About Vista

[nancylebov]

I don't get the impression anyone likes it, but there was a real market for anti-Windows buttons. No one has even special ordered an anti-Vista button. Maybe it's just that it takes time to come up with the devastating enraged joke, but maybe just that people have stopped caring. Does this bode ill for Microsoft?

Bill Gates has more money than Warren Buffet. By all accounts, he hires smart people. What's going on that they apparently can't manage to create decent software?

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It could just be that Vista is seen as "more of the same", without enough of an identity of its own to support specific (as opposed to generic Windows) gibes.

[madfilkentist]

So far I've avoided Vista completely, as has my office.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

*wry grin*

Well, as I mentioned to sue over the weekend - I've got your windows 95 button on my wall with a sticky above that says:

"Vista - a 64 bit "security upgrade" to (on button) windows 95 - a 32 bit...."

Personally, I've found that it runs okay as long as you don't ask too much of it. My folks are fine with their websurfing and their specifically adapted photography software from Nikon.

Try doing anything with a manufacturer-installed version on a PC and you rapidly discover that even an ADMIN user doesn't own the box.

This is fine for most regular users but is a nightmare for techy types. which is why XP pro service pack 2 is still the standard.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>Bill Gates has more money than Warren Buffet. By all accounts, he hires smart people. What's going on that they apparently can't manage to create decent software?<<

Part of the problem is that, for all the eye-candy whizziness added over the years, Windows at its roots is still based on MS-DOS, a kludgy bastardization of a much better written command-line system. An admin guy once described Windows to me as being like a beautifully renovated house with a bunch of crazy old aunts living in the basement who futz around with the plumbing, the wiring and the fuse box every so often. No matter how many renovations you do up top, so long as you don't evict the aunts, you're gonna have problems.

Another part is that they must perforce write an OS that will play nice with hardware and software created by literally hundreds of 3rd-party manufacturers, down to and including the CPU chip itself. The more code you have to include for all the uncountable numbers of permutations of Intel/AMD/whoever chips and peripherals, the harder it is to maintain efficiency and stability (cf. Scotty's comment about "overthinking the plumbing" in STAR TREK III). This is one advantage Apple has historically had over the Wintel folks in largely controlling both ends of the equation (hardware + software).

Wow

[skipernicus.livejournal.com]

Crazy aunts is now my term for system errors.

Beautiful analogy.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

People have very low expectations of Vista...and guess what? Microsoft EXCEEDED those expectations...in the wrong way! For example, I need to support Vista at work, so I installed it onto a HD at home...I've got this great 19" cinematic LCD display with some wonderful specs, and a 1440 x 900 max native resolution. Even after installing the .inf file and the latest drivers for my NVIDIA card, it will not support that resolution. On the other hand, Linux has no problem setting things up that way. I did research the problem, and a number of people who have monitors with that resolution have that problem with Vista.

ttyl

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Is it possible, just possible, that this problem is a intended feature acting in an unintended way? I know with the latest DRM stuff insisted upon by the MPAA that if you try to hook a HD TV into your Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player it will downstep the picture resolution to 720 unless the HD TV has the right chips to assure the player that it is really honestly an approved TV. Perhaps it is an intended DRM feature acting in an unintended way on your computer. Just a thought from a non-techie.

[avram]

Joel Spolsky says the company has become too bloated; they've had to lower their hiring standards to get enough people to work on all the projects they want worked on, and there's too much bureaucratic cruft. Here, read this post by a guy who worked on the Vista shutdown menu. (This is the same post Spolsky links to, only Lettvin has moved his blog since, so Spolsky's link doesn't work.)

Compare this with the design of the Mac OS X shutdown feature.

[madfilkentist]

Didn't anybody there read The Mythical Man-Month?

[whl.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Gates' companys software is nicer than Buffet's.

Culture and history. The history is that they have to drag all the old stuff forward with them. The culture? Harder to characterise, but I'd say it is the main problem.

I can't really speak to the culture inside Microsoft. I've never interviewed there. But from the outside, they don't seem to care much what their customers think.

As for why no Vista buttons, I'd say it's just because people are ignoring Vista altogether, which will bite them next time they buy a PC, or when XP is no longer on the shelves.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I'm ignoring Vista because I am going to have done and jump to Apple. I reached my fed up level.

You need a Thneed.

[skipernicus.livejournal.com]

Microsoft tries to make universal tools, and that's the problem. No one tool will suit everyone's needs, and you have to have all of it to use the part you need - like a 500 bladed swiss army knife when all you need is toothpick. MS-Word, for example. It's huge. It does mail merges, indexing, coordinates your missles guidance systems with the meridians, but what you need in a text editor is little more than a typewriter with a solid spell check.

It's tantamount to you telling me you need software to turn a color photo into b&w, and I sell you Photoshop. Maybe someday you'll utilize the other features of Photoshop, but for now, you just need to turn an image B&W. Then again, maybe all you'll ever do is turn and image B&W. I'm selling you a car to go with the wheel you need.

And you know, the more features there are, the more can go wrong.

Re: You need a Thneed.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My impression is that Macs are just as general purpose as PCs. No?

They are, and they aren't

[skipernicus.livejournal.com]

It seems to me (dyed in the wool mac user) that the interface is easier to get a handle on - it doesn't require esoteric knowledge of ancient protocols. It sounds hokey to say it, but it's just a friendlier experience. Forget what you know about computers, and say "I want to accomplish this", and generally it wil reveal itself to you. Pull down menus and great help files built in.

That said, Microsoft Word is the same beast on Macs as PCs. I try to avoid using it (and indeed, all MS products) whenever possible. Which is sorta sad - given that Bill Gates gives more to charity than just about anyone, including our man Jobs who isn't noticeably charitable...

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