Windows 7 Superbar vs. Mac OS’ Dock
In case you haven’t heard about, since today, Microsoft’s Windows 7, the successor of Vista is available as a free download. Of course, it’s just a beta, and maybe they do it to distract a bit from not-so-well performing Vista, but anyway, if I had a PC, I’d certainly give it a try. But because I don’t, and I’m not sure whether bootcamp supports Windows 7, I was forced to simply read some reviews and build up an opinion.
And there was this one thing. Imagine a system-wide menu bar featuring all your current apps, plus the one you are using most often. Of course, it’s up to you to decide what you want to place in that amazing menu-bar. You can even use a very, very hot ability to place items using the mouse called “drag and drop”. Finally, after using an application and closing it, the corresponding icon will just disappear. Unbelievable, I know. There is one other amazing ability this dreambar, as I call it, offers. The grouping of windows belonging to the same application. This is indeed something total new, something I have dreamed about for years, and now it’s finally happening.
Well, in case you thought it sounds like the Mac OS Dock. It’s not. It’s the new taskbar in Windows 7, called “superbar”. It seems people at Redmond are a bit desperate these days, instead of being creative..
But let’s be serious, just for a moment. I’m really wondering where the innovation is. Even searching for “Windows 7 Innovation” doesn’t return much. There is the mentioned superbar ( wuhhzza ), some eye-candy and a multi-touch interface ( if I got that rumor right ). The multi-touch interface is a gift for hardware manufacturers, but not for people with ordinary PCs eating French Fries while surfing the web, the superbar is pretty much a bad copy of several already existing concepts and the rest? Is there still this ridiculous Flip-3D thingy that is so not boosting productivity? Oh it’s so spacy I can’t see the contents of the other windows..
Windows definitely has some fields where no one is at the moment able to compete with it, but not because of the superior technology but rather because of hardware manufacturers still keeping that platform up, and game vendors still building mainly for it, too.
But actually, this hasn’t necessarily to be something bad. Mac OS simply is the best system when it comes to usability, consistency of an interface etc.. And Windows can only profit from … reinventing some stuff already present there. Calling it Superbar seems a bit exaggerated, but after the Zune disaster I guess it’s to polish some Egos.
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4 Comments to “Windows 7 Superbar vs. Mac OS’ Dock”
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I am a Windows user and I won’t deny that Microsoft has copied features from the Mac OS, but can you say that Apple has never copied a Windows feature.
Windows has had a “system-wide menu bar featuring all your current apps” since Windows
95. A feature of this menu bar is: “after using an application and closing it, the corresponding icon will just disappear.”
Since an upgrade in 1997 which added the Quick-Launch bar, users have had the ability “to decide what you want to place in that amazing menu-bar. You can even use a very, very hot ability to place items using the mouse called “drag and drop”.”
With the release of Windows XP in 2001 “The grouping of windows belonging to the same application” was used to solve the problem of multiple buttons filling up the taskbar making them unreadable.
With Windows 7, all Microsoft has done is combine these features together and group icons before the Taskbar is full.
Yes it looks and acts more like the Dock than it did before. But it still has more in common with the old Taskbar than the Dock.
Personally I prefer the old Taskbar which has one button per window used to switch between windows that shows a label of that window’s title. But uses a separate button to launch an application and to open a second window of that application.
All modern web browsers use a tab system which works in the same way as the old Taskbar: One button per web-page used to switch between web-pages that shows a label of that web-page’s title. But uses a seperate button to launch a web-site and to open a second tab of that web-site.
If “Mac OS simply is the best system when it comes to usability” then instead of having tabs, why doesn’t Safari have a row of label-free icons, that are used to open new web-pages and switch between already opened web-pages, using a vague blue dot to let users know the difference between pages that are open and pages that are not?
Of course web-pages from the same site will be grouped together under one icon and users will have to right click every icon to see how many pages are open from that site, but at least it will be “the best system when it comes to usability”.
Windows 7 superbar is far better than dock http://my–own–space.blogspot.com/2009/07/mac-os-x-flaws-os-x-vs-windows-7-on.html
The new superbar is madness. Its already hard to use a PC, now they make it even harder. Usability isnt really prioritized, it seems.
now if even windows users agree, what is there more to say