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A Former Microsoftie Forecasts Microsoft Doom
Chris Holland writes "Jeff Reifman, a columnist for Seattle Weekly, has written a toe-curling editorial analysis of Microsoft's past and current missed opportunities, contrasted with its financial success, while covering in fair depth some of the most serious threats to their business model. Beyond the many choice quotes, I've found this article to be a very interesting read from somebody who has not only been on the inside, but also significantly developed his professional career thru Microsoft solutions."
Earlier on in the article he says: Yet near the end he says: By "Income" does he mean "Profit" or is MS actually predicting a 50% revenue drop over the previous year?
Trolling is a art,
. I'm tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work.
I must be very lucky because I typically go weeks without rebooting.
Absolutely
Microsoft admits that one of its biggest challenges is getting users of its products to upgrade to new releases. Fewer than 3 percent of Microsoft Office users have upgraded to the latest version
I can't use all of the features in Office 200 yet....
Synchronization of our Internet bookmarks across all our computers
Now wouldn't THAT be nice?
The article is well worth reading. I agree with most of it. I am not exactly a Microsoft fan but I don't have quite the issues with Microsoft that the author does. My biggest gripe is not their products but rather their predatory business practices.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
To me, the blurb is slightly misleading. Whoever wrote the href tags did it so "editorial" was there, but analysis wasn't. People miss that.
Being a true slashdotter, I daren't RTFA, thus I'm not disputing the truth of what the guy says, but people who do read the article should take everything said with a fairly large grain of sodium.
Editorial means subjective, and a true "analysis" would be objective.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
I know most of us on slashdot will enjoy a bit of MS bashing but this article is interesting in pointing out the apparent weakness of the MS mindset. Well worth RTFA.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Did anyone else feel like part of the article was more of a resume than an article about Microsoft?
I hate M$ as much as anybody but for a guy who worked there for 9 years that was a pretty meatless article/argument. You would think he would use some of his experience about their processes to describe their doom rather than buggy applications and anecdotal evidence. No doubt, M$ has systemic problems that favor ease of use and result in bloated code, poor architecture, bugs, and shortcuts that all feed into lax security. But he barely touched any of these things
No major computer maker preloads linux on the desktop for more than a tiny niche market. No major computer maker preloads a competing office suite for more than a tiny niche market. Nobody's making money on browsers, directly or indirectly. Etc.
People who keep thinking that the IBM model can occur here are fooling themselves - IBM voluntarily restrained from anticompetitive behavior because they were scared to death of the antitrust proceedings. Microsoft (for good reason) has no fear of the government here, and is behaving just as badly as they ever did.
Now it's more a browser than an os problem : even if the browser is supposedly embedded in the os.
Sorry but this guy wants Microsoft to produce Macs, it's too obvious, he's not credible.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The only major issue is that almost everyone's retirement owns at least a small portion of MS and it's priced at a level that doesn't leave much room for error (the average Joe investor believes MS to be one of the best companies ever). I'm not joking about retirement accounts either. If you have any large cap funds they are exceedingly likely to own a portion of MS (it's one of the biggest companies in their index and volatile enough that most money managers prefer to keep a market weight 3-4% of funds in it). They can do all sorts of things right, but if they don't keep the Windows/Office gravy train flowing (and find something to replace it eventually) that value will begin to bleed off to a leve that assumes less goes right (see Novell).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
In the past year, I've been split about 50-50 between XP and Linux. I have to say that I MUCH prefer the flexibility of Linux, but there are certainly drawbacks. Hooking up your new digital camera is a hit-or-miss proposition, unless you're willing to spend a couple hours learning about how hardware is mounted. For the most part, if you plug something into an XP machine, it's recognized and runs. It may be unstable, but it normally works.
Recently though, I've looked at the Macs more closely. I loathe Steve Jobs almost as much as Bill Gates, and Apple's policies aren't much better than M$oft's, but the G5 is appealing. The UI beats anything I've seen before, plus it comes with a shell that's darned-near identical to the one I'm coming to know and love in Linux. It's to the point now where I'm considering a G5 for my next machine, even though 5 years ago I swore it would take a full-frontal lobotomy to make me say that.
Speaking as a geek, I guess I dislike Micro$oft in part because it is prevalent, but also because I don't care much for how they've run companies under because they couldn't compete with them technologically. I also prefer being able to get my hands dirty with configuration - XP takes much of that configurability away from you while Linux allows (or expects!) you to get into the middle of it all.
IMHO, for basic useability, I recommend XP to folks getting into computers, or just wanting a machine for e-mail and web surfing. Plug-ins are made for IE first, and pretty much every hardware configuration is recognized or supported. I don't think that Linux (in it's current form) is right for say my grandpa. And I'm afraid that if you make Linux that user-friendly, you'll end up with something not too much different than Windows. The Mac is a useable compromise, but I still believe that the hardware is too expensive for the majority of users. I sure wish Apple would finally allow licenced machines.
Reifman mentions a series of mistakes he thinks hurt Microsoft over a multi-year period. He also interweaves descriptions of mistakes, and why he thinks they are mistakes, with asides about other Microsoft actions, which I gather he means to present as background to the reader. I'm assuming this, because he analyzes some actions as explicit mistakes, and just mentions others uncritically or even in a positive light.
That's not necessarily bad, mind you. If it's not clear whether something is a mistake or not, it's better (IMHO) to stick to the clearcut cases.
Reifman's mention of the MSNBC 'merger' as one of his background bits got me thinking though. What if that's one of Microsoft's bigger mistakes? Was there a way to create a stand alone ISP and content sources, and would it have been bold, inovative, and even profitable? Microsoft is known for an embrace and extend approach to small companies. What if they had built up the Microsoft Network's proprietary content entirely by e&e'ing a bunch of small content owners, and stayed away from 'media giants"?
Dealing with a company as large as NBC means adjusting your views on DRM to better fit with theirs. In Microsoft's case, it moved the company towards the same situation as Sony, in that they have divisions that see DRM mostly as something to be imposed preferrably at the hardware level (i.e. the Windows development team), vrs. divisions that want it in the OS (probably everyone who wouldn't have to code it). The situation also sounds a lot like AOL/Time Warner's, which is also a bit strained.
Who is John Cabal?
I think most Mac users will enjoy the day that the word "beleaguered" prefaces every mention of Microsoft's name in the press. I think most Linux users would enjoy it too, but that word has more special meaning for the Mac users.
I remember when it started showing up in front of Compaq's name before they got assimilated. It was kind of delicious.
Reeses
Paul Andrews, a Seattle Times columnist, author of How the Web Was Won, a book about Microsoft, and co-author of the biography Gates
...
Andrews hasn't upgraded his PC from Windows 98 or Office 2000
Is this person REALLY qualified to be speaking about technology, much less writing books about it?
Talk about schlock journalism...
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
The success of Windows has depended on its nature as a bundle: you pay 100$ (or Dell pay ???$ for you) and get the whole shebang. The licenses from this release pay for development of the new items in the next version of the bundle. .Mac) cannot be funded from the Windows license fee, unless Windows costs 300$ a license. People expect not to have to pay extra, so it's hard to convince them to do so.
This means that Windows customers expect everything to be included in the bundle that they need. The kind of services that TFA recommends MS sell (20$ a month for virual hard drive etc. like
This bundling also affects the lifecycle of the product: 5-6 years between XP and Longhorn is required because they need to do a lot of work! (Could their 're-write' do to them what Netscape's did?). There is so much in the bundle, and MS want to add so much more, that it takes a long time.
This has an impact on EOLing too - MS is still supporting (to some extent) Windows 98(!), 2000, XP. The cost of having a rapid release cycle is supporting many different releases (unless you EOL these releases just as rapidly, cf. Redhat Linux).
Overall, the size of Windows counts against MS in several different ways. It will be difficult for them to move away from it. Perhaps all those companies killed by MS integrating their features into the OS will have the last laugh?
Posters recognized by their sig,
Buried in the article (which I thought was very well written) was this sentiment (echoed in a few other places as well):
The company is addicted to the revenue from these flagship products and is afraid to go in new directions that might initially hurt the bottom line.
Most healthy companies have diverse product lines and aren't afraid to compete internally. Just look at Sony, a company that sells media that it wants to DRM protect as well as devices for copying said media.
Internal competition usually doesn't hurt. But it does hurt Microsoft, at least in the short term. No matter how much of a spectacular success one of its other products is, if it even lowered Windows or Office revenue by 5% it would be a disaster. That's really kept Microsoft from expanding its dominance into areas it should have been able to because of its market position.
The author writes (and many others have written) that Microsoft is paranoid. There's a good kind of paranoia. I think at Microsoft it's become the bad kind. After all, they have a $280B market cap to maintain.
ps. I thought the anecdote about Gates at the bottom was pretty funny. All the anecdotes of Jobs and Gates seem to paint Jobs as an inspirational, visionary asshole, while Gates is just an asshole. I wonder how true that is?
The company must protect these core products. "The prime directive at Microsoft is to protect Windows and get customers to buy Windows and upgrades to Windows," says Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland-based newsletter.
If this is really the mindset at MS, it is one of the continuing problems with a lot of big businesses, which is based on their "theory of business". The problem that Peter Drucker lays out is that a company continues to use a theory of business that may have been VERY successful at one time in their earlier years, but because the environment changes, it is no longer successful. But the company isn't able to review their theory of business and create a new one that takes advantage of their current environment.
A typical symptom that Drucker points out is sacrificing new business oportunities for old ones. This was a problem IBM had when creating the PC market, it frequently sacrificed PC sales to it's mainframe line, and stunted itself for some time.
One aspect that seems to particularly apply here is Drucker's story about GM. GM apparently was very good at improving the performance of existing businesses (I don't recall exactly how it did this though). Over a period of years, it bought a number of other well established businesses (in a variety of fields and for seemingly too much money) and dramatically improved their performance. The idea is that GM had a great theory of business, which no longer applied to it's own field, but still worked in other areas.
It seems like MS is trying to do this, expanding into MSN, the Xbox and other areas, but that still there is something in it's theory of business that is holding it back from dominating those areas. Perhaps they haven't gone far enough afield from their core business... (or perhaps their ToB is too Windows centric)...
Interesting food for thought.
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
A driver may do it, but there are many applications capable of bringing down a Windows system, and that is the bad thing.
Also Mac networking is quite good. I use a 12" Powerbook 867 everyday on a 100%, till I plug up my Mac, network and have no difficulty. I use Entourage to check my work email because we use Exchange servers, but I use finder to browse network shares, I can print to all the printers I need to without hassle. But I put about 3 hours into making the system work because it was worth it to be able to use my mac instead of my XP desktop. We also have a number of professors that use Macs without hassle on the network. And at home I have my powerbook plus a PowerMac G4 and a FreeBSD system all existing quite fine. In fact, my Macs were easier to network together out of the box than any windows system I have configured, short of automated deployment situations.
Yes, early versions of OS X did not play nearly as well with Windows Networks but that is because MS is not real open about how to make them work well. BUT 10.3 works just fine. Besides I enjoy my mac because it is easier to use, easier to manage and due to its lower market share not nearly as interesting a target as all the unpatched and outdated windows boxes. Plus common sense will save you from a world of hurt when working on the internet anyways.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
The Nazis were trying to eradicate ideas they did not agree with, by killing people.
Microsoft is trying to eradicate ideas it does not agree with, by misusing its position of power. Different means, same end.
Some might say that forcing me to use a particular brand of software is a lesser abuse of my human rights than killing me. My point, and the parent's point, is that closed-source software may look trivial -- especially when millions of people have far, far worse things to worry about than choosing their own software -- but an abuse of human rights is still an abuse of human rights.
There is actually a school of thought that says we should fight just as hard, if not harder, against "small" human rights abuses {e.g. dress codes} as "big" human rights abuses {e.g. racism, sexism}. As long as the lesser abuses are accepted without question, that acceptance can be cited in an attempt to justify greater ones. And, of course, the great abuses are used to justify the small ones; giving every would-be abuser of human rights a circular argument. {"Right to wear trousers? Pah! You should count yourself lucky -- thirty years ago a woman wouldn't have been allowed in this job at all!"}
An abuse of human rights is stil an abuse of human rights. And the fact that a few hundred thousand people died in the Nazi concentration camps does not make it any less wrong for Microsoft to deny me the right to choose what software I use.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
With the statements he makes, how can anyone take the article seriously? I stayed with Windows 98 for its stability? I have to reboot every morning and it takes 10 minutes? Duh. You're using 98. Or how about Wal-mart putting out a PC with Sun Linux? I knew they did a desktop but don't those machines use Suse or Redhat? I could go on. He does make very good points but he is supposed to be a Tech guy not just some journalist. Let's see some factual statements. His quote's are lifted from other stories. His one interview is with some guy who is a Seattle Weekly reporter. Great topic. Some great points but supported by a bunch of B.S.
and the pro mac open source parts and this artical has some very interesting meat and potatoes.
Office and Windows can not provide the revenue stream that they once did. Cheap computers are here to stay and free software that is good enough for the average everyday Joe rocks the world.
So what is going to happen in a couple of years when the Microsoft tax is repealed? What will the company do to replace that revenue stream? I see some serious questions here.
Just consider the Walmart example (which used to run on Lindows). If the average Joe can get by on a (pretty nice) $300 machine that comes chocked full of software, why would he buy one for a great deal more, and get a barebones OS with a couple of little apps? Seriously there is a big difference in what you get with Lindows and Windows. When people start selling that notion watch out. Microsoft should do a full port Gnome and KDE if they had any sence.
I think that the big crush is going to come when the average everyday business wakes up and says no to the Microsoft tax.
I dunno, whenever my girlfriend blames the computer for not doing "what [she] wants it to do", I usually roll my eyes and figure she's just not doing something right.
Office (specifically Word) is a complex tool. It can do a lot, but with that level of flexibility comes a certain level of complexity and obfuscation. I've programmed C for 10+ years, but I still make mistakes now and again and can't figure out why the hell I'm leaking memory here or there. It's not the compiler's fault, certainly not the languages fault, it's my dumb ass missing or not understanding something.
I run 2000 at work (we just switched from NT) and at home, and I never have to reboot...I go months without a reboot, and I constaly have Outlook up and running, along with Java development tools, Visual C++, about 5-10 IE windows and version management software. It's not like it's terribly hard to keep Windows stable.
--trb
I think the problem is deeper than he realizes. Even if you don't buy a new machine you can run into this issue: Upgrading.
I recently attempted to upgrade my 2k pro machine to XP pro. I wanted to get slightly better (newer) driver support and play with the newer OS. However, you cannot upgrade from 2k pro to XP pro but have to do a clean install. WTF!? It's the same base NT kernel with some slight tweaks and services and a new front-end. Why exactly am I required to do a clean install? I could understand possible issues if it was from 2k pro to XP advanced server but from pro->pro?
Don't get me wrong, I possess Clue having been a system admin and network architect for many years so my reticence to doing a clean install isn't from a lack of technical ability. But I'll be damned if I can figure out why I have to re-install all of my applications again. Having a easier way to updgrade products and OS versions would go a long way towards Microsoft accomplishing their goal of putting users on the upgrade treadmill. Spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down...
Amoeba
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Actually, I remember a NPR interview with one of the people responsible for putting words in the OED. If I recall, he said that the OED should be considered a catalog of english words in the particular slice of time that the book was published.
He then went on to talk about how words are added all the time. If I recall, a word has to be used somewhere between three and seven times in published works, with a consistent definition, to be added to the OED. And he defined published works very loosely.
I fully expect an entry for negritude ultramarine in the next OED.
This sentence struck me as weird:
/. stories, search is hard. With file sharing and e-mail, it seems to me that those would be easier to scale.
Admittedly, though, creating search engines to serve millions of users is an easier task than offering other remote services, such as e-mail and file sharing.
As has been pointed out by various
In my view, Microsoft got in the door because of the IBM PC and a healthy crop of third party DOS applications, Lotus 1-2-3 in particular. My own employer was building DOS apps when we picked up our first copy of Windows, version 1.03. We laughed at each subsequent attempt, up until around 3.1, when we finally decided maybe it was worth building an app for, just to test the waters.
But did we end up becoming a Windows shop because Microsoft was superior? No. We ended up becoming a Windows shop because our customers already had PC compatible machines, largely because of a legacy portfolio of DOS products. We built software to meet customer demand, and in our industry, it was a gradual platform migration from DOS to Windows 3.1 and onward. Microsoft is entrenched largely because of the hardware.
(That said, Linux also runs on that same hardware. And just as with the shift to Windows development, we'll build whatever customers want. If you're in a position to do so, make sure your software vendors --- particularly their sales reps --- know that your company has an interest in Linux products. That kind of feedback causes more of a stir and will yield more results than a hundred cost of ownership studies or technology articles.)
I disagree that Microsoft got where they are because people loved their products. It has far more to do with simple inertia, followed by aggressive marketing tactics that date back to the days of Windows versus OS/2.
>Over the years I've seen dozens of examples where all of the Kings Techo-Geeks and all the Kings Men standing around a windows box with bad behaviour finally decide to backup what they can and re-install the damned thing because *nobody* can come up with a plausible explaination for what the heck is happening.
Worse, I've had to reinstall Windows simply because I installed one program out of sequence!
Just installing the programs resulted in a system that worked for normal (for Windows) periods of time, where installing the SAME applications in a different order caused Windows to bluescreen or reboot itself every 3-5 minutes!
And this has happened on systems belonging to others I know.
If it wasn't for the "compatibility" issues, most people would drop Windows in a heartbeat like the bloated crapware it is.
Of course, many will argue that users should have computer-science degrees to simply run their applications, but most of them are MS shills.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Read Bill Bryson's educational and well researched book "Mother Tongue: The English Language" and discover why American English is often more 'English' than British English.
I would strongly disagree that Xbox won't bring in billion $ revenues. Whilst it may not be doing that now, MS are looking at the large amount of money made by Sony, Nintendo, and big hitter publishers like EA, who do have billions in revenue from games products.
MS seem pretty committed to the games market, so don't write this off just yet. Look at Sony, whose primary revenue is now derived from the SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) groups, powered by the PlayStation phenomenon.
"This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
But for Reifman, who owns two non-profit coffeehouses on Capitol Hill, it has never been about the money. It is more about creating a company that makes a difference. "A lot of what I am doing is motivated by philanthropic causes," said Reifman, who is setting up a program at GiftSpot.com so his online customers can donate their spare change to charity. ...
But Reifman also said Microsoft, which has grown to 30,200 employees, is a more bureaucratic company than the one he joined eight years ago. That was part of his reason for leaving.
"Bureaucratic" is a nice way of saying "stupid".
I don't see where you get off calling the man bitter. He is currently gainfully employed and his gushing praise of Macs and Linux is anything but bitter. Indeed, the whole article is carefully considered and constructive criticism. M$ regularly pays for astroturf and smear, but, jmulvey, you really have set a new low standard by accusing a man driven by philanthropy of bitterness about money.
Fanboys never cease to amaze me with their vehemence, twitsted logic and bile. Reifman has argued persuasively that the Microsoft experience is not all it's cracked up to be and that alternatives require far less effort to work and are earning loyalty. Deal with it, if you can, without slandering the speaker. It's a turn off and always has been.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think it is pretty remarkable that the English the yanks, canucks, or aussies speak are as close to real thing as they are. I understand people from GBR well enough when I meet them. An interesting question is whether world English will converge in the future or continue to diverge. I think they will converge, but heaven forbid if "thru","nite", "cuz", "u", or even "hoser" become commonly accepted.
an ill wind that blows no good
If you aren't a monopoly, you have a right to charge whatever you want. That's not the same as a right to profit, because if you aren't a monopoly and demand too much money, your customers go elsewhere.
Just try to open a grocery store and swing an 80% profit margin like MS does on their office and OS divisions. Try to run a car company or run a restauraunt that way, I dare you.
If individuals or other companies had life as easy as Microsoft, our economy wouldn't function at all.
"It's very interesting that many of the complaints people have about Microsoft Products are actually addressed in later releases, but if the customer never upgrades to that new release they'll never see the changes."
Which, in essence, means that you have to PAY for bug fixes.
This has been a very profitable practice for Microsoft. That way they can keep selling you the same product(Win95) over(Win98) and over(Win2000) and over(WinXP).
I wouldn't have that big of a problem with the practice except for one major "bug". As was mentioned in the article, moving your apps from one version to another is damn painful.
So, people don't pay for the bug fixes (or feature packs) because applying them is too painful.
That's why I like Debian so much. I don't have that problem with Debian (and it is very stable and reliable).
It may look like a very minor one, but it's a human rights violation all the same. I am no less able to do my job in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt than I would be in a shirt and tie, nor does my wearing a T-shirt and jeans endanger others; therefore it is not necessary that I should wear a shirt and tie to do my job. "What other people might think" is a red herring, since it is a matter of opinion and therefore beyond my control. What if some of those "other people" have an irrational distrust of people with dark hair and blue eyes? Should I dye my hair or wear tinted contact lenses just to please them? Small abuses make it easier to perpetuate large ones -- that was one of my points, remember. Yes, I am bloody lucky to have what I've got -- but I'm still entitled to more, and I'm damned if I'm not going to fight for it with everything I've got, because if I give in now then somebody else is only going to have a harder time in future. The idea that there is such a thing as "just free enough" is what keeps the whole rotten system going -- the truth is, either you are free, or you aren't. And I'd rather die standing than live on my knees.
BTW, I haven't worn a tie for ten years, and you would have an easier job getting a hangman's noose around my neck.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
> You, me, everyone has a right to profit from their labors.
... it's an exchange or barter, whether it is good or services of perceived value.
It's *not* "profit"
Who owns your time?
Your experience or skills?
You give UP those two in order to RECEIVE money. That's all money. An extremely convient way of trading those two.
To me, that's not profit, thats a TRADE, specificaly, a contract.
Now whether anyone has the right to be a third party to that contract is an entirely different matter.
--
The fallacy of government is that it assumes everyone needs to be told how to live, but the fact remains it is unconstituational to homogenize community by its own standards. When it passes more laws until it makes everyone a criminal it has made the mistake of placing the intent on the "Letter of the Law" over the "Spirit of the Law."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerious the laws" -- Tacitus, A.D. 55
ALL civilizations eventualy collapse. Are you that ignorant and arrogant to assume that yours won't?
Microsoft ought to consider moving from the software industry into something new. They have the capital for anything. They have enough brainpower to do anything. Commercial space flight comes to mind as one of the most important contributions Bill and friends could make to Planet Earth. It's something no individual needs, sure, but there is big money in it just waiting to be tapped. Imagine going on a space vacation and eating at the 'Restaurant at the End of the Universe.' So cool. Imagine playing Ender's game in space, with lasertag style suites that caused joints to lock. I bet it would replace football on ESPN. And there's a hundred thousand other things people would pay to do on their vacation. That's only the recreation aspect. Then think of science, and paying for lab time in space. And mining the moon or asteroids. Colonization, because such a base would be an ideal staging platform.
But in the software industry, I think they are just about done. They will not contribute anything else important to mankind there. They can only cause damage to the world by crippling the internet they helped create, or crippling software by continuing their current pattern. Time to bow out gracefully and move on.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
"It's not like it's terribly hard to keep Windows stable."
So, anyone who disagrees with that statement is admitting to being less technically proficient than trb001. And there is ALWAYS someone who will post that claim. Regardless of whether the OS is Win95, Win2000 or whatever.
Yet when the NEXT version of Microsoft's OS is released, EVERYONE claims how it is so much more stable and reliable than the last. Even Microsoft got into that with comparing NT and Windows2000 and showing that NT wouldn't stay up for more than a few days of heavy work (sorry, I couldn't find a citation for that yet).
I get dragged in to fix all kinds of Windows problems. From corrupt registries to tons of spyware, I've seen it and fixed it. It is a PAIN keeping Windows stable. Even installing the DCom patch on NT broke apps.
Here's a tip on how much everyone else in the world has to reboot. Call Microsoft tech support with any problem and see what the FIRST thing they tell you to do is.
Thanks for your reply. Addressing your points:
``You also complain about the size, but that's stupid/pointless because Apple gives you for free a lot of development tools you just don't have on Linux.''
Yes, so? I don't want to have to download 600 MB just to get the dev tools that Debian gives me in like 20 MB. It's good they provide them for free, but it would still be a lot better if they could be gotten in separate packages.
``2. Many applications written for the GNU system won't compile on it. This is because glibc is bloated with all kinds of functions that do get used by developers who target GNU/Linux.
Nah. The real reason is that Linux developers often have tunnel vision for their (x86) systems. Still, you need look no farther than fink for counter-examples of software that is readily ported to Mac OS X.''
No, the reason is that they use functions that are available in glibc, but not in other libcs. Few programs actually use code that only works on x86.
It's true that fink has some applications, but it's very very meagre compared to Debian's collection.
As for Java; yes, it is a miserable failure and definitely not write once, run everywhere, but c'mon. Swing doesn't even use native widgets, does it? That should be _really_ easy to port.
``4. The OS (including the GUI) eats a *lot* of memory. The iLife apps are also huge.
Compared to what parity apps? Both disk space and RAM are cheap these days. If you can't scrape up ten cents to cover the HD cost of 20 language localizations (or whatever) for an app, delete them. I'm not seeing any significant RAM usage difference from my Linux box, so maybe you could explain what you're talking about in more detail.''
Well, under Linux, I used to run XFree86, WindowMaker, Mozilla Firefox, GAIM, XMMS, Gkrellm2, xterm with screen and a couple of shells, mutt, and elvis. It fits under 128 MB, comfortably - maybe even under 64 MB, I can't test it now. In my iBook, I have 256 MB RAM, and it constantly runs out.
``I tend to switch to another tab before a page load and renders, so I'm not really seeing what you're seeing.''
Yes...well, I only want to switch tabs while loading if the loading takes long...and that's exactly when I can't. I'm sure it will be fixed someday.
``For a 1.x version browser, though, it's a damn nice job.''
Yes, Apple "gets it". You take KHTML, and *poof*, instant web browser. That's the way open source is supposed to work!
As for iChat: I have no clue if it's supposed to work behind NAT. I think the protocol it uses was specifically designed to allow for NAT, though. Anyway, this is mostly a IP problem, that could be fixed once and for all if NAT boxen did IP-IP tunneling. Still, iChat would work if the ports it used were configurable.
``7. The Terminal is sloooow to start, and annoyingly eats the PgUp and PgDn keypresses, sending them to the scroll bar instead of the program that's running. I know, I can use Shift+PgUp, but that's annoying, especially since that's actually Shift+fn+up on my iBook.
You can also, you know, maybe change the preferences!''
Tell me how. I looked.
``What would concern me are real show stoppers, not minor annoyances people seem to complain about.''
I crashed the system yesterday. That's a show stopper, and an intolerable one. For the rest, I posted that rant because it's on topic. This thread isn't about show stoppers, it's about falling out of love with OS X and the software that is shipped with it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Software is becoming a "mature" market. In the developed countries, most of the people want/need a computer already have one. Chances are, it runs OK and will continue to do so for at least a few years. MS has had a big problem with "declining upgrade rates", meaning each new release of software is leaving behind more and more people who pass up the chance to buy the new version. The "Microsoft tax" brings in vast amounts of revenue when new PCs are sold, but PC manufacturing is not the growth industry that it used to be.
Unless they can find a vast new source of customers, how are they supposed to grow the company?
How emerging markets such as India or China? Unfortunately, the same currency exchange that makes offshoring so attractive is what makes MS products unattractive for export. Selling MS products in those markets will be very tough. Customers will be hard-pressed to pay the price, and open source will look more attractive than ever. In many parts of the world, MS competes with pirate copies of its own products -- priced at less than $5 per CD. MS considered piracy to be a bad thing until they learned that open source would absorb most of the market if piracy were eliminated. Now they look for ways to give away the product to people who have demonstrated their resistance to pay.
If MS can't grow earnings by 15% per year, investors will take their money and look for companies that can. No matter how much money MS makes today, any CHANGE in their stock price is determined by the expectation of increased future earnings. If the earnings picture is "fat yet flat", the price per share goes nowhere, and they have unhappy investors. If MS faces a stagnant market, combined with erosion from open source and possibly other competitors, they will be in big trouble just trying to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the "other guys" can make plenty of money just by eroding Microsoft's market share. A stagnant market can still be a growth market if you can take business away from the top player in that market.
...once upon a time, long long ago, ok not that long ago, late 70's early 80's PC's where FUN!
Not just fun, I said FUN!
There where many architectures, many ways to enjoy the whole personal computer experiance.
Then IBM set the standard for hardware. That took out some fun, but the clone wars began. That was fun.
Then MS took over the OS and desktops and all the fun got squeezed out, until Linux. Now there is fun again.
It isn't a requirement that personal computers be fun, they can be boring business based comp-u-drones. It's just that if its fun, not Frustrating, if the pc does what YOU want, not what THEY want, people will spend more time not less using them.
Once upon a time MS invoked passion, now "... Microsoft doesn't evoke passion in me anymore...". Me either - I'll think I'll get a Mac!
Or accept the brain damage of transferring all my bookmarks, files, etc etc to a Linux box.
MS just can't understand the concept of FUN anymore.
I did this over last weekend.
1 - Take hard drive with Fedora Core 1 out of 400MHz Compaq Presario computer.
2 - Install as boot drive in new computer with 2GHz CPU motherboard with all different peripherals (NIC, video, sound, etc.).
3 - Boot new computer with "old" hard drive and watch it find all the new hardware and all the right drivers and install them without requiring a reboot.
4 - Run Fedora Core 2 CD upgrade.
Done. No problems. No errors.
I know of no version of MS operating system that could do step 3. With MS it would have involved loading drivers of several CDs, reboots after each driver installs, downloading fixes and updates and possibly adjusting application settings to match the new system. All of that IF it did not require a completely new install from scratch.
I spell relief L-I-N-U-X!
The opportunity here, for everyone involved (you, your employer, your customer), is for you to point this lot out to your manager, offer some consultancy work, to:
- Investigate cause of frequent crashes
- Investigate, summarise and prioritise remedies - these may include:
- Reconfigure their Windows network
- Replace with Linux
- Replace with Other (UNIX, maybe MacOS)
- Replace buggy app with alternative (eg IE -> Mozilla)
- Provide project management for the upgrade
- Provide services and hardware for the upgrade
Everyone gains - your employer gets a bigger cheque for all that work, not just $15k/month, and the customer gets a better system. They also trust you more - you're not just fixing problems as they happen, you're identifying and eliminating the cause of those problems. That's worth the big up-front investment for them.When I say "You", I mean that they trust your firm, but they also trust you personally - that's a big incentive for your employer to treat you well. If a big customer says "We really want Pavera to come and deal with this", that should get noticed by your management.
If the company are paying you $25/hr to be an engineer, and you double-up as a salesman, creating new revenue for the company, you should be able to get yourself some commission, credibility, bonus, etc. on this deal.
Everybody wins.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Over the years I've seen dozens of examples where all of the Kings Techo-Geeks and all the Kings Men standing around a windows box with bad behaviour finally decide to backup what they can and re-install the damned thing because *nobody* can come up with a plausible explaination for what the heck is happening.
Reason #1 why I hate Windows (and love Linux): In Windows, things fail, and I may never know why. In Linux, things fail, and I know why; it may take a day of reading and tinkering, but at the end of that day, I always know why something failed---and guess what? 99.9% of the time, it's my fault!
In short, I don't want the crutch of being able to blame "the system."