“Not content to blow both feet off with a shotgun, Microsoft is going for the kneecaps now by blackmailing it’s customers,” Charlie Demerjian writes for SemiAccurate. “If you are still dumb enough to use Windows, you are about have your wallet shaken down by Microsoft in a familiar yet still unwelcome way.”
“We don’t feel the need to sugarcoat this much because the company’s behavior is so blatant and uncaring it is almost staggering. Worse yet the victims, that would be almost all Windows users, have only themselves to blame because the pattern has been well laid out for years now,” Demerjian writes. “Microsoft has been unapologetically blackmailing users for years, anyone who bought one of their products in the last few years should have known better.”
“What are we talking about? Windows 7, Windows 8, and security. Microsoft has been putting out OSes that are both unsecurable and known vulnerable because it makes them more money,” Demerjian writes. “Fixing their security problems would cost them quite a bit of sales so they simply do not make the attempt to fix any of the gaping systemic design problems with security in their offerings, instead they just redefine security and cut out any press that dares question their approach. Ad money works wonders here, just go look at the initial glowing reviews for Windows 8 if you don’t believe me.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Aparajita” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Defending Windows over Macintosh a sign of mental illness – October 13, 2003
After reading the article I can see that this writer is insane. Windows XP is extremely old. I mean extremely. Companies don’t even support software for it anymore at this point. Adding just like apple has its place in the world, windows does as well. Their are thousands of programs that don’t work on apple. Plus Windows does do some things right. Such as their AD system. And as much as people like OD, it can’t handle the larger user capacity like AD. Which is probably why Apple is partnering with IBM. In order to create a system that can handle extremely large business infrastructure.
“…that don’t work on Apple.”
Lol. Clearly you don’t have any real experience using Macs. Move on troll.
Im a mac admin. I work in business setting Macs up. It reality that you have to accept. I still love mac but we have to be honest with ourselves. Maybe you don’t have nay experience in the business world.
You’ll on here, do not like the truth at all. Its really sad.
“Their are”, “Im a”, “It reality”, “nay”, “You’ll on here”, “Its”. And more.
If you want to claim Mac and business expertise, semidavis, you really need to take a couple of seconds and check your spelling and grammar. Your writing destroys any possible credibility… before even getting as far as actually considering any of your points.
Sean, as a non-native-speaker I can usually spot an American by these kinds of mistakes. Surely I too make them, but in reading I can almost always tell. Accept….on this forum. Most people here, American and other, are pretty good at grammar.
This probably has to do with the level of education Mac users have. So semidavis (must be an American judging by the name, half a davis) is clearly an American AND a Windows user.
You may flame me for this if it makes you feel better 🙂
And his son is Semi Davis Jr.
Yes, there is the incessant American “loose marketshare”. Then we have the old favorite… it’s for its. Etc.
But the VOLUME of errors in that post! That was exceptional.
That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. IM not good at grammar that doesn’t discount what i am saying,
What kind of software doesn’t work on a Mac? Macs run pretty much all x86_64 and i386 software, which includes all software made for Mac, Windows, and/or Linux in the ten or so years. They can even run very old Mac software made for PowerPC by running Snow Leopard or other versions of Mac OS with legacy support.
“Maybe you don’t have nay [sic] experience in the business world.” Probably. Too much bullshit in that world. I have better things to do than have business meetings with morons like you who don’t actually know shit about what you are talking about.
Apparently you don’t like the truth. Or you would see that there are plenty of applications that do the same thing on a a Mac as a PC. And you don’t have to pay for OS upgrades like you do for Windows. Macs can handle anything PC’s can and do it more reliably and safely as the article suggests. Microsoft doesn’t care. Apple is partnering with IBM to improve it’s corporate business and to show Admins like you that there are many solutions on a Mac for any application out there. And with the iPad and iPhone being wanted by most corporations and CEO’s it just makes more sense to get rid of PC’s.
The point about Windows XP is that Microsoft is continuing to patch it, no matter how decrepit it is, IF you fork over $500 a year. IOW: Extortion, just as the article’s author indicates.
Upgrading to wretched Windows 8 is NOT the point. Microsoft Just Want The $Money$.
This I can believe.
But the snippet, sounds crazy, and gives me little incentive to click through. I only came here to read the comments.
I don’t think Microsoft deliberately makes shoddy product to collect extra revenue, I believe they create shoddy product. Then looks to recoup expenses incurred to fix it.
The real problem, if you set up an enterprise from scratch with Linux or Mac OS, then you are fine. You can do pretty much everything. However if you set up an enterprise when at the time the best offer was Microsoft, now you are stuck. You have apps, which is dependent on Windows. That’s pretty much 99% of the business world. (I made that up by the way, I really don’t know what the spread is like.)
For the record: I use Mac, and Mac OS as my main system. However I do support Windows, AD, and an Enterprise. I need Windows to do my job competently. But I survive quite well on a Mac. All my Windows stuff is on VM Fusion, VMware Infrastructure, via – RDP, VDI, and a large library of system models I support.
Nearly all of the productivity packages for the enterprise are written exclusively for Windows. Oracle is one example. That’s possibly the biggest lock Windows has on enterprise businesses.
One ‘hope’ is that Apple’s association with IBM in the enterprise will gradually spill over from the current iPad/iOS focus into the Mac as well. That would give enterprise code developers and incentive to get off the Windows and progress upward to OS X. We’ll see.
Your workplace sounds like it’s stuck in a 90’s timewarp – a time when monkey boy dance moves were the hip.
Things have moved on since then. The largest tech layoffs this year mainly involved IT doofuses and productivity package operators. Nobody wants these characters anymore – they’re a dead weight and constant financial drain even if you paid them minimum wage.
Another Windows-only productivity package is PeopleSoft, which is yet another Oracle offering these days. There are others, but my brain is not at optimum capacity at this time of day. I certainly have a lot of experience from the doofus infested 90’s. But a lot of this stuff lingers on and on and on.
Thankfully, the monotheistic computer worship lunacy is gradually ending, as you pointed out. To each their own for their own purpose.
A number of enterprise-scale implementations of Oracle’s PeopleSoft sukcessfully employ the web UI so that Mac and PC clients have equal network standing.
I’ve been attempting to talk about the fact that Microsoft Server still rules in most companies and why. I’m not talking about workstations, clients or network access to the server. I know the noise level is high around here. But apparently the noise has been high enough in my brain to make me not quite coherent enough to make my point clear.
Sometimes I lose track of why I bother. Then I remember that there are some kewl people around here and that I’m no genius of communication, which of course has repercussions.
All of Oracle’s apps are web based so OS does not make a difference. The exception is Oracle Forms and Reports which need Windows to create apps.
Flounder!
It’s too bad Apple doesn’t throw a few billion Oracle’s way to rewrite those same enterprise apps for Mac. Ditto for other enterprise software companies. You really want to present no excuses to CEO’s and IT doofuses still lingering not to use a Mac.
Jobs and Ellison were friends. If Jobs couldn’t get Ellison to wake up…
But, as others in the thread have been pointing out: At least clients have a variety of OS/Web options for connecting to their server software. That is indeed a great improvement since the 1990s.
Most businesses run Oracle on UNIX/Linux boxes which Macs can connect to using the Oracle Instant Client which is available from the Oracle website.
If you need to run Oracle on your Mac then you can install it with VirtualBox. I have done so and it works great,
Oracle runs on more that just Windows. Most organizations that use Oracle run it on UNIX/Linux.
It can also be run locally on a Mac with VirtualBox.
Where on earth did you come up with that one?
I’m specifically talking about the SERVER that runs the software. What fun it is to be pointlessly critical.
Oracle is not nor has ever been completely tied to Windows Servers. Perhaps some further clarification from you is needed because what you are stating does not make any sense whatsoever.
And, Derek, what fun it is to be pointlessly snarky.
It adds nothing to your clarification. It wouldn’t take a “genius of communication” to have been clear about that in the first place. No need to “botvijerk” him. You degrade your posting by doing so.
From Oracle’s website (gawd I get sick of these obnoxious conversations!):
Technology Solutions
Big Data
Data Warehousing
Database Migration
High Availability
Internet of Things
Java Technology
Linux
Open Source
Oracle Optimized Solutions
Security
Server Consolidation
Service-Oriented Architecture
Solaris
Virtualization
Windows and .Net
Do you find Mac on this list? NO.
What’s the subject of this thread? MICROSOFT.
Next: How about we see if we can download Oracle database of OS X!
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index-092322.html
Oops, we can’t. You can get old version 10 for OS X (current version is 12) IF you make a special request and already own an Oracle license. Great Mac support, huh!
What DOES Oracle offer for OS X? Lots of Java stuff. And wouldn’t we all rather Oracle took their ruined rendition of Java and shoved it back up their orifice? I sure do! I Hate Oracle!
So Kent Dorfman, you were saying?
[BTW: Too tired of this thread to bother replying again, so have at me. Wee!]
I have to respond to the latest post here because there is no reply available to Derek’s unintelligble reponse.
In you original post you stated:
Nearly all of the productivity packages for the enterprise are written exclusively for Windows. Oracle is one example. That’s possibly the biggest lock Windows has on enterprise businesses.
Which is clearly not the case.
You apparently know nothing about Oracle whereas I have been an Oracle developer for over 15 years.
“After reading this article…”
Yeah, I don’t think you did, given that your comment doesn’t appear to have one thing to do with the article’s premise.
——RM
So.Happy to be part of the Cult. Its stories like this that continuously reify my decision to switch oh so many years ago. I just don’t have this level of crap to deal with anymore.
Read the whole thing. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people are so stupid and continue to put up with this behavior when such a wonderful alternative is available.
From my POV, the Microsoft abuse started with DOS and has continued through every version of Windows. Working with their software is always about ‘Do It My Way Or The Highway’, and their way is almost always obtuse and annoying.
When I was forced at work (blessedly) to learn how to use a Mac, as I climbed the learning curve, it was a process of increased excitement and enthusiasm that I had NEVER had for computing before. I’d learned BASIC coding back in 1974 on a terminal. I’d coded giant stacks of cards to be fed into mainframes. I’d done statistical analysis in DOS and written up data summaries in the DOS version of Word Perfect (what a pain). Then there’s this scary new Mac IIci put in front of me…
Free at last! Free at last!
Similar experience here. When the huge company I worked for offered me a choice of a IICi and a LaserWriter, I was elated. The rest of the 200 or so people has DOS PCs and spent hours a day standing in groups around printers all trying to figure out why their stuff wouldn’t print or wasn’t WYSIWYG (or anything close). I used that IICi there for years. They even let me order an accelerator card for it. Sadly, in the mid 90s that company sunsetted the Macs and took them all away. It was more than a decade later before the PCs could do (in a GUI), the stuff I was doing with that IICi.
I make a point to read the “highly recommended” articles MDN links to, but trying to ingest that awful diction was like stabbing myself in the eyes repeatedly.
We have to use pcs at work. Luckily we skipped vista and were only forced to changed from Xp once the licenses ran out. Win7 isn’t bad. Since we have a firewall and massive security programs there are no major issues. Dreading having to use win 8. Every other windows os is okay so here’s hoping win 9 will not be a dog
Forced to use Win 7… XP was our corporate favorite. Now we can’t get off it fast enough. We have a love hate relationship with Win 7. Win 8, is pretty much confusion hate relationship. However, since we have Win 7 supported as 32bit. It’s been decided that Win 8 will be 64bit only. We solve two problems minimizing our exposure to configs.
Frankly I think Windows 9 will be the ticket.. Or at least I hope so. Let me explain this. In the Windows world, where you must have Windows, then I think 9 won’t be better that 7, (usability wise) But it will be better than 8 and 8.1.. It will be more mature.
The real trend? OS/Hardware agnostic, as resources move to the web and HTML 5. At this point it doesn’t matter what you have. But you better pick the most secure foundation, which is either Linux or Mac OS… as I see it.
I think you’re right. Those who use Winblows are waiting for the tiled travesties in Windows 8 to be rectified in Windows 9. Windows will always be travesty in any form, just the lesser of productivity evils from version to version.
What I’m getting a little disturbed about are long time and Academy Award winning Mac movie industry professionals I know are starting to express a desire to switch to PC’s because of the perception of Apple’s poor pro commitment. Final Cut Pro X doesn’t support some of the same pro formats Premiere Pro does and whatever happened to Shake’s Pro VFX digital composite replacement Phenomenom? Not that there aren’t already great alternatives.
The number of BIG computer systems running Unix has to dwarf any running windows. In fact I’m not sure ANY of IBMs heavy iron runs windows. True many large business systems are really just large PC pools running windows, but their IT departments have got to be just as unhappy as this article so aptly points out. I am seeing more and more inroads by Apple into this market and iPad is doing nothing but accelerate this. Knowing Apple the next blow is soon to fall. Can’t wait. I suffered for years under windows mediocrity, they are reaping the results. Karma is great to watch.
‘Ad money’ present day term for payola.
Gives excuse for WS shysters to dump on the pension funds that they control.
IS the write correct on his percentages?
Mac OS 9 3.95%
Other 2.96%
Isn’t Mac OS a higher percentage, even world wide?
write = WRITER
The pie graph doesn’t have a legend. We aren’t told whether it refers to the USA or the world. Adding up the percentage of Windows users we get 91.35%. That sounds about right for the world, too high for the USA. So my guess is he’s talking about world OS usage. That would explain the oddly low percentage of OS X 10.9 users. It’s a shame he didn’t bother with the rest of the OS X users and merely shoved them into ‘other’. Let me dig around for another data set….
The above linked pie chart shows Mac sales at 13.7% of total US PC sales for Q4 2013. But let me find another OS percentage chart…
Ed Bott at ZDNet (whom I know and trust) provided the above chart for worldwide OS percentages in May of 2013. Mac is listed with 7.07%. We know it has risen since that time while Windows has declined. I’d go with that number for approximate worldwide Mac usage versus the misleading, probably older data provided by Charlie Demerjian who writes for SemiAccurate.
A good friend of mine, in Ukraine, is using Ubuntu… He swears by it. I am thinking, those who can’t afford Mac, will go Linux… Be prepared to see that pie slice get bigger at Windows’ expense.
One of my brother-friends does exactly the same thing. He and I met by way of the Mac UseNet newsgroups much the same as I got to know Dan Dilger. But these days he’s down on Macs (because he had a lemon of a MacBook Pro back during the days of evil leaky diodes that wrecked motherboards. He and I still chat about Macs, but he is ever working on me to go Ubuntu. I had my Linux exploration phase. These days I have an incentive to continue with Mac and I enjoy it. I will be putting Ubuntu on an external boot drive one of these days, but just for fun.
Where I most appreciate Linux: On Raspberry Pi and similar mini motherboard devices. Those things are subversively changing the world. Very kewl.
I use Linux on my Apple TV 1… Shhhh…
I jail broke my ATV1 on day 1 and put aTV Flash on it. I maxed it out with stuff until I drove myself crazy. A friend recently handed me his iMac’s Bluetooth keyboard, which I shall be using with it as well. 😉 shhhh
My Ukrainian friend upgraded linux code on his guided missile launcher and it prematurely launched. Been hiding ever since.
If the new CEO keeps that awful tablet UI in front of the regular Windows OS it will be just as bad. Apple said it before, you can’t make a tablet run a desktop OS and a desktop OS run a tablet OS. It just doesn’t work and they were right.
The rumors I’ve heard are that in Windows “9” the Metro GUI will remain, but only as an option. This of course is what they should have done with Windows 8 but were too stupid to do it. This of course is why shareware to kill the Metro GUI in Windows 8 is incredibly popular and a default install unless you’re a granny who doesn’t care or comprehend.
One minor point: On the MS support page they list security updates for 10 years, not 5 as indicated in the article. I think there may be a little over-exaggeration going on: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#ServicePackSupport
This is so familiar in our current age of ‘Abuse Thy Customer‘, the age of predatory marketing:
…The company’s behavior is so blatant and uncaring it is almost staggering. Worse yet the victims…
I’d enjoy watching all such companies speed up the rate of their deliberate self-destruction by simply lining up along a cliff, like mythological lemmings, and stepping off. Good riddance to them all.
Die Samsung, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, ad nauseam…. Who’s your least favored abusive company?
Don’t forget another big business from Microsoft.. training and certification.
I took the windows 2003 server and a few years later the 2008, almost nothing changed, most of the changes were services set to “disable” by default. That was the big security implementation.
Same thing with windows XP, windows vista and 7; the 3 OSes are the same, they just moved everything around or change its name, like in windows Xp to add or remove programs is called “Add or Remove programs” but in windows vista and 7 it is called “Program and features”, but it does exactly the same thing.
And that is just one of the way too many examples of how microsoft just put the same OS in the blender and mix it very well so you have to play hide and seek and pay a lot of money to found them.
Good thing I don’t pay for those certifications, my company pays and I get to travel 🙂
Good. I’m happy Microsoft is charging/extorting Windows 7 customers for patches in six months. This will drive MANY people and businesses to purchase Apple products. The Apple December quarter is going to be epic.
I use Win 7 in a virtual machine for a few things you can’t run of the Mac side. I won’t be buying patches: not needed and not worth it: I don’t do any browsing on that side and if the VM crashes, so what? it’s all backed up.
Wow. Microslut is really a hacker’s best friend. Especially now. Enterprise better have killer firewalls and AV protections.
That’s screwed up. A friend of mine has a very new HP laptop that came with Window 8 installed. I tried to help her upgrade to Windows 8.1, but it just doesn’t work – everything was drastically slower after the update, even after trying a variety of fixes and driver updates. Downgrading back to Windows 8 was they only thing that made the laptop usable again. If this article is correct, Microsoft has cut her off from vital security patches, only because her new Windows 8 computer can’t run 8.1. What does Microsoft want from customers like that? Buy a new computer, after less than year, to run Windows 8.1? That ain’t reasonable.
Microsoft Windows – the gift of misery that keeps on giving.
My new Mac Pro has been a joy to work with, but today I began the process of retiring my 2009 Mac Pro, and got a nasty shock…it seems Windows 7 is not compatible with Boot Camp on the new hardware. Crossing myself, I ordered the Win 8.1 DVD through Amazon. I nervously await this unexpected new learning curve…I am concerned at what installation horrors may lie ahead…
MS. Found in a Bottle, E. A. Poe