Microsoft group manager: Windows 7 borrowing 'Mac look and feel' (updated: Microsoft responds)
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 11th 2009 9:43PM
posted Nov 11th 2009 9:43PM
Of course, he followed that up by slamming OS X's general stability, noting that Vista's core technology -- on which Win7 is built -- is "far more stable than the current Mac platform." We know we're opening up a giant can here, but... um, thoughts?"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."
Update: Microsoft has issued its response, and it's none too happy, and apparently the Microsoft employee in question was "not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7." From the official Windows Blog: "I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed." We imagine there were lots of frowny faces around the office today.
Oh no, don't tell!
@engadget. do we really need another mac vs. windows debate?
Sup Nintendo beta-Wii?
Noooooo, I don't wanna another flame war. Make it stop!
His future looks bleak.
surprised to see Irfan Viewer... very nice program.. using it for years !
I do not see osx in win7... thats rubbish.
No the fact is that they're trying to create a more graphically pleasing Operating System, which is what people want today.
Although I prefer Windows overall, there's quite a few things the Mac OS does quite nicely compared to Windows. I think Microsoft should either do some serious innovating or just steal a few things from Mac. I mean, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? No sense reinventing the wheel.
I don't have a problem with Windows, I used a PC for years, and understand why people would want one over a PC. I decided on a MacBook two years ago and don't think I'll ever go back. My Mac has frozen on me TWICE in two years, that's 2, as in less than three. I don't game on the computer and I don't do a ton of graphically heavy stuff... never have... but I make the occasional short film and do some photo editing, same things that I used to do on my PC, and no longer have to deal with the almost daily crashes I used to deal with. The thing also fully boots up in under a minute, which is really helpful when I need to check something online when I'm in a rush. PC's are the obvious answer for some, for sure.... Honestly though, most people should just have a Mac.
I want to live in a world were companies can compliment each others strengths without opening up a giant can.
@tyba I don't understand people that have problems with Windows PCs freezing on them. I've had 2 different IBM Thinkpads for about 3 years and have not had a single freeze happen.
Yes, programs have crashed the system has become unstable and required a reboot, but freezes? That's about as rare as a Blue screen around these parts. This isn't Windows 2000 anymore.
@ tyba
twice in two years seems like a lot to me. My XP machine hasn't frozen in years, and my Vista machine has yet to freeze.
I don't why Mac vs Windows discussions allways have to turn into flame wars.
And I haven't personnally seen one since Windows 7 was released.
My 2cents:
i've been in the Windows 7 Beta program since the beginning, and have been running the RTM for a little over 2 months now.
So far, i've seen what we've all seen over the past few versions of windows.
The same old windows features along with a few new ones, some improovements and a new interface.
The diffrence here is that (And I hold the extended Beta period as a Key to this success)
Windows 7 was stable out of the box and 2 months into the final release version is still stable.
OF course it still has the occasional issues that Windows has and allways will have.
But far less than Vista, XP or Win2K had on their first release. (I won't even mention the issues seen in the 9x series)
The new interface? As much as people can say that MS ripped off the MacOS style
We could say the same about MacOS ripping off the Windows Task bar for their new interface a few years back.
I like em both.
All in all Windows 7 has so far been a more pleasant experience than upgrading a G4 macbook to MacOSx Leopard.
Sad as it is to say, While MS has been striving to match Apple in it's OS it seems that Apple has taken a few bad tips from MS.
I've seen more errors and downright stupid things in Leopard than in any it's predecessors.
So all in all it seems that Apple and MS are getting closer to an even level of good vs bad.
I'm glad they stole/borrowed/whatever the Dock. The old Windows taskbar/quicklaunch/systray was an absolute clusterfuck of a design.
I haven't used 7 much (it's in a VM but haven't found much to do with it), but integrating app launching and task management is a huge step in the right direction.
... now if only it wasn't such a total nightmare to manage non-Microsoft OSes from inside of Windows, I might consider Windows to be ready for the desktop.
Clean up the software installation/removal and file management metaphors and it could be a decent OS for the average user; currently it's simply too confusing for the proverbial grandparent. Obviously the Wizards were put in place to make things more novice friendly, but I think they end up obfuscating important details and confusing novices and power users alike.
The stability and speed certainly seem to be there, again, from my limited experience but also from what I hear from others.
I have not seen a blue screen of death since I migrated from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, and can't remember when I last saw any of my three Windows computers freeze.
I like OSX too, but I do get tired of applications that simply stop running and vanish. This happens to me pretty much daily on OSX. I've never experienced it on Windows.
99.9% of my lock ups involve either Flash, Acrobat or Adobe authorization services. I cannot think of another issue that I have had, but this is not the old Mac OS, and just about all modern OSes are stable enough. I prefer Macs and hell iPhones, but have absolutely no problem using a Windows machine, other than ensuring that it runs some sort of adware software... I also look forward to Android becoming increasingly refined.
Let’s welcome our new multi-cultural overlords and stop this inane fanboy flame-fest!
AHHHHH WHY DO PCS SUCK SOOO MUCH.... ohh just remembered i dont care cuz i got a mac ahhhhh that feels better...
I don't understand why people keep referencing "boot up time", as if that is some reason to choose Apple over Microsoft or vise versa.
My win7 desktop goes to sleep when I push the power button, and wakes up in about 4 sec when I "turn it on". No need to shut your computer down all the time; sleep mode essentially consumes no power.
So why care about boot up times? Wait a minute just to check your email? ughh.
That being said, I just timed my desktop for a cold start. 62 seconds to get internet explorer open from pushing the power button. Let me try my XP dell mini 9 netbook. 47 seconds to get IE open.
One minute bootup is what sold you on Apple? Give me a break.
Well being the sore losers that they are Apple could try suing Microsoft for copying the "look and feel" of their OS... /sarcasm
I use Windows 7, I love it. I prefer to use it for varying reasons, none of which include insulting Apple or OSX.
Gee, that wasn't difficult at all.
This guy must really be trying to get his name out there by throwing out ridiculous statements......... Next week he'll probably have an Reality show....
Why Engadget, do you insist on concocting these flame wars? You're just like the annoying troll of the blogosphere.. and all you want is more traffic to your site so you resort to cheap tactics such as this. How unsurprisingly pedestrian of you.
On my work computers, I'd much rather use a Mac than a Windows machine, but if I have to choose between using Windows, where I must install anti-virus and anti-spyware suites and be mindful of what sites I'm going to or paying a 150% premium to run OS X for stability and peace-of-mind, I'll use Ubuntu.
"Mr Aldous, I have Mr Ballmer on line 2 for you, and he doesn't sound happy"
@UnixSystemsEngineer
You know its the same taskbar from Vista right? Just twice as tall, bigger icons to fill that space, and white icons on the right with grouping. :) Since when did Hx2=LessClusterFuck ?
Since when do they consider "outright theft" borrowing something.
I'm using Windows 7 and OSX Snow Leopard side by side and they don't look or feel the same at all. I would never guess that Microsoft borrowed anything from OSX for Windows 7. It still feels like heavy candy-coating on Windows XP. I think Windows 7 is pretty good as long as you've got the hardware to run it. I'd still just as soon stick to Windows XP SP3 because I honestly don't see the benefit of Windows 7 on medium-range dual-core machines. I like Windows 7 and Windows XP, but I still prefer using OSX.
Microsoft should have no problems selling Windows 7 to the masses as long as they're willing to upgrade their hardware. The first thing I installed on my Windows 7 VM was AVG Internet Security 9 software. Hell, I kept getting nagged by Windows 7 to get some sort of anti-virus software on it. I still don't have any AV software running on my Mac nor does it appear to need any.
This has to be a record for number of "High Ranked" and "Low Ranked" comments from a single article. The PC vs. Mac war is still going strong!
Looks like the idiot is asking to be fired. Why not tell the media the code is stolen from another OS too, maybe that'll seal the deal.
*fanboy mode* hey they even copied the phrase "look and feel" from apple
just kidding. but seriously. im kidding. take it easy.
Oh good, My BBQ broke a few days ago.
Now I can wait a day or two until I have to buy another one.
in the '80's Coke had 90% market share for cola. some genius decided they need to make Coke taste like Pepsi to improve market share.
So now MS has 90% market share, so now they want it to look and feel more like Mac. They must have hired Cokes genius...
@ OneLove
I completely agree. Windows does some things well. Mac does some things well. And really don't we want both to be successful? Competition keeps things fresh!
@loocas
1) You can change aero to be whatever color you want. You can also turn off transparency if you want and still have aero on.
2) I read the posts on your webpage. Some thoughts. The reason you cannot see the icon when you drag the cursor is because you insist on having it in the UI from 95. It works fine for the rest of us. Also WMP12 not remembering its previous size is an issue with WMP12, not Windows 7. Finally, I don't understand your issue with pinning. Are you saying you don't like having the option on the right-click menu because it takes up too much space? Pinning is a fantastic feature because whether I am opening a program or bringing up a file I have open, the button for that is in the same place.
I will agree with you that it can be annoying when a company redoes their software that we are comfortable with so that we can no longer find things but guess what, it happens, and if you take the time to learn the new layout of any software, you may find that with time those little gripes go away and the benefits of the changes shine through. That being said, I doubt Microsoft will ever get Control Panel right, haha.
Just my $0.02
@Greg: I agree. We can say what we like about Engadget, but one of it's great strengths lies in the comment management system. I'm sure it wasn't an original idea- somebody else will have done the High/Low ranking model first- but it really encourages intelligent discussion in the comment thread. Notice how all the fanboys' comments (from both sides of the divide) have their unintelligent/elitist comments voted down.
Colour me crazy, but this innovation seems to be a great analogy for the development of Windows and Mac OSx. Both parties "take" each others' ideas... both produce a better OS because of it, and users benefit from the competition.
@thatrotierkid
Thanks for your input, however, you CAN'T CHANGE AERO GLASS THE WAY YOU LIKE! I keep hearing this bullshit over and over and over. NO! You can change the galss effect, make it more/less transparent, you can make the window border thinner/thicker, change font, but that's about it. If your eyes get all sore from looking at the ridiculously overbrightened theme, you're out of luck buddy! You can't change window colors for example! Aero won't reflect that and besides it's buggy (the right click menu will stay the same color, but the last approx. 5 pixels only will show you the color you chose)
Besides, this old-school theme used to work in Vista without too much problems, but in W7? They broke it!
Regarding WMP12, yeah, I know, it's an issue with WMP12, I don't care for it that much, but it's still stupid.
Regarding pinning, I wrote that I PERSONALLY HATE THIS FEATURE, but I understand there might be other users who might find it useful.
And it's not about learning new software. Windows 7 are nothing new from Vista. Just slightly modified. Also, I don't have problems configuring it to the way I like it, but I have strong problems with BUGGY FEATURES such as the icons, icon spacing and today, miraculously, my QuickLaunch dissappeared after logging in!
Amazing!
I know you are all PC fan boys, but if you don't see OS X in Windows 7, you're blind, in denial or you've never seen OS X.
Personally, window's 7 is by far my favorite iteration simply based on the fact that it DID pull a bunch of stuff from OSX. I mean you can't honestly consider they're new "pin" feature to not be the equivalent of the Dock in OSX, or the fact that they've added a new "search feature" which is exactly like the one found in the Mac OS.
Not to say that it's a bad thing by any means, it's just finally windows got around to adding things that are infinitely useful, added some graphical aesthetics that I've seen for years on Ubuntu, and tied them all into one easy to use Windows package. Kudo's to them.
Most original windows ever? Hell no.
Most useful? Absolutely.
most people just need more RAM. ever try a mac running osx without enough RAM, its more finnicky than any xp machine i've experienced, slow, constantly crashing. at this point theres no difference between which OS you use, i switch between macs and windows daily without any problems.
Why the hell did my previous comment get deleted?! o_O
@The Grendel
"All in all Windows 7 has so far been a more pleasant experience than upgrading a G4 macbook to MacOSx Leopard. "
How did you install snow leopard on a G4? The fact that snow leopard requires an intel based mac may be the reason you had such an issue.
That was a stupid thing for him to say. The interfaces look and feel totally different.
Considering he was involved in the making, that's as close as they could get to OSX UI. They feel different because they focused on the menu bar for years instead of making an extra dock like Apple did.
I think the new Win 7 interface is much more intuitive than OS X. all those windows tucking down into the corner? having an app running with no windows open? it's just bad design.
They're not the same thing at all. If they were, Apple couldn't get away with charging such a huge premium on their hardware.
Same look and feel? Windows 7? No.
Now their retail stores... That's a different story.
Windows 7 is more graphical, in an effort to get that feel that Mac users seem to like.
It's not a stupid comment to say at all.
It's great that someone at MS is willing to be honest about their competitors. It's surprising, but it does not open up any can of worms, it is not controversial, and it's not a bad thing.
Windows 7's taskbar seems closer to Mac OS X's dock than to the taskbar in Vista and other previous versions of Windows though. So what that group manager is probably saying, and what I'm saying, is that Windows seems to be trending in OS X's direction at least in terms of the UI.
also MS has locked up quite a bit of folders following unix style, no more access to docs & settings and other folders...
@Streetfights:
In Snow Leopard, windows can now minimize down into their respective dock icons. But I very rarely minimize a window. Exposé and Spaces are the right way to manage your windows.
And as for having programs open with no windows running, what do you think your system tray is doing? I much prefer the separation of program from window. There are certain programs that run 24/7 on my computer, such as Thunderbird and Firefox, Adium, NetNewsWire (rss). I don't need their windows to be open until I want to activate their windows, but I do want the programs to be running all the time so they can continue to update themselves, or in the case of Firefox, so I don't have to wait for the program to boot up every time I want to open something in my browser.
On Windows, you're up to the mercy of the programmers for each application. Will they include the ability to run in the system tray? Maybe. If not, then you have no choice but to open the program each time.
The Windows 7 taskbar comes much closer to reproducing that kind of functionality with being able to pin programs to the taskbar and interact with them via context menu like you can with the OS X dock. Definitely a smart move.
The comments are actually rebutted here:
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/11/11/how-we-really-designed-the-look-and-feel-of-windows-7.aspx
too bad windows 7 doesnt have the genie effect i think thats pretty cool looking
And since I don't like candy and gloss....I'll stick with XP.
...and if you paid attention you would know that you can change the theme. You can make it look like 2000 or you could download a custom one to make it look like XP.
Wow the ladies must love you.
You should downgrade to Win 95. I hear that it is now ridiculously stable.
Actually that's probably too much candy for you. Why not go back to straight DOS?
I'll stick with 7 and it's vastly improved interface. Seriously, if you don't like the shiny, you can turn it off. You shouldn't be saying anything though if you're still using the default XP Fisher Price theme.
So...all of a sudden XP is the dog's breakfast? Fickle aren't you.
Fickle? There's not many people who make the (stupid) claim that XP is superior to 7. Nobody is "fickle" about XP. The thing is ANCIENT because people loved it so much.
There's just something better out there now. Stop being annoying and go buy it.
XP is dead, and I couldn't be happier.
XP dead? You must not work around business.
@trainwrecka >> "XP dead? You must not work around business."
Right... because business users are so concerned with the interface... and NOT the programs they are running for their job...
Do you think the girl behind the counter at the bank cares that her maching is still running Win2000 ?
No, but she does care if it's running ME.
@Michael Scrip is right.
The agency I work at (advertising) won't be switching from XP to Win7 for at least a year..
Big companies don't care about interface.. as long as it runs CS4 and Office.
I know, it's sad.
Wow, Microsoft fans bashing Microsoft fans... I bet the Apple fanboys are loving this!
@streetfights
No, XP is not dead; however I hope it does die a quick death. Windows 7 is way better.
Commence flame war.
Ejecting fanboy rage air-to-air missiles.
Anti-troll shields are at 40%. Nerd rage inbound; What do we do?
I say nuke 'em.
Oh god.. here comes ubuntu.. run!
Evasive Maneuvers: Riker Beta
Deploying internet meme countermeasures!
Arming ICMPs!!
Man the bunkers and prepare for the zergling rush.
Do a barrel roll!
I'm from Buenos Aires and I say; "kill 'em all"!
I have that background set right now, they stare at me as I sleep...O__o
Where can I get that background? I want it for my laptop, my phone, and my MP3 player wallpaper.
It's a stock wallpaper that ships with Windows 7.
I can help you with that, iDavey:
Open Computer. Then Go into your C: Drive. Scroll down to the folder that says "Web", and open that. Then go through the "Wallpaper" folder. In the "Characters" folder is where you'll find that Wall.
Hope that helped!
LMAO. Gosh...I know it's a stock paper for Windows 7, LOL. But I haven't upgraded yet (waiting for a new computer). So I was wondering if it's uploaded anywhere on the web.
Ohhh, OK.
Here. http://img12.imageshack.us/i/img24mp.jpg/
fail
*Braces self for fanboy impact*
When I read that comment first I thought you meant "braces" as in the orthodontic product for straightening teeth.
Are they for sale?
lol...let it begin!
So Darren, did you win a bet? I'm assuming anytime there's a Microsoft/Apple article to write, the Engadget writers draw straws.
In before 200+ comments
FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!
Engadet seems to like watching people try to kill each other with these Microsft V Apple posts.
How does that look like the mac os?
I'm asking the same question.
remove that nightmarish wallpaper put a decent single color background on it. and imagine that the start button is upper left corner and looks like an apple. continue to imagine that you see an apple while startup phase and not a win-logo. imagine that you actually can use image files without a tool like deamontool and you don't have to worry about a Registry-Collection that might have some missing entries .... list goes on for a while... last thing imagine that when you shut down your notebook/pc you won't hear that win-sound (factory-setup) THEN you have a similar feeling like with MacOS 10.X.xyz
@the swiss: Don't forget to suddenly make downloaded archive files extract themselves(sometimes with disastrous results) and to make file copying a crapshoot, where you have a 50/50 chance of it actually copying the file, and the rest of the time it makes an "alias".
iTunes logo, Firefox logo, Chrome Logo, Background (if you dl it).... and ..... that's
"@the swiss: Don't forget to suddenly make downloaded archive files extract themselves(sometimes with disastrous results) and to make file copying a crapshoot, where you have a 50/50 chance of it actually copying the file, and the rest of the time it makes an "alias"."
You can turn off auto-extract. The only way OSX will _ever_ create an alias is if you right click and go down to "Make Alias" (or use the terminal), and drag-and-drop on files/folders cuts in all situations so only the criminally stupid can fuck that up.
I hope they are not - I find OS X to be very unfriendly to my style of working. If they start making future versions of Windows like that, then it will hurt my productivity.
I do heavy multitasking and Windows 7 is much better for that than XP. Its easy to use and much faster at finding what you need.
JX, I have been using Win7 for a while, and it works fine (once you turn off collapsing programs in the task bar). However, if they start pushing for a Mac-like model in the future, then I will be staying with Win7. With OSX, it seems as if there are large parts of the OS that can only be accessed by the mouse, and large parts that can only be accessed by the keyboard, with very little that can be accessed by both. Since I use mostly the keyboard, it is very innefficient for me to use OSX.