FT's attack on Windoze
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From: Hugh Newbury on 20 Sep 2007 09:11 Hi: There's an unusually direct attack on Microsoft and its Windoze by John Gapper in an op-ed article in today's FT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa31eea2-6711-11dc-a218-0000779fd2ac.html Enjoy! Hugh -- Hugh Newbury Running Linux Suse 10.1 in deepest Dorset
From: Chris on 20 Sep 2007 09:45 Hugh Newbury wrote: > Hi: > > There's an unusually direct attack on Microsoft and its Windoze by John > Gapper in an op-ed article in today's FT: > > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa31eea2-6711-11dc-a218-0000779fd2ac.html > > Enjoy! > Interesting, but I disagree on a couple of points. Apple did indeed migrate away from 'classic' aaplications with the launch of OS X, but they would still run albeit via emulation. They are doing the same now with PowerPC based apps running on Intel Mac hardware. The difference is that Apple (unlike Windows) doesn't try to be all things to all people when it comes to backwards compatibility, but gives users a viable stop-gap until they upgrade. I think the device driver argument is a red herring. Linux and OS X support almost as much hardware as Windows either through their own drivers/kernel modules or third-party ones. But, the problem with the argument is that Windows doesn't (AFAIK) load them all up at once, just like Linux and OS X. The difference is how the drivers are managed by the OS where the strength of a *nix core shines through in Linux and OS X when compared to Windows. Plus, all the additional software that the average Windows users needs to run (Virus checker, Anti-spyware, Anti-adware, WGA) versus other OSes doesn't help in the snapiness stakes either. ;) And don't get me started on how MS's copies of other people's ideas always end up being worse than the originals e.g. Aero versus Aqua/Compiz, MS Search vs spotlight/beagle, etc
From: Maurice Batey on 20 Sep 2007 12:36 On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:11:48 +0100, Hugh Newbury wrote: > There's an unusually direct attack on Microsoft and its Windoze by John Gapper in an op-ed article in today's FT: > > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa31eea2-6711-11dc-a218-0000779fd2ac.html Interesting! But I was surprised to see him claim that: "Microsoft has stuck to the principle of "backwards compatibility" - that all software written for earlier versions of Windows should be able to run on newer ones." I hadn't realised that... -- Maurice (Remove 'removethis.' to reply by email)
From: anahata on 20 Sep 2007 13:56 Maurice Batey wrote: > > Interesting! But I was surprised to see him claim that: > > "Microsoft has stuck to the principle of "backwards > compatibility" - that all software written for earlier > versions of Windows should be able to run on newer ones." > > I hadn't realised that... Well, it's not entirely true, is it? There are many examples of applications that won't run on later versions of Windows, but it's true that MS have hampered themselves with several generations of API all available at once in an attempt to maintain compatibility. Their maintenance of document file format compatibility though different generations of MS Office is legendary, of course. -- Anahata anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827
From: Andy Burns on 20 Sep 2007 14:43
On 20/09/2007 18:56, anahata wrote: > Well, it's not entirely true, is it? There are many examples of > applications that won't run on later versions of Windows, but it's true > that MS have hampered themselves with several generations of API all > available at once in an attempt to maintain compatibility. and internally they've used app-specific tweaks to ensure that apps that would otherwise break continue working on newer versions of windows, leading to spaghetti code. |