How would you make Windows 7 better?

[LTD]

like OSX, which wasn't started over from scratch.

What do you mean here?

[Tomoko]

Make every single component that is not required to run the OS optional and able to be uninstalled (and the ability to not install it to begin with), the way it was with Windows 95. Getting rid of the built in Movie Maker, Messenger and Mail is a good start though.

An option to run Windows Explorer in light (or classic) mode, without all the preview panes, favorites bars, fake folders, special effects and other nonsense.

[Eric Veteran]

What do you mean here?

My post was in English. OSX was not a complete rewrite. They ported the UI from the Classic kernel to BSD. Unless you work in Apple's OS division you cannot disprove this.

[Tomoko]

OS X is based on BSD and NeXTSTEP, but it most certainly is not a port of the classic GUI. That's my biggest complaint about it. The classic OS was certainly buggy and lacking in modern features like preemptive multitasking but it's interface was near perfect. They threw that all out and gave us a stupid, useless dock and flashy eye candy. Yes there are some similarities but that doesn't mean it's a port. Just look at Gnome for example.

Unless you work in Apple's OS division you cannot disprove this.

You realize that the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim, right? Do you work in Apple's OS division?

Edited December 2, 2008 by TRC

[Dc'1]

I think more, features the everyday person will use, thing to make it faster, more customisation... Allowing you to use 3rd party visual styles...

I'm not sure if there is enough good new things in Windows 7 to pay like ?100 for, Vista works good enough...

I'd end up getting it, but it's not going to be high up in my list.

[giga Veteran]

My post was in English. OSX was not a complete rewrite. They ported the UI from the Classic kernel to BSD. Unless you work in Apple's OS division you cannot disprove this.

The OS X UI, Aqua (powered by Quartz), was a complete rewrite from scratch.

Classic is just a software environment. It was ported to OS X in order to run OS 9 applications, since there weren't many OS X apps by itself. The successor to it in OS X, Carbon and Cocoa, were completely rewritten.

Now you could argue that the XNU kernel wasn't completely rewritten from scratch, since it takes many elements from BSD and Mach.

[LTD]

We need to be clear on whether we're talking about the OS X GUI, or the OS 9 APIs that were ported over in order to facilitate the "Classic" environment.

Some original Macintosh APIs were ported to Unix libraries known as Carbon. Mac OS applications could be ported to Carbon without the need for a complete re-write (of those applications, not the OS!), while still making them full citizens of the new operating system. Meanwhile, applications written using the older toolkits were supported using the "Classic" Mac OS 9 environment. Included support for C, C++, Objective-C, Java, and Python.

The APIs that Mac OS X inherited from OpenStep are NOT compatible with OS 9 and earlier versions. These APIs were created as the result of a 1993 collaboration between NeXT Computer and Sun Microsystems and are now called Cocoa. This heritage is highly visible for Cocoa developers, since most Cocoa class names begin with the "NS" prefix, standing variously for Nextstep, NeXT/Sun. Apple's Rhapsody project would have required all new development to use these APIs. All Mac software that did not receive a complete rewrite to the new framework would run in the equivalent of the Classic environment. To permit a smooth transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, the Carbon Application Programming Interface (API) was created. Applications written with Carbon can be executed natively on both systems.

So there was no rewrite of OS 9 to OS X, since there was nothing to rewrite, except adjustments to NeXTStep. Apple essentially bought OS X (via NeXTStep), and OS 9 apps were supported via emulation. The new UI had nothing to do whatsoever with OS 9, either in looks or code. It was entirely a NeXtStep phenomenon that evolved into Aqua.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Right... the transition to OS X was a lot like the Windows transition to NT. If NT were the Apple equivalent of NextStep / XNU, then Windows 2000/XP would be equivalent to the first OS X releases (except that the first OS X releases weren't really useably by anybody whereas 2000 and XP were both highly regarded releases).

I think what that guy was getting at was that neither was a rewrite. In fact, if you're talking kernels, NT itself is by far the "newest" of the popular OSes, much newer than XNU / Mach / FreeBSD.

[MrChainsaw]

How would I make Windows 7 better? Make it so small that it fits on your motherboard, where the bios is, I think that will make it safer.

[LTD]

How would I make Windows 7 better? Make it so small that it fits on your motherboard, where the bios is, I think that will make it safer.

Hehe, you just reminded me of something. It's not Windows, but it's fully functional (I used it for a while back in 2005), and it's really, really small:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/

Can boot from a USB pendrive and can fit inside a 50MB live CD.

As for Windows, Windows 7 seems to offer some nice improvements already in performance, and especially the UI. As long as it's made leaner and faster, it'll be good.

[afusion]

Steve Jobs must of been proud to merge what he had been working on for years with little public success and to merge it with Apple.

I'll leave this here just for kicks

[LTD]

Steve Jobs must of been proud to merge what he had been working on for years with little public success and to merge it with Apple.

Anyone remember the mac clones?

Those clones made Apple very, very sad.

Funny thing is, Apple didn't really create OS X. They acquired the NeXTStep OS and made enhancements to it. It's oversimplifying things, but that's essentially what happened.

Apple didn't know where the hell to go with the old architecture, and they were doing a lousy job of trying to create something new.

During the mid-90s, Apple was looking down the business end of a gun-barrel called FAIL. The decade-old Mac OS had finally reached the limits of its single-user, co-op multitasking architecture, and its UI (at one time incredibly innovative), was beginning to really show its age. So Apple started a massive dev program to replace it in 1994, called Copland. A lot of people thought this was a futile exercise from the get-go because there was plenty of political infighting at Apple. By 1996 Copland was nowhere ready for release, and the project was eventually trashed. They had some cool plans for it, but hey, welcome to Apple's pre-Jobs management! Though, some elements of Copland did make it into Mac OS 8, released in July, 1997. I used this OS quite a bit, having migrated from System 7.5 and before that 7, which I used in 1994. I liked OS 8, but it was nothing too special. I didn't even bother with OS 9.

Apple almost bought BeOS (would have been very interesting!) that would have been good for multimedia/multitasking and it even ran on hardware similar to Apple's, but that idea was scrapped and they acquired NeXT instead, and used OPENSTEP as the basis for an entirely new OS. Jobs came on as a team "consultant." They first decided to develop a new OS based entirely on a new OPENSTEP version with an emulator bolted on to run Classic stuff. The result was known as Rhapsody, scheduled for release in 1998.

But developers gave Apple the finger an said they wouldn't bother porting anything over to this new system, and that they would rather leave the platform entirely. This rejection of Apple's plan was mostly the result of long list of broken promises form Apple. After watching more of "Apple's next OS" disappear down the tubes, one after another, devs weren't interested in doing any work on the new platform, let alone rewrite everything for it.

And it was at this point, that Steve Jobs was given more or less free reign to return Apple to profitability. Darwin was born in 2000 with code derived from NEXTSTEP, FreeBSD, and other free software projects. And the rest is history.

OS 8 screenie:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/images/system8.gif

OS 9 (the "Internet-enhanced OS") screenie:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/images/macos9.jpg

And the OS that never was (apart from two dev releases) - Rhapsody:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/...es/rhapsody.gif

Now back to Windows 7!

Edited December 2, 2008 by LTD

[i_was_here]

What I would like in Windows 7 is more performance and lower system requirements. Pretty please!!!

[Sandor]

need a new team on user interfaces.

IE7 and vista are total pish.

[MrChainsaw]

Hehe, you just reminded me of something. It's not Windows, but it's fully functional (I used it for a while back in 2005), and it's really, really small:

http://damnsmalllinux.org/

Can boot from a USB pendrive and can fit inside a 50MB live CD.

As for Windows, Windows 7 seems to offer some nice improvements already in performance, and especially the UI. As long as it's made leaner and faster, it'll be good.

Yeah thanks, I know about it, thats why I posted that post :laugh:

Hey you know what? Vista can now fit on a usb drive, with the technology we have today of 64GB of usb flash drive. :rofl:

[afusion]

I'm looking forward to the AV Microsoft will release next year.

[Ci7]

I'm looking forward to the AV Microsoft will release next year.

morro FTW lol

[NEVER85]

Um, yeah... That's in there... somewhere... :rolleyes:

You'd only have to look at my sig to know I was being blatantly sarcastic. :p

[Ci7]

A little button on right side of taskbar can be found in some builds of Longhorn. I believe it had same purpose.

I don't think we need Windows 7, but only SP2 for Vista. I think MS should start working on OS from scratch and get rid of NTFS file system and concept of OS as we know by using Windows.

New File System, New File/Folder Organization, New GUI etc...new smart ideas.

FAIL !

you would be the first one bitching about them because your ten year old crappy program doesnt work

[Revolution.]

all i want is the start up timing should be fast, not having to wait minutes.

and i dont have ****ty hardware.

referring to vista.

[Ci7]

all i want is the start up timing should be fast, not having to wait minutes.

and i dont have ****ty hardware.

referring to vista.

how many programs you got at autotrun in startup ?

for me i have removed everything from startup except AV and Windows sidebar

[Crompee]

I'd just want them to take a different approach.. The same approach which is now standard in Browsers. Instead of keep adding things, take everything away and list everything as optional.

Give people a choice on what 'addons' theyd like on there OS, rather than it installing everything. So they can have a completly bare OS which runs extremly fast or they can pick certain 'addons' to install with it which makes it look nicer, added functionality, easier navigation, etc. Its a problem that there is now so many things as standard in an OS which alot of users will never use or dont want.

[XerXis]

A little button on right side of taskbar can be found in some builds of Longhorn. I believe it had same purpose.

I don't think we need Windows 7, but only SP2 for Vista. I think MS should start working on OS from scratch and get rid of NTFS file system and concept of OS as we know by using Windows.

New File System, New File/Folder Organization, New GUI etc...new smart ideas.

I love this kind of comments :D, you probably don't know a thing about file systems in general or NTFS in particular. You couldn't name one bad thing about NTFS. Yet somewhere someday you heard someone say that NTFS is bad and you keep repeating it over and over again hoping it makes you sound smart.

Well sir, it doesn't ;)

[Denholm]

Wow, I love the new taskbar and the way it handles multiple instances, and the virtual folders is the thing I love most about 7 finally allowing me to use custom folders and still have them included in Documents/Music etc.

So I have to respectfully disagree :rolleyes:

That's all right. Not here to convince you. Just that Microsoft has failed to convince me.

I also feel that the new taskbar is so much like a dock that the idea of actually having the Start menu seems a bit superfluous.

I'm looking forward to the AV Microsoft will release next year.

They couldn't do much in terms of taking any real market share, so now it's been given away. :rolleyes:

[Denis W. Veteran]

First things first. No idealist garbage like "just ditch the kernel and start anew." Microsoft ditching the NT kernel and building something *nix based isn't a solution either.

Anyways:

At the moment, my pet peeve is glass on maximized applications. The whole point of making an application's title bar and the task bar turn black when an application is maximized is to pull focus to that application, which I think it does very well. However, Microsoft have bent to the will of the small number of very loud people who don't seem to understand this and have changed the behavior in Windows 7 so that maximized applications retain their glass title bar, which looks absolutely stupid. Why can't they just implement a check box: "I like things that look flashy and I don't understand interaction design principles".

End rant.

I have to agree. A good solution would be to just turn off transparency in maximized windows as if the user unchecked "Enable transparency" in the Personalization dialog, while at the same time keeping glass enabled on the taskbar at all times. But before that, I think they have to address the problem/bug where the transparency is temporarily disabled while windows are animating in build 6801.

This will get me crucified but anyway, undo the changes to UAC, or at least make the highest security level the default. They've swung the security pendulum too far back in the other direction

I would like to agree, but consider that the new default UAC setting in Windows 7 was nonexistent, at least to the user, in Vista. It was a black and white situation: either prompt everything, or don't prompt at all. Now only downloaded apps get the prompt, which would also include any malware that silently downloaded itself to the user's system.

I'll still keep the slider at the second highest level... I don't really trust myself to do things correctly the first time. :p

But about Secure Desktop: has there EVER been any proof of concept code that allows an app to hijack the UAC dialog?