So what, people like to generalize ... but ....
Still, here's the thing... I *used* to be a far bigger supporter of Microsoft than I am today. A lot of things happened to make me feel that way.
1. Bill Gates no longer has any real say-so in the company. I happen to think Steve Ballmer, by comparison, has NO real technical expertise. He's your run-of-the-mill business sales drone, essentially. I don't think Bill Gates would have ever said things Ballmer has said, like predicting the irrelevance of the iPhone. He would have seen it as a "game changing device" and focused a lot of attention on creating a product that competed with it.
2. Microsoft is falling flat on their face in the OS department. When Windows '95 was first released, it was a HUGE change from Windows 3.1. Everyone was excited about it. Windows '98 was a huge stability improvement from there, so people embraced it too. They really dropped the ball with "Windows ME" - but even Bill G. himself admitted that they really just shoved that out the door because Windows '98 hadn't received an update in so long. Most of the programming talent was focused on the Windows 2000 architecture instead. People loved Windows 2000, all in all, and then Windows XP (based on that) was a hit. But now look where they're at. We've got "Windows 2007" on the server side, which is costly and doesn't feel like it addresses needs of anyone but the largest of businesses. Windows Vista was a total bomb (after that LONG wait for it), and now Windows 7 release candidate is proving to be only *slightly* better performing than Vista. It's all "flash" but no "substance". Even needs to run Windows XP in a virtualized environment to retain compatibility with some of the software out there.
3. I *used* to have nothing but praise for MS Office, but again, I think they're gotten off track. Office '07 for Windows is a waste of money. They revamped all the menus enough to confuse everyone who used to know their way around the product, and half the "improvements" really just address FLAWS in the previous version that people should have received free bug-fixes for. Office '08 for OS X? Well, we all know the issues there. No VB script support anymore, "Student" version's Entourage can't even connect to an Exchange server, etc.
4. I never even liked the X-Box. Agreed it sold a lot of units for Microsoft, but look at all the hardware problems it had. Red ring of death, scratching up people's discs if they moved it at all while it was running, overheating .... And ultimately? It's still just a neutered Windows PC. I bought a Sony PS3 instead, because at least I felt like I wasn't just re-buying yet another Windows box in a different looking case.
Well the problem is the hate is not being thrown towards a particular subset of MS, but MS as a whole. So you see people claiming M$ SUCKS! M$ IS EVIL etc. while happily giving MS their money for products like xbox etc.
it should be more like " ms is a good company but vista is bad" but you never get that from a Mac user, even ones with MS products. It's always "MS sucks. Apple rulz."
