Vista vs Leopard

At its recent WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple sought to steal some of Microsoft's thunder by releasing just enough details of its next OS (operating system), Leopard, to make an early comparison to the forthcoming Windows Vista possible. Staying true to form, then.

It seems as though we've been talking about Vista for ages, and although RC1 (Release Candidate One) came out in September, it's likely to be February before most of us see the finished article. However, its features and general look and feel are fairly common knowledge -- and now we have something tangible to compare it to.

Implementation strategies Leopard is an upgrade to Mac OS X, whereas Vista replaces Windows XP almost entirely. Both Apple and Microsoft released OSes in the autumn of 2001 -- Apple's was OS X Puma; Microsoft's was Windows XP. The difference is that XP is still the current version of Windows, while Apple followed up Puma with Jaguar, Panther and Tiger – Apple has a lots-of-incremental-upgrades philosophy, compared with Microsoft's big-upgrade-once-in-a-blue-moon approach. The two major service packs for XP have been relatively feature-light.

Leopard looks to be idiosyncratic and entertaining in a way it's hard to imagine a Microsoft product being. The first major Leopard feature demoed at Steve Job's WWDC keynote was Time Machine, a backup utility that lets you step back to earlier versions of your system and files. This is not a revolutionary idea -- and Microsoft is planning a vaguely similar function for Vista -- but Time Machine's UI (user interface), which involves windows flying through space, is quirky and fun. By contrast, Vista has no strong sense of personality.

We're not saying it's always good for an OS to be playful -- we know people who gnash their teeth even at the way Mac OS X Dock icons bob up and down when it's alerting you to something -- but this contrast has become a defining difference between the two products.

Safety first

Apple can still get away with security not being a selling point for an OS upgrade; Microsoft has felt the need to introduce lubricating features such as User Account Control -- a function that keeps users aware of dangerous activities on their PCs. But you've got to wonder if Apple will be able to stay smug about security – we've been hearing about security holes in Mac OS X, and hackers seem prepared to target it. Let's face it, they weren't going to leave Apple alone forever.

Which brings us to stability issues. Although XP is considered to be the most stable version of Windows yet, Apple has been in the news recently after a number of its customers found their MacBooks were inexplicably crashing. So upset were these people that they set up www.macbookrandomshutdown.com.

Of course, Leopard's stability is something that can't be properly assessed at this time -- betas, previews, Release Candidates or whatever you want to call them are notoriously flaky, and we'd caution anyone against making judgements about this issue now.

But it will be something that commentators will be watching very closely as the OSes get closer to release.

Go web go

Sadly, neither Vista nor Leopard shows signs of being truly web-native. It's a dead certainty that we'll eventually see OSes that are so tightly integrated with web services that you can't tell where the OS finishes and the web service begins. But Vista seems to have almost nothing to do with Microsoft's Windows Live services -- and if Apple has big plans linking Leopard with the '.Mac' service, it's keeping them under wraps. '.Mac', which costs £69 a year for features that are increasingly available for free elsewhere, is in danger of becoming irrelevant. You begin to wonder whether another company will be the one that builds the first real web OS. Google would seem the obvious name to suggest at this point, but we've not heard anything concrete to back this up.

Leopard's inclusion of a feature called Web Clips, however, is potentially a revelation -- and a wonderfully webby one at that. Web Clips allow users to turn any part of a web page into a widget on your desktop. This is the best advert we've seen yet for widgets, gadgets, or any other form of web-enabled applet.

You might remember services such as Octopus, which tried to do similar things a few years ago, before the technology was quite there. Microsoft's Sidebar and Gadgets, meanwhile, mostly seem to be playing catch-up with technology that's already out there, although the Windows Sideshow mini-screen for laptops is potentially interesting.Several features in Leopard can be closely compared with planned applications in Vista, but which company has the early bragging rights? Turn over for a our pick of the top six applications in each OS.

Vista reliant on beta testers, Microsoft admits.

Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Vista, says Microsoft is counting on 'aggressive' beta testers to get Vista into the shops in time. The product team of 5,000 engineers is working upwards of 70-hour weeks on Vista RC1 as it heads for shipment.

RC1 was released in early September and represents code deemed good enough to ship, but which needs a final round of testing. Hallauer said in a podcast that it is vital testers dedicate as much time as possible to providing feedback to Microsoft so it can meet its release dates.

"We have a feedback window of two to three weeks after the RC1 release where we can really make changes in terms of getting deeper into the code base. Thereafter, we become very, very constrained in what we can change without resetting the clock," Hallauer said.

Microsoft recently revealed that Vista will be available to general consumers on Jan. 30, 2007.

According to Amazon, Windows Vista Home Basic will cost $199 (about £105) and Vista Home Premium will sell for $239 (£126). Vista Ultimate, the highest-end version of the OS for consumers, will cost $399 (£210), while Windows Vista Business will cost $299 (£157). At the time of writing these figures hadn't been confirmed.

Vista and Leopard features compared…

Backup and Restore Center vs Time Machine

Vista and Leopard have very similar approaches to backing up and restoring a system -- Microsoft and Apple have both kept all the functions in a single location. Microsoft has concentrated on making the interface easier to understand and navigate, although Time Machine is arguably easier to use. But Time Machine's space-themed interface won't appeal to everyone.

Virtual Desktop Manager vs Spaces

Both of these features allow you to create virtual environments -- separate desktops, in effect -- for collections of applications to sit in. This is particularly useful when working on several tasks at once. But Virtual Desktop Manager has not been incorporated into Vista; it's part of the free PowerToys download pack, which is currently compatible with XP but not Vista. Spaces is an integral part of Leopard.