Randall C. Kennedy of InfoWorld:
Mac OS X Snow Leopard is truly an underwhelming release, one that borrows most of its “new” ideas from Windows Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to drive OS evolution forward, introducing a raft of truly innovative features with Windows 7. The new Taskbar puts Apple’s clumsy Mac OS X Dock to shame, while its enhanced support for multicore CPUs means that even non-optimized code gets a boost – no Grand Central Dispatch tweaking required.
I’ve often referred to Windows 7 as “Vista R2,” an incremental follow-up release that was mostly about righting the wrongs of its predecessor. Viewed in these terms, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is more like a service pack: a collection of bug fixes and minor functional enhancements that, quite frankly, should have been in the original release. As such, Snow Leopard is nothing to get all excited about; it’s not worth even the modest “upgrade” price Apple is asking.
This dude wins “Jackass of the Week” hands down.
Most of the features he claims Apple has copied from Vista have been around way before Snow Leopard, but have merely been tweaked in 10.6.
Most of what’s new in 10.6 is under the surface — things like Grand Central Dispatch — and aren’t going to blow away users right now. Apple’s simply laying the foundation for the future.
Is Microsoft doing that with Windows 7?