Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dendory.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 331 posts

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

#111

Post by zemanel »

wpietri wrote: post #99
mhurron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the reason Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors 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.

Do you have a source for that? 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.

good thing he didn't. one of the reasons i enjoy working on OSX is the "mintness" i got accustomed from using Linux

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

#112

Post by tadfisher »

belorn wrote: post #105
biturd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> please remember that as a public company, they are required by law to maximize stock price.

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-...

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

#113

Post by maxerickson »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #107
dbarlett wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ninite does a lot of what you are talking about.

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

#114

Post by jiggy2011 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #93
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…

I haven't used it yet, but windows 8 has a 'reset windows' option that will basically reset everything to a fresh install of windows 8 without having to do a reinstall.

Nice, does it allow OEMs to decide what to "reset" to though?

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

#115

Post by belorn »

tadfisher wrote: post #112
belorn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> please remember that as a public company, they are required by law to maximize stock price. 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 providi…

An opinion article is not really an reliable source. Same law says:

>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...)

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

#116

Post by _delirium »

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.

You can also get non-crapware machines if you buy from most OEMs' "small business" divisions.

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

#117

Post by recoiledsnake »

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…

>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

Microsoft does this too, if you buy a PC from them or from a Microsoft Store.

http://signature.microsoft.com/

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

#118

Post by viraptor »

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…

I see you never needed quicktime on windows? Their download page asks you for the email to "Keep me up to date with Apple news, software updates, and the latest information on products and services." Their privacy policy starts with:

"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.

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

#119

Post by Auguste »

The easiest way to deal with this crap is just to do a fresh install of Windows when you buy a new PC, and download the drivers from the manufacturer's website. That way you can be sure that it's as clean an install as you can get.

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.

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

#120

Post by rcb »

After almost 20 years of running Linux, FreeBSD (and even NextStep!) on x86 bare metal, I've for the time being gone back to Windows.

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.

Post reply on HN