On Slashdot: Why does everyone hate Microsoft? [Archive]

Ephraim

12-15-2006, 01:58 PM

Can you link some screenshots of the UI?

Also, my statement was more than a little subjectiveness in it. I'm a big fan of UI that uses very little realestate, and doesn't waste space. I also don't like dynamic interfaces. I want shit to stay still, and not move.

Sure, I'll dig some up now, but based on what you say you're a fan of, you would definitely like OS X's UI better. The staying still and not moving is a hallmark of it, with the top menu bar being consistent across ALL applications. The dock is also a very efficient quick launcher/open window tool that takes up minimal screen real estate.

The only thing I much prefer in the Windows GUI is how it handles window maximization. OS X doesn't ever want to make a window "full screen". Pressing on the OS X equivalent of "maximize" just makes the window the maximum size the OS feels it should be. It seems arbitrary.

You can read all about Tiger (the current version of OS X) here (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/).

Here's a simple screenshot of the desktop with Finder (their equivalent of Explorer) and Spotlight (the search tool) open:

http://images.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/images/indexfeature20050412.jpg

Here's a screenshot of Expose in action, it's still far superior to the flip tabs in Vista and demonstrates the worst case scenario of an incredibly busy system, this is how all open windows are displayed while you hold down a function key. Notice the consistency of the top menu bar.:

http://images.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/images/indexfeature20050412.jpg

Lots more where those came from.

Charles

12-15-2006, 02:13 PM

Gordon Cameron

12-15-2006, 02:25 PM

Woo hoo, it's an anti-Microsoft backlash backlash thread! Or is it a backlash backlash backlash?

I don't have a problem with Windows, but I have little experience with other OS's (unless you want to go back to AmigaDOS or Workbench or whatever), so I don't have much to compare it to. My experience of Mac OS's, in the limited time I have used them, is basically "same stuff, but a little different." I'm sure with more experience the little things become more important but I don't think my taste is that refined.

I did find Win 98 to crash a lot, but since XP in 2001 I've been more or less satisfied.

Ephraim

12-15-2006, 02:30 PM

I know I'm a picky bastard but I can see a bunch of stuff in there that would annoy the piss out of me.

First, the top menu bar may be the same between apps, but it looks like the name moves the actual menus around -- this breaks my rule of no movement. On windows, the main menu might be different per app, but the menus always start in the same place on a maximized app.

I also dislike the wasted space to the right and left of that app bar thing. And it's way bigger than it needs to be.

Your bit about maximizing would kill the OS for me if nothing else did.

Yeah, the app title does shift the menus over, so I can see that bugging you.

The wasted space on the app bar (the Dock) thing is customizable. As is its size, transparency, and content. It can be hidden (auto-reveal on mouse-over or not) as well.

The maximizing thing... yeah. It's a weird one. It's a bit of a mindset thing, and my biggest dislike of OS X. I believe the app basically looks at your screen resolution, and the content within the window, and makes a "best guess" as to how big it should get. Sometimes that takes up most of the screen. Usually not.

The Apple GUI standards are rigidly enforced, unlike the Windows ones (which are more suggestions than standards) and that does make for a big difference in day-to-day usage. But, there's no denying it, there is a learning curve for hardcore Windows users. It's just one that I was willing to overcome. And now I'm equally at home in OS X and Windows. I prefer OS X, but due to circumstance, spend most of my time running XP at the moment.

MarchHare

12-15-2006, 03:05 PM

I have two Windows PCs (one running Vista, the other running Server 2003) and a Mac (Tiger) at home and support both platforms at work.

While there are many things Mac OS does better than Windows, I still choose a Windows box for my primary desktop machine. The maximizing windows issue described above really is a killer for me; far too often it results in the need to scroll horizontally, which has got to be one of the biggest annoyances in computer use. Closing a window not closing the related app is also a nuisance for those of us used to this bahaviour on Windows, but I quickly learned to use the command+q shortcut.

Spotlight is about a million times better than Microsoft's search function, though, and the iLife apps (iPhoto, iMovie, etc.) are much better than the equivalent freebies included with Windows.

wisefool

12-15-2006, 03:24 PM

Geeks who are pissed off at having their lunches stolen during high school overly-empathizing with the underdog. It makes them cool to be different.

Disdain of people who are disdainful of you is a self-defense mechanism.

IMHO slashdot used to have more interesting comments. People wrote virtual encyclopedia articles that were very instructive. It seems there's a heck lot more snarky remarks.

Derek Meister

12-15-2006, 07:20 PM

Because big corporations = evil. Get with the program.

One only has to look at the tone Slashdot posters took with Red Hat before and after it went public to see this. Even though Red Hat has done much for the Linux movement, the moment they started making serious money off of Linux, they were just another "M$" to many members.

Damien Neil

12-15-2006, 08:08 PM

IFirst, the top menu bar may be the same between apps, but it looks like the name moves the actual menus around -- this breaks my rule of no movement. On windows, the main menu might be different per app, but the menus always start in the same place on a maximized app.

The app name is a menu as well, so the menus actually do always start in the same place.

As Ephraim mentioned, the Dock (the app bar) is fairly customizable. I strongly dislike the default configuration, and prefer to make it small, vertical, and pinned at the upper right of the screen. It's still not the most inspiring bit of UI in OS X, although it serves its purpose.

App maximizing is substantially different under OS X. Windows encourages using the entire screen for a single app at a time; most other operating systems don't. Personally, I dislike the approach many Windows users seem to follow--I've got a large screen, and I don't want to use it all for just one thing.

On hating Microsoft: I think that Microsoft has done more to retard the development of computing than any other company. They have a monopoly in the desktop operating system market, and they aggressively leverage that monopoly to crush the competition in other markets. Their OSs are clumsy, painful to administer, and horrifying to develop for. I want to be able to choose not to use Microsoft software--but, thanks to their monopolistic domination of the market, I can't do that without cutting myself off from numerous things that I do want to use. (Games, of course, being foremost on that list.)

Microsoft is a very unpleasant company to get in the way of. They are masters of FUD, often preferring to market their competition to death rather than fight on technical grounds. They betray partners on a regular basis. (The discarding of PlaysForSure being a recent example.) They pioneered the strategy of "embrace and extend", using monopoly power to undermine open standards.

Most of this behavior isn't limited to them. I'm certain that if Apple had been the winner of the desktop operating system wars, they'd be behaving in the same way today. But it turns out that Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla that we have to deal with, and they don't play nice with others. I'd very much like to see them cut down to size. The world is a better place with competition in it, and Microsoft is a company that despises competition.

Ephraim

12-15-2006, 10:13 PM

The world is a better place with competition in it, and Microsoft is a company that despises competition.

I used to worry about this, too.

Then I realized that for whatever reason, Adobe Photoshop is still better than any bitmap editing application, pro or not, that Microsoft has managed to do. And the market recognizes it.

The same goes for Google as a search engine, when compared to Live Search. Or Quicken when compared to Microsoft Money. And more recently, the Zune compared to the iPod. Microsoft may despise competition, most companies want to "win", but they haven't managed to crush it by any means.

So now I just shake my head in pity at the dying revenue stream that MS Office stands for, and wonder just how badly Microsoft's desktop market share is going to be eroded by Apple and various Linux distros.

Rimbo

12-15-2006, 10:35 PM

I think it's natural to resent a monopoly so I can't get on people's case about it. I would agree that a lot of the ire is mis targeted though. If people don't like a monopoly it's the government they should be angry at for continuing to allow it, not Microsoft for doing their legal best to do, as Tim pointed, what any corporations should do.

You mean all of that "legal" stuff they were convicted for in a court of law?

Damien Neil

12-15-2006, 10:43 PM

There's a key difference between Photoshop and Windows: You don't need to use Photoshop to edit images. You can choose an alternative if you want. (For example, The Worst Named Program Ever. Err, I mean The Gimp.)

If you want to play Company of Heroes, however, you need to use Windows. And this is a self-reinforcing situation--since you need Windows to play just about any games, all gamers have Windows. Since all gamers have Windows, there's no incentive for developers to make portable games. Since just about no developers make portable games, you need to have Windows to play games.

Someone could come out with an a better alternative to Windows tomorrow, unquestionably better in every way possible. And it wouldn't matter, since it wouldn't be better in the only way that counts--it wouldn't run any Windows software.

MS Office...is in an interesting position, both similar and different. It's a monopoly, but it remains there partly through a lack of competent competition. I'm not entirely certain what I think of Office. (Well, other than the fact that it really should have been broken off from the rest of Microsoft by antitrust regulators. But that's a different story.)

Ben

12-16-2006, 12:52 AM

Open Office is a completely competent MS Office competitor, but that's neither here nor there. OS dominance creates a feedback loop of development, but there's no reason there needs to be a 90/5/5 split. Look at the video game console wars(which is sort of a simplified version of the same situation). There's no reason Linux has to be the Jaguar to Windows' PS1, get a little better at basic web-surfing/photo collecting/light office work/etc. type shit and it can maybe take a shot at being the Gamecube.

Idar Thorvaldsen

12-16-2006, 02:51 AM

There's no reason Linux has to be the Jaguar to Windows' PS1, get a little better at basic web-surfing/photo collecting/light office work/etc. type shit and it can maybe take a shot at being the Gamecube.

What most Slashdot-type geeks don't seem to get the current 'big' OSes serve very different markets. Due to lots of combatible software and tons of money spent on usability and getting things to work, Windows is used by most people, because it does what they want well enough. Mac serves the non-technical iconoclasts and other people who don't mind sacrificing compatibility for more elegance and ease of use. Linux is for people who care about having control over their computer and doing whatever they want with it.

Many of the Slashdot-type geeks honestly seem to believe that switching to Linux from Windows would be a good idea for a lot of peoplenot really understanding that Linux doesn't give most people anything they need.

Damien Neil

12-16-2006, 02:54 AM

The problem is that you can't tackle Windows piecemeal on the desktop. You need it all: Office, Photoshop, Quicken, games, etc., etc., etc. Miss any piece of software that a given user feels is vital, and you've lost that user. You can make minor inroads, but nothing which really challenges Microsoft's dominance.

Apple has come the closest, and Apple still has a microscopic market share.

Damien Neil

12-16-2006, 03:03 AM

What most Slashdot-type geeks don't seem to get the current 'big' OSes serve very different markets. Due to lots of combatible software and tons of money spent on usability and getting things to work, Windows is used by most people, because it does what they want well enough. Mac serves the non-technical iconoclasts and other people who don't mind sacrificing compatibility for more elegance and ease of use. Linux is for people who care about having control over their computer and doing whatever they want with it.

The interesting point is that the differences you describe have almost nothing to do with the operating systems themselves, and everything to do with the software available for them.

Windows: The default, and virtually anything you can imagine exists for it.

OS X: The other major OS, supported by almost all of the big-name software packages. (Office, Photoshop, etc.) No games.

*NIX: A world of its own. Essentially no software overlap with the major desktop OSs. No games.

But imagine if all software ran on all platforms. How many more people would consider a Mac, if they didn't have to worry about compatibility? How many people would be happy to save $100-400 on operating system costs and run Linux, if all their Windows software ran on it?

The single most important thing about an operating system is the software available for it. That's why Balmer yelled, "Developers! Developers! Developers!" So long as most desktop software is made for Windows, Microsoft will dominate the desktop market. And, of course, so long as Microsoft dominates the market, most software will be made for it. That's what makes the MS monopoly so strong, and makes it so frustrating for people who don't like Windows--Windows succeeds and will continue to succeed regardless of its actual technical merits.

WarrenM

12-16-2006, 03:14 AM

OSX is the greatest operating system UI ever invented, IMO. I've never seen anything better or slicker. I use Windows because I have to for work but if I was just a guy who had a computer at home that I used purely for personal use, I would go Mac in an instant.

Idar Thorvaldsen

12-16-2006, 03:34 AM

The interesting point is that the differences you describe have almost nothing to do with the operating systems themselves, and everything to do with the software available for them. But imagine if all software ran on all platforms. How many more people would consider a Mac, if they didn't have to worry about compatibility? How many people would be happy to save $100-400 on operating system costs and run Linux, if all their Windows software ran on it?
To a certain extent, the OS will determine the type of software available for it. It's clear that using Linux is still more complicated than using Windows, and I don't think the Mac really scales that well in big business-type environemnts.

But neither Linux nor Mac seem interested in competing directly with Windows. Linux is really an open-source ideological project as much as anything; I don't really think the existing Linux user base would welcome an invasion of closed source Windows-style apps into their environment, nor do I think that's primarily what they want to accomplish. Mac knows they can't compete directly with Windows, so they create a unified, controlled, slicker package directed at single users who just want something elegant that works, outperforming Windows in that relatively narrow market. With OSX, they're also going for part of the Linux market, since the Unix parts and features give some of them what they want; it's now an OS that's very much usable for academic Computer Science work, for instance.

So it's more than just software: I use a Windows box at home, because there I play games and just goof off, but use OSX and Linux for academic work, because the OSes are more suited to that. There aren't really any applications in Linux I need that I can't get for Windows, but it's still a better OS for the work I do.

Brendan

12-16-2006, 11:26 PM

In the 90's Microsoft was a company intent on crushing the market through mediocre products and ruthless behaviour. They have cleaned up their act lately, possibly as a result of all the lawsuits and fallout over the security situation.

Andrew Mayer

12-17-2006, 10:05 AM

One other point about Microsoft is that they don't innovate. They copy then they crush, and have done that since they first ripped off CPM to make DOS.

Every major release has been built on other people's code and/or ideas. (CPM, Doctor Dos, Mac OS's, Stacker, Netscape, etc.) It's an impressive strategy to copy something then attack the innovator, but it should be pretty clear you're not going to make friends doing it.

Hetzer

12-17-2006, 03:43 PM

Hmmm im personally are happy with windows. I can remember times when there where several systems to choose from:

Colorgenie, ZXSpectrum, VC20, Atari 800, Apple II anybody? At that time you could go crazy if you wanted to play all games all of them run on only one or max two machines.

No, this is much better even if i have to rely on MS for it.

Fugitive

12-17-2006, 04:10 PM

There's nothing wrong with 'merely' being a good executor of ideas, though their marketplace position might introduce complications, and they've been willing to abuse it in the past (e.g., the you-WILL-buy-dos tax). As far as I know, they've been behaving themselves recently though, and the business side doesn't really interest me that much.

A big part of the stigma was the unreliability of Windows. It's no longer nearly as big a problem (can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD that wasn't hardware-related), but negative memories are long, and who can resist a good BSOD joke?

And from a development point of view, there's some really wacky stuff under the covers (<yakov>You call CreateFile to open a named pipe? What a country!</yakov>), but it's largely legacy stuff that's supposedly vastly improved with .NET.

Overall I think I've gone from being moderately negative towards MS to more or less neutral. With experience, things that were seen as 'evil' are now clearly just the standard fumbling of all large organizations. I still do a lot of my fiddling under Linux due to control freak tendencies, but writing (mostly) Windows code is what keeps me employed, and the OS advocacy wars feel too much like petty squabbling now.

(edit: And as much as I might like Linux, my last project involved trying to get a C++-heavy program working on various Unixes, which turned out to be even less fun than dancing naked in a pit of scorpions. It's a good thing I couldn't find a HOWTO on developing a heavy drinking habit.)

bago

12-17-2006, 07:23 PM

Microsoft was the worst company I ever worked at. Until I worked at other companies.

When MS is on the ball, it's sick.

Damien Neil

12-17-2006, 10:07 PM

To a certain extent, the OS will determine the type of software available for it. It's clear that using Linux is still more complicated than using Windows, and I don't think the Mac really scales that well in big business-type environemnts.

I'm not certain that Linux is all that much more complicated to use than Windows. Most users do three things with the OS: File management, window management, and launching programs. None of those is really all that different under KDE than under Windows.

Windows scales really badly in big business-type environments. I mean REALLY badly. It sucks more than anyone can imagine until they've actually tried to support it. The only reason anyone puts up with it is because they have to--you can't go to management and tell them that Windows is a pain in the ass to support, so you're switching everyone to Linux...and, by the way, nobody is going to be able to use Word or Powerpoint now.

Macs aren't any worse than Windows in wide-scale deployments.

Damien Neil

12-17-2006, 10:09 PM

When MS is on the ball, it's sick.

Yes. MS usually applies marketing power and money before technical skill, but every once in the while they do something that's very good. C# and the CLR, for example, are absolutely excellent.

John Sansker

12-18-2006, 01:44 AM

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None, they declare darkness the new standard.

Mark Asher

12-18-2006, 11:02 AM

I used to worry about this, too.

Then I realized that for whatever reason, Adobe Photoshop is still better than any bitmap editing application, pro or not, that Microsoft has managed to do. And the market recognizes it.

The same goes for Google as a search engine, when compared to Live Search. Or Quicken when compared to Microsoft Money. And more recently, the Zune compared to the iPod. Microsoft may despise competition, most companies want to "win", but they haven't managed to crush it by any means.

So now I just shake my head in pity at the dying revenue stream that MS Office stands for, and wonder just how badly Microsoft's desktop market share is going to be eroded by Apple and various Linux distros.

By almost any standard applied to other businesses, Microsoft has crushed the competition in the OS and Office channels. Both Linux and Open Office are free, and they still get walloped by Windows and MS Office. And the margins on Windows and MS Office are very high, much higher than you normally see in industries with competition.

DeepT

12-18-2006, 11:51 AM

I used to hate MS, but not any more. I have no particular love for them, but no antipathy either.

They do what they do in order to gain the greatest power they can in the market. They set standards because they can. They steal ideas because they can. There is nothing wrong with any of that. It is war and they should show no mercy to any company who can oppose them. However, all things come to an end, and one day MS will fade and some new company will take their place. On that day MS will cease to be the big evil empire and the new company will take its place.

Apple does the same thing, only they are the under dog and they do it with more style. They didn't invent MP3 players, they just made them user friendly. The didn't invent GUIs, the just have the prettiest. They didn't invent an OS. MS wrote their old system, and their new one is just a hybrid of old technology. Everyone loves to bash MS for ripping people off, but what truly new thing has Apple ever done? The newton, maybe, but not the Mac, xerox gets credit for that.

From the end user standpoint, Apple's big win is that "It just works." Microsoft's win is the software library, cost, and adaptability. On the latter, you can just take any set of PC parts, put them together, and load a MS OS on to it.

You know what else that people seem to be missing with regards to ability for Mac's to run windows too? It is touted as some kind of victory against Microsoft. How can it be so when you must buy a copy of windows? It is just as much victory for MS as it is for Apple users. W00t! MS has yet another platform it can run on. I think in the long run it will hurt Apple more then help them.

Nick Walter

12-18-2006, 11:53 AM

You mean all of that "legal" stuff they were convicted for in a court of law?

The court case has prevented them (somewhat) from extending their monopoly and leveraging it into other markets, but it hasn't made a move to break up their core monopolies on workstation operating systems and office software.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 12:06 PM

The court case has prevented them (somewhat) from extending their monopoly and leveraging it into other markets, but it hasn't made a move to break up their core monopolies on workstation operating systems and office software.

The point is, what they did was illegal. I also personally find it to be immoral. I don't care so much about the quality of their products; I have plenty of products that have bugs and big ol' flaws that I love that aren't made by Microsoft, and Microsoft makes some really great things (Xbox online service, Excel). But how they run their business bugs me, and I'm going to avoid them whenever possible for that reason alone. When Microsoft decides to play by the rules willingly, I'll consider buying their stuff again.

jeffd

12-18-2006, 12:12 PM

Having a monopoly is not illegal.

Nick Walter

12-18-2006, 12:22 PM

Having a monopoly is not illegal.

That's certainly an arguable point, but I would agree in general that Microsoft is playing by the rules. It's the rules that are fucked and our goverment hasn't embraced opportunities to change them.

Operating systems, or at least the ABI they present to apps, are basically infrastructure. It's something that should be as standardized and nationalized as the interstate highway system so that no one vendor can reap the huge financial rewards that come from becoming the standard.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 12:25 PM

Having a monopoly is not illegal.

No one's claiming it is (and they're an idiot if they are). Microsoft wasn't convicted in a court of law of "having a monopoly." They were convicted of using a monopoly they had in one market to crush competitors in markets they didn't, which is and should remain unethical and illegal.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 12:29 PM

Operating systems, or at least the ABI they present to apps, are basically infrastructure. It's something that should be as standardized and nationalized as the interstate highway system so that no one vendor can reap the huge financial rewards that come from becoming the standard.

Doing so would require legislative decree to allow any new OS technology to surface. It would take all of the problems of a company having a monopoly and make things infinitely worse. At least with monopolies, the march of change and innovation coupled with the monoply's growing complacency and sluggishness eventually allow competitors to overthrow the monopoly (as the hardware manufacturers did to IBM in the late 80's).

In fact, it was deregulation of Bell that allowed that sluggish monopoly to die and that created an enormous explosion of telecom innovation; we're still enjoying the benefits and expansion caused by that.

Are you sure that's anything other than a horribly shitty idea?

Nick Walter

12-18-2006, 12:36 PM

Doing so would require legislative decree to allow any new OS technology to surface. It would take all of the problems of a company having a monopoly and make things infinitely worse. At least with monopolies, the march of change and innovation coupled with the monoply's growing complacency and sluggishness eventually allow competitors to overthrow the monopoly (as the hardware manufacturers did to IBM in the late 80's).

In fact, it was deregulation of Bell that allowed that sluggish monopoly to die and that created an enormous explosion of telecom innovation; we're still enjoying the benefits and expansion caused by that.

Are you sure that's anything other than a horribly shitty idea?

Legislative decree to allow new technology to surface? I'm not quite following. Government regulation doesn't mean that congress has to oversee something directly. Ever heard of the FDA, FCC, etc? Government agencies can oversee and regulate industries fairly effectively. Basically I'm just thinking a government body that does the same thing for a basic O/S or ABI layer that the various standards groups do for network protocols.

While not without downsides, I do think that would be a better system than propping up MS for basically no reason. I was happy with Win98SE and all my O/S upgrades since then have basically been forced on me for app/game compatibility reasons. This has not made me a fan of the Microsoft tax.

Charles

12-18-2006, 12:46 PM

On hating Microsoft: I think that Microsoft has done more to retard the development of computing than any other company.

Wow. Just wow.

I can understand hating their business practices, I can understand hating how they push all their other MS stuff on you (or did for a long time), I can understand not liking Windows or Office or whatever else they make. But I can't understand this. MS is the reason why computers are everywhere. Microsoft gave developers a standardized development platform, and development exploded. On top of that, MS embraced an open hardware platform. You didn't need to spend $2000 on a mac to get a gui.

Just look at how fractured linux is. There may be 20 distros out there that are all functional, but it's still nowhere near the level of ease of use required to put it on a desktop in front of your mom.

And regarding games going to windows -- that's because DirectX gave developers a standardized and evolving platform to abstract out all hardware from the mix. It was a rough start but once it picked up steam it made all the difference.

If any other platform had made the efforts to embrace all the hardware out there, to allow hardware manufacturers to easily support the system, and to abstract out hardware from the user, things would be different.

Say what you will about MS's business practices, they didn't get where they are simply by stomping on everyone.

TheTrunkDr

12-18-2006, 01:08 PM

If any other platform had made the efforts to embrace all the hardware out there, to allow hardware manufacturers to easily support the system, and to abstract out hardware from the user, things would be different.
The thing is, this wouldn't have been possible without Windows and MS being the defacto standard. MS quite literally dictates to hardware manfacturers and driver programmers rather than the other way around. Companies build hardware and develop interfaces specifically to fit with Windows. I love it also but to claim that MS did all the work isn't the whole truth.

Jason McCullough

12-18-2006, 01:38 PM

That's certainly an arguable point, but I would agree in general that Microsoft is playing by the rules. It's the rules that are fucked and our goverment hasn't embraced opportunities to change them.

Operating systems, or at least the ABI they present to apps, are basically infrastructure. It's something that should be as standardized and nationalized as the interstate highway system so that no one vendor can reap the huge financial rewards that come from becoming the standard.

Wow, it's not very often you see a call for nationalizing something in the US anymore. :)

Nick Walter

12-18-2006, 01:42 PM

Wow, it's not very often you see a call for nationalizing something in the US anymore. :)

Well like I said it's infrastructure. Leaving the O/S standards in the hands of MS to sell is sort of like giving the entire interstate highway system to someone to turn into toll roads.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 02:07 PM

I can understand hating their business practices, I can understand hating how they push all their other MS stuff on you (or did for a long time), I can understand not liking Windows or Office or whatever else they make. But I can't understand this. MS is the reason why computers are everywhere. Microsoft gave developers a standardized development platform, and development exploded. On top of that, MS embraced an open hardware platform. You didn't need to spend $2000 on a mac to get a gui.

Just look at how fractured linux is. There may be 20 distros out there that are all functional, but it's still nowhere near the level of ease of use required to put it on a desktop in front of your mom.

And regarding games going to windows -- that's because DirectX gave developers a standardized and evolving platform to abstract out all hardware from the mix. It was a rough start but once it picked up steam it made all the difference.

If any other platform had made the efforts to embrace all the hardware out there, to allow hardware manufacturers to easily support the system, and to abstract out hardware from the user, things would be different.

Say what you will about MS's business practices, they didn't get where they are simply by stomping on everyone.

Your objections are correct; they did some things very well, such as ensuring that obsolete DOS software worked in e.g. Windows 95. And they made sure on most of their core products that they didn't spend more than they expected to get back (in bushels).

When it comes to advancement, one must merely look at the offerings of crushed competitors to see where we missed out. For example, the WWW was the biggest emerging technology of the past 10 years; why was IE stuck in version 6 for almost all of that time? Only now, with Vista, has Microsoft deemed it desirable to grant us a compositing manager, something that's been in competing OSes for a decade.

Windows was the last OS to offer a built-in TCP stack. It only recently began to behave like a multi-user system. It still can't do a simple symbolic link -- not even in Vista. Running as admin...sure, why not? And that's not even touching on features of Word, IE, media player, and the like that have been in competitors' products forever; I'm still waiting for when Word will have some of the page layout capabilities working right that Ami Pro had in 1991.

Pointing to the crumbs of advancement Microsoft has ceded to us poor civilians over the past fifteen years is just the ignorance bred from living within a monopoly. Unless you've been actively working with the alternatives during this time, you don't know what you've been missing.

Charles

12-18-2006, 03:52 PM

Damien Neil

12-18-2006, 04:43 PM

MS is the reason why computers are everywhere. Microsoft gave developers a standardized development platform, and development exploded.

I don't see this cause-and-effect relationship. Personal computing exploded because the hardware was there. Microsoft had the fortune to be in the right place at the right time to ride the tide. They fought a brief but bitter war, and they won it in large part through marketing and anti-competitive sales practices. If they hadn't been there, someone else would have filled their shoes.

Possibly several someones; I'm not certain if the desktop OS market is a natural monopoly or not.

On top of that, MS embraced an open hardware platform. You didn't need to spend $2000 on a mac to get a gui.

IBM also embraced the same open hardware platform, with OS/2.

Just look at how fractured linux is. There may be 20 distros out there that are all functional, but it's still nowhere near the level of ease of use required to put it on a desktop in front of your mom.

Leaving aside the issue of application compatibility, what exactly is wrong with modern Linux desktop environments like KDE? I doubt that my mother could install Linux, but she couldn't install Windows either. (And she'd possibly have an easier time with Linux; as I mentioned earlier, I've long found Linux far, far easier to install than Windows.)

The "fractured" nature of Linux that you refer to is just competition. It doesn't make Linux any harder to use, although it does make it harder to decide on a distribution to use. If you're using Ubuntu or RHEL, however, there's no reason that you should be concerned by the existance of other distributions out there.

And regarding games going to windows -- that's because DirectX gave developers a standardized and evolving platform to abstract out all hardware from the mix. It was a rough start but once it picked up steam it made all the difference.

The games market was solidly on the PC even before DirectX existed. Master of Magic, X-Com, Ultima 7, and so on--the games of that generation were almost all PC-only. DirectX has nothing to do with the fact that most games are Windows-only.

Consider the console market: The fact that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all give developers different and incompatible APIs doesn't stop developers from making multiplatform games.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 05:07 PM

IE 6 came out in late 2001. That would make it "half" not "most". And MS didn't focus on IE because as far as they were concerned it was "good enough." Even with the problems, the web catered to them so they just left it.

Anyway, I'm not saying MS did everything right, as you've stated there are a ton of cases where they were outright stupid. But they are still responsible for the proliferation of computers as they are today. Dictating hardware or drivers or whatever, whether you like it or not, played a huge part in that. Whether they gave or forced the platform, the result is the same.

And I've been futzing with linux on and off during that time. I recently installed Ubuntu. It was nice to see that I could download video drivers from the manufacturer. It was laughable to see that I still had to install and use them from the command line. And then there's the fact that you still need to get your linux apps for your specific distro, or compile them yourself.

So ultimately, still not quite as friendly as windows 95.

Most people don't download graphics drivers for Windows, either. They use what comes with the system. And Ubuntu, Fedora/Red Hat, SuSE all ship with functional drivers. So if you want to download and install special drivers, you can... but you can use a 3D-accelerated GUI without it on modern Linux desktop systems.

As for the complaint someone else made (maybe you?) about the numerous distros, this is what's known as a Free Market. Where you, the customer, get to choose the product that suits your needs, rather than being at the mercy of what a single organization (be it the government or a corporation) decides you get.

Linux, remember, is not an Operating System in itself; it's just a kernel. Each so-called "distro" is an Operating System. There's some compatibility between all of the OSes in the Linux family, but really each one is an OS unto itself, and should be treated as such.

Jason McCullough

12-18-2006, 05:15 PM

As for the complaint someone else made (maybe you?) about the numerous distros, this is what's known as a Free Market. Where you, the customer, get to choose the product that suits your needs, rather than being at the mercy of what a single organization (be it the government or a corporation) decides you get.

This is one of those areas where the academic and hacker types behind linux just wave their hands in disgust at the consumer market. Hello, people don't give a damn about picking "what distribution suits their needs" - they have no idea, short of becoming experts by installing the lot of them. Last time I checked no one in the linux community was trying to help them, either - maybe there's been changes.

mouselock

12-18-2006, 05:27 PM

The thing is, this wouldn't have been possible without Windows and MS being the defacto standard.

This is bullshit. Quake was written on an OpenGL abstraction language (which was around before DX). The reason OpenGL didn't win? Being a consortium standard it wasn't agile enough to keep up with potential changing technology, and people wanted the new whizbang now. DirectX capitalized on that market while being reasonably open (at least compared to Glide) and thus more accessible.

OpenGL could have been the standard. There were drivers available and it could have been pushed to the forefront. But it wasn't, because it wasn't good enough to keep up with developer demand. DX was. That's not a win because of a monopoly, it's a win strictly due to MS representing a better and more responsive business partner.

jeffd

12-18-2006, 05:28 PM

Yes, and they were punished for it (and are still dealing with the fallout). What's your point?

No one's claiming it is (and they're an idiot if they are). Microsoft wasn't convicted in a court of law of "having a monopoly." They were convicted of using a monopoly they had in one market to crush competitors in markets they didn't, which is and should remain unethical and illegal.

mouselock

12-18-2006, 05:38 PM

The "fractured" nature of Linux that you refer to is just competition. It doesn't make Linux any harder to use, although it does make it harder to decide on a distribution to use. If you're using Ubuntu or RHEL, however, there's no reason that you should be concerned by the existance of other distributions out there.

Yes it does because of the whole packages thing. Back when everything was a tarball at least all you had to do was get the tarball. Redhat had a decent idea, but then dipshits keep forking the idea and end up giving you software installation routines that while ostensibly easier become just as confusing as doing stuff the old way was, even for those of us who used to have to go in and configure make files by hand.

In comparison if I have Windows XP and find a file that's workable for Windows XP, I download it and I'm done. Maaaybe if it's some two-bit shareware or freeware app I get sent out to pick up .net 2.0 or something like that, once. I don't have to make sure I have dependancy trees set up properly. I don't have to run a package manager which requires the computer to compile things then install it. (Or alternatively look around for pre-built packages for the proper flavor of computer.)

Linux is far uglier to use, because people have their favorite flavor, and just because something exists for Linux doesn't mean that it exists for my flavor of Linux.

Damien Neil

12-18-2006, 05:44 PM

This is one of those areas where the academic and hacker types behind linux just wave their hands in disgust at the consumer market. Hello, people don't give a damn about picking "what distribution suits their needs" - they have no idea, short of becoming experts by installing the lot of them. Last time I checked no one in the linux community was trying to help them, either - maybe there's been changes.

So, should I blame Microsoft for making it hard to decide what game console to buy? I mean, there's the XBox 360, and the PS3, and the Wii...how can I decide? I don't give a damn about picking "what console suits my needs", and Microsoft just doesn't seem to be trying to help me.

Rimbo

12-18-2006, 05:44 PM

Yes, and they were punished for it (and are still dealing with the fallout). What's your point?

They were punished, but they still dominate the markets they illegally muscled in on; having thus been rewarded for their bad behavior, they continue to do it in other markets -- most recently in (but not limited to) the media player market.

shift6

12-18-2006, 05:59 PM

And then there's the fact that you still need to get your linux apps for your specific distro, or compile them yourself.
Most distros, the vast majority in fact, use package managers now that handle that for you including dependencies (aka DLLs). I consider it an analogue to having versions of some regular consumer apps, to whit: Windows 3.1/95/ME/2000/XP requiring .Net 1.0/2.0 and Direct-X 8.0a/9.0c stuff. Heh ;)

This is one of those areas where the academic and hacker types behind linux just wave their hands in disgust at the consumer market. Hello, people don't give a damn about picking "what distribution suits their needs" - they have no idea, short of becoming experts by installing the lot of them. Last time I checked no one in the linux community was trying to help them, either - maybe there's been changes.
There is still alot of that, but a few distros have stood out in just the past three or four years as being uuser-friendly and having non-elitist-fuck communities. The problem is, they aren't yet the big names like Red Hat.

Anyone who says Linux is ready for desktops isn't familiar with desktops. Heh. But it's getting there. I give it another five years or so. I think Vista will be MS's last market-owning OS release.

Jason McCullough

12-18-2006, 06:06 PM

So, should I blame Microsoft for making it hard to decide what game console to buy? I mean, there's the XBox 360, and the PS3, and the Wii...how can I decide? I don't give a damn about picking "what console suits my needs", and Microsoft just doesn't seem to be trying to help me.

Microsoft does make it easy, actually. Xbox.com lists every game made on multiple axes, it's fairly obvious what the games are about in the descriptions, and so it's pretty easy to look at the list by and decide if you want the console to play them. I guess they could add gamerankings, but probably won't. I haven't looked at Sony's PS3 information offerings.

By contrast....ok, I take it back somewhat, Ubuntu does a pretty good job (http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop) of explaining their distribution. Freebsd is as useless as ever (http://www.freebsd.org/), though.

To continue the gaming analogy, there's plenty of easily findable sites that will explain the PS3 vs. Xbox difference to you. Is there for linux?

DeepT

12-19-2006, 07:39 AM

Anyone who says Linux is ready for desktops isn't familiar with desktops. Heh. But it's getting there. I give it another five years or so. I think Vista will be MS's last market-owning OS release.

You think? Why?

I can't see it. Not in 5 years, not in 15 years. I would put OsX as the common OS before Linux ever was.

Ill tell you why I am sure MS will hold on to its dominance for the foreseeable future, until they lose Bill gates or do not have a visionary (flawed as he may be) who can dictate terms without regard to wall street.

Once Upon a time there was no PC. The average person did even know what a computer was beyond what they saw from Hollywood movies and TV shows.

Then began the Age of Hardware:

There were kits for tech geeks. You could get a box of parts and build your own computer. Then some bright individuals thought they could make a few bucks by selling pre-assembled computers. Thus the Apple, Commodore, TRS-80, and other machines were born. Some made it, some did not.

All the while, new computers offered new features such as color graphics, sound, more memory. You didn't really upgrade old computers, you just bought new ones.

Then IBM came along and thought, "Why not make a computer from standard parts? It should be cheap." This was the sunset of the Age of Hardware. IBM set in motion something they didn't understand. Bill Gates understood it...

The Age of Software:
Bill gates was the underdog. IBM was building their PC and Bill gates was making the software that would run it. It would work on a variety of hardware. IBM soon found out that if they could make a PC from standard parts, so could anyone else... and they did with great vigor.

Microsoft was in the business of making software that would run on any PC. For each PC sold they got some money, while IBM only got money when their brand sold.

There was a paradine shift, and IBM was selected out, and MS was selected IN. For almost 100 years, IBM was the monolith that no one could challenge, and virtually over night, the world changed.

Now MS is the king. They know it is all about software. You make a box, they can run on it. Apple doesn't realize this. They sell hardware mostly, even though it is the software that makes people want to buy an Apple. They refuse to make OSX run on any platform, like MS does. For this reason, they will never beat MS.

Unless there is a paradine shift again, or perhaps MS becomes beholden to the short-sightedness of Wall Street, they will remain the ruler of the OS market.

Charles

12-19-2006, 07:53 AM

Leaving aside the issue of application compatibility, what exactly is wrong with modern Linux desktop environments like KDE? I doubt that my mother could install Linux, but she couldn't install Windows either. (And she'd possibly have an easier time with Linux; as I mentioned earlier, I've long found Linux far, far easier to install than Windows.)

The "fractured" nature of Linux that you refer to is just competition. It doesn't make Linux any harder to use, although it does make it harder to decide on a distribution to use. If you're using Ubuntu or RHEL, however, there's no reason that you should be concerned by the existance of other distributions out there.

You can't just leave aside the issue of app compatibility, because it exists within linux itself. Just last night, the mere act of upgrading my kernel to a k7 specific version caused another linux app to suddenly stop working. And because of a peculiarity of my distro, I can't recompile their source.

Most people don't download graphics drivers for Windows, either. They use what comes with the system. And Ubuntu, Fedora/Red Hat, SuSE all ship with functional drivers. So if you want to download and install special drivers, you can... but you can use a 3D-accelerated GUI without it on modern Linux desktop systems.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. Ubuntu 6.06 recognized my X800 card, sure. But it wouldn't let me change resolutions until I installed the official ATI drivers, and I *still* can't get any 3d acceleration. It's stuck using Mesa and I've done everything in every Howto and forum thread I've found.

Most distros, the vast majority in fact, use package managers now that handle that for you including dependencies (aka DLLs). I consider it an analogue to having versions of some regular consumer apps, to whit: Windows 3.1/95/ME/2000/XP requiring .Net 1.0/2.0 and Direct-X 8.0a/9.0c stuff. Heh ;)

That only counts if the app you want is already packaged for your distro. And the difference with windows is that you only need to know what windows you have, everything else is automatic. And linux still hasn't reached the point where if a non-savvy user wants new software, they can get it. With windows / mac, you go out and buy a box: done. With linux, you have to find the software online or via your package manager (ie. not user friendly, even via the guis), and then you have to install it (often via command line when it's not registered in your package manager). On top of that, within a single linux distro, you have to find different apps depending on the window manager you are using.

lesslucid

12-19-2006, 08:06 AM

Charles

12-19-2006, 08:13 AM

Paradigm.

When it was Win 3.1, I didn't like it because it was unstable.

Then Win95 came along, which looked prettier and had more features but was still unstable.

Then Win98 came along, which looked prettier and had more features but was even more unstable... and so on.

I think you mean "and so wrong".

Once windows 2000 hit and started getting driver support, it was rock solid stable no matter what you did with it. By XP, it ran anything and kept that stability. The only stability problems I've ever had with XP were hardware related. With 2000, there was the odd lockup due to bad programs, but XP seems to avoid those.

I hate MS for inflicting this junk on me (and the rest of us) again and again, purely because they can. Given my druthers, I'd write a law mandating that MS has to license the Windows architecture, so anyone who pays a fee (decided by a government dept.) can code and release their own flavour of windows, which could compete on a level playing field with the Microsoft version. An end to the monopoly, a return to proper competition, some profits still for MS but no more extortionate excesses... it'd be a big improvement.

Given what I've spent on their junk over the years, I think I'm entitled to feel some antipathy towards them. :P

You realize, don't you, that even if MS allowed anyone to download windows' complete source code, it would be a decade before anyone could release any meaningful changes? It's not like you can download an OS worth of source and immediately start whipping out big changes. And Windows is so big, it's getting too big for MS to handle, so they are in the middle of major architecture changes that they figure will take another five to ten years. And that's with hundreds of programmers.

I love the nobility of the open source community, but what they lack is realism.

mouselock

12-19-2006, 08:17 AM

With windows / mac, you go out and buy a box: done. With linux, you have to find the software online or via your package manager (ie. not user friendly, even via the guis), and then you have to install it (often via command line when it's not registered in your package manager). On top of that, within a single linux distro, you have to find different apps depending on the window manager you are using.

More importantly for non-game applications, with Windows you go out and buy a windows application and, barring bugginess, it works. If I hear of a Linux application out there that I'd like, I still have to qualify what distro packages are available for and jump through some labyrinthine hoops to get it installed (if it's even possible) on some other flavor.

This is the single reason why Linux in its current incarnation will never become a widely accepted desktop OS: Knowing that there's a program out there for Linux isn't sufficient to know that you can run it. Knowing there's a program out there for Windows is. Nobody expects a MacOS program to run on windows. Everyone would expect a Redhat specific package to run on a SuSE installation, because they're both Linux. But of course this isn't always the case. (Completely discounting the mess that is having to try to install your own packages by compiling from source; this is simply imfeasible for an average desktop user.)

The first thing Linux needs for acceptance widescale in a desktop environment is a unified directory structure. The second thing is a unified package manager. The third is a unified installer. The fourth is a unified desktop architecture (use whatever you like, KDE, vanilla X, GTK, but programs written for one should be API compatible with whichever choice someone makes). Then Linux could start making inroads.

As long as Linux is the province of ubergeeks who feel they have to make the right religious choice and stick to it for each of these items, Linux is dead in the water as an OS a random home user will pick up and use instead of windows. Lack of centralization and monolithic vision has plenty of drawbacks to go with the benefits.

Chris Nahr

12-19-2006, 08:21 AM

Charles is right. lesslucid with his imaginary API legislation and Nick Walter with his imaginary API agency are totally ignorant of the facts of Windows programming.

Everyone can clone Windows. Here and now. The WINE project (http://www.winehq.com/) is doing just that. And many programming tools, such as Python and QT, support the Windows API alongside other platforms.

So the problem is not that Microsoft is nefariously hiding or changing APIs. That does happen occasionally but it's a very minor factor, and usually has good reasons. Nor is the Windows API somehow wacky and inscrutable to a degree that would make Windows software inherently unportable.

The real problem is that Windows is fucking HUGE and incredibly complex. Cloning it in any way that actually allows existing, fairly recent software to run is nearly impossible. API legislation or standardization wouldn't change that fact one bit. If the entire Windows API was standardized by law the only company that could realistically offer an actual implementation is... Microsoft.

Charles

12-19-2006, 08:27 AM

The first thing Linux needs for acceptance widescale in a desktop environment is a unified directory structure. The second thing is a unified package manager. The third is a unified installer. The fourth is a unified desktop architecture (use whatever you like, KDE, vanilla X, GTK, but programs written for one should be API compatible with whichever choice someone makes). Then Linux could start making inroads.

Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. Linux needs standards. Without them... it's not going anywhere. Without standards you can't get developers. No developer wants to have to support 10 different systems.

As long as Linux is the province of ubergeeks who feel they have to make the right religious choice and stick to it for each of these items, Linux is dead in the water as an OS a random home user will pick up and use instead of windows. Lack of centralization and monolithic vision has plenty of drawbacks to go with the benefits.

The other problem is that linux geeks have a huge case of Not Invented Here syndrome. And that's before you even get in to the politics of open source and free software.

WarrenM

12-19-2006, 08:31 AM

Actually, that's not necessarily true. Ubuntu 6.06 recognized my X800 card, sure. But it wouldn't let me change resolutions until I installed the official ATI drivers, and I *still* can't get any 3d acceleration. It's stuck using Mesa and I've done everything in every Howto and forum thread I've found.
I've had the exact same experience. I have a GeforceGo in my laptop and I'll be damned if I can get an nvidia driver installed. I've tried EasyUbuntu and every tutorial I can find on the web. Nothing.

It needs to be about 100 times easier than this before it has a shot at the common desktop.

Nick Walter

12-19-2006, 08:42 AM

Charles is right. lesslucid with his imaginary API legislation and Nick Walter with his imaginary API agency are totally ignorant of the facts of Windows programming.

Everyone can clone Windows. Here and now.

Totally ignorant? I do, like, get a paycheck for my technical skills and stuff. I'm no win32 internals guru but I think an accusation of total ignorance is a bit harsh Mr Nahr . . .

Technical issues aside, your argument is crap from fom a business standpoint. The second someone tried to come to market with a clone O/S capable of running win32 apps well enough to be a serious threat to the windows monopoly you can bet that lawsuits and nefarious undocumented API tricks would proliferate.

The O/S is infrastructure that enables apps to run. Common infrastructure is one of the few cases where government nationalization and standardization makes good sense so I still think some goverment action to take the O/S monopoly away from MS would be a darn good thing.

Charles

12-19-2006, 09:49 AM

I wouldn't have an issue with MS being split up, but it wouldn't really change anything. Even if Windows was spun off from Office, Xbox, MSDN, etc, Windows would still remain the most common OS for a *very* long time, if not ever.

Also, from what I've heard, when it comes to pure windows apps, Wine *does* do a great job. Enough that if you were correct, MS should be trying to shut it down.

But it doesn't pose a real threat to MS, because people will still use windows over linux because of ease of use.

DeepT

12-19-2006, 10:09 AM

I think at some point, if everyone spends all their time running emulators for MS applications, they might just ask themselves, "Why not just run it native?"

This is where I think Apple has screwed the pooch although it will be quite some time before Ill know if I am right nor not. If Apple users can run Windows in a Window, and then they start finding themselves running more and more windows apps, they may eventually decided to go with a pure windows platform the next time they upgrade.

Mac's are not cheap. They say, "There are 10 things I love about Mac's. But there are about 20 I love about windows. A new Mac will cost a lot more then a new windows box. Is it worth spending the extra money to get both?" If the answer ever becomes no, which I think it will for most users, then Apple is screwed.

TheTrunkDr

12-19-2006, 10:21 AM

I wouldn't have an issue with MS being split up, but it wouldn't really change anything. Even if Windows was spun off from Office, Xbox, MSDN, etc, Windows would still remain the most common OS for a *very* long time, if not ever.
The goal of breaking up MS isn't to curtail their OS monopoly, it's to prevent MS from using it's OS monopoly to leverage products in other markets.

Charles

12-19-2006, 10:33 AM

The goal of breaking up MS isn't to curtail their OS monopoly, it's to prevent MS from using it's OS monopoly to leverage products in other markets.

Right. But people forget that. They seem to think that if MS was broken up, suddenly linux would be a viable alternative or something.

Michael Fortson

12-19-2006, 07:23 PM

edit: finally found the right thread for this. Whoops.

Can you link some screenshots of the UI?

Also, my statement was more than a little subjectiveness in it. I'm a big fan of UI that uses very little realestate, and doesn't waste space. I also don't like dynamic interfaces. I want shit to stay still, and not move.

Since you were talking about consistency, I wanted to show you something on my desktop.

This is my secondary monitor. Those two windows on the bottom right have been open in that exact location and showing those exact contents for several months (through many reboots). I never touch them except to drag exported files from one to the other during development. They never close, they never move, and they never decide to show me some other view. If I need to export a Flash file and get that into Tomcat's webapps directory so I can take a look at something, it's a quick flick of the wrist away -- always.
http://static.flickr.com/141/327711442_9f66babcef_b.jpg
I could also just automate it so that anytime something new hits that folder it copies over itself (with defaults set-able to overwrite, not overwrite, or ask), but Flash exports so slowly it doesn't save me any time in this case. The windows could also be shown without any other directories or without the left shortcut bar or upper menu, if you want to go minimalist.

Below is my primary monitor. The Dock on the left never moves, and it holds everything that I use regularly. At the bottom of the dock are a couple of Remote Desktop connect files, and if I right-click the folder below them it expands my entire applications folder much like the Start menu does. It's a 23" Cinema HD display, so the icons aren't as small as they appear, but the dock doesn't take up too much room, either.

http://static.flickr.com/141/327705239_37dc084f43_b.jpg

Which is just to say that OSX can be a pretty consistent thing, and damn is it great for development work. You can't see much of it, but on the secondary monitor at the bottom, the Windows Taskbar is hiding -- I prefer to run Flash natively (meaning Intel-native), so I just keep a VM open running XP. You can't even tell it's there (by looks or performance), and with the new Parallels "Coherence" feature, the Flash for Windows window is treated like any other OSX window on that screen -- which just rocks.

Michael Fortson

12-19-2006, 07:42 PM

I wouldn't have an issue with MS being split up, but it wouldn't really change anything.

The impact would depend on how it's done (along what business lines). The primary intended effect would be to keep them from making decisions that unfairly extend their monopoly into other markets (bundling, restrictive licensing etc), but the collateral impact would be to also prevent them from funding their entry into those other markets with their primary cash cows.

You can't fund a loss-leader like their games division without their OS sales, but if they'd been split up, that might just have been what they were faced with trying to do. The impact on sideline businesses could be pretty big if you consider it that way.

Michael Fortson

12-19-2006, 08:01 PM

Jason McCullough

12-19-2006, 08:29 PM

Paradigm.

When it was Win 3.1, I didn't like it because it was unstable....

You aren't going to like, and may not believe, these answers.

* Windows 3.1 instability was from badly written applications corrupting everything.
* Windows 9x mostly fixed that. Now badly written drivers screwed everything up. Especially as hardware got more complicated.
* Windows XP finally got rid of the badly written application problem. Now it's crap drivers and crap hardware screwing everything up.

If I remember correctly, Vista moves drivers out of the core OS, since apparently the damned things can't be trusted. That leaves hardware; I've heard some vague discussion of isolating that in the motherboard, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

A response to this is "what took them so long?" The sad thing is none of this could have been done much earlier; the hardware features and performance to support doing it in a cost-effective manner was historically been immediatelly followed by the windows OS release to exploit it.

Damien Neil

12-20-2006, 01:34 AM

(Mega-response to various people.)

Yes it does because of the whole packages thing. Back when everything was a tarball at least all you had to do was get the tarball. Redhat had a decent idea, but then dipshits keep forking the idea and end up giving you software installation routines that while ostensibly easier become just as confusing as doing stuff the old way was, even for those of us who used to have to go in and configure make files by hand.

I've installed packages on my RHEL4 box at work by performing the following very difficult steps:

1) Go to web site.
2) Click on link.
3) Click "yes" when asked if I want to install the package.
4) Typing my password to authorize the install.

Every bit as simple as using InstallShield. Simpler, really.

Now, yes, you do need to find a package that's built for your distribution. That's a fairly minor problem compared to the real one which is that if the package you want is named "Microsoft Office" or "Company of Heroes", it doesn't exist at all--the real issue is that the software you're likely to want to run doesn't exist for any flavor of Linux.

Microsoft does make it easy, actually. Xbox.com lists every game made on multiple axes, it's fairly obvious what the games are about in the descriptions, and so it's pretty easy to look at the list by and decide if you want the console to play them. I guess they could add gamerankings, but probably won't. I haven't looked at Sony's PS3 information offerings.

That's my exact point.

Microsoft wants you to use an XBox. Sony wants you to use a PS3. Red Hat wants you to use RHEL. Canonical wants you to use Ubuntu. Pointing at "Linux" and complaining that the market is fragmented is like doing the same thing with the console market. What is Red Hat supposed to do--close up shop and go out of business to decrease competition in the market? All they can do is try to convince you that their product is the best--just like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

The problem is not that the market is so fragmented that you can't find software. The problem is that there isn't any software. Not the kind that a desktop user in search of a point-and-click install process is going to be interested in. Thus, the software you find isn't targeted at that user, because it's a waste of time to put the effort into packaging it up properly.

You can't just leave aside the issue of app compatibility, because it exists within linux itself. Just last night, the mere act of upgrading my kernel to a k7 specific version caused another linux app to suddenly stop working. And because of a peculiarity of my distro, I can't recompile their source.

More details? (i.e., what version of Linux, and what program.)

In many years of using Linux, I've never seen something like that happen.

(By the way: "Mere act of upgrading my kernel"? When's the last time you upgraded your WinXP kernel?)

Mac's are not cheap.

This isn't really the case at the moment. A Mac Mini is $600. A MacBook is $1100. You can get cheaper PCs, but not all that much cheaper, and you sacrifice quite a lot of elegance.

Macs were significantly more expensive than the equivalent PC competition for a long time, but that's changed substantially with Apple's shift to Intel hardware.

If you want a Mac capable of hardcore gaming, that'll be expensive compared to a PC. But there aren't any games to speak of for the Mac, so I don't think that's a fair comparison; Apple isn't making games machines. They make a low-end desktop machine, two lines of laptops, and a line of very beefy high-end desktops. A gaming machine would fall between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and there isn't anything there--because, I suspect, there's little demand.

Chris Nahr

12-20-2006, 02:18 AM

Technical issues aside, your argument is crap from fom a business standpoint. The second someone tried to come to market with a clone O/S capable of running win32 apps well enough to be a serious threat to the windows monopoly you can bet that lawsuits and nefarious undocumented API tricks would proliferate.

Lawsuits based on what? The API is public. Writing another OS to the same specifications is perfectly legal. Undocumented API tricks for what? Windows is successful due to its vast third-party software base, not just Office.

Historically, when undocumented Windows functions were exploited, it was typically by third-party morons who thought ignoring the documentation and programming by debugging was a great idea. They did so because they followed the system with the most installations. Are you going to make that illegal, too?

The O/S is infrastructure that enables apps to run. Common infrastructure is one of the few cases where government nationalization and standardization makes good sense so I still think some goverment action to take the O/S monopoly away from MS would be a darn good thing.

So your viewpoint is purely ideological and untainted by facts. Microsoft's continued expansion as if they mean to swallow up the entire software industry is certainly cause for concern but the Windows API has nothing to do with it. The devilish secrets of hidden Windows functions are ancient John C. Dvorak fantasies, nothing more.

Ben

12-20-2006, 09:25 AM

You can get cheaper PCs, but not all that much cheaper, and you sacrifice quite a lot of elegance.

I love that you try to gloss over this. I tried to price a comparable Dell, but Dell doesn't seem to sell any Core Duo desktops with 512MB of RAM, a 64MB of shared memory video card, and a 60 GB harddrive. I can get a Dell that is equal or better to the $800 Mac Mini for $629. That's around a 25% premium for "elegance."

mouselock

12-20-2006, 09:31 AM

Now, yes, you do need to find a package that's built for your distribution. That's a fairly minor problem compared to the real one which is that if the package you want is named "Microsoft Office" or "Company of Heroes", it doesn't exist at all--the real issue is that the software you're likely to want to run doesn't exist for any flavor of Linux.

The point is you don't have to do this for Windows, period. You get a windows product, and (barring bugs) it runs. No making sure you have the right flavor of windows. No making sure you have the necessary dependancies beforehand. (It's been a while since I used Redhat, is it better about automatically pulling down dependencies these days?) No worrying that the current version of program A you have is compiled against glibc2.0a but the new package you want compiles against glibc2.1d and having the two installed at once fucks things up.

Linux is still far more complicated than Windows. And seeing as how your average, everyday user fucks windows up three ways to sunday regularly it's a big hurdle.

DeepT

12-20-2006, 09:41 AM

This isn't really the case at the moment. A Mac Mini is $600. A MacBook is $1100. You can get cheaper PCs, but not all that much cheaper, and you sacrifice quite a lot of elegance.

So.. these 'cheap' macs, they are as good as PCs? So if I throw together a duel core box with 2 gigs of ram, a great video card (something that has an analog on a Mac), and all the other fixings a gamer would want, that a Mac equivalent would be around the same price?

This I find hard to believe. It is not about simply getting a computer for 600 bucks, it is getting a computer to meet your needs for that price. You can go to a computer show and pick up a PC for 300 bucks. Its pure crap, but certainly is cheap.

Just make sure were comparing apples to apples with respect to hardware.

Even then... if NVidia puts out a new super-duper video card, can I just plug that in to a normal 'desktop' Mac?

Charles

12-20-2006, 09:54 AM

More details? (i.e., what version of Linux, and what program.)

In many years of using Linux, I've never seen something like that happen.

(By the way: "Mere act of upgrading my kernel"? When's the last time you upgraded your WinXP kernel?)

Ubuntu 6.06. App was Truecrypt 4.2. I updated the kernel and Truecrypt stopped working because the format of its own kernel changed, or something wacky. I did finally manage to get it to compile but it was a giant pain in the ass. And I say "mere act" because it was a one line command to do it. Seems to me that it's on par with a security update from MS for windows. When was the last time you installed something from windows update and had programs just stop running?

Edit: And I upgraded my kernel as a step in a howto of trying to get my 3d acceleration working. Which STILL doesn't work.

shift6

12-20-2006, 10:30 AM

The point is you don't have to do this for Windows, period. You get a windows product, and (barring bugs) it runs. No making sure you have the right flavor of windows. No making sure you have the necessary dependancies beforehand. (It's been a while since I used Redhat, is it better about automatically pulling down dependencies these days?) No worrying that the current version of program A you have is compiled against glibc2.0a but the new package you want compiles against glibc2.1d and having the two installed at once fucks things up.
I agree in the aggregate with what you say, but the idea that Windows products always "just run" isn't as true as it used to be. You have dependencies on versions of Direct X, .NET, certain DLLs, IE6/7, service packs and hotfixes, hardware drivers (mostly for games, but still use this tool to uninstall NVidia and this one to gracefully install ATI and Fuck Creative! and here's a registry cleaning tool and so on), etc.

It's true you don't usually have to go online to find these though as most Windows products will check and install them for you from the CD, but that's just built-in package management. The only area in which Linux gets killed in this particular area is the non-standardization between distros, such as file structures and so on (the glib drama was huge but has more or less been resolved as of a few years ago), and the large number of competing products that do the same little things (there's about a billion forks of everything nowadays).

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 10:45 AM

Lawsuits based on what? The API is public. Writing another OS to the same specifications is perfectly legal. Undocumented API tricks for what? Windows is successful due to its vast third-party software base, not just Office.

Windows is successful because it is the standard. In essence it will continue to be successful because it was succesful once and the market has no tolerance for deviation from the standard. Once a software product has reached standardhood it has an incredible force of inertia and can maintain control of the market despite mediocrity and even a certain amount of crappiness.

Historically, when undocumented Windows functions were exploited, it was typically by third-party morons who thought ignoring the documentation and programming by debugging was a great idea. They did so because they followed the system with the most installations. Are you going to make that illegal, too?

Illegal? No. If somebody deviates from a published spec they are taking their chances and will probably have a broken product as of the next service pack/upgrade/etc. This is completely irrelevant to the discussion we are having though.

So your viewpoint is purely ideological and untainted by facts. Microsoft's continued expansion as if they mean to swallow up the entire software industry is certainly cause for concern but the Windows API has nothing to do with it. The devilish secrets of hidden Windows functions are ancient John C. Dvorak fantasies, nothing more.

My viewpoint is uncluttered with irrelevant technical minutae, that's for sure. I think you are letting all the trees get in the way of seeing the forest.

You also seem to have ascribed to me some tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist mindset that I have not professed. I do not believe Microsoft has, right now, deep hidden APIs or nefarious plots. I do believe the following:

1. Microsoft got an O/S monopoly by being in the right place at the right time.

2. Microsoft maintains an O/S monopoly because such a monopoly is largely self sustaining due to nobody wanting the handle the pain of migrating to a different standard.

3. Due to 1 and 2, MS should have no right for their O/S monpoly to continue.

4. That if a commerical win32 compatible O/S hit the market and tried to steal their market share MS would find 10 trillion pretexts to sue the company behind it.

5. That if a commercial win32 compatiable O/S hit the market MS would start playing technical games to deliberately screw up attempts to be win32 compatible.

6. An Operating System in infrastructure and hence should be govermentally regulated in terms of the ABI it presents to client programs. This will allow operating system competition in the marketplace without royally fucking the software companies who suddenly have to try to worry about building for 19 target platforms and including 19 executables with every release.

Phil_Stein

12-20-2006, 11:01 AM

Illegal? No. If somebody deviates from a published spec they are taking their chances and will probably have a broken product as of the next service pack/upgrade/etc. This is completely irrelevant to the discussion we are having though.

It's pretty hard for Windows developers to follow the published spec, because for lots of API stuff, the spec is garbage (leaves LOTS of holes for the dev to figure out).

Developers fumble around trying to get API calls to work. Once they do, the developer moves on to the next problem, whether or not their usage of the API call in question was 'per spec'.

A cloned Win32 would be hard to make reliable, because it would not only have to replicate documented behavior, but also undocumented behavior. This is not necessarily a case of MS being devious (sloppy is more like it), nor of the app developers (either MS developers or 3rd party) consulting some kind of hidden API manual, but rather, fumbling around with a particular API call until they get it to do what they want.

Zylon

12-20-2006, 11:17 AM

6. An Operating System in infrastructure and hence should be govermentally regulated in terms of the ABI it presents to client programs.
What, POSIX isn't good enough for ya?

Charles

12-20-2006, 11:21 AM

5. That if a commercial win32 compatiable O/S hit the market MS would start playing technical games to deliberately screw up attempts to be win32 compatible.

This part gets very, very dangerous. Why? Because if you lock this down in any fashion, you block evolution of the system. Not all changes made to the API are in the interest of fucking people over. Some are in the interest of making the system better, some are in the interest of adding/supporting new features/hardware.

It's easy to see a nefarious plot behind every API change, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of the time, or more, when the API is changed it's because the developers needed to change it. I highly doubt that there's any actual cases of a suit coming down and saying "Quick everyone! We need to obfuscate the API!"

It's pretty hard for Windows developers to follow the published spec, because for lots of API stuff, the spec is garbage (leaves LOTS of holes for the dev to figure out).

Developers fumble around trying to get API calls to work. Once they do, the developer moves on to the next problem, whether or not their usage of the API call in question was 'per spec'.

That used to be true, but hasn't been true for years and years. MSDN is awesome, freely available via the web, and absolutely complete, down to the minutiae of specific OS implementations. It's pretty much been true since Windows 2000. I agree, it was rough during the NT/9x years. But it isn't anymore.

A cloned Win32 would be hard to make reliable, because it would not only have to replicate documented behavior, but also undocumented behavior. This is not necessarily a case of MS being devious (sloppy is more like it), nor of the app developers (either MS developers or 3rd party) consulting some kind of hidden API manual, but rather, fumbling around with a particular API call until they get it to do what they want.

Actually, it's more along the lines of the fact of MS's legendary backward compatability. Internally to the APIs, MS supports a huge amount of things done the wrong way, in order to keep old apps working, who didn't use the API correctly to begin with. So while you can emulate the win32 option to the spec exactly, that will only guarantee that apps which use the spec properly will work properly. It doesn't cover old programs or programs exploiting backwards compatibility hacks.

I read a lot of The Old New Thing (http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/), and it goes in to a lot of detail about the lengths they go to ensure backwards compatibility, and the problems that result from people doing things in undocumented ways. You may see evil in undocumented functions, but usually they are undocumented for good reason.

wisefool

12-20-2006, 11:25 AM

Jason McCullough

12-20-2006, 11:41 AM

OS/2 was a more advanced OS, that's how. MS got beat in technical innovation on this one, but only for a few years - OS/2 2.0 came out in 1992, Windows 95 in 1995. I was just explaining what made windows unstable.

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 11:50 AM

What, POSIX isn't good enough for ya?

POSIX is not an ABI. POSIX is an API, or more accurately, a set of standards relating mostly to API stuff.

Phil_Stein

12-20-2006, 11:52 AM

That used to be true, but hasn't been true for years and years. MSDN is awesome, freely available via the web, and absolutely complete, down to the minutiae of specific OS implementations. It's pretty much been true since Windows 2000. I agree, it was rough during the NT/9x years. But it isn't anymore.

I disagree. If you do much work with the GUI, you'll find lots of functions calling for 10+ parameters. Several of those parameters are in turn complex structures and/or the results of previous function calls you had to make (to create a handle to the proper kind of thing). These things are VERY hard to parse, and I think there are still some cases where you simply could not use the documentation to properly code it, without guesswork and/or example code to refer to.

Also, due to Windows' age, over the years a LOT of different functions and APIs have developed to do basically the same thing. But reading the documentation, it's often hard to tell which of the 5 ways to play back a WAV file or blit some graphics to the screen is right. Stumble down the wrong path, and you may find yourself dead-ended with functions that don't do what you'd expect them to (or need them to).

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 11:56 AM

This part gets very, very dangerous. Why? Because if you lock this down in any fashion, you block evolution of the system. Not all changes made to the API are in the interest of fucking people over. Some are in the interest of making the system better, some are in the interest of adding/supporting new features/hardware.

I'm not advocating any sort of lockdown. I'm just saying the standards for how the low level O/S components and basic libraries work should be regulated. There's no reason the regulatory body couldn't release a new standard every few years.

It's easy to see a nefarious plot behind every API change, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of the time, or more, when the API is changed it's because the developers needed to change it. I highly doubt that there's any actual cases of a suit coming down and saying "Quick everyone! We need to obfuscate the API!"

Again, you are ascribing to me a tinfoil hit mentality in regards to APIs. I think your 95% is waaaay low. Shouldn't that be 100%?

Midnight Son

12-20-2006, 11:59 AM

I'm not advocating any sort of lockdown. I'm just saying the standards for how the low level O/S components and basic libraries work should be regulated. There's no reason the regulatory body couldn't release a new standard every few years.

Thank you, Big Brother. While we're at it, lets lock down any media we find on the PC.

Charles

12-20-2006, 12:43 PM

I'm not advocating any sort of lockdown. I'm just saying the standards for how the low level O/S components and basic libraries work should be regulated. There's no reason the regulatory body couldn't release a new standard every few years.

And how do they decide on those standards? How do they review a set of changes made by hundreds of programmers? Ultimately this would result in MS setting the standard... which they already do.

Again, you are ascribing to me a tinfoil hit mentality in regards to APIs. I think your 95% is waaaay low. Shouldn't that be 100%?

Yeah, you are right. It should be 100%. But then, I'm not sure how you think MS could suddenly play technical games to screw over someone else's win32 implementation.

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 12:56 PM

And how do they decide on those standards? How do they review a set of changes made by hundreds of programmers? Ultimately this would result in MS setting the standard... which they already do.

Huh? I completely don't understand this objection. Why couldn't a regulatory body set a standard. It seems to work for lots of other standards and regulatory bodies, both governmental and non governmental.

If MS can set a standard by fiat, I'm sure a regulatory body could as well.

Yeah, you are right. It should be 100%. But then, I'm not sure how you think MS could suddenly play technical games to screw over someone else's win32 implementation.

How about signed binaries like in the Xbox? Of course this falls under the perfectly legal heading of DRM (got to prevent pirated software!) so the DMCA would forbid their competitors from reverse engineering that . . .

And that's just off the top of my head. Given better programmers than me (I make no claim to greatness in this area) and some time I'm 100% sure MS could come up with some very dirty tricks.

Charles

12-20-2006, 01:19 PM

Huh? I completely don't understand this objection. Why couldn't a regulatory body set a standard. It seems to work for lots of other standards and regulatory bodies, both governmental and non governmental.

If MS can set a standard by fiat, I'm sure a regulatory body could as well.

How about because the regulatory body isn't the one doing the developing and finding out what said development requires? You cannot have an outside source setting limits on software. You just can't. It will restrict development.

How about signed binaries like in the Xbox? Of course this falls under the perfectly legal heading of DRM (got to prevent pirated software!) so the DMCA would forbid their competitors from reverse engineering that . . .

And that's just off the top of my head. Given better programmers than me (I make no claim to greatness in this area) and some time I'm 100% sure MS could come up with some very dirty tricks.

You mean signed binaries like on the PS2? MS didn't innovate that method of locking executables. It's certainly not to stop reverse engineering -- that will happen anyway, once mod chips are out.

DeepT

12-20-2006, 01:34 PM

My biggest concern with any kind of API standards body is that it will become big and bloated. The interests of the end users will become secondary to the concerns of some big interest who will want their standard because it profits them the most, not because it is actually any better then other standards. Finally you will get lots and lots of debate which will slow things down to a crawl.

Look at OpenGL. It started small and lean, and people liked it and started to use it. Then it gets 'big' and innovation slows way down and eventually almost grinds to a halt.

What is the actual OpenGL standard now? I do not mean what you can do with public libraries and what not, but what the official standard that all implementations of OpenGL *must* comply with?

Take pixel shaders for example. How long have they been around? You know when they were actually added to the OpenGL standard? August 2006. Yeah, just a few months ago.

Sure you could use pixel shaders, but were talking standards here, as in you *know* such and such is available to you on any system that supports OpenGL.

A private entity, like Microsoft can develop standards as the please. If they want new functionality, they just dictate the terms. Look how fast Direct X evolved compared to OpenGL.

Turing over a standard to any board of people or companies is a bad idea. Innovation will suffer for it.

You know, if a standards committee could handle these kinds of API issues, then why isn't there already a GUI API standard so that all Linux GUI apps can work on any Linux GUI shell? Why isn't there a standard OS API? Why do C programs need to be filled with thousands of #ifdef PLATFORM_X statements? Linux is the embodiment of open source and open standards, yet it is a cluster-fuck.

Microsoft has a dozen flavors of OS out there. Not only can a single body source code compile on all of them without the need of #ifdef WIN98 or #ifdef WIN_XP_HOME crap, but the binary file produced can freely move around most, if not all, the Microsoft OS's out there.

Who else can do that? Nobody in the Unix world can. Apple can with their Rosetta stone technology, but only with 'Apple' applications. Take a binary compiled for a BSD machine or Linux machine, and it will not run on 'Darwin'.

Public standards comities just do not work very well, if at all.

Phil_Stein

12-20-2006, 02:43 PM

Microsoft has a dozen flavors of OS out there. Not only can a single body source code compile on all of them without the need of #ifdef WIN98 or #ifdef WIN_XP_HOME crap, but the binary file produced can freely move around most, if not all, the Microsoft OS's out there.

Well, this is only really true if you either target the least common denominator (oftentimes Win 98), and avoid relying on any features added in the last 8 years, OR if you do lots of internal checks and LoadLibrary calls (i.e. you don't necessarily use #ifdef, but you accomplish the same thing dynamically, in-code).

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 03:58 PM

How about because the regulatory body isn't the one doing the developing and finding out what said development requires? You cannot have an outside source setting limits on software. You just can't. It will restrict development.

I'm still completely not getting you on this one.

Right now we have an outside source setting limits on software by designing the O/S, APIs, etc. It's Microsoft. A government body could do the same darn thing, pretty much just as well. I'm not saying they'd sit in an ivory tower and just make up random interfaces, there's plenty of ways to invite developer input into the process.

You mean signed binaries like on the PS2? MS didn't innovate that method of locking executables. It's certainly not to stop reverse engineering -- that will happen anyway, once mod chips are out.

But that requires an illegal link in the chain (the mod chips) which means that h4xx0rs can do it but no commercial competitor can. But whatever, I don't want to get bogged down arguing technical minutae of a random example I pulled out of my hat. Maybe signed binaries wouldn't lock out competition but I still maintain that MS can and would find a way to break a competitors product if anyone was dumb enough to try competing with them in the win32-compatible OS market.

Nick Walter

12-20-2006, 04:18 PM

My biggest concern with any kind of API standards body is that it will become big and bloated. The interests of the end users will become secondary to the concerns of some big interest who will want their standard because it profits them the most, not because it is actually any better then other standards. Finally you will get lots and lots of debate which will slow things down to a crawl.

ABI, not API.

You know, if a standards committee could handle these kinds of API issues, then why isn't there already a GUI API standard so that all Linux GUI apps can work on any Linux GUI shell? Why isn't there a standard OS API? Why do C programs need to be filled with thousands of #ifdef PLATFORM_X statements? Linux is the embodiment of open source and open standards, yet it is a cluster-fuck.

Big difference between open standards and regulated unified ones. Nobody controls linux, it's fragmented all over the place, which is where a lot of nonsense comes from. If there was a body that said "Thing will be X way" then they would be.

Microsoft has a dozen flavors of OS out there. Not only can a single body source code compile on all of them without the need of #ifdef WIN98 or #ifdef WIN_XP_HOME crap, but the binary file produced can freely move around most, if not all, the Microsoft OS's out there.

Right, and with a unified ABI, a developer could have confidence that their binary would run on all the MS Operating Systems, plus all the competing win32 ones.

Public standards comities just do not work very well, if at all.

Any government run institution is going to be less efficient than a private enterprise, that's just a given. That being said, even if it was less efficient it would still be a win for the public because it would force competition in the OS market for PCs.

Damien Neil

12-20-2006, 04:29 PM

I love that you try to gloss over this. I tried to price a comparable Dell, but Dell doesn't seem to sell any Core Duo desktops with 512MB of RAM, a 64MB of shared memory video card, and a 60 GB harddrive. I can get a Dell that is equal or better to the $800 Mac Mini for $629. That's around a 25% premium for "elegance."

I glossed over it, because I couldn't easily price a comparable Dell either--as you say, Dell doesn't have any Core 2 Duo systems in that price range.

The "elegance" that you surround in scare quotes is fairly easy to see: A Mac Mini is a tiny little thing. The Dells that you are looking at are mini-tower cases. (The "compact" Dimension C521 is 15.8" x 4.5" x 14.2"; the Mini is 2" x 6.5" x 6.5". You could fit eight Minis inside that case.)

So, $45 to go from the $629 Dell you mentioned to a $674 low-end Mini with 1GB of RAM. That's not a huge premium, if you ask me. (Why were you comparing with the more expensive Mini, by the way?)

Or other models: I can see a Dell laptop for $944 that's roughly comparable to a $1,174 MacBook. $230 premium, which isn't insignificant. The Dell, of course, is much bulkier, doesn't have DVI output, doesn't have digital audio out, doesn't have gigabit ethernet, and doesn't have a camera. So perhaps it isn't really all that comparable. I could compare it to the Dell XPS M1210 instead, which has most of those features--and starts at $1,299.

You can find cheaper PCs, yes. But when you compare apples to apples, the price difference isn't all that large. Of course, if you don't care about the features that come standard on Macs (DVI output, digital audio output, etc.), the extra expense isn't justified.

So.. these 'cheap' macs, they are as good as PCs? So if I throw together a duel core box with 2 gigs of ram, a great video card (something that has an analog on a Mac), and all the other fixings a gamer would want, that a Mac equivalent would be around the same price?

This I find hard to believe. It is not about simply getting a computer for 600 bucks, it is getting a computer to meet your needs for that price. You can go to a computer show and pick up a PC for 300 bucks. Its pure crap, but certainly is cheap.

First off, as I said before, there isn't a Mac equivalent of a gamer's PC. They jump straight from "runs Office perfectly well but can't play games" to "quad-core Xeon behemoth". A good gaming PC falls in the middle, and Apple isn't making anything in that space right now.

The Mac Mini starts at $600. That's with only 512MB of RAM, so you'll want to add on a bit for some more memory. It's a perfectly good machine--nothing like the $300 pure crap computer show PC. It'll run Office just fine, and works perfectly well as a box for doing development on. I've got one (an earlier model) in a rack acting as a mail/web/etc. host for myself and various other people. Its graphics are a bit rubbish, so you won't be playing Company of Heroes on it, but that's not an issue for non-gaming use.

The Mini has firewire, DVI, S-video, gigabit ethernet, 802.11g, bluetooth, and optical audio output. It doesn't compromise on much of anything other than 3D graphics. (And a DVD burner, unless you get the $800 model; the low-end one only has a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive.)

So, to answer your question: Yes, the cheaper Macs are as good as PCs. They're a bit hard to compare, especially in the case of the Mac Mini--there isn't much in the way of PCs that try to compete with it in terms of form factor and feature set. You can get a PC with the same CPU/memory/graphics for less money, but it'll be an entirely different animal in terms of size, connections, and so on.

Damien Neil

12-20-2006, 04:33 PM

The point is you don't have to do this for Windows, period. You get a windows product, and (barring bugs) it runs. No making sure you have the right flavor of windows.

This is only a point if you insist on comparing Windows with the amalgam of all Linux distributions.

That's like comparing the XBox 360 with the set of the Wii, the DS, and PS3, the PS2, and the PSP. "You get a XBox 360 game, and it runs. No making sure you have the right flavor of console."

bago

12-20-2006, 06:58 PM

Having actually worked on validating the documentation of the win32 API for the DOJ, I can tell you most of the undocumented functions were stubs.

A developer had planned a certain way to write the api, put in a stub function that just returned true, and then later forgot about it. If I remember correctly there were only a couple of hidden OS functions with weird names like TreeBear6 or something.

Also, all the documentation you could ever need about windows is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sdkintro/sdkintro/devdoc_platform_software_development_kit_start_pag e.asp

lesslucid

12-20-2006, 07:55 PM

You aren't going to like, and may not believe, these answers.

* Windows 3.1 instability was from badly written applications corrupting everything.
* Windows 9x mostly fixed that. Now badly written drivers screwed everything up. Especially as hardware got more complicated.
* Windows XP finally got rid of the badly written application problem. Now it's crap drivers and crap hardware screwing everything up.

If I remember correctly, Vista moves drivers out of the core OS, since apparently the damned things can't be trusted. That leaves hardware; I've heard some vague discussion of isolating that in the motherboard, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

A response to this is "what took them so long?" The sad thing is none of this could have been done much earlier; the hardware features and performance to support doing it in a cost-effective manner was historically been immediatelly followed by the windows OS release to exploit it.

Well, I guess it's not that hard to believe. Still... I was perfectly happy using DOS and resented it when all of the applications I wanted to use (well, fine, games I wanted to play) needed Win 3.1 to run and this seemed to result in many more crashes than I experienced with DOS.

I guess I just object generally to the philosophy that the operating system has to be some huge, slow, resource-hogging monster that fills up the RAM with 30+ different background processes which don't ask for my permission to run or give me any information about what they're doing. To me, it seems sensible to have an OS that is as light and simple as possible, that "just works", and leaves everything else to be handled by applications. As I understand it, this is how linux works; you can get big linux distributions with lots of stuff in them, but the smallest and lightest distros will still run any individual application that's available, so long as you've got the hardware and dependencies it needs.

My experience with WinXP was that it took longer to fall over than Win98 did, but when it fell over, it really and truly died... I was having blue-screen crashes during the boot-up sequence. I don't think it could have been a hardware problem because when I wiped the harddrive and installed Debian it ran flawlessly.

RepoMan

12-20-2006, 09:16 PM

IMHO slashdot used to have more interesting comments. People wrote virtual encyclopedia articles that were very instructive. It seems there's a heck lot more snarky remarks.
How long ago are you talking about? I have filtered slashdot comments to ranking 3 or higher for years, and it's the only way to go.

Actually I hardly ever read Slashdot anymore because their RSS feed is so picky. It only has the last ten items and if you ping it more than once an hour or so it locks you out. So I effectively can't read Slashdot through my RSS reader without leaving it open ALL the time, and I tend to be an occasional RSS reader (e.g. a couple of times a week), so I never can see anything older than a couple hours on Slashdot. Ergo, it's effectively useless. DUMB, Slashdot, DUMB.

bago

12-20-2006, 10:18 PM

If you want a stick have a stick. Most people need more than a stick.

DeepT

12-21-2006, 07:00 AM

My experience with WinXP was that it took longer to fall over than Win98 did, but when it fell over, it really and truly died... I was having blue-screen crashes during the boot-up sequence. I don't think it could have been a hardware problem because when I wiped the harddrive and installed Debian it ran flawlessly.

I have never had that happen, nor do I know anyone who ever did with one important exception.

The exception is when there was a major hardware failure, such as the motherboard dying. Unless you replace it with the exact same motherboard, an NT kernel will not boot.

You can recover from this, just install over your old installation and your personal settings and program registry keys will be preserved.

Charles

12-21-2006, 07:29 AM

I'm still completely not getting you on this one.

Right now we have an outside source setting limits on software by designing the O/S, APIs, etc. It's Microsoft. A government body could do the same darn thing, pretty much just as well. I'm not saying they'd sit in an ivory tower and just make up random interfaces, there's plenty of ways to invite developer input into the process.

Okay. So they'd listen to microsoft, microsoft would get the changes they need... what would change again?

But that requires an illegal link in the chain (the mod chips) which means that h4xx0rs can do it but no commercial competitor can. But whatever, I don't want to get bogged down arguing technical minutae of a random example I pulled out of my hat.

Or alternately, you can't find a way to pin this as MS = evil.

Maybe signed binaries wouldn't lock out competition but I still maintain that MS can and would find a way to break a competitors product if anyone was dumb enough to try competing with them in the win32-compatible OS market.

Of course you do.

Charles

12-21-2006, 07:34 AM

I guess I just object generally to the philosophy that the operating system has to be some huge, slow, resource-hogging monster that fills up the RAM with 30+ different background processes which don't ask for my permission to run or give me any information about what they're doing. To me, it seems sensible to have an OS that is as light and simple as possible, that "just works", and leaves everything else to be handled by applications.

You know you can turn off pretty much everything that isn't necessary for the OS to run. In fact, you can turn off a lot of stuff that is necessary, and the system will still run, you'll just lack some basic functionality.

As I understand it, this is how linux works; you can get big linux distributions with lots of stuff in them, but the smallest and lightest distros will still run any individual application that's available, so long as you've got the hardware and dependencies it needs.

That is such a gross over simplification, I don't even know where to start.

My experience with WinXP was that it took longer to fall over than Win98 did, but when it fell over, it really and truly died... I was having blue-screen crashes during the boot-up sequence. I don't think it could have been a hardware problem because when I wiped the harddrive and installed Debian it ran flawlessly.

Then you did something to fuck it up. Windows XP doesn't just magically get that way, and on top of that, it offers you the tools (system restore) to make sure that if you do manage to fuck it up, you can revert to a working config. But hardware problems aren't relegated to broken hardware, it can also be broken hardware drivers. Or you installed the wrong drivers for something. It's amazing how much shit Windows can sift through before truly becoming unusable. I've seen people install wrong drivers and have the system still mostly work. It's fantastic.

In linux though, one thing goes wrong and you are just SOL.

Midnight Son

12-21-2006, 04:41 PM

Charles, Windows XP is as robust as a wet noodle. I know, I fix it each and every day for reg-lar people.

Damien Neil

12-21-2006, 07:49 PM

There isn't anything that can go wrong with a Linux system that I can't fix. I can't recover data that isn't there any more, obviously, but you can perform any form of trashing of the system files that you care to name, and I can put it back together again.

Now, the fact that I can't do that for Windows doesn't necessarily mean much, since I'm not a Windows person. I haven't put the time and effort into acquiring the equivalent level of knowledge of it that I have of Unix. But it's definitely the case that one thing wrong doesn't leave you SOL with Linux.

And I've certainly fucked up a Windows XP system beyond my ability to repair with one mistake: not rebooting between installing drivers.

Charles

12-21-2006, 08:37 PM

Now, the fact that I can't do that for Windows doesn't necessarily mean much, since I'm not a Windows person. I haven't put the time and effort into acquiring the equivalent level of knowledge of it that I have of Unix. But it's definitely the case that one thing wrong doesn't leave you SOL with Linux.

Sure, if you are one of the bearded variety who knows everything. But for anyone other than someone super advanced? It can very easily and quickly become impossible to fix. Or at least, far more painful than a reinstall.

And I've certainly fucked up a Windows XP system beyond my ability to repair with one mistake: not rebooting between installing drivers.

System Restore is your friend.

Damien Neil

12-21-2006, 09:16 PM

The goggles, they do nothing! Err, I mean System Restore did nothing for me. The system was mightily hosed, and nothing short of starting the reinstall from the beginning worked. Friends of mine doing fresh XP installs have had similar experiences.

To be fair, things are a lot better when you use a recent SP2 install DVD, since most of the drivers you need will already be present. This was a couple years ago, and I had older installation media.

I think my point is that you're allowing your knowledge of XP to color your perception of the relative ease of hosing a system. XP systems can be fucked up, and Linux systems can be repaired, and either seems a lot better when you've got a deep understanding of how it works.