Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7

[skaertus]

It's simple.

Windows 7 is no more than Vista, with a little different design, some removed programs, and which basically went back to Xp's speed, and improved it a bit. So it's just a little faster than Xp, (And I don't care about what tests say, I'm talking about my experience).

Well, Steve Ballmer himself said that Windows 7 was Vista, but "a lot better".

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

That's what I want to see, but I've found no concrete data on it yet. There are videos on YouTube comparing the boot speed of Windows 7 beta and Leopard. Sometimes 7 gets the edge, and sometimes it's Leopard.

Microsoft has reportedly made Windows 7 even faster than the beta version shows. But Apple has also tweaked Snow Leopard so it's faster than Leopard. I'm curious about this thing now.

That's all about speed.

And about all the other things, well, it's just like the previous versions:

Speed/Performance: Snow Leopard.
Security: Snow Leopard.
Stability: Snow Leopard.
Design: ?, we still don't know how the Snow Leopard design will be. Windows 7's design is basically identical to Vista, so I'd give this to Snow Leopard.
Best 64-bit system: Snow Leopard.

Windows 7 has some great new things, such as a redesigned task bar. Eye candy is basically the same, but there are improvements on the usability area, which really makes a difference. It will probably be far more stable and secure than Windows Vista.

So for what is Windows better? For...em...nothing, except if you're looking for the cheapest computer you'll use only and only for games, nothing too serious.

Windows is definitely better to play games. And also on the enterprise market, in which Apple is just crawling. I have also to say that Microsoft Office for Windows is better than the Mac version... but then is Microsoft's fault!

Oh, and you can customize Windows, there are thousands of horrible, disgusting themes you can find online!

Have fun.

True. I don't buy the whole "customization" stuff. There are designers at both Apple and Microsoft whose job is to make great standard themes. Why do people want to exchange that great stuff for the amateurish, disgusting things they find on the Internet?!?

And because it's unstable. And slow. And easily infectable.

I'd rather say that Windows gets slow and unstable over time. It's registry's fault.

BS, it naturally gets slower the more you use it, the more you install program. Just like any other Windows version.

Registry, DLLs... that's what makes Windows inferior to MacOS.

BS again. It's because of the instability. The registry. Partial uninstallations. Malware. It's not just about drivers.

Registry, DLLs, all over again. Thousands of files, a maze of files spread over the hard disk, all awaiting to get corrupt...

 

[michael.lauden]

i don't think any argument can beat that last post

bravo +1! actually... +2. for real

 

[gollum]

Windows 7 will be less buggy on release. Apple doesn't
beta test as thorougly as Microsoft.

Right, they just charge for it (Vista).

 

[Infrared]

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

Faster at what precisely?

 

[Tallest Skil]

That's what I want to see, but I've found no concrete data on it yet. There are videos on YouTube comparing the boot speed of Windows 7 beta and Leopard. Sometimes 7 gets the edge, and sometimes it's Leopard.

Thereby covering every aspect of usability of the OS and ending the argument once and for all.

Microsoft has reportedly made Windows 7 even faster than the beta version shows. But Apple has also tweaked Snow Leopard so it's faster than Leopard. I'm curious about this thing now.

Faster at what?

I'd rather say that Windows gets slow and unstable over time. It's registry's fault.

Truth. Screw the Registry.

i don't think any argument can beat that last post

bravo +1! actually... +2. for real

-2 to counteract this. No points were made.

 

[Infrared]

Right, they just charge for it (Vista).

Right, like Apple did for Leopard, which has had hundreds of
megabytes of bug fixes since release.

 

[Beerfloat]

Windows 7 has some great new things, such as a redesigned task bar. Eye candy is basically the same, but there are improvements on the usability area, which really makes a difference. It will probably be far more stable and secure than Windows Vista.

Stability and security aren't really problems with Vista. Top heaviness and an annoying UI however..

Registry, DLLs, all over again. Thousands of files, a maze of files spread over the hard disk, all awaiting to get corrupt...

In all fairness, Unix has plenty of shared library incompatibilities too, and the registry is actually meant to fix the problem of config files being all over the place.. not that it succeeds as an improvement.

In general though if someone really insists on making a troll thread here they should at least be required to put some effort into the opening post

 

[geoffsee]

POINT in case is that Mac is better
Windows 7 is really glitchy sometimes and OSX SL is supposedly going to support up to (theoretically) like 2 TB of RAM. Could you imagine?

 

[sharp65]

POINT in case is that Mac is better
Windows 7 is really glitchy sometimes and OSX SL is supposedly going to support up to (theoretically) like 2 TB of RAM. Could you imagine?

Really? Huh, I didn't know the final code was released yet. I guess your living several months ahead of the rest of us.

 

[EmperorDarius]

Faster at what precisely?

Generally, you know, browsing files, multi tasking etc.

Stability and security aren't really problems with Vista. Top heaviness and an annoying UI however..

Actually they ARE, they're the main problems. Vista is like a Beta. Or better, an early Alpha of what Windows 7 promises to be. And everyone who's using it is a beta tester, non-volunteer, but still beta tester.

 

[Stridder44]

It's simple.

Windows 7 is no more than Vista, with a little different design, some removed programs, and which basically went back to Xp's speed, and improved it a bit. So it's just a little faster than Xp, (And I don't care about what tests say, I'm talking about my experience).

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

That's all about speed.

And about all the other things, well, it's just like the previous versions:

Speed/Performance: Snow Leopard.
Security: Snow Leopard.
Stability: Snow Leopard.
Design: ?, we still don't know how the Snow Leopard design will be. Windows 7's design is basically identical to Vista, so I'd give this to Snow Leopard.
Best 64-bit system: Snow Leopard.

So for what is Windows better? For...em...nothing, except if you're looking for the cheapest computer you'll use only and only for games, nothing too serious.

Oh, and you can customize Windows, there are thousands of horrible, disgusting themes you can find online!

And because it's unstable. And slow. And easily infectable.

BS, it naturally gets slower the more you use it, the more you install program. Just like any other Windows version.

BS again. It's because of the instability. The registry. Partial uninstallations. Malware. It's not just about drivers.

All hail the king of FUD!

This thread should be closed.

 

[L0s7man]

Windows 7 is shaping to be decent OS. With sort of KDE-ish look and feel (which is good, I think) and maybe some improvements under the hood. There is some trouble brewing though - I've read on ArsTechnica that, for example, new design for UAC is rather stupid and makes the whole thing incredibly annoying and, ultimately, pointless.

But I've heard that W7 is faster than XP. So I might use it for games ;-)

As for SL, it'll be evolution of Leopard. I don't know why people are hoping for miracles (so it seems). Also, the addition of OpenCL for GPU computation that's a big thing, but only for *very few* that can benefit from that.

OpenCL is important, because it's the first OS-specific rather than hardware-specific (like CUDA) approach. This is important for Apple. If they encourage dev's to write software using OpenCL (like Photoshop, video editing, Mathematica, etc.) then they can come way ahead of Windows in benchmarks.

And it would be really hard for Microsoft do the same (much more hardware to support).

As for OS itself, there are no operating system specific tasks that can benefit from using GPU computation. To make OS feel sleek you have to reduce latency. And offloading tasks to GPU gives you lot of number-crunching power, but introduces latency because you have to pipe data to the GPU and back (i.e. transfer it twice).

So, ultimately (and I mean after it comes out + few months), Snow Leopard will be a winner for professional solutions.

 

[skaertus]

OpenCL is important, because it's the first OS-specific rather than hardware-specific (like CUDA) approach. This is important for Apple. If they encourage dev's to write software using OpenCL (like Photoshop, video editing, Mathematica, etc.) then they can come way ahead of Windows in benchmarks.

And it would be really hard for Microsoft do the same (much more hardware to support).

However, DirectX 11, which will be implemented in Windows 7, will also support GPGPU. I have no idea on which one will be more powerful than the other, though. Perhaps this will repeat the DirectX vs. OpenGL war...

 

[Saladinos]

Truth. Screw the Registry.

They've tried to ditch the registry lots of times. The problem is that if you try to remake the registry whilst retaining backwards compatibility, you end up with something almost exactly like the registry.

Apple and MS have taken opposite approaches.

Apple:
Front-End: Leopard
Back-End: Snow Leopard

Microsoft:
Back-End: Vista
Front-End: Windows 7

Apple revamped the UI and applications (with Leopard) before going to the lower levels, which is what SL will do. Microsoft made lots of changes to the lower levels with Vista, and is only now making use of it all with front-end stuff (W7). At the end of it, they're both going to have relatively fresh back and front ends.

 

[Beerfloat]

Actually they ARE, they're the main problems. Vista is like a Beta. Or better, an early Alpha of what Windows 7 promises to be. And everyone who's using it is a beta tester, non-volunteer, but still beta tester.

Don't be silly

 

[EmperorDarius]

Don't be silly

I'm not being silly. If you look at it, even Xp is more stable than Vista. Even Windows 7 betas are better than Vista.

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.

 

[steveza]

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.

I don't deny it but at the same time which IT/computer/software company doesn't use it's customers as beta testers. Products are released to meet marketing timescales in many cases and the technicalities are sorted out in release 2.0 (or 3.0 in the case of the iPhone ) or Service Pack 1 or update 10.6.1.

 

[EmperorDarius]

I don't deny it but at the same time which IT/computer/software company doesn't use it's customers as beta testers. Products are released to meet marketing timescales in many cases and the technicalities are sorted out in release 2.0 (or 3.0 in the case of the iPhone ) or Service Pack 1 or update 10.6.1.

That's true, however it's not the same thing when the technicalities are actually sorted out in the next major version of the OS (IF the next major version is going to sort them out, it's still hard to say, until the final version comes out).

 

[Beerfloat]

I'm not being silly. If you look at it, even Xp is more stable than Vista. Even Windows 7 betas are better than Vista.

Proof plz

 

[barkmonster]

Don't be silly

I couldn't agree with you more!

OS X was basically a public beta for quite some time after 10.0 came out at first.

I remember reading all the tales of slow performance and lousy interface response till Quartz Extreme came out to improve things and how much did some mac owners end up paying for several full versions of OS X before it was in the state it was from TIGER onwards?

I didn't even want to risk moving from OS9 till Tiger was out and I'd seen how Pro tools LE was performing under OS X and we've only had 1 major OS update since then too.

 

[jaw04005]

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.

How soon we forget the myriad of problems with Leopard once it shipped including Back to My Mac not working, missing Time Machine backups, disappearing files when transferring over network drives, AirPort problems and major video card problems including scrambled video (particularly the August 07 iMac).

 

[dwsolberg]

I'm not fond of Microsoft, either, but Windows 7 is definitely a big step in the right direction. I expect that Windows 7 will probably hurt Apple's sales because Windows users will finally have a decent OS to use.

Snow Leopard is a different beast. A lot of people haven't thought about it, but processors of the future will have tens then hundreds of cores (according to Intel). Snow Leopard is about getting ready for this huge change that has already started (most computers now have two cores, and bigger computers sometimes have eight cores). It takes years for programmers (especially the likes of Adobe and other big names) to adapt their programs to take advantage of these OS hooks. In the next 10 years, as our computers get 4 then 8 then 16 then 32 cores and more, the current work with Snow Leopard will make Apple computers MUCH faster than any comparable Windows computer. I think we'll already start noticing this when Snow Leopard comes out, but the big thing is Apple's positioning for the future.

 

[EmperorDarius]

Proof plz

Ehm...try by yourself, that's all the proof I can give. If you're intelligent enough, you'll realize that. Otherwise...

I couldn't agree with you more!

OS X was basically a public beta for quite some time after 10.0 came out at first.

I remember reading all the tales of slow performance and lousy interface response till Quartz Extreme came out to improve things and how much did some mac owners end up paying for several full versions of OS X before it was in the state it was from TIGER onwards?

I didn't even want to risk moving from OS9 till Tiger was out and I'd seen how Pro tools LE was performing under OS X and we've only had 1 major OS update since then too.

Ehm, sure, but OS 10.0 was a completely new OS, that really was like a BETA. However, things have changed nowadays, don't you think?

How soon we forget the myriad of problems with Leopard once it shipped including Back to My Mac not working, missing Time Machine backups, disappearing files when transferring over network drives, AirPort problems and major video card problems including scrambled video (particularly the August 07 iMac).

Most of the issues I know have been fixed with the early updates.
Windows Service Packs, they do fix problems of course, by really they do not change things by much, they don't dramatically fix the stability of the OS. Actually, most of the times installing them itself is a problem (either by updating or using the standalone installer).

 

[steveza]

Windows Service Packs, they do fix problems of course, by really they do not change things by much, they don't dramatically fix the stability of the OS. Actually, most of the times installing them itself is a problem (either by updating or using the standalone installer).

This is generally the case except for 2 that I can remember XP SP2 and Vista SP1. XP SP2 added a number of security features and improved others that were there already - this improved the general security and stability of XP. Vista SP1 was a major improvement on the original release but to gain full benefit you have to do a clean install with SP1. Vista SP2 will have many of the improvements that W7 includes so that too will be a major step up I think.

 

[Beerfloat]

Ehm...try by yourself, that's all the proof I can give. If you're intelligent enough, you'll realize that. Otherwise...

You assert that Vista is less stable and secure than both XP and the Windows 7 beta, so surely you should be able to back that up. Or are you just blowing smoke?