So you seem to be saying that Windows is best for the customers’ needs? Gosh, what a shocking strong arm tactic.
No , I am saying that installing Windows is easy.
Keeping it up-and-running is damn-near fricking impossible.
I do 90% of my development work with pure Microsoft technologies, with the other 10% being UNIX, Oracle, Java, etc.
The absolute latest development tools (VS.NET), the ones that were officially released early this year will run just fine on NT 4.0, which was available in 1996. The previous version of their development tools (VS 6.0), the ones that are still the primary tool used by almost every large corporation, run just fine on Win 95, which was availabe in 1995. I actually upgrade my hardware more than my development environment.
I’ve developed since 1981, and I still don’t remember the glory days of Unix. When was that, exactly?
For the record, I agree with the OP that Microsoft doesn’t have the corporate honesty thing down pat (I’m still looking for a software company that does), but I just don’t see the behavior that he outlined as a horrible sin.
You said nothing of the sort. You seem to be merely trotting out random anti Microsoft-isms as and when you feel like it, and this latest one isn’t even right; XP’s stability is such that I have yet to experience an OS-related crash, merely game-related ones. Face it: stability is no longer a stick you can beat windows with.
I’m an asshole for saying people have a choice? HAW! That’s a new one!
What’s the alternative? Writing your software to be compatible with potentially dozens - maybe even hundreds - of different types of OS’s? Putting in a hundredfold more man-hours just to make sure that you can be compatible with at least 50% of the market? Having to expand your customer support significantly to deal with the thousands of new calls complaining how your product doesn’t work with Fred’s Discount Operating System of Bumfuck, Tennessee?
Face it, Microsoft managed to create a single, unified standard for operating systems. Heck, I’ve always been of the opinion that it was because of the creation of this standard that they’ve been so inherently glitchy. Apple? They started with a standard and simply managed to maintain it… MS built their standard from the chaotic mismatchings that already existed in the market. Linux? Sure, they’re stable, but as you’ve already said, most people simply can’t use it.
That’s funny. I haven’t had any problems keeping it up-and-running.
Well, there’s always Java. 
And any good programmer should be able to develop portable code. Being tied to one OS and/or set of APIs is a sure sign of shoddy development.
Mayhaps I allow my cynicism too much free reign, but what major corporation does not lie to me, or at the very least spin facts so they appear most complimentary to said corporation?
Caveat emptor is not a motto for shopping, it’s a motto for life.
Anyone who has a vested interest in an OS will likely attempt to scenario me rosily as to it’s benefits in regards to other OS’s. And you know what? They all work ok, so I just pick the one I’m most comfortable with.
whaaaaaaat? SINGLE UNIFIED standard?
Hehe.
Hehehhe.
HEHEHHEHE!!! HAHAHA!!! Oooh my, now THAT is a laugh!
WIN32. Win3.1 version of it VS Win95 version of it.
(did you know that install shield is a 16bit program? Ick.)
There are three different versions of help files. Well even more then that if you get into some of the newer incarnations (between win98 and windows2k three MORE versions where introduced, not of the .hlp format but of other extensions.)
Two versions of CAB files (neither forward NOR backwards compatible, one for Win95, Win98, and NT4, and another for Win2K+), at least three forms of EXEs, and holy shit, I do not even know HOW many different interface APIs!!!
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html
And if that isn’t bad enough, there is always Palladium (think needing authentication from a central Internet server in order to access ANY FILE on your computer. Now imagine that central server being run by some company who doesn’t give a fuck about you and just wants your money. Enjoy. )
That’s funny. I haven’t had any problems keeping it up-and-running. **
[/QUOTE]
For those of you who where NOT in the field before windows was the only choice out there;
Windows has NOT always been the ‘best’ choice for users, but MS had a rather nasty habit of buying out competitors or making nice random changes to How Shit Worked to help ensure that competitors had to spend extra resources just trying to keep things up and running. Of course that last tactic also alienating users from competitors, and MS got to do the whole entire “Heya, tired of that meeean old company that neeever works for yah? Come on over to our camp!” bit.
For the longest time MS actually made the WORST GUI out there on the market (well, okkaaay, second worst, heh, there was one GUI slightly worse then Windows. 
), but ONE killer app came along and shot MS to the head of the bunch.
The only reason we are using Windows9x/2K/XP and not DesqView*9x/2k/XP
Which reminds me;
I have to go and hunt down + kill the original makers of Aldus PageMaker. (responsible for both Windows AND Mac being around today, ugh, great. Shit, we would have been where we are now back in 1997 or so if it wasn’t for MS. . . . Do people even realize how SLOW and PAINFULLY Windows development moves along? Better to bleed the market with. . . .)
*Not to imply that we would actually be using Desqview, there where plenty of other GUIs out there on the market when Windows came about, many of which had features (such as, say, OVERLAPPING WINDOWS) which is took Microsoft a fair number of versions to implement (and in some cases, quite awhile longer to implement properly!)
One word(term?);
SPARCstation.
(eeew, marketing hype!)
Anyways, yah, heh.
Oddly enough, Unix was considered Kiddie like by a good deal of the pre-existing comptuer crowd when it came out, and now it is considered to be “that advanced thingy of a majiga”
I imagine that some day people will mourn the passing of the “Glory days of Windows.”
Scary thought.
Already many people complain about the OverPublicizedHasn’tQuiteHappenedYet death of DOS, and many a new user (or pretty much anybody within the last 5 years. 
) thinks that DOS is /waaaay/ to complex to use every day.
Either the computer using community as a whole are getting stupider and stupider as we move to simpler and simpler systems (and refuse to believe that things could ever have been done on those “oh so hard archaic systems” ), or;
err
oh wait, only possibility. Damnit.
Is this really something to get your panties all in a bunch about?
I mean, golly gee whiz, but who really gives a fuck.
Like JB said, if it does what I want it do, then I’m satisfied.
All the other stuff is bs.
Feh, I normaly only post pro-Windows stuff on /.;
pisses the shit out of the trolls when I get modded up for it.
I thought you said the glory days of Unix. Sparcstation was an extremely good seller…
… for a workstation. Hell, OS/2 had higher unit sales than Solaris on the Sparc. LINUX is much closer to realizing the glory days of UNIX, but it’s not there yet (and may never be). The Sparc was not a home computer and never was meant to be.
If you mean to say that UNIX is a top notch operating system, then you’ll get no argument from me, but it has yet to see any glory days.
I should probably note that your knocking of InstallShield on the basis of it being 16-bit makes some of your other arguments even less convincing.
Installshield uses a 16 bit stub to detect the operating system, as a 32 bit app wouldn’t be able to run on a 16 bit system to do any detecting. Once it confirms that it’s a 32 bit system, it uses a 32 bit engine to do the work. It’s actually quite logical, since the concept of Installshield is to be able to distribute apps on as many OS versions as possible, without having to purchase individual packages for each one.
I thought you were supposed to be a geek or something.
(You may now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast of “Microsoft gave me a feature they claimed I didn’t have, so they must die a thousand deaths, much like drug users.”)
Windows 3.1 will tell you that you cannot run the 32Bit application, built into it and all, no need for program to do it.
And quite frankly, a 16bit stub on an installer installing a 32bit application;
WHY??? Ugh.
Nerd, not geek. Geeks get out more. 
Who said anything about top seller? I was referring to feature set and capabilities.
If MS had not been around, somebody else WOULD have been up there though, and it might have very well been a Unix derived system.
Actually, it’s a 16 bit stub on an installer that will install a 16 bit, 32 bit, and a 64 bit application.
If the stub wasn’t 16 bit, then it wouldn’t be able to determine the OS and use the appropriate engine to perform the actual install. It’s considered so important that MS is planning on working around it specifically for installation apps for their 64 bit platform, which won’t have 16-bit emulation.
There are still companies writing 16-bit software (I have no cites, but I’d guess that there are more VB 4.0 16-bit shops than there are true .NET shops at this time), and InstallShield sees no reason not to support them. You rant about MS semi-forcing everyone to upgrade all the time, then you rant about InstallShield, which lets you still deploy Win 3.1 apps (and Win 95 through XP and the upcoming 64 bit platforms, too). As those seem like opposite mindsets, I’m confused.
::sighs::
There is a difference between forced upgrading and not writting shitty software.
16 bit windows programs suck, period. Suck suck suck suck SUCK. Horrid icky buggy pieces of crud. . . .
Now I can understand if some dev house has their thing going on with some software used for some large firm and they are doing the occasional bug patch on it, ok, hey, whatever, no reason to change what already works.
But Install Shield is hardly called for then anyways.
In EVERY OTHER CASE there is going to be a 32bit OS underlying, (well, or 64bit, but that can be worked around as it comes, and the quality difference between 16bit windows executables and 32bit windows executables is far greater then the difference between 32bit EXEs and 64bit EXEs ) and keeping old crash prone parts of code around (Yes, I have seen Install Shield crash. I have gotten Divide By Zero errors on it before. I do not know how the fuck somebody manages to ship software with a Divide By Zero error in the installer, new software mind you, now some old stuff, but hey, I have seen it happen. Install Shield isn’t that good anyways, leaves shit all around the HD).
Is this really something to get your panties all in a bunch about?
Yes it is. Not if you just have to use it. It is if you have to support it in a large organisation.
Let me give you an example : because you have to develop for mutiple Microsoft systems (which do have differences, most end-users won’t notice that, programmers do), you need different Microsoft Operating Systems.
Now just trying to upgrade the Antivirus software in your whole organisation is a real hassle. Microsoft in it’s infinite wisdom has created a variable called OSTYPE (just open a command prompt and type set and you will see it).
This would be really handy if it really contained a string identifying your OS, instead whether you are using NT 3.5, NT 4.0 (Workstation or Server) or are running Windows 2000 or even XP, the string still only contains WINDOWS_NT.
Why after all these bloody years haven’t they changed this.
This is just only little peef, but it makes a simple job of upgrading some software from a job that would take mere hours to a task that will cost you a week to research and test.
Of course there is one option :
Buying Microsoft System Management Server + Microsoft Operations Manager + Microsoft Application Center, which will set you back at least a few thousand bucks.
Yes, Microsoft really made it a better world