There’s been many reports on how much more stable Microsoft’s Vista RC1 has been compared to earlier releases. Vista RC2 should be out possibly by the end of this week and will be near ready for release. Congratulations to Microsoft for the progress they have made recently with Vista.
Now that Vista is stable and can be reviewed and compared more closely to Apples’ OS X it appears there will be many similarities. Below is an article from Apple Matters that praises Vista and states that the difference in user experience is all but disappearing between Apple’s and Microsoft’s Operation Systems.
What this means for Apple is that the edge with OS X will disappear. And what is left? Better hardware? Perhaps. More software selection? Certainly not. The so-called advantages of a closed hardware/software platform? Most assuredly not as iTunes availability and success on the Windows platform shows.
All signs in the future point to the end of the importance of the operating system. Or, maybe it is time for Apple to start thinking about what needs to come next.
So this raises the question, are all operating systems progressing towards a destination that involves an almost identical user experience? Will they all at some point end up performing the same tasks in almost the same way?
technorati tags:vista, osx, apple, microsoft