An Unpleasant Goodbye to Windows Vista
Microsoft ended support for Windows Vista this week, ten years after it appeared on our computers in gorgeous frosted glass. Was it bloated? Maybe. The interface requirements were unforgiving on older hardware. But it looked like a glimpse of the future.
During development, Vista’s codename was Longhorn. Longhorns are, of course, cattle, their horned namesake reaching six feet wide, bulky curls that don’t quite facilitate fast movement. It is believed that they descended from the first cows brought to America by the Spanish colonists – literally the cows of Christopher Columbus. Vista, too, evolved from the well-established line that predated Windows XP, which was, of course, a widespread and significant improvement over the Windows 95 line.
XP’s interface was similar to LEGO and Play-doh. The taskbar was a car bumper. You could feel the weight of each colorful button and rounded corners as if they were simulacrum pieces of plastic. Vista was not like that. Vista was glass and fog, rays of light in fog. Everything was translucent, and you could make the windows fly in 3D space like shuffling a weightless deck of cards. The brutality of previous versions caused it to crumble, leaving glass panels hovering over the dust.
But it didn’t quite work.
When Windows Vista launched, a high-performance system was required to run properly. The ambitions of the interface were hampered by the reality of installing a new OS on old equipment. This is always a problem with a new release, but Vista’s requirements made it especially slow for casual users not using fancy machines. There was too much in it, complete with sticky widgets all over the desktop – clocks, notes, news tickers, and more if you like. Launching Vista was like driving a heavy truck. It was necessary to slow down in advance and be patient.
However, over the years, operating system updates and the ever-increasing speed of computers have made everything work as intended. By the end of its life cycle, everything was … in order. Vista worked fine on faster machines. By then, however, chrome, glass, and skeuomorphic elements were beginning to look obsolete. And in 2009, Windows 7 appeared with all the glazing, but without weight. The windows were fresh, light and simple again.
Windows Vista may be remembered as a bloated operating system with the wrong priorities, but it was an exciting nudge to the sci-fi interfaces we’ve dreamed of. Hasta la Vista, Windows.