What Microsoft has been doing since 2001, or, why Mac users are actually excited about upgrades
Paul Thurrott understandably bristles when the claim that Microsoft has been ineffectually fumbling around with Vista since 2001 rears its ugly head. Here’s what he ahs to say about the matter:
Apple and its supporters will tell you that Apple spent the past five years churning out major new Mac OS X versions while Microsoft fumbled around trying to finish Windows Vista. This is completely untrue. Though I use and respect Mac OS X, virtually every version Apple has shipped since 2001 has been a minor update, akin to a Windows 98 SE or Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Meanwhile, Microsoft has pushed an amazing variety of Windows versions out the door since 2001. Some highlights include Windows XP Embedded, Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE), Windows XP MCE 2004, Windows XP MCE 2005, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (TPC), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. It has also shipped major updates to its digital media software, including three major updates to Windows Media Player, a major IE release–IE 7–major new client-based security applications and services, including Windows Defender and Windows Live OneCare. And this is just a partial list. The point here is simple: Microsoft hasn’t sat still, contrary to the FUD you read online.
Thurrott retorts that Microsoft has actually been doing a lot since 2001 on the OS front; and he’ll point to several new versions of XP, such as XP Embedded, XP 64-bit edition, XP Media Center Edition (MCE), XP Tablet Edition, and their combined updates. At the same time, he’ll claim that Apple’s retail OS releases all amount to minor improvements the type of which have been included in XP service packs for free.
However, this isn’t really true. XP Embedded is just plain-jane XP with a bunch of unnecessary components removed and some settings tweaked to allow it to be run on flash memory devices, but none of these changes are anything a teenager with msconfig and regedit couldn’t already do. 64-bit XP is a more significant undertaking, but it doesn’t really work; lots of software isn’t compatible with it, and Thurrott himself will admit its general unsuitability:
Chances are, you don’t want or need it. And if you do get it, you’ll be disappointed. I can almost guarantee it.
Ouch! Finally, two of the new versions of XP he points to–MCE and Tablet PC Edition–are really just regular old Windows XP with a new visual theme (“Royale”), a new application or two (Media Center and Windows Journal, respectively), and support for some new hardware (TV tuners and tablet screens, respectively). If this is what a “new version” amounts to, don’t the hardware vendors like Dell and HP who tweak XP with their own bundled software, settings, and special drivers actually distribute “new versions” of Windows? Calling the addition of some applications and drivers (and probably a new splash screen) to an existing OS a “new version” strikes me as a tad disingenuous. However, if Thurrott wants to call those products full releases, fine; Apple can play ball. In that same time frame of 2001-2007, it released Mac OS X for Intel processors (one), released a “new version” of Tiger with Intel Macs that included Front Row and Photo Booth, as well as support for built-in iSights (two), released the AppleTV which runs an embedded version of the Mac OS (three), and announced the iPhone, which runs a mobile version of OS X (four). In fact, Apple did all of this since 2005 (though to be fair, it has always maintained a parallel Intel-native Mac OS X since the very beginning of 2001).
Compare these four “new versions” of OS X from Apple to what Thurrott says Microsoft’s been up to, which amounts to XP embedded, XP-64bit, XP MCE, and XP tablet PC edition. (calling updates to those products separate releases is just plain stupid; I’d have to include XP’s two service packs and dozens of minor hotfixes, as well as the 50 or so incremental updates to all versions of Mac OS X). It looks like both Microsoft and Apple both released as many minor “new versions” of their operating systems during that time, and all this is in addition to Apple’s five major OS releases (10.0 through 10.4) compared to Microsoft’s two (Windows XP and Vista).
The charge that Apple’s Mac OS X versions amount to XP service packs is similarly bogus. Here’s what went into said XP service packs:
SP1 (September 2002)
- Support for USB 2.0
- Support for hard drives larger than 137 GB
- Support for Serial ATA hard drives
- Set Program Access and Defaults
SP2 (August 2004)
- Improved firewall
- Improved wireless support
- Improved memory protection and more general security
- Improved Windows Movie Maker
- Support for Bluetooth
- Windows Security Center
Now, let’s take a look at what the different versions of OS X added to the original release, which came out in March of 2001:
10.1 (September 2001)
- CD burning
- DVD playback
- Improved performance
- Improved printer support
- Improved AppleScript
- Image Capture
- Support for Bluetooth
10.1 Acually does look like a “service pack” release to me. In fact, Mac OS X 10.1 was released free of charge to owners of 10.0 simply because the initial release of OS X was so embarrassingly slow, buggy, and incomplete that it was the least they could do! 10.1′s feature list reads like a service pack primarily because 10.0 should have had all those things to begin with. After 10.1, however, Apple picked up the pace:
10.2 (August 2002)
- Improved Windows compatibility
- Improved performance through Quartz Extreme
- Improved Sherlock
- Improved Address Book
- Improved printer support with CUPS
- Zero-configuration networking (Rendezvous/bonjour)
- Journaled file system
- Support for tablets and handwriting recognition
- Support for USB 2.0
- iChat
- Safari
- User Interface overhaul (widgets look less fuzzy and more clickable)
10.3 (October 2003)
- Improved Finder
- Exposé
- Fast user switching
- Color labels for files
- Home folder encryption
- Zip archive creation
- Support for faxing
- Support for .doc files in TextEdit
- Support for Serial ATA hard drives
- Font Book
- Xcode
- Improved iChat
- User Interface overhaul (widgets look clearer and more intuitive, mostly)
10.4 (April 2005)
- Spotlight
- Dashboard
- Automator
- Grapher
- Quartz Composer
- VoiceOver
- Systemwide dictionary/thesaurus availability
- Parental Controls
- Support for Access Control Lists
- Improved iChat
- Improved Safari
- Improved Mail
- Improved QuickTime with h.264
- Improved XCode
- Improved Quartz Extreme
I’m sorry, but 10.2 through 10.4 simply don’t look like service packs; there’s too much there for them to be minor incremental upgrades. In particular, features introduced between 10.2 and 10.4 such as iChat, Safari, Labels, Fast user switching, Exposé, Spotlight, Dashboard, and a systemwide dictionary and thesaurus do a great deal to make Mac OS X the basket of luxury its users view it as. To dismiss these feature-packed releases as mere “service packs” is a gross injustice; when was the last time you found yourself thanking your lucky stars for Set Program Access and Defaults or Windows Security Center?
It’s also unclear why Microsoft chose to create entirely separate versions of Windows when it could simply have bundled the applications and drivers from those “new” editions into XP itself–why create extra complexity? In fact, this is the route Microsoft has taken with Vista, which–depending on which edition you have–includes tablet PC as well as media center functionality.
So has Microsoft been sitting on its butt waiting for Apple to embarrass it for the last five years? Well, no, but neither has it exactly been a bastion of output and innovation on the OS front. Of its operating system antics since 2001, one is widely regarded as non-functional, one could have been cooked up in a basement, and the remaining two simply involve the addition of a few applications and drivers–no reworking of the OS itself. At the same time, Apple has been delivering compelling updates year after year that people actually want to buy; a near first in the computer industry.
Categorised as: Mac OS X, Windows