The cat is out of the bag on the next operating systems from Apple
and Microsoft. Apple has announced Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).
Microsoft has promised Windows 7 - or, if that
isn't good enough, maybe there will be Midori.
Let's pull together the facts and see how they compare.
Snow Leopard
Let's drop in at the Apple Snow Leopard
website. Apple has five new things it is highlighting:
- OpenCL
- QuickTime X
- Grand Central
- Microsoft Exchange Support
- 64-bit
That sounds great, but what do they do?
Every modern computer comes with a GPU (graphics processing unit) to
put the picture on the monitor and, when needed, play video games, but
the rest of the time its spent cleaning its fur and taking naps.
OpenCL is software that lets programmers tap into the processing
power of the GPU for general computing so way your high-end video card
is doing something when you're not playing World of
Warcraft.
As an added bonus, the processing power of a good video card can
exceed the power of your regular CPU for some types of calculations.
Pushing those pixels around isn't easy. This could be a huge boost to
computer performance for no extra cost.
QuickTime X will have souped up support for video codecs and
improved playback. This will have close ties to video iPods and
watching videos purchased from iTunes. Maybe true HD videos are
coming?
If you have a new Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo or a Quad Core Xeon,
you want all those extra processor cores working hard for you. Grand
Central gives the operating system multicore support, and it gives
additional tools for developers to bring that same functionality to
their programs.
Microsoft Exchange Support is built in support for this
widely used technology for handling emails in the business world. This
is already big news for the iPhone and MobileMe products that have
this.
64-bit increases the amount of RAM your computer can use.
Currently the Mac Pro tops out at 32 GB; the new theoretical limit will
be 16 TB! Now you just have to find enough cash to buy that much RAM.
This will only help if RAM chips increase in size by huge leaps and/or
cost drops like a rock.
Windows 7
Good try Apple, but be prepared to be blown away by what Microsoft
is getting ready to unleash on the world. Where else would I go for
Windows news but the Windows 7 FAQ
on Paul Thurrott's SuperSite?
As Thurrott points out, Windows 7 is going to be the next "major
release" of Windows. There are five features that are highlighted, just
like Apple:
- Multitouch
- New Windows Explorer
- Hypervisor
- WinFS
- Subscription based sales
Is multitouch what I think it is? Yes, this new feature can
already be found on the iPhone, the iPod touch, and MacBook (plain,
Pro, and Air) trackpads. It's good to see the photocopiers at Redmond
are working hard.
The new version of Windows Explorer will use the "ribbon"
user interface that Microsoft introduced with Office 2007 to replace
pulldown menus.
Hypervisor is a
code word for virtualization. This is just like what Parallel, VMware,
and other programs are already doing with Leopard today (and did with
Tiger before it).
Then there is the infamous WinFS, but they may not
call it that. You may remember WinFS as one of the features cut from
Longhorn (now known as Windows Server 2008) after
years of hype from Microsoft. I guess that we can say that
Microsoft doesn't give up on a good idea; they just give it a new name
and keep trying.
Saving my favorite new feature for last, we may be able to buy all
this as a subscription. What more could we want? This gives us
the privilege of sending Microsoft money every year to renew our
subscription in order to continue using all the wonderful Microsoft
goodness.
Midori
We can always count on Microsoft giving their fans a little extra.
When I heard about
Midori, I knew that this could top everything. Here we have
Microsoft taking Google's idea of having all your software and data on
the Internet and getting it for "free" - and spinning it into a highly
profitable business for Microsoft. What could possibly go wrong?
What really gets people excited is the idea that there might finally
be an end to Windows. Open up the heavens, and let's start the
hallelujah chorus, the
"end of Windows"! That's the kind of news a lot of people have been
dreaming of, and it's Microsoft who's going to deliver?
After my head stopped spinning, I regained my cynicism enough to
say, "Yeah, right. It will take a serious silver bullet to kill the
money-sucking nightmare that is Windows."
Until that day, I'm betting that Snow Leopard will do more for
putting Windows in a coffin than Midori ever will.
Update 2008.08.20
A late addition from none other
than Microsoft is upstaging Paul Thurrott's Supersite. That's
right, the big guns are coming out to hype Win 7. How could they pop
out to ruin my well-researched comparison?
I saw posted this long list of "main feature teams". No way could
Microsoft be releasing this many new features:
- Applets and Gadgets
- Assistance and Support Technologies
- Core User Experience
- Customer Engineering and Telemetry
- Deployment and Component Platform
- Desktop Graphics
- Devices and Media
- Devices and Storage
- Documents and Printing
- Engineering System and Tools
- File System
- Find and Organize
- Fundamentals
- Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
- International
- Kernel & VM
- Media Center
- Networking - Core
- Networking - Enterprise
- Networking - Wireless
- Security
- User Interface Platform
- Windows App Platform
This list isn't new features at all. This is just a list of things
that all operating systems have. Microsoft needs to give a better scoop
on their next OS for people to bother stopping in to read this
blog.
It looks like the Microsoft hype machine hasn't warmed up yet. I'm
sure by next year we'll see them solving the oil crisis, bringing world
peace - and just maybe they'll have a plan to take on Apple.
