Any mac users tried Vista

I am curious if anyone has had a change to compare the Mac operating system to Vista, and if so, what they thought.

 

Well, I think we can all safely say that Mac OS X is more stable than Vista, or any Microsoft OS for that matter.

As far as personal differences, there are many. In my opinion, the Mac OS is more aesthetic, and Apple's computers tend to reflect this. The main thing is that each OS offers different pros and cons, so it maybe that if you are, for example a graphics designer or sound editor, the Mac OS platform is perfect for you - but if you are a CAD engineer, then you need Windows.

 

I actually like what I have seen from Vista. Having said that, I think it is probably a little early to adopt it as an everyday OS. Give them another month or two and I think Vista will be very solid. Do I plan on switching back? No way, but Vista is a nice upgrade to Windows.

 

i've been running vista for 2 months now (i'm not an apple user, altought i'd love to have one). Vista is just xp dressed up, with a different menu hiearchy. the security features that ms trumped up are not that useful, particularly UAC.
however, it is fast and looks amazing. there are some memory leakages with firefox and itunes on vista. opening itunes, i use about 33000K memory. After about 2 hours, it went up to 80000K. Same with firefox. in addition, none of my games work. OpenGL support sucks, as all my games that use to run on the same laptop under XP now won't run on Vista. America's Army won't run, Enemy Territory won't run, what else?

Aside from speed and looks, Vista has nothing else going for it. In case you were wondering, I have Vista Business, so I can't vouche for Ultimate or Home Premium.

 

I'm a longtime Mac user, although have also been using Windows on my home PC for a number of years as well (running XP at home currently). I've finally gotten a chance to use Vista more regularly since getting an SZ460 last week.

Generally it seems like a nice upgrade visually from XP, and they at least seem generally consistent with the "aero" glass effects (although I have to say that the transparent glass effects don't do a whole lot for me, but I guess they are kind of cool).

Useability wise though it doesn't seem all that different from XP to me, at least from what I've used so far. Overall it still has kind of an inconsistent feel to me, but then again, so did XP, so I can't knock it too much.

In terms of the Vista functions that have more direct OS X equivalents, I sort of like Flip3d, but I don't find it to be quite as useable as Expose (I like the idea with Expose that I can expand everything out and view all windows at once, rather than having to still tab through all of the windows to see the full view. I can't see a real benefit to the "stacked" window concept of Flip3d beyond avoiding being too much like Expose). I do like the "search" integrated into the Start menu, which makes it more useful to me (my XP PC at home has a Start menu that is a mess). One thing I don't like is how the Start menu now seems to have a scrolling list.... on one hand this at least avoids the giant massive start menu lists, but on the other, it seems to require more work to scroll and navigate through. But I find myself using the Search more often to just quickly get to the app name I am looking for).

I am not really sure about the whole Sidebar function.... although I did like finding out that I could drag items out of the Sidebar and put them anywhere on the desktop. I think the thing I still don't like about it though is that you have to switch to the Desktop (although one annoyance, when I use the flip3d interface to switch to the desktop, it doesn't show the sidebar) to view it. Comparitively with the OS X Dashboard, or Konfabulator, I like the idea of widgets that are not normally viewable, and that you can just bring up quickly with a keystroke and then quickly hide it again. Having said that, I wouldn't mind in OS X being able to pin certain widgets to the desktop so they were always visible.

I like the feature in Vista that shows a little thumbnail of above a task when you mouse over it.

The UAC stuff is irritating, but I have sort of gotten used to it.

Overall, I think Vista seems like an improvement over Vista, and certainly a step in the right direction for MS. I don't really like it as much as OS X, which has a very different feel, but it has a more polished feel, generally. It's still rough around the edges, but it seems like a good framework for MS to move forward on.

Also, just to be clear, I don't think OS X is perfect by any means. Apple has gotten kind of bad about UI consistency (with the current OS X experience a sort of bizarre combination of different UI themes, with things like the Finder still having the brushed-metal appearance while other apps, etc. are now using solid grey colors, etc.). I am definitely hoping that when Leopard is finally unveiled, Apple will show an overhauled OS X UI that finally brings back some much-needed consistency, etc.

 

Yup, used it on an iMac our dept just bought at the Univ to test to see if we can get triple boot to work. If everything goes as planned (and it's looking good), we will replace all our PCs in the labs with iMacs (probably fully loaded).
Right now, there are some major security issues. I'm not sure how many of the issues they've fixed since RC2, but that one had security flaws from like, 98 and crap.
But, they removed the RUN command. WTF... I mean... WTF!
That greatly reduces productivity.
Um... The widget thing is terrible. The whole reason I even tried widgets on OS X is because I don't have to go through the trouble of minimizing all of my windows. I can quickly overlay them on top of the desktop.
UAC... not sure how much that will help.

But the cost! Dear god the cost! $400 for ultimate?!?!? WTF! I probably will only upgrade if our Univ gets a copy in our bookstore for $15 as they did with XP. And I won't even install it until SP1 comes out.

It's actually a disapointing OS. But, then again.... what can you expect when they failed after 3 years, then basically restarted and developed this in 2 years.

 

yes some features, such as gadgets, feel like they were rushed, and its big $$ to get the most workable version, but its the newest OS for PC in 5 years, so at least its something. I dual boot my macbook and still rather stay in OS X for my main use.

 

Seek and you will find.

Oh, the UI in Leopard is far more consistent according to recent reports... Can't find any screenshots now, seems Apple's lawyers have been busy.

 

Cool, I'll have to play around with that.

Yeah, definitely looking forward to the full unveiling of Leopard next month, especially what they have in store for the new UI.

 

I skipped reading other posts, since I seem to be overcome with strange urges to defend Windows around here (just FYI in case I say something repetitious)

I thought, from the user side of things, Vista felt very much like XP. It looked a lot better... amazing what a shift in colors and some transparancies can do. It did add an indexed search, which I didn't actually use much, but I mention because it's Spotlightish functionality. It's got "smart folders" which're search based, and I'm not sure OS X has. (I think it does. It's a pretty obvious next step once you've got spotlight.) I do really like the start menu's new search-based launcher thingy. You hit the Windows key and type a program name. It's like a little piece of Quicksilver (I use Colibri in XP for the same functionality, sans documents). UAC supposedly adds security.

Beyond that, and a host of small changes in details (more information in task manager, file extension not highlighted when you rename a file...) it compares to OS X the same way XP does, IMO.

 

Yeah, there is a Smart Folders feature in OS X.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder/

It's basically like setting up an iTunes smart playlist.

-Zadillo