Regards.

Joe, let me quote you: “Who’s calling who a shill? Andre is a fan. Good for him.”

Yes, lets look at one of this “fans” recent comments on Twitter (screen dump was taken incase it “accidently gets deleted”

“Looking at some family pics of MJ, I can see he was a PC user, too bad he didn’t live to see Windows 7″

Joe, why not cast your eye over to the comments he left when you announced that you were being let go from your job.

The Mr Dee connection? I’ve screendumps of identical posts between Andre’s twitter and a poster called Mr DEE over on another site.

This is all academic, since its off topic. What I will say is this.. Remember the pre-Vista hype? wasn’t it very much the same? Your experience of gifts surely shows that in regards to proprietary a seamingly innocent and independent opinion needs to be questioned.

Anyway, I’ll let the conversation continue on topic…

The quicklaunch was a mess, having it’s .lnk’s inexplicably stored in Internet Explorer’s application data folder.

The little hide-unhide system tray that collapses before you get a chance to hit one of it’s systray icons.

The language bar which on occasion seems to just replicate to the point where you have 8 empty divider walls and 2cm of space for running apps.

Grouping running applications together as you run out of room.

The whole locking and unlocking and manually dragging dividers of quicklaunch, apps, ect around is a joke.

What amazes me is that you can have so many annoying UI issues crammed into a 2cm bar onscreen.

This thing of lowering the bar so much with xp and Vista, then clearing it with Windows 7, and then getting enthusiastic applause from the usual suspects just galls me.

Right now, Windows 7 upgrades are Number 1 (Home Premium), Number 2 (Professional) and Number 7 (Ultimate) on the Amazon.com “Bestsellers in Software” list.

I use Vista SP1 Preinstalled every single day, and it works just fine.

Vista’s most vocal critics are people who don’t use it, and don’t know anything about it.

It is not the frustration of wanting something other than Windows, it is about the frustration of running Windows. Linux and Mac work perfectly with the wireless and are not slow with lots of popups. Ubuntu 9.04 deserves a special mention at the slick installation of drivers and connection to the wireless.

My problem with UAC is not really the annoying prompts, it is more that you have annoying prompts and the system is still not secure. I am not sure if it is different with Vista but 7 allows any program to execute code as Administrator without prompting, that is not secure so UAC is just an annoyance tool. Knowing that annoys me.

I don’t disagree with what M$ Truth Teller said, but I applaud your efforts to maintain some civility. Your name’s on the website, you can do what you want. Perhaps viewer comments should be considered an important voice in this social edition discussion.

I think comments can add value to what you do and give you a better overall product. They can also be a disaster. Take a look at cnet or zdnet sometime. You have a knowledgeable base of readers. I think we are a resource you can tap into, if you can figure out how to corral us.

This fall will be the culmination of a tremendous effort on the part of Apple and Microsoft to deliver their best operating systems to date. Linux is a compelling alternative that should also be part of the discussion. I hope you can find a way to make yourself an important part of the discussion. I’ll be watching, and participating.

Anyway, a couple of specifics:

With the taskbar in Windows 7, they essentially merged the main area and the Quick Launch menu together. You can pin any app to the taskbar (very easily – 2 clicks), and it stays there until you unpin it, running or not. if you want to fill up your taskbar with all you apps, you can.

The status icons are also “pin-able”, so you can choose which are permantently visible. You can also choose to make them visible only when they notify, or just hide them (on an individual basis) and they are anyway just a click away. There is even a check box just for you “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar”

You said “There is no user separation and UAC is only designed to annoy”

Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes, but have run XP, Vista and XP with two account – one admin, one not. I log in with a non-admin account. On XP this was a pain. One Vista and XP, I just get prompted for an admin password, and get evalated for that operation. I’ve never understood the bitching and moaning about UAC – for me its always been a big convenience.

Of course I’d rather be paying $29 to upgrade – but Microsoft has probably got the price right, ‘cos I wont flinch at upgrading to WIn 7 for $49.

In the end I just installed Ubuntu and when I need Vista I just connect a cable and sit in the corner under the desk. I remember hearing later that Vista wifi problems are very common. I am not stupid and I did try for more than 5 minutes.

When I have to spend my money on fixing these problems, it is a little hard to swallow. All of the features you mention are no use to me, jump lists are OK but they are not worth all the hassle and money of upgrading. Essentially I would be paying to fix Vista bugs which is what should be a service pack.

Grand Central is probably Snow Leopard only, but developers can work around it if they want to support Leopard too (it is just an extra object that they send jobs to). Apple has a different attitude here though, and I agree with it. We shouldn’t hold back progress just so that everyone can run every new application going. Grand Central and Open CL are only going to be used on high-end applications so if you cannot afford $29 to upgrade then you cannot afford to use that application.

Someone might write a killer app using Grand Central or Open CL, and that would then drive upgrades for Apple which is good for them. A much larger percentage of Apple users upgrade or are prepared to upgrade for a special app. Maybe the problem with Windows is that they give up too much for backwards compatibility?

That just leaves the taskbar which really baffles me. What is the middle part of the taskbar for and why is it always blank? Why did they hide the system tray icons when they have at least 6 ” of room to grow into? Is it because 3rd party icons are ugly?

Oh, and Windows 7 seems to undo all of the security work that they did in Vista. There is no user separation and UAC is only designed to annoy (even Microsoft says that). No part of OSX is designed specifically to annoy me so much that I complain to the developers of a bad application.