“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.
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“Windows is held hostage by the enterprise customers”
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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….