Five Features Operating Systems Should Have

[prathapml]

My friend Eugenia over at OSNews.com was lamenting how boring operating systems have become. And I agree. How far we've fallen from the exciting times of 1991 when pre-emptive multitasking, protected applications, flat memory, and object oriented interfaces were about to be delivered to the masses.

Since then, improvements to operating systems have been incremental. Or in some cases, we've actually regressed (largely thanks to jerks taking advantage of open systems to create viruses and spyware).  IBM's OS/2 was well on its way to providing an OS in which users from around the world could seamlessly integrate new functionality into the operating system via SOM and OpenDoc.  Of course, had that occurred, it would have been the mother of all opportunities for spyware vendors and the creeps who make viruses. The 90s could be looked back upon as a time of naiveté and idealism. It was in that environment that ActiveX and VB Script and Internet Explorer Outlook Express were designed that we now rue because of the exploitative nature of malicious people.

And so in the past few years the two major OS vendors, Microsoft and Apple have largely taken on the role of tossing in features into the OS that third parties had already provided or that the other had managed to come up with on its own. And then after that the Linux vendors then try to mimic that (there, I've offended all 3 camps!).

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[sven]

its true that new OS' jsut take ideas from other people, look at apple, the new mac 10.3 has switching users, a windows xp feature. as soon as i saw that, i knew where they got it, but my pretty stupid friends believes mac thought of it themself. now mac has this thing called expose, which im sure will soon be implememted into the new versions of windows. all they really do is copy ideas back and forth, and some times sue eachother in the process. its a flaw in developement. there should be more time spent thinking of new useful stuff, and less on looking at what other systems have that they an put in. im waiting for mac to implement a blue screen of death

[tim_horton]

B) read some of your articles on another site pram good stuff and i agree boring oses 2 bad cooperatation amongst the builders wont happen .instead we watch version after version offer us a new theme/style and the lastest internet explorer yippie kia.

[Zxian]

now mac has this thing called expose, which im sure will soon be implememted into the new versions of windows.

I don't think that this will ever see its way into a MS based computer because of the way that graphics are displayed while you're at the desktop.

In a Windows-based computer, the graphics are still handled by the CPU. Look at the CPU usage when you drag a window around.

In a Mac, the graphics are truly handled by the GPU. This can be done because Apple keeps very close tabs on the hardware that goes into their computers, and therefore can write the proper code to handle complex graphics like Expose.

Until Windows integrates graphics related operations into graphics card system calls, we won't see anything like that... (well... we might if they just rely on the stupidly fast processors of tomorrow...)

[prathapml]

huh?

Zxian, would ya like to see the expose feature on win32? Its already existing.....

[DigeratiPrime]

im pretty sure that in Longhorn all the graphics will be offloaded to the GPU, MS is boasting this will increase productivity since you will free more CPU.

[Zxian]

I've tried all kinds of Windows-Expose programs out there, but I haven't found any that have the same smooth-sliding features that Macs have. That kind of rendering power just isn't possible for the typical computer wihtout making specific calls to the graphics card.

[sonu27]

I've tried all kinds of Windows-Expose programs out there, but I haven't found any that have the same smooth-sliding features that Macs have. That kind of rendering power just isn't possible for the typical computer wihtout making specific calls to the graphics card.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We will just have to see how longhorn is.

[Spyder2k]

now mac has this thing called expose, which im sure will soon be implememted into the new versions of windows.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

WinKey + D

[Crispy]

im pretty sure that in Longhorn all the graphics will be offloaded to the GPU, MS is boasting this will increase productivity since you will free more CPU.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In Longhorn all window-level graphics will be handed by the GPU ... Also, both Mac OS 10.4 and Longhorn will feature "google'ish" algoritms for local harddrive search ... I wonder who came up with that idea ... hmmm ...