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Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by Chris Brennan
Do I like Windows 7 because it’s so like a Mac?
In the latest part of our experiment to see whether Windows 7 can convert a hardened Mac user, Chris Brennan gets a sudden feeling of déjà vu.
I think it’s fair to say that although Apple is good at marketing it hasn’t always been the case. But since Steve Jobs’ return in the 1990s, the marketing team has lifted the company from also-ran to master brand.
Microsoft’s marketing team hasn’t fared so well, with a spate of bad decisions and u-turns that have made it easy for the Mac faithful to point and laugh. Bill Gates and that Seinfeld bloke? Really? A Family Guy special? Dangerous. Windows 7 launch parties? Even if it is a joke there’s a chance it’ll backfire and you’ll end up looking stupid. Oh, it did.
I say this because one of Apple’s skills is to introduce a feature and make people believe that it was responsible for the technology. It has constantly goaded Microsoft with claims that the Seattle-based company simply copied Apple’s ideas. Whether you believe this to be true, or even care who did what first, it really doesn’t matter; but as I’ve used Windows 7 I’ve seen a few things that I’ve been using on the Mac for some time. Pinning applications to the taskbar? Surely a copy of the much derided dock on the Mac? The search box in the start menu? Well, the Mac’s had spotlight for sometime now.
I’ve increasingly found myself jumping to the defence of Windows over the past few weeks, especially as my Mac-using friends have sought to deride it. However, what’s becoming apparent to me is just how similar, on the surface at least, the Mac OS and Windows 7 are. Dig a bit deeper and there are differences (and I’ll talk about them in due course), but the similarities are striking.
So, has Microsoft copied Apple? I don’t know, but I’m beginning to think I may feel at home on Windows 7 precisely because it’s so much like the Mac OS. And if Microsoft has copied Apple, it’s speaking to the wrong crowd: surely it’s the Windows XP users it needs to woo? It is, after all, an ever so slightly larger market than the Apple one.
On an unrelated note I’ve noticed in the comments that there’s been a bit of derision over the one-button mouse approach that Apple takes. Whilst I do love a robust debate I think it only fair to point out that the Mac has been able to use one, two, three and even four or more button mice for quite some time, it’s just that mouse design is like Kryptonite to Apple – it’s not made a good mouse since 1986.
Microsoft, now it knows how to make mice. Perhaps Apple should copy some of its ideas, a kind of exchange program if you will.
Click here to read the rest of Chris Brennan’s blog on converting to Windows 7
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15 Responses to “ Do I like Windows 7 because it’s so like a Mac? ”
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November 2nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Search box in the start menu came with Vista as far as I remember, so if they copied Spotlight then it was earlier than Windows 7. As for pinning things to the task bar, well there was always that option, but it was quicklaunch and it wasn’t called pinning.
If something makes an OS easier to use its inevitable that it will end up in an OS whether it was copied or not. Both Apple and MS have the same goal to make their operating systems as easy to use as possible, and either have similar ideas or copy each other.
Apple had to give in to the two button mouse crowd by introducing the Mighty Mouse (universally hated by even Mac users). Likewise they borrowed tabbed browsing and Top sites from other browsers. Fast User switching was in Windows first. Spaces is just lifted from Linux and renamed as if its Apple’s own.
I think criticising User Interfaces for having similar elements is like criticising cars for all having 4 wheels, a steering wheel and windshield wipers. Some features are just too useful and have to be there.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I agree about the mice. My Mighty Mouse sits unloved in a desk drawer, the iMac is controlled by a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 2.0, an old mouse, but still one of the finest.
The search in the Windows menu was one of the things that made me like Vista, where as I hated XP and switched to Linux in 2002 and then to OS X in 2006.
Now I use Windows 7 at home and at work and I also have Linux and OS X at home. To be honest, I don’t really see much difference in the ways that OS X and Windows 7 now work, in general terms.
Each have strong and weak points – only being able to resize a window on the bottom right annoys me with OS X, for example and I much prefer the ClearType font rendering on Windows over the Mac’s font management (yes, I know it is supposed to make the fonts match a printed page, but blurry fonts and wonky diagonal descenders don’t endear me to looking at a Mac screen!).
Which is my favourite? Linux isn’t, I used to like it, it leapt ahead of XP years ago, but Vista and Windows 7 restored the balance and Windows and OS X make Linux look amateurish again – although Linux is still a clear winner compared to XP.
As to Windows 7 and OS X, it depends on what I am doing and what mood I am in. I mainly use OS X at home at the moment, but that is down to syncing my iPhone with the iMac, in the summer I had a Windows Mobile ‘phone and was using Vista more, because I was syncing with Windows on a daily basis…
I don’t have any apps which rely purely on one platform or the other and with MobileMe syncing the important stuff and having my files regularly synced between the two, I really can’t say I am bothered which one I use.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Make extensive use of the Quick Launch toolbar since win98. Can’t understand what the fuss is all about of intergrating the open windows into this toolbar.
Another feature of 98 that was a god-send was the ‘Show Desktop’ button. I remember having to double-click each windows in OS9 to get to the desktop. But this didn’t minimize, they just hung there in the open, getting in the way. Can’t remember a big fuss being made when Apple ’stole’ this and incorporated it into OSX
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
The Quickstart has been there for a long time, but it is very different to the new way of working.
I could never get on with Quickstart, I’ve been saying that Windows needs this “Dockesque” style for years. As to the “show desktop”, why? The wastebasket appears in Explorer anyway…
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Quick launch is not quite the same as the new Windows 7 taskbar, or OS X’s dock. If it were that simple, there wouldn’t be such a fuss over the new taskbar in 7.
For example, quick launch, doesn’t show status changes, like if a program is open or closed. It can’t show if multiple windows/tabs are open, and it doesn’t support Jumplists.
The Windows 7 taskbar has more in common with the OS X dock, then it does with quick launch. And, I’m sure there’s probably evidence that the Dock idea was nicked from someone else too.
And just like the blog, I find Windows 7 more amenable now because it behaves like OS X, (which was superior to Vista (imo), but is now on more equal footing with 7).
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Let me clarify…
Intergrating the open programs into the Quick Launch toolbar seems, to me, to be a natural progression of what as already there. The claim that it’s a mere copy of the Dock in OSX is nonsense.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Yes, now it’s close to what enlightenment 0.16 did 10 years ago, yay
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
@Alan – I think it depends on where you’re coming from. To a Windows user it looks like an evolution of quick lunch. To an OS X user it feels very much like the dock.
In the end it’s very much its own thing, with elements of quick launch and the dock, and some new features added in. It’s not a mere copy but it builds on what was already there.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 am
*launch not lunch (I was hungry at time of writing)
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
At least OS X doesn’t foist 15 useless folders on you forcing you to use their verb to a noun search nonsense.
Spotlight works very quickly and finds things that are relevant. Windows search grinds away uselessly for ages and then finds something from your email that’s entirely unrelated.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Nick,
Yawwwwwwn
Mac users are forever bringing up ridiculous things to find fault with Windows. Should I mention the awfulness of Finder compared with Explorer? But you will of course be blind to that, since most Mac users are.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Just one look at what M$ have done with the Taskbar is enough to make it abundantly clear that they have ripped off OS X. I’m amazed it’s proving so hard for you to work this out when it’s so obvious.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:43 am
osx is just a riped off linux stop ggt%%%%$$6tggh and just in joy the os’s
November 5th, 2009 at 10:07 am
It’s been said elsewhere that the concept of the Mac Dock isn’t a million miles from the MS Office Bar which has been around at least since Office 97 … It was a good concept in any form which is why I used Rocket Dock with its Mac lineage until Win7 came along.
But the Taskbar works very differently from the Dock, and vastly improves daily usability. I may be missing something but it seems to me that the Dock is good for opening and switching tasks, but nothing else. The Taskbar on the other hand shows you at a glance what tasks are running, and more importantly with jump lists allows you to get quickly to the various tasks/files you work on every day. It also allows you to navigate quickly between tasks using the same program – I know you can do that on the Mac by bringing up thumbnails on the full screen of everything that’s open, but concentrating these things in the taskbar is more logical and usable, and reflects the useful task-oriented approach that always distinguished the Windows taskbar from anything on the Mac. In fact, though there’s much to like about OSX, Win7 has highlighted how old fashioned its approach to task and file management really is.
I’ve had cause to spend more time with OSX in the last year, and when I first turned to it I was quite baffled by much of it. I don’t think that’s all OSX’s fault – it just brings home how much usability depends on what you’re used to. But I also think that Apple’s claim that a Mac “just works” is pretty ludicrous. It’s true only up to the point where it “just doesn’t work”.
Btw in reference to Chris’ next piece in 15 years of using a PC with online connectivity I’ve never had a virus. If you’re sensible it’s no more of a problem than it’s fast becoming as Apple market share grows.
November 7th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Didn’t RISC OS have a dock back in 1993?