell folders but were still prominently available in the shell. Then, virtual folders were renamed to Stored Searches, the built-in virtual folders were completely scrapped, and a new set appeared. Then, Stored Searches were completely downplayed in the shell. And then, finally, Stored Searches were renamed, simply, to Searches. Good luck finding them in the current builds. They're in there, but like the Task Panes in XP, no normal user will ever discover them, let alone use them. If a feature is in Windows and no one uses it, is it still a feature? I'll leave that one to the philosophers out there.
There are so many more examples. But these two, WinFS and virtual folders, are the most dramatic and obvious. Someday, it might be interesting--or depressing, at least--to create a list of features Microsoft promised for Windows Vista, but reneged on. Here are a few tantalizing examples: A real Sidebar that would house system-wide notifications, negating the need for the horribly-abused tray notification area. 10-foot UIs for Sidebar, Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, and other components, that would let users access these features with a remote control like Media Center. True support for RAW image files include image editing. The list just goes on and on.
There are so many more examples. But these two, WinFS and virtual folders, are the most dramatic and obvious. Someday, it might be interesting--or depressing, at least--to create a list of features Microsoft promised for Windows Vista, but reneged on. Here are a few tantalizing examples: A real Sidebar that would house system-wide notifications, negating the need for the horribly-abused tray notification area. 10-foot UIs for Sidebar, Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, and other components, that would let users access these features with a remote control like Media Center. True support for RAW image files include image editing. The list just goes on and on.
...with extreme prejudice...
Where Vista Fails
I'll leave a fuller examination of Vista's broken promises for a later date. For now, let's look at the most current builds we do have--build 5308 and 5342--and see where Vista just completely blows it. As with the broken promises, Vista's failures are legion, but I'll just focus on a few examples here and leave the full list for a later time.
User Account Protection
Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago.
Here's the good news. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP.
The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.
Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?
Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog (Figure) explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ... shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?
OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window (Figure). Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What's the big deal?
What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
I'll leave a fuller examination of Vista's broken promises for a later date. For now, let's look at the most current builds we do have--build 5308 and 5342--and see where Vista just completely blows it. As with the broken promises, Vista's failures are legion, but I'll just focus on a few examples here and leave the full list for a later time.
User Account Protection
Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago.
Here's the good news. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing before making a critical mistake. It sounds like a good system. But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. They completely botched UAP.
The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.
Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?
Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog (Figure) explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ... shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?
OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window (Figure). Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What's the big deal?
What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
...wtf... I hate Windows, but it was never this bad...
Glass Windows
One of the most highly-touted features of Windows Vista is glass windows, a part of the Windows Aero user interface. It sounds like a great idea, and heck, let's give Microsoft a bit of credit for the ingenuity of taking the windows metaphor to its logical conclusion. Maybe Apple can add stained glass windows to the next version of Mac OS X in response.
Anyway, the reality of glass windows is that they stink. The windows themselves are translucent, meaning you can see through them partially. But the visual difference between the topmost window (that is, the window with which you are currently interacting, or what we might describe as the window with focus) and any other windows (i.e. those windows that are visually located "under" the topmost window) is subtle at best. More to the point, you can't tell topmost windows from other windows at all. And don't pretend you can.
One of the most highly-touted features of Windows Vista is glass windows, a part of the Windows Aero user interface. It sounds like a great idea, and heck, let's give Microsoft a bit of credit for the ingenuity of taking the windows metaphor to its logical conclusion. Maybe Apple can add stained glass windows to the next version of Mac OS X in response.
Anyway, the reality of glass windows is that they stink. The windows themselves are translucent, meaning you can see through them partially. But the visual difference between the topmost window (that is, the window with which you are currently interacting, or what we might describe as the window with focus) and any other windows (i.e. those windows that are visually located "under" the topmost window) is subtle at best. More to the point, you can't tell topmost windows from other windows at all. And don't pretend you can.
I actually wondered about this when I saw the screenshots...
...the ugly mistake that is Vista Media Center.
nuff said
This is surprising from such an MS booster as Thurrott. It looks like Vista might suck even worse than XP does.
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