Windows 7 has gotten off to a much smoother start than Vista, and indeed, many are calling Windows 7 the most Mac like version of Windows to date. Now that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone well aware of Microsoft’s penchant for copying all things Apple, but what is surprising is that Simon Aldous, a partner group manger with Microsoft, said as much in a recent interview with PCR.
When asked about the agility of Windows 7, Aldous responded:
The interesting thing is, it’s basically the next version of Vista. Vista was a totally redesigned operating system from XP. We’ve improved upon Vista in that way. We’ve stripped out a lot of the code, we’ve made a lot of it much more efficient, it sits on a smaller footprint, it operates far more quickly, it’s far more agile and effective in terms of the calls it makes. I saw an article recently that described it as ‘Vista on steroids’, and in some ways you can absolutely relate to that.
One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.
How about that. Making an OS easy to use? Who woulda thunk it?!
To be fair, Apple’s OS X has copied features from Microsoft Windows over the years, but not to the extent of emulating the entire look and feel of the OS. Again, this isn’t really groundbreaking or surprising news, but it’s not too often that you’ll hear a higher up at Microsoft openly make those kinds of statements. Also, Windows 7 appears to be one of the few times when Microsoft has actually copied Apple’s look and feel successfully. More often than not, Microsoft’s attempts to implement features from OS X produces lss than stellar results, like the lame sidebar of bland gadgets Microsoft first introduced in Vista.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:07 am
You should also remember that OS X will only run on the Mac hardware, whereas Windows 7 will run on almost any kind of PC with whatever hardware you like.
It makes sense to me to spend more time and money on the backend coding which is much harder for anyone else to copy than spend it on a user interface when Apple’s already made one that is easily replicated!