I couldn’t resist especially when Mr. Gorgeous gave me the title.
Picture Creds to: Nothing To Do With Arbroath
Vista SP1 RC1 Redux
You know it’s not fair. You get all settled in and ready to run the Alamo right up to the last minute and the time that Service Pack 1 for Vista goes gold. Then you think it should be safe enough to install and hopefully fix the problems you are having without breeding any more of those little buggers called bugs.
Then two things happen and you find yourself wondering if maybe .. just maybe you should get the gauze out and click on that old download button that will begin the road to installing the one Release Candidate you said you wouldn’t.
First it’s a post by Bill Brenner who comes right out and says that it’s because I’m a cranky old fart that I won’t be able to resist installing it. Which he follows up with a quick tale that relates the experience of Brandon LeBlanc and how well everything is running for him after installing RC1.
Now I could have gotten my cranky on even more and said no way .. I’m still not installing it but no sooner had I read Bill’s post than along came Ed Bott and his high five report of his experience of installing RC1. That would have been okay .. I could have handled that except when Ed just had to go and report that one of the biggest improvements he had seen was to to with the network problem that is haunting me.
It was bad enough he was writing this but then he had to go an throw in a few graphs just to really mess me up along with just how much of an improvement he was seeing when copying files over a network to an XP machine
As you can see, the file transfers under Vista SP1 were dramatically faster than the Vista RTM times. For the directory full of many small files, the performance increase throughput was more than 300%; for the large files, the speed increase was roughly 260%. Note that you can expect similar results when transferring files from Vista to systems running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.
It sure seems that the evidence it there – the main problem I am having with Vista sure seems to have been fixed and from all the good things that are being said about how good RC1 is I feel like I’ve had the carpet pulled out from under me.
What is a cranky old fart suppose to do now – huh … to download or not to download. Maybe if I leave it until tomorrow some-one will come along with something bad to say about it and I can feel righteous in my crankiness and stick by my waiting for SP1 to go gold.
Here’s hoping for tomorrow …. 
No Vista SP1 RC1 for this boy
For as long as I have been using all the different versions of Windows I have been first in line to try any beta releases of their operating systems and just as quick to elbow my way through the line for release candidates of any service packs that they release.
Sometime this riding the razor approach has been fairly safe with very few times where I got bit on the ass in my rush to be among the first on the bleeding edge to subject myself to the possible torture that comes from using beta’s and release candidates. Now if it were a case where I was still running XP I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to grab any available version of XP SP3 and install it without a second thought.
With Vista however I am breaking this self-made rule and putting my gauze bandages back in the closet because this is one Windows OS version where I won’t be touching anything less that the final build of SP1. Unlike some of the more vocal commenters in previous posts about Vista problems I have some serious doubts about the OS.
While release candidates of Service Packs have proven to be fairly stable in the past I don’t have the same feeling about SP1 for Vista. Much of the advance gossip about SP1 isn’t saying anything about performance improvement but more around stability and security; along with a totally revamped WGA system. I have yet to hear anything about things like the copy/move problem being addressed plus other problems being voiced around the web.
So while the word is that a Release Candidate of Vista’s first service pack will be hitting the download links in the next few days this is one former early adopter of all things Service Packs; with the razor blade wounds to provide, that wouldn’t be stepping up to download anything stamped RC1 or any other number.
No .. this time I’m going to be waiting for the gold stamp to be applied along with readying my XP install discs just incase the so-called fixes do nothing more than change a version number or two.
Apple joins the real world
For as long as Apple has been in business it has strived to be exclusive and cultish. It has been happy to have a solid place in a small percentage of the computer world with devoted followers who believed; and still do, that Apple can do no wrong. It didn’t want to deal with Grandma, Auntie May and Cousin JoeBob or the rest of the great unwashed masses.
Then with the return of Steve Jobs, the iMac and iPod an interesting thing happened – the world began to discover Apple. Cousin JoeBob was buying iPods for his kids because they had to be cool. Auntie May was learning how to make playlists and enjoy taking her music where ever she went. All of a sudden the great unwashed masses were arriving on the shores of AppleLand and buying into the whole “it just works” marketing.
During this period Microsoft was fighting off the hounds of the DoJ and rival companies seeking to limit the company’s reach. Along with this they where having to deal with new technologies and information access that they didn’t necessarily have a lock on. The landscape was changing for them as well. Operating system needs were; and still are, changing as were the users desire for something more than just plain vanilla boxes with battleship gray colored applications.
So we saw the introduction of XP and the beginning of the trend of eye-candy for eye-candy sake. While the boxes may not have changed the systems and programs that ran on them began to show life. The unfortunate part of this is that along with this came incredible bloat and inconsistent user experiences which didn’t settle down until at least the second service pack for XP.
Throughout all this Apple was slowly making improvements through a series of feline iterations of OS X adding real eye-candy as well as actually improving the user experience without apparently adding the same kind of bloat factor. Along with that they were marketing some of the nicest looking computers seen to date. Put an Apple along side a PC desktop was like putting a high class model alongside an 80 year old spinster. No wonder people in general were questioning their reliance on the PC and Microsoft.
In the last year pretty well this has all come to head with the release of Vista which contrary to the marketing WOW, was far from it. A lot of people were rightly beginning to feel gouged and getting nothing of real value in return. On the other hand Apple brought the iPhone into the world and whether they have truly changed the mobile market forever is debatable, the fact is they are now a major force to deal with in that market.
Then came Leopard, the newest version of OS X and the version many believed out WOW’ed Vista hands down. For the first time in Apple’s history an OS X release was getting press far beyond its usual cult base. Blogs were talking about it and as a result the mainstream media started talking more about it especially considering the overwhelming success of the iPod and now the iPhone.
Talk of switching to a Mac was becoming more than just talk. The great unwashed masses were discovering that maybe switching to a Mac wouldn’t be as painful as they thought considering things like Parallels and Bootcamp would allow them to still work in Windows if needed. Suddenly Grandma could have a really nice looking computer that just worked and Cousin JoeBob’s daughters could show off their cool MacBooks at school.
However there’s a problem when the great unwashed masses decide to start joining the party – they bring problems and inexperience which is something the rather closed world of Mac isn’t use to and to a very large degree dread. As the release date for Leopard was approaching I saw a lot being written about what people; both Mac users and Windows users alike, was going to bring to the table – how it was going to change things like the iPod and iPhone had. Hell even I got bitten by the Leopard fever which hasn’t changed. I would still like to have a MacBook with Leopard on it but the fact was that people’s expectations and hopes were high. After all this was the “it just works” operating system and hardware.
In the aftermath of the release I have been fascinated by the reaction of reported problems being experienced by both Mac diehards and new comers to the platform. When Microsoft releases an OS that has to support hundreds of different hardware configurations from home desktop to enterprise wide upgrades and has problems it is always Microsoft’s fault. Yet when Apple does the same thing with far fewer restrictions placed on it and the users old and new encounter problems it is the user’s fault.
This attitude was more than evident when people like Rob Hyndman, Robert Scoble and Dave Winer write posts about problems they have experienced with Leopard. They get called everything from morons to Microsoft shills even when they quite rightly point out that they are experienced Mac users or have spent more money than I will see in a year on Apple products.
Apple and its devoted cult of users may not want it to happen but I hate to tell you all – the great unwashed mass is heading your way. Mac might only have a small percentage of the desktop or corporate marketplace but given the dissatisfaction with Microsoft that percentage is bound to grow. That growth will be people like Grandma, Auntie May and Cousin JoeBob and they are going to have problems which means they are going to be looking for well intentioned help not moronic quips about their mentality or heritage.
As Apple joins the rest of the real world of regular users it may find its downfall isn’t the price of admission but rather the rabidness and condescension of those that have manned the walls that have surrounded AppleLand. Like the Berlin Wall this one too will topple but it would be better that Apple and its cult followers did the toppling rather than it being forced upon them by the great unwashed masses headed their way.
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