Dismal Science
December 23, 2006The Economist puckers up and delivers this junk in its latest issue:
But the real difference between Unix-like operating systems and Windows is their design philosophies. Windows may squander computing power through its clumsy architecture. But by favouring simplicity of use over simplicity of design, Microsoft has been able to leverage cheap but powerful commodity hardware, to provide cost-effective software solutions. These may be complex in design—and full of bugs to boot—but, boy, are they easy to use and maintain. That’s a winning formula in anyone’s book, and the reason why Windows rightly rules the world.
There are a lot of firsts in this article, for example:
1) An OS with (evidently 250,000) bugs is desirable
2) Windows is easier to use than Macs
3) Windows is simpler to maintain than Macs
How much for that pony in the window?
i read that article and wondered if people are paid to think this stuff…or if they do it voluntarily. The person who wrote that article has not only no clue…but seems to… along with swallowing the hook….sucked his way up the line, chewed his way down the pole, gnawed his way around the reel and then ingested Steve Ballmer during one of his perodick spaz-outs.
Reality truly is stranger than fiction.
this guy’s never used a mac. period.
preach it brother, amen!
Doesn’t seem to have used any distro of Linux recently too
Obviously the acid hasen’t worn off yet for this guy – keep eating the oranges.
Puckers up to whom? Bill Gates?-like he cares what the Economist days…The guy’s just a dork-who’s never used a mac and probably doesn’t even know what one is
So, how long has THE ECONOMIST been owned by Microsoft?
The only people who talk this way about M$ are employees.
Microsoft’s domination of the PC market has nothing to do with computer manufacturing skill. It’s success lies in the ability to make bloatware appealing.
What a laugh! I purchase peripherals that are suppose to work with Windows and the Mac OS. But what happens to these ‘plug and play” items? They work fine in 2 to 3 minutes on the Mac, but plug and don’t play on Windows after an hour of battle with this “easy” operating system. My friends constantly seek my help to get a preformatted external drive to work with XP, and it is usually anything but “simple”. This is in addition to the numerous infestations of malware and viruses on Windows. Many of them are now switching to a Mac, using their Windows PC for work related stuff that on is Windows compatable. There are many more articles about how unsafe a Mac is, than there are infected or attacked Macs.
The article implies that Vista is better because it has fewer lines of code, and that Linux/Unix and OSX are not good because they’re modularized. Then the anonymous author charges that Linux setup is easy, but installing an app isn’t – and never even mentions a downside of OSX.
Then, suggesting that Microsoft is “leveraging cheap but powerful commodity hardware” – uh, that would be Dell, HP, eMachines,etc., not Microsoft.
There is so much more that is just plain false in this article that it does make you wonder if M$ paid for it.
I am also highly suspicious about that assertion about Vista having fewer lines of code. It may be the case, but with the rest of the article being so inaccuarte– who knows? In any event, it matters only in a theoretical sense; it does not DIRECTLY affect quality.
I think that Vista does have fewer lines of code. I found the whole operating system codebase online:
If Computer=Running then
Me.Crash
Elseif Computer=Slow then
Me.Slower
Elseif Computer=HaventSavedImportantDoc then
Me.Crash
End If
This guy has:
a) never used a Mac, and
b) sits in a Windows office all day, with a huge army of Windows IT support staff behind him, invisibly keeping his network running and keeping his PC virus, malware & spyware free.
He is also
c) a clueless Windows drone.
I am curious about that assertion that fewer lines of code is necessarily better.
As you know, better software often is the result of maturity and experience. That is, there are fewer flaws, bugs and vulnerabilities in older code. Mac OS X has had five years of development as NeXtstep/ OPENstep software. Then it had four years of Apple changing it so that Mac OS 9 legacy software could run under Mac OS X. Since then, Apple has put out five upgrades with many improvements in speed and features. It will put out a sixth in Spring. The only way that Apple could have put out that many upgrades is that its foundations are very solid and mature and Apple isn’t having to “reinvent the wheel.” Apple could even move its hardware to Intel processors easily because Mac OS X had always been complied to run on both x86 and PowerPC processors.
Meanwhile, Microsoft worked on a completely new OS called Longhorn for four years before scrapping it all to rework Windows XP again two years ago. Features have been constantly dropped and Vista, when it is released, will not be advanced or feature rich as Apple’s current OS: Tiger 10.4. No one knows how mature and bug free Vista is, but the first virus on Vista came out four days after its Beta was released.
But, Vista is smaller than Mac OS X so it must be better. Thanks for clearing that up.
This is so far off base that even Windows users will question what he’s been smokin’. Those who don’t, wouldn’t consider a Mac under any circumstances so I see no harm to Apple from what this dullard has to say. I find it more interesting that reports of Vista security flaws are already being posted. Microsoft’s most secure application is ripe for exploitation. The first meltdown isn’t far away. Let’s see what the M$ sycophants have to say then.