Windows is so irrelevant | Hacker News Reader

Windows is so irrelevant

uiorean.ro

10 pointstimurlenk19 comments

Microsoft sold a large amount of Windows 7 licenses - see: http://beta.thehindu.com/business/article96694.ece

People use Windows because they like it and they can do a lot of work with this operating system. Stop believing that people use Windows because they are forced to.

As for the rest of this article, I have the feeling I'm being fed with a list of peremptory choices based on little or no field experience.

I'd like to see more examples of strategic choices of choosing an OS vs another and the impact it had on a deployment.

I bought a mac book because it could run windows. I installed windows on it and i have tried unsuccessfully to get into the mac side of things. The dvd player doesn't work under windows, so i boot to mac to watch movies and such, but I always go back to windows.

Under Mac, I don't like the way the mouse moves. I don't like the window resizing. I don't like that I can't maximize a window. I don't like it isn't really all that stable. I get the spinny rainbow wheel. I've seen other people's macs lock up in the middle of a presentation. I find the mac constricting.

You may disagree with me, which is fine. But to say that people use windows because they are forced to isn't true. I use windows because I prefer it. Maybe it's just familiar. I dunno. I started out on Apple IIe's decades ago, but I don't really have a problem with windows. I think most microsoft issues are religious. When you add up the hardware and the software for a PC, they're much cheaper than macs. The hardware is nice, but I probably won't buy another one for myself.

EDIT: I do wonder sometimes if I'm "holding myself back" by not learning another environment. I do understand the advantages to *nix and another reason I bought the mac was the underlying kernel for the OS. Perhaps I just got locked in. I don't find it unsettling though.

Much of the dislike for Microsoft is historical. At various points, Microsoft has beaten competitors by means other than making the best product at the best price, and some of us don't really like doing business with that sort of company.

There's also the fact that some versions of Windows have been less than shining examples of the art of computer programming. Perceptions of a brand take a while to improve. 7 doesn't seem too bad, but Vista wasn't exactly universally loved, and some of us still remember Windows ME.

As for price - my Thinkpad was only cheaper than a Macbook Pro because it was refurbished. I don't think it's fair to compare either to a lower-priced consumer-grade PC with similar specs on paper.

Because Apple does not throw its own weight around? Ok.

I'm not defending Apple here. I'm explaining why people don't like Microsoft.

Perhaps you're also describing why people will come to dislike Apple in the future?

Perhaps, but I think people dislike Apple now (and probably in the future) because of their insistence on a locked-down and controlled experience regardless of what users and third-party developers want.

I find the mac constricting.

It's like new underwear: At first it's constrictive, but after a while it becomes a part of you.

that's what i wonder. if I just dive in and say no more MS forever, i'll feel better about it in a few years.

> I will stay away from free products based on Linux and some comodity servers, I will focus only on commercially supported products with provide reliability.

A company will feel no shame in using Linux and commodity servers. Not everything needs to have a support contract attached to it, quite the contrary.

My rule is simpler: laptops are macs, servers are linux on commodity machines (or VPS) and windows sits in virtual machines for testing.

I believe it was meant as a thought experiment - even when actively avoiding free solutions, your best shot is a non-microsoft setup. That's how I understood the article.

The article is taking one of two stances, but never formally (or clearly) states which. Either it's arguing that Windows is irrelevant because there is comparable software for no cost, or that the continued existence of Windows as an OS is pointless.

I'll freely admit that I host all my websites on a Linux machine. As a web server Linux is just better for PHP & Ruby. My development is on a Dell Studio 1555 with Windows 7, since I cannot afford the Mac price tag (I even got this one on a $150 off sale!).

But I still don't see why a $20 billion market is "irrelevant".

Now, that $20 billion is partly due to the fact of all the pent up demand for a working version of Vista. Remember that when ME flopped XP sold quite well... so it's not irrational to assume that W7 has prospered thanks to the failure of Vista.

... and so is Linux, apparently, since the world is about to switch to Macs on the desktop. That comes naturally once the admins have had to to learn BSD by picking non-Linux-based server/backend solutions. Excuse me while I go hold my breath.

Indeed. And while OSX might have a BSD heritage the command line isn't exactly where it's at with OSX.

Strikes me as being written by someone that does more reading than building.

OSX makes me feel nostalgic. Every time I open the terminal, I feel like I am on a VT-100 running Unix on a VAX...

Seriously: having no package management as a central part of the OS is so 70's... The next step could be charging extra for compilers...

Installing MacPorts is trivial.

Have you ever tried to delete every file that a .pkg installation creates on your hard drive, good luck! I think this is what he was trying to say, even slackware has a better package management than OS X... MacPorts mitigate this for some software but not all, but I still prefer pkgsrc.

I know it is - I have it installed on my Macs. Unfortunately, it's slow, cumbersome and can't do a lot of stuff apt or yum can rather easily. I tried Fink before, but it's not the same. And you are not package managing the OS, but a "shadow" of it in a different file tree.

It's a kludge.

No mention of Sunacle hardware and software?

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