OSX wins, but Vista is worse than XP.
by Alex Horstmann | 17 Apr 2007 | Permalink |
Macarati, User Experience
A very interesting report was published in February which analysed Vistas, XPs and Mac OSXs usability by Pfeifer Consulting, which did some very detailed analysis of the Mac and Windows UI. It conculded that (naturally) OSX was the superior UI, but also that Vista/Aero is worse than XP!
Now, there is always going to be strong opinions on UIs, as you are in the realm of personal taste. Because a UI is such a visual and tactile thing everybody has an opinion on it. While people tend to reserve judgement on the particulars of a feature, when it comes to the UI people feel comfortable commenting.
But Pfeiffer Consulting is talking about Mouse precision, Menu latency, speed in Desktop actions (such as opening folders), etc. which are not a matter of personal taste. These are things that can be reproduced and measured by anyone.
The report just shows that mouse precision has worsened and menus, submenus and desktop actions are slower on Vista.
Their benchmarks show that creative professionals will actually become less productive than they would be when using Windows XP. Of course, Mac OS X remains a clear winner in this area.
The IT Enquirer has a commentry on the Pfeifer Consulting report here: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/pfeiffer_vista/
There is a bias towards then need of the “creative professional” in this commentry, but the results of the tests clearly show that the Mac UI is just more usable than the Windows UI.
IT-Enquirer also have an interesting article entitled Working With A Mac To Increase Productivity: How Valuable is Your Time?.
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