Mark Morford has written an excellent article for SF Gate pondering why it is that people continue to use Windows. He makes some excellent points and I jumped ship once OS X was released and haven’t looked back since (finally a Unix destop that does everything I want it to, not to mention that the hardware is great).
“Why Does Windows Still Suck?”
Mark Morford, SF Gate, Friday, February 4, 2005
Mark writes:
Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?
There is nothing else like this phenomenon in the entire consumer culture. If anything else performed as horribly as Windows, and on such a global scale, consumers would scream bloody murder and demand their money back and there would be some sort of investigation, class-action litigation, a demand for Bill Gates’ cute little geeky head on a platter.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
macs are hardly upgradeable they dont need viruses to crash ive spent my whole high school career in anger because they are sooo damn slow and the lack of a right click makes it so much more complicated only 3 percent of people use them and the reason is they suck every thing apple makes suck even the ipods suck yes windows has the blue screen of death and even then is rare atleast for me(srry macs a screwing up my high school simply they SUCK
and yes windows 95-me does really suck too also vista is just as bad as the new mac software) xp tho is by far the best operating system easy to use and a freakin right click. yes microsoft sucks atleast there newest stuff but macs always and a god is my witness i will buy a mac just to shoot the crap out of so years of anger can be released (blue screen of death[repairable] slow un upgradeable game deficient whit box of anger[unfixable]
I must admit, I’m still using M$ WinXP – for now. I too had BSOD problems, until I changed the memory, and quit using the computer for real work. However when XP has outlived its usefullness, and software no longer runs on it, I will be switching to Linux. I’d do it now, but I’m just lazy I guess.
There is a mac user in my immediate family, and he says that OSX seems to hang up more than XP did. – but he keeps on because unix is under the hood, and he likes to code.
Dav. Maybe you should try a modern Mac computer. I have a MacBook, have had it since Tiger, and it runs Leopard great. Seriously, Apple has made leaps and bounds over Microsoft in the past few years. I used to have the same outlook as you; then I actually tried a Mac. I was blown away by how elegant and seamless everything was. I connected my camera. It synced into iPhoto. I dragged my music into iTunes, it was fully tagged and had most of it’s album artwork automatically within an hour. The entire computer is not built around function, nor around form. It perfectly balances the two. Give one a try, and I guarantee you’ll be happier than you are on Windows.
Windows still has issues for the very reason you state – no-one is pushing Microsoft. The reason I believe is that the vast majority of software is written with Microsoft OS’s in mind. Apple is pretty much a waste of your time if you need compatability with the majority of software out there, same with Linux. Linux just isn’t mainstream enough (yet) to compete. I had strong hopes for Windows 7, but those are slowly being dashed as more and more details emerge about it.
After 10 years of Linux I finally made the switch to Apple around October 2008. It took about 20 minutes to get a feel of how things worked. I still play around with Ubuntu through VMWare Fusion and occasionally Vista or Windows 7.
People still use Windows because casual computer users – which is most of them – do not want to have to spend more than $1000 to get a Mac.. Your only other option is basically Linux/Ubuntu, and open-source is great and all, but it’s not really that accessible to the average user. It makes exchanging files w/non-Linux puters a huge pain in the ass, at least from my experience.
I use a Mac at work sometimes, and I don’t see much of a difference usability-wise–if anything, it’s harder cuz I’ve always had PCs. If you started on Windows in 19-dickity-5 , you’re likely to stay w/Windows because the Mac keyboards make no fucking sense to you.
As far as the angry mob part goes, if we won’t riot about a stolen election, we won’t riot because some of our computers crash sometimes, heh..