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The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

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Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#101

Post by gizmo686 »

unimpressive wrote: post #25

I remember reading that this is the reason[2] Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors. As I understand it, a good deal of this crap is caused by misaligned incentives. Software companies pay OEMs to preload computers with their buggy, invasive, resource hogging software. Thanks to the Microsoft Windows operating system having all sorts of nooks and crannies to hide this sort of…

The cure could also be MS limiting what OEMs can do to the pre-installed OS. Of course, if OEMs switch to free OSes, the copyleft would make it impossible for the OS maintainer to make any such demend. Another solution would be consumer pressure to not crap load PCs. This is one of the main reasons Macs did so well, but their is no reason a OEM cant get a brand recognition as non crap-loaded PCs.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#102

Post by codgercoder »

Your real problem is that you think you own your computer (err, software delivery appliance). I actually think PCs have become like MTV. MTV was a way to get all the people who like music and video onto a channel, then deliver all kinds of content (IE ads) that the advertisers think would be appropriate for them.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#103

Post by tl »

kenjackson wrote: post #70

Why doesn't the author just pay the non-subsidized price and get a clean Signature machine from Microsoft? http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/pd/product... 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.

From your link:

"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.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#105

Post by belorn »

biturd wrote: post #73
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

I enjoyed this rant. The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold too. That is because "you" are too cheap to pay what "we" think should be paid for them. It is like a hotel which sells you room for $100 a night if you agree to let them leave a web cam on 24/7 and sell any useful 'snippets' it catches while you are there. The bulk of the market doesn't buy "computers" they…

I think there is a company that does what you suggest. I will probably get down voted for saying it, but Apple. They put in the time to make a pretty darned good user experience for first impressions. 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 u…

Apple never collect information on the users? They don't use that information for advertising? Its not a asset to the company, possible to be sold if economically useful? please remember that as a public company, they are required by law to maximize stock price.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#106

Post by gizmo686 »

givan wrote: post #12
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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". 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…

>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.

What operating system does bundle multiple browsers?

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#107

Post by jiggy2011 »

dbarlett wrote: post #100
jiggy2011 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned elsewhere, doing a clean Windows install is difficult if the only means of reinstallation you have is the bundled "recovery DVD" which puts all of the shit right back on there. 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…

A comment yesterday [1] led me to Chocolatey NuGet [2], a package manager for Windows built on PowerShell. The gallery [3] has almost everything I need to set up a dev environment. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763895 [2] https://github.com/chocolatey/chocolatey/wiki [3] http://chocolatey.org/packages

I was thinking more as a way for installing stuff for more casual users.

Now I think about it these just seems like such an obvious idea that I'm surprised nobody ever did it.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#108

Post by belorn »

GuiA wrote: post #35
derleth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold to 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,…

>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. 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 sen…

Exactly what contributions did Steve Jobs do beyond opening up markets by design and marketing powers?

It had a large impact on a number of industries, but your statement implied a multiple of contributions.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#109

Post by ChuckMcM »

gizmo686 wrote: post #97
nitrogen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because major Linux distros and the upstream developers like to ignore or mock use cases that deviate from their "brand identity" (witness https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti... which recently saw the HN front page).

The difference is that if you do not like the desktop on most Linux distros, you can go into the package manager, install another desktop, and then log out and back into that one.

You are both right of course. But in being so right we can see the problem. If I am a third party software package and I try to install I have to know all the possible window systems you may, or may not, have running. And it gets worse for me if I only support one since there will be vocal anti-support for any version I pick.

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.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#110

Post by belorn »

belorn wrote: post #108
GuiA wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. 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 sen…

Exactly what contributions did Steve Jobs do beyond opening up markets by design and marketing powers? It had a large impact on a number of industries, but your statement implied a multiple of contributions.

When disagreeing, it would benefit if the person who downvote would say what the contributions are instead of silently downvote.

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.

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