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Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
111–120 of 219 posts
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enough to make it very repetitive, too little that automation would make much sense, especially considering the abysmal automation tools Windows comes with cough shell cough Hmm... I've been thinking about switching to Powershell. What do you find abysmal about it?
You are kidding, right? Powershell just does not conform to the original UNIX sh standards, which is why even console wizards will avoid it. Same reason why tcsh and ksh didn't get traction, and they even have merit to them. Who is the target audience? UNIX command line people certainly aren't. Then who, people that managed to learn VB Scripting host? That's just not how things work.
You are kidding, right?
No.
Who is the target audience?
People who want to utilize its access to hundreds of administration tasks across most (all?) of Microsoft's server products, to automate administration tasks.
EDIT to add:
Same reason why tcsh and ksh didn't get traction, and they even have merit to them.
I can't tell: is the implication here that Powershell doesn't have merit? I'm trying to understand.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#113If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
Nice list.
Continuing the "Microsoft and Apple are different" theme, the thing that's worth considering is that the "goodness" of these products is the goodness of well engineered compromises.
Current Word is actually a fusion of DOS word and the original Windows Word and while it has a huge feature set, this set is not terribly consistent. It's an achievement to make thing feel as good as it does. Similarly for the others and very different from producing a clean, "just works" app from the ground up (not necessarily a better or worse achievement imho).
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
I agree, when you consider when products were released and compare it to similar offerings at those times, many Microsoft products are (or were) "decent". I would add these: - Windows 95: Not perfectly stable or technically very groundbreaking, but a good enough combination of usability and features to be considered decent in my mind and millions of others at the time. - IE6: great at the time. Some of the standards…
I always bring up Flight Simulator whenever there's some MS bashing going on. I miss the Microsoft of my youth,
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Utterly unfair comparison. The Apple and Microsoft business models are so unlike each other it's almost inaccurate to say they're in the same business. Apple can get product quality to the point they do because they laser focus on a few profitable segments. Microsoft's business model --- not "what Steve Ballmer thinks they should be doing this month" but their underlying business model --- involves them serving 80+%…
Did you watch Futurama last night? I have trouble believing that two detracting comments about Safeway ice cream were spontaneously made a day apart. "What do you say we go get some sewer coffee, sewer cake, and Safeway Ice Cream?" - Futurama
He is an avid Futurama fan.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#116If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
Both companies have their strong and weak points... including some in critical strategic areas. For instance, if Jobs wants to live up to his reputation as a dictatorial advocate for quality and engineering, why doesn't he force-choke the program manager for iTunes?
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#117So Windows 7 was his idea!
Mystery solved.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of those are "mee too products". Not breaking new ground, and certainly not the best of options.
Xbox was revolutionary. Online multiplayer on a console had been tried many times before — as far back as the Sega Genesis and as recently as the Xbox's rival, Playstation 2 — and failed miserably every time. Microsoft was the first company to make it work, and their current implementation is still probably the best. And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio. In most regards, it's a best-of-breed…
> And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio.
You are new around here, right? Make yourself comfortable and you will know droves of them in no time. ;)
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
Almost all releases of the NT line were good (including Win 7). Was there any OS contemporary to NT 3.51 that was better than it at anything (beside win 95 when it comes to compatibility with more software & hardware)?
Perhaps; I thought it peaked in quality of releases after 3.51 SP1.
Better than SCO Unix of the period as a desktop.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#120The first time I read it I was in disbelief. I actually checked if the mail was fake or true, turns out it's true.
The second time I read it I actually laughed.