“Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews,” Jessica Mintz reports for The Associated Press.
MacDailyNews Take: The only “fans” of Windows are those who’ve not yet tried a Mac.
Mintz continues, “No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows. For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.”
MacDailyNews Take: Why panic when you can simply get a Mac? You can even slum it with XP until you quickly figure out that you don’t want to boot Windows anymore.
Mintz continues, “Galen Gruman… a longtime technology journalist… started a Save XP Web petition, gathering since January more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.”
MacDailyNews Take: The depth of delusion boggles the mind. When the wheel was invented, do you suppose there were cavemen who just completely ignored its existence for years and instead clamored to “Save the Sled” instead of using the “New, Improved Sled with Spikes” that some Neanderthal had just introduced?
Mintz continues, “Microsoft already extended the XP deadline once, but it shows no signs it will do so again. The company has declined to meet with Gruman to consider the petition.”
More Luddite lunacy here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MidWest Mac” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: The Windows sufferers with their Stockholm Syndrome are just so amusing sometimes! They’re sitting in a leaky, rapidly-listing barge and we’re floating alongside in our gleaming yacht and they just simply refuse to get in. They always yell the same thing, too: “We just need one more patch!” Whatever. We have lobster to eat and champagne to drink.
No, please don’t take my OS X 10.2 away!!!
Oh, wait…
“irritating security pop-up windows”
Microsoft Windows Vista’s security features are irritating by design.
“In a Thursday presentation at RSA 2008 in San Francisco, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC (User Account Control), admitted that Microsoft’s strategy with UAC was to irritate users and ISVs in order to get them to change their behavior.
‘The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I’m serious,’ said Cross.
‘We needed to change the ecosystem, and we needed a heavy hammer to do it,’ Cross said.”
(source: http://www.crn.com/software/207100934)
@Ampar:
Now that it has been public for quite sometime, why is no one out there screaming at the top of their lungs about suing MS? This is really crazy in how people view MS. I guess MDN is correct in reference to the Stockholm Syndrome.
last january? i thought it was a year-ago january?
” . . . why is no one out there screaming at the top of their lungs about suing MS?”
Because they have nightmares of being attacked by a scary monster while they sleep?
Today I saw my first Vista BSD. It came when my co-worker plugged in a projector after I unplugged his laptop so I could make presentation with my MB. Don’t laugh too much my MB crashed when when I brought it out of sleep and plugged the projector into my laptop. That was annoying.
What was interesting is the M$ put a reboot timer on BSD’s. So you get this new BSD screen that automatically reboots the machine after x number of seconds….way to fix the BSD!
In an age where technology advances every 6 nanoseconds, it’s purely pathetic that people have a legitimate need for a 7-year-old OS. This is not a slam at users; it’s a slam at Microsoft that Vista isn’t better than XP in every single way.
Yes! Bring back Panther…
Sign right here….
______________________________________
This is like having an ugly wife (because having an OS is like being married) getting her a make over, and then begging her to go back to her old, hideous, buggy, disgusting self.
I just summed up PC users.
“That’s a shame”
-Kel Varnson
See what happens when you put the wrong shade of lipstick on the pig?
FANS?
Prisoners is more apt.
Ampar… Windows “users” are attacked by a scary monster every time they boot up!
Except for companies that keep custom applications in their portfolios I find my self being naive as to why this is such big freaking deal. In other words, if you want to keep using XP keep using it – right? If I want to keep using Tiger or Panther I just keep using them. Obviously I have to live with their respective limitations, but… So what am I missing? Or are religiously Windowed Windows users really the unweaned little teat suckers they seem to be?
With the save XP revolt, the down with Vista campaign, and the Yahooligans stoking the fires in preparations for a Microsoft raid.
Microsoft is looking like it’s backing itself into a very tight corner that I don’t think their going to get out of without loosing a lot of shareholder value and cash.
Ballmer should just go ahead and shave his ass and start walking backward now and not wait for the directors to start looking to extract a few tons of flesh from him after the financial and PR disasters happens.
It’s not the OS they want, it’s the ability to run their apps in a familiar environment. I recently left a large federal organization which put its “upgrade” to Vista on indefinite hold, but didn’t allow one to procure Macs even to replace older computers. So they put themselves into a bind.
BTW, anyone else notice that an OEM copy of Windows XP costs *more* than the business version of Vista?
MDN: There’s no reason for your comments on this topic. These are IT departments and support people. They don’t have the option to go OS X. And they don’t want to support a bloated unnecessary Vista. All they need is XP. There is no compelling reason to “upgrade” to Vista. They can’t run their apps under OS X.
So MDN, STFU. Your comments are beside the point.
Classic case of being caught between a rock and a window.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I am not gonna upgrade XP->Vista, I will wait until Windows 7 is released.
I have used XP for years and it works ok in my book, no big problems at all over the years.
Mac OS might be better but I am too lazy to switch OS, also.. with XP I have tons more 3d party apps&games;at my disposal.
I don’t think there’s a bad Windows in the bunch and I wish Microsoft made all versions of Windows available for purchase. Sure, some people complain about Windows ME, and others might find Windows 2.0 a little long in the tooth, but they should be available so that Windows fans like myself can relive the joy and excitement of the GUI OS that started it all.
You MAC lemmings might be interested to know where Apple got all of their ideas.
” rel=”nofollow”>Here’s an example of the original MAC OS X dock concept. Awesome!
Your potential. Our passion.™
@raskol,
I was going to let a dead-horse lie, but I have put up with so much utter nonsense from IT depts for the last 25 years that I have to say that, the preliminary phrases, “… I [We] just…”, or, “… all I [We] need to do is…”, should be eradicated from the vocabulary’s of pro IT and support personnel. It’s exactly that minimizing sort of get-by mentality practiced by people who actually know what the score is that has gotten those described in this latest MDN article in the position that they now find themselves.
Remember that in those becoming-less-rare places in the enterprise market place where OS X is beginning or has already been making inroads, change is often due to the common sense voices of the end users – not IT. So if the front-line worker can make or at least initiate change how the hell do IT depts. justify their positions?
In the words of Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact, “… funny, I always thought that life is what we make of it…”
@raskol,
Thank you for brining common sense into the discussion. I am fortunate the IT guys where I work wouldn’t think of looking beyond Microsoft solutions. Ever.
Windows forever, MAC never!
Your potential. Our passion.™
Hey…I just loaded Lobster 2.0 and it’s amazingly snappy.
Bring back OS 7! (still better than XP)
Reading the awesome comment about the wheel made my macbook pro snappier!!!
Hey Zune Tang, wanna know where MS learned to ‘innovate’ their GUI? Take a look and weep!
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macos11
“They always yell the same thing, too: “We just need one more patch!” Whatever. We have lobster to eat and champagne to drink.”
This is poetry! I love it! MDN, you could not be more correct.
Vista just arrived and people are *already* saying “I’ll upgrade when Windows 7 comes out.” News to these people: Windows “7” is NOT going to be any better than Vista. So there’s no use in prolonging your agony. Really. This reasoning that they have… it is entirely incomprehensible. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Simply astounding.
–mAc