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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

#121
post #67

First of all, this guy's biggest mistake was failing to format his drive and start with a clean Windows install. Installing windows requires far less effort than cleansing a vendor's install of crapware. Users should not have to do this. I must fully agree that MS needs to start restricting what Vendors like HP can install on the PC's they sell. Second, I'm very curious to see how the Windows App store plays out. The…

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…

"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."

That's not a clean install.

A clean install is buying a retail version of Windows and blasting it down on your HD.

Recovery DVDs recover what the hardware vendor put there in the first place.

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

#123
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No matter how hard I try I can't understand this comment. Are you implying that Linux is a Mac OS X clone?

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

#124
post #73

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…

Definitely NOT Apple. Despite their open source site, the most important bits of the OS are closed, and so developers can't dig into the OS to figure out if the bizarre behavior they're seeing is a bug in the OS or not. Worse, they can't submit patches for things they do find. Instead, they have to go submit a radar report, which can't be seen by anyone but themselves. It's so bad that it has become common behavior to copy/paste the report to openradar and then have other developers submit duplicate reports as a way to "upvote" a bug. That is most definitely NOT developer friendly.

And then we have Xcode, the program that has inspired a twitter account dedicated to its severe brokenness.

And let's not forget their terrible provisioning process that always breaks in continuous integration systems, and the asinine limit of 100 test devices. Oh, and their train wreck of a command line tool suite.

And then there's their absolutely bizarre behavior of replacing every internal function name with , and disabling stdout on iOS 6.

And then we have the "eat all memory" pager system in OSX that can chew through 8 gigs like candy and bring your system to its knees should you ever try to run more than 5 programs + Xcode.

If there were an iOS development environment + simulator for Ubuntu, I'd wipe this laptop and switch over.

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

#125
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…

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…

Little secret: if you click the download button below without entering your e-mail, it just works.

Apple is very discreet in their e-mail marketing. They send maybe half a dozen emails per year, mostly after product launches or before christmas/school term/black friday/etc.

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

#126
Working a small development shop I can tell you that if we buy an off the shelf workstation it can take almost as much time to clear our the crap ware and configure the drivers as it does to build a machine from parts, even considering the work it takes to quote/order/pickup/assemble a system.

It is a very sad state of affairs when NONE of these vendors offer a service to sell you one without crap ware..

This costs small business so much time it is a very bad joke!

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

#127
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It…

Corporations have a duty to act in the interest of their shareholders, but this is broadly defined. There is no requirement to maximize profit.

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

#128
post #108
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.

Bringing tablet computing, multi-touch, voice control, quality screens (IPS etc), video-calling on phones, small utility software, ubiquitous (real) web access, to mainstream (before someone attacks: yes, all these existed for a long time, but only became common place after Apple pushed them)? Pushing hardware design way past what anyone else was doing in the past half dozen years? Cornering the music industry with a digital distribution model that works?

I can't even begin to enumerate the things you see everyday that are influenced by Apple, besides their own products.

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

#129
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 is still a polished, shiny version of the consumer-focused computer, and not, I think, the developer-focused computer that ChuckMcM is describing. The locked bootloader of the iDevices and the Mac app store are but two pieces of evidence of this.

Er...what?

The iDevices are completely orthogonal to whether a MBP is a "developer-focused" computer. I use mine for Android development (oh noes! locked bootloaders!), Web development, and Windows development about equally, and everything works pretty much flawlessly, with the tools I need kept close at hand. (Hell, I don't even use Quicksilver anymore, as Spotlight's gotten better and Quicksilver hasn't kept up to date.)

The Mac App Store is entirely optional and none of my developer tools except XCode come through it. MonoDevelop and IntelliJ I get separately, pretty much everything else comes through homebrew. Loads and loads of applications are sold outside of the Mac App Store, too, with absolutely no problems.

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

#130
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK sure, but change the statement to "...any major Linux distro on any major hardware system" and it seems on the money to me. The only place I think Linux is lagging is graphics cards.

In my experience (and I use Linux at home (Ubuntu 12.x) and at work CenTos) Linux is lagging on Graphics cards, wireless support, USB peripherals, file system stability, disk i/o scheduling, user interface tools, network printing, and document preparation. But other than that, its right up there with MacOS and Windows. Hmm, that sounds a bit snarky. I wasn't going for snark, that is a list of things that I run into a…

But in regards to hardware support, the only reason that's really an issue is because people want widespread compatibility. You don't need to start a whole new company to design entirely new hardware; just pick your components with a little care.
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