Microsoft’s Murderous Partnerships

I was reading Daniel Eran’s (of RoughlyDrafted) latest article on the history of Microsoft Office and a great point was brought up: despite Microsoft’s bluster about working with others, it routinely stabs its partners in the back when convenient. The general message is this: if Microsoft partners with you or buys your technology, it’s because they want to kill you. There weren’t many examples given in the article, though, so I tried to think of as many as I could. The results were startling.

Seattle Computer Products
IBM was working on the PC, but it needed an operating system. Originally, IBM looked into licensing CP/M from Seattle Computer Products, but it was too expensive. When Microsoft conned IBM into trusting it to provide an operating system for the PC, Bill Gates needed to somehow acquire an operating system they could convince IBM was good enough. He found a CP/M look-alike named QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) sold by the very same Seattle Computer Products. Bill Gates bought it for $25,000 by concealing his relationship with IBM, and licensed it to IBM under the name PC-DOS.^[1]

IBM
Microsoft’s PC-DOS license agreement with IBM did not preclude Microsoft from licensing PC-DOS to other companies as well, so that’s what they did, doling out expensive licenses to IBM’s primary competitors and getting rich in the process. Microsoft make a fortune selling out IBM.

Apple
As Daniel Eran explained, Microsoft partnered with Apple in 1981 to deliver office software for the Macintosh, then stole technical secrets from Apple over the next few years in order to build their own knock-off graphical computing environment called Windows 1.0. They then ported all of their Mac software to the PC, essentially giving the keys to the castle to Apple’s then-biggest rival, IBM.

IBM again
Microsoft partnered with IBM again to work on a joint project: a new, next-generation operating system called OS/2. After some public-relations blustering, Microsoft promptly ditched IBM and OS/2, stealing technology from it to incorporate into the still-unusable Windows (now at version 2.0).

All the other computer manufacturers
Aware that the PC clone manufacturers like Packard-Bell and Gateway were at each other’s throats, Microsoft signed exclusive licensing agreements with all of them to provide them with Windows 3.1, which was years ahead of the PC-DOS (now re-branded MS-DOS) it had previously licensed them. Microsoft then used this leverage to bully all of them into bundling its other software by using the threat of revoking their licenses or raising prices to put them at a disadvantage to their competitors.

Mosiac
Netscape was an outgrowth of NCSA Mosiac and was a popular web browser during the mid 90s. Microsoft licensed Mosiac, re-branding it “Internet Explorer 1.0″, and used its leverage with Apple and the PC clone manufacturers as well as its control of Windows to put Internet Explorer everywhere for free. Microsoft also added proprietary extensions to IE, ensuring that websites made for IE wouldn’t render properly on Netscape. Netscape couldn’t compete with the IE juggernaut as more and more web pages were coded for IE, and IE became the dominant web browser.

PlaysForSure
Microsoft licensed its PlaysForSure DRM technology to various partners like Yahoo! for use in their online music stores, which Microsoft hoped would challenge Apple’s iTunes Music Store juggernaut. When it became obvious that this plan was not succeeding, Microsoft built its own media player, the Zune^[2]. The Zune uses used a different DRM scheme, making it incompatible with all the songs sold by Microsoft’s music partners. Plays for sure? Really?

Apple again
After pledging to deliver new versions of Microsoft Office through 2010, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit announced that Office 2008 would ship without compatibility for VBA macros, which many businesses depend on. The lack of macro support effectively kills Mac Office in the enterprise, and forces IT departments that use macros to look into unstable open-source software or move to Windows Office.

That’s a lot of murderousness. You might wonder, “How the heck can Microsoft get away with this!?!” THe answer is that they usually don’t. The majority of the time, they get sued and lose, but their loss amounts to pocket change compared to their profits on the illegal deals themselves. For example, Microsoft paid 1 million to SCP in response to complaints about concealing its relationship with IBM to buy QDOS on the cheap. But in the long run, did it matter? Does anyone remember SCP? Who got the better deal? Microsoft knows this, and they consistently abuse the law because they know their legal losses will easily be eclipsed by the obscene profits they’ll make by avoiding legality.

^[1]
I find it terribly disheartening that the majority of the world’s computers at one time ran an operating system originally named “Quick and dirty.”

^[2]
Actually, the Zune is just a re-branded Toshiba Gigabeat; Microsoft did next to no hardware engineering of its own on the Zune.

Following the money, losing the way

People follow personal philosophies all the time, and many companies have corporate philosophies as well. Holding true to a core set of beliefs that inform and guide your decisions is a sure way to not only infuse your life or company with a sense of purpose, but also to attract those who agree with your philosophy.

This is why so many Mac and Linux users are rabidly fanatical about their operating system choices: they’ve found their ideal philosophical computing environments. Those who cherish digital freedom and love to tinker and build literally have a paradise in Linux, while the ones who appreciate the elegance of a well-designed whole and want maximum efficiency find their own heaven with Mac OS X.

Windows, on the other hand, has nothing of the sort. It’s a purposeless, directionless blob of features bound to the corporate aspiration to remain top dog forever.

The original mac had a goal: bring computing to the masses with brilliant interfaces that matched the way people thought. Linux too began with an idea: that computer users should be free to alter, modify, improve, and redistribute any and all of their software free of charge in order to further computing for all. These ideas didn’t exist in the tech world before their pioneers brought them into existence through technical skill and sheer force of will.

Windows began with none of this. Its birth was a reaction to the Macintosh; an attempt to duplicate Apple’s success for Microsoft’s own profit once it saw that graphical computing was the future. Still, it took Microsoft a full 6 years after the Macintosh was released in 1984 to deliver a version of Windows (3.1) that anyone could use without retching. Five years later, despite the fact that Windows 95 was still playing catch-up to the Macintosh, it skyrocketed into dominance as a result of Microsoft’s shady deals with computer manufacturers and brilliant FUD-based marketing.

Windows became popular not because it was consciously selected over its competitors, but because Microsoft managed to position it as the only operating system available to PC manufacturers. When people bought PCs (typically because they were cheaper than Macs, not because they were measurably superior), they automatically got Windows and learned how to use it, unaware of superior alternatives. For those aware of noted alternatives, Windows was “good enough” or considered a small price to pay for customizable hardware, a larger software library, and good legacy support.

But what happens as “good enough” no longer is? What about when the bases are all covered and people start to realize that Mac OS X or Linux offer faster runners? Once people begin to become aware of alternatives, the ones who enjoy tinkering will gradually peel away towards Linux, and the ones who prefer great visual design and maximum efficiency will gravitate towards the Mac. Once the geeky, the practical, the creative, and the efficiency-conscious are gone, who does that leave for Windows?

I firmly believe that there is no place in the future for Windows. Architecturally, Windows is purposeless; it’s utterly devoid of any sort of comprehensive philosophy that might excite or attract choosy computer users. That will basically leave the technological luddites, people for whom Windows is dramatically unsuited due to viruses, malware, and endless driver conflicts and blue screens of death. A platform that caters to the lowest common denominator—especially one created by a company noted time and time again for its shoddy workmanship and draconian practices—is a platform doomed to mediocrity. With escalating security woes, over-complicated technology, ever-increasing restrictions, and a stagnant user base, the Windows ecosystem will begin to rot from the inside out. As users inevitably become more technically proficient and more informed about the choices and alternatives, are any of them really going to stick with Windows?

Snowballs and dominos

It often seems hard for me to believe that the Windows Registry exists. It’s such a monolithically bad design and implementation that it simply boggles my mind. With such a creaking, doddering foundation, it’s no wonder that Windows is so unstable.

Bad decisions tend to cause snowball effects; that is, they eventually cause more and more problems and get worse and worse over time. Many of Windows’ most high-profile problems originate in some way from the bad decisions of the Registry. What are these bad decisions?

Here’s the biggest one: the Registry is series of huge, centralized databases. That means each component of it is one huge file, tucked away somewhere you’ll never find it. Databases have a lot going for them, but security and transparency aren’t two of them.

Databases tend to be prone to data corruption. Since they’re one big file, if part of that file gets corrupted, the whole thing is shot; this is why storing preferences in multiple files is a better idea. The logical solution to this data corruption problem would be to regularly back up the registry–say, every time it was changed. Wouldn’t that be nice? As a matter of fact, it does this, but it only keeps one, so you can’t roll back changes to anything beyond the previous backup.

The registry is also not very human-readable. You need a special program to even access it, and even then, its terminology is cryptic. HKCU? HKLM? Dword? Why all the hexadecimal values?

Finally, the registry’s design encourages developers to rely on it for everything. Let’s say, for example, that when an application installs itself it creates a registry key listing its location: “C\Program Files\ScumCo\ScumEdit\”. Well, I and many others hate the tendency of software to install itself in a folder named for its parent company, rather then its own name. So I opt to change its location. I grab the ScumEdit folder and move it back down a level into C\Program Files\, then delete the redundant ScumCo folder. But now we have problems! When I try to run ScumEdit, it mysteriously fails or throws up an ugly error message. Why? Because it consults the registry for its location, and the actual location differs from the listed one. Oopsie! Now I have to edit the Registry to make my change reflected in the database. Fun fun fun.

Moving things in Windows that you didn’t specifically put there yourself is dangerous for precisely this reason. With the advent of the Registry in Windows 95, playing around with your computer became a minefield. But Microsoft came up with a solution: abstract everything! Suddenly, users didn’t need to navigate the filesystem; Windows 95 also debuted that big, pretty Start button that listed everything they had when clicked on. And that just solved everything!

Problem is, when users have no contact whatsoever with the filesystem because it’s an incomprehensible mess, it becomes easier for unwanted software to hide there. Ever looked inside an install of Microsoft Office? Subfolders within subfolders, lots of files with meaningless extensions, plenty of files with unreadable 8-character names, and a whole bunch that do both. Here’s what it looks like, by the way:

By contrast, here’s what a portion of my Mac OS X Applications folder looks like:

The abstraction required by the Registry’s deathgrip on information meant that users didn’t have to look at their operating system’s underbelly. In the absence of critical attention, mold started to grow there. Developers cared less and less how elegant their software’s installation routine was; after all, nobody would ever look at what happened. Scripting became more popular now that that pesky issue of users looking at what was happening was gone. Software began to use unofficial means to accomplish things.

Unfortunately, Malware took advantage of these developments. Poorly-conceived scripting environments made it easy for malware to automatically replicate, and huge folders full of files with bizarre incomprehensible names offered great places to hide. The Registry itself was a perfect place since it was hidden and inscrutable. Users knew less and less about the structure of their computers, while the malware developers knew more and more. Compounded with the problems of bad privilege control, open network ports, and hard-to-understand networking features, replicating to nearby machines and hiding there became a cinch. So naturally, it started to happen more and more. Suddenly, there was a full-blown security epidemic, and Microsoft was caught in the middle.

There were two options:

They could completely do away with all their poorly-designed insecure swiss-cheese-like OS holes by doing in the registry and starting from scratch, closing outbound network ports, properly separating user settings and programs from system settings and programs, and simplifying networking. The problem with this approach was that not only did it require fundamentally remaking most of Windows’ core, but it would also break compatibility with 100% of all existing Windows software, including their own! To bypass this, a sandboxed compatibility layer like Apple’s Classic during the Mac OS 9 to OS X transition would have been necessary, throwing up all sorts of other problems such as emulation, inter-process communication, and developer transition kits.

This effort would have taken years and years. If this was what they had decided was the best course of action, it probably would have been easier to pull an Apple and start over from a promising foundation owned by someone else. But what was available? Anything UNIX-based would certainly be mature enough, but its openness was utterly contrary of Microsoft’s corporate identity and business models of monopoly dominance and vendor lock-in. BeOS was dead, Solaris was becoming open-source, and Mac OS X was already used by a competitor. There really wasn’t anything for them to take and re-brand.

That left the sticky option of somehow retrofitting Windows to be more secure without breaking compatibility with existing software. Thus, the Registry and most other existing attack vectors for malware had to stay. Instead, Microsoft worked on locking down these vectors; in Vista, Internet Explorer 7 has a “sandboxed” mode where it is isolated from other operating system components, and other applications are more isolated from each other as well. The kernel itself consistently randomizes the location of its data, the built-in firewall was strengthened, and weak anti-malware was built in.

In a decidedly ironic twist, Microsoft also began to sell antivirus software, turning itself into a vendor for solutions to problems its own ineptitude had created, rather than finding a way to fix those original problems.

Finally, Microsoft decided it hadn’t annoyed its users enough by adding a hellish feature called User Account Control which demands confirmation when something happens. Want to install a program? You get a UAC confirmation dialog. Decide you don’t like it and want to uninstall it? You get another one. Access the Device Manager? Adjust the font size? Change the date or time? Share files? Let a program through the firewall? Add a new device? All these actions pop up UAC prompts to waste your time and blow your blood vessels.

The really great thing about a UAC prompt is that they dim the background and lock out everything but the dialog box, meaning you are forced to acknowledge its presence and deal with it, even if you were in the middle of something else. Also, the dialog box appears in a random location each time to prevent you from being able to quickly click on “OK”. No, I’m not making any of this up.

Note that none of these tasks actually require elevated permissions; Windows just feels the need to make you confirm your action to make sure it was originated by you and not a piece of malware. But imagine this situation: there’s a piece of software you want to install that has a virus inside of it. Upon trying to install it, it pops up a delightful UAC prompt. You click OK like you always do, since you want the software. But oops! You just installed the virus too! UAC does nothing whatsoever to counter this type of hijacking.

Basically, with Vista, Microsoft did what they always do: pile on more features and workarounds instead of solving the core problems. And it shows; Vista takes up 12 gigabytes of space compared to Windows XP’s 1.6, and feels noticeably slower. Copying files is glacial, and playing an MP3 will slow down your internet access! On top of that, Vista is still insecure; even after all these bolted-on features, it remains quite vulnerable to infection by malware. The herculean effort took 6 years and cost billions, driving up the price of windows to such levels that the major computer vendors are complaining and Dell is now selling machines pre-loaded with Linux.

It’s all a monstrous domino effect: Microsoft creates a poorly-conceived, insecure feature that negatively affects usability; to cover it up, they abstract everything, making it easier for malware to hide and replicate; to deal with the resulting security disaster, Microsoft piles on fixes and features without addressing the core problem, making their operating system late, slow, bloated, and expensive; Manufacturers complain and look for other options, while consumers slowly migrate to Macs.

Isn’t the Registry great?

Fun in PC land, or why Macs are faster

I got a pretty standard assignment today: a faculty member’s computer is on the fritz, so take a look and replace the machine if you can’t fix it on-site. Fair enough; I went down and took the requisite look. She had a Dell Optiplex something something 26-something, and on the dim screen was a blinking DOS command prompt. I tried typing on the keyboard, but no input was entered. Restarting did nothing, nor did fiddling with the BIOS settings. Eventually, I just grabbed the machine and replaced it with another one while Jesus took a look himself.

By the time I returned to the office, Jesus was happily tapping away at the now-operational Dell. I had figured that I had overlooked something silly, so I asked him what it was he did to fix it. Grinning, he held up a jet-black floppy disk and said, “Here’s the criminal. It was in the floppy drive.”

I was a bit bemused. “What’s so bad about a floppy in the floppy drive?” I asked naively. This was Windows we were talking about, after all.

“In the BIOS, it was set to boot off the floppy drive before the hard drive,” Jesus replied.

“But… is there an operating system on the floppy?”

“No…”

“Soo… why would it get stuck on the floppy if there’s no operating system to boot from, then?” I retorted, fully aware that attempting to make Windows conform to logic was an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, I had to try; my inner Techno-Paladin demanded it.

“Well,” Jesus said, “Sometimes it’ll get stuck on the floppy drive if it’s unformatted or something.”

“But in that case, wouldn’t this have been a routine occurrence back in the days of floppies when everybody used them for everything? I don’t recall an epidemic of stuck machines trying to boot off operating system-less floppies.”

“It could have been the floppy drive or there might be corrupt data on the disk,” Jesus replied, invoking the classic Windows user’s voodoo explanation for a problem with no obvious cause.

“Let’s see what’s on it, then,” I suggested. We popped into the now-functioning computer, and it showed without complaint, displaying two normal-looking Word documents. So much for the data corruption or bad drive theories.

Sighing, I returned to the faculty member’s office and replaced the replacement computer with the original.

This brings me to my next point: the whole song-and-dance took a little under three hours–three hours that I could have spent doing other work I was assigned. The uselessness of this particular random Windows-related problem wasted 180 minutes of my life. I can accomplish a lot in 180 minutes. Or, I can use that same amount of time to goof off or read the news. Windows prevented me from doing these things with its random problem. In short, it wasted my time. Wasting time is not something that a fast machine typically does.

So why then do PC users constantly claim that PCs are faster than Macs? All the evidence I’ve collected while working with them for 8 hours a day suggests that PCs wear out and get bogged down faster then Macs left in the same condition, and experience more idiotic time-wasting snags by far.

The truth is that when your average PC enthusiast says, “PCs are faster than Macs,” he really means, “I can build a PC from parts I bought on the cheap from Newegg and wind up with substantially faster hardware for less than you paid for your Mac.”

And this is true. But it also falls into the classic PC user pitfall: that of thinking too much about hardware and not enough about software. Once this tricked-out gaming rig is assembled, it’s time for some software. Windows is a must for gaming, but who wants to pay for it? Most PC enthusiasts steal Windows, and the cracking process often results in background daemons that block Windows’ built-in anti-piracy tools from working. That’s a performance hit.

Then come the drivers for all that fancy custom hardware. Windows drivers are typically encrusted with trial software, unnecessary system tray utilities, and replacements for existing components of Windows (I’m looking at you, video and WLAN drivers) that work fine. After installing all this stuff without manually cleaning out all the junkware that hitched a ride, performance is lowered significantly.

Then comes anti-virus and anti-spyware. Generally, the more you pay, the crappier it’ll be and the more resources it’ll take up, but all anti-malware software that runs in the background takes up valuable system resources. That’s another performance hit right there.

Next, it’s time to download all the other utilities and miscellaneous pieces of software that make Windows more functional. First comes Winrar, which integrates into the Windows shell with a standard install, stealing valuable system resources. After that is Acrobat reader, which is so bloated it’s not even funny. Acrobat slaughters idle processor time, so there’s another performance hit for you. Needing to play pirated games that come in ISO and .bin/cue files, these PC power users typically grab Daemon Tools to mount those disk images as virtual CDs. This, as usual, bogs down the system.

Firefox comes at some point, but because of the design of Windows and its Registry, each application installed slows down the system a teensy-weensy bit. The Registry is just a big database; as it grows in size, it takes longer for anything to access a given piece of data, since the whole registry is just one big file. Were it logically split into many small files–say, one per application like Mac OS X’s preferences system, then having more preferences would result in no slowdown whatsoever, since any random preference file that needed to be accessed would be the same size as it was last time. Basically, the more Windows is used, and the more stuff you install, the slower it gets. Big time. Ask any Windows user how fast their Windows is after a year or two; most reinstall it from scratch every 18 to 24 months just to keep the whole thing from collapsing from the weight of its own bloat. And before Vista, reinstalling the OS erases all the user data! Faster, indeed.

This isn’t even including the truly random problems that plague windows as a result of its system administrator-centric design, terrible security model, poor privilege separation, and necessity to run on arbitrary hardware. Windows just falls down and dies regularly–I see it every day. In the long term, Windows is just fucking slow, and that’s a fact of life.

That leaves games. Yeah, Windows plays lots and lots of them, and Mac OS X doesn’t. That’s true. And if you’re a hardcore gamer, you ignore the problems and game away. That leaves your computer as a big fancy game console. Hmm. What about the times when you need to use it as something else? Good luck!

So yeah, your processor is faster than mine. But yours is churning away on protecting you from viruses and spyware that your operating system is too stupid not to automatically install and coughing and wheezing to access the humongous Registry every five seconds, while mine is keeping my system snappy when I have 13 windows and 8 applications open (as it is at the moment).

Remind me again how PCs are faster?

Must slam head into wall

Looks like there’s another up-and-coming iPod competitor looking to challenge the king. Only, this one has a secret weapon; a killer feature that’s sure to generate an inordinate amount of buzz compared to its probably mediocre music playing capabilities. This MP3 player stands to get people talking as much as did the sony “white is coming” ad campaign. You see, this MP3 player is titled nothing other than “i.Beat blaxx“.

I guess they’re targeting the computer-savvy southern yokel–a great untapped demographic! I mean, who else participates in this market segment? They’ll snap up mindshare in an instant! Those genius marketers of theirs deserve multi-figure raises!

I wish them the best of luck in their not-at-all uphill battle.

Dueling office suites, lovable software

A funny thing happened yesterday: I found myself wishing for an opportunity to use Pages, a part of Apple’s iWork suite I recently bought. Pages is not a game. It’s not a non-linear video editor, a graphics manipulation application, or a 3D modeler. It’s a simple word processor, designed to aid in the writing and editing of blocks of letters and words. Word processors are not fun, nor have they ever been in the global history of all computing. Word processors are simply a means to produce whatever lettered end you wish to arrive at. While the same can be said of any type of creative software, such as Photoshop or Final Cut or modo, these applications tend to have dedicated and loyal users who are fanatical about their software and will defend their choice if asked to compare it to comparable product. Microsoft Word has never had this loyal fanbase.

As Word is the program probably 100% of all computer users believe they need for the task of penning their thoughts, the overall enthusiasm of its most enthusiastic users is drowned out by the ones who couldn’t give a damn about what makes Word special because they don’t know what the alternatives are. Since the product was commoditized and everyone uses it, most people use it not out of choice but out of perceived necessity.

Despite that, the latest version is absolutely awesome. Earlier this year, I actually found myself infatuated with the windows version of Microsoft’s venerable and bloated office suite because it was so good! Office was and is the testing ground for an experimental interface convention, something called the Ribbon, which is essentially is nothing more than a context-sensitive bar of labeled icons, giving access to Word’s functions. The Ribbon completely replaces the menu bar, and is aimed at increasing the discoverability of Word’s monstrous feature set. To that aim, it succeeds fantastically, and it truly creates one single, easy-to-use access point for all the functions of an entire application! I must admit that I was quite in awe of what I perceived to be the user interface genius behind the idea. Why doesn’t Apple adopt this obviously superior convention? I wondered.

Well, with iWork ‘08, they did. Only, in true Apple fashion, they distilled it to its core genius and left out all the bloat and cruft. Pages’ context-sensitive bar is barely 15 pixels high, and contains all common text and graphics operations, depending on what’s selected, compared to Office’s Ribbon, which takes up 135 and tries to do everything. Rather than throwing everything there and doing in the menu bar, Apple opted to respect users’ existing knowledge and augment the menu bar and toolbar with the new context-sensitive format bar, and actually achieves the holy grain of putting common features a click away while preserving ease of access to advanced ones while not treading on users existing expertise. Jackpot!

Pages also includes a host of entirely new features, too. First of all, there’s Word-compatible track changes–a must for heavy collaboration and exchange of ideas. As usual, Apple implemented the feature in a surprisingly pleasing, elegant, attractive manner, and finally exposes an obvious way to temporarily stop tracking changes without turning the whole darn system off:

Finally!

Then there’s Instant Alpha, which is an easy way to extract part of an image from its background. But the important part isn’t that it’s easy, but that it’s super-easy. The procedure is practically instantaneous and results in beautiful, Photoshop-defying results in probably under 1/20th of the time it would take using any existing procedure. Here’s an example image I grabbed off Google real fast:

And here’s what I managed after scarcely 20 seconds of effort in Pages using Instant Alpha:

Sure, if I took 10 minutes to do it in Photoshop, I could probably have achieved a slightly cleaner result. Maybe a substantially cleaner one. But are those 9 minutes and 40 seconds worth it for an extra 5 to 10 percent of quality? For most people, the answer is no, and the fact that Pages allows a result that’s 90% as good in less than of 1% the time is commendable and astonishing. Just for fun, Pages also lifts the image manipulation panel straight from iPhoto, making it a powerful image editor as well.

That’s not all, though. They also threw in the ability to natively open, edit, and save the new Office 2007 files, a feat that Microsoft itself hasn’t yet accomplished in its own Office suite. That’s right, Microsoft hasn’t managed to build read/write capability for a file format it invented into a piece of software it wrote, and now Apple comes along and does it just to embarrass them. Snicker.

Pages is also full of nifty little timesavers, like the ability to look a word up in Google or Wikipedia with one click and insert hyperlinks from your existing bookmark library. They also threw in grammar checking for the hell of it, and it’s about as good as Word’s – which is to say pretty pathetic. It must be hard to program a good grammar checker, but at least the feature’s there to be improved in the future. Basically, Pages 08 is a major upgrade in practically every way.

All this raw functionality coupled with lightness and quickness and a killer interface makes Pages an absolute joy to use. And that’s why I wanted to use it. Not because I felt the need to write, or wanted to edit some document I had created, but I wanted to use it because Pages is so enjoyable that I felt the concrete desire to interact with it.

Kevin Hoffman, a prominent Windows programmer, once referred to his time using Apple software thusly: “I have never before encountered a situation where I missed the visceral experience of a tool more than its raw feature set.”

What I felt this morning was beyond that; not only was I missing the visceral experience of using Pages, but I was actively trying to generate reasons to use it when none actually existed.

I have Never before encountered a situation where I wished for some work to do simply so I could have the experience of using my favored tool to complete it.

Random problems versus those with a cause

It would be stupid to claim that buying a Mac will solve all your computer problems, because though they’re endowed with a better operating system than your average Dell, they’re just machines, and machines break or behave erratically from time to time. No, as a Mac user you will still have problems. You’ll still run into annoying glitches and bugs and irritating behaviors, and while there may be fewer of them, you’ll still be annoyed by them.

Example: after playing a game that required me to reduce my screen’s color depth to thousands of colors, OS X retained that setting after I quit the game, despite telling me that it was set to millions. Annoying. But ultimately, it was obvious what caused the problem: the game. Another example: every time I disconnect my laptop from my printer (to take it somewhere) and then reconnect the printer, OS X’s printing subsystem creates a duplicate printer. Very annoying. But also 100% consistent, and the problem’s origins are again obvious–the printing system is stupid and gets confused when I re-plug in an existing printer.

However, there’s one a theme here: on a Mac, every problem has an obvious cause. Many are really aggravating, and a few high-profile ones I could name can be a royal pain in the butt to work around, but every single one of them is obviously broken for a reason that’s easy to divine. Even somewhat nebulous causes such as “there’s a bug” are obvious because most of these bugs exhibit their behavior 100% of the time in a very consistent manner.

On Windows, not so much. Windows will forget which of my screens is the primary one approximately one out of every five times I restart my computer; no cause has ever been found. Sometimes, Firefox in Vista will randomly shake (like its teeth are chattering because it’s cold or something) when I first open it. After a restart, it will stop. Three restarts later, it’ll start again, for no apparent reason at all. Occasionally, my mouse won’t move after the computer’s started up until I unplug it and re-plug it in. Again, no obvious cause. I always install driver updates from the manufacturer when they come in through Windows Update (a nice touch, and Microsoft should be commended for this), but none of them have ever solved the problem.

Experienced Windows users know that restarting, doing the uninstall/reinstall dance, or removing the offending piece of hardware and putting it back in will probably solve the problem, whatever it is. Why? Who knows! But it worked, that’s all that matters! The problem is that this contributes to an overall atmosphere of fragility. If your computer randomly freaks out and dies every once in a while, you’ll be less likely to experiment or push it to its limits, and you’ll be more tolerant of random faults. In short, you’ll be trained into accepting mediocrity, and that is a terrible thing.

Why gaming is good for you

Yes, that’s right; computer gaming is actually good for you. How can this be? It’s easy to dismiss games as just “how to blow up aliens,” but this is a mindset that is terribly uninformed about the medium, focusing instead on the subject matter. An apt comparison to books would be the charge that a reader of a particular text is learning only about that particular made-up world, which obviously doesn’t exist in “real life.” But this is just as wrongheaded; we all know that reading is good for you–it opens up your mind, it excites your imagination, it gives you an appreciation for the power of the written word, it teaches you to dream your own worlds.

These facts are self-evident to readers. However, those who have never picked up a book in their life might well disagree–or at least, fail to see the truth.

The same is accurate of gaming. Their loudest critics are those who have never played them in any significant capacity, especially newer ones. However, games do have skills to teach us–skills that are more relevant today than ever before. You see, games teach computer skills, and not just computer literacy–games teach computer mastery. The 35 and older crowd often wonders just what it is that makes us whippersnappers so good at computers. I think I have the answer: games. Here are some common types and what they teach.

Twitch games
This category encompasses first-person shooters, action/adventure games, and anything where skill at the game’s controls greatly determines the player’s success. Those who master said controls through the speed and coordination of their reflexes and knowledge of efficiency-boosting shortcuts will best players who have not. These skills directly translate to the desktop; players of twitch games internalize the desire for efficiency, and actively seek out ways to maximize their ability to accomplish repetitive actions. Twitch gamers are more likely than non-gamers and even other kinds of gamers to know keyboard shortcuts and fast ways of doing things.

Role-Playing games
This category encompasses games where the player takes on the role of one or more characters exploring a virtual world. Because of the limited nature of how much can reasonably be shown, these virtual worlds always have set limits and boundaries, which distinguishes them from the real world, which goes on for miles and miles. Therefore, those who play these types of games learn probing–the skill of testing the limits of a finite space with concrete but hidden boundaries. This skill is immensely useful on the desktop, which is also a world unto itself with limits and boundaries which must be discovered. RPG players learn to explore the nooks and crannies of their computer systems to find hidden secrets.

Real-Time Strategy games
In the average real-time strategy game, players must balance the tasks of building their base with building enough military units with building the right type of military units with gathering enough resources to sustain both an expanding base and a growing military with upgrading their military units with probing their enemy’s forces with correctly timing an assault with making use of their military units’ particular special capabilities…
RTS games teach multitasking, and not just any multitasking–they teach extreme multitasking! Your average RTS consists of dozens if not hundreds of time-sensitive tasks that must all be harmoniously balanced to achieve victory. Those who play RTS games will often be the most extreme multitaskers on the desktop, often keeping 10 or more of windows open at once and working on half a dozen tasks at a time, rapidly switching between them to work a little on each one. Because of the nature of computers’ ability to facilitate multitasking, this particular use of them meshes very well with the most efficient way to use modern computers.

Puzzle games
Puzzle games involve figuring out an intentionally obfuscated or muddled problem or situation through experimentation, intuition, or trial and error. Puzzle gamers learn patience with confusing problems and learn to approach them methodically and patiently. Puzzle games can be thought of as the ultimate “bad interfaces” because they often seem to have been thought up specifically to challenge the player’s ability to decipher them. Sadly, this often happens unintentionally in computer software as a result of poor design or planning. Those well schooled in puzzle gaming are far more likely to respond to these challenges with patience and determination rather than frustration and concession.

Of shod, and how much of it Microsoft possesses

Allow me to relate an experience I had with Windows today. A student brought her computer in because her ethernet port was no longer working, and she was wondering if a massive storm we just experienced had perhaps blown it out. A reasonable diagnosis. Jesus and I sat it down and went through all the basic troubleshooting steps, and we determined that yes indeed, the internal ethernet card was fried, and that the best solution would be to get an external ethernet card to plug into the laptop’s handy PC card slot. Jesus got out a card we keep around for just such a purpose and stuck it in. “It’ll work, Windows has drivers for it,” he announced, leaving me to do the grunt work, but I had no such luck; after a frustrating round with the add new hardware wizard, Windows was still clueless about the new device that had appeared. Puzzled, I hopped online to retrieve the missing drivers, but Jesus had already grabbed another card; it too was no-go. He tried five of them, and Windows couldn’t find drivers for a single one.

On the online front, I was having just as little success. One of the cards had drivers only for Windows ME and below, and two only went up to Windows 2000 (which should have worked, but didn’t for some inane reason). The final two had XP drivers, but even after they had been correctly installed, the card still refused to accept them. We did some more research, and made sure we had write access to the area of the registry it was sticking things, disabled NIC power management in the BIOS, and did several more random-sounding troubleshooting ideas we found online in response to the problem.

Eventually, Jesus found a Microsoft knowledge base article that described the exact problem, assuring us that the solution was a quick hotfix away. A quick hotfix, it turns out, that you can’t actually download from Microsoft’s website; you have to use your computer’s built-in “Windows Update” feature!

Allow me to explain the senselessness of this decision. Let’s pretend for a moment that you have a hypothetical computer whose network connectivity is dodgy or nonexistent. Thus, this computer cannot connect to the internet to retrieve patches, updates, or drivers–these must be accessed from another network-capable computer and transferred to the broken one manually. The necessity of using Windows Update breaks this procedure by requiring that a network-incapable computer access the internet. How dumb is that?

Anyway, somewhere in this inanity I discovered that the hotfix we need is contained within Service Pack 2, which her computer has. Soooooooo… if it has SP2, and the fix is in SP2, how come it’s still broken? Never mind, says Jesus, she might have a corrupted SP2 installation. A corrupted installation? How does an update that hooks itself in so deeply get corrupted without affecting anything else? Oh well, I thought, time to go reinstall SP2 on her machine.

For some reason, all our SP2 CDs had flown the coop, so I headed over the Microsoft’s website and searched for it. But oops, as soon ad I tried to grab it, the download page declared that I needed to be using Internet Explorer 5 or greater! How aggravating, and also a little amusing, I thought, that you have to use an insecure web browser to download a security update.

But aha! I had an ace up my sleeve! For just such occasions, I keep around a crusty old copy of IE version 5.something for Mac. I fired it up and waited for it to creak tepidly to life, and then chuckled as Microsoft’s website failed to render correctly on their own (admittedly ancient) web browser. Amusing. But then, when I tried to access the page, it coldly informed me that possessing IE5 isn’t enough–it had to be Windows IE.

And now another little ranty aside. Doesn’t the whole concept of platform- and browser-specific websites pretty much destroy the philosophy and usability of the web? The whole point is that no matter what rickety operating system or gnarly browser you’re using, as long as they and the pages you’re trying to access with them both support the standards the web is built on, you can do what you need. Purposefully designing a web page that sniffs your browser and OS and then completely prevents you from accessing it if you don’t meet its criteria is utterly contrary to the entire purpose of the web. It’s one thing to sniff the browser to warn non-IE users that your website may not render correctly without IE, but it’s quite another thing to use sniffing to deliberately prevent these people from accessing a page regardless of whether or not their browser is capable of doing so. What if the only internet capable computer I have is a Mac or Linux machine? What if I need to access the page from a computer running Windows 2000, which can’t support the latest ActiveX controls used on the page (this actually happened to me on Friday) to determine what needs to be downloaded? Designing with standards eliminates these manufactured problems and simplifies life for everyone, even Windows users–who may decide to use a different browser or version of Windows and want everything to still work. &nbsp/rant

So I couldn’t access the SP2 page from my Mac. But Microsoft itself came to my rescue, because unbeknownst to me (but knownst to Microsoft), there are actually two update sites: Windows Update and Microsoft Update! The difference between the two is beyond me, as is the economy in maintaining two parallel collections of the same data, but hey, if it gets the job done, I’ll take anything at this stage. I headed to Microsoft Update and searched for SP2, but the site had such embarrassingly bad search-narrowing tools that it took me about 10 minutes to shorten the list to 37 items, none of which was exactly what I was looking for. The closest hit was something called Service Pack 2 for IT professionals, which announced in big bold uppercase letters that it was ONLY INTENDED FOR NETWORK INSTALLATION and NOT TO BE INSTALLED ON SINGLE COMPUTERS.

At this point, I was sufficiently infuriated that I settled for using one of the ass-slow office PCs to download SP2, using, yes, Internet Explorer. I logged on, closed the nag screens popped up by some random search bar that had embedded itself in the taskbar of MY account just because someone else didn’t have the sense to click on the “no” button on some pop-up of some dodgy website that was probably viewed in IE. Sigh. Angrily, I clicked on the IE icon twice after it failed to respond for 30 seconds, causing two additional windows to appear. Sigh. I slogged my way to the accursed site that I had been rejected from twice before, and I humbly submitted my operating system and web browser versions in supplication to the sniffer in the web page.

Success! The Windows logo in the corner waved in a digital breeze, a triumphant flag planted in the approval of the Microsoftean overlords. I smiled. I had beaten them. They tried to contain me, but I had beaten them!

Only, I hadn’t. When the page finished loading, I was left staring at an ad for Windows Update, urging me to install it so I could download SP2. The only problem: Windows Update acts only on the computer it’s installed on. If I use Windows Update to download SP2, it gets installed on that machine only. I don’t get a transferrable package, a file I can stick on my flash drive and put on another computer–nada. All I get is the update installed on the machine I download it on.

At this point I snapped. I started swearing, hitting the PC, yelling that Microsoft’s headquarters should be bombed with chemical weapons, and spewing profanities about Bill gates and his company. Jesus sensed that perhaps it was time to step in, and he pushed my rolly chair aside and headed to the Microsoft Update site to download SP2 himself. “That won’t work,” I despondently informed him, “The only thing you’ll find there is for network installation.”
“No, it’ll work, even if it says it won’t,” he replied.
“But…, It specifically says that it won’t install on a local machine,” I said with growing disgust at the possibility of the file having been mislabeled.
“No, it’ll work,” Jesus insisted.
And so it did. SP2 downloaded just fine and we installed it on the target machine with no trouble. Why oh why did it claim so spiritedly that it would absolutely not work, only to have that information proven blatantly false? What would one who was not privy to this insider information do when confronted with such a problem? What could possibly alert you to the fact that “It will under no circumstances work” actually means “It’ll work fine”? In order to navigate this byzantine maze of doublespeak and confusion, you have to already be an expert.

What Microsoft has been doing since 2001, or, why Mac users are actually excited about upgrades

Paul Thurrott understandably bristles when the claim that Microsoft has been ineffectually fumbling around with Vista since 2001 rears its ugly head. Here’s what he ahs to say about the matter:

Apple and its supporters will tell you that Apple spent the past five years churning out major new Mac OS X versions while Microsoft fumbled around trying to finish Windows Vista. This is completely untrue. Though I use and respect Mac OS X, virtually every version Apple has shipped since 2001 has been a minor update, akin to a Windows 98 SE or Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Meanwhile, Microsoft has pushed an amazing variety of Windows versions out the door since 2001. Some highlights include Windows XP Embedded, Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE), Windows XP MCE 2004, Windows XP MCE 2005, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (TPC), Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. It has also shipped major updates to its digital media software, including three major updates to Windows Media Player, a major IE release–IE 7–major new client-based security applications and services, including Windows Defender and Windows Live OneCare. And this is just a partial list. The point here is simple: Microsoft hasn’t sat still, contrary to the FUD you read online.

Thurrott retorts that Microsoft has actually been doing a lot since 2001 on the OS front; and he’ll point to several new versions of XP, such as XP Embedded, XP 64-bit edition, XP Media Center Edition (MCE), XP Tablet Edition, and their combined updates. At the same time, he’ll claim that Apple’s retail OS releases all amount to minor improvements the type of which have been included in XP service packs for free.

However, this isn’t really true. XP Embedded is just plain-jane XP with a bunch of unnecessary components removed and some settings tweaked to allow it to be run on flash memory devices, but none of these changes are anything a teenager with msconfig and regedit couldn’t already do. 64-bit XP is a more significant undertaking, but it doesn’t really work; lots of software isn’t compatible with it, and Thurrott himself will admit its general unsuitability:

Chances are, you don’t want or need it. And if you do get it, you’ll be disappointed. I can almost guarantee it.

Ouch! Finally, two of the new versions of XP he points to–MCE and Tablet PC Edition–are really just regular old Windows XP with a new visual theme (”Royale”), a new application or two (Media Center and Windows Journal, respectively), and support for some new hardware (TV tuners and tablet screens, respectively). If this is what a “new version” amounts to, don’t the hardware vendors like Dell and HP who tweak XP with their own bundled software, settings, and special drivers actually distribute “new versions” of Windows? Calling the addition of some applications and drivers (and probably a new splash screen) to an existing OS a “new version” strikes me as a tad disingenuous. However, if Thurrott wants to call those products full releases, fine; Apple can play ball. In that same time frame of 2001-2007, it released Mac OS X for Intel processors (one), released a “new version” of Tiger with Intel Macs that included Front Row and Photo Booth, as well as support for built-in iSights (two), released the AppleTV which runs an embedded version of the Mac OS (three), and announced the iPhone, which runs a mobile version of OS X (four). In fact, Apple did all of this since 2005 (though to be fair, it has always maintained a parallel Intel-native Mac OS X since the very beginning of 2001).

Compare these four “new versions” of OS X from Apple to what Thurrott says Microsoft’s been up to, which amounts to XP embedded, XP-64bit, XP MCE, and XP tablet PC edition. (calling updates to those products separate releases is just plain stupid; I’d have to include XP’s two service packs and dozens of minor hotfixes, as well as the 50 or so incremental updates to all versions of Mac OS X). It looks like both Microsoft and Apple both released as many minor “new versions” of their operating systems during that time, and all this is in addition to Apple’s five major OS releases (10.0 through 10.4) compared to Microsoft’s two (Windows XP and Vista).

The charge that Apple’s Mac OS X versions amount to XP service packs is similarly bogus. Here’s what went into said XP service packs:

SP1 (September 2002)

• Support for USB 2.0
• Support for hard drives larger than 137 GB
• Support for Serial ATA hard drives
• Set Program Access and Defaults

SP2 (August 2004)

• Improved firewall
• Improved wireless support
• Improved memory protection and more general security
• Improved Windows Movie Maker
• Support for Bluetooth

Windows Security Center

Now, let’s take a look at what the different versions of OS X added to the original release, which came out in March of 2001:

10.1 (September 2001)

• CD burning
• DVD playback
• Improved performance
• Improved printer support
• Improved AppleScript
• Image Capture
• Support for Bluetooth

10.1 Acually does look like a “service pack” release to me. In fact, Mac OS X 10.1 was released free of charge to owners of 10.0 simply because the initial release of OS X was so embarrassingly slow, buggy, and incomplete that it was the least they could do! 10.1’s feature list reads like a service pack primarily because 10.0 should have had all those things to begin with. After 10.1, however, Apple picked up the pace:

10.2 (August 2002)

• Improved Windows compatibility
• Improved performance through Quartz Extreme
• Improved Sherlock
• Improved Address Book
• Improved printer support with CUPS
• Zero-configuration networking (Rendezvous/bonjour)
• Journaled file system
• Support for tablets and handwriting recognition
• Support for USB 2.0
• iChat
• Safari
• User Interface overhaul (widgets look less fuzzy and more clickable)

10.3 (October 2003)

• Improved Finder
• Exposé
• Fast user switching
• Color labels for files
• Home folder encryption
• Zip archive creation
• Support for faxing
• Support for .doc files in TextEdit
• Support for Serial ATA hard drives
• Font Book
• Xcode
• Improved iChat
• User Interface overhaul (widgets look clearer and more intuitive, mostly)

10.4 (April 2005)

• Spotlight
• Dashboard
• Automator
• Grapher
• Quartz Composer
• VoiceOver
• Systemwide dictionary/thesaurus availability
• Parental Controls
• Support for Access Control Lists
• Improved iChat
• Improved Safari
• Improved Mail
• Improved QuickTime with h.264
• Improved XCode
• Improved Quartz Extreme

I’m sorry, but 10.2 through 10.4 simply don’t look like service packs; there’s too much there for them to be minor incremental upgrades. In particular, features introduced between 10.2 and 10.4 such as iChat, Safari, Labels, Fast user switching, Exposé, Spotlight, Dashboard, and a systemwide dictionary and thesaurus do a great deal to make Mac OS X the basket of luxury its users view it as. To dismiss these feature-packed releases as mere “service packs” is a gross injustice; when was the last time you found yourself thanking your lucky stars for Set Program Access and Defaults or Windows Security Center?

It’s also unclear why Microsoft chose to create entirely separate versions of Windows when it could simply have bundled the applications and drivers from those “new” editions into XP itself–why create extra complexity? In fact, this is the route Microsoft has taken with Vista, which–depending on which edition you have–includes tablet PC as well as media center functionality.

So has Microsoft been sitting on its butt waiting for Apple to embarrass it for the last five years? Well, no, but neither has it exactly been a bastion of output and innovation on the OS front. Of its operating system antics since 2001, one is widely regarded as non-functional, one could have been cooked up in a basement, and the remaining two simply involve the addition of a few applications and drivers–no reworking of the OS itself. At the same time, Apple has been delivering compelling updates year after year that people actually want to buy; a near first in the computer industry.