MacDirectory Magazine

FEA TURE WINDOWS 7 AND THE FUTURE OF OS X WORDS BY TREY YANCY For more than a generation users of the Mac OS have enjoyed a notable lead over their Windows cousins. The debacle of Windows Vista provided an opportunity for many Mac users to gloat but that time may well be over. The arrival of Windows 7 represents the most important advance in the history of the Borg collective and it brings enough muscle, good looks, elegance and stability to the table that it truly rivals OS X in many respects and it presents a challenge that Apple must take very seriously. Windows 7 For XP users who never dipped a toe into the alligator pit of Windows Vista, Windows 7 is a major change. While much of the interface is familiar, the changes and improvements are numerous. For example, the taskbar now accepts icons for favorite programs, a la the OS X dock. As with the Mac, when you right click on a program icon, you get a context sensitive jump list that contains recent documents, tasks, etc., but with Windows 7 you can do this right in the taskbar. You can organize and automatically resize windows by snapping the window to the edge of the screen. If you hover over a taskbar icon you are presented with a coverflow-style preview of related open documents. File searches now resemble those of Spotlight. Taking another cue from OS X, the homegroup function (which still has a few rough edges) allows you to share printers and drives with other Windows 7 machines. Windows media center also takes a cue from front row, providing easy access to photos, video and the like. There are also several features that OS X has yet to support, two of which being direct support for touch screens and the reduction of visual clutter by turning open windows transparent (possible in OSX terminal but that’s not saying much). There are many other improvements in both function and eye candy, all of which add up to an OS that is hugely appealing. Frankly, with the exception of the bare bones starter edition of W7, this is the only release of Windows in its 25-year lifespan that has been able to rival the combination of power and ease of use of the Mac experience. It is also much more stable than in the past. As expressed in a recent Windows 7 commercial (one that elicits giggles from Mac users), one of the dearest wishes of Windows users has been an operating system that doesn’t crash constantly. This dream has finally become a reality for PC users, and it is about time. As with previous versions of Windows, the versions and pricing are all over the map. Beyond the basic test drive version, Windows 7 is available in three versions: Home Premium (“premium” meaning basic consumer edition), Professional (which also includes support for XP apps, backups, and corporate networking), and Ultimate (which also includes file encryption and 35 language support). Upgrade prices are $119, $199, and $219 respectively, with full versions priced at $199, $299, and $319. In comparison, Of course, Snow Leopard supports all the above features and is available for the single price of $29. OS X Snow Leopard Rather than attempting a lengthy (and boring) feature-by-feature comparison with Snow Leopard, suffice it to say that Snow Leopard is not a major rewrite and its major improvements are largely under the hood. The great majority of features have been with us for a couple of years now and it can be argued that as far as the average consumer is concerned, the lion’s share of changes have been seen in the bundled software. In contrast, Windows 7 is a game changer in that it is now clearly in the same league as OS X. One may remember the words of a Microsoft vice president (much to the embarrassment of the folks in Redmond) who said that the goal of Windows 7 was 58 MacDirectory

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