C'mon! I know this guy, we ditched him for a poor work ethic and bad work! Vista is lean, mean, fast and coom!

What in the hell is that?

Uh, watch the video!
That's not what Traut said in the video.

He admitted there were some weaknesses in core areas
of windows that they will be working to improve. He
mentioned that these areas were common to all OS's.

He mentioned that Vista was much better in many areas.
The area of focus for him was on the kerenel and
virtualization for servers. He did not really describe
Vista as bloatware in the way you describe.

Watch the complete 1 hour video.

When I read this crap I wonder where I'm going to find the past minutes of my life again.

this is news? sure it's bloated, that's not in dispute by anyone. i'm still waiting for a convincing argument that bloat is bad. you don't know when you'll want to use the features that you don't currently use, but it's nice to have them when the time comes up. more importantly, you cannot predict which of those features is gonna be the one you want to use. with hard drive prices as they are, it doesn't matter if the footprint of the OS is 4 gigs, 8 gigs, 30 gigs or 150 megs. sorry, but it's a pointless nag on the os or any peice of software to say it's bloated. the only time that matters is when you want to run in a resource restricted environment, and that does not apply to the desktop or notebook.

I interned for an embedded linux and rtos company all summer long. 25mb is massive. Most of the kernel, rfs combos we used were within 10mb. And this was stock boot anything images not speciallized much at all. This image would boot on a ATCA chassis(big boards) or even the smallest embedded x86 board. I think 25mb needs alot more context than what you give it in this article. Some of the smaller linux builds are bootable within kilobytes.

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Anonymous wrote:
this is news? sure it's bloated, that's not in dispute by anyone. i'm still waiting for a convincing argument that bloat is bad. you don't know when you'll want to use the features that you don't currently use, but it's nice to have them when the time comes up. more importantly, you cannot predict which of those features is gonna be the one you want to use. with hard drive prices as they are, it doesn't matter if the footprint of the OS is 4 gigs, 8 gigs, 30 gigs or 150 megs. sorry, but it's a pointless nag on the os or any peice of software to say it's bloated. the only time that matters is when you want to run in a resource restricted environment, and that does not apply to the desktop or notebook.

A few possible problems with bloat follow. Some primarily affect the customer, others the developer, and some both.

Minor:

- The software may be sold to people by touting features that most will never understand, much less use.

- It may run more slowly because of the bloat.

- It will probably require more RAM, reducing the RAM available for applications.

Moderate:


- It is likely to be more expensive than it would be without the bloat because it took more investment (people-hours) to create it.


- It will likely take longer to create, test, and document, thereby delaying the release. (Sound familiar?) That loses money for the company and creates ill-will with customers.

- Support will cost more, driving up the price even more.


Major:

- Bloat can make even the simple functions more complicated than they need be. (Anyone who uses Word in Windows should know just what I mean. Try printing a document or opening a new, blank document.)

- It will probably be more susceptible to problems, both internal (bugs) and external (attacks) because of the bloat.

- More complexity/bloat makes testing more difficult and less likely to find problems.

- Because of the delays, it may be more likely that the developer will skimp on testing, quality assurance, and documentation. (For a good example, read about the early problems with the IBM 360 series.)

- No code is an island unto itself. A problem with a seldom-used feature may affect other parts of the system, without the link being apparent. (Think of the complex issues that a problem in a driver for an audio or video card can cause, for example.)

How about no more guest posts? How about you register, and sign in before you post? Come on TMO, the rest of us have done it, and if we say something stupid, our bare, um, faces are right out there to be corrected.

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iJack wrote:
How about no more guest posts? How about you register, and sign in before you post? Come on TMO, the rest of us have done it, and if we say something stupid, our bare, um, faces are right out there to be corrected.

I wonder how many guests are registered, but like me are still having problems with cookies not remembering who I am. I can not come to the site with cookies enabled and comment without logging in. I have tried all the suggested tips; deleting cookies and repairing permissions, but they did not work for me. if I go to other web sites they remember me without even having cookies enabled.

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Anonymous wrote:

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iJack wrote:
How about no more guest posts? How about you register, and sign in before you post? Come on TMO, the rest of us have done it, and if we say something stupid, our bare, um, faces are right out there to be corrected.

I wonder how many guests are registered, but like me are still having problems with cookies not remembering who I am. I can not come to the site with cookies enabled and comment without logging in. I have tried all the suggested tips; deleting cookies and repairing permissions, but they did not work for me. if I go to other web sites they remember me without even having cookies enabled.

Try this:

- Delete ALL cookies for macobserver.com and ipodobserver.com. ALL. (there are several; check under "macobserver.com" and "www.macobserver.com")

- Go to the Forums link at the top of a TMO page, which takes you to the forum index. Log in there. Do NOT log in on a discussion page, especially an article page.

- If you come in and find that you're not logged in, go to the Forums link and log in. You may have to do this twice.

This works for me every time.

IJACK,

What's the difference whether someone is registered or not? "IJACK" doesn't tell us anything except that it's the same person posting whatever they're posting. You could be be GUEST, TMO, or anyone else for that matter.

If you want others to step out then start by stepping out yourself. Like this:


Robert
iosis.records at gmail

Until you do that, you're just another poster pretending to be out in the open, along with all the other over-opinionated people fawning about their favorite tech choices.

And the reason why I was posting in the first place is to tell the author that he shouldn't assume everyone reading his article knows who Stan Beer is. I did not and had to use a search engine to learn who he is.

@gslusher, I've done all those things. I've emailed TMO about my problems logging in, and still I can't.

And when you give advice for how to make a log-in stick, and tell us how you do it, and then say... "This works for me every time." .... it makes my brain go into an endless loop.

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gslusher wrote:
Major:

- Bloat can make even the simple functions more complicated than they need be. (Anyone who uses Word in Windows should know just what I mean. Try printing a document or opening a new, blank document.)

- It will probably be more susceptible to problems, both internal (bugs) and external (attacks) because of the bloat.

- More complexity/bloat makes testing more difficult and less likely to find problems.

- Because of the delays, it may be more likely that the developer will skimp on testing, quality assurance, and documentation. (For a good example, read about the early problems with the IBM 360 series.)

- No code is an island unto itself. A problem with a seldom-used feature may affect other parts of the system, without the link being apparent. (Think of the complex issues that a problem in a driver for an audio or video card can cause, for example.)

- If you liked the keyboard, Ctrl-N, Ctrl-P, If you like the mouse, click the blank document icon, click the printer icon, man that was so freaking complicated! Please, that's your first example of a major problem with bloat? Well, it failed.

- Supposition, "probably" is not a major problem especially since even you are certain it exists

- This has nothing to do with bloat, this has to do with project management. Are we to assume that Leopard is bloated since it has been delayed?

- Agreed, to an extent, but again, this is not a convincing argument that bloat is bad. If nothing calls into a function, then this is clearly not true, and that code is indeed an island. This is how lots of web service companies allow themselves to release code that has not finished testing, because it is isolated, it is precisely an island that none of the live web pages will be calling into. That is clearly bloat, and no it is not bad.

gslusher, you failed that was a perfect example of the arguments that are given none of which are convincing that bloat is bad. Not one of the major issues is actually major, let alone critical.

I like lean, mean OS and applications. But one type of "bloat" is all the software that comes preinstalled with a new OS. On my new mac I got a set of office programs I'll never use. I also got iTunes and iPhoto which are OK programs, but the pressure to use them prevents competing programs in the market place. And their inclusion in the base install from Apple is a form of bloat.
People complained when microsoft decided to build IE into their OS. But isn't iPhoto, iTunes and all the other i* programs from apple the same thing? But it's OK because it's done by the 'good guy'?

Don't get me wrong, I just bought a macbook because vista sucks and microsoft sucks. But there is more than one kind of bloat.

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Anonymous wrote:
I like lean, mean OS and applications. But one type of "bloat" is all the software that comes preinstalled with a new OS. On my new mac I got a set of office programs I'll never use. I also got iTunes and iPhoto which are OK programs, but the pressure to use them prevents competing programs in the market place. And their inclusion in the base install from Apple is a form of bloat. People complained when microsoft decided to build IE into their OS. But isn't iPhoto, iTunes and all the other i* programs from apple the same thing? But it's OK because it's done by the 'good guy'?

Don't get me wrong, I just bought a macbook because vista sucks and microsoft sucks. But there is more than one kind of bloat.

Differences:

- The iLife applications are not demos.
- They are quite useful for many people. For example, few other image library/management programs can capture photos from almost any digital camera. (FWIW, Apple also includes another application, Image Capture, that can get image files from digital cameras and scanners without using iPhoto.) If you have a camcorder, try iMovie. GarageBand can do a lot of things even non-musicians like myself will find useful, like recording and editing audio (e.g., for podcasts, narration for movies, recorded greetings); editing and mixing songs (I used it to create several tracks for use in musical freestyle classes at horse shows); and more. Musicians can use GarageBand to record, edit, and publish their own music.
- No Apple application thrusts itself in the user's face, like much of the "demo" stuff on a new Windows computer. Unless you look for it, you won't even know that there's a demo of iWork on the Mac.
- If you don't want some of the included iLife and iWork applications, just toss them. NONE are critical to OS X. If you want to use something else available for OS X, go ahead: Apple will not do anything to stop you. You can use other chat programs, sync programs (e.g., Palm HotSync, TheMissingSync), browsers (e.g., Firefox, Camino, SeaMonkey, Shiira, Opera, iCab, OmniWeb), image editors and managers, movie editors, DVD burners (e.g., Toast), audio recorders/editors, contact/calendar managers, etc.

Now, some of the alternatives to Apple software are not free, but "you pays your money and makes your choice."

- The antitrust complaint wasn't just that Microsoft (capitalized, BTW) "decided to build IE into their OS." On the browser side, there were several aspects, though they were not the only points of the suit.
-- Microsoft illegally acted to PREVENT other browsers from being installed.
-- Microsoft coerced PC makers to not include Netscape on PCs out of the box. (The feds had Gates on videotape directing that to be done.)
-- They made it difficult to remove IE or define another browser as the default. Parts of IE were, indeed, built into the OS. Apple supplies the Webkit, which Safari uses, but it can also be used by other applications, including other browsers (e.g., Shiira). You can remove Safari from your Mac without damaging the OS. It's easy to set another browser as the default--and has always been so.

Don't tell me that you can install Firefox on a Windows PC. Yes, you can--NOW, BECAUSE of the antitrust suit. Microsoft was found to be an illegal monopoly by courts in the US and EU. It has paid hundreds of millions in fines and its activities in the EU are being overseen and supervised by a court. In simple terms, Microsoft was found to be a criminal operation. (The penalties in the US case were minor, as the Bush administration backed down on the penalties recommended by the previous administration. The federal judge was very angry, but had little choice but to accede to the DOJ's recommendation.)

You think that there are no competitors to iTunes and iPhoto? It depends upon the functions you want. Go to VersionTracker and search around. You'll find several image/media cataloging applications, including iMedia Viewer and iView Media. Many digital cameras come with software that does pretty much what iPhoto does, like Canon's ImageBrowser. (One thing that they do NOT do, in general, is to connect to a competitor's camera.)

The major advantages of iTunes are the ease with which it syncs with iPods and iPhones (it IS required to activate an iPhone) and the integration with the iTunes Store. There are ways to sync iTunes (the non-DRM content, at least) with other players besides the iPod, but most players have their own software to do this. AFAIK, iTunes is the ONLY way to use the iTunes Store, but, iTunes is free for both OS X and Windows, so there's no reason to complain there.

I'll get around to answering the previous message sometime soon. It would seem from the comments that the Guest most likely has little/no experience managing a large, complex development project.