Why is Windows so bad?

[Timelessblur]

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.

What you mad because it true. I was stating something I have noticed. The Mac Zealots are worse than the Windows Zealots. Zealots of either type piss me off but the mac Zealots dont know as much about hardware as they claim or their OWN OS as they claim. As one Zealot I can think of does. Everytime someone has a problem with PC (OS, hardware what ever related) he states "Get a mac" and refuses to offer help and just trashes the PC. I am sorry but that kind of crap really pisses me off. The trashing of XP with 0 real knowleged of it pisses me off.

Go to PC forums and look around there. Apples do come up from time to time in discutions and they are not trashed a few strongly disagree but they dont trash them everychance they get. There are a few Mac trolls that comes in from time to time that are just asking for it and they show there ingorances every single time. They dont go looking for a reason to trash other compainy heck they help you configure a dell (push to build you own or buy else where) but they would at least help you even it if is a BIY forum.

 

[RubberChicken]

I've used both Platforms, but mainly mac in both professional and fun capacities. Both will get the job done. For many the differences will be unimportant, for others critical.

1. Web content. Yes, there is plenty of web content that does not work on a mac, but that is choice of the programmer. Too few Macs users to influence these decisions. Though understandable it is one of the worst offenders as it unfairly contributes to PC as a preferred platform. A vicious circle.

2. Aesthetics and usability. The Mac has better looking, better made, easier to use hardware and software, generally. There are some reasonable looking PC systems, but way more garbage. Most mac software has a consistent GUI. Before OSX I would have said installations were easier on Mac, but they are pretty much the same now. From a a designer's perspective Windows is a horrible looking GUI, in every respect. The quality of the graphics/icons/typography is absolutely abismal. I see no excuse here as surely Bill has far more cash to throw at this exercise.

3. File management. Windows, to my knowledge, cannot move an installed application easily and has often failed to delete an application successfully for me. To my knowledge, file type associations on Windows are limited to 1:1 based on suffix. This is a big problem for a design workflow where I deal with EPS files created by Quark, InDesign, Photoshop, FreeHand, Illustrator and more, but as far as Windows is concerned they can only be associated with one of those apps. Font management is hideous, though it's almost as bad on OSX now. I'd like to thrash the brainless idiot at Apple who decided Helvetica.dfont would make a great system font, when it clashes with standard postscript publishing workflow. And you cannot replace it without causing problems with Safari, Mail and Address Book.

4. Speed. Well, we can argue for ever about which systems are faster but at the end of the day many do not need the capacity of even the lowest end systems for most day-to-day tasks.

5. Software availability. Just becuase there is more software for PC does not make it better. There's a huge range on both platforms for most users.

If I'm grossly ignorant on some of these points, I'm sure some thoughtful soul will let me know!

 

[railthinner]

Here's one example of why I would never want to depend on MS:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/07/1414234&tid=201

You could scour just /. alone and find a thousand pathetic, unacceptable errors made my MS.

 

[brap]

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.

I totally agree, you raise some valid points. I do remember using 3.11 (albeit on someone else's machine), and Windows 95 was a huge jump - I am talking solely for the x86 world though. It was, however, full of bugs. For kicks I tried installing Win95 on, uh, Bochs, or Qemu, or... may have been VPC - and boy was it painful... had some really vague, evil error messages crop up!
So, in the usability sense it got marginally better through to 98SE - but from what I could tell, and please correct me, the package changed little. USB support, and a new driver database basically, sums it up.

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.

Windows ME was an excuse to get people to upgrade. New box and icons. Truly disgusting.

I'd also like to agree in saying Windows 2000 (Pro, not server) is my favourite windows flavour. It's such a crying shame they had such sketchy Firewire support, otherwise I'd still be usng it, crappy Windows Installer and all.

 

[Timelessblur]

3. File management. Windows, to my knowledge, cannot move an installed application easily and has often failed to delete an application successfully for me. To my knowledge, file type associations on Windows are limited to 1:1 based on suffix. This is a big problem for a design workflow where I deal with EPS files created by Quark, InDesign, Photoshop, FreeHand, Illustrator and more, but as far as Windows is concerned they can only be associated with one of those apps. Font management is hideous, though it's almost as bad on OSX now. I'd like to thrash the brainless idiot at Apple who decided Helvetica.dfont would make a great system font, when it clashes with standard postscript publishing workflow. And you cannot replace it without causing problems with Safari, Mail and Address Book.


If I'm grossly ignorant on some of these points, I'm sure some thoughtful soul will let me know!

I think I can give you some help on the file associations for windows. Windows will have a 1:1 for double clicking on which program it will open it up with but if you right click on it it will bring up a menu, one of them is Open with and from there it will have a list of every program that you have open that file type with or windows has been told when the program installed that it can be open with this program. If it one there there is a choose a program. in hte choose program area you can set which program it will default to for double click.

I hope that helps you out on dealing with a file type that can be open to multiple programs.

 

[railthinner]

Everytime someone has a problem with PC (OS, hardware what ever related) he states "Get a mac" and refuses to offer help and just trashes the PC. I am sorry but that kind of crap really pisses me off. The trashing of XP with 0 real knowleged of it pisses me off.

I can't speak for others but I don't know that this is always intentional trashing of XP. Other users I know who have had pcs doing audio and video and web design, etc. -- friends doing stuff similar to me -- spend half their time pulling their hair out and fighting a the OS or imcompatible hardware and drivers. Sometimes I just look on in amazement watching them struggle with difficulties I have no comprehension of. I gladly admit it. I don't want to have any comprehension of it. I just want my computer to work right so I can do what I want. That's it. So the "get a Mac" comment may just be short and seem useless, but it's really often saying. "Yeah I don't have to deal with that crap on my machine, maybe you should try one."

 

[musicpyrite]

Windows isnt' that bad if you know what you are doing. I'll admit that I like using my Mac much more, but Windows is bearable, just like many of the more known distros of Linux.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages, except I get the best of all three worlds.

 

[Mord]

What you mad because it true. I was stating something I have noticed. The Mac Zealots are worse than the Windows Zealots. Zealots of either type piss me off but the mac Zealots dont know as much about hardware as they claim or their OWN OS as they claim. As one Zealot I can think of does. Everytime someone has a problem with PC (OS, hardware what ever related) he states "Get a mac" and refuses to offer help and just trashes the PC. I am sorry but that kind of crap really pisses me off. The trashing of XP with 0 real knowleged of it pisses me off.

Go to PC forums and look around there. Apples do come up from time to time in discutions and they are not trashed a few strongly disagree but they dont trash them everychance they get. There are a few Mac trolls that comes in from time to time that are just asking for it and they show there ingorances every single time. They dont go looking for a reason to trash other compainy heck they help you configure a dell (push to build you own or buy else where) but they would at least help you even it if is a BIY forum.

I'm a huge apple zealot and i know tones about hardware from the moto 68000 and the intel 8086 to the G5 and the opteron, i do post on pc forums and the trolling there is far far worse, people just state things like "dude mac sucks" in threads that have anything to do with macs, and i generally set them straight, i even have a PC in my house running XP 2k and fedora linux on it, of course people on a mac forum are not going to like windows, thats why we use macs, calling us mac trolls in every thread is pointless, we are mac fans on a mac site and every now and again when someone asks for some help when they need to buy a system and obiously needs a pc we suggest it.

one last thing when someone asks me for help to fix there PC i always do it and i always lecture them install firefox yadda yadda yadda but i always suggest getting a mac next time they buy a computer, now if they have gone and bought a pc and filled it with crap after i had told them how to avoid the situation i'll tell them to bugger off, it takes the piss when people call on your time and effort to save themselves some money buying a computer.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Here's something else I've been rolling around in my head today -- Mac users are completely ignorant toward defending themselves against spyware and virii.

That's fine. It's non-issue ... for now.

But what happens when some brilliant mind (and these people really are brilliant) figure out how to load a virus or a spyware app when you download an Internet-aware .dmg or something equally benign? What about that proof-of-concept MP3 spoof that popped up a few months ago? What if someone had really harnessed that and done something with it?

These people know that the Mac user base is basically ignorant to handling their threats. They know that Windows' users are getting more and more adept at blocking and removing their threats. It's only a matter of time.

What, then, will the Mac community do? Will they have the patience (or the insight) to wait for a Mac-based AdAware (or some equivalent) to pop up (and it will), or will they run to MS and AdAware?

Being a regular user of Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro, and OS X (currently 10.3.8), I must say that I feel more confident in my ability to defend myself against these threats in Windows than I do in OS X.

 

[Applespider]

What, then, will the Mac community do? Will they have the patience (or the insight) to wait for a Mac-based AdAware (or some equivalent) to pop up (and it will), or will they run to MS and AdAware?

Given how ingenious the Mac community can be, I have no doubt that there will be an Adaware equivalent within short order of malware appearing for OS X. Just look what a short time it took for someone to hack the motion sensor to do cool stuff. I seem to recall that when one possible security glitch appeared, a freeware system preference appeared to fix it within hours.

 

[RubberChicken]

I think I can give you some help on the file associations for windows. Windows will have a 1:1 for double clicking on which program it will open it up with but if you right click on it it will bring up a menu, one of them is Open with and from there it will have a list of every program that you have open that file type with or windows has been told when the program installed that it can be open with this program. If it one there there is a choose a program. in hte choose program area you can set which program it will default to for double click.

I hope that helps you out on dealing with a file type that can be open to multiple programs.

Thanks, that's useful, but it does not cure the problem of actual ownership. If I get an eps from someone else I may not know what created it. Each program is capable of creating a very different type of EPS. I used the example of EPS becasue it is one suffix that can contain either bitmap only, vector only, or a mix and may aslo have certain attributes or editability unique to the program that created it. For example if I open a FreeHand EPS into PhotoShop it will work, but is now converted into an entirely different format. Appreciate the pointer though.

 

[biohazard6969]

i neither like nor dislike the windows platform, one thing i love, is having both, and even though its slow, virtual pc does the4 trick for me. but i have many friends who stick true to the conformist world of windows, mainly because they just don't know another alternative, and when i try to show them OS X they won't even listen, no one cares, i tell them "no viruses! no spyware! no hackers!" and they just say "cause macs suck ass" and everyone laughs and then they go home and find that all they're files are gone cause they have WINDOWS. no one seems to give a damn. i think that tiger will make a huge difference in this though. the way i see it, Longhorn has been in development for a long time, but i can see it being even worse then XP, don't ask why, maybe its just something i WANT to see happen but i believe taht tiger wil open up a whole new window for macs and mac users and switchers too. XP is great, but OS X is just indescribable

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

Given how ingenious the Mac community can be, I have no doubt that there will be an Adaware equivalent within short order of malware appearing for OS X. [...]

And what about distribution? Even at 3% (or whatever Apple's current marketshare is), it's IMPOSSIBLE to get it to EVERYONE w/out being part of Apple's Software Update app.

Even then, you can't rest assured than everyone pays attentiton to that app. They don't have to, right? OS X is bulletproof.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Here's what annoys me the most about Windows XP Professional SP2:

1. It takes 10-100x as long as Mac OS X for Windows to try to get an address via DHCP then fall back to Automatic Private Addressing.
2. While #1 is going on, Windows will either beep at you, give you confusing error messages, or sit there and twiddle its thumbs instead of letting you browse the network.
3. If I disconnect the Ethernet cable from my Windows PC, Windows "helpfully" tells me that a network cable is unplugged. I don't want to be notified of something I did intentionally.
4. If I try to access my Mac from my Windows machine when I've forgotten to first turn on Windows Sharing, my Windows machine will of course complain (with another confusing Windows error). If I then turn Windows Sharing on then try again, Windows refuses to realize that the network is accessible until I reboot!
5. Sometimes I have to restore my Windows machine to a pristine state. The second time it boots (the first boot is for the out-of-box experience, or OOBE), it takes about 3 minutes before the Welcome screen disappears and the Windows interface appears. When I try to use Windows, I'm greeted with a message: "Windows has installed the drivers needed for your new hardware device to work. Would you like to restart now?" I click Restart, and I'm greeted with several MORE messages, all saying "The application failed to initialize because the workstation is shutting down". Those then dismiss themselves, Windows reboots, and I'm FINALLY able to use Windows.
6. The nVidia graphics card drivers that shipped with my Windows machine are defective - they let me select modes that my monitor cannot display, and the checkbox to hide these modes is greyed out. Worse still, the update that Windows Update offers to fix this problem won't install because of an internal error, so I have to search the Windows Update Catalog for the correct driver every time.

 

[Passante]

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.

This is nothing to do with not learning to use the machine. Check my post again:

Dialog boxes that are the wrong size. That have to be resized each time. Doesn't happen on a Mac.

Names on shortcuts not visible when I hover over with the mouse.

Aliases that don't work unless I alread connected to the file server. Doesn't happen on a Mac. I have 5 server to connect to each day. My Mac does it for me. Windows forces me to do the work.

Icons that are so small and communicate nothing. Thats windows, not a Mac

Default menu setting in Office that don't show the menu bar. Only on the PC version. Not on the Mac version (funny both are by MS)

and so on.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

6. The nVidia graphics card drivers that shipped with my Windows machine are defective - they let me select modes that my monitor cannot display, and the checkbox to hide these modes is greyed out. Worse still, the update that Windows Update offers to fix this problem won't install because of an internal error, so I have to search the Windows Update Catalog for the correct driver every time.

The others are basically matters of preference and inexperience, but this one takes the cake.

www.nvidia.com <-- Download the latest drivers from there.

Hope this helps.

 

[Mav451]

Here's what annoys me the most about Windows XP Professional SP2:

1. It takes 10-100x as long as Mac OS X for Windows to try to get an address via DHCP then fall back to Automatic Private Addressing.
2. While #1 is going on, Windows will either beep at you, give you confusing error messages, or sit there and twiddle its thumbs instead of letting you browse the network.
...snip.

Lol I had no idea what you were talking about until I actually went into Networking and realized that "DHCP" and "Automatic Private Addressing" is what it does when it finds the campus LAN for me automatically. I've had so little trouble with networking, I rarely even look in that setting (dare I say, a noob at it).

I wish I had the same problems as you, but the last time I experienced network issues was in 98, trying to get a home phone-lined based network to work. I had to reboot after every change in a setting. XP? I never rebooted.

My mother brought back home a Win 2000 machine from work. Remember, after doing jack sh_t for XP (that had me on the Internet in seconds), I was waddling through 2k looking for something to change. In the end, I realized it was b/c of something I learned in my Win95 days. She had an address already typed in >> set it to DHCP, and it was gold again.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

The others are basically matters of preference and inexperience, but this one takes the cake.

www.nvidia.com <-- Download the latest drivers from there.

Hope this helps.

Actually, I have the Windows Update driver downloaded and archived on my Mac, ready to deploy on my Windows machine any time it's needed. The driver I have on my Mac works great. I don't bother to update the driver from nVidia because the graphics card in my PC never gets challenged (the 3D capabilities go largely unused).

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Lol I had no idea what you were talking about until I actually went into Networking and realized that "DHCP" and "Automatic Private Addressing" is what it does when it finds the campus LAN for me automatically. I've had so little trouble with networking, I rarely even look in that setting (dare I say, a noob at it).

I wish I had the same problems as you, but the last time I experienced network issues was in 98, trying to get a home phone-lined based network to work. I had to reboot after every change in a setting. XP? I never rebooted.

My mother brought back home a Win 2000 machine from work. Remember, after doing jack sh_t for XP (that had me on the Internet in seconds), I was waddling through 2k looking for something to change. In the end, I realized it was b/c of something I learned in my Win95 days. She had an address already typed in >> set it to DHCP, and it was gold again.

The reason why I don't do this is because my Windows XP SP2 machine spends 99.999% of its "on time" disconnected from the internet - instead it's directly connected to my iMac via an Ethernet cable. The Mac connects to the Internet wirelessly.

 

[09872738]

The trashing of XP with 0 real knowleged of it pisses me off.

Agreed. Trashing XP WITH a lot of knowlegde is ok for you?

It´s not ok to deny help, i agree. However, stating the opinion that a lot of probs do not exist on the Mac platform doesn´t seem wrong to me

 

[09872738]

It's only a matter of time.

I seriously doubt that. Mac OS - thanks to its unix core - has some sort of protection built in, in contrast to Windows, who´s "secure computing" is set on top of an system without any security concept.

Given Apple takes care of the system and closes security-holes asap, malware has little chance. Same for virii.

We´ll see what the future brings

 

[matticus008]

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.

You can turn that feature off. The Windows start menu also shortens menus after time, and you can turn that off just like you can in Office if you'd prefer to see the whole menu all the time.

 

[eXan]

"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. If I'm finished with Safarie I have to go under the Safari tab and click Close Safari. I am aware of the two key shortcut to do the same thing but why not just "X" out when I'm finished."

If you close the window the app doesn't close for the simple resson that if you want to open other file with it you don't have to relaunch the whole app. For example Photoshop. If you closed the last image in it, it wouldn't quit and you can start working with the other image without restarting Photoshop. Do you how much time it takes to launch PS?

 

[Passante]

"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. If I'm finished with Safarie I have to go under the Safari tab and click Close Safari. I am aware of the two key shortcut to do the same thing but why not just "X" out when I'm finished."

If you close the window the app doesn't close for the simple resson that if you want to open other file with it you don't have to relaunch the whole app. For example Photoshop. If you closed the last image in it, it wouldn't quit and you can start working with the other image without restarting Photoshop. Do you how much time it takes to launch PS?

just press apple (command) Q to quit. I see my wife do this alot. First she closes each window THEN she shuts down the application. Just quit the app and all the windows will close.

 

[evil_santa]

apple+Q to quit , apple+W to close window. This is works for all apps on the mac. Apps that only allow 1 window will such as the Calculator will quit when you close the window.

On windows I find it more confusing, if you close the window for IE it quits the app. The same with photoshop elements, the way it is set out I tend to close the window with the buttons on the top of the window, this quits the app, then when i open the next image PS has to reload. What I find most frustrating with windows is cntrl+q & cntrl+w only works on some apps! its totally inconsistent.

The original poster talks about video editing, at work i asked for a G5+FCP for editing on, I got a Dell & Adobe Premiere & a lame excuse that the company no longer supported macs. Most days I have to get the Support people to come round and fix something on it. In 4 months of using it I have had more down time than I had in 6+ years of using a mac. In sort the Dell / XP / Premiere has a real problem dealing with video. The machine meets the specs for the software / hardware but it has real problems keeping the audio / video in sync or just has trouble with playback of video clips, this is a bit of a problem considering that the system is meant to do.

Im sure windows if fine for office & internet type stuff, but its not good for video. I now point & laugh at the PC boys who have been telling for me years, that Windows is much better than a mac. They were so wrong.