There’s a new article out in E-Week online, titled “Apple’s Tiger vs. Windows Vista: Who Comes Out Ahead?” comparing Tiger and Vista. This is quite typical of Windows-centric writers comparing Mac and Windows: though they get some things right, they all too often are mistaken about what Macs can do, and give unreasonable props to Windows for things that don’t deserve it.

The article starts out on a legitimate track, pointing out all the things Vista will do which imitate Tiger, especially with the note of search design & features and look-and-feel, though he also notes some rather irrelevant items, like the similarity between the names “Aero” and “Aqua,” and the names for the “Network” and “Computer” areas. It does not talk about other more significant similarities, such as Internet Explorer suddenly become an RSS-savvy tabbed browser with startling resemblances to Safari.

But then the author begins to point out the differences, he starts getting stuff wrong. He starts with:

The more-advanced Aero Glass option uses translucent window title bars, a handy feature of Mac OS X that Apple dropped with Panther, but is still used in the Dock.

I’m not even sure what he’s talking about here. Title bars in the dock? They don’t even exist there–no windows in the dock. And if he’s trying to say that transparencies don’t exist in Tiger, he’s gone batty. And how are translucent title bars such a big deal? What’s the advantage with that?

Vista does, however, have some nice touches that Tiger doesn’t. Vista places previews of documents right on file icons. These are more sophisticated than the thumbnails that Photoshop creates, as they update as the file is changed. Tiger can display previews of graphic files, but not text-based files. … Vista’s folders display a representation of the type of files inside. Dialog boxes for saving files and other tasks use these thumbnails.

Actually, Tiger can do previews of text files as well if you use the column view in Finder windows. But I will concede that icon previews are better in Windows–though this is not really a Vista improvement, as XP can do the same things the author is talking about. But then we get back to the question, so what? Is this really a big deal for anyone? It’d be nice if Macs had this also, but I use both systems and never really feel the need. I mean, they’re icons–they can’t hold very much information about a document. Metasearch is more important here, and Tiger has that, while Vista had to abandon it already.

But I really get annoyed when the Mac is criticized for essentially not being Windows. One example is when the writer praises Microsoft: “Windows Vista will be superior to Tiger in terms of networking, mostly because Windows is a better client for Microsoft servers.” In other words, Microsoft is better because it can communicate with itself better than Macs can communicate with it! How’s that for Windows-centric? And it’s not even always true: many times in the past I have had an easier time connecting a Mac to a Windows network than I have had connecting a Windows machine to a Windows network. There are certainly fewer steps involved with the Mac, to be certain.

The writer also says a great deal about archiving and searching, virtual folders and stacking–but fails to mention the vital fact that much of this depends on the WinFS file management system, which has been delayed and will not be available until 2008. Which means that Vista users will have a relatively hollow shell of these features, most of which are already available in Tiger–and yet the author here uses them as examples of how Vista will outshine Tiger. Really? When? Three to four years after the fact? He even mentions the use of “stacks” in file management–an idea Apple has been developing since 2000.

What’s even more outrageous is when the writer concludes, saying that the next version of the Mac OS, Leopard, “will need to be a compelling alternative to Vista.” In other words, Apple better catch up with Microsoft–pretty arrogant, considering that not only has Tiger achieved a year and a half early what Vista promises later, but that much of what Tiger can do now won’t be available on Vista for another two and a half years, well after Leopard has been released.

And that brings me to the final and somewhat overwhelming flaw in this article: although it does mention Leopard near the end, it is overall a comparison between Tiger and Vista–an already-released Mac OS and a future version of Windows that won’t be released before Tiger itself is obsolete! Think of comparing Mac OS X Jaguar with Windows Me, or even Windows 98; a fair comparison? Please.

Considering the fact that the Mac has always been way ahead of Windows, this kind of reverse-logic comparison smacks of revisionism before the fact. You have to admit, if you have to go so far as to compare a 2008 version of Windows (pretending it’ll be complete in late 2006) with a mid-2005 version of Mac OS in order to make Microsoft seem even marginally comparable–well, that speaks volumes as to Who Comes Out Ahead.