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they're coming!!! they're coming!!!! bye bye microsoft. you're the joke of the tech world.

apple down another 5%. does anyone know why? any particulat reason? or is it just that wall street hast completly lost its mind again? soon aapl will be traiding below its cash horde.

Ralph,

When did you receive the first clue that the majority of humans are not necessarily nor completely objective and rational?

excrete - LOL
don't you mean poot ?

Nov 20, 08 - 11:04 am Comment from: 84 Mac Guy

Here is another indication of the chaos that MS calls operating system development. Apple has consistently named its OS X operating systems after big cats. In other words, Apple planned ahead and stayed consistent to the course they set upon.

Now look at MS and Windows.

Windows 3.0 - the first version really used by the public
Windows 95 - let's change from software version language to years
Windows 2000 - oops, can't call it Windows 00, let's switch to 4 digit years
Windows XP - screw the years, let's start using meaningless letters. If it is good enough for car makers, it is good enough for us.
Windows Vista - this one is so good we better give it a name.
Windows 7 - f__k those other ideas, let's use a single digit. Yeah, that's the ticket!

You notice a pattern here. No coherent strategy on something as simple as naming their flagship software product.

After Windows 7, you know their next tack is to use an acronym. How about: Windows POS

Nov 20, 08 - 11:07 am Comment from: SirROM

I seem to recall that once upon a time Windows XP was berated for being prone to so many viruses and malware that IT was the worst OS Microsoft had ever put out and people were clamoring to stay on Windows 98.

Why does it seem that Windows users long for what they used to have rather than what is being offered/promised in the next OS “upgrade”? It is doubly sad that a 7 year old, buggy OS is better than the current one.

84MacGuy. They obviously don't want any new system identified with the POS that went before. All about new starts you see. Shame they are all false ones.

Windows won't change quickly as long as Ballmer is CEO. MS' biggest client for Windows is businesses. As long as whatever flavour of Windows meets business needs and brings in the $, MS has no incentive to make substantial changes, just incremental changes, to Windows.

If MS made substantial changes to Windows, that could upset their biggest revenue stream. If it forced companies to rewrite drivers (like Vista) more companies may consider switching to Mac or Linix.

Sooner or later, MS needs to totally revamp Windows; it's a matter of when. I love my Mac and competition is a good thing for both Apple and MS.

M$ has always been doomed... It only gets easier to see it, by now!

@84 Mac Guy,

In the same time frame that Microsoft had 5, Apple had 3:

System 7
Mac OS 8 - Mac OS 9
OS X

The naming gets more confusing with OS X as releases within it are known by the cat names. But the cat names don't tell you the specific version, so you have to use the full 10.x.x...although now with the upcoming Snow Leopard, Apple is setting a new naming convention of having sub-cats represent major upgrades that make the OS more efficient and such, but lack major feature additions.

Also worth noting, Apple didn't start charging for upgrades until System 7, which is fine, but there's definitely been an inconsistency in the naming versus charging when it comes to Apple (note: I've paid for every Mac OS upgrade and they've all been more than worth it, I'm just talking about the naming inconsistency).

BTW: XP wasn't meaningless. It stands for XPerience, and referred to their planned subscription model. Stupid, yes, but not meaningless.

You forgot Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, etc.

@84 Mac Guy: don't forget the fabulous Windows ME that should be in that list! Which means if you count them:

Windows 3.0
Windows 95 (which should be Windows 4)
Windows 2000 (which should be Windows 5)
Windows ME (which should be Windows 6)
Windows XP (which should be the real Windows 7)
Windows Vista (which should be Windows 8)
an lastly the upcoming Windows 7! (which should be Windows 9)

So... which 2 versions is Microsoft not counting as real versions of the parade of excremental changes? Clearly they consider 2 of those versions as rank imposters!

The mystery thickens...

Oh yes and Windows 98! How could I forget? So that means there are 3 rank imposters now...

Nov 20, 08 - 12:29 pm Comment from: MacRaven

Next name choices:

Windows DOA
Windows FU
Windows WTF
Windows YMe
Windows AYOR
Windows SS (So Sorry or Same Sh_t
Windows SOS (The usual disaster call or Same old Sh_t)

@ 84 Mac Guy

You missed a few...

> Windows 3.0 - the first version really used by the public
> Windows 95 - let's change from software version language to years
Windows 98 - we fixed 95... three years later!
Windows NT - NT stands for nothing (no joke here, honestly)
Windows ME - let's name software something other than Y2K, because Y2K implies that it may crash... and it does!
>Windows 2000 - oops, can't call it Windows 00, let's switch to 4 digit years
>Windows XP - screw the years, let's start using meaningless letters. If it is good enough for car makers, it is good enough for us.
>Windows Vista - this one is so good we better give it a name.
>Windows 7 - f__k those other ideas, let's use a single digit. Yeah, that's the ticket!

My question is how they justify calling it Windows 7? Isn't Vista already 7 if you factor in the versions that are not based on NT?

Nov 20, 08 - 12:39 pm Comment from: Crabs

@Macslut

True, but System 7 is short for (Macintosh) Operating System 7. Mac OS 8-X (because it's actually called Mac OS X unless it's on an iPhone/Touch, because those aren't Macs) is short for Macintosh Operating System 8, 9, or 10 (because X means 10. Don't believe me? Go watch a keynote where Steve Jobs talks about OS X. He says OS 10). So really, Apple has only changed their abbreviations. I don't think that's too much of an issue.

And as for your complaint about having a sub-big cat as full .X upgrade, and that it doesn't have any real features. Really? First off, there are only so many big cats left. Second, the big cat names are more or less for the consumer horde, and to them, Snow Leopard will not be that different from Leopard, except it will be faster. Truly, it has a lot of new features. You just don't see them. So you name it Snow Leopard so that the consumers don't say, "HEY! Why does my (insert big cat name here) look just like Leopard! Apple's so far behind!) And third, why complain about that? Really? 84MacGuy made a good point, and you have to go through and muddle it up. Good job.

Dell has been charging $99 extra to add XP to Vista-based PCs.
They could only do that if people are willing to pay for a 7-year old OS.

Which tells us how really awful Vista is.

Nov 20, 08 - 01:05 pm Comment from: jackdawsson

Considering some early Windows 7 beta-testers are already lamenting the stuff WS 7 breaks that worked fine in Vista, one wonders how many more PC users won't bother waiting for Windows 7 SP1 & will switch to OS X or Linux? I think the only saving grace for Microsoft is that Apple doesn't compete at the low-end of the market.

Nov 20, 08 - 01:15 pm Comment from: DLMeyer

Do Crabs and I have it wrong? Seems like several people here believe that Snow Leopard will be a "major revision". I know it will be significantly different code - if only because they are dropping the code that enables my beloved Dual G5 and the other PPCs - but the user interface will be quite similar. That includes the features that the user directly interacts with. Except for the jettisoned code, it could easily be 10.5.7. or .8 or the like.
Yeah, now someone needs to launch into the GPU thing.

I'd like to see Apple release a Mac that came with Windows and Open Office pre-installed in one partition.

It would be really reassuring for switchers.

And maybe even provide some cross-OS tools, such as TimeMachine on OSX, that backs up your Windows files. Just gives the hesitant switcher the safety they need until they get used to OSX.

But it'll more than a decade at least before businesses really take up macs. Consumers may switch in droves, but corporations, running on ancient VB6 custom written applications aren't going to switch to Mac any time soon.

Nov 20, 08 - 02:13 pm Comment from: thethirdshoe

Windows NT -> New Technology

Other name choices:

Windows Ouch
Windows Oops
Windows Odly
Windows Yuck

"Your rut. Our revenue."

The Pussy always wins out in the end, whether you want to admit or not. HaHa!!

Nov 20, 08 - 02:59 pm Comment from: s

"So... which 2 versions is Microsoft not counting as real versions "

If I remember correct Windows NT restarted the count from version 2.0.

Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 386 (I think they had a special version for i386)
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95 (Windows 4)
Windows 98 (Windows 5)
Windows ME (Windows 6)

OS2 (Windows NT 1.0)
Windows NT (2.0, 3.0)
Windows 2000 (which should be Windows NT 4)
Windows XP (which should be the real Windows NT 5)
Windows XP 64
Windows Vista (Windows NT 6)
an lastly the upcoming Windows 7

Wait till next year. May be MS will rename it Windows 10 or Windows 11, as they done with MS Word 6 (instead of Word 3.0 competing against WP5.1/WP6.0).

Nov 20, 08 - 03:26 pm Comment from: Spudly

Don't forget "Bob!"

I miss Longhorn jokes. Can we just start calling it Longhorn again? Please?

I thought I read somewhere that Windows 2000 is Windows NT 5.0 and Windows XP is Windows NT 5.1. I'm quite sure of this because at work I have to use a Dell running Windows NT 4.0.

I think that they should go back to the XP naming convention (if you can call it that). The next one could be Windows BS! Or they could scrap it all and make Windows a GUI API like X.org on top of a Linux kernel. They could call it WinSUX! Or, I still like WindX, "We'll wipe your hard drive clean!"

You know that they'll just end up licensing the SUSE kernel from Novell and doing that eventually anyways. Where else can they go once Vista 2 bombs? A complete rewrite would just put them further behind the curve. Linux already has the kernel & drivers for tons of stuff. They'll just steal the idea from Apple once again, and use the open source kernel to sell their "new" Windows API/GUI as an overlay. I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't already working on it.

IMHO... Microsoft should just label Win XP as the last stable version of its useless OS... they should then close down and give their stockholders any of the money that might be left....

Guaranteed, the stockholders will get more money this way ... vs. letting MS continue wasting their money on crap OSes

Not so fast my like minded AppleFanboys. I have heard that Windows 7 is actually Vista done right, the way it was supposed to be. We may actually have competition here unfortunately. I really think that this is the reason that Snow Leopard may come out in January, ahead of schedule.

I've had the opp to speak with a few Microheads and they are gleaming about Windows 7. The unfortunate thing is the name. Whereas Steve states that he is basically firming up Leopard, admitting that it has some glitches, Microsoft decided to give their updated OS a whole different name. A few people believe that the new file system for Windows will be attached to 7 to make it completely different, but don't hold your breath on that one, because it would deem everything incompatible.

Windows 7 is all about the UI with more attention being placed on the end user, while Vista was a geeks wet dream essentially. No user input support. That means competition for Apple.

I am hoping that Snow Leopard is really stable, particularly for MySQL, Exchange server functionalities, which is what it is being touted for at this time. Hopefully it will be flawless, because we will now have competition.

rick.

Yeah, I don't really get this, Windows 7 will be coming down the pipe xmas 2009 or 2010, that's the answer for people who don't like Vista, not XP

Nov 20, 08 - 10:00 pm Comment from: ken1w

If Snow Leopard is released any time on 2009, Windows 7 is dead before it sees daylight. It will be like the Vista launch, except even fewer people will care.

Microsoft really needs to take advantage of the relative popularity of Windows XP, and use that code base to create XP2. Sure, it will basically be another service pack in a fancy new box, but for people who are sticking with Windows, that's apparently what they want.

Nov 20, 08 - 10:41 pm Comment from: FuzzyBo

Wikipedia knows all the Windows version numbers - see
Timeline of releases

The best and most stable Windows version by far was Windows 2000- and they barely promoted it- It just showed up. I run it under Parallels and it's fine for the few Windows apps I still need.

But Mac OS X- just keeps getting better- and with Snow Leopard- smaller and faster.

@84 Mac Guy,
Nice one. I would even wager that the post Win7 may and should be called Windows R.I.P

Nov 21, 08 - 12:24 am Comment from: Krioni

@ Spudly:

What About Bob?

"Windows XP - screw the years, let's start using meaningless letters. If it is good enough for car makers, it is good enough for us."

Not quite... Windblows came out with XP the same year that Mac OS went X.

They can't even come up with a genuine name!

Nov 21, 08 - 07:04 pm Comment from: MacSmiley

And don't forget that most memorable version of Windows,

Windows RG (Really Good) Edition:

http://www.lagmonster.info/humor/windowsrg.html

Windows version numbers:

IIRC, from using the DOS command 'ver' (for version), you get the following for the surviving Windows lineage:

Windows NT (with Windows 3.1 interface) -- 3.5
Windows NT 4.0 -- 4.0
Windows 2000 -- 5.0
Windows XP -- 5.1 (a mere visual facelift)
Windows Vista -- 6.0
and the next is, logically, Windows 7.

The rest, that is, the Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 lineage, died its proper death with Windows ME.