There is a new sidebar at the site that compares XP and OS X and even offers some clarification of his stance.  I still disagree in many areas, but at least he is responding to the feedback.

Best regards,
Brad

I read the sidebar article on OS X and XP and even though I don’t agree with some things he says, at least he has the guts to use the feedback he received for an article. There would have been ppl who would have done nothing. As I said before, he and I don’t agree on certain things and with WinTel friends it’s usually that way. Some ppl really believe that a machine with more software available is the better one.

Just read Thurrott’s rebuttal in the above-mentioned sidebar.  It gets a little repetitive at the end, but the bulk of his argument is solid.  His main point is that MacOS and Windows have borrowed *from each other*, and the notion that Microsoft is all about pillaging while Apple is all about innovation is a myth.

He may be right.

Hell, he IS right.  Sure, Apple has historically been more innovative than the PC crowd.  But the two technologies have progressed to the point where they are both trying new things and constantly striving to one-up each other.  A lot of Mac users would like to believe that Apple & Steve do their R&D in a sound proof bubble away from the rest of the industry.  They don’t.  When they’ve seen a good idea in Windows, they’ve gone after it.  Anyone who thinks that the Dock is not a direct rip-off of the Windows Taskbar is either desperately clutching at the old paradigm, or is highly medicated. 

The truth is that Microsoft and Apple are watching each other’s products closely, and in the end we’re the ones who benefit.  Sure, Thurrott’s initial comment was overly broad, but he’s corrected it, even responded reasonably eloquently to his critics. 

Ask yourself before you hit ‘Send’ on your latest Thurrott flame: Why is the idea that XP “raises the bar” above 10.1 so difficult for me to entertain?  Is it truly reasonable that XP offers ZERO advantages over OSX that Steve & Co. might want to “emulate”?  Is the posters in this thread interested in seeing the truth of the issue, or are we only interested in authoring Puma Fan Fiction? 

Let me know.

  -mithral

sorry for not posting the link!!! it was kinda stupid maybe I was too overcome by the article

It is clear that it comes from a windoze fan and he is probably biased because of this,  what annoys me most about the article is that PC users who read it may take it as the solemn truth without knowing the “real” facts.

Hell, he IS right.  Sure, Apple has historically been more innovative than the PC crowd.  But the two technologies have progressed to the point where they are both trying new things and constantly striving to one-up each other.  A lot of Mac users would like to believe that Apple & Steve do their R&D in a sound proof bubble away from the rest of the industry.  They don’t.  When they’ve seen a good idea in Windows, they’ve gone after it.  Anyone who thinks that the Dock is not a direct rip-off of the Windows Taskbar is either desperately clutching at the old paradigm, or is highly medicated. 

*sigh*

While I agree that Apple shouldn’t be completely insular in it’s R&D, the suggestion that the dock is sourced from the windows taskbar is flat out wrong. Both are most likely based on the NeXT dock, which Apple happens to own the rights to.

Me, I agree that Win2K and XP are better than their predecessors, but as I’ve said before, having your foot amputated is better than the whole leg, but you’re still gonna walk funny

darn I thought i was the first thansk Daimac

On 2001-09-06 17:51, mithral wrote:

Anyone who thinks that the Dock is not a direct rip-off of the Windows Taskbar is either desperately clutching at the old paradigm, or is highly medicated. 

Actually mithral you are completely WRONG

The dock is not a rip off of the windows taskbar.  The taskbar is a rip off of a similar thing made by NEXT, years before windows copied it.  And as Apple bought NEXT they can use all of NEXTs technology including the dock,

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: firefly on 2001-09-06 18:08 ]</font>

mithral writes-
“Anyone who thinks that the Dock is not a direct rip-off of the Windows Taskbar is either desperately clutching at the old paradigm, or is highly medicated. “

Dude, the Dock comes from the NeXTShelf, which Microsoft ripped off and altered to create their “taskbar”. Apple, in it’s acquisition of NeXT, owned all the rights to the “dock” concept. Also, several UNIX Window Managers have had Dock/Shelf/Taskbar like features years before Windows95.

Another strike against MS and their supposed “innovation”...

I didn’t feel like registering before I wrote this so I appear to be anonymous… However, I am not. I wrote the article on Macs vs. PC’s at this addy: http://pinko-commie.org/3.html  ...

While my site references Cold War dogma, this guy has reinented it… This is like the Ruskies claiming they invented the game of baseball.

Puhleeeeeze. This guy is completely ignorant of consumer technology history or is intentionally re-writing it. Either way it seems quite evil.

Somebody knock the Berlin wall on this guy’s head!

Ladies, gentlemen - please.  You’re making asses of yourselves. 
Know your enemy before you make your argument:  Paul Thurrott is not stupid, not biased, not uninformed.  He knows exactly what he is talking about.  Read his new sidebar in which he explains thoroughly. 

He has been a long time Mac user, Windows user, and general computer expert.  He owns an iBook and uses OS X.  He used OS X years ago when it was still “Rhapsody”, years before many of you even guessed that it was in development.  He knows what he is saying, so try and see his point of view.  After all, it’s valid.

The real hole in his argument is that he claims Windows XP is better because it offers users a new way to “do things”.  Instead of having to worry about applications, or documents - they worry about solutions.  He claims Mac OS X doesn’t do this, and he’s right.

But why would an intelligent person want to do that?  Mac OS X is better, and will continue to be better.  When a user is guided through a template to accomplish a task, they do accomplish it, but they will do it exactly like everyone else does.  They become clones of their system.  They don’t even learn how to do things without their “wizards”.

OS X is superior.  Even though may be difficult to use in the beginning, in the long run, it allows users to be infinitely more creative, and they learn how to really operate their system.  Automated XP is like working with a hand tied behind your back.

So what I’m really saying is that Thurrott’s pretty smart, and knows what he’s saying.  What he’s said is justified, and correct.  His weakness lies in what he hasn’t said.  That Windows XP is better, only because it allows unintelligent people to easily duplicate the work of professionals, in a very uncreative, unfresh way.

Everyone knows that Apple has innovated a lot in terms of technology and design. They have even won an industry award for Firewire. Kudos Apple!!! Keep it up!!! What award has Microsoft won?????? Microsoft excels in rip-off technology (i.e. ripping off and living on someone else’s hardwork) rather than in innovation. What has Microsoft innovated? All their products have been copied from some one else. As for Linux, they are solidly based on Unix. I am really glad Apple decided to go the Unix way too. Do not forget you idiots at Microsoft, that you also ripped off a fair portion of BSD code and used it in Windows 2000. Not suprisingly, they did not have the backbone to admit it till it was proved to their faces that they did. I believe that Apple and Linux now being cousins can learn a lot from each other and benefit one another. Why do we want to fight with each other when we belong to the same family and have the same Ancestors (Unix). As for Microsoft, their policies and their rip-off’s will dig their own grave soon.

On 2001-09-07 01:00, Anonymous wrote:
I didn’t feel like registering before I wrote this so I appear to be anonymous… However, I am not. I wrote the article on Macs vs. PC’s at this addy: http://pinko-commie.org/3.html  ...

I LOVED that article! We linked to it at Mac OS News Around the Web too. Please consider registering and hanging out more often.

Anyone here have Paul ThurrotÒ‘s e-mail adress?
PLEASE PUBLISH HERE!

On 2001-09-07 04:01, Anonymous wrote:
He used OS X years ago when it was still “Rhapsody”, years before many of you even guessed that it was in development.

I doubt that you could find many registered users on these boards for which that is true.

The real hole in his argument is that he claims Windows XP is better because it offers users a new way to “do things”.  Instead of having to worry about applications, or documents - they worry about solutions.  He claims Mac OS X doesn’t do this, and he’s right.

I got the biggest kick when he said Windows switched from being application-centric to document-centric with the addition of the “My Documents” folder in Win95. If only someone had told Apple that switching paradigms was as easy as adding a new folder, they wouldn’t have had to spend all those years working on OpenDoc.

The problem with having a task-based system is that it’s only good for those tasks it’s programed to know how to do. I want the computer to give me my tools and get out of the way.

I think the biggest flaw in the Mr. Thurott’s article is the focus on features. To use a sports metaphor, offense draws fans, defense wins games: in the OS case, the offense consists of the UI features, the defense consists of the underpinnings.

Apple went to a lot of effort to make UNIX work with Mac OS because they wanted solid underpinnings for OS X. MS basically revamped NT to make it more palatable for all users, somewhat less effort than a total overhaul. I have heard a lot about NT, from ‘rock solid’ to ‘an unstable [pile of feces]’ and, actually, a similar range of comments covering X 10.0~.0.4, but perhaps the most signicant comments were made by the major press a few weeks ago, under ‘code red’ (that was NTIIS, right?) headlines.

One can always obtain features from 3rd parties (I am addicted to DragThing and FinderPop), so, in the end, the best way to design a feature set is to provide a huge, creative pool of programmers the means to offer handy utilities and alternatives. I do not, as yet, know how welcoming either X or XP are in this regard, but I can guess (if a hugely popular tool is created for Windows, chances are it will be folded into the next OS release to co-opt the competition).