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Why Microsoft really patched XP

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Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#41

Post by FollowSteph3 »

chasing wrote: post #15

"Long story short, it hurt their IE brand. MS no longer has to worry about reputation management for the XP brand, but they sure do for IE." Maybe I'm being a little off-topic, here, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Internet Explorer has destroyed Microsoft's brand. Apart from it being their largest consumer-facing brand apart from Windows (I think), I suspect that more people came into programming thr…

You're thinking techies vs the average user who just uses IE cause it's there. The average user barely knows there's other browsers, or even that xp is no longer supported. How many people still use xp :(

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#42

Post by tormeh »

Just a nitpick: What features were lost in the transition from the start menu to the start screen? The start menu closes if it loses focus anyway, so you can't do other stuff with it open. Arguably, the start menu not being full-screen is a bug. I suspect this is just a case of people not liking change, no matter how trivial.

Well, it did lose the off button, but other than that I can't come up with anything.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#44

Post by wnevets »

tmzt wrote: post #34
ConceptJunkie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not sad at all when XP does the job and it would cost ridiculous amounts of money to update for no benefit. Now, waiting until the product fell out of support was a mistake, but Microsoft failed to produce a compelling upgrade for XP, period. Even Windows 7, which people generally like, doesn't run on the same hardware as well as XP if that hardware is older, which XP computers are going to be. And Windows 8? As…

Part of "doing the job" is keeping customer data secure, and the company's reputation -- and the CEO's job -- intact.

was target's data breach caused by an xp bug?

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#45

Post by twistedpair »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #37
twistedpair wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but let's not forget page transition animations introduced by IE. Thank God those died a rapid death. The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

> that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. It didn't kill Netscape to charge per copy, that's how software works. People need to earn money for their work creating software. What killed Netscape was Microsoft taking advantage of its monopoly by pushing itself into a new market with free software. Microsoft didn't need to earn money directly from the browser, so they could afford to…

I was jesting. ;) I happily bought several copies back then, which was a lot on an allowance for mowing grass, but FREE was very hard to beat. Of course there was a little Anti-Trust case that came out of those dealings.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#46

Post by WettowelReactor »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #37
twistedpair wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but let's not forget page transition animations introduced by IE. Thank God those died a rapid death. The other thing that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. Remember... people used to pay for browsers.

> that killed NetScape Communicator is that it had been costing $70 per copy. It didn't kill Netscape to charge per copy, that's how software works. People need to earn money for their work creating software. What killed Netscape was Microsoft taking advantage of its monopoly by pushing itself into a new market with free software. Microsoft didn't need to earn money directly from the browser, so they could afford to…

While the monopoly control provided a simplified avenue for distribution the free price tag alone cannot be held to blame. By that analogy any free, open source product can push its way into a new market and kill the paid for competition which is clearly not the case.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#47

Post by the_hangman »

tormeh wrote: post #42

Just a nitpick: What features were lost in the transition from the start menu to the start screen? The start menu closes if it loses focus anyway, so you can't do other stuff with it open. Arguably, the start menu not being full-screen is a bug. I suspect this is just a case of people not liking change, no matter how trivial. Well, it did lose the off button, but other than that I can't come up with anything.

> Arguably, the start menu not being full-screen is a bug.

A bug introduced in Windows 95 that they waited until 2013 to patch? I think after a certain number of years it might have moved from a bug to a feature.

For me, the problem with the new start screen is exactly what you describe. I'm fairly scatterbrained. When I'm going to open a program, file, etc., it's usually because of something else I have open, like an email with a request from a co-worker. When the start screen takes up the whole screen, I get distracted from the reason I opened it in the first place and have to go back to my email before I remember. I know that it's my problem, not Microsoft's, but at least having the choice between overlay or full screen would be nice.

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#48

Post by nivla »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #24
nivla wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying and tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox cam…

Yeah, MSIE was the best browser through version 4. The real reason Netscape lost the browser wars was that it became a huge bloated mess. Now it probably couldn't have beat IE regardless of how good it was because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices, but IE was the best browser for a few years in the mid-90s. Of course, they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade...

>they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade...

That is one of the side effects of being on top without the worry of competition AKA being a monopoly. Despite Chrome being my favorite browser, this is one the things that worries me the most when everyone yells "Port all browsers to Webkit!!!", we will inadvertently repeat history.

Southpark best visually described it in one of their episodes [1].

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_Way_Co...

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#49

Post by geekster »

ema wrote: post #43
geekster wrote: post #36

The irritating thing is: While IE is the most veulnerable, the most slowest and the clunkiest internet browser in the universe, it still manages to be the most used browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_usage_share says chrome overtook IE already 2 years ago.

Ahh, my bad! But I think it overtook in 2013, cause many websites claim that. Cheers!

Re: Why Microsoft really patched XP

#50

Post by mikeash »

ntakasaki wrote: post #32
mikeash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing seems to snowball. MS bends over backwards to preserve backwards compatibility, so third-party vendors basically have free reign to abuse the OS, requiring MS to bend over backwards even more to accommodate them, and on and on. Apple, for example, had much less of a problem with this even before the days of the App Store and the accompanying restrictions, because developers largely k…

The other side is that Apple is not preferred in many corporate shops exactly because of that.

That's an excellent point. Neither approach is perfect, just different tradeoffs.
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