Why Does Windows Still Suck?

[billbuckhead]

Why Does Windows Still Suck?
Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn't everyone on a Mac?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, February 4, 2005

So about a year ago, the SO finally upgraded her Net connection to DSL, carefully installed the Yahoo! DSL software into her creaky Sony Vaio PC laptop and ran through all the checks and install verifications and appropriate nasty disclaimers.

And all seemed to go smoothly and reasonably enough considering it was a Windows PC and therefore nothing was really all that smooth or reasonable or elegant, but whatever. She just wanted to get online. Should be easy as 1-2-3, claimed the Yahoo! guide. Painless as tying your shoe, said the phone company.

She got online all right. The DSL worked great. For about four minutes.

----------<http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/>

[CBGLuthier]

1. sdaid it before and will say it again

If more than 3-6 percent of the world used Macs there would be thousands of viruses and spyware attacking them.

[realisticphish]

4. at least 75% of the world's servers

are unix...yet they get hacked a LOT less frequently then windows servers


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[wtmusic]

8. Possibly, but to little effect

"the Mac OS architecture is much more robust, much more solid, much more difficult to hack into. Apple's software is, by default, more sound and reliable, given its more stable core. (Sometime in the later '90s, a Mac org whose name I forget ran a rather amazing hacker competition: they offered a $13,000 cash prize to anyone in the world who could hack into the company's unprotected Mac server and alter the contest's home page in any way. Needless to say, no one ever could)."

[makhno]

2. Yawn

Clueless person operates computer. Computer dies. News at 11.

[realisticphish]

6. so you've never had your computer fuck up?

its a little ridiculous to assume that all people whose computers die are morons


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[makhno]

7. Sure, computers die

But read the article; you don't get hacked within 4 minutes of turning on your DSL line unless you're doing something wrong.

[realisticphish]

13. or if you've never had dsl

and dont have an activated firewall

:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[makhno]

14. Patch your machine before turning on DSL

That's it. A firewall is entirely optional.

[realisticphish]

3. software availability

its a vicious cycle; people dont buy macs, software makers dont put out mac versions, thus fewer mac buyers...

im a mac user, and i get by just fine, but some people arent willing to look for a little software online. there is hope thou; companies are more and more willing to put out mac versions of software...


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[burrowowl]

5. M$-DOS

and Gates, IBM was more iron than software, and many people are idiots or subjugated to and don't know how to rebel.
Look at Cobal, very bad at negatives.
Of course all this gives IT people and 'bidness' (e.g. EDS) jobs and how to make things more costly. A RACKET! You would think that IT people would like more interesting things to do than re-insert a disc 4 or 5 times before Windoz comes to its senses.
One IT person told me Apple, Unix and Linux were better but M$ had much better marketing so she admired Bill Gates (who by the way is saying good-bye American Pie to the U$ dollar, money has no loyalities).

[wtmusic]

9. And MS ponied up some serious cash for the GOP

thanks to the kid gloves treatment in their DOJ monopoly investigation. Why build better software when you can just use everyone else's ideas?

[burrowowl]

10. Everybody elses'

ideas and F%$k them up! Go M$!

[Boomer]

12. Gates may meet his waterloo yet

The more I hear about Longhorn -- and the enormous stake that M$ has placed in that new OS -- the more I wonder whether Gates will finally overreach himself.

It's a bold move, if one can call an attempt to take over the entire Internet and render the world wide web and HTML obsolete. (Personally, I call it incredibly stupid.) Longhorn programmers will create non-HTML web applications that require a Longhorn OS to view. And since Windows PCs can't run the Longhorn OS, Microsoft expects the entire Microsoft PC consumer base to buy a NEW computer in order to participate in the brave new world they have created.

If this marketing plan ever reaches fruition in this form, I'm abandoning the Microsoft platform entirely. I didn't spend years learning HTML, CSS, ASP for nothing. And I'll be damned if I'll rework every single web site (dozens) I've built just so Bill Gates can sell new computers.

Edited for sneaky typos

[democracyindanger]

11. Not MS's fault Mrs. Morford doesn't read her hubby's own paper

She would've read David Lazarus' columns about SBC Yahoo's sneaky marketing scheme. She would've learned that she didn't have to install the crappy SBC Yahoo software just to get on the internet. And because she didn't know the simple fact that all you have to do is connect the modem to the PC to get online, it's safe to assume that her "creaky Sony Vaio PC" was long overdue for a defrag, not to mention littered with spyware.

As for software, some manufacturers are turning AWAY from Apple. Adobe didn't like it much when Apple came out with iMovie or whatever the hell it's called. That's why they didn't launch Adobe DVD with a Mac version.