Compare Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista vs. Windows XP vs.

Mac:

Some key features for all the Operating System are as follows:
Windows 7 Features: There will be a OSX-like dock, though how OS X-like is yet to be seen. Multi-touch gestures in photogalleries like two-finger zoom, flicking, and panning. Think of the photo app on the Microsoft Surface table. Multi-touch paint program where you can draw with 10 fingers (again, think of what you've already seen in Surface) Multi-touch piano app In-depth mapping application that pulls from Microsoft's Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth

Windows Vista Features: The new Ease of Access Center to help you find the settings and tools that make it easier for you to see, hear, and use your computer. Improved magnification capabilities in Microsoft Magnifier. Improved text-to-speech capabilities in Microsoft Narrator. The new Speech Recognition experience that lets you interact with your computer by voice.

More Windows Vista Features here . Windows XP Features: Enjoy Music & Video with Windows Media Player Explore Digital Photography with Windows XP Learn more about Gaming with Windows XP. Create Home Movies with Windows Movie Maker. Find out more about Windows XP Professional operating system. Learn about the ultimate Photo, Music, & Movie Pack for XP Protect Your new Computer.

Mac OS X
Mac OS X's core is a POSIX compliant operating system (OS) built on top of the XNU kernel, with standard Unix facilities available from the command line interface. Apple released this set of software as a free and open source operating system named Darwin. On top of Darwin, Apple layered a number of components, including the Aqua interface and the Finder, to complete the GUI-based operating system which is Mac OS X. Mac OS X introduced a number of new capabilities to provide a more stable and reliable platform than its predecessor, Mac OS 9. For example, pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection improved the system's ability to run multiple applications simultaneously without them interrupting or corrupting each other. Many aspects of Mac OS X's architecture are derived from Openstep, which was designed to be portableto

ease the transition from one platform to another. For example, Nextstep was ported from the original 68k-based NeXT workstations to x86 and other architectures before NeXT was purchased by Apple, and OpenStep was later ported to the PowerPC architecture as part of the Rhapsody project.

Windows 7 sold well during the 2009 holiday season, and the results are showing up, not only in sheer revenue, but in the OS market share numbers as well. Nevertheless, in December 2009, Linux was the only operating system to show positive percentage growth in market share. Between November and December 2009, Windows market share dropped 0.31 percentage points (from 92.52 percent to 92.21 percent), Mac OS dipped 0.01 percentage points (from 5.12 percent to 5.11 percent), and Linux edged forward 0.02 percentage points (from 1.00 percent to 1.02 percent). Strong sales from Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were not enough to stop both Windows overall and Mac OS overall from dropping. When putting this into perspective across the whole year, though, we see that Windows was actually sliding steadily throughout 2009 (93.66 percent in January 2009), while both Mac OS (4.71 percent in January 2009) and Linux (0.90 percent in January 2009) have been gaining.

You can see the market share pie for December 2009, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph directly above this paragraph shows how things at Ars are different from those elsewhere, but the differences aren't as significant when it comes to the browser market: our Mac OS share is more than five times greater than the rest of the world, while Linux is six times more. Nevertheless, more than half of our users are on Windows.

Data source: Net Applications

Even if Windows is slowly losing share, Windows 7 is doing phenomenally well. Above, you can see how quickly the OS has been gaining share in its first few months compared to Windows Vista's first few months. While Vista was at 0.93 percent after a month, Windows 7 was at 4.00 percent; when Vista jumped to 2.04 percent after two months, Windows 7 hit 5.71 percent. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that Vista had to compete with XP, which was on the market for an abnormally long time. Furthermore, Windows 7 arrived in time for holiday sales, while Vista did not. In addition, Windows 7 had a very successful beta program, both private and public. Most importantly though, Microsoft managed to generate the kind of hype around Windows 7 that it hasn't generated around any of its operating systems in years.

Data source: Net Applications

In terms of OS versions, Windows saw the following changes between November and December: Windows XP dropped 1.28 percentage points (from 69.05 percent to 67.77 percent), Windows Vista dropped 0.68 percentage points (from 18.55 percent to 17.87 percent), and Windows 7 gained 1.71 percentage points (from 4.00 percent to 5.71 percent), meaning it has passed all versions of Mac OS. Speaking of which, Mac OS saw the following progress: version 10.4 dipped 0.04 percentage points (from 0.84 percent to 0.80 percent), version 10.5 dipped 0.14 percentage points (from 2.61 percent to 2.47 percent), and version 10.6 moved up 0.22 percentage points (from 1.38 percent to 1.60 percent). Taking the historical perspective, we can see that Windows Vista and Windows 7 together have just over a third of Windows XP's market share, while Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6 together have more than five times the market share of Mac OS 10.4. Before the end of 2010, we're expecting to see Windows 7 pass Windows Vista, Windows XP to drop below the 50 percent mark, and Mac OS X 10.6 to pass 10.5 and 10.4 combined.
Start-up and Shutdown The results from these two most basic tests were somewhat surprising. For startup comparison, I pressed the power button and stopped the timer when the desktop and all interface elements appeared and the Start menu became operational. Windows XP actually started up fastest, but keep in mind that my test machine was built in the XP days; new machines will be more tuned for quick start-up in Windows 7, possibly very quick start-up. But for the purposes of this story, testing on

one of those machines would be pointlessthis story's about the experience those who are upgrading can expect. For most people, that means an older machine. Windows XP Start-up time (in minutes:seconds) Shutdown time (in seconds) Picasa video Encoding (in minutes:seconds) Geekbench (higher is better) SunSpider (in milliseconds, lower is better) PCMark05 (higher is better) * Green is best, red is worst. Windows 7 evened the score when it came to shutdown, however, besting XP by an impressive 5.5 seconds, or 32 percent. As in my previous testing, Windows 7 surpasses Vista in both start-up and shutdown time. One of the major criticisms of XP performance has been the long "Windows is shutting down" time, and my testing bears this out. Even Vista shut down faster than XP did. Of course, startup speed is far more important to most usersso far, XP is in the lead. 1,868 1,731 1,823 1,241 3,170 1,248 2,647 1,260 1,828 0:49 17 5:36 Windows Vista 1:07 12.5 6:02 Windows 7 1:03 11.5 5:41