A few of my Mac centric friends saw my blog post on Windows 7 and said that Aero Peek ripped off Apple’s Expose. Let’s make this clear, I have 3 Macs running OS X Leopard, I use them all of them time, and I think that makes me pretty credible to judge Mac OS X features. I have also been playing with Windows 7 for several days and have it installed on two computers that I use every day. I have some screenshots to display how Aero Peek and Expose’ look, and I’ll narrate how they work in case you aren’t using them.
Apple OS X Expose’
When you are using your Mac and have a bunch of applications open, a keyboard shortcut or hot corner will tile them out on your desktop like this
Ironically I don’t really use this feature much. I prefer to use Spaces to thumbnail all four of my virtual desktops and then select the desktop I want to use, organizing applications by sets instead of selecting from all available windows like this. Expose is also somewhat of an island in the sense that if you don’t choose to create a hot corner for it or remember the shortcut, you might not ever even notice it is there and use it. In my experience many users do not actually take the time to learn shortcuts so not having this hot corner enabled by default limits its exposure.
So what is Expose’ really? I would say that it is a beefy alt-tab for PC or cmd-tab for Mac. Ironically cmd-tab was not available on OS 9 and many claim that Apple stole it from Microsoft Windows, but that’s a debate for another day 
Microsoft Aero Peek
Windows 7 brings us Aero Peek. Aero peek is integrated into the taskbar and adds several features to the mix. First and foremost when you hover over a running application’s icon in the taskbar, Aero Peek turns all other open windows transparent to draw focus to what you are highlighting like this
What’s powerful about this is that there are no shortcuts or hot-corners to assign, every application supports it and it’s default functionality. When you hover over any icon in the taskbar a thumbnail of that application is shown, no need to hit a hot key and see what it looks like, if you hover the thumbnail, all other windows fade to clear and that window retains clear focus at it’s actual size and placement.
That doesn’t sound or look like a copy to me. It’s a variation on ways to find open windows for sure, but these are concepts here, I think you have to go much further up the implementation stack before you call it copying.
Is it a copy?
In my opinion it’s not only not a copy, it doesn’t even serve the same fundamental purpose. Apple Expose’ is designed to show you all open windows and let you choose the one that you want to have focus. Aero Peek is meant to show you which window would have focus if you click it. Since you have already highlighted the window that is being shown, and the taskbar thumbnails are telling you textually which application or document it refers to, you aren’t using Aero Peek to select, you are using the taskbar thumbnails to select and then Aero Peek is showing you what the current selection is.
Sometimes OS X will show you a thumbnail in the dock, sometimes not. Windows 7’s task bar always shows thumbnails when you hover. So the Windows 7 taskbar is the tool you are using to select your application window.
For the record, Vista’s task bar had application thumbnails also. The thumbnails were not capable of showing a set of documents and windows related to that application however. If you compare the thumbnail view on the Windows 7 taskbar it’s actually quite superior for a few reasons:
- Windows 7’s taskbar displays all windows related to the icon you are hovering over grouped together. Expose’ has no concept of relation when you have several windows open so you see every window for every application in a big pile.
- Hovering over different application gives you a full size preview of the window you are hovering over no matter how many windows you currently have open. Expose’ thumbnails become less and less useful the more you have open because they get smaller and smaller.
- Right-clicking pinned applications give jump lists that allow you to launch the application in specific states or with specific documents already loaded. (Recent Items for example)
I think it’s interesting that Microsoft Windows had the taskbar long before OS X had the dock. When OS X released the dock, it was seen as being revolutionary, nothing else like it in the business. Microsoft comes along years later and makes some tweaks and refinements to it’s taskbar which basically boil down to taking the names off of the taskbar buttons and integrating the quick launch menu with running applications, and now people are blaming Microsoft for stealing the dock. I can’t figure it out to be honest, is the taskbar in Windows 7 so drastically different than the taskbar in Windows Vista that it’s turned to stealing from Apple?
Hopefully after looking at these you can see that the functionality is useful, well implemented and unique. The who copied who rhetoric is tired and old, if you want to get nasty about it, look at all the things one could make an argument that Apple stole from Microsoft.
- Is iWork a copy of Office?
- iTunes is a media player, did it rip of Windows Media Player?
- Is Front Row a poor copy of Windows Media Center?
- Cmd-Tab is the same as Alt-Tab in functionality and implementation.
I think that these things are the result of evolution of personal computing, not a board room full of developers saying “ooh, that’s awesome, we need to steal that.”
- The best quote I have ever read was on a forum once, it said:
The only thing Microsoft ever stole from Apple was the personal computer market…
- Ouch.
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I don’t like the “best quote”…
I stopped using Expose a while after it came out in OS X 10.3. I never really knew where the zoomed-out windows were going to end up on screen. Moving to & clicking on a random point on the screen quickly with a trackpad seemed like more work than hitting the keyboard to achieve the same goal.
I’m finding Aero Peek more predictable. It isn’t so different a mouse motion from clicking a taskbar button in earlier verisons of Windows… and now you get fullscreen thumbnails of the window instead of the teeny taskbar buttons. Nice.
I have a Mac running OSX Leopard and a PC running Windows Vista+Windows 7 dual boot. I am happy with both the OSes but i have always felt that Leopard was more usable. I never had performance problems or driver problems or crashes with Vista. Everything was fine and i was happy with my PC too. Now that i have gotten my hands on Windows 7(Actually i started with M3 build) i have to say that this time Redmond guys got it right.
I find that Windows 7 is a beautiful OS and i like all the features. They have paid attention to minute details that make the OS special. I like the performance and everything about it. I would surely buy it without hesitation
I hear all the time that one OS copied from another… Well for me, if i have a feature in my OS, i dont care if its a copy or not as long as i enjoy it
I’m looking to dual boot Vista and Windows 7, both 32 bit. I tried XP and Vista awhile ago and lost all my data. Vivek, could you send me some sort of tutorial on dual booting Vista and 7? Thanks
Please write where you got the quotes from.
This is a brilliant, well balanced post, with a solid ending. Nice quote. And nice post overall. Well done!
The post has some good points, but it’s largely biased. And just for the record, jump lists are a COMPLETE RIP of the menus that you see when you control-click an item on the dock in OS X. In fact, the way the superbar works is a rip too. Usually in Windows, Applications with multiple instances would have their own space on the taskbar, Now, with the introduction of the super bar, all instances of a particular application are now all handled by a central icon, This behavior is an exact replication of behavior in OS X. Lastly, if you want expose to only show the windows for a particular application, use Application Mode.
That said and done, although I agree that OS X’s window management utilities are initially hidden, once they are enabled, they run circles around Aero Peek, not to mention that exposé has been around since 2003.
I think we just disagree, not really bias. I am using a mac right now and dock icons aren’t even remotely as usable as a jump list. When I click photoshop I get remove from dock, open at login and open in finder. With jump lists I would be able to open previous files, open favorited files, possibly open it in a specific mode. They are application specific, dock icons are OS wide. Big difference. Now, as far as taskbar space, Windows has had the feature for a long time to combine to one icon when you have more than x windows open for one app, now they let you do it voluntarily, I don’t call that a rip, I call that a feature refinement. Removing the app name just saves space and is common sense. I wish they had ripped off expose and spaces, I miss them when I use a PC. As a matter of fact, port Quicksilver too while you are at it
The taskbar in xp show all open windows in the order in which they were launched, regardless of program. The shift in taskbar from being windows based to application based in Win7 seems a rather fundamental paradigm shift to me. It’s been a key difference between Mac and windows since back in the day of Mac OS 8 and Win95.
accidently, a strong case can (and has) been made that the original Windows taskbar was a rip from NeXTSTEP. NeXT, of course, was Jobs’ OS before Apple b(r)ought him back, and the origin of OS X…)
@Kees: I can’t imagine how anyone thinks the Windows 95 task bar (that’s the first task bar as far as I know) looks anything remotely like NeXTSTEP’s very dock like bar. While I agree that the shift they have made does make it more dock like in the sense of retaining the icon position that you chose (assuming that you pinned it to the dock of course) I look at things like this and think, hmmm, how many ways are there really to do this one thing. At some point doesn’t it become more complicity than stealing? I mean, when OS X added in the right-click functionality that PCs had for a long time, was it stealing or were they just complying to what had become a user expectation? I think the “theft” arguments get so silly.
Well, if you’re always last releasing a “new” product, I think you’re pretty much asking to be accused of theft.
Stuff like Zune (HD), Marketplace, Xbox, Bing, Vista/7, they all seem (are?) responses a change in market that other companies made happen.
Natal to me is one of the more interesting ideas to come out of MS in a while, but I don’t think anyway will want to claim it isn’t Wii inspired.
I don’t believe you fully understand how the taskbar functions in windows. The taskbar does not directly handle the applications, as in it only shows what applications have been opened. Therefore 10 instances of notepad running are not handled by the taskbar, but they are separate programs running. However, what windows 7 does is it takes similar programs such as notepad, firefox, or whatever you are running and groups them together.
In OS X the taskbar directly handles each instance of the program running, so if you had notepad or whatever program running you can close all open instances and the taskbar will still be running until you close the taskbar.
The OS X Dock on the other hand shows the applications that are open it doesn’t handle the programs directly.
Lol, the Applications with multiple instances running can be grouped in WindowsXP. And, remember WinXP is 2001 Release, and Mac had this feature in 2003!
In the “Taskbar and Startmenu properties” there is a checkbox option “Group similar taskbar buttons”
Great! if you check it, you can see the windows of same catagory are stacked in a pile. In Windows7, they made this option deafult! WHAT is the matter of copy here? :O
Will you agree, if i say Apple copied this feature from Microsoft? I think this feature is already available in Windows2000 and ME before XP… not remembering well
Windows7 DOESNT need a Ctrl-Click to open up Jumplists.. just Right Clicking on taskbar button pops the Jumplist up. Microsoft Windows had a feature of a List Menu since Windows95 which pops up on a user rightclick on Taskbar Buttons…. So, whats wrong, if Microsoft improved that List Menu, added some more useful features, and named it as Jumplist with a new look and feel different from traditional List Menus? :O
Do you think the HIDDEN things are more user friendly and usable?
Well i dont believe so.. :O And, Aero peek is far far far more different from Mac’s Expose. Aero peek feature allows you to view thumbnail view as well as Full Size view of any opened window, and Live Updation of the thumbnail preview.
The Superbar can be reverted to traditional Windows style Taskbar buttons without grouping, and even with Taskbutton Texts. In older versions, the grouping is not enabled by default, but in Win7 its enabeled by default.
So, Mac is not at all a question enough to Windows. Even if you dig more.. you will find Mac is a ALMOST TOTAL copy of several operating systems including mostly Windows!
I totally disagree with what you said about Expose being an island. For me it is one of the central features of the Mac Operating system. I think by default if you bought an Imac, the mouse that comes with it will have 2 buttons at the side which can be used to activate Expose. And if you have the new unibody MacBook’s, a 4 finger swipe down activates Expose and whilst a swipe up reveals the desktop or selects a window in Expose. So to me Expose is extremely important and much better than Window’s window management system (admittedly I haven’t used Windows 7 Aero Peek, but having read your description I don’t think I will like it much)
I think what using namespace Pikachu was trying to say is that once you have an application open and right click or hold a left click on it, something similar to the jumplist will appear. For example, if I right click the Transmission icon on my dock, it shows, in addition to those system wide options you mentioned, options like pause all, resume all and even tells me the amount of downloaders and seeders.
One more point I think the Dock is better than the taskbar is that the icons on the dock can be updated to reflect certain information. For example, my transmission icon, once it is running updates in real time the speed at which I am downloading and uploading. If I am using Adium, the icon also reflects in real time the number of unread messages I have. The calendar application also reflects the correct date every single day.
And the last point I feel like bringing up even though it wasn’t brought p here is that MacOSX’s dashboard, completely, and I mean completely owns Windows Widgets. With Dashboard I can access my widgets anywhere with just a click of a button. And even once the Dashboard layer is down, I can still see the Windows behind it.
So….overall, it’s MacOSX all the way for me =), but I will try Windows 7 though to see what the hype is all about. I really hope it is better than Windows Vista and XP, which even though are usable, was kind of a pain in the ass to use.
yes it is this is why i hate Microsoft
Interesting comparison, I tend to agree to most of it.
I had installed a windows version of exposé a while ago, and while it worked perfectly, I actually barely used it. Actually almost only in order to watch multiple windows at the same time…
On the other hand, I’ve been using Win7 for a while now, and I actually do use Aero peek.
Facts
As both a PC user and once mac user (had to sell my macbook a few months ago unfortunately) I can also see both sides. But one of the things I really enjoyed about using a mac was the expose feature. In fact I’m not sure how anyone used a mac before it.
It definitely took me some time to get used to expose but once I did I really began to realize it was the best was to navigate an OS. As someone previous to me said, expose can show either all open windows or only open windows for a given application.
Aeropeak looks like a cool feature, but I really wish Microsoft would have included expose in Windows 7. It’s not like the mac is the only OS to have this feature these days. There are now several distros of Linux which also support this way of navigating, including Ubuntu. As you said, it’s less about ripping each other off and more about evolving the standard. Mac users are typically the first to complain when windows gets a similar feature because it means their little walled garden was breached.
I have used win7 very briefly at work and it has me concerned. The new taskbar is very different and it seems to me like an extra step is required to get to the window you want by first having to click the icon and then select the window from a list. That’s a feature in XP/Vista I never really liked and always shut off. meanwhile on my mac I also had one of my mouse side buttons programmed to expose all my windows so I could navigate very quickly but just clicking the button and selecting the window I wanted. I also had another side button set to show my desktop so that I could easy get to it, or if while I was at work I could quickly hide everything if someone walked in the room.
As for what someone above said about dashboard. I disagree. I very rarely used dashboard on my mac. Although I liked the option, I think having the widgets on the desktop is better. Ultimately I’d love the option on an OS to do both. That way the widgets I use more often can rest on the desktop while the others can remain on their own dashboard-like layer. Though I think there needs to be multiple dashboard spaces.
I also agree that windows 7 needs multiple desktops. It’s the only major remaining OS that doesn’t have this feature.
MacBooks don’t require a shortcut key or hot corner to use expose, and neither does a desktop with a more-than-two-button mouse.
If you’re going to make a statement, at least make sure it’s true.
“Expose’ has no concept of relation when you have several windows open so you see every window for every application in a big pile.”
Try pressing “tab” with expose open.
And does peek really make more sense than just shoving windows to the side? With peek, you’re stuck with those annoying window borders still in your face, where expose just puts an unobtrusive shadow around the edge of the screen.
I’ve never been particularly fond of Windows (to say the least) but with 7, it looks like Microsoft is *starting* to comprehend the idea that actual, english-speaking, non-engineer people are going to use their product. For awhile, it seemed like plain English was not a language that Microsoft systems spoke. Thank you, Apple, for showing these guys how it’s done.
The mac vs pc war is ridiculous. The bottom line is operating systems are going to evolve. Would all of you that are bawwwing about who ripped off who be happy if no one implemented new ideas? Probably not. Without borrowing “ripping off” neither OS would make any progress and we’d still be using a terminal for everything. Regardless, I’m just preaching to the choir anyway.
P.S. Burger King has a double cheeseburger. They ripped off Mcdonalds!!! get them!!!!
Aero Peek is Aero Peek
Expose is Expose
but ‘Dock Expose’ is plagiarized from Windows 7′s Aero Peek concept.
Aero Peek (2008, October @ PDC2008)
Dock Expose (2009, June @ 10A394)
Aero Peek shows you a thumbnail of your windows and other full-size without any click, just slide your cursor over the thumbnails.
I agree they really tried to copy the windows 7 concept and it didn;t come out as well as the taskbar. The taskbar is amazing and windows 7 just made it better.
It’s largely biased. You can’t judge Mac OS if you have a biased-mind.
I completely agree with David and using namespace Pikachu;
I’ve been using Windows for almost 14 years, I just tried Windows 7 for 3 days, I don’t see any good and User friendly features in Windows 7.
As for Expose in Mac OS X? It’s still genius and brilliant, far better than Aero.
As for hidden stuff in Mac OS, WHAT?! What are you talking about anyway???
Just to remember that both Apple and Microsoft have ripped of the GUI and HCI from the Xerox Alto, released back in 1970, with a GUI identical to the MacOS 9. The Xerox Alto was the first personal computer. It even had a program called Sketchpad, which was very similar to PaintBrush, and also a text processing program. The Xerox Alto was costing around U$ 3,000 for a market that didn’t exist back then (people are not intimidated to pay as much for an Apple Power Book nowadays). So Xerox dropped the Xerox Alto manufacturing and research, donated all 100 units to universities, and 14 years later we see the first Apple Macintosh, a Xerox Alto with an apple branded in it.
Also remembering that the first “personal computer” that really hit the market was the Altair (remember Alto?) sold as eletronic parts to be assembled in 1974. It used a BASIC interpretor created by a guy named Bill Gates. In 1974 Micro-Soft was founded.
Many things evolved so far, but yet both Apple and Microsoft are copying and being copied. The only ones not being bothered about it seems to be the open source community building UNIX based OSes (hey isn’t MacOSX kernell basically FreeBSD ?)
yes, the kernel is basically a modified version of Free BSD
WHAAA!
I mean WHO cares! I tell you who: those people who dont have a computer to work on, but have it for “man look i have a mac and look how cool it is!”. And when you tell them: Well, mine has bluetooth too, then they say “but mine is bigger / was in there before”.
For the rest of us, we use the stuff we have to use (some programs wont exist on both platforms or your boss wants you to use one platform), or at home, we just use the platform we like. I dont care if you like exposé or aero peak. When you like expose, use expose. Both have their pros and cons. Dont get me wrong, you can talk about what might be better, but why is it important who invented it? Thats only important for those i-told-you-so-guys. For example, one could argue if this green plus in mac is really such a great idea. I think it is not. Luckily, there is a program called right zoom. And i’d also like to have that feature in mac os that i can put one window on left and the other one on the right side as in aero snap. And of course, many things in Windows which are cool in mac os. After all – we can be happy, because the competition makes windows and mac os (and linux) better.
But PLEASE!!!! stop this they-invented-it. its not even an argument in a discussion whats better. There are many companies who “invented” stuff (did something for the first time) and dont exist anymore. Or do you want software patents???
Holy shit i cant believe people are bitching over things like this. Like “the guy” above me says; its just how it is… Its always been like this.. People steal ideas.
“Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” – Thomas Edison
Apple didn’t invent Expose-style window switching either, so why all this hand wringing about whether Microsoft copied them?