Microsoft Panther?

I am currently on ThinkPad X40, will switch to OSX ASAP. I am a power user and use my laptop for business-related tasks mainly. I have recently been internet cafe with G4 mac-minis and tested OSX and MSWord. I've been impressed. Not very smart move money-wise as they plan to release 12" intel mcBook, but i guess I will switch to g4 powerbook 12".

That's because it became obvious to me how OSX is superior to XP. And from what I've seen and experienced myself - and I've been MS user from the times of MS DOS and Windows 3.11 - Vista is going to be more stable, is going to have great Mac-like visual features and colorful and thought-out user interface, but it will still be Windows. No matter how stable it is, Windows is Windows no matter how you package and promote it, still Microsoft Windows and it says actually a lot. What they excel in is business strategy, marketing and competition, not software design. As a result, I strongly doubt it will be very convenient to use. I don't care if it could run the next version of Lotus Notes or run on cheap hardware corporate users tend to be ordering. Or if it could run any legacy software. There is no point to even use Microsoft Word - all I need is to convert the docs to PDFs to email my customers. What matters - to have the most convenient features integraded into one sleek and powerful interface to make me more productive and Microsoft can't do that, that's simple. What they do is to market collaboration, ability to do something I don't need, integration with something not very important, savings based on buying MS bundles and the like. As they said back then, it may look like a Mac but it's certainly not. People that are afraid to switch IMO are either corporate IT managers not being able to loose the already made investments in hardware, software and infrastructure or stupid average people that have fallen victims to Microsoft Propaganda :-) So, even if it's gonna look like a Panther it wont actually be Panther. Like cheapo sneakers looking like Armani certainly aren't Armani and it is apparent to anyone who can afford the real thing. Of course, those preferring fakes will likely argue about great value of their copycat garments forever as usual, that's life. If you don't know why you need a 30,599 BMW, buy yourself a 27,000 Chevrolet instead - more horsepower, BMW is for faggots. As well as Rolexes, Casio tells the time just fine. I am referring to Mac minis and debates among PC community: "you can buy more powerful computer cheaper" (but it won't be a mac).

What I've seen is just about that - same taskbar, same ugly windows minimize/maximize/close buttons, same Start-menu, wow... Now finally they included the 3D engine, a revoulutionaty breakthrough.

But look - it is convenient to use? The Windows Media Player (which you need to pay for as it doesn't have any DVD playback capabilities - you pay for the codec like 20 bux or so) is inconvenient to use and packed with useless features. Some 'other parties' DVD playback machines like PowerDVD do a better job usability-wise but the interface is still quite ugly. Same with everything. However they try to make everything stylish, they won't succeed because they first need to acquire the sense of style which only a few creative professionals possess. Everything is stylish as separate elements, but the overall experience is still inferior to Mac. Well, for 2-3K I think I can afford the real thing.

Enough with those Task Manager duties (killing apps).

corporate

corprate espionage

Apple always previews there newest OS X releases and had a beta program for the original OS X a while back. Even this year's WWDC will preview Leopard, the WWDC is in early august and the release of OSX 10.6 won't be till the end of the year or early next. So that statement isn't entirely true.

I really don't think M$ would make it as blatant as creating a directory named PANTHER even if they did copy so I don't think the image warrants any truth to the matter but I do think a lot of the stuff that I've seen in OS X for the last 2-3 years is showing up in Vista.

And it's really nothing new to me because of that. I think the one real inovation that Vista had going for it was the virtual folders/storage (not sure what it was called) but they canned it. I heard because they thought people would be confused.

It's hard to be M$ they have a lot of legacy that they need too make work but they should look at Apple right now with their transition to Intel. They know that the transition will be the best in the future and they are not worried about transition, they market rosseta as the answer to the problems and they go. If M$ can't get over their past, cut some limbs and really inovate they will be just the same. A OS company that I prefer not to like nor want to use.

That's doubtful; Apple is usually keeps a pretty good lid on things like that, especially when it comes to OS design and their biggest competitor. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I doubt they would have gotten an early enough look at it to produce working demos of their next system before Apple even released it.

In any event, the main point is that just because there may be some similarities does not mean there was any copying going on.

Maybe people at Microsoft personally saw and used Panther before it was released in 2003.

I think we've been over this before, but in case you forgot, MS had (and I personally saw and used) working demos of a lot of the stuff in Vista (both UI and under the hood features) that is supposedly "copied from Panther" before Panther was released in October 2003.

probably a fack but probably real (the part about vista ripping off panther).

This is a troll and possibly a fake as well.