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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.

I live my life strewn across two computing platforms. By day I live in the Windows world (happily I might add) and usually at night I am hanging out on one of my Macs. So that leaves me with a unique perspective to share with you. I know what my commonly used and favorite applications and what their counterparts would be for your new Mac. I also know of a few unique to Mac applications that you might just fall in love with. If Santa Claus left a shiny new Apple computer under your tree, read on:

Now your Mac came with iLife, and the applications are really cool. iPhoto is great, Garageband is loads of fun and you will get a lot of mileage out of iMovie but there is more free software than what came from Apple. One quick tip before we get there is that if you DO use iMovie a lot, you will find that many people actually prefer the old version of iMovie, HD 6. You can get the old version for free from Apple to test it out for yourself.

So while we are on the multimedia topic. As good as GarageBand is, it’s not a Swiss Army audio editor. The odds are after you deck out your new computer with ridiculously expensive extras from the Cash Incinerator, I mean Apple Store, you won’t have the money to pick up an expensive audio editor, so check out Audacity. Audacity is a great, simple Audio tool available for Mac, PC and Linux. For all your quick conversion and editing needs, it can’t be beat. Download Audacity here.

Now you probably either already had, or got lucky enough to get a shiny iPod with your Mac. But you don’t want to buy all of your movies on iTunes do you? I mean you already have plenty of DVDs that you might want to rip on there. Download Handbrake and you can rip DVDs to any format you could possibly want.

Now that you are creating all of this cool media on your computer, you might just find you need it somewhere else. There’s one problem, you don’t want to blow $100 a year for Mobile.me. Let’s go somewhere you might never expect…MICROSOFT! Microsoft Live Mesh is a fantastic tool for remote file syncing. You can set the folders you want synced and then have access to those files from the web. It has a great feature set for Mac, PC and Windows Mobile. Learn more and sign up here.

Now iChat is cool, but not everyone is on AOL. Get in touch with all of our Microsoft Messenger buddies with Microsoft Messenger for Mac. What’s that? You have friends on every conceivable service? Download Adium, it supports chatting on every protocol you can imagine. Except IRC…..get your IRC on with Colloquy.

Now that we are in the old school world of IRC, you might also be one of those geeks that needs to FTP stuff from time to time. You just can’t beat Cyberduck for FTP transfer on a Mac.

Now as much as you love iPhoto, you want to share your photos with your friends on Flickr right? Get Flickr’s Uploadr tool and transfer your files to the service quick and painlessly.

Are you using your GPS to Geotag those photos? Run them through GPSPhotoLinker first to get your GPS data into the meta-data before you upload lickety split.

Now this one I don’t really have a metaphor for, but I can tell you that I would DIE if I couldn’t use this application anymore. One thing that Macs just aren’t quite as good at is finding your applications. Sure spotlight is an awesome way to locate your files and stuff, but it’s not the most intuitive way to load Photoshop. You don’t want every application on your Dock. What if you just hit a key, started typing the name till you saw the icon and hit enter. BAM! Enter Quicksilver. This program may take some getting used to for some, but it’s something I just couldn’t live without these days.

One last thing to grab. You will find the Mac world is quite different from Windows when it comes to video formats, and Windows Media video is all OVER the web. Download VLC to get all of your video playing smoothly on your Mac.

Last but not least, Safari? No thanks, download Firefox. While you are at it, if you get disenchanted with Mail.app, Thunderbird is a kick ass mail client by the folks at Mozilla.

Now there are plenty more awesome free applications and lots of them are great. I wanted to list the cool ones that I use daily. Enjoy!

You know the drill, there was the guy that was kind of dweebish in high school. Not too many friends, got picked on for his forward thinking style (Chucks before they were cool kind of thing) and his penchant for out of mainstream music and insisting on listening to vinyl instead of CD.

Fast-forward to your fifteen year reunion and he is a successful stock broker at Ima, Asshole & Stien, and he shows up with his obviously an ex-stripper girlfriend and status quo BMW 3 Series M model macho dick car.

Do I sound angry? Sorry about that, I am one of the few people around the office that like and support Apple, but being that I do work for Microsoft, some of the latest “Mac vs. PC” ads are starting to work my nerves a bit.

First it was the “Screw you Windows, we can run Office too.” Conveniently forgetting that WE write office for them and if we stopped they would be in a serious disadvantage. Second came the iLife commercial advertising that while the Mac comes with all this cool software, Windows comes with stuff like Calculator. Nevermind the bundle of games that are included now, or the video editor, photo catalog and editor, really all the stuff in iLife except Garageband.

The latest is this monster that seems to be making fun of Microsoft for spending money on advertising? Seriously? How many ads do you see Apple put out that are specifically targeted to badmouthing Windows, not really advertising their own product. I would be willing to bet that Apple spent more on music licensing for Cold Play than we spent on ad production entirely!

So that’s how I am starting to feel about the Apple marketing machine, you were cool and chic when you were the underdog, now that you are building momentum, it’s starting to come off and arrogant and, most of the time completely not true.

I work for Microsoft, you probably already know that. I also carry a Macbook Pro and own two Mac Desktops. So yea, I like Macs, and I am probably going to take my snarky ass down to the Bellevue Apple Store tomorrow to buy a new one (with the Microsoft discount of course!)

That being said, I also got this email with a deal from HP on laptops, and it compelled me to show just how far off the gap in price and features are.

Ok, that’s quite the list. Let’s break down a few of these things in a minute, first I want to talk about Mac vs. PC in general. So you have to be asking me, “You work for Microsoft, you USE a Mac, yet you are telling me to buy a PC.”

Fair enough, let me explain a little about myself. I am a closet musician. I used to use a software package called ProTools. My Mac odyssey started when I broke down and bought a Macbook Pro in order to run Logic Express as my recording software. ProTools is notoriously expensive, the LE version is limited and they constantly deprecate their own hardware with newer versions (and charge a nice penny for ever dot upgrade even) So I decided to take on Logic. After awhile of really enjoying Logic, I bit off a 24” iMac so my studio wouldn’t be based on the same laptop I carry around every day.

When I upgraded to Logic Studio, and then also bought Aperture, I decided to move to the big boss Mac Pro to run my audio gear. I guess at this point you can figure out I have a little expendable income and a computer habit that rivals most heroin junkies, sue me. So the part of this story that you may be missing, is that along side both of those Macs at home, are two very nice, very capable Vista based PCs. One is a 32bit machine I do all of my web development and work from home stuff on, the other is a 64bit Vista machine I use for Media Center, all my music, backups, general file server, etc. Both are incredibly stable, fast as hell and in no way play second fiddle to my Macs.

That being said, if I was a college student, home user or someone who was in the market for a new computer with no brand allegiance, and I looked at these two options, I would buy a PC no question.

I do like OS X and I think it’s a fantastic OS, but I don’t see anything in it that screams, “I am so much better than Vista.” To be fair, I don’t look at Vista and think it burns OS X either. I think they are fundamentally different operating systems, different usage patterns and ultimately I don’t care which I use as long as it runs the software I need to run.

That’s where the rub comes in. It’s getting much better in recent years, but it used to be that you couldn’t go to Best Buy and purchase anything that works with a Mac. Even now, try to find more than one or two alternate keyboards for the incredibly annoying (but terribly sexy looking) new Apple keyboard. Sure, you can plug about any keyboard in and it will work, but who wants to type on a computer with mislabeled keys?

Then look at all the nice design choices (i.e. limitations) Apple makes for you. Steve Jobs says, “I understand you just bought a 1TB Firewire hard drive, and that it’s a very common interface for digital video cameras and other cool gadgetry (namely any good audio interface) but we at Apple have decided that port is kind of ugly so you don’t need it anymore. That may not be what drove them to that decision, but look at the new Macbook, it’s gone. Just about all of them are. Two USBs and some headphones and you are going to have to start trying alternate places to plug stuff in, maybe you could shove it up your….never mind.

Ok, so back on the path I seriously diverged from, I think I covered most of my disgruntles with the new laptops.

I think if you look at the specs of the two laptops, and consider your probably 10 years of experience using Windows, you will agree that while OS X is fantastic at a lot of things, Windows Vista runs fantastic on current hardware, it’s just as stable and secure as OS X is these days, and Microsoft’s Live Suite has everything iLife has covered with the exception of Garageband, and it even includes Office!

What are you going to buy?

There are several like me at Microsoft. Some more extreme, some less, and there are also those there that would like to hang me for my transgressions. (right Scott?) The truth remains that I work at as an Engineer at Microsoft and most of my home computing is done on a Mac.

Of course I am not all Mac. I have two Vista PCs that I use regularly and I have no dislike or hard feelings towards them at all. The reality is that several of my personal hobbies happen to lend themselves to the Mac easily. Of course they can be done on the PC, but I prefer to do them on the Mac.

Now let me be clear on one point, Video, Audio and Photography can be done and done quite well on the PC, often with the same software from the same companies (Protools, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, etc) But I have just gotten used to doing them on Mac, and long before I ever came to Microsoft.

That being said, there are some things I just don’t do on a Mac. Application and Web Development are two things I have yet to get comfortable with on my Macs.

So what is it exactly that brought me to the Mac and what has kept me there? Protools is the software that led me there. Digidesign’s digital audio application is dual platform, and when I finally dropped the cash for the audio interface and software, Windows 98 is what I was running it on. I purchased a Dell Precision workstation around the year 2000 with dual monitors and as much ram as I could get at the time, about 1GB I think, and about 40GB of hard drive space. It was a beast of a machine and it was optimized and dedicated to running Protools..

The problem was that the computer just didn’t run it very well. I had issues with pops and clicks, sometimes tracks stuttered while recording and it just wasn’t stable. After a few months of toiling away, getting more and more frustrated with it, I decided to give Mac a shot and got what I think was around an 866Mhz G4 PowerMac.

Protools installed quickly and I was up and recording flawlessly from the start. Now this isn’t always the most practical approach both economically and realistically. Most people use their computers for more than one thing.

It’s interesting how much an impression like that lasts on you. It’s really still there, although intelligently I realize that Windows runs some very stable recording systems on Protools, Sonar, Cubase and the like.. I just had a bad experience, switched and never had a reason to switch back.

These days I am still running my studio on a Mac, and it has crept into other parts of my world as well. When the intel switch came I decided it would be a great thing to get the Macbook Pro as my laptop and be able to run both Windows and OS X on it. I have been on the Apple laptop for over a year now and wouldn’t switch back to a PC only for anything. I have Vista installed into Bootcamp and available through VMWare Fusion, and 90% of the time I run it in OS X. Before I switched to the Mac Pro for my studio, it was based on a 24” iMac which I just couldn’t bear to sell, so I kept it. Now that it’s not my audio computer anymore, I use it more than ever.

There are things that I still use PCs for daily. I have a 64-bit Vista Media Center machine that is our iTunes server, storage server and gaming computer. I have a 32-bit Vista computer that I use for work email, work IM, VPN, web design, software development and managing our network and other computers via Windows Live OneCare.

At work I use Vista machines for my desktop and laptop and I don’t find myself “missing” my Macs at all (except maybe Quicksilver) so I don’t want anyone to think that my point is that I love Macs more than PCs, after all “I am a PC” ☺ But what I am saying is my home has room for both.

So what does this all mean? What is the point? The point is that there is room for both for anyone, even someone who works for Microsoft. The computer I use is suited to the task I choose, so to speak.