Microsoft Don't Get It: An Example

Posted by stephen on Friday, 24th March, 2006 @ 17:50

I've seen taking a look at some of the screenshots for the latest build of Vista over here. It's certainly very colourful. It looks potentially rather complicated and laden down with too many options, text and buttons. But I'll reserve judgement until I see the real thing and of course I'm a well and truly biased Mac lover, so have come to expect fewer options and sensible assumptions.

One particular screenshot really highlighted a philosophical difference to the approaches of Apple and Microsoft. This is a window used to add more 'gadgets' to your 'sidebar' (an analogue of the non-original Apple widget and dashboard features)...

My real beef with this is why is there a big, not actually but almost, copyright message in the second largest typeface on this Window consuming an inordinate amount of space along with the Windows logo? Why is it here? We know we're using Windows, we're adding a gadget to our sidebar, do we need to know Microsoft Corporation built it and has been doing so since 1985 right here?

I tried to look for an Apple equivalent, and all I can find is the various About dialogues, where you expect the program/system to tell you about itself.

And the copyright information? It's almost self consciously hidden, in lighter, smaller font at the bottom of the dialogue.