So I was able to play around with a PC the other day that was running the new Windows Vista Operating System. For those that don’t know, Vista as the successor to Windows XP. It’s widely known that Microsoft “borrowed” a lot of the user interface features directly from Mac OS X. Being the Mac geek that I am, I was super curious to try it out.
Well, you know what? They did an AMAZING job!! Don’t get me wrong, underneath it’s still just as annoying to use as any previous version of Windows but man, is it pretty. The glass interface does something that has always been a pain to do in an OS… transparent windows. The problem in the past is that once you start knocking back the opacity of window backgrounds, any text in that window becomes difficult to read because of what lies behind the window (other windows, documents, desktop wallpaper, etc.). Microsoft was able to solve this problem by blurring anything that lies behind it. This makes it so that there are no hard lines or sharp text to compete with the readability of the text or other elements in the foreground window.
The other thing I really thought was nice was the level of detail they put into the little things such as mouse-over states of various UI objects such as buttons and input fields. This is very Mac-like but it seems that Microsoft really understood what Apple was trying to do and took it to the next level.
The one thing that I really didn’t like was the 3D window rolodex thing. This was Microsoft’s answer to Exposé. In my opinion, they really missed the mark on this one. Exposé allows you to see all of the open windows by pressing a function key. All of your windows shrink down and you can quickly see anything you have open and bring it to the foreground with the click of your mouse. The Vista version makes you scroll through the windows so it takes longer to find the one you want. There is an option to see all of your windows at the same time but they are small thumbnail images so it makes it hard to distinguish similar-looking windows. The one thing I do like about the Vista version of this feature is that when you activate the 3D rolodex thing, it includes your minimized windows in addition to the windows that you have open.
So that’s all I was able to get out of my time using Vista. I’d love to spend more time with it so that I have more ammo for my arguments on why it is an inferior OS to the Mac platform. Maybe next week I can sneak back on.
Of course I’m a die-hard Apple fanboy (proud of the label) so it’ll take a lot more for me to make the switch but I sure hope we see some of the transparency UI stuff in Leopard. I doubt it but it would be nice.
