Windows 7 vs OS X: The OS war is definitely on
Apple will likely pull a few shiny rabbits out of its OS X hat, but Alex Kidman says this round's got to go to Microsoft.
Apple and Microsoft definitely have a love-hate relationship.
Talk to anyone from Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (Mac BU, which always sounded like a Scottish ghost to me), and you'll get the usual talk about synergies, compatible relationships and how wonderful the next version of Office is going to be.
Try the same chat with a Windows person, and things are likely to be less cordial.
With Apple shifting to more commodity hardware and pitching the advantages of its operating system fiercely that's pretty inevitable.
You've only got to look at the focus of most of the Mac vs PC ads for that. Apple's generally always been good at marketing, and with OS X they've got a product to back up the marketing hype. In short, the OS war is definitely on.
And this year, it's going to be all about Windows 7 versus OS X 10.6. "Snow Leopard" versus "Vienna". It's even the battle of the generally-less charismatic second bananas, "Cook" versus "Ballmer".
The more I test Windows 7, the more generally speaking that I'm liking it. I can't ignore the fact, though, that the release of the Beta is, in its own way, clever marketing for Microsoft, who have been badly hurt by Vista's failures in the marketplace -- or perceived failures, anyway.
Sure, the Beta gives Microsoft the benefit of a couple of million beta testers finding bugs for them, but more than that, they get to show off a little bit with a built-in safety net.
What do I mean by that? Well, to pick out one thing that even I've noticed about Windows 7 out, consider the boot times. Vista is slow and painful, but most users have reported that Windows 7 Beta boots quickly.
This sounds great for Microsoft, and creates positive buzz, but they're not beholden to that for the final released product, which could of course incorporate extra processes, perhaps a WGA check or two, and almost inevitably some lag once third-party applications start to load at startup.
All of these things could slow Windows 7 down considerably. Obviously, you'd hope not, but the positive initial press remains; Windows 7 is seen and reported as "faster" in early going.
Likewise, because Windows 7 is a beta, Microsoft can stay relatively immune to criticism of any flaws in the product. It's a beta, after all -- if it does crash, or has some incompatibility, well, you can always ask for your no money back.
If it doesn't crash, then clearly (engage sarcasm mode) Windows 7 is the most stable operating system of all time (disengage sarcasm mode).
Meanwhile, Apple's stuck to its knitting with Snow Leopard. Developer releases have made their way out, but only to developers weighted down by a hefty non-disclosure agreement.
Some Snow Leopard features have been slowly revealed and/or leaked (depending on your perspective of Apple's security and marketing policies respectively), but there's no stage for general public evaluation of the OS.
It's true that OS X is coming from a more stable and accepted base than Windows 7 is (or, in short; people seem to like OS X and dislike Vista, for the most part), but at the same time there's some obvious points where Apple could be losing mindshare.
They've admitted that Snow Leopard is "building for the future" with some interesting underlying technologies, but so far there's not much detail on why existing Mac users might want to upgrade.
Recently it's been revealed that the CoreLocation technology Apple's putting into OSX will give it GPS-like qualities (via WiFi triangulation), but that only works if you're withing range of points it knows about. Which is unlikely to be much of Australia at all.
I don't doubt that Apple's marketing people will be building up the hype machine accordingly once Snow Leopard actually has a release date beyond "this year", and it's almost inevitable that Apple will pull a few shiny rabbits out of its OS X hat in order to entice the punters along the way -- especially, as has been widely pundited, Snow Leopard bites the head off PowerPC Macs -- but at least in mindshare terms, this round's got to go to Microsoft.
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