Windows 7

So CES just happened. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made many inane statements that make no sense. For example, he said something along the lines of "2008 was a really bad year economy-wise. But these economic problems don't affect those who are innovative." Well in that case, Microsoft is pretty much screwed. They haven't ever been innovative. It doesn't look like they're planning on starting being innovative, as shown by their latest updates on their latest OS, Windows 7.

For example, there's one feature called "Aero Shake". Whatever the "Aero" means is beyond me. It means that when you shake a window, all other windows will minimize. The video can be seen here. Now really, look at this. It doesn't take much shaking at all to minimize the windows. What if I accidentally make it all minimize when I didn't want it to? Apple did something that could be compared to this, called "Shake to Shuffle" on the iPod Nano. Now that could've been risky, since you might accidentally shake it and have it shuffle when you didn't want it to. However, Apple actually thought of this and made so that it knew when you were really shaking it. I'm worried about whether Microsoft was smart enough to do that with "Aero Shake". Also, didn't Apple do the same basic thing with Expose'? The only difference is, instead of shaking it, you just hit a keystroke. You can also see all the windows of a certain application in Expose.

There's another feature that I don't know the name of, where you move your mouse to a certain corner, and you can see the desktop. Sound familiar? Yes. Apple did the same exact thing, once again with Expose'. The only little difference is that instead of the window flying out of the way, the window turns into a square outline of the window, as if you're looking through a sheet of glass. Cool effect, but otherwise, it's a blatant copy. And what's really funny is that somebody from Microsoft spouted about how "innovative" they were by doing this. They keep using the word "innovative". What's with "innovative"? Are they trying to talk like Apple? News flash, Microsoft: even if you're going to copy off of somebody's work, that doesn't mean you have to act the way they do too.

Anyway, I'm not going to completely bash Windows 7. I actually secretly have high hopes for it. Why? Because I'll never afford a Mac, so Windows is all I have. I want Windows to be as good as possible. But I'm sure it's still going to be a memory hog, and I'm sure it still has a confusing interface, just retouched to look different.