Vista pricing: no thanks

Jeff — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:56:00 GMT

Microsoft announced pricing for Vista. I'm laughing at them.

Sure, they'll sell OEM copies just as they've been doing for ages, but do they really expect to sell any at retail? This is not a compelling upgrade. I haven't seen anything in Vista yet that makes me want to run out and buy it. Sure it's pretty, but I get my pretty from OS X anyway.

I was really pulling for Microsoft a couple of years ago, because the original plans really seemed like they would offer something exciting. What we're really getting is something pretty that's still Windows XP. I know the fanboys will come out and say that it does this or that, but does anything "new" really solve a problem not currently solved by XP or OS X?

Someone explain why Vista is worth a couple hundred bucks. I'm not seeing it.

And you thought Vista was looking like a colossal failure before

Jeff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:49:00 GMT

I'm sure I'll be accused of drinking the Apple Kool-Aid (or is it Apple juice?), but I have to say that Microsoft is so ridiculously far behind in making a meaningful gee-whiz operating system that it weighs heavy on me. The company that has brought to me amazing development tools and a superior Web platform has utterly embarrassed me on the OS front.

Apple showed off some of the new features in Leopard, the next OS X version, at their developer conference today. Can you believe this Time Machine application? It represents everything that's wrong with Vista. Time Machine was clearly thought of by coming up with a user interface that normal people would understand, and then the technical details were figured out. Where is the new file system and related tech in Vista?

And Steve Jobs demonstrated part of the reason that OS X has evolved so well: Iterative development. Five versions in five years, and people actually pay for the upgrades! Would people have upgraded Windows XP in this fashion? I doubt it, but making those incremental steps sure would have made a lot of sense to me.

It's hard for me to admit as a Windows developer, but every day I become more of a "Mac person" as I run Visual Studio in Parallels and do my day-to-day computing in OS X. With those amazing new Mac Pro machines, I can see getting one of those and being even less Windows oriented.

Microsoft has really blown it.

Jeff does Server & Tools Online : Vista

Vista pricing: no thanks

And you thought Vista was looking like a colossal failure before