Microsoft’s Windows Vista one year later: ‘the chrome has worn off the turd’

One year after Charlie Demerjian called Microsoft’s Windows Vista a “chrome plated turd,” he’s back to take another look:

“It has been a year since Vista was released, and I said I could not in good conscience go there. Since then, Vista has gotten a thorough airing, has been debated more than anything in recent memory, and for the vast majority, the chrome has worn off the turd,” Demerjian writes.

“[A year ago] I lamented the fact that MS was forcing me to use Linux against my will, but Vista was unacceptable to me on far too many grounds,” Demerjian writes. “To be honest, MS did try to engage me after I wrote that, but the sad thing is it was through bribery. I don’t use that word lightly, but there is nothing else I can call it.”

MacDailyNews Note: See the full article for more on the bribery.

Demerjian continues, “So, 12 months to the day after release, Vista is still a chrome plated turd, but due to direct abuses of the customer, much of that chrome has worn off. Activation servers that could never go down did for days.”

“Inviolate promises of user control over patching was shown to be far less important than MS needs to control your box, and hosts of other egregious violations show how much MS really cares about the people giving them money,” Demerjian writes.

Demerjian writes, “Until MS does a complete 180 on the anti-user aspects of Vista, it remains unsuitable for use to any rational person.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Stoo” for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Take: Get a Mac.

50 Comments

  1. There is a more serious issue here: 5 years and billions of dollars and Vista was the result? Microsoft has become corporate America and in doing so has lost the passion that once made it great. Most mac users hate MS but to their credit they did bring the PC to the masses and still have a 90% market share. Vista was a MAJOR disappointment and shows what happens when you try to make too much money for something that has no value to your base. Most companies are sticking with XP and will continue to do so and now MS is delaying the next version of Windows till 2011?? One has to wonder if Apple can maintain their innovation when Mr Jobs retires

  2. I’ve never used Vista, but everything I’ve heard from PC users about it is negative.

    Last week, a visitor gave us an unexpurgated account of his Vista experience, ending with his reversion to XP. It made my problems with Leopard on my workplace Mac pale into insignificance.

  3. “If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”

    “Let’s face it, the average computer user has the brain of a spider monkey.”

    “We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.”

    – Bill Gates

  4. I think MacDaily News needs to iCal this comment on the article. 10% is coming real fast there Andrew… can we get your email too so we can all call you out! Expensive and underpowered? Right… check a comparable Dell to a MacPro with the same specs.

    “For Jobs Mob to take any Market Share they need to release a version of Mac OS that doesn’t require expensive underpowered Apple supplied hardware, or hacking to make it work on a custom build box. Untill you can buy a value(read cheap) HP/DELL for around £300-400 (with screen) with OS X on it Apple will never ever take more than 10% of the market”
    posted by : andrew, 30 January 2008

  5. How refreshing to read an article and all the comments that primarily pit the Vista nuts against the Linux crowd. Us Mac fanboys tend to think of everything in terms of Apple, but the Linux fans have the same arguments with the MS fanboys.

    Interestingly Linux fans and Apple folks are more than just allies against a common enemy, they are brothers with the same mother–Unix. In contrast, Vista is a bastard child.

  6. What’s amazing is that he “was forced to learn Linux” due to Vista, but his girlfriend uses a Mac. I wonder why he didn’t try her Mac, instead of being forced to learn Linux? Maybe because he didn’t want to replace hardware?

  7. > MS was forcing me to use Linux against my will

    Linux is getting much better as a client OS, but it’s NOT nearly as refined as Mac OS X. I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE on my Mac through VMware Fusion. They work fine for common tasks like web-browsing, but I definitely felt a relaxing sense of comfort and well-being when I was back in the Mac environment. And while I would use Linux instead of Windows, there is no way I would use Linux instead of Mac OS X. As it stands now, PC makers like Dell are in for a disappointment if they believe Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for most of their customers.

    With no other alternative to Windows Vista, other than Windows XP, Apple’s competitors are in for a rough three to four years. Apple may actually achieve 20% U.S. market share for Macs during that time, since Mac OS X is the only true long-term alternative to Windows Vista for most customers.

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