Michal Ždanský In the 90s, Microsoft dominated the field of operating systems. The turning point came with Windows 95, which brought unprecedented changes compared to previous operating systems, and the Mac OS of the time looked incredibly outdated next to it. With Windows XP, Redmond had a great foothold into the next decade, after all, since the advent of the seventh version, it was the most widespread operating system in the world. But after 2001, when Microsoft released XP, it took almost another six years for the new Windows (Vista). But in the meantime came Mac OS X, Apple's breakthrough operating system, which took much from NeXTstep, the system that powered NeXT machines owned by Steve Jobs before he returned to Apple and had Apple buy it.
The first decade of the new millennium was the so-called lost decade for Microsoft. Late release of a new operating system, falling asleep on the market with MP3 players or modern smartphones. Microsoft seems to have lost a step and allowed itself to be overtaken by its rivals, especially Apple. Kurt Eichenwald perfectly captures this period in his extensive editorial pros Vanitifair.com. The part where hell froze over at Microsoft when the new version of the Mac OS X operating system was revealed is particularly interesting:
In May 2001, Microsoft began work on a project codenamed Longhorn, which was to see the light of day in the second half of 2003 under the name Windows Vista. Vista was given several important goals, such as competing with open source Linux by supporting the C# programming language for easier application programming, creating the WinFS file system that could store different file types in a single database, or creating a display system called Avalon that was supposed to render user interfaces in windowed applications .
Microsoft engineers tweaked Longhorn features from the beginning of development. For this purpose, huge teams were assigned to the project, however, despite all efforts, the show kept moving. The system took ten minutes to load, was unstable and often crashed. But then Steve Jobs introduced a new version of the Mac OS X operating system called Tiger, and Microsoft employees were not surprised. Tiger could do most of what Redmond planned in Longhorn, except for the small detail that it worked.
[do action=”citation”]After a long time, Apple won in the field of operating systems, until now the exclusive sandbox of Microsoft.[/do]
Inside Microsoft, employees have been sending out e-mails expressing dismay at how Tiger is a quality operating system. To the surprise of Microsoft executives, Tiger also included the functional equivalent of Avalon and WinFS (Quartz Composer and Spotlight). One of Longhorn's developers, Lenn Pryor, wrote: “It was bloody amazing. It's like I got a free ticket to Longhorn land today.”
Another team member, Vic Gundotra (now SVP of Engineering at Google) tried Mac OS X Tiger and wrote: "So their Avalon competitor (core video, core image) is something. I have great widgets on my Mac dashboard with all the effects that Jobs showed on stage. Not a single crash in five hours. The video conferencing is amazing and the scripting software is great.” Gundotra sent the email to Microsoft headquarters as well, reaching Jim Allchin, then an executive at the company, who forwarded it to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, adding only "Oh yeah..."
Longhorn had it figured out. A few months later, Allchin informed the entire development team that Microsoft could not complete Windows Vista in time to meet the last scheduled release date and had no idea when the new operating system might be ready. So it was decided to throw away the entire three years of work and start from scratch. Many of the original plans have been changed - no C# or WinFS, and Avalon has been revised.
Apple's operating system already had these functions in its finished form. Microsoft has thus completely given up trying to bring them to a working state. Vistas did not go on sale until two years later, but the public's response was not very favorable. Magazine PC World called Windows Vista the biggest technological disappointment of 2007. After a long time, Apple won in the field of operating systems, until now the exclusive sand of Microsoft.
[youtube id=j115-dCiUdU width=”600″ height=”350″]
The tale of the beginning of the end of the Microsoft scam. The Nokia one would be similar
Hello, about two years ago I switched from Windows to Mac OS, I can't let it go, that's true, many things in my life have become simpler. But then again, we have to honestly say that Win has some things that are more refined, whereas Apple slowly releases some functions year after year as "brutal" news. For example, an ordinary stack that, when opened, is not able to refresh itself after a change, for example, when you download something from the net and open the download stack a few seconds before it is downloaded, then you cannot use the file through the associated application. And there are more such "features", only we are willing to accept them and we won't let Apple do it... then we look for various plugins, extensions and brag about how many of them we have.
then the seven came out and it's still better than the newest axis x :p
I do not think so :)
Are you serious?
i do with both so yes :)
I have been doing both for almost 25 years. One of our older iMacs (5 years without a reinstall) with new OS X is on par with a new Win7 PC after a year of use. In another year without a reinstall, it won't match it.
Well, if you had to reinstall win 7 after a year of using it, that speaks volumes about your abilities. The last system I had to reinstall was win 95. It is usually a fault between the computer and the chair.
sure, sure... if I don't have a reasonable logical argument... then I throw everything at the user....-))) I had to reinstall every Windows in sevens several times in order to be able to work on them... not in sevens... because I didn't have the nerve anymore and windows stopped using it completely... I don't want to be one of the people who patronize producers of overpriced beta versions anymore...
What are you stepping on? Ask the nurse to put you down, it was probably too much for you.
Why should time stop? OS X has negligible market share... Microsoft doesn't care!
Because at that time and not only in it, he painted it to Microsoft.
I think that OSX is still smearing MSshrota, the only question is how many people are able to understand it and invest more
Apple is painting it to Microsoft in everything. Be it OS X, iPad, etc.
I have never seen a normal and objective article about you "Mr. Author".
Although actually it should have happened to me when you call yourself an "apple iron lover" and write for a biased website about Apple products.
I use both sevens and ML, so I agree with the comment from both.
Wow, did you read all 700 of them? And which one did you like the most?
Damn man I've been there and never had Win95 on MacOS. As a graphic designer, I know that it was impossible to do anything about it. Both the speed in Photoshop and other graphics programs were ridiculous compared to MacOs. The same opinion will be confirmed by people through music. Viruses, flies, yearly reinstalls... Still the same song today.
Vista was an excellent operating system compared to xp. Unfortunately, only with a bad media reputation. The funny thing is that windows 7 is praised, but when you upgrade from vist to win 7, you don't know that you have changed the system...
I agree, Vista was a problem-free fast and stable system, again a bit further than XP!
An interesting read. But it bothers me that the article is written with a tendency and, moreover, with a hint of fluff. You somehow forgot about Windows Millennium. Vista wasn't a perfect system, it was since W7, but Mac OS has never been able to beat Widle in terms of users during its existence, so I don't know what kind of victory you're talking about.
He writes about the victory of quality. Ferrari has never beaten Skoda in the number of units sold…
Just like surface and ipad :)
Dear Michael,
according to your photo, you are still a youngster who in this article, don't be offended that I use this term: "beats nonsense" and has no idea what happened around the year 95, when you were probably pulling a wooden duck (no offense). The sentence along the lines of "Win95 brought unprecedented changes and MacOS at the time looked incredibly outdated" really amused me. For example, have you ever seen MacOS 7.x.? I personally started on a Macintosh LC475, then worked on Performa (both as a hobby only). Then at work I got a Compaq with Win 3,11 and then with Win95. And I have to say I cried over both Microsoft OS's. It may just be my feeling, but I certainly wouldn't publicly use statements that you obviously don't have from your own experience. On the contrary, based on my own experience, I say that MacOS has always been much more user-friendly and I like to remember the work in these early days of Apple here.
Memory protection, preemptive multitasking…
In the second half of the nineties, BeOS > Unixy > Win NT >= OS/2 > Win 9x >> Mac OS >= Win 3.x
On the other hand, Microsoft now has no competition with W8, the system has been tuned for fun, work is fast, user-friendly and reliable. Only some users are too conservative and can't put up with new things in the system and would prefer to use outdated XP all the time.