7 reasons Apple fans would love Microsofts's Windows 7
Windows 7 isn’t merely a poke in the eye with a slightly blunter stick than what we’re used to getting from Windows. It’s a tremendously positive $119 update that makes your PC easier to use, easier to maintain, and puts more of your hardware and software’s power up at the surface where you can make the most of it.
It’s such a leap forward that many reviewers are even claiming that it finally brings Windows up to the same level as the Mac OS, the usual high standard for simplicity and elegance.
I’m ecumenical. I embrace hardware and software of all faiths. That said, the machine I do most of my work on each and every day is a Mac and I’m convinced that Apple still has a serious edge over Microsoft.
And that’s why Windows 7 fills me with unfamiliar and scary sensations: I believe you humans call it “envy.” The new edition of Windows has a boatload of features that Apple would do very well to steal for Mac OS 10.7:
- Libraries. Windows 7 lets you pretend that the contents of multiple directories scattered all over your desktop and the network are all enclosed inside a single virtual folder you create. You might create a “Home Photo Library.” Open it, and the contents of the picture directories of your desktop, your notebook, and your spouse’s notebook appear within. Double-click on a thumbnail and Windows 7 invisibly connects to the item’s physical photo. You can build Libraries out of anything.
- Window management. Much of the dull drudgery of operating a computer is simply managing the Pollock-like splatter of dozens of open windows. In Windows 7, alt-tabbing walks you through live previews of every window on your desktop. A menagerie of simple but instantly-memorable mouse actions allows you to maximize, isolate, and tile individual windows.
- Management of system messages and alerts. Windows 7 introduces the “Action Center.” It may sound like the midday newscast of a third-ranked local TV station but it’s actually an organized area in which every important system alert, error, and warning is collated for your orderly perusal. And it doesn’t just tell you about a problem that the OS encountered: Windows troubleshoots the problem and tries to offer you a functional solution.
- Device support. Now, Windows sees your Fax/Copier/Printer/Scanner, and your Phone/Camera/Mass Storage Device/Movie Camera, and your Keyboard/Steam Iron/Pizzele Press as individual accessories. Visit the Device Stage to see every device that’s attached to your PC at the moment. Click your Monitor/Card Reader/Cheese Straightener to adjust universal settings for the device and access its features directly.
- Acknowledgment that this is still Windows, and things can still go horribly wrong. W7 has plenty of tweaks to help keep your PC out of trouble and fix it when the inevitable happens, from a timeline that tracks system performance and helps identify the moment your machine when wotty-lumpus to a “flight recorder” that will allow a technician to see what you were doing just before That Horrible Thing Happened.
Overall, I’m full of love for this release. And it’s finally happened. I’ve written highly-positive reviews of both the latest Windows and the latest edition of Microsoft’s Zune music player. I bet right about now, Sun-Times fans are scrutinizing the “Abbey Road” cover, spotting that I’m the only columnist crossing the street barefoot, and concluding that I was killed in 2008 and replaced with some sort of Microsoft-loving replicant.