The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
dendory.net
dendory.net
The bulk of the market doesn't buy "computers" they buy "televisions." Think about that for a minute.
The bulk of the market are entertainment 'consumers' for which you can sell access to their eyeballs for real money. Just like TV did before people got digital recorders and started skipping all the ads. Not so with these new fangled TVs, they don't care if you don't look at their advertising they want to know what you did look at, and when, and after what, and then what did you do? Because all of that is much more valuable than putting up a tasty picture of a cheeseburger in front of you, no, they can phone ahead to your local market and tell them to stock up on cheeseburgers because you've been researching them all day and are now at the point where you want to make a purchase.
But the cool thing? It means that the current 'big' players are leaving the market for computers behind. You can tell that by the fact that the computer company no longer sells a product that a developer would care to use. And that means that there is room again at the bottom.
Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix.
But for that company to exist, you have to pay for the products you use, and to get to that point you have to not be able to get something 'good enough' by hacking and slashing something else into shape.
To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS.
> Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix.
Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need. Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored.
But you need a 'real' company to say to someone like an Atheros that you'll design in their wireless chip only if they will commit to driver support for it on your OS. That sort of thing doesn't happen between a company and an 'interested third party' sadly.
The other thing folks will have to come to realize that you won't be able to combine your "TV" and your "computer" much longer. The demands of content producers are reaching a point that 'general purpose computing' on devices that can show their content are made increasingly more difficult and eventually they won't legally exist. Secure boot, HDCP, all of these things are manifestations of externally exerted control over the platform.
The good news is that computers will go back to being computers. It is going to feel a bit weird for a while though.
Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite:
Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple.
But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really.
Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries.
In the light of this, it makes complete sense that Steve Jobs is a household name, whereas Wozniak isn't (but Wozniak is definitely a "hacker household name", which is what he deserves to be).
The last Apple computer Woz had a direct hand in designing was either the Apple II or the II+ (I can't quite figure out which), over three decades ago. Woz was a genius when it came to minimal and effective designs and it's certain that he played a key role in getting Apple off the ground, but he has had no real impact on the company or anything the company does for nearly as long as I've been alive.
Woz helped build Apple into a successful company, but the scale isn't even remotely the same. The Apple that Jobs subsequently built decades later now sells more hardware in a month (or so) than Woz's Apple sold during his entire tenure.
I guess if you have seen somebody build one of the worlds first affordable computers out of some bits in garage it probably seems like anything is possible when you have a few billion $.
But your point remains; Woz hasn't done anything at Apple since 1987.
It had a large impact on a number of industries, but your statement implied a multiple of contributions.
Hacker news arent a poll of "do you like Steve Jobs" with simple yes/no, and i am honestly interested to hear what those contributions are.
So I think you downvoted an opinion.
I can't even begin to enumerate the things you see everyday that are influenced by Apple, besides their own products.
Or he just used smart and predatory business practices, and somehow was the only major player to realize eyecandy will win over configuration for everyone that wants just a "tv" into the internet.
No, he didn't do all this himself, but he was captaining the ship. Has Sergey Brin changed the way people use the internet?
Let me Google that for you.
Google however turned a better product and has therefore captured the lion's share of the market. But they Google search engine is pretty much a copy in functionality of previous ones that came before.
Of course Google have brought other things to the internet (maps comes to mind), but the search engine didn't change how people used the internet - we were searching long before Google.
- Sub-second reconnection to wifi when resuming from sleep, using past remembered networks and IPs
- Bonjour zero-configuration service discovery for printers, network speakers, etc.
- Exposé window management and the GPU-accelerated desktop in general, not to mention just-in-time-compiled GPU accelerated image and video manipulation with CoreImage / CoreVideo.
- Spotlight indexed desktop search that's actually usable for real world filetypes
- Quicklook instant previews, not to mention native PDF support not involving Adobe Reader
- A mail program that autoconfigures based on just the email address, just by trying the obvious options
etc
Add in the fact that Apple is still the only company to have multi-touch work properly on a desktop, that their hardware has been dominating geek conferences for years because of its travel-friendlyness, and there is plenty of innovation to go around.
In what way has multi-touch been pushed way past what anyone has done in the past? (say, compared to Sears et al work from 1990?) Actually, any of the technologies on that list, in what way were they pushed way past what anyone else was doing in the past? Cornering the music industry (legally) was an achievement indeed, but a tremendous contribution? My thought goes back to Wallmart and any product that they was first to successfully sell.
The reason fewer people have heard of Wozniak is because he left the company 25 years ago. He doesn't get the same PR treatment from the Apple marketing fund.
Now, here are some bonus questions: You all know who invented the transistor at Bell Labs, but who invented the LASER? How about the microwave oven? FM radio?
Actually, I don't know why few people know who invented the microwave oven, since the inventor was a big-wig at Raytheon. I guess Raytheon doesn't have much of a PR department.
He hasn't done anything worthwhile but trundle around on a segway since leaving Apple
Yup, every time I use someone else's computer I'm astounded by the sorts of things they put up with. A simple example - after years of using AdBlock and FlashBlock, I simply don't have any tolerance for ads on the web. I don't have the ability to ignore them.
The dark side of this is why I hate MacOS: There are things in MacOS I consider broken that I cannot fix, because Apple is dedicated to One Apple Way. Great for the Mac Fan, lousy for someone who has their own workflow.
Apple only has room for one Jobs, one person to dictate how the experience is. Anyone else has to bow to Jobs or GTFO.
The solution is good defaults with configurability maintained as a first-class citizen. Ubuntu has this, mostly to the extent it keeps non-Unity window managers and desktop environments in the Ubuntu package repos. I can still use all of the Ubuntu stuff except the tiny amount that really does depend on Unity, which wouldn't make sense with my workflow anyway.
"You're holding it wrong," indeed.
Your comment makes me want to try Ubuntu again on my MacBook. What I liked about it last time was that everything worked--just like on OS X. I guess the hardware premium and hardware monoculture are helpful even in the open source community.
... the culture of hardware developers that isn't focused on 'It works on Windows', the culture of driver developers that aren't (apparently) seen as loss-centers by the hardware makers, and a number of other things that slip my mind, I'm sure.
The only thing better is something like Stallman's current laptop, which was built ground-up to be Free and Open. Given Stallman's track record with 'crazy' predictions like 'The Right To Read', I fully expect to eventually end up on something like that as my primary machine.
I hope Mark Shuttleworth might read and understand this paragraph before he continues to reduce the trust of Ubuntu users. The crucial difference between users of Windows/Apple on the one hand and GNU/Linux on the other is that Linux users have choices at the distribution level. A secondary advantage for GNU/Linux users is that once a distribution has been chosen, application software is packaged centrally with some degree of oversight so this kind of bait and switch by software vendors becomes harder.
The Ubuntunaughts at Canonical seem to be heading in the direction of selecting hardware which they can ensure will 'just work'.
RHEL need no competitors at all then?
If you are suggesting Ubuntu should focus on the server market - well they have put a lot into that too but they cannot get the market share required to sustain their business from that. RHEL is far too entrenched.
Red Hat seem to be selling a Desktop support package still, but minus the support! I assume this is a cost for the installer and updates.
I've donated the sterling equivalent of $49 to Ubuntu, and would do that on a yearly basis if it meant a cruft free system.
No Wozniak required. Aren't there already companies that sell Linux laptops that "just work?" Really, the big challenges are in organization, distribution, and marketing.
How about this? http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/zareason-ultralap-430...
I have bought two laptops from ZaReason, with mixed results. They mostly "just work".
Why would that not describe any major Linux distro?
Because Linux distros don't build or spec hardware. A hardware company can make a platform that is 100% supported by a software distribution, but it is currently impossible for a software distribution to be 100% compatible with a HW platform which won't release details of its implementation. One of the things I like about the OLPC XO-1 was that everything was documented. Very cool that.
Trendy example, look at the Raspberry Pi. Now look at the graphics blob, now back at the Raspberry Pi. Can't get there from here. So there is an opportunity.
Hmm, that sounds a bit snarky. I wasn't going for snark, that is a list of things that I run into at least one of them and often more every week. My latest was trying to get some sort of drawing tablet support out of Wacom for Linux. They point you here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/linuxwacom/index.php?t... What is wrong with that picture?
I really disliked the Windows95 window system which I was thrust into when I left Sun for a startup. But over time I learned its quirks so that I could get stuff done in spite of it and eventually came to appreciate what the developers were going for when they shipped it.
But had there been any way to go back to something like the Sun desktop when I first encountered it, I would have in a heartbeat. The change interfered with my productivity.
Linux gives you that chance, you can stick with what ever window system you want as long as your willing to recompile from source if it stops getting maintained. And maintain all of the packages that go with it, and maintain all of the utilities that adjust it, and maintain all of those 'throwaway' apps that you use from time to time. It wears on one to do so.
Most software packages do not need to know what window system you are using, and when they do, it is almost always for non critical conveinces in OS integration.
>Linux gives you that chance, you can stick with what ever window system you want as long as your willing to recompile from source if it stops getting maintained. And maintain all of the packages that go with it, and maintain all of the utilities that adjust it, and maintain all of those 'throwaway' apps that you use from time to time. It wears on one to do so.
That rarely happens with popular software. The most common thing to have happen is your preffered distribution swithces window systems, in which case the actual maintainer of the system will continue to maintain it. Or in the case of Gnome, the old version will get forked and maintained by another group. The only time the problem you describe will happen is if the developers of the window system abandon it, and it is not a highly popular system. This is far less frequent than the OS maintainer deciding that the software is not the one true way.
So true. so true. My applauses sir.
Still though, you can always throw Ubuntu on a Thinkpad. A small company like System76 can't match the form factor and battery life of products from Lenovo, Apple, Samsung, etc.
If they were doing a 'Sun' type model, they would spec the hardware, get the Ubuntu distro and integrate it with some key features. Create an ABI and a DDI [1] that third party vendors could rely on to work for the next few years and when it changed to evolve in a compatible way, and then sell that to end users.
The point of having a managed ABI/DDI is that someone like an AutoCAD would be assured that if they ported AutoCAD to the system it would always work on all systems and if it didn't then System76 would figure out why and fix it. System76 would have to sign up to create a stable set of interfaces that provided all of the required features so that you wouldn't need "autoconf" or "configure" you could just add "#ifdef SYSTEM76" in your code where needed and know it would just work. Now System76 can build that out of existing pieces, they can say for example that "OpenGL will be available, link library is -lgl and include path is <opengl/*.h>" and those kinds of "restrictions" enable someone to maintain a version of their product for a 'small user base' (which rounded to the nearest million users is 0) Those same restrictions are anathema to many in the community ("Why force me to use Unity? I love Gnome/KDE/XFCE...") but they require a federating API if someone wants to code to them and support that code.
The counter argument is "community support has created stuff that runs on everything without restrictions, look at MySQL, or VIM" and that is a good argument, but for 'boring' things it works poorly, and 'boring' usually means tools of interest to a user who isn't interested in quarrying the rock so they smelt the iron to make into a lathe kind of users.
The third argument is that its all going into the cloud and people running computers that they compile on and stuff will be like people who spin fiber into yarn so they can knit their own sweaters, a niche and a small one at that. I can see the merits of that argument as well but hope it doesn't win the day.
[1] ABI - Application Binary Interface, DDI - Device Driver interface
I got the system back, and it seemed to work, but now I was getting a lot of crashes. I tolerated it for a couple of months as it wasn't so severe to make the system completely unusable, but I eventually got sick of dealing with it. memtest immediately reported some severely damaged RAM, so I emailed System76 and again, after a protracted paperwork/support process, they mailed me replacement parts to install myself (the only alternative to shipping the whole laptop back off to California; the disk is encrypted, but still was not looking forward to the potential of a careless tech wiping it and another $80+ bill to make sure it got back to me within the month).
I installed the new RAM modules (and I'll say that it was quite easy to take apart, only exception being the keyboard ribbon, much better than my old MBP) and things were going better, but I still get full system hangs in 3D games. I am concerned that there is a hardware issue with the GPU. Haven't cared enough to tackle that one seriously yet, as I do most 3D stuff on my desktop, but it's really annoying.
If System76 was better with their support processes, these would not be such a big deal, but with their non-cooperation in getting shipped repairs performed and returned quickly, inability to contract out or reimburse for local repairs, long RMA processes and limited customer service availability (no weekends, hours something like 9a-4:30p Mountain), it's just not worth the hassle.
Next time I will get a powerful Dell most likely. I just wipe them immediately and put Arch on anyway, so no concerns about bloatware/spyware/whatever.
There's no junk, no spyware, nothing to remove. Occasionally you might get a software bundle, like Office, or Quicken, but literally just drop it in the trash and you are done with it. Rarely would you have to find an uninstaller or dig deep to remove something, and if you do, you generally brought it on yourself and should know what you are doing.
But you pay extra for this, most of which people apparently don't want to do, as I always hear "I could have bought computer xyz for 25% cheaper", as they are finishing their 15 hours of cleanup.
The iDevices are completely orthogonal to whether a MBP is a "developer-focused" computer. I use mine for Android development (oh noes! locked bootloaders!), Web development, and Windows development about equally, and everything works pretty much flawlessly, with the tools I need kept close at hand. (Hell, I don't even use Quicksilver anymore, as Spotlight's gotten better and Quicksilver hasn't kept up to date.)
The Mac App Store is entirely optional and none of my developer tools except XCode come through it. MonoDevelop and IntelliJ I get separately, pretty much everything else comes through homebrew. Loads and loads of applications are sold outside of the Mac App Store, too, with absolutely no problems.
Based on this and other things he said, I think Macs count as the "something else" that can be hacked into shape, since Apple is not specifically targeting all of your listed use cases.
I'm also not the only one who's extrapolated the recent trend of Macs more closely resembling iDevices to imagine a possible future in which Macs become appliances, and the developer-focused computer ChuckMcM envisions can come into being.
So how about a development environment for Android in the 'cloud' ? How cool would that be, your files are in iCloud so you know they are safe, your tools are always current and compatible since you're just talking to them over web API, and you can pay for a months worth of access to the compilers and debuggers for cheap instead of wasting all that time to put together an open source environment or spending big bucks for the MSDN Library equivalent service. You can watch movies on your MBP while you are building the Android manifest and running regression tests on that thing in some cloud instance that spun up just for that one task and will go back to idle when its done. Click a button and blam! it's submitted to the App Store.
You may not realize it but that is the vision that is driving moving away from a computer that you hold and do things with, vs a 'viewer' into a service somewhere that is doing the lifting and "adding value" in other ways.
If you read the thread on the Lisp epiphany [1] then this is the same kind of thing. But rather than data is code and code is data the epiphany here is that if you have enough network bandwidth and its available 24/7, then it becomes just another bus on the backplane and where your "computer" is and where your "screen" and "keyboard" are becomes irrelevant. At the office we have folks who put their desktop computer in some room, out of the way, and using X have their 'screens and keyboard' on their actual desk, they do this because the desktop machine is modestly noisy (we have quite cases but its not silent) and really on a gigabit LAN you can't tell that your machine isn't under your desk anyway.
That is coming to the world, faster than you expect, and because it will be insanely more convenient for most people supporting the few people who want to do this 'locally' will fall by the wayside.
Step 1, you figure out how to present a interaction rich UX
Step 2, you figure out how to move most of the data into the network.
Step 3, you create tools that present the UX, process data in the network, and deliver the result.
Google Docs is crushing Microsoft office, services like Box.net, DropBox, and S3 are capturing more and more of the data.
Free startup idea: Github + APT, add a button to a GitHub like service that says "Build this for Ubuntu-x86-64-12.10 and give me the link to the package." Click the button, wait, then post the link to a modified APT
apt-get install <URL>
Probably won't happen for a couple of years at least but it will happen, too many people want it too, and too few will demand local compilation to keep it supported.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4765067 - "The Nature of Lisp"
My open-source stuff is on Github, sure, but none of my private code is. I run a Redmine+gitolite instance on a physical box in my house for my private and private collaborative projects (one on-site backup, taken daily and rolled over three days; one off-site backup, stored every week). My code stays local and on machines I control, and the same is the case for many other businesses. It's for that reason that I don't think what you're describing is likely to be so commonplace as to make local development "fall by the wayside" in the near future.
While I get where you're going, I admit I had to restrain an eye-roll at the idea that this will be "the thing" anytime soon if only due to inertia. A development environment for Android in the cloud would be "cool," until it breaks. I have a very overpowering need to control my toolchain and my environment and that doesn't mesh with what you describe. I find the situation you are describing to feel really fucking oppressive. Unsettlingly so.
(I don't see Apple locking down the Mac, by the way. I see Mac sales being cannibalized by iPads, but I do not see Apple, at least in the near future, killing its most attractive feature--flexibility. Both for developers and for consumers. I think Microsoft has a much better chance of offing the traditional desktop/laptop with WinRT, though I'm personally not a fan.)
.
I fully agree that something similar will eventually happen for a certain subset of development; there are certainly some developers to whom this no doubt sounds really awesome. But I think that, and I don't say this to be either insulting or patronizing, this may be a bit of projection on your part. This feels like a "Valley bubble" idea, a "wouldn't it be cool if" that ignores a lot of real-world use-cases. Even aside from the "ew, remote" factor for me personally, I think there are enough infrastructural hurdles to make this really difficult to do in the sort of timeframe you're suggesting.
But I am not the target market for such things anyway. I find "always-on" technology overwhelming. I find that my best development time is when I turn off the Internet and go sit outside and write code; I keep local copies of the Python manual, the Java APIs, and the MSDN library for that reason. (And my Mac is silent when I'm doing development work, FWIW.)
Perhaps I am wishcasting, but I don't think so. Here's hoping you're wrong. =)
I think we're more alike than you realize. My point is that there is much of what you and I do in our day to day development efforts that depends on the notion of "I own a computer, and I run these tools on it, and I get these results." And we can do that reasonably easily because even though our requirements are outside the mainstream (the target market as you put it) they are enabled because the piece work, the foundational stuff, is required for the target market, for now.
My prediction, fear, belief, what have you, is that the bulk of the 'investment' in terms of time and energy and thought power, will become more and more focussed on that market and worry less and less about what you and I are trying to accomplish.
Here is a milestone which you can look for in order to measure progress toward that future. When you see a GCC release which supports a system or processor where the only way to use it initially is through a remote API to some remote server with source code on some network accessible repository. The rationale will be
"We didn't want to delay releasing it for all the ports to 'catch up', most people can use it like this, installable packages for local OS'es will be available in a few {days/weeks/months}."
That is when you know that it has started changing 'faster' than people are willing to wait for the ports. Then the folks doing the ports will start to drop off because the number of people who use the port is dropping off because all the new kids just use the remote API anyway and you can do it from a command line as if it were running locally so why complain? But that milestone will tell you, to get the feature you want right now you have to use the remote version or wait for a port to come out. Here is a pointer to the source if you want to start porting it yourself.
Except the source will embed various network services which it can 'assume' are there, its the remote version after all, and you will have to code up an equivalent.
I've seen build systems like this, they are very powerful, I will buy you a beer and we can talk about the 'old days' when you could do development without having to be connected to the network. The kids will pity our backward ways. But the beer will be tasty as usual.
While I agree with the rest of your rant, this is simply untrue. The best summary I can find is here:
> Thanks to a legal doctrine called the business judgment rule, corporate directors who refrain from using corporate funds to line their own pockets remain legally free to pursue almost any other objective, including providing secure jobs to employees, quality products for consumers and research and tax revenues to benefit society. The idea that shareholders "own" corporations is another powerful but mistaken myth with no legal basis. Corporations are legal persons that own themselves. Stockholders own only a contract with the company, called a "share of stock," giving them limited rights under limited circumstances.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/02/opinion/la-oe-stout-...
>directors of a corporation ... are clothed with [the] presumption, which the law accords to them, of being [motivated] in their conduct by a bona fide regard for the interests of the corporation whose affairs the stockholders have committed to their charge
what that mean, is up to interpretation, but I thank you for encourage me to read up on it. Its clearly not a clean cut case as I first thought.
(better link: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-com...)
Microsoft does this too, if you buy a PC from them or from a Microsoft Store.
Vizio seems to get it. A sleek industrial design. Well priced. And Windows Signature. It's hard to believe that OEMs have trouble grasping this given that Apple has done it for years.
"You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with Apple or an Apple affiliated company. Apple and its affiliates may share this personal information with each other and use it consistent with this Privacy Policy. They may also combine it with other information to provide and improve our products, services, content, and advertising."
I don't think they're different from other companies at all.
Apple is very discreet in their e-mail marketing. They send maybe half a dozen emails per year, mostly after product launches or before christmas/school term/black friday/etc.
They aren't. Believing they are is the quintessential feature of the fallacies of Apple partisans.
And then we have Xcode, the program that has inspired a twitter account dedicated to its severe brokenness.
And let's not forget their terrible provisioning process that always breaks in continuous integration systems, and the asinine limit of 100 test devices. Oh, and their train wreck of a command line tool suite.
And then there's their absolutely bizarre behavior of replacing every internal function name with <redacted>, and disabling stdout on iOS 6.
And then we have the "eat all memory" pager system in OSX that can chew through 8 gigs like candy and bring your system to its knees should you ever try to run more than 5 programs + Xcode.
If there were an iOS development environment + simulator for Ubuntu, I'd wipe this laptop and switch over.
Edit: Really? Someone downvoted my explanation?!!!
Yeah, but don't let it bother you. Your comment is appreciated, but it's off-topic and doesn't provide conversational value, so I'm going to downvote it. I'm just curating for the next user. :)
Everything you posted is basically an understatement of the truth. Like you forgot to mention that if you do bother going to the trouble of posting a radar, it's probably going to get ignored.
I use an ageing (4yo) 13" macbook as my primary development machine and it works fine. I'm no where near geeky (or whatever term you use) to be even thinking about fiddling with OS internals and I've never hit an OSX bug that bothered me much
If you don't know how to use a computer at all, Apple is really awesome. If you are trying to make your own software or sell software (particularly for phones) Apple is awful.
I was an Apple user and small OS X developer, and I agree completely. Three years ago, I made a living developing shareware. Then Apple decided they wanted total control over the app ecosystem and turned the "put out a good product and wait" business model into an impossibility. VersionTracker's sale to CNET and subsequent mediocritization didn't help, of course.
Now I use Ubuntu and do web development. And maybe some day WebGL and related technologies will get to the point that I can go back to the tightly optimized graphics programming I really crave.
I guess great minds think alike, because I'll be jumping ship for web development on Linux in short order.
That's great. It's really not as painful a transition as I feared it might be. It's actually pretty astonishing how far the various linux desktop environments have come as far as usability.
More recent abominations like Gatekeeper are just icing on the cake.
>I'd think that it would improve discoverability in general, not hurt it
Nope. Apple's app stores are abysmal at helping people discover your software. I don't know why they opted to ignore everything that software aggregators like VT and Mac Update had learned over the years, but they did.
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this line of reasoning. How can security measures like this harm most users, especially given it's something that can easily be turned off.
And that's pretty shitty. Now a lot of people will say "it's only $99/year; what's the big deal?"
Well, first off, that's $99/year, forever, or your apps stop working. That's quite a commitment for a small developer.
Secondly, $99 is steep if you're developing freeware. You should not have to pay a hundred bucks a year for the privilege of giving your software away without people thinking that you're trying to steal credit card numbers or something.
Finally, $99 is steep for a lot of young people. I started developing freeware and shareware when I was in high school. If I had had to pay $99/year to make my app presentable, it probably would have been a deal stopper.
Now, you might say "Sure, but you're an established shareware developer and none of these things apply to you." But they still affect every shareware developer. Ever notice that nobody seems to be have been successful with shareware on Windows in many many years? Everything on that platform has been "free trials" and sketchy ad ware. The difference is ecosystem.
For many years, there was a thriving freeware and shareware ecosystem for the Mac, and so Mac users expected to be able to find freeware and shareware solutions to their problems. They expected to be able to find a handful of cheap or free programs that did what they wanted, and they'd be able to try out each one until they found one they liked. They expected this because it was true.
And free/shareware developers expected there to be an audience of Mac users looking for a free/shareware app that did what their app did. And they could be reasonably sure that if they fulfilled a real need, did it well, and kept the latest versions up on software aggregators, they'd be able to reach that audience.
But those three points above, along with the decimation of aggregators, and the introduction of the Mac App Store have broken that ecosystem. And let's be clear: Apple didn't merely sit by while the forest burned. They clear cut the damned thing and built their app store there. That thriving ecosystem had helped Apple sell computers, but it didn't profit them directly. So Apple set out to change users' expectations away from "find some cheap/free software out there written by a small developer" to "check the App Store", all so that they could squeeze 30% out of the process.
I do not think Gatekeeper is really about security. I think it is about turning the Mac App Store into the Only Way to release software. It's just a little squirt of agent orange to make sure that the forest doesn't grow back.
I hate going to random websites and giving them my credit card and dealing with whatever license key they give me.
I hate trials. Cheaper apps I can buy more liberally are nicer.
I hate crappy software that spews stuff around my system. Even though some apps can never be subject to sandboxing, I think forcing the rest to clean up their interactions with the rest of the system is an advantage of the App Store. (But I am biased in this particular opinion.)
I like having all my updates in one place.
I think the App Store generally has the potential to provide much better discoverability than the combination of Google and some crappy websites. Even considering the fee, I think that if people get used to it, the store can provide a better version of the "find some cheap/free software written by a small developer" concept.
I like that my mom is much more likely to use the App Store than VersionTracker.
I think the Store is only the death of an ecosystem insofar as it replaces it with a slightly different, but mostly just improved ecosystem.
But it's not an ecosystem now. It's a garden. And maybe it seems improved from a user's perspective, but it is completely fucked from a developer's perspective. If we can agree that Apple has made selling outside the App Store nonviable, and that dealing with the App Store is complete hell for developers, then I think we can agree that this is a bad situation for developers.
This trend towards apps stores may also be pushing in the same direction.
Um. Any company that does that is probably going to go out of business, just like Sun. You know who's a "developer's" company? Microsoft. And if you drink their kool-aid, your Visual Studio-developed desktop apps will run smoothly across all sorts of hardware with a single compiled exe. Microsoft convincingly showed that hardware doesn't matter many years ago, in fact their focus on software over hardware is arguably why they won, and they treat their licensed software devs well regardless of what company they work for. There are many instances of "Hey Microsoft, this doesn't work" and Microsoft responding with a custom piece of software to fix the problem. Some developers are angry about Windows 8 because they perceive that Microsoft is caring about them less, and that's probably true, but Microsoft will learn again that it shouldn't upset its developers if it wants to retain its supremacy.
nope, it was their business acumen, and willingness to kill off competitors
C'mon, Microsoft just handed them an app store for the entire ecosystem. None of their technology stack was designed to do that before surely some stuff had to change.
assuming they survive, that's pretty cool.
http://bartongeorge.net/2012/11/06/project-sputnik-profile-t...
Looks like they plan to launch something soon. Hope it turns out well.
The UX on PCs has turned to crap. All programs want to run in the background, they all compete for my attention every 30 minutes, they all want to be updated all the time and they all want to install some stupid toolbar into my browser that you can't remove, or even if you do it will somehow come back. Installing new programs has turned into a 10-minute minigame of "spot the checkbox that screws up your computer deep in the Custom Install settings!". Or sometimes I have to re-read a question in a randomly intruding dialog box 5 times just to figure out if I should answer Yes or No to their vague question for them to just please leave my computer alone. It's extremely annoying. I also can't remember the number of times I've cleaned up my msconfig startup. The programs just magically insert themselves back somehow over time. It's infuriating and exhausting.
I feel protected on my iPad from this torture.
And my desktop distro just goes on, doing what it's supposed to do, year after year.
What distro are you using? Because not all of them are free of this sort of crap. For example, Canonical decided to pollute the universal search in Unity, starting with Ubuntu 12.10, by adding in results from Amazon.
Second, I'm very curious to see how the Windows App store plays out. The #1 thing it needs to do to improve Windows as an OS is distribute free software. There is a lot of excellent free software available for windows like chrome, firefox, VLC, foobar2000, texmaker, Notepad++, uTorrent, etc.. Users have to go to different websites to download everything. This is such a pain that people have come up with installers, like ninite, that aggregate free software together into a single download. Ninite doesn't have everything I use, but it can easily shave hours off of setting up a new Windows box!
One major advantage of an App store is that software distributed through it can be policed for malware and viruses. If MS could get users to use their store as much as possible there is the potential to improve security of the OS. The only way MS can do this is to build their store up as a trusted and comprehensive distribution center that is all most users need. MS should view it as a failure on their part whenever users are forced to go elsewhere to get software, even software that competes with Microsoft products or which duplicates core functionality of the OS. That's where Apple's App store failed! In order to do this, MS needs to devote resources to lowering the barrier to publication in their store. Don't get me wrong, I am dead-set against Windows moving towards an entirely walled-garden iOS style ecosystem. The ability to install software from outside the store should be preserved, nor should it be limited in any way. However, I would welcome a central distribution point for Windows software like what Linux has.
Debian's APT package management system is brilliant. Even 10 years ago it would have made today's Apple App store look sad and pathetic. It is both comprehensive and incredibly smart in how it makes software modular with clear dependencies that are managed automatically for the user. This is the dream that all application stores should aspire towards. Redmond and Cupertino, for the love of your users, please start your copiers.
With regards an APT for Windows, I don't see how that wouldn't be possible to add to Windows as a third party thing. With a nice GUI and search and a default catalog of quality mainly OSS software with no toolbars or BS and have it also keep everything upto date.
That way you could just install it on all of your relatives who use Windows's computers and tell them just to download everything from either that or the MS app store.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763895
Now I think about it these just seems like such an obvious idea that I'm surprised nobody ever did it.
That's not a clean install.
A clean install is buying a retail version of Windows and blasting it down on your HD.
Recovery DVDs recover what the hardware vendor put there in the first place.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbpage.Wind...
You can wipe a Windows 7 install and do a completely clean Windows 8 install.
Or you can buy a computer that doesn't come with Windows in the first place.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-officia...
So, basically, burn respective .iso to a USB key, boot from it, install, enter the key from the sticker on the bottom of the laptop - done. Caveats are (a) limited choice of languages (b) lack of some brand-specific drivers, but if you run English version on a common laptop, it's very straight forward.
and then there might be a specific patch or workaround that's been applied by the oem that keeps the computer from exploding, but they sold it anyway because you can blow yourself up as much as you like AFTER voiding the warranty.
I noticed that starting with Vista, the distinction between OEM vs Non-OEM key seems to have been reduced. This makes life easier when there is no recovery partition or the hard-drive is hosed. Whereas with XP, you did have to use an OEM version for the key to work.
I have not had any issue validating windows using the above versions of Win 7, as well as a few vista cds that I believe are retail, as long as there is an OEM sticker on the laptop. Every so often I have to call in and do the automated telephone activation, but they are valid CD Keys and I think that is probably tied to how often the key was activated.
Having said that, at least with Vista, the disc the manufacturer gives you is often locked to a specific laptop/bios/board.
reason number 1001 why I hate windows
So, not your phone number, or the match of the given code with your computer's IP and usage when you go online?
Go tell your mom to format her hard drive and let me know what she says. I don't know about you but for most of us the answer would be "what?".
But for the standard "Pro" versions of Windows available at Best Buy for $65, you can run anything you want, including a lot of legacy apps all the way back to Windows XP.
ninite seems just like what the doctor ordered and I cannot believe I haven't heard of it until now.
I know what I'll be trying out when we get new dev-machines at work and need to go through yet another reinstall. Thanks a bunch :)
HAHAHAHAHA IT'S LIKE I'M ACTUALLY LIVING IN 1997
I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stops asking for more "next".
And now they all sneak garbage adware with the check boxes enabled by default because most people just click "next" anyway.
Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundled and what is bundled is MS only like internet explorer, nothing you can choose in that "next" wizard.
Windows is like a granny in the OS world, she needs to retire.
Well, if you use the Windows Store to get applications, you can finally get rid of them.
>the OS has almost nothing bundled
Really? Windows 8, for instance, comes with much of what you'd need. It's bundles a lot more than previous versions of windows
>nothing you can choose in that "next" wizard.
I'm not quite sure what this means.
I was referring to the fact that Microsoft does not bundle multiple browsers to choose from and forces everyone to have IE installed and unfortunately most users don't understand what a browser is to fix this.
And this is the reason web developers had nightmares with IE6 in the past and some still have with IE7.
> I never understood the install wizards for windows software...
I never understood why half the time when I download Mac software and double click it, nothing seems to happen because it's a "disk image" (talk about an outdated concept), which means I have to know to navigate to the Finder, find the actual thing I want, and then remember to unmount the image when I'm done.
Possibly because Windows has many, many, many more users than other operating systems do.
It's like the old urban legend about bank robber Willie Sutton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton) answering a reporter's query about why he robbed banks with "because that's where the money is." Crapware vendors focus on Windows because that's where the users are.
OSX by default (at least for DMG's) opens a window with the extracted content and most include "setup" instructions ("drag FOO into the Applications folder"), so it's not hard to miss.
I was afraid of that first, but after I briefly explained that to my father 3 years ago, he has never had a problem again (except with Flash Player)
Why is this? I don't know. Maybe they put less, er, effort into the OS X driver because of marketshare. Perhaps it was a different set of developers and the Mac developers had some sense. Maybe it's not even possible to create custom-potato-themed printer dialogues for OS X. All I know is that since moving to OS X I've seen far less crapware and whilst you're right that OS X has some UI warts too, I find that it (and the 3rd party software you install) bugs you a hell of a lot less.
You lost me at the first sentence.
But once you get the hardware to work, apt-get install really is a great way to get quality software. You list a bunch of stuff and it will get installed. Without trying to trick you into bundled crap, without charging you, with quite decent documentation included. If you run into trouble, there are people you can reach out to -- other users of your distro, mailing list, even the authors. It's not perfect, and may be time consuming but head and shoulders above of what regular users of other systems can get nowadays.
More than that. Package is maintained by people who use it themselves and will usually get updated in a timely manner, with minimal effort required on your part.
While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem.
> Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundle
The OS part of Windows is about 2 gigabytes (tried looking for source, but couldn't find one. Although this explains how you can fit a bootable emergency windows suite on a flash drive). The many other gigabytes are drivers. Plus, it's pretty disingenuous to blame Microsoft for Windows not supporting 3rd party devices, even though Windows checks for driver updates automatically.
Windows is as successful as it is because of Microsoft's cooperation with crappy OEMs who are only too happy to betray their customers for a quick buck.
You can't have Windows without the OEMs - show me the Microsoft PC you plan to buy. Microsoft does the best they can, working within their constraints, but at the end of the day they're throwing their product over the fence and letting someone else package it.
And you can't have good OEMs because Microsoft's PC strategy - with WHQL, PNP, UEFI, ACPI, and just about every other hardware initiative they've participated in, has been to make it difficult for hardware manufacturers to innovate in creative, non-standard ways without Microsoft's prior consent. Hence the race to the bottom among PC manufacturers. Cheap PCs, yes, but there's not much room for innovation that hasn't been green-lighted in some way by Microsoft and so the only PC manufacturers who do well are those who can survive on thin margins.
So yes, it is a Windows problem.
Microsoft under Gates and Balmer demonstrated very clearly that they couldn't be trusted to exert their influence over the hardware OEMs. They couldn't resist using their power to hammer small start-ups selling potentially threatening new technologies. So yes, they've lost this lever that might otherwise have been used to protect PC buyers.
Well, on a new Ubuntu installation the first thing I have to do now is:
sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
Step 1: Create an Apple Store account. Credit cards aren't so common here because bank transfers are basicly free and you automaticly get a debit card from your bank that is universally accepted. If you try to create an account directly you will fail if you don't have a credit card. You need to "purchase" a free App to be able to create an account without credit card information.
Step 2: Download Xcode and skim the licence agreement for 10 minutes so you don't sell your organs to Apple
Step 3: Find the Console Development Tools installation somewhere hidden in the options of xcode
Step 4: Install macports
Step 5: Install octave with macports, this encompasses half an gentoo installation. Things already present on the system like the llvm from xcode get rebuild. This takes hours.
1. Installed Command Line Tools for Xcode instead of Xcode (you don't need the IDE now for build tools, and yes this used to be painful)
2. use homebrew instead of macports which is more actively maintained and generally works better
It's a fast dual-head box. One screen is all Windows (and I'm typing this from IE 10), and the other is xmonad and emacs on Arch Linux on VirtualBox.
I'm also an Apple user (and AAPL shareholder), owning two (2010 and 2011 model) MBPs, and it is my opinion that Windows 8 is gorgeous and very, very stable. Microsoft has finally simplified the desktop experience, with sane security defaults, and in my opinion are very close if not at par with Mountain Lion on ease of use and attention to detail.
Finally, the system's performance as a desktop machine is at least %25 better than Unity/Gnome 3/KDE, and the overall fit and finish is years ahead of any leading open source DE. It was the Desktop Linux experience that has encouraged me to look elsewhere.
I'd encourage everyone to keep an open mind wrt MSFT. They're on the right track. This is not the same company I grew up hating.
It's interesting that only 7 years ago you probably wouldn't have be able to sit me in front of a Windows machine without resistance or at least some complaining. Since then I turned out to be a frequent defender of Microsoft in my surroundings and I'm considering ditching my Apple ecosystem for Windows 8 (esp. because of Surface and Windows Phone 8).
But the real problem, as have stated other, is OEM software and 3rd-party-apps. It takes effort to maintain your system (although not much, at least in my opinion, but you have to pay attention to, for example, what is installed along the way). I usually have none of the problems my peers or friends have (with Windows) and if you look at their machine, you'll see why. Almost every time I visit my father, there is a new (worthless) toolbar installed.
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof (some benchmarks, maybe), you are not providing any of that.
If that is your idea of a better operating system, try again.
We are talking 1 command against hours of fight against a whole system.
Companies, I don't care about your offers. When I will want to buy something, I'll Google myself a better deal.
Damn, it's just so wrong...
The Amazon search in Unity home lens (where you go to launch programs &c) is attempting to be a dynamic search so that results narrow as you type. Network latency means it sort of 'jumps' in groups of letters. Sometimes results corresponding to part of the words you type appear. This can produce 'interesting' results.
The point is that there will always be a Linux distribution which focusses on the user because a lot of them are made by community
The whole point of the article is that these issues can be solved but that the combination of all of them eventually make the platform bad.
Your "just turn it off" statement couldn't be more off-base for this discussion if you tried.
What a self righteous jerk. The article is about the regular bullshit that Windows users go through. A single choice made to bolster revenue of an open source project is vastly different than a system that simply hasn't been innovated on for the past 20 years and just sucks in a lot of places.
If you can spend 20 seconds of effort and fix breaking issues like installation standardization, or (un)installation cleanup, or package management, or the new security system that manages to suck harder than GateKeeper... then you can come back and talk down to me.
edit: even just drivers. Do you know how frustrating it is to be given a laptop as a gift from Microsoft only to find that the drivers are difficult to locate, impossible to install without several Admin-level command line statements and a reboot and several scary warnings, and that even after installing them, several of them were just disasterously bad. Fedora, everything works out of the box. Ubuntu, everything works out of the box.
Explanation for those outside the Ubuntu bubble: 12.10 has had an Amazon search integrated into the main Unity lens, and this is enabled by default. Early in the release of 12.10 a graphical 'kill switch' was added to system settings. Before that, you had to uninstall a package manually from the command line.
As I commented up the screen, I hope Canonical don't alienate their users with (any) more of this sort of thing as switching between GNU/Linux distributions is relatively easy.
And theres no magic switch to get them back to a point where they recognize that users matter.
Of course, the cure is presented in the form of locked down, proprietary platforms which shelter users from software companies self inflicted wounds. As times goes on; these platforms will slowly come to resemble their former counterparts, but without the relief of being able to uninstall the crapware.
I think that priority one for people interested in the future of computing is to fix the experience for the 99%.
EDIT: The answer isn't necessarily other open systems like Linux or Haiku, OEM manufacturers can screw the default installs on those systems up just as well.
EDIT[2]: Part of the reason anyway.
1. 1st-party OS installations in which the OS creators sell you the hardware with only the OS installed (Apple). Or possibly 3rd parties can license your OS only if they don't install any additional software (sort of like Nexus phones). Or obviously you could install Linux distros yourself... which is not appealing to most people.
2. Monitored software installations either in the form of (A) community managed software repositories as done with Linux distros and the BSDs, and/or (B) "app stores" with restrictive policies and sandboxed apps.
The reason Jobs didn't license out OS X is because the last time Apple did that it almost killed the company. One of the first things Jobs did on returning to Apple was end those agreements.
My recollection was that Apple was in dire straits at the time anyhow, but that the clone makers were substantially increasing MacOS shipments at a time when Apple was threatened with irrelevancy.
I thought Jobs killed the clones because he wanted absolute control, which he saw as necessary to pursue his goals for a high-end, seamless experience.
So basically you get a machine in mint condition. And yeah, it is like Linux in that when you install the OS it's the OS and nothing more. You can talk about freedom and locked down platforms all day long and I'll even agree but thats neither here nor there. Point is, the Mac isn't screaming for your attention, doesn't come preloaded with shit, and generally doesn't fuck with you in the same way Linux doesnt do those things. There are exceptions to every rule and god knows you have to cover them all here on HN but generally speaking that's the way it is.
As a long time Linux and Gnome user i got accustomed with an arguably better experience in managing software and user experience :-)
E.g., this blog entry (skip down to "Amelio") --
http://blog.adamnash.com/2008/04/16/reminder-why-apple-kille...
Here's Jobs on the subject, indicating it was unwillingness of the clone makers to accept higher license fees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIgu_7oLm0
Of course, just because Jobs is saying it, you can't know if this is the whole story.
It was almost weird to be able to take a PC out of the box and be able to immediately start using it.
Microsoft apparently worked pretty closely with Vizio on this, which suggests that Microsoft knows that the experience on most Windows PCs sucks.
For better or worse, the "consumer" user of Windows -- a person at home, without an IT support desk, who purchased his computer himself at a store -- captured a lot of attention inside Microsoft for this release.
I'm not at all surprised to see more Apple-like behavior from them, e.g. (1) restricting what Windows RT can run to the software available in the windows app store, (2) completely breaking app compatibility for older (WinForms) apps on WinRT, (3) getting way more draconian about hardware requirements for the Phone (specification of button counts/sizes, etc.), (4) having a "Signature" edition of windows.
MS has been fighting this battle for decades -- most blue screens were caused by crappy hardware drivers; they knew this but couldn't fix the problem without hugely breaking compatibility.
The only alternative for the mainstream seems to be the sandboxed type approach of iOS/WinRT. Oh, some developers abuse browser toolbars? No browser toolbars period! Background processes can make your system slower? No background processes period! Software from random websites can be viruses? Buy all of your software from us!
It does seem ironic that the product you pay for is far more anti-consumer than the free (in both senses) alternative. But I don't think that fact can be denied.
Most of those background service apps (Google Update, Apple Push, Adobe Update) are because a tiny background app is necessary to preform certain functions, and check for updates in the background, which is a good thing!
For example, 'iTunesAgent.exe' on Windows was to simply detect if you had plugged an iPod in and auto pop-up iTunes. For usability, it makes sense; because otherwise you would plugin an iPod and get nothing or a confusing Windows 'dunno what to do with this drive' screen. And because of Windows' architecture (for better or worse), it requires a background app to do this.
The same for many of the updaters. I would much rather be sure Flash and Java are updated then go running without an important security update.
I still have yet to understand the "no background app, good or bad" manifesto. Good background apps barely use any CPU time, they barely use any memory (and Windows reports too much memory in the first place due to shared memory), and preforms useful functions.
Why do we need 30 individual software update checkers running anyway? Linux solved this problem many years ago.
- To those suggesting using Linux, I use Windows because I need to. I run programs that require Windows, and don't really want to start messing with Wine. Also, from seeing the recent Ubuntu stories here on HN, it really does seem like the people behind Ubuntu and Gnome in particular are guilty of the same thing with their "brand"
- While Apple probably doesn't do this on MacOS they sure do try to get your email to sign you up to "offers" when you download QuickTime.
- Adobe Photoshop
If you rely on it for work, than you can't just switch to Linux. GIMP is closer to paint than to PS.
I last used GIMP in 2010 so a few of these might be available now. Anyway here's my list:
- No support for raw images.
- No 16 Bit and 32 Bit color mode.
- No adjustment layers.
- No support for Photoshop plugins.
- Lack of LAB and CMYK color modes.
- No 3D support.
- No video support.
- Integration with other Adobe tools (e.g: copy paths directly from Illustrator).
- Lack of usable transformation tools.
Also even though GIMP supports psd files, once you exceed a few hundred megabytes, it gets really slow compared to PS on the same machine.
The only thing that's better in GIMP is the lasso tool. I hate it in PS, but it's actually usable in GIMP.
If you factor out price (which you can and should if this is the tool that makes you money) GIMP doesn't even come close.
They don't sell you out to 3rd party advertisers like Microsoft has sold their Metro and Xbox UIs.
But clean install of Windows 7 or 8 + ninite.com. Windows generally has the drivers you need out of box, or at least the NIC / wireless driver so Windows update can find the rest for you, automatically. I can't remember the last time I had to manually get a driver for something, with the single exception of a USB to serial adapter I need for work.
So it isn't all roses in the Windows world with drivers. At least there was a driver, though.
(Slightly tongue-in-cheek - my Nexus One is nothing like as bad as my Galaxy Tab for crapware that comes pre-installed.
It is a very sad state of affairs when NONE of these vendors offer a service to sell you one without crap ware..
This costs small business so much time it is a very bad joke!
I called Dell, telling them I'm not agreeing with their software license and that I want to return them all the software. 5 minutes.
Got 180€ back for this.
Wiped the entire HDD. Ah man! That felt good. No more rants on crapware.
Installed Ubuntu.
Now I have a computer that does what I want it to do, not what I'm supposed to want.
Sure I have to put up with other issues now but what a liberative experience.
To a post about "usability problems people have to put up with because authors care more for their ideas than user experience".
Linux. Famed for choosing choice over usability and ideology over usability almost to the point of absurdity.
I was at least three sentences into a long "Uninstallers? Seriously?" rant when I realized that this is exactly what the average poor bastard on the street would do if they wanted to get rid of the crapware that infests a new machine.
[long thoughtful pause]
Jesus. It really is that big of a divide. I never (never, never, ever, ever) boot up a new machine. I always nuke-n-pave it right out of the box. I don't even give it any thought -- it's just the way it is.
[another long thoughtful pause]
Then again, this is a problem for my generation, where one in one hundred (maybe more) had half a clue when it came to personal computers.
I'd like to think the "run the uninstaller" route is also not an option for kids in their 20's and 30's (get off my lawn!). I'd like to think the ratio is closer to one in three or four, and installing a virgin copy of your OS of choice on a new machine is just as much a habit for them as it is for me.
So I guess I'm left wondering if I'm reading a rant from the late 1990's.
I bought a cheap Sony laptop a few years back, came with Vista and all of this shit pre-installed. The only provided way to re-install the OS was via a "recovery" DVD which puts all this shit right back on.
So I uninstall all of this stuff and it occasionally gives me errors complaining that it's missing various things that it expects to be there, so obviously even the uninstall doesn't quite work properly.
These ISO's should work on any machine as long as you have a valid Windows 7 Product Key.
I've always bought at least one OEM copy of Windows, or purchased upgrade copies when a new version is released. I picked up three copies of the Windows 7 DVD set (x32 and x64) for $40 each on Amazon, and you can pick up ISO's of Windows 8 directly from Microsoft for $40 a pop.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WO...
No, a PC, car, washer machine should just work, as purchased. The idea that a new Windows PC can't be used out of the box just shows how broken the user experience is.
I suspect that while he doesn't like the crapware, he doesn't mind the $75 subsidy. You really can't have it both ways.
I'm surprised the number of people who consider a browser that takes 30 seconds to start (on an i5) as normal. No wonder they are awed by an iPad when they use one.
"To install Windows 8 Pro upgrade, customers must be running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, or Windows 7."
What I don't see is a way to buy a non-upgrade version at a sane price ($69 vs. $199) if I want to run a clean version of Windows on the desktop I built. Said desktop is running linux and my primary interest would be running it on virtualbox, but that's neither here not there.
Perhaps what we need is a meta-installer that runs standard installers but ticks check boxes and sets or clears options that tell the app to not install adware/toolbars/plug-ins, maximizes the privacy settings, turns off auto-update, etc.
Whenever I install something, I already make notes about what I ticked/set/cleared so I can do it quickly the next time I need to install the same thing. Notes like this in an appropriate format--from thousands of users--can serve as the config file for the meta-installer.
Since the meta-installer would run the applications' own installers, there shouldn't be objections from commercial vendors since it wouldn't be repackaging their products.
Is that marketing speak for no crap/bloat/shovelware?
Is it better to lock down user experience using a central software quality assurance and distribution system (allowing an OS developer to enforce rules to keep experiences powered by their OS consistent and easy, but massively hampering homebrew), or allow developers (and by extension marketing people) add whatever they want to software (leaving the market open for innovation, and by necessity, this crap as well)?
Windows 8 represents both experiences, side by side. User adoption will give us the answer.
Personally, I am happy to be part of the experiment.
Unfortunately, this is complicated by the fact that manufacturers don't ship Windows discs. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, but perhaps Windows 8's built-in restore feature will be the solution to this problem.
Windows is not a bad OS, it has it's pluses and minus just like OSX. Sometimes I love my windows box, other times I really like my iMac. To blame the OP's issues on windows is short sited, it's like blaming android for touch wiz or motorblur. These problems are with the 3rd party groups putting shit on top of their products. This is why Mac is doing well. It isn't that the OS is "better," it's just that you have go through 290-38080823 popups when you are trying to check the email on your AOL account.
As others have pointed out, MS needs to step up to the plate and really force vendors to release just a vanilla version of Windows. At the enterprise level this saves time/money. Either that, or send machines without OSes installed allowing the customer to put their own images directly on to the computer. MS is losing customers specifically for this reason. That and their laptops aren't "pretty". If MS followed the android lead (ie: nexus), they might be able to recover some of their customer base.
Sure, because it is always nice to expose $HOME to the world.
A lot of Americans -- myself included -- automatically buy things because they're "cheap". I wonder whether people in other places (countries? regions?) behave this way, or if some cultures emphasize "less but better" over "more but crappy"?
- Symbian
- Android
- Linux distributions on netbooks
- ...
SmartFilter seems to be a McAfee product. This Windows user has never encountered it.
Besides, I'm finding it increasingly morally indefensible to purchase Apple products.
There's no such thing as a clean HP laptop ... or desktop ...