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Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

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Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#41

Post by holygoat »

GrandMasterBirt wrote: post #10

Its good that these sort of issues are exposed, even if by Bill. The scary thing is that MS QA does not pick this stuff up. As more of this stuff gets exposed this will hopefully make MS work harder. And as Apple is becoming a REAL contender, hopefully MS will pull their head out of their ass.

MS's QA is oriented towards making sure that individual pieces function, not that the right thing happens. Their aim is 100% automated unit testing... but nobody ever tests that doing something is intuitive.

The UX folks do, but that doesn't mean they get their way.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#42

Post by michaelneale »

dcurtis wrote: post #34
hugh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.

Well, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows…

yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#43

Post by aneesh »

dcurtis wrote: post #34
hugh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.

Well, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows…

Yeah, all those, plus you missed a couple whole divisions:

Entertainment: XBox, Zune

Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc

Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc

Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#44

Post by silencio »

aneesh wrote: post #43
dcurtis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows…

Yeah, all those, plus you missed a couple whole divisions: Entertainment: XBox, Zune Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Visual studio part of "server stuff"? All those versions of visual studio are replaced by Xcode for the basic functionality, then you mix and match whatever else you might need that may or may not come with Xcode/OSX e.g. svn for scm. There's OS X Server as well...

Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#45

Post by silencio »

michaelneale wrote: post #42
dcurtis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows…

yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.

This is not necessarily a good thing for end users when there's a handful of different versions of Vista. Assume the average consumer in the US...that's Vista Home Basic and Home Premium and possibly Ultimate to choose from. At first glance do you know what the differences are? Or whether or not you need an upgrade or full version? (Let's not even get into the other versions of Vista, System Builder/OEM, EU versions, Windows Server et cetera.)

Compare with OS X (ignoring OS X Server). There are only two versions, period: OS X and OS X Family Pack. How obvious is it what the difference is between the two? Very. You just count the number of computers in your household you want to install OS X on, and buy accordingly. No upgrade/full version worries, no "what does this have over the other one?" worries, no buying something you don't need...

Sure, OS X doesn't come in so many "flexible" configurations as Vista does, but the thing about it is that you could just do that on your own if it meant so much, and otherwise you get a default config that works for most people.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#46

Post by aneesh »

silencio wrote: post #44
aneesh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, all those, plus you missed a couple whole divisions: Entertainment: XBox, Zune Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Visual studio part of "server stuff"? All those versions of visual studio are replaced by Xcode for the basic functionality, then you mix and match whatever else you might need that may or may not come with Xcode/OSX e.g. svn for scm. There's OS X Server as well... Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Visual studio part of "server stuff"?

Yep, take a look at any Microsoft org chart (http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/orgchart/s...)

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#47

Post by jauco »

mhartl wrote: post #27
st3fan wrote: post #6

"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?""" Haha % uname -a Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 % uptime 19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07

I had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were electrical power outages and moving apartments. Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks h…

I'm always amazed by this. Why would you keep your computer running if you're not using it? just for comparing lengths?

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#48

Post by silencio »

aneesh wrote: post #46
silencio wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual studio part of "server stuff"? All those versions of visual studio are replaced by Xcode for the basic functionality, then you mix and match whatever else you might need that may or may not come with Xcode/OSX e.g. svn for scm. There's OS X Server as well... Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Visual studio part of "server stuff"? Yep, take a look at any Microsoft org chart ( http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/orgchart/s... )

Ah, under the server and tools division. Interesting, thanks.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#49

Post by narag »

michaelneale wrote: post #42
dcurtis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, think about... Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus. Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter. Windows…

yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.

Yesterday I spent some time online looking for a new laptop. I would like 14'', thin-and-light, and long battery life. I needed no more than five minutes to know all the offer from Apple.

Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse.

Re: Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

#50

Post by rms »

narag wrote: post #49
michaelneale wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.

Yesterday I spent some time online looking for a new laptop. I would like 14'', thin-and-light, and long battery life. I needed no more than five minutes to know all the offer from Apple. Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse…

Lenovo's T series is probably the best one in that class. Linux is well supported. Not sure that it is a better buy than a Macbook though.
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