Whew! As a Microphobe in good standing for over two decades, I never thought I’d say that. But the truth is, hating Microsoft just isn’t as much fun as it used to be. The reason is simple. As a web designer and developer, Microsoft and the indignities it inflicts upon the computing experience, just aren’t that relevant to me in the twenty-first century.
11 Comments
11 Comments
Comments
I just made myself buy a Vista business laptop even though I wanted a new MacBook. I must admit it’s elegant. The reality is that most of the world uses MS. There is power in standardization whether it’s our personal favorite flavor or not.
Hmm MACs are nice but you are paying a premium for lower performing tech and the paying 100 quid for a service pack grates.
Macs and Mac based software is a total pain for web developers especially the few Mac users that insist on using Safari.
If Bill walked into the boardroom and said "We have so much money, we don’t have to worry about it any more, why don’t we try something new? Make really great software." The stockholders would cry foul. Such is the fate of public companies. Microsoft is stuck in the niche of making profit rather than truly excellent products, and it’s a hard habit to break.
David, I think you’re right but Google is now stuck in that same rut. So, basically we’ve just created another 800lb gorilla through our support of Google.
"Microsoft has proven to be woefully incapable of competing on a level playing field and the current playing field is tilted against them. Think MSN.com, think Zune, think Xbox 360." I wouldn’t place the 360 in that group. At least they’re competing this generation compared to the regular Xbox sales numbers. Aside from that one nitpick, nice write-up. I think it’s a valid point!
Xbox 360 is doing better than Playstaion.
Skitzzo, It’s a disease. Big business can no longer plan longer than next quarter profit numbers, and the CEOs separation perks.
I use both Mac and PC on a daily basis and the computing experience couldn’t be any more night and day and the benefits of Mac and the downside of PC continue to grow in my experience. Truly great software, with attention to user experience as well as functionality, has increased vastly on the mac platform while windows offers the same old ugly clunky junk. Whereas before I might have an issue with not having some software available on Mac, I’m having the opposite problem now, that Windows doesn’t have software for some tasks that come close to what the Mac offers. Macs connect to windows networks and printers so much easier than windows does, the list goes on and on. It’s a case of Mac having to be really good to compete and break out of the small market share and Windows just having to exist, and in the end that is going to hurt PC big time.
"As a web designer and developer, Microsoft and the indignities it inflicts upon the computing experience, just aren’t that relevant to me in the twenty-first century." How is being incompatible with standards not relevant to a web designer of all people? Web designers should hate Microsoft the most for the abomination they call Internet Explorer. I don’t get the argument anyway - stop hating on Microsoft because they haven’t done anything good recently?
oh i saw this on the reg :-) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/18/macbook_apple_support_hell/