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Vista Is Good

mattmaroon.com

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Re: Vista Is Good

#31

Post by axod »

petercooper wrote: post #28

Why do nearly all of this guy's blog posts end up on the front page of HN? Sure, a couple have been good, but it strikes me as a little "odd" that he seems to be on here all the time. Group voting, or do random people really dig opinionated blog posts that much? Honest question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

I think quite a few of his blog posts fall into this category.

Re: Vista Is Good

#32

Post by axod »

mattmaroon wrote: post #7
jws wrote: post #4

Too much slack in this article. Which is not to say that Microsoft didn’t make some mistakes in launching the OS. They clearly made a few. For one, they gave OEMs too much leeway in deciding what they could or could not slap “Vista Capable” stickers on. And even though it wasn’t entirely their fault that manufacturers screwed this up, it reflects badly on Microsoft. It’s just like when a program crashes your PC. It m…

Not exactly on the OEMs.I suppose it's impossible to tell who had how much fault, but there's clearly some blame on both sides: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/mi... As for crashing, depends how you define "fault". If a program causes Windows to crash, where it wouldn't have without that program, it could be said to be the program's fault. I tend to agree with you, since the point of Windows…

No usermode program should cause windows to crash.

This is such an irritating point of view. In a previous job we had a boss like this, who said our code must have bugs in it because the JVM was crashing with a segfault.

Re: Vista Is Good

#33

Post by jcromartie »

brianlash wrote: post #2

A lot of good points here. I think his best comes from the notion that business customers' slowness to upgrade "...was the case last time. The reason is that enterprise customers don’t upgrade much." So true. Apple's taken the tact in their "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" adverts that Vista's a failure for it's lack of penetration among enterprise users. Nice work, Matt, for pointing to the fact that while little penetration m…

> Edit: What was worth downmodding here?

I don't think many people believe that "business customers' slowness to upgrade" is the cause, and Vista's poor reputation is the effect. Most people believe it to be the other way around.

Re: Vista Is Good

#34

Post by jimbokun »

mattrepl wrote: post #27
bouncingsoul wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X has Spotlight, which searches inside files. It's probably comparable to Vista's search.

Since it was released before MS' offering, Spotlight was probably inspirational to Vista's search.

Which is an important point.

Steve Jobs was able to make it very clear that the most notable features of Vista were in OS X first. I was at the WWDC where Tiger was introduced and the posters said things like "Redmond, start your photocopiers", and "Introducing Longhorn" (Vista's previous code name).

The brilliance of the Mac vs. PC adds is that it has been pounded into the subconscious of the consuming public that innovation happens on the Mac first and is eventually picked up by Windows sometime in the future. This means that the PR burden has now shifted to Microsoft to demonstrate that they actually can offer functionality that's not already available on a Mac.

Which is not to say that PR can exist in a vacuum. If Apple didn't have some legitimate claim to being ahead of Microsoft in technology, the ads mocking PC would not be effective.

(ps The long version of PC's country western song is brilliant. I especially like how they were able to work a rhyme of "Control-Alt-Delete" into the lyrics.)

Re: Vista Is Good

#35

Post by gaius »

jcromartie wrote: post #30

Matt sounds like he has never encountered usable desktop search before. Has he really not been exposed to Google Desktop Search or seen Mac OS X since around 2005? I think that my basic criticism of Vista is that it's just not worth it. It adds too much to read (I really need to do a formal study of this), too many choices to make, too many new UI paradigms (on top of the XP/2000/98/3.1 pieces still kicking around),…

It's weird that MS are blundering so badly with Vista. Server 2008 is shaping up to be a solid (if rather late) product. There's even a command-line only version (Server Core Edition).

The question MS are struggling with is "what does this do that that didn't", something Apple have been quite good at, e.g. '10.5 has Time Machine!".

Re: Vista Is Good

#36

Post by gaius »

Create wrote: post #21

DRM gives power to Microsoft and Big Media. * They decide which programs you can and can't use on your computer * They decide which features of your computer or software you can use at any given moment * They force you to install new programs even when you don't want to (and, of course, pay for the privilege) * They restrict your access to certain programs and even to your own data files Even when you legally buy Vis…

The thing is, if (and it's a big if) Trusted Computing meant an end to virii etc, it would be worth it for many people. But as you say, it's a bit of a one-way street.

Re: Vista Is Good

#37

Post by mynameishere »

axod wrote: post #31
petercooper wrote: post #28

Why do nearly all of this guy's blog posts end up on the front page of HN? Sure, a couple have been good, but it strikes me as a little "odd" that he seems to be on here all the time. Group voting, or do random people really dig opinionated blog posts that much? Honest question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll "An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion." I think quite a few of his blog posts fall int…

I think that it is impossible for someone to troll his own blog.

I think that is is especially impossible to be a "troll" when someone else is posting entries from your own blog to a social news service. No, I don't think that qualifies.

Re: Vista Is Good

#38

Post by olefoo »

It's too bad this article is such a troll. I'm sure there are intelligent and useful things to be said about vista; but this article is not where they can be found.

Vista strikes me as a reasonably good OS crippled by the need to support the entire win32 legacy. It's too bad that Microsoft can't take 2000 of their best programmers and turn them loose on building a new OS that supports .NET and nothing before; as it might be quite worthwhile.

However; Microsoft the company seems to be slipping into the senility phase, thinking that their spot at the top of the pile is a god given right and that they should stay there forever. They seem to have forgotten that it's capitalism, it's dog eat dog; and it's their turn to be a dog's breakfast.

Re: Vista Is Good

#39

Post by josefresco »

axod wrote: post #11

You don't win by being "good". You win by being outstanding. MS died and stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago. What features does vista have that XP doesn't that are worthwhile? What is pushing people to upgrade? Nothing as far as I can see. Now you can buy PCs without an OS, and some very cool portables like the asus eeepc using linux, I'd expect MS dominance to take a major bashing over the next…

"MS died and stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago"

Is this 2020? It must be the future because MS has not died and is still very relevant.

"Now you can buy PCs without an OS,"

How many non geeks do you know that bought one of these? I know 0.

"The operating system is becoming irrelevent"

Again this must be 2020 because the OS is still essential to almost 100% of computer users.

"IE is nose diving in usage"

Any stats to back up this claim? I'm not seeing it, in fact IE7 usage is now higher than Firefox on hundreds of my managed websites.

I'm sorry but you live in fantasy tech-geek world where Linux and browser based operating systems are the norm. Do me favor and do some work for real "users" and then re-evaluate your opinions about where MS is and is heading.

Re: Vista Is Good

#40

Post by alex_c »

mattmaroon wrote: post #8
LPTS wrote: post #6

The feature that Matt says he likes (searching, eg poker) is much better implemented with Quicksilver on Mac OS X.

Does it search inside of files? I did like Quicksilver a lot. But it isn't fair to compare an OS against an OS and a third party program.

Vista DOESN'T search inside files, or if it does, it does so very very badly. I spent half an hour trying to do a very simple search for one keyword in a folder with php files, and trying various tricks from the net when it became obvious I can't do it on my own, with no luck.

That was probably the first major flaw in Vista I've run into.

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