Being predominantly a Windows user, I have always loved the functionality of the Microsoft OS and the “style” of the Mac. There is no question, in my mind, that Mac’s are usually beautiful pieces of hardware with adequate software. It had become clear that Microsoft had a mature OS on their hands, but they lacked in the “style” department. Windows has long been the leader in the
PC market, but after Windows 95, fell into a crazy aesthetic funk. Nearly every OS they made from 95 to 98 to 2000 to ME all looked exactly the same with a different logo here and there. For the most part, everything worked fine, but it seemed that we were stuck in the GUI dark ages, perhaps mostly limited by graphics hardware. Then we had Windows XP in 2001, which brought a change in colors and window layout and some UI upgrades.
Vista is a somewhat crazy and strange story which began with Longhorn and seemed to be Microsoft’s way of throwing a bunch of ideas at a wall and seeing which ones would stick. Formerly known as Project Longhorn, Vista began in May 2001 before the release of XP and was originally supposed to be a marginal update to the flagship OS. Through a long and ever-changing beta period, Vista eventually began to take shape and the features and UI of the next OS started to reveal itself. Vista was eventually completed in late 2006 and was released to customers in early 2007.
