Why is it that so many people like to bash the Microsoft Corporation and it’s product line. I’ve read several such comments here, and they are usually made as a blanket condemnation rather than a specific criticism.
I once saw a guy on TV complaining about Microsoft Windows, and as an example he explained how ironic it is that you have to click on a button called ‘Start’ when you want to shut the computer off. Now, maybe this could create some confusion in a first-time user for a period of about a millisecond, but it really doesn’t seem like it’s a valid complaint. It seems more like he went looking for something to complain about, and, unsurprisingly, he found something.
Why do so many people hate Microsoft? What, specifically, is their problem with the company??
I have three specific problems with Microsoft:[ol][li]Their business practices make the mafia look like saints.[]They don’t seem to understand software security very well.[]They bollocks UI design quite often (Menus that change as I get used to them? What genius thought of that?)[/ol]Other than that, I got no truck with them.[/li]
I can guarantee you that some people hate them just because they’re a large corporation.
Windows was, for years, pretty crappy. Some people stay it still is, but I love XP. Microsoft has all the corporate ethics of Enron. And some people just like bashing the big guy.
Microsoft sucks because they have driven / are driving / will drive competitors out of business by using their OS monopoly to promote their inferior software over the competitions superior software. They do this by making it appear that their software is “free”. That is, that it comes at no additional cost with pretty much any PC sold.
There really isn’t any application software category (spreadsheet, database, word processor, etc.) where MS makes the best one available. They continue to have huge market share for all of their apps because it is rolled into the cost of the PC. Word for instance sucks. but faced with the choice of using Word or spending $500 dollars out of pocket to replace it what is the most common choice going to be?
Also MS loves to make its apps dependant on one another and/or completely incompatible with those of other software developers. Because of this if you use one MS app you are pretty much forced to use them all. Likewise when you dump one MS app you will have to dump several because MS discourages interoperability bewteen its apps and those of any competitor.
Also also, MS apps are standard for any institutional machine so if I am using a word processor at work I pretty much have to use the same one at home. This is also true of libraries, cybercafes and friends houses. So to make data portable you have to use the standard format. The one MS chose.
I hate Microsoft because I have to use their lousy software rather than some of the really cool stuff avaiable simply because they bundled it with every copy of windows ever sold.
Besides their predatory business practices, I hate Microsoft because their software is sloppy and inelegant. They seem more focused on adding features to the programs (to justify upgrades, I suppose) than they do on making sure the software and features work correctly.
For example: I use Microsoft Excel a lot. The version I’m using is a few years old (Excel 2000), but it’s about the 7th or 8th version of the program, so you’d think they’d have the basic stuff worked out by now. But every time I sort a list containing formulas, the numbers get messed up because the formulas end up referencing where a number was before the sorting, rather than after.
Basically, they piss me off because their products work perfectly for 99% of things, but that 1% is always something that nobody would expect them to screw up and thus ends up screwing up whatever you’re doing.
I’d say most of it is because Microsoft is perceived as the “enemy” of Linux / open source software. And they are direct competition in many things. Add in that a lot of open source supports are rabid fanboys. (See Slashdot) If you are a rabid fan of one thing, you tend to be violently opposed to it’s competitors, sometimes even irrationally.
Because Microsoft are an excellent example of why monopolies are bad. Bad for the industry, but for innovation, bad for all other companies in related industries, bad for the consumers.
Microsoft frequently use their position in the industry to bully other companies. They force some to give their software preference over others. They announce ‘vapourware’ versions of software in order to put consumers off buying into another company’s product. They buy up other companies with competing, and often better, software in order to kill it off to protect their own. They have blatantly stolen ideas from other companies, safe in the knowledge that they can tie things up in the courts for years until the issue is no longer commercially relevant. They are practically immune to consumer pressure to improve aspects of their software (like security) because the consumer really doesn’t have that much of a choice.
This doesn’t mean that Microsoft itself is ‘evil’, or the people who run it. It is simply the natural behaviour of a monopoly. This is why they should be prevented by law and the US government has failed in its obligations to break it up.
I would venture that very few people/companies/developers really understand software security. Microsoft is just the poster child because their products are popular and everyone jumps on their failures.
In at least one recent OpenHack contest, Microsoft’s security actually held up very well. Neither the Oracle nor the Microsoft sites were actually penetrated, however the Oracle version was used as a platform for launching cross-site scripting attacks. (CSS is an attack where one website is used to send possibly malicious javascript code to another site. The first site is simply a relay.)
I see MS as unnecessarily antagonistic towards its competition and consumers.
I’m also critical of Microsoft because I don’t think it’s as influential as it could be, as it should be. I don’t see it as a leader, or as having independently developed anything truly original. I can’t think of any major contributions it’s made to the industry. It’s just a really big company. And it’s a shame, because it has the presence and resources to bring something cool and outstanding to the entire world. But it hasn’t. There’s a lot of wasted potential in its dominance.
He gives away hundreds of millions of dollars (yay) but he can’t invest in an operating system that is stable. XP is nice, but I’ve had to rebuild my laptop TWICE because the sleeper function is really a sleeper cell function (don’t use it).
He breaks the first techno commandment: “tho shall not rename a function”. Can you imagine buying TV and the ON button is called OCULAR INTENSITY.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, pisses me off more than to get a revised product and have to relearn the SAME FUNCTION. I want to kick his ass everytime I go to use “File Manager” and it has a new name, or button, or icon.
From what I gather about MS, the really good compilers get to work on the programs and the NUGS (new useless guyS) are assigned Beta duty.
I actually love his products (when they work) and I don’t agree with the monopoly argument. It was because of MS that we have such a variety of software today. What makes it all work is a unified OS. Ask an old person what it was like when you had to match the software up to your hardware. Your word processor had to include the brand of printer you own or it wouldn’t work.
The best thing that could Mr Gates could do is to develope an OS that is burned onto a chip. It wouldn’t require “booting up” and it couldn’t be tampered with.
Contrary to what many want you to think, Microsoft achieved dominance in the technology industry simply because their products were vastly superior to the competition, not by being jerks or engaging in unfair trade practices. Netscape was driven out of business not because of the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, but because Netscape Navigator was an absolutely terrible product in comparison to IE.
Since they achieved their monopoly position, Microsoft has clearly begun to exploit it. The most obvious way is with Windows Product Activation, in which Microsoft allows only five major changes to a system before a new copy of Windows must be purchased. No one likes this. Further reasons for annoyance include Microsoft’s backing of Digital Rights Management implementations, as well as their just plain icky proprietary MSN internet service.
Two big, big reasons. They can get away with selling inferior products, and they’ve never had to answer the monopoly charges. Both serious offenses in my book.
Take Windows 95. Pure garbage, and anyone who’s used it for two days knows it. It took ages to boot up. Applications ROUTINELY crashed for absolutely no reason. The file manager was a mess. Every feature was hideously slow (don’t get me started on the search function). It was clearly inferior to Apple interfaces released years earlier. Any non-monopoly that tried to market something this horrendous would be looking at crippling losses within the month. (Windows has improved since then, but it’s been a long, long process, and guaranteed no other company in the world would have been allowed to pull this off.)
Now, the monopoly charges. You may not agree with them. In retrospect, I think they may have been a bit overstated. But the fact remains that there were charges, which were not groundless, which, for most companies, means that they have to deal with them. Think of all the ridiculous, baseless, moronic lawsuits filed against big corporations (most of them by other big corporations) that, nonetheless, required the defendant to ring up the legal department, get their butts out to the courtroom, and make a case addressing the charges. Here we have serious charges about the fundamental nature of Microsoft and its practices, and the government…the same government that’s supposed to be protecting our rights…backs off. (IIRC, MS did get a wrist slap or some meaningless gesture, but nothing that appreciably affected the company.)
Microsoft is just getting the same scorn anyone or anything with near-absolute power and almost no accountability would get.
(Confession: They do have some terrific products, and even the X-Box is shaping up to be a decent system. I’m not going to go out of my way to avoid the MS label, but I sure as heck don’t seek it out either.)
DKW: I disagree with your asessment of Win95. Yes, it occasionally crashed and was at times slow. It was STILL light years ahead of any other competition. The first Apple OS to approach the usability of Windows 9X was OS8, which was released in mid-1997. Windows 95OSR2, released in 1996, solved a good portion of Win95’s problems and was quite a decent OS in its own right.
I hate Microsoft due to the incredibly ironic fact that their software is responsible for my paycheck while simultaneously being my prey. It is too much of a mindfuck for me to fathom most days, therefor I excersize my right as a human being to hate what I do not understand.
I would be hard-pressed to think of a component of the vast plague that is Internet Abuse which does not somehow link to a Microsoft Exploit.
Microsoft Exploits are (arguably) an engineered aspect of their business model. A constant reliance on patches and upgrades (from who? Microsoft) are required to keep your personal information private…your credit profile your own…your marathon weekend of anal sex pr0n between you and the cat…or more accurately, Microsoft sells you the illusion that the teeth of the script kiddies are not snapping the seat of your pants off of your ass.
I hate Microsoft because it has placed a weapon in the hands of the inept. To borrow an analogy that a co-worker once used to describe the femme fatale who had ruined him and left him bereft…“She is like a kitten with a laser-beam strapped to her head. She doesn’t quite realize that everywhere she looks in her sweet little kitten way, doom…DOOOM!!!”
Such is the inadvertantly destructive entity that is the average ignorant virus infected/owned/hacked/violated Windows user.
Your grandmother. Your boss. Your little brother who invites the soccer teammate home who just happens to know how to make a few extra paypal bucks by sending e-mails via instructions provided by someone with a screenname of “AllYourB@s3areB3|_0ng2U$”
The Microsoft MVPs (‘Most Valuable Professionals’, now that’s a pompous title!) that hang around in Microsoft product related newsgroups don’t seem to be human.
