Wow... Mary Jo Foley must be the world's dumbest techwriter. Or she was just really really drunk. For fuck's sake, I hope someone just hacked her account and wrote
that article for her. Otherwise I hope ZDnet has some balls and finally shows this grandma the door. What happened? Well, if you enjoy a laugh, just go ahead, waste 5 minutes of your life and read her
"Leopard looks like ... Vista" story.
Let me address and dismiss all of her points very quickly:
"1. New Leopard Desktop: Not a whole lot different from Vista’s Aero and Sidebar."
Well here's the first and biggest problem with you: You should be a designer, not a techwriter. You don't judge features by its looks. Admit it, you just saw the desktop wallpaper, right? But you obviously missed the stacks for example. Besides that: Vista must be just like Windows 98 then. Still looks the same to me, after all.
"2. New Finder: Many of the same capabilities as the integrated “Instant Search” in Vista (the subsystem that Google is trying to get the Department of Justice to rule as being anti-competitive). The new Leopard Coverflow viewing capability looked almost identical to Vista’s Flip 3D to me."
Smart searches in Windows Explorer? Yeah right. You don't even know what a Smart Search is, admit it. And Flip 3D? The one which looks almost identical to something Apple introduced in iTunes before Vista came out, right? Wait a second, what was the name again? Ah yeah right, Coverflow it was called. Oh wait, but that would mean Vista just copied that from iTunes and not vice versa.
"3. QuickLook: Live file previews — just like the thumbnail preview capability available in Vista."
Sweetie, you didn't really attend the Keynote, just admit it now. Show me just one of the QuickLook features that Apple showcased in your beloved Thumbnail. Good luck finding them.
"4. 64-bitness: Leopard is the first 64-bit only version of a desktop client. Vista comes in 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. And most expect Windows Seven will still be available in 32-bit flavors. Until 32-bit machines go away, it seems like a good idea to offer 32-bit operating systems."
Again, I just don't understand how you ever got your job? Didn't people at ZDnet notice that you've actually just ran into the wrong interview and were supposed to become a gossip reporter? Almost all new computers you can get nowadays come with a 64bit CPU. (Intel Core2Duo e.g.). All Apple machines you can buy today are 64bit machines. And contrary to Windows you just boot up a 64 bit Leopard / Darwin kernel and are able to mix 32bit and 64bit applications in userspace.
"5. Core animation: Not sure what the Vista comparison is here. The demo reminded me of Microsoft Max photo-sharing application. The WWDC developers attending the Jobs keynote didn’t seem wowed with this functionality."
Oh my god. CoreAnimation is an API not an application. What they showed was just a demo, so developers get a clue what they can do with this Framework. This demo had nothing, not the slightest thing, to do with Microsoft Max photo-sharing. I bet this demo application won't even be shipped with Leopard, because anyone could write it in a couple of days with CoreAnimation. That was their entire point.
"6. Boot Camp. You can run Vista on your Mac. Apple showed Vista running Solitaire in its WWDC demo. But I bet those downloading the 2.5 million copies of Boot Camp available since last year are running a lot of other Windows business apps and games."
Well of course they are. What's your point, though? They just showed Solitaire to prove that Windows actually runs fine on the machine. Would you have wanted them to showcase all new Vista features at the Apple Keynote, too?
"7. Spaces: A feature allowing users to group applications into separate spaces. I haven’t seen anything like in in Vista, but the audience didn’t seem overly impressed by it."
Because the audience (developers, remember?) knew that since January already. Whereas your knowledge, once more, seems absent. Besides that it existed on Unix/Linux desktops since a decade... and I can tell you it's a damn good feature to keep your desktop clean and speed up your workflow.
"8. Dashboard with widgets. Isn’t this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?"
SIGH... I'm really getting fed up with you now. Where have you been the last ten years, god damn. Vista's Gadgets are a copy of Dashboard, which already existed since Tiger and came out long before Vista. They just improved it big time for Leopard... or where are the widget scissors in Internet Explorer?
"9. iChat gets a bunch of fun add-ons (photo-booth effects, backrops, etc.) to make it a more fully-featured videoconferencing product. The “iChat Theater” capability Jobs showed off reminded me of Vista’s Meeting Space and/or the new Microsoft “Shared View” (code-named “Tahiti”) document-sharing/conferencing subsystems."
I must admit, this time it's me lacking the knowledge - I never tried / seen Vista's Meeting Space. So let's give you a point here and just assume you're right (even though I bet you even cocked up this point and some commenter will be able to prove it).
10. Time Machine automatic backup. Vista has built-in automatic backup (Volume Shadow Copy). It doesn’t look anywhere near as cool as Time Machine. But it seems to provide a lot of the same functionality.
Backup applications like Vista's exist since the very first computer I ran (an ITT 3030 CP/M system) obviously and didn't improve much over the last 20 years or so. Again, I just can't believe you've seriously been watching the entire keynote. Otherwise you would have noticed Time Machine's seamless integration with the Finder and the way it logs 'states' and changes for every folder on the disk.
Mary Jo Foley, do us all a favour please and quit your job tomorrow. You seem to be resistant to technical knowledge, logic and truth, so just go ahead resign and stop this awkward embarrassment. Also your grand-children might not have to ask you why everyone's pointing and laughing at you in the future. It'd be a win-win really.
Kind regards,
Chris