Note: This post was derived from a "brain dump" e-mailed to a friend. I began discussing my lust for Apple machinery and experience and somehow wandered around to my thoughts on how far Vista misses the mark.
Interesting blog post by a professor at U of Maryland - human-computer interaction lab... about going from Microsoft to Apple.
Very timely as I've been mulling a MacBook Pro for some time...
After reading this, I'm feeling very queasy about it. I really really want that brushed aluminum goodness.
But, the freaking low-ball prices on the fresh Core2 Duo Dell's blow my mind. I could buy something for my wife and myself and pay as much as the MacBook Pro. Absolutely sick.
I think I'm going to be a PC guy for a long time.
Here's Ben Bederson's post:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/user-advocate/2006/09/switchback-horrors-of-windows-power.html
Vista... now that's another story. Like I said, still nothing too compelling.
I actually well up inside wanting to cry about it. I honestly wanted Microsoft to get it right. They've been "out of the game" in terms of new features for Windows for what 5-8 years?
Vista usability is "slick", but man, it is NOT worth the upgrade price.
I'd be willing to consider selling a kidney for OSX on a Dell Intel box, though.
It's too bad Apple's only a hardware company.
As I write this, and now dwell on these thoughts, another thing that piques my interest is the fact I'm lamenting about these things that ... man, a few years ago, were going to change computing. Sort of like looking forward to Windows 95, faster machines, and the Internet.
Yet, here we are with the same old, same old. When is something big and awesome going to come and sweep me off my feet? Something so fundamentally game-shifting that everyone thinks, "Why didn't I think of that?" We're still stuck on the same, old, stupid "desktop" paradigm.
I have an inkling though... it could be something similar to Ubuntu. If the Linux crowd could aggregate their powers for good and unite across distros (think: "Distros Unite!" and a couple of thousand code-wielding nerds throw their hands together for a huddle), man, think of that potential to just blow us away.
Get a couple of hardcore industrial design firms involved... compete for the UI to beat all UI's...
What is super sad is: Microsoft has honestly taken a hit, and has been hemorrhaging user acceptance (and talent) because of security. Vista will get security right, though. It will also go too far, with DRM baked into the neurons inside. DRM baked in doesn't even annoy me quite as much as the gazillion pop-ups that you have to click through to DO anything.
But as far as pure OS experience... it's just so missing. WinFS (and friends) should never have been cut from the final spec.
Stockholders (which I am one.. albeit, to a very small degree) are one thing, but I honestly would give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt if they were still feeling ambitious enough to throw WinFS (and the other missing components) into Vista. I mean, they're basically saying, "We'll bake Google-like search into the OS." I'd wait for that.
I was pretty hardcore with Windows Desktop Search on XP... Vista took that away from me. And the search experience in Vista sucks. Search itself "works" functionally (especially if you index), but the accessibility/usability of it from file system, e-mail, and other parts of the system just sucks. You always have to invoke the start menu to search. Maybe I'm missing something? It's vaguely intuitive. But I want it right there - everywhere - when I need it. I want the IE7/Firefox Google search right there at the top of every app that runs on my system. EVERY WINDOW/APP needs search when its relevant. Every Windows app needs to have the option to hook into a Search API and provide relevant results to it. It needs to be as standard as the red-X to close windows.
One thing I am secretly hoping for is that somewhere about 9 floors underground in Redmond there is an army the size of the U.S. Iraq contingent working on WinFS and the other Vista-drop-outs. Then, they roll Vista... people begin crying fowl and complaining, "What in the heck are you trying to pawn OSX's leftovers over on me for?" - they pull out the secret weapons. And then Windows Update shows us that we all have some delicious features to pull down and make our lives complete.
Would it make the $299 upgrade price to Ultimate worth it? (You know as a power-user you can't live much less than Ultimate).
There are other lamentables such as the licensing terms of only being able to transfer to one additional machine and so on.
I'm using it (Vista RC2) in production on my machine at work, and sure its generally been a decent experience, but when I think of having to pay for the upgrade. It ain't worth it.
Then there's the whole corporate side of it and having to ultimately make a decision on whether we upgrade our entire organization to Vista. At this point, nothing compelling will push us to Vista so we'll wait until XP goes off support in 5 years or whatever it is. Our users don't even need anything on Vista. With straight line-of-business apps (with minimal "visual" requirements), my users can barely manage the features of switching windows in XP as it is.
I wonder how much of Vista adoption will also depend on baby-boomer retirement issues. I know that's more of a socio-cultural line of thinking, but we have a large contingent of baby-boomer age people who just hate computers. The machines are necessary evils of this world, up there with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. I'd hate to think what it'd do to these folks if Vista were unleashed on them.