4 ms·

You know, this is a pretty apt analogy. Vista (apparently) was considered terrible primarily because it ripped off the band-aid and made a bunch of inconvenient

by Gaelan 7y ago

You know, this is a pretty apt analogy. Vista (apparently) was considered terrible primarily because it ripped off the band-aid and made a bunch of inconvenient but important-for-security-in-the-long-term changes. [0] [0]: https://twitter.com/swiftonsecurity/status/851857404891471872 https://twitter.com/swiftonsecurity/status/85185740489147187...

Yetanfou 7y ago
Well, that, plus the fact that it was resource-heavy. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of hardware was sold as being 'Vista-ready' while in reality being incapable of running the overly-fancy graphics-heavy 'glass' shell. It also had a number of performance problems (e.g. slow file copy) which only got sorted out in Windows 7. Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of the future with a database file system and all sorts of fancy stuff which was either dropped due to performance problems or never left the lab in the first place.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of the future with a database file system This sounded interesting when I first heard about it, long before Vista came out. Now when I see it I wonder what they were trying to do. A file system is a database, with a well understood user API. So what were they going to add? Tagging? Application level views of the system? None of t hat seems like something that would require anything more than an extension that handled additional metadata.
  - kayfox 7y ago
    Lots of file systems at the time were hierarchical databases, but the file-system Microsoft was working on was to be more a hybrid with the ability to find files based on specific criteria right away, rather than having a search process walk the tree looking for something.
  - bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
    The point of a database is probably to index via arbitrary columns, allowing for fast lookups and filters of files. The current model is to find something you more or less have to walk the directory tree.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    A file system is a database, with a well understood user API. Yes, a terrible API which works poorly for most home use cases. You probably have music on your computer. In your hierarchical filesystem, do you organize it by Genre/Artist/Album or Artist/Album? Do music videos live in the same Artist directory or in a separate "video" folder? Chances are you don't know/care because you're using an app like iTunes that builds a custom database on top of the filesystem. And something like Photos that reinvents a totally different custom database. And more database reinventions for email, ebooks, games, karaoke files, voice memos, calendar appointments, etc... all proprietary file formats without published APIs. Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy.
    - 72deluxe 7y ago
      "Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy." Data has no feelings. In the case of file system, it makes perfect sense to be stored in a single static hierarchy because that perfectly reflects the concept of a paper file in a filing cabinet, in a little binder. Even a relational database system that lets you query tables for data based on set ordering has a single method of storing the data on disk - that's a clustered index. You can't get away from having that, despite being able to support additional nonclustered indexes. In that case, the table and its rows really is organised in a static hierarchy too. As it stands, NTFS has plenty of features that lets you attach a secondary data stream to a file anyway, and all manner of metadata. The Windows Internals book on NTFS is very informative on this. These features don't exist on APFS though, as it's not as good despite being brand new, it seems!
    - kbenson 7y ago
      I take it you missed the part where I said " None of t hat seems like something that would require anything more than an extension that handled additional metadata"? I'm not saying don't add additional data that can be fast indexed and trackable, I'm just not sure why it requires a rewrite from the ground up and isn't additional data that is tracked tacked onto the file metadata. I mean, what is that not going to be able to support that just the new metadata would? The difference is whether you also have a hierarchical location stored or not. The only thing that comes to mind is ACL tracking and it getting a bit complex from different access types, but I can think of a few options to work with that already.
Crontab 7y ago
I remember friends bitching about Vista's UAC prompts but I never really had an issue with it. I suspect that was because their main experience was with Windows XP, which pretty much did everything with admin rights.
dpkonofa 7y ago
>You know, this is a pretty apt analogy. Disagree wholeheartedly. It definitely has "hints" of Vista band-aid rips in the same way that shit like La Croix has "hints" of flavor but Vista was one of the worst OS releases I ever had the pleasure of being part of, only behind Windows ME. It took Vista a really long time to be a stable, fully-usable OS and, while I'm glad for the steps they took with it, their execution was terrible. On top of that, this is completely due to the user.
- mynameisvlad 7y ago
  > On top of that, this is completely due to the user. What? All the user did was install Catalina and leave it alone for a few hours. How is this all "due to the user"?
  - dpkonofa 7y ago
    Because, in this particular case, the user was using software (Alfred 3) that he knew wasn't going to work right on Catalina prior to upgrading it. Newer versions of Alfred exist that support the newer permissions model in Catalina. He knew that version wasn't fully compatible with Catalina and chose to install it anyways. A normal user isn't going to get that.
    - mynameisvlad 7y ago
      Uh, okay. Now explain all the other software requesting permissions: - Acorn - HazelHelper - Plex Media Server - Keyboard Maestro - Parallels Access - Bartender 3 - Arq Agent - Nextcloud - Tweetbot - 1Password - Spark - Drafts - OmniFocus - Dash - Bear - iCloud If you have dozens of apps asking for permission, then you need to have a better system of displaying those requests than one off popups/notifications. This is not on the user. Don't victim blame. This is what any other person upgrading would see, maybe not to the same extent but I'm not sure it'd be that far off.
      - dpkonofa 7y ago
        Except that's not true at all unless every single one of these is an old version of the software that hasn't been updated since High Sierra. Any app that was developed using the sandboxing paradigm from High Sierra (and nearly every app in that list has been updated to support this) would not need to ask for all those permissions. This would not be common for the vast majority of users and it's only caused by someone explicitly ignoring warnings and notices. It may be a little more common for power users but the average user may get 1 or 2 of those prompts and nothing more. The OP is only in the situation they're in because they either upgraded the OS without updating the individual apps or they purposely ignored a prior prompt to give access.
decebalus1 7y ago
I think I was the only person I know who actually liked Vista, mainly because of these. I was on the fence about installing Catalina but this blog post paradoxically convinced me to do so.

by Gaelan 7y ago

Yetanfou 7y ago

Well, that, plus the fact that it was resource-heavy. This was compounded by the fact that a lot of hardware was sold as being 'Vista-ready' while in reality being incapable of running the overly-fancy graphics-heavy 'glass' shell. It also had a number of performance problems (e.g. slow file copy) which only got sorted out in Windows 7. Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of the future with a database file system and all sorts of fancy stuff which was either dropped due to performance problems or never left the lab in the first place.

kbenson 7y ago
> Oh, let's not forget the fact that Vista was supposed to be Longhorn, the OS of the future with a database file system This sounded interesting when I first heard about it, long before Vista came out. Now when I see it I wonder what they were trying to do. A file system is a database, with a well understood user API. So what were they going to add? Tagging? Application level views of the system? None of t hat seems like something that would require anything more than an extension that handled additional metadata.
- kayfox 7y ago
  Lots of file systems at the time were hierarchical databases, but the file-system Microsoft was working on was to be more a hybrid with the ability to find files based on specific criteria right away, rather than having a search process walk the tree looking for something.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  The point of a database is probably to index via arbitrary columns, allowing for fast lookups and filters of files. The current model is to find something you more or less have to walk the directory tree.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  A file system is a database, with a well understood user API. Yes, a terrible API which works poorly for most home use cases. You probably have music on your computer. In your hierarchical filesystem, do you organize it by Genre/Artist/Album or Artist/Album? Do music videos live in the same Artist directory or in a separate "video" folder? Chances are you don't know/care because you're using an app like iTunes that builds a custom database on top of the filesystem. And something like Photos that reinvents a totally different custom database. And more database reinventions for email, ebooks, games, karaoke files, voice memos, calendar appointments, etc... all proprietary file formats without published APIs. Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy.
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    "Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy." Data has no feelings. In the case of file system, it makes perfect sense to be stored in a single static hierarchy because that perfectly reflects the concept of a paper file in a filing cabinet, in a little binder. Even a relational database system that lets you query tables for data based on set ordering has a single method of storing the data on disk - that's a clustered index. You can't get away from having that, despite being able to support additional nonclustered indexes. In that case, the table and its rows really is organised in a static hierarchy too. As it stands, NTFS has plenty of features that lets you attach a secondary data stream to a file anyway, and all manner of metadata. The Windows Internals book on NTFS is very informative on this. These features don't exist on APFS though, as it's not as good despite being brand new, it seems!
  - kbenson 7y ago
    I take it you missed the part where I said " None of t hat seems like something that would require anything more than an extension that handled additional metadata"? I'm not saying don't add additional data that can be fast indexed and trackable, I'm just not sure why it requires a rewrite from the ground up and isn't additional data that is tracked tacked onto the file metadata. I mean, what is that not going to be able to support that just the new metadata would? The difference is whether you also have a hierarchical location stored or not. The only thing that comes to mind is ACL tracking and it getting a bit complex from different access types, but I can think of a few options to work with that already.

Crontab 7y ago

I remember friends bitching about Vista's UAC prompts but I never really had an issue with it. I suspect that was because their main experience was with Windows XP, which pretty much did everything with admin rights.

dpkonofa 7y ago

>You know, this is a pretty apt analogy. Disagree wholeheartedly. It definitely has "hints" of Vista band-aid rips in the same way that shit like La Croix has "hints" of flavor but Vista was one of the worst OS releases I ever had the pleasure of being part of, only behind Windows ME. It took Vista a really long time to be a stable, fully-usable OS and, while I'm glad for the steps they took with it, their execution was terrible. On top of that, this is completely due to the user.

mynameisvlad 7y ago
> On top of that, this is completely due to the user. What? All the user did was install Catalina and leave it alone for a few hours. How is this all "due to the user"?
- dpkonofa 7y ago
  Because, in this particular case, the user was using software (Alfred 3) that he knew wasn't going to work right on Catalina prior to upgrading it. Newer versions of Alfred exist that support the newer permissions model in Catalina. He knew that version wasn't fully compatible with Catalina and chose to install it anyways. A normal user isn't going to get that.
  - mynameisvlad 7y ago
    Uh, okay. Now explain all the other software requesting permissions: - Acorn - HazelHelper - Plex Media Server - Keyboard Maestro - Parallels Access - Bartender 3 - Arq Agent - Nextcloud - Tweetbot - 1Password - Spark - Drafts - OmniFocus - Dash - Bear - iCloud If you have dozens of apps asking for permission, then you need to have a better system of displaying those requests than one off popups/notifications. This is not on the user. Don't victim blame. This is what any other person upgrading would see, maybe not to the same extent but I'm not sure it'd be that far off.
    - dpkonofa 7y ago
      Except that's not true at all unless every single one of these is an old version of the software that hasn't been updated since High Sierra. Any app that was developed using the sandboxing paradigm from High Sierra (and nearly every app in that list has been updated to support this) would not need to ask for all those permissions. This would not be common for the vast majority of users and it's only caused by someone explicitly ignoring warnings and notices. It may be a little more common for power users but the average user may get 1 or 2 of those prompts and nothing more. The OP is only in the situation they're in because they either upgraded the OS without updating the individual apps or they purposely ignored a prior prompt to give access.

decebalus1 7y ago

I think I was the only person I know who actually liked Vista, mainly because of these. I was on the fence about installing Catalina but this blog post paradoxically convinced me to do so.