“Frankly, there’s no other way to say this: Microsoft is stupid and Apple is not,” Jim Lynch writes for ExtremeTech.
“If you take a look at the history of OS design by each company, it’s pretty clear why this is so. Microsoft has historically made an unreliable, ugly, and highly insecure operating system based on its own spaghetti/Swiss cheese code. This is no secret to anyone who has followed the industry or even used Windows on a daily basis. If you are a Windows users you MUST have spyware/virus/malware prevention software or, sooner or later, your machine is going to get nailed,” Lynch writes.
“It isn’t Microsoft bashing to say any of this, it’s just the truth for Windows users each day of their computing lives,” Lynch writes. “Apple, on the other hand, decided long ago to ditch their old operating system and build one that was Unix based. Why did this matter? Well as people have begun to notice, thanks to its Unix roots, Mac OS X is a hell of a lot more stable and secure than any version of Windows ever released. Apple didn’t make this choice by chance, they thought it through and knew exactly what they were doing and why.”
Lynch writes, “Mac users simply don’t live in the same inherently insecure and fearful universe that Microsoft, through its stupidity and bad programming, has inflicted on Windows users. The difference is night and day, and anyone who has ever switched from Windows over to Mac OS X (or Linux for that matter) knows how liberating it is once you realize that are free and safe from debilitating viruses, spyware, and malware that plague the Windows operating system.”
Lynch writes, “Microsoft is stupid and will never get security right, Apple already has… Smart computer users are abandoning Microsoft in droves and embracing Mac OS X and/or Linux.”
“And, thanks to Apple’s skill at elegant design, Mac OS X is also much easier on the eyes and far more intuitive than Windows 2000, XP, or even the deeply flawed Windows Vista (which was supposed to be Microsoft’s best shot at catching up to Mac OS X). All Microsoft had to do, in terms of design, was to copy Mac OS X, but they couldn’t even do that right. So they ended up with an ugly imitation of Mac OS X Tiger and then promptly fell even further behind after Apple released Mac OS X Leopard,” Lynch writes. “Instead of the simple elegance of Mac OS X, Vista looks like a Frankenstein OS…bolted together and looking more and more like a stumbling, walking corpse of an operating system… [It’s] a second-rate clone of Mac OS X…”
Much, much more in the full article here.
rather rhetorical statement is it not?
Bloody ‘ell. By the end of that article I _almost_ felt sorry for M$.
LOL.
as truthful as it gets!
That article sounds like it was written by MDN.
Has everyone here tried Vista? It truly is horrific, and I only switched to OS X in 2005. Good luck getting a steady network connection in Vista – it’s not gonna happen.
I don’t agree with the verse,
“Smart computer users are abandoning Microsoft in droves and embracing Mac OS X and/or Linux.”
I regret telling a couple of people about macs, cause they now whinge about how they can do things that they can’t in mac, because theres an easier and better way… for example, instead of Control-C in windows, it’s Command-C in macs…. and the whinge never stops.
Hence people, only introduce macs to those whom are sick on windows. If they like windows, and they’re stupid, let them be…
that way the only userbase for windows computers are stupid and whinging
For years I have been a Windows user. My transition to the Mac began when my office gave me PowerBook a few years ago as my laptop. I hesitated for a while. Slowly but surely I made my transition, even giving my $3,000 Dell XPS system to my 10 year old to play games.
Fact is, I got tired of the constant battle with Windows. Did I remember to update my antivirus? Should I open that email? What does the cryptic message mean? How do I force an offending program to close?
Well, to accommodate some of what I do, I even partitioned my MacBook Pro (barely 4 months old now) to run Vista. My God, I got frustrated with that piece of crap and just this week removed the Windows partition. Too much hassle.
Frankly, there are some good things to be said of XP. Vista? Total garbage. Too bad. My computing experience is of such that my next move to met my significant other a Mac. She has just finally seen the light. I guess she realizes it’s hell to get rid of the spyware that has infected her Sony laptop.
Tell us what you REALLY think!
Good article. Certainly he’ll be bashed royally by brain-dead Pee Sea drones.
Under duress, I installed a MIDI keyboard last Saturday on a Vista box…..what a nightmare.
That same keyboard just plugged into the Mac, and worked through GarageBand.
Why would anyone knowingly suffer through that?
Apple is coming back strong and that’s good. But as far as I’m concerned, calling a 300+ billions market cap company “stupid”, is in fact “stupid” !!!!!!!!!!
Microsoft is laughing at your article, they’ve managed to dominate an industry. Honnestly they must have done something right. Not seeing that doesn’t help nobody, including Apple.
Wake up MDN.
This article invites the usual arguments as to why Windows is spaghetti and why the UNIX foundation on OS X is so superior. We should never forget the positions two companies ended up in: Windows is held hostage by the enterprise customers. It is impossible for MS to turn around like Apple and re-work Windows from the ground up, building it on a totally different system. Legacy support is the curse of MS Windows throughout its history. There is simply no way Apple would have been able to make three major migrations in just ten years with the anvil of enterprise tied around its neck. From 68k to PPC code, from OS9 to OSX (cocoa/carbon), from PPC to Intel (Rosetta), every time they switched, they had left some developers and some applications behind. In the end, their product was cleaner, leaner, more effective and, over-all, much better for it.
There is an unrelated difference which cannot be argued as a mitigating factor for Microsoft, and that is User Interface. Nothing prevented MS from designing a good UI. Obviously, their best attempt at that (Vista) is an unqualified failure. And that is why Apple will continue to gain market hare.
Microsoft’s market share is more than 90%. Apple’s market share is less than 10%. Microsoft has a partner network, Apple does not.
When Microsoft released Vista, many drivers weren’t available. People said you can’t blame Microsoft for that, because the drivers are written by third parties.
When Apple released Leopard, all the drivers were included.
So how did this state of affairs come about?
XP is not bad, but Vista is truly a failure. I tried it on my other computer for a bit and its just a disaster. I cant even install Microsoft owns MSN without the whole screen going black and warning me twice that the program might be infected with spyware. I cant even move a file without “permission from the administrator.” I tried plugging in the Microsoft LIVE vision camera which works without drivers on XP, even Leopard, but it’s not compatible with Vista. I seriously hope Mac takes over, its just such a perfect, integrated experience.
<<
“Windows is held hostage by the enterprise customers”
>>
I think you got that backwards.
Talk about hyperbole! I find rants like that uninteresting no matter which side of the fence it comes from. I use XP, OSX, Vista, and OS 9 and have no problems with any of them. I prefer OS X, but the others are okay when you get used to them. Really.
Here’s the thing… Microsoft and Apple have two different business models. Apple’s prompts it to write better software, while Microsoft’s does not.
Are there any MDN readers who are enterprise Windows users during the day (especially in an IT support setting) and closet Mac users at home? If so, I’d like a bit of validation for the following:
Microsoft has created and nurtures a network of independent support specialists. These specialists attend seminars funded by Microsoft that show them previews of upcoming products and provides them with free, unlocked software. Fine.
What Microsoft also does is tell these folks which features in Windows are turned off with a default installation, which are turned on, etc., and how there are holes and vulnerabilities that exist and how each of these techs can swoop in, make these magical changes unknown to the average Windows user, and charge a hefty fee for their time and additional software needs.
So why wouldn’t Microsoft ship tighter software with proper default installation settings? Doesn’t this hurt their reputation? It’s because they get a percentage of each tech’s fee. It’s not in their best interest to ship software that doesn’t need support or even less support. It’s in their best interest to keep shipping shoddy software because most computer users don’t know enough to question their user experience.
I feel this is one of the biggest reasons there is such a chasm between Mac and Windows users. Mac users can’t believe what Windows folks are willing to put up with (and pay for), while the Windows users think the Mac people are blowing smoke because there’s no way their OS could be THAT much more stable and secure.
I’ve been a Mac user for years, and I have friends who were devout Windows users who have made the switch, not only with Macs but iPods and iPhones as well. But they still service Windows boxes during the day and attend the Microsoft seminars where they are taught how to essentially exploit their customers.
I’ve never seen an article written either online or in a mainstream tech publication calling Microsoft on the carpet for what essentially amounts to kickbacks. If there are any Windows techs out there, I’d enjoy having you prove me wrong and explain how at the end of the day you help the average computer user — like my mother or yours — have a better experience over the entire life span of owning a machine with Windows than they could by using a Mac mini.
That’s why Apple won’t get into enterprise. They aren’t willing to play the wine-and-dine game.
to iLuvMyMacs:
My point was that even if Microsoft had the creativity, the vision, the drive, to develop a good OS, they were held back by the enterprise demands of legacy support, which explains why in Vista you can still run DOS applications, and why in Leopard, you can’t even run OS 9 PPC apps (unless you have at least 3 years old Mac).
Obviously, at this point, that can only be accepted as a poor excuse for the Vista mess.
@ Predrag
I agree with the exception of “It is impossible for MS to turn around like Apple and re-work Windows from the ground up”.
MS needs to create a totally new SCO Unix-based OS that is clean, but fully incompatible with existing Windows apps. It needs to be aimed at the consumer (who care less for compatibility) with all new, modern consumer apps and hooks into the OS. They should then layer the old Windows as a compatibility layer over the top in virtualisation mode, similar to Parallels, to wean the users off the old Windows. But they need to keep selling XP/Vista to the enterprise forever since they will NEVER switch over. In the end they will have two OS’s to their current eleven (Win 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP, Vista, CE Mobile, Server, 64-bit, Zune, XBox).
Their problem is that this process took Apple 10 years to build. Even if MS began today they would only match today’s Apple in 10 years and Apple will be 10 years ahead. Maybe they should have made a hostile take-over bid for Apple!
@bioness
Um….. what?
Mac users are so smug/arrogant/superior?
I can hear the cries now….
And judging from the headline I expected the article to talk about the Yahoo purchase. “Stupid is as stupid does.”
There is a way out for MS but I don’t think they’ll take it.
First, they try to make the best of a bad job with the various versions of Windows by providing the best updates possible and, at the same time, lowering the prices.
That should keep the corporate world reasonably happy.
Secondly, they get a good design and developer team together and create a completely new and innovative OS, as Apple did.
This they then sell (again for a reasonable price) to run on PC’s with Windows – using their own versions of Bootcamp and/or Parallels. They could even bundle the two systems.
This would cost a lot but if they avoided wasting their money on desperate take-overs, they’d easily be able to afford it.
This would enable MS to use it’s present market dominance and slowly introduce an attractive, modern and stable OS.
But they’re probably too stupid …. which is good news for Apple.
HolyMackerel ,
I read your similar ideas after posting mine.
to HolyMackerel,
This could have / should have been done ten years ago, when there existed two paths of Windows (home user – Win98 <-> Enterprise with WinNT). Instead of moving to Windows ME (the previous unqualified disaster, before Vista), they could have built all-new code, with the blue-box type emulation layer (transparent running of old Windows code), much like the Classic environment (or Rosetta), forcing developers to begin delivering dual versions of Win Apps: Win2K (for legacy-supported enterprise version), and the UNIX-based WinME.
With all the predatory OEM deals MS had with HP/Compaq, Dell, Gateway and others, they would have been able to shove this new system down consumers’ throats without problems. With such guaranteed sales, they could have taken no more than three years to dominate the markets with that OS, possibly even getting enterprise to slowly move along.
Luckily for Apple, MS was asleep at the wheel, and is at this point in a coma, and the car is careening down the mountain side.
Apple has lost nearly 50% of its value in the last month, Microsoft has not….
to Quanto the redacter:
That is stock market. Apple is treated (rightfully) as a growth company; Microsoft has nowhere to grow, therefore, less to lose in slowing economy.
To put it in another way, Microsoft’s share is now around $28. It has been there for the past five years (since about 2003). It broke out a bit last year (up to about $37). Meanwhile, Apple is now around $120. First time it touched this was less than 8 months ago (early July). This means, While Apple had retreated to its July highs, Microsoft went back to its highs of 2003.
Wow, the only thing missing from this is intellectually stimulating headline was the ending ‘nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah’!
Any more red meat to throw for the rabid cultists?
Not to mention that while that $120 was an all-time high in July, Microsoft’s $37 last December was nowhere near their all-time high of about $57 in the summer of – 2000!!! (almost eight years ago!). At the time, Apple was around $35.
@Predrag. I repeat: Apple has lost nearly 50% of its value in the last month, Microsoft has not….
It was over $200, now $120.
There are other growth stocks out there – few or none have bombed like Apple in recent weeks.
Plus Microsoft pays a dividend of 1.5% (not much for sure, but better than nothing).
Apple?
I own Apple stock, not Microsoft. The Steve blew it by not splitting the stock when it was above $150; plus he is hiding in his Apple fortress not coming out in public to address the tremendous fall of his company´s stock and try to boost the stock price or stem the fall.
Imagine if the the U.S. stock market fell as much as Apple stock and George Bush hid in the White House afraid to meet the press and the people. I think he would be accused of a lot of things. The Steve?
I agree Microsoft is stupid! But it’s Apple’s stock that has tanked over 40% in one month (currently at $119/share)! Hard to be excited with those numbers!!!
Funny how the comments on ExtremeTech are generally outraged that anyone could suggest Windows is worse than OSX.
Do those guys all live inside their Windows boxes to never see the real world?
Damn! Finally someone with the grapes to tell it as it is.
Yeah Microsoft are so stupid they rule the world.
‘Insecure and fearful universe…with deblitating viruses, spyware, and malware ‘? Sure if you’re too stupid (like most mac users) to install proper protection.
And as for the myth of Windows instability, I’ve been running Vista for five months now and there hasn’t been the hint of a crash from programs or system.
It’s also silky smooth and breathtakingly fast thanks to the 4GB Intel quad-core beast of a machine I was able to buy for the price of an ugly mid-range, criminally underspecified iMac.
“Has everyone here tried Vista? It truly is horrific”
Yes I have, and you are 100% correct. I encourage everyone to experience the suckiness that is Shitsa. Go to your local Pee-Cee shop and enjoy the bogged down goodness of Fista that runs on a Core 2 Duo machine like Leopard runs on a first generation G3.
Excellent SmallAndFlaccid! Good job!
Microsoft Vista is terrible. They steal from others. They lie. They cheat. They just suck. What else is there. We mac users are not ARROGANT. We just know the facts. YAHOO knows this too. This is why they are trying to run from the hostile take over of Microsoft!!!!
As long as software vendors put all the value into developing MS Windows Only software for the enterprise. Microsoft will retain a monopoly strangle hold on the enterprise PC OS Market.
With any luck the US Military and government along with the EU might slowly break Microsoft’s strangle hold and reduce their strong arm tactics. The US Army is moving from Windows to Linux, the US Navy started dumping Windows in 2005 form all combat systems, then in 2007 they moved all their internet systems from Windows to MacOS X, the US Navy plans to replace Windows with MacOS and Linux over the next 3 -5 years. The US Air Force is in the process of moving all their internet connected systems from Windows to Mac OS X and Linux this year and are looking at dumping all Windows Desktop, Air Traffic Control, internal network and combat systems by 2017.
The EU keeps putting pressure on Microsoft for antitrust violations and most EU Member states have adopted the ODF format as the standard office file format and not the OOXML format that MS Office based, this will put a big crimp into MS Office sales in the EU. Many Scandinavian EU Members have adopted the one third OS rule for all government entities. This rule requires that all government entities deploy no more one third of the deployed computer systems in one OS (so, no more then one third of the computer system can be Windows OS.) The rule of the one third OS came about after a Windows virus outbreak that crippled and closed most government offices (including some of the emergency services) for a few days to over a week in Sweden. To prevent this from ever happening again the government created the one third OS rules
As an interesting bit of trivial only one government agency was totally unaffected by the virus. The office of Tourism and Culture, all of their systems were MacOS X desktops and Linux Servers.
An interesting twist in the one third OS rule is that a large number of big companies their Home Offices in the EU Scandinavian region has said they are looking at or will adopt the one third OS rules approach to prevent the same types of systems failure.
What this will mean in the long run is software vendors will slowly be forced to take all of their software development into a truly cross platform direction and not just releasing Windows Only Versions and if they do a Mac OS X or Linux Version it will not just be the half ass attempt at a port that does have all the same features as the Windows version does.
Why spend the energy to force or even worry about Heterogeneous computing? The simple fact is Microsoft does not want heterogeneous computing. The more propitiatory, dependent and closed the more Microsoft likes it. MS Silverlight is the perfect example, Microsoft is blowing all kinds of smoke on it’s cross platform solution for dynamic web content delivery. It is not cross platform as the Silverlight back end only runs on a Windows Server. The Silverlight back end is so full of MS Propitiatory crap code that creating an implementation to run on Linux or the MacOS X just is not going to happen. While I think Silverlight in the end will prove to be flop. Microsoft will continue it just as they have continued many of their OS and Server flops hoping that it might be adopted some day. Like they have done with .Net…
According to the Windows expert in this office, whose hands have never been sullied by a Mac, Vista only uses 3.3GB of memory, max. It’s a bug. With a simple patch it can use 4GB.
I read the article. Nothing informative. Just some guy ranting.
I think 90% of MDN visitors know this stuff already.
Let’s move on to real “news”.
But it plays games. And that is all that matters, right Zune Tang?
@Moo Cow
Good for you. Now, go play your games.
Fat, lazy, and stupid is no way to go through life.
I guess MS thinks being a rich bully more than makes up for it.
MS will only lose weight if it is starved.
Wake up, enterprise!
“Not seeing that doesn’t help nobody…”
uh…ok.??..or not… what the hell are you trying to say?
I’d like to get a second opinion from Rubber and Glue. Just kidding. Seriously, Windows must die.
“what the hell are you trying to say?”
I speak multiple negatives. It means, “I’ve gone blind. Will someone please help me?”
MS can do exactly what Apple did: create a new OS and maintain compatibility with the old. They’ve already Virtual PC to emulate things. But let’s not speak so loud, MS might actually do something with their future OS.
Just to say: real italian spagetti “al dente” and real swiss cheese (not the fake and tateless one in US surfaces) are too delicious to be compared with M$’s activities!
Me gusta:
Is it possible that Microsoft has achieved the ultimate combination of stupidity and incompetence, at a level never before achieved by any corporation?
¡Sí!
ZuneTang is missing…
@bioness
You can easily configure your keyboard under System Preferences on OS X to swap the Ctrl and Cmd keys so that most keyboard shortcuts work the same on either Windows or OS X. I always do that since I’m constantly switching back-and-forth between systems and also because it’s simply much easier for me to use the Ctrl key, physically–maybe because I’m a touch typist.
@iamdj
Thanks for that excellent suggestion – I think I might just go and play a game… BECAUSE I CAN! Especially as my PC has not one but two Nvidia GeForce 8600GT cards in an SLI configuration plus five Logitech speakers – again all for the same cost as a heavily-chinned, over-priced, under-specced iMac. Isn’t life wonderful?
Windows is COMPLETE AND UTTER CRAP
I’ve been trying to fix my friends PC and it’s been a nightmare.
I don’t want to help people anymore, period.
They all can die for all I care, fsck them.
For instance, MSN Hotmail. You sign into Hotmail and instead of your mail displaying like you intended, there is some news and other crap in the way first. So you go into a limited preferences and say “just take me to my email” and it doesn’t work. You check the setting and they are the same. You try again it works, then again it doesn’t work. Then it works then it doesn’t.
ITS CRAZY!! MICROSOFT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN OUT TO THE FIELD AND PUT DOWN!!
If your using a PC, god help your sorry ass. Get a Mac, it’s the absolute TRUTH!!!
Microsoft is the American car maker of software companies…
Ugly, uncreatively designed products, with horrible low reliability, stuttering performance and lousy efficiency by any standard, pulling most of the parts out of a parts bin strew with clunky pieces from models made a decade ago.
It always struck me how similar Microsoft’s technology previews and demos are to much like American brand show cars… they look exciting and different, and with innovative style and creative applications of technology… But when the actual product ships two or three years later… having been drawn through the design by committee shredder, it’s design, once innovate is not looking dated with key design elements watered down terribly or replaced with off-the shelf components, most or all of the promised technology improvements dropped entirely, and those that somehow managed to survive seem as it they had been sabotaged to protect the oil industry… and they wonder why the product fails, and only watered-down, beer swilling NASCAR loving uneducated losers buy them up (with the underpowered, underperforming, hardly efficient base model engine)…
Let’s face it folks… We are surrounded by rednecks… they buy American cars and trucks and Windows PCs at WalMart.
AND WHAT’s WORSE?
The poor fool idiot who has been brainwashed into only doing things a particular way.
So you try to help this imbicile do things a better way, to avoid problems and they HATE YOU.
“Why can’t I do it like before?” “It was so easy before you placed Safari on my PC”
“IE is responsible for all your viruses, why you had to pay $160 for someone to clean your machine to make it work again”
“But at least I knew where everything was before, now I’m lost”
“Well I can install IE and you’ll just have viruses and spyware again”
“But isn’t there a way to just clean them off”
“Yes, but it’s closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out”
“What horses? Trojan horses?” “Where’s the BIG E now?”
Installed IE 7 today on idiots computer just in case.
For some reason it doesn’t use Javascript.
God help me, nothing on the web works without Javascript.
Please somebody shoot me…
Not that I’m dismissing Apple’s design excellence, but I sure wish I could run OSX on something other than Apple hardware…
The thing I believe most people have missed is that Microsoft is no longer an operating system company. Oh, they have an OS, and they continue to develop it–at least in theory. But by insisting on backwards compatibility all the way back to Win95 (if not DOS 3.1) they’re doomed to continue shipping crap. Worse, they don’t care anymore. They care about games, advertising and search but not about operating systems.
Microsoft is trying to be all things to all businesses, and in the process they’ve allowed their primary competencies to wither. If the purchase of Yahoo! goes through Microsoft will be dead within 10 years. If it doesn’t, and Ballmer remains CEO they’ll also be dead–it will just take a little longer.
Per IndieFan at the ExtremeTech Discussion Board:
You may know a thing or two about computers, software, and operating systems, but if you do it certainly doesn’t come across in this article. I use both Mac and PC, and I constantly get into debates with Apple-heads about which is better. First of all, I find Macs to be far less reliable than they claim. However, even assuming they are completely reliable out of the box, you seem to miss a major point of why Macs are, while good machines, simply a trendy, followers machine. Like all Apple products, you have to pay an insane amount of money to get all the swell features Mac brags about, and you are limited to only using Apple products with it. Your rant about virus, spyware etc.? Idiotic. I can buy a $2,000 Mac for its OS stability, or buy a $400 PC that will have the same stability after $30 in software is installed….let me think….
Mac used to be the only way to go for audio, video, and graphics applications. However, it lost its edge ten years ago. You can get a good, custom PC with all the bells and whistles you want, great software, and great stability, for less than half of what you pay for a Mac. Macs are the Rolex of the computer industry. It tells time just as well as the cheap Timex, but trendy idiots will insist it’s worth the ridiculous markup.
And your claim that Microsoft is stupid and their coding sucks? Guess what? Microsoft owns part of Apple, writes much of their software now, and Macs are now using Intel processors. Macs are just PCs in Mac clothing and you pay 4 or 5 times as much for them. What you get is less versatility for upgrade, software choice, and expansion….oh, but also your choice of super-pretty colors!
So who’s stupid?
This is a typic PC user response. This person is either really young or has been out of touch with computer since the mid 90’s.
MS does not own Apple. Those were non-voting shares. Do some homework.
MS does not write Apple’s software. That would be done by Apple. Do some homework.
Only limited to Apple products? Oh, you mean like USB, eSATA, Firewire, MS Office, Adobe Suite, Internal and External drives? Right, didn’t think you knew what you were talking about.
Macs cost 4x or 5x a PC? The cost is NEVER that different and, if you had comparable specs, the PC is roughly the SAME cost.
It’s PC people like this that makes me GLAD I charge PC folks to fix their never-ending malware issues. Apparently, only PC people buy my Macs. For that, I say thanks!
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I loved the article. But Microsoft is not second-rate, it is tenth-rate or worse.
Anyone who remembers M$ Bob knows that ‘Microsoft innovation’ is an oxymoron.
The reason M$ is “worth” $300B+ is that people are basically stupid, i.e. they are so easily influenced. After all they voted Bush into the presidency, drive SUVs, drink bottled water in plastic bottles, thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and believe the earth, sun, moon, the stars and all life on this planet was “created” whole as we now know it. M$ bid of $44B for Yahoo is like the owners of the Titanic buying new deck chairs. But M$ will not die gently, unlike Yahoo, it will try to convince us that we need to still own a horse & buggy even after the road in front our homes becomes free and we have free and immediate access to wherever we want to go.
Come on Zune Tang! Stop that WoW Raid that you are on, and chime in. We Macsheep need your clear, well worded, reasoned rebuttal to this.
MS is the 800 pound gorilla moving on momentum only. The reason they have 300 bil in cash is because they had nearly a 20 year stretch w/o significant competition, mostly due to a lot of unethical business practices. It takes time, but eventually you can’t run on momentum alone.
Vista is the first really visible public failure. For the first time companies are refusing to upgrade to the latest MS OS. That is a huge statement. Meanwhile Apple gains record market shares.
Calling one stupid and the other not is a generalization, but it’s clear which company is the one building momentum now.
@ Amos
You think that people are basically stupid because they “believe the earth, sun, moon, the stars and all life on this planet was created”. How else do you think things came to be? The universe and everything in it didn’t just suddenly appear. Your statement basically says that our lives are just “accidents” and I don’t believe that at all. Please tell me you don’t think we evolved from monkeys.
Fistula, nuff said.
No, Kev, we didn’t evolve from monkeys. Their line and ours split off from our common ancestor a few steps back.
I really hope you’re being sarcastic.
What’s all the hoo-hah about playing games? I work all day on my iMac and then go ape with quake 4 which runs beautifully. Are these windows guys under the impression there are NO games for Mac?
“they were held back by the enterprise demands of legacy support, which explains why in Vista you can still run DOS applications”
You can run DOS applications on Macs and Linux as well it doesn’t mean anything, DOS has been emulated since NT 3.1 back in the early 90’s. The same argument was used to say x86 processes had too much baggage being backward compatible to XTs but it doesn’t seem to slow down the new Intel processors.
I also like how so many people say Windows is spaghetti code, we must have a lot of ex-Microsoft kernel developers here
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“But by insisting on backwards compatibility all the way back to Win95 (if not DOS 3.1)”
Mmm most of the complaints I’ve heard about Vista is that the backwards compatibility to XP sucks. As far as running Win95 programs on it I’d like you to provide an example, just one.
Wow quake 4, that’s serious. Did you guys get asteroids too?
There is no underestimating the gullibility of humans. Many still read the astrology section of their papers/magazines, buy fraudulent medical devices, or even special water. Fact is, trying to get Windows users to accept that their OS sucks is like trying to tell christians that there is no life after death. Both camps cannot fathom such concepts.
“Yeah Microsoft are so stupid they rule the world”
Nope, they ruled the world, just like IBM before them. What we’re seeing now is the first stages of their decline and fall.
IBM was able to transform, adapt, and become relevant again, thanks to Lou Gerstner. MS doesn’t have that kind of talent in the executive suite.
-jcr
Well, well what do we have here? Just a little something for you. I got Vista the week it came out. I subjected it to evry phishing site, trojan infested hole I could find on the internet. Guess what? Vista performed as advertised. Every infection was stopped before install, or was interupted before system take over. Do that with our little wannabes you call macs.
The truth is and will remain, until Apple throws off this mantra that we are God and PC is crap, that the script kiddies will go after Windows and OS 10 or whatever will go blissfully along at 3-6% of the market unmolested. Why because no one gives a shit for that 3-6%. Think about it folks, taking on the bully was much more rewarding than picking on the playground sissy.
A windows PC is CHEAP. That’s why they get purchased over and over. Most people would rather deal with virus and trojan problems if they feel like that haven’t spent much money.
“Heck, I only spent $250.00 dollars on it, besides my [insert family member or IT person] can fix it for me. Why waste a lot of money on a dang computer” – generic PC user
Quantity over Quality. I’m surrounded by it.
@Crash
I’m glad you feel safe surfing your porn sites with Vista.
long time mac user here, no problems… use my guitar, keyboard, just plug and play… no virus protection, just common sense. all wireless, 3 comps in home, all run flawlessly. if anything hangs over 30 seconds, WHAM! command/option/escape, i force quit, reload, and go. Even that doesn’t happen often! I have to fix 2 windows comps tomorrow from in-laws- both are down, totally inoperable due to virus infestation. also, a 3rd won’t even boot. all are less than 2 years old, and have had NOTHING but problems. Windows just doesn’t get it, unless the “it” is a virus, unfortunately. i am getting tired of fixing the blasted pc’s.
@John
As I noted in my post, your not getting it. The reason PC has the virus attacks is the script kiddies love the big audience. And quite frankly Mac does not have it, now if they ever get some traction, then you will see the attacks begin.
Google the internet on Mac DOS, or trojan or vulnerabilities you will find them. As quoted by some of the vulnerability professionals, Mac OS is really just a problem waiting to happen. The whole base is unstable and full of exploits waiting to be used.
@crash
You would think that the user base with 5-8% of unprotected Mac OS X users is already big enough to attract virus and trojan authors. Big infected base for spreading the crap.
And yet, there’s not ONE virus in the wild (!) right now… Just proof-of-concepts that require a stupid user (or local access).
@ all the people saying “Oh yeah MSFT is stupid – they just own the whole world, nub.”
1. you have no idea how business works. You can only rest on your laurels for so long
2. think of all the people that will lose their jobs if msft doesn’t pull its head in and things go pear shaped for them
3. market share is – frankly – irrelevant to contributing something worthwhile to the ongoing evolution of technology. That might sound like liberal stuff, but I think Apple has changed the playing field with their attention to detail. People ARE starting to wake up to the fact that they want their tech experience to be seemless and invisible. That don’t want to have to stuff around with something to get it to work… they just want it to WORK. And msft doesn’t get it. It is for msft’s own benefit to listen hard to articles like this one
mw: faith
@ hs No really you dont get it. Msft is getting it. They do listen. Apple is the one with its head in the sand. Thinking they are all that and Sunday dinner too. Man they cant even allow for user experience to be expressed truthfully, they find a thread not to their liking and they make it go away. Kinda of like ummm der Fuerher Steve Jobs. Man he reminds me of when in the fourth grade the rich kid didnt like the outcome of the soccor game he grabbed his ball, called all of us stupid and went home.
If you go back to Bills earliest days he expressed his drive to get technology in the hands of all, make it simple in design, ease of use, and smooth in integraton of everything. Whether that be at home, at the office, on a plane or train.
And look at what is coming about.
Oh thats right you fanbois got your heads up your…. I mean in the sand just like the rest of that one hit wonder of a company.
@elgarak
Man cant you fanbois Google http://www.scmagazineus.com/Second-Mac-virus-in-the-wild/article/32987/ or maybe this http://www.pctechtalk.com/index.php?m=show&id=4473
Now go running back to der Fuerher and complain that I said a bad thing about his OS…
Man you fanbois are too easy to rile
“You would think that the user base with 5-8% of unprotected Mac OS X users is already big enough to attract virus and trojan authors.”
Mmm I’m writing a virus what should I write it for. GEM for Atari ST, a good option but not many people use it anymore, maybe Mac OSX now that’s got 5% of the market, wow. Now lets look at windows 90 % of the market, I think I’ll go for that.
That’s how all of them think. The only reason you get any viruses on the Mac is because some people really really really hate Mac fanboys
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You really do not need to read any further than the first paragraph in this article.
‘Nuff said.
I say to Micros$oft via Billy Joel’s song:
“I love you just the way you are.”
Because I’m on a Mac, and as long as M$ doesn’t go changing, Apple’s user % goes up, and my stock goes up. Thank you for making me thousands $$ Microsoft! : )
“Don’t go changing………….”
And yet still some 95% of customers prefer Microsoft Windows powered PCs to Macs.
Lets see, be stupid and get 95% of the worldwide market or be smart and get 3%. At least as far as ability to make good business decisions it seems your definitions of smart and stupid are are screwed up.
Its only in Mac Fanboy World that the demise of Microsoft is imminent.
@Crash,
Those were cool links. I’m surprised they’re still around they’re so old. And I’m surprised Macs across the world haven’t succummed to them – especially after Sophos says “the good news is that Inqtana is not going to spread successfully in the wild” (Apple released a patch against the vulnerability in mid 2005).
Isn’t spreading in the wild the purpose of most viruses?
Please come back and tell us when the first expoit that can take over a Mac without the user giving permission is causing damage beyond a proof-of-concept lab.
@ crasch: “If you go back to Bills earliest days he expressed his drive to get technology in the hands of all, make it simple in design, ease of use, and smooth in integraton of everything. Whether that be at home, at the office, on a plane or train.”
Too bad he still hasn’t achieved his drive and probably won’t even in his old days.
@me: “Mmm I’m writing a virus what should I write it for. GEM for Atari ST, a good option but not many people use it anymore, maybe Mac OSX now that’s got 5% of the market, wow. Now lets look at windows 90 % of the market, I think I’ll go for that.”
Or maybe, if I’m able, write two seperate viruses and get 95% of the market. You’d think the challenge of creating the first wide-spread havoc-wreaking virus for OSX would be appealing. Isn’t that how they think as well?
@Johnsson
No Bills dream is not realized, never will be. By its very essence that dream will be a never ending drive to aspire to something more integrated, smoother in implementation, ease of use and generally superior to the last generation of software and hardware. I expect this type of comment from you folks though.
Your statements indicate a strong need to believe your products are there and everyone is not. Typical Apple fanbois.
You guys dont realize that integration is not just a PC, MP3 player and a (hobby) tv tuner. Look at the Sync for Ford, look to the search, advertising software. Look at the virtualization going on now with Msft. At the 2008 did you notice the touch demonstration, that technology is going to go far with Universities, pub schools, librairies, and just about any reatil sales position that is foward thinking in presenting product to the consumer. Think about sitting down at a bar a ordering drinks, appt and meal just with a touch interface built into the table.
Keep trying Apple you might just get it.
“Or maybe, if I’m able, write two seperate viruses and get 95% of the market. You’d think the challenge of creating the first wide-spread havoc-wreaking virus for OSX would be appealing. Isn’t that how they think as well?”
Only the ones that really hate Apple, the vast majority only think about how many credit card numbers they can steal.
@ Crash: “Google the internet on Mac DOS, or trojan or vulnerabilities you will find them.”
Exactly, that’s the only way you’ll find them.
The reason people get viruses on windows and not mac is mainly because nobody cares about writing viruses for macs. Why attack 10% of the market at once when you can attack 90%?
I haven’t even gotten 1 single trace of malware in the past 2 years. Even if I get problems, they are easily fixed imo.
Vista fails because it was a frantic rush of an incomplete OS. Yes, it does hog memory, but that’s because of its backwards compatability, searching index, and secretive hotfix installer.
Oh, and it’s not like Macs don’t crash either… I used a few new macs for college and boy did they give me hell with Photoshop and Illustrator… 🙁 And those damn standard one-button mice… I wish they’d just switch to multi-button mice like the rest of the world..