Leopard and Vista
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard",
released in October 2007, is a successful operating system that brought
numerous improvements to the Mac. Things like Boot Camp,
Core
Animation, more 64-bit support, Exposé,
Quick
Look, Time
Machine, OpenGL
improvements, etc. This powerhouse OS brought major new features to
new Macs - and to older Macs (going back to 2002) with PowerPC G4 CPUs
and AGP graphics.
Could Mac OS X 10.6 "Leopard" have inspired Vista's Aero
interface?
Windows
Vista, released to retail in January 2007, wasn't a total slouch.
It also brought new features,
like the Aero interface. (Where have I seen that kind of eye candy
before? Maybe it was in the Aqua interface
- used by Apple starting with Mac OS X 10.0 in 2000 - and larger
icons up to 256 x 256 pixels (Mac OS X 10.5 icons only go up to
128 x 128.) Microsoft shows it knows how to beat Apple on important
features like this. Other Vista features include a new Start menu
(yawn!), a Windows Movie Maker update (it first came with Windows Me back in 2000,
where it was a copy of iMovie, which came out in
1999 and ran under Mac OS 8).
Vista has better security than Windows XP (with no Mac viruses in
the wild, that is hard to compare). It came with Windows Media Player
11 - again nothing new, but a nice improvement. In fact, d except for
those features copied from the Mac, the list is short on truly new and
innovative features.
(If Microsoft really had balls, they should have done a reverse Boot
Camp that would have let you boot your PC into Mac OS X. But they
are more scared of Mac clones than Apple is.)
At best, Vista should have been a point release of XP (e.g. Windows
XP 1.1). Unfortunately for Microsoft, Vista has such poorly optimized
code that for most consumers it was actually a negative point release
(e.g., Windows XP -0.1).
Apple poured in virtualization technologies, video acceleration,
64-bit support, and helpful features. Microsoft messed up so bad trying
to improve stuff that a lot of people wanted to stick with XP instead
of upgrading.
Snow Leopard and Widows 7
It is upon this foundation that we have Apple and Microsoft
releasing their next round of operating system improvements.
Microsoft's update to Windows is almost two years late and has been
branded "Windows 7" (for an explanation of the name, see Why Is It Called Windows 7?).
The 400 to 500 million XP and Vista users around the world should
praise Microsoft for finally getting Windows XP version
1.1 Windows 7 finished. (Not everything is sunshine and roses,
but what else would you expect from Microsoft?)
With Windows 7, Microsoft will have caught up to Mac OS X, somewhere
between versions 10.4 and 10.5.
There is simply no contest between the two operating systems.
Windows still has a long ways to go to completely catch up with Mac
OS X 10.5.
The power of Mac OS X 10.6
"Snow Leopard" with fully integrated 64-bit support, Grand Central
Dispatch, OpenCL, QuickTime X, and Microsoft Exchange support is way
out past Windows 7. Maybe when Midori, Microsoft's planned
post-Windows operating system, comes out, Microsoft can try to catch up
with Snow Leopard. By then, Apple will have moved forward again - still
leaving Microsoft behind.
Windows users can keep hoping that Microsoft will catch up one day,
or they can make the switch and catch up for real. (Anyone who thinks
Microsoft is catching up with Apple has never really used Mac
OS X.) 
