Why is Windows so bad?

[512ke]

I have to computers, one running XP and two running OS X.

I love XP. It's zippy. Very responsive. However, after time, it gets weird. I know one can maintain it, but I don't. I'm too dumb and lazy.

I love iLife. And Final Cut Pro. I do lots of stuff on the OS X computers. I know I could do similar things on the XP computer but I don't. I never go seek-out the perfect video editing program, for instance. I'm too cheap and lazy.

In summary, OS X computers w/ iLife are perfect for dumb, lazy, cheap people like me who like to turn on their computers and do cool stuff with them, without investing time to maintain, purchase and upgrade them.

 

[RedTomato]

I used windows for nearly 10 years till I got a powerbook 6 months ago.

People say how nice XP is - i've never used it - my machine was an Athelon 700mhz, running win 98ii which I built myself. When XP came out, i decided I wasnt gonna invest the time in learning how to use it. I would move to linux. Well, that move never happened, but I got a powerbook instead

The biggest issue for me was the sheer amount of work it took to keep Windows running smoothly and at peak performance. I'd have to:


- regularly defrag,
- regularly update my virus files, sometimes Norton AV would update twice a day or more, which is annoying on dial up.
- run my software firewall, update it to let my chat apps, irc, kazaa through
- run ad-aware
- run norton system doctor
- run pop-blockers
- be very careful about opening attachments in emails

apart from all that, windows 98ii actually ran pretty well for me, it rarely crashed (I've already crashed my shiny new 1.5 ghz PB a couple of times if a program locked up, i could shut it down without affecting the OS

It did what I needed, so I saw no reason to move to XP on the Athelon 700.

But now I'm happy doing film editing work on my PB, and the Athelon is retired to the attic, possibly to be reborn as a network fileserver one day.

Oh, and after a few inevitable frustrations while learning the ins and out of OSX, I'm genuinely happy with it. I no longer feel like I'm part of some large Evil empire, just part of a smaller Evil empire now

As I say, I've never used XP, but I honestly dont think I could go back to Windows, it's just the aesthetics and the smoothness of the whole experence, the wonder of making my first few film shorts in iMovie, compared to the frustrations I had in Premiere before.

cheers

RedTomato

--A Bush in the hand is worth two Blairs.

 

[Timelessblur]

I used windows for nearly 10 years till I got a powerbook 6 months ago.

People say how nice XP is - i've never used it - my machine was an Athelon 700mhz, running win 98ii which I built myself. When XP came out, i decided I wasnt gonna invest the time in learning how to use it. I would move to linux. Well, that move never happened, but I got a powerbook instead

The biggest issue for me was the sheer amount of work it took to keep Windows running smoothly and at peak performance. I'd have to:


- regularly defrag,
- regularly update my virus files, sometimes Norton AV would update twice a day or more, which is annoying on dial up.
- run my software firewall, update it to let my chat apps, irc, kazaa through
- run ad-aware
- run norton system doctor
- run pop-blockers
- be very careful about opening attachments in emails

apart from all that, windows 98ii actually ran pretty well for me, it rarely crashed (I've already crashed my shiny new 1.5 ghz PB a couple of times if a program locked up, i could shut it down without affecting the OS

It did what I needed, so I saw no reason to move to XP on the Athelon 700.

But now I'm happy doing film editing work on my PB, and the Athelon is retired to the attic, possibly to be reborn as a network fileserver one day.

Oh, and after a few inevitable frustrations while learning the ins and out of OSX, I'm genuinely happy with it. I no longer feel like I'm part of some large Evil empire, just part of a smaller Evil empire now

As I say, I've never used XP, but I honestly dont think I could go back to Windows, it's just the aesthetics and the smoothness of the whole experence, the wonder of making my first few film shorts in iMovie, compared to the frustrations I had in Premiere before.

cheers

RedTomato

--A Bush in the hand is worth two Blairs.

As case in point of people of miss infomation about XP. I am sorry but that is an example. XP is much more forgiving than 98se. a lot of people only expernce with windows at best is one of the 9.x line which in it self is like comparing OS 8.2 to OSX in the diffence betten 98 and XP

 

[Passante]

I was forced to switch to a PC because my boss thought that Apple having 3% of the computer market was reason to switch. These are my observations after 19 years of work on Macs and 9 months on Windows:

Navigation of hard drives is a nightmare. Its almost as if windows was written assuming the user would always go to "my documents". Just trying to find a file on the file server is a nightmare. I fequently turn to my Powerbook just to find something on the office server.

Windows seems to be network phobic. I click on a shortcut and unless I aready mounted the file server windows has no idea where the short cut leads to.

Icons are worthless. I have many shortcuts on the bottom of my screen and the file folder names don't show up when I mouse over them. So unless I memorize where things are I have open each one until I get the correct folder.

Windows is windows phobic. Applications hog the whole screen. You have to force Windows to have windows from different applications showing at the same time.

The default for menus in Office is not to show the whole menu unless you click on a little arrow button. Why would one want to hide menu options?

No drag and drop between applications

The Open and Save dialog boxes are not large enough to show all the sidebar options. I have manually resize these boxes each time.

The interface is Ugly Ugly Ugly.

Then there was the funny episode with the Associate Director in our office. Tried to print a floor place scanned as a jpg document. The image was printed thumbnail sized on a 8.5 x 11 inch paper. Could not figure out why it printed so small. Sure enough the default setting for printing in Microsoft photo editor did not have "the scale to paper size" setting checked. Why am I not surprised. Of course I wanted to print the floor plan as a 1 inch square on a full sheet of paper.

 

[ldburroughs]

I'm getting used to a lot of the differences in the two operating systems from an end-user perspective and I find them different rather than better than one another. When I use end-user I'm referring to the fact that I don't do much other than use programs. I'm not coding or anything like that. It's just interesting that once you really think about the newest incarnations of each operating system and remove emotional ties, you find that they are both pretty decent.

I will say that knowing at least a little about the history of each company I can see how the anomosity came about. I'm finishing law school this semester and have had the opprotunity to read some of the case law between these companies and it's pretty interesting to say the least. For the sake of those who rely on Microsoft, whether because they have to or want to, I hope it continues to move in the direction of innovation. It seems to be that when it is unchallenged that it starts resting on its laurels. Apple on the other hand has to watch itself too. Either company is getting a bit comfortable in some respects and a little healthy competition will only help. Firefox is dragging a newer version of IE out of Microsoft before it had planned to release it with Longhorn.

The one thing I would like to see more of is a more cross-platform uniformity. I humbly admit that they have come a LONG way in this area. Doing this allows everyone to integrate a bit more. This would be good as long as they refrain from taking it too far by limiting choices. There is no real need to limit, they can keep their proprietary standards but should make things work on both sides. I didn't expect to see a clear winner either way but was genuinely curious as to why there was so much hatred (the name calling is tiring.) I guess it tends to be somewhat emotional rather than substantive.

 

[Timelessblur]

I was forced to switch to a PC because my boss thought that Apple having 3% of the computer market was reason to switch. These are my observations after 19 years of work on Macs and 9 months on Windows:r.....

I think all of you problems with windows can be summed up in you first senticed. 19 years on a mac less than a year on windows.

It almost seems like you dont want to learn how and it should not be that hard to do that. I seen some of the same complains about macs. Menu bar at the top crap.

The menus in word dont show all of them at first because after a short time it learned what commands you are calling up and what ones you choose so it makes it faster and easier to choose the ones you wanted. but then again you been using Mac for 19 years and windows less than a year in short you are going to hate windows because it diffence.

 

[mattster16]

Windows isn't HORRIBLE.

I used Windows machines my whole life and only recently got a mac last year. I have to say I love the mac and I love the hassle free computing I have now. Mac does have its disadvantages though. I sometimes have compatibility issues, only with certain websites that insist I be using Windows. (No matter what I do nothing seems to trick them.) Ok...so other than that mac doesn't have any problems. I guess my only complaint about the mac is that it's harder to find pirated software for it...just kidding .

Windows on the other hand, I now only use when I am fixing someone's computer who has Windows. My family still has Windows computers, and they work ok for them. It seems I am always trying to fix them though. My younger brother is constantly reinstalling his OS (he always ends up with tons of spyware, partly his own fault, but with a mac you don't have to be cautious or watch what you do, you just won't get spyware). My mom also uses Windows, I just reinstalled her OS because the harddrive crashed (nothing to do with the OS obviously). When setting up the system I was reminded just how much more user involved maintenance is on a windows machine. I had to install all the updates (same with a mac), anti-virus (not really necessary on a mac), and of course spyware protection (not necessary at all on a mac).

I guess really Mac and PC can be just as productive. For most people, though, I believe a Mac would be more productive. Of course an experienced user can keep their windows system "clean", but with a mac you don't have to. It just stays "clean"! For those who don't want to worry about anti-virus and updating virus definitions and having an anti-spyware program and updating spyware detection rules, etc. a mac just IS better. Normally those users only do things like email, internet, word processing, and a mac does all that just as well as a PC. It's a win win situation, for those people, to just go ahead and buy a mac.

 

[Bear]

This is just not true. I've been installing Office for years and, outside of the office, never install Outlook. Do a custom install. You can install Office w/out Outlook just like you can install Office for Mac w/out Entourage.

The amount of disinformation I see in these Mac communities regarding Windows and (to a lesser degree) PCs is staggering.

If it wasn't Office (or its service packs) It was other software that insisted on Outlook being there.

 

[mattster16]

As case in point of people of miss infomation about XP. I am sorry but that is an example. XP is much more forgiving than 98se. a lot of people only expernce with windows at best is one of the 9.x line which in it self is like comparing OS 8.2 to OSX in the diffence betten 98 and XP

I really couldn't disagree more. I used every windows from 3.1 and up. The difference between 98 and XP is not that great. It is a bit more stable, a bit more zippy. The NTFS file system is much better than FAT 32. I don't think XP is more 'forgiving' when a program crashes you still do the ctrl+alt+del, end task, and then you wait....sometimes it closes quickly sometimes you wait nearly a minute or more. It's the same on 98 and XP, the only difference is that on XP the entire system crashes less frequently. Another difference is that XP has more driver support (still not as much as OS X).
I bought a Microsoft Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse set. In order to get it to work on XP I had to install an entire CD full of drivers. To get it to work on my mac, I turned on bluetooth on my powerbook, and all of a sudden I was typing and 'mousing' with no driver installation at all. And this was a Microsoft product.

 

[Applespider]

The menus in word dont show all of them at first because after a short time it learned what commands you are calling up and what ones you choose so it makes it faster and easier to choose the ones you wanted. but then again you been using Mac for 19 years and windows less than a year in short you are going to hate windows because it diffence.

Well, I used Macs for 5 years (4 many years ago, and just over a year currently), and I've used PCs since Win 95 all the way through to XP SP2. So I'd say I'm fairly balanced. Zealots on either side can be detrimental to both sides' arguments. I would say that Mac users tend to have a little more awareness of Windows (having used at work etc) than Windows users have of Mac (can they go online?)

The 'shrunken' Word/Excel menus still drive me batty. I know the menu I want to go to, I know how far down the menu I need to click. Just let me choose not to shrink them. It also means that when you're trying to talk a newbie through 'sorting' or 'pivot tables', they have trouble trying to find the command because they haven't used it before so they can't see it in the menu.

It took me a month or so to get used to the menu bar across the top of the screen on the Mac - let's face it, that's why on Windows most of us work full screen. It was only last month that I realised that when using IE at work (no choice there!) I've started opening them with smaller windows so that I can see other windows. Windows tendency to open new windows at different sizes (unless full screen) also causes me problems. I know it's to do with the last size opened/closed but it's annoying. I've also got a 'View Status' problem at work at the moment. The default for a new window is to have it 'off' and regardless of how often I turn it on, it refuses to stay on. At least on the Mac, if I make a change, it tends to stay!

And yes, the conversation bubbles on XP can be annoying too. The desktop wizard to clean up files is a prime example. Why can I decide what settings to have there but not in those darned Office menus? Just leave me alone - I'll tidy my desktop up when I want to/need to. My office PC also insists on popping up every so often to let me know I'm connected to the network. I know the network hasn't gone down in the interim so why bother telling me? I expect to be connected (I've logged on after all) - just tell me when there's a problem or if I click an icon to check. Popping up just to tell me it's doing what I expect it to do is just irritating.

To balance out my woes, there are 2 things on Windows that I miss on the Mac. Being able to see the 'Recent' files in the Save/Open dialogues, and being able to sort folders to the top/bottom of an Explorer window.

 

[jwtillema]

1.

The key difference is if you are under pressure to get your work done in a hurry, and you had a room full of experienced Windows-users and another room full of experienced Mac-users - the room full of Mac users would swear at their computers significantly less. That, more than anything is why the Mac is loved and Windows is tolerated.

What he said. When at work, ESPECIALLY when doing powerpoint presentations, I get really pissed! That G&* D*%$ program is always crashing, reformatting slides upon importing pictures, etc. I freakin' hate it.
2. To function in Windows, you have to learn the correct series of loopholes through which to jump to get the job done. On a Mac, the path to achieving your goal is clear, simple, and requires few steps.
3. In a continuation of #2, programs written for windows suck as bad as windows. The only exceptions, in my experience, are those from Adobe. They are cluttered with buttons, which are supposed to make jobs quicker, but most of the buttons are unfrequently used functions that should be in a menu system. Case in point: Roxio's easy CD creator software is for creating CDs, but there is no button to burn the cd. That's a function that should warrant it's own button, because that function is used nearly every time, yet it's burried under one of the menus in some not so obvious place. In their macintosh version of the software, Toast Ti, Burn is the only button. It just makes sense. There's no stupid **** to learn. You just get to work.
3. The interface sucks. Every time you have some kind of error, you have to read the entire dialog box to make some decision because the options are not verbose (e.g., Yes, No, Cancel) but on the Mac, the options are verbose (e.g., Save, Don't Save, Cancel). This slows down my work flow and annoys me simultaneously.
4. Continuation of #3. When multiple windows are open within an application, you may have multiple windows within a single window. Of course, Microsoft can't even maintain consistency here, as Excel and Powerpoint do this, but Word does not. So if I click the wrong close box, and I've forgotten to save my work on one of the documents, but I don't want to save work in another, a dialog box presents itself asking me to save, but I can't see which one I'm saving because it remains hidden in the background.
5. Continuation of #4. In Word, if many documents are open, but minimized in the task bar, maximizing one of them maximizes all of them. So I must minimize each of them again.

There are so many other reasons I hate Windows, but this is a start. Seriously, it pisses me off to no end. And it makes me even madder that Microsoft spends ten times the money on R&D and has a model to copy after (Mac OS) and still makes a ****** product. Microsoft works their ass off to dominate a market, often times using illegal practices, and buying out competetion and closing them down. Once a market is dominated, the product stops being advanced. It just sits there until there something comes along to threaten its position. Look at Internet Explorer. That pile of crap hasn't advanced at all since dominating the market (no tabs, pop-up blocking until sp2, etc.). And as a result of its domination, it has crushed web standards, making many pages, especially banking sites, rendered poorly or not rendered at all. I can't wait for the day when that company dies.

 

[Mord]

As case in point of people of miss infomation about XP. I am sorry but that is an example. XP is much more forgiving than 98se. a lot of people only expernce with windows at best is one of the 9.x line which in it self is like comparing OS 8.2 to OSX in the diffence betten 98 and XP

it's more like comparing OS 6 to OS 7, pre OS X os's are completely and utterly different in every way shape and form, they only thing they have in common is some features of the gui and carbon.

 

[09872738]

Besides, if I were creating a virus that I wanted to affect the most amount of people I would not target the Mac user market. It would be a waste of my time. It would have little, if any, impact on the business or consumer world.

Agreed. But crackers who create viruses also do it for honour. If i were a cracker-bad-boy, i´d love to be honoured for being able to create the first-ever MacOS X virus. But nothing happened till present

Following issues are NOT resolved in Windows XP:
5) The System Registry - it's a pain to clean up. A pain to modify and a pain if something breaks.
7) Cleaning up from applications you're removing.
8) DLL conflicts
9) Software that forces installing of older versions of software - Like direct x among other things - thus breaking other software.
11) Every fricking piece of software seems to have some sort of embedded web browser that it uses. Talk about software bloat.
13) Needing to defrag the filesystem.
14) Viruses/'Spywar/Malware

What I've found most challenging about OS is that I can't "X" out of anything. This is the most frustrating thing in the world. I can close the window but it does not close the program. It is still running in the background.

The reason is: MacOS makes pretty aggressive use of system memory. Keeping applications in memory makes the apps available almost in realtime if needed again. This feature is the reason why a lot of people recommend lots of RAM - it makes a Mac noticeable faster/snappier.


I prefer the Mac over PC coz i do not have to take care of the system to keep it running. And Macs are looking so much better, both hardware and software.

I think it was Mr. Steve himself who made it to the point: "The problem with Microsoft is they´ve got no sense of style at all. "

I really second that

 

[ldburroughs]

I agree that there is no real sense of style for the OS itself. I love the interface of Panther. It's sleek and doesn't grow old to the computer weary eye as quickly as the start menu in Windows does. Microsoft is not really in the hardware business so I can't fault it for the drab machinery that runs its OS. You have to blame Dell and company for that.

This was an article I found in another thread that is relevant. For this author of this article it boiled down to finding a viable alternative to Windows. This was an interesting read.

http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20050307150305

As far as hacker's honor is concerned ... bragging rights for cracking OS X in some way are likely imporant but so is taking down the majority of the computer population (the entire free world) with a simple line of code embeded in an e-mail message. Why bother with less than 10% of the computer population if you really want to make an impact? I agree that if I were a hacker I would do it for the challenge of doing what others, up until this point, have been unable to do. I'd also like to be the biggest and baddest and that takes into account Windows and its undeniable market share.

 

[jwtillema]

What I've found most challenging about OS is that I can't "X" out of anything. This is the most frustrating thing in the world. I can close the window but it does not close the program. It is still running in the background. I'm sure there is some reason for this but I can't figure out what it is. Maybe I'm missing something. it just adds an extra step to actually close out of something.

There are many instances in which this is a blessing. If you're working with any application which takes a long time to load, then you can avoid reloading it when you close out of the only open window. In other words, just because you close a document within an application doesn't mean you're done with that application. On the macintosh, it's up to you, not Microsoft, to decide if you're done with the application.

 

[ldburroughs]

There are many instances in which this is a blessing. If you're working with any application which takes a long time to load, then you can avoid reloading it when you close out of the only open window. In other words, just because you close a document within an application doesn't mean you're done with that application. On the macintosh, it's up to you, not Microsoft, to decide if you're done with the application.

I think it actually boils down to function rather than an outright prohibition. In Windows you can minimize or "x" out. At first glance, Panther does the same thing but it offers an additional feature of closing the window but leaving the program running. My wife accidentally "x"s out of programs rather than minimizing and has to wait for a moment as the system reopens them for her. She really appreciates this feature in Panther. This is just something to get used to in a new OS environment. Again, an alternative to "the way things are done." It's something that is in the details. Is it a distinction without a difference? I'm not really sure at this point.

 

[Mav451]

There are many instances in which this is a blessing. If you're working with any application which takes a long time to load, then you can avoid reloading it when you close out of the only open window. In other words, just because you close a document within an application doesn't mean you're done with that application. On the macintosh, it's up to you, not Microsoft, to decide if you're done with the application.

Well, the flipside is that its "up to you" if you have 256MB of RAM or 1.5GB of it as well. If only Apple would educate people to max it out -_-.

 

[absolut_mac]

Why is Windows so bad?

Personally, I'm in a similar position to you. I have a custom made machine using only the very best components, so like you, I have had virtually zero problems and only one virus - thanks to my son visiting sites that he shouldn't.

Having said that though, Windows XP is the first version that I've used that seems reasonably easy/logical to use and is very stable when taken care of nicely.

Windows 95, 98 and ME were very poor Beta products that should never have been released because of how poor and incomplete they were. Yet MS made tons of money on that garbage.

Back to the point. The current version is more than acceptable, but still has who knows how many security problems. The registry is corrupted way too easily when programs are installed/uninstalled, and IE is a right mess that MS won't fix until their market share probably drops below 50%.

All in all, IMHO while Windows XP works reasonably well and is pretty good value for money, OS X is far superior, works a whole lot better, has better security and offers much better value for money.

Horses for courses, take your choice.

 

[brap]

<snip the typical Mac Zealot trash>

Every time this topic comes up, you jump on the moral high-ground. You project the issue of "Mac Zealots" onto the entire userbase, and assume this shining-armour "Protector of the Faith" guise in putting them all to rights. You refuse to listen to well-put arguments, even to the point of doubting substantiated truths. It's getting really tiring.

In response to the creator of the thread, your second sentence sums up your confusion:

That said, here I go. I have a Windows machine and a Mac machine. I've never been infected with a virus on either machine. I don't get a critical error message on the Windows machine. I built it from the ground up and have the latest version of Windows on that machine and OS X on the mac.

You sir, aren't indicative of Windows' userbase. Building your computer from the ground implies familiarity with the system, care to detail when performing maintenance, and knowledge of how to stop things going wrong in the first place.

Windows is fine for you, but not for the 95% of the rest of the PC-using world - which is something that the rest of us (I say with a pinch of salt) come into contact with as those enlisted to fix the fallout.

Besides this, uh, I just prefer it. It's prettier. Even Word for OS X is prettier and more functional. There doesn't have to be a fundamental, faith, ideological or divinely inspired reason, now does there?

 

[feakbeak]

There are many instances in which this is a blessing. If you're working with any application which takes a long time to load, then you can avoid reloading it when you close out of the only open window. In other words, just because you close a document within an application doesn't mean you're done with that application. On the macintosh, it's up to you, not Microsoft, to decide if you're done with the application.

While the operating system itself may favor a preference of how MDI apps should function in this regard, it is really up to the design of the software. For example, Microsoft Office on Windows allows you to close all your docs but leave Word open, which you can then minimize. Many other Windows apps work this way as well. Plus, some OS X apps close the application when you close the window, such as System Preferences, iSync and Address Book (maybe?).

My point is it is really up to the design of the application over how this functionality behaves. Both platforms allow you to code it to work either way. Windows users get used to it working one way, Mac users get used to it working another way just out of precedent. For some reason, people feel the need to argue about how it "should be". *shrug*

 

[absolut_mac]

You sir, aren't indicative of Windows' userbase. Building your computer from the ground implies familiarity with the system, care to detail when performing maintenance, and knowledge of how to stop things going wrong in the first place.

Just having good quality components and doing the correct maintenance will probably keep 99.9% of Windows users on track - unfortunately, most PC users don't fall into that group.

 

[Mav451]

Just having good quality components and doing the correct maintenance will probably keep 99.9% of Windows users on track - unfortunately, most PC users don't fall into that group.

Dell doesn't follow what I've underline. Heck, most companies don't follow that. Tell me how many white box builders use Antec/Enermax power supplies? How many use brand-name motherboards?

Alienware/Falcon/GamePC/Monarch, on the other hand, use those brand-name products >> but they overcharge out of the butt.

People STILL don't understand the hardware advantage. Apple's G5's use PSU's going up to 600W! And yet, the power requirements for the G5 are miniscule in comparison to PC's (think Prescott). When you have a very powerful PSU, you can run it at a very low load, and it will not only be reliable but also quiet and cool. If you ran a 200W PSU, for example, out of spec (say supporting a 6800Ultra + Prescott), you'd be asking for trouble.

 

[0098386]

im petty. although i could go on about why i dont HATE (ROAR GRRR!!!!) windows, i just dont like it.

its tiny things like my old windows laptop, i say old... bought July 2004. it does STUPID things like the CD dosnt work after its been in sleep for more than 5 minutes. like i had to put it to sleep just to get the display working after boot up. and the fact that basic drivers were not included in with Windows XP Home (i mean Home should have an entire stockpile of basic drivers seeing a lot of home computers are custom built etc.)

also stupid things that windows itself does, like year-long boot ups. but even when XP is on its still loading things. so for a minute or 2 the desktop is there... just waiting for network initialization, other hardware to boot up and all that junk.

its just so slow! and im using a P4 2ghz dekstop machine and a P4 3.2ghz HT laptop!

that said i do find running around in Windows is muuuch faster compared to OS X. pity its not such a major deal compared to viruses and the likes...

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Windows 95, 98 and ME were very poor Beta products that should never have been released because of how poor and incomplete they were. Yet MS made tons of money on that garbage.

Y'know ... I read this a lot, but I just don't understand it.

Sure relative to today's technology, Win9x is trash. Did you use Windows 1.0, though? Or 3.1 and 3.11? Moving from DOS to Windows 3.x was huge. Moving from Windows 3.x to Windows 95 was even bigger. Win95 to Win98 was a huge improvement, but it wasn't nearly as significant as earler upgrades.

Windows Me was trash, though, and should've never been released. It was only worsened by the fact that it was released alongside Windows 2000, which was the first Windows-based system that I was truly happy with.

 

[sigamy]

From the very beginning Apple hired very talented and very creative people. Musicians, writers and artists who were also some of the best computer engineers around.

Microsoft hired very talented computer people. CompSci, computer engineers, etc. People who didn't do much else but computers.

These may be sterotypes and generalizations but I think they hold true.

The personnel who designed and developed each OS is very evident in each OS. We are computer people, so we can live in Windows. We can see how to do things, get things done. REGULAR PEOPLE CAN NOT.

Windows wasn't designed *for* or *by* regular people. Think back to trying to teach your mom how to do something. It was obivous and easy for you, right? But not for your mom.

I was helping my sister download a shareware app the other day. We were on the phone, states away. I'm on my Mac, she's on a PC. She clicks download, then what? Save or Run? Save. OK, where did it save it? Look on the desktop. OK, oh, it's a Zip file. She hates zip files. Now she has to double-click, and then extract the files. Oppps..where did the files get extracted to? I say nevermind, look for setup.exe in the list of files in Winzip. Ok, run that...whew..

for me to download and install the same app was one click to download, then click on the disk image and then drag app icon to Applications.

The beauty is in the simplicity. That is what Microsoft will never get.