It is kind of funny to me that the most popular post I have written (based on the number of hits, anyway) is one on Vista from well over a year ago. It is even more interesting that the hit rate on this post has gone up over time.
Of course, it is fairly easy to draw hits – just use any combination of Microsoft, Vista, sucks, etc. in your tags!
I was wathing one of Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials last night, and noticed how much Apple’s marketing campaign resembles the mindless mud-slinging which permeates the political campaign process. I cannot remember the last time any of these commercials actually mentioned anything good about the Mac, or even mentioned anything about the Mac’s capabilities.
I am sorry, but saying “you should buy my product because XYZ sucks” is a pretty lazy marketing campaign – especially from an organization that pretends to be innovative.
Interesting post over on Ars Technica – Microsoft does a blind test with Windows XP users, telling them that they are testing a new OS. It is really just Vista. And the overwhelming majority are impressed.
As I have said frequently before – Vista’s problems are (for the most part) not technical – they are marketing and perception. It reminds me of a term from (I think) Tom Peters in Thriving on Chaos – “relative percieved product quality”. It is not the true qualty that drives consumers, it is all about perception.
This SharePoint in Web 2.0 Fire Starter- Live Meeting looks interesting.
I also find the following statement on the page interesting:
Did you know that SharePoint is the fastest growing Server product in Microsoft’s history? It’s not only an enterprise darling but also an IT pro dream in terms of maintenance.
SharePoint technologies seem to have a lot of momentum going.
Microsoft Silverlight « Josh Anderson’s Blog
I always find the predominant attitude in the software and Internet world amusing – it is important to have alternatives, unless they come from Microsoft!
Also, the installation model for Silverlight is not all that different from Flash – if you go to a site that uses Flash, and you do not have it installed, it asks you to install it.
BTW – given the market share enjoyed by both Opera and Safari, it is fairly generous that any effort is made to support them at all.
This article from PC Magazine is interesting. It does a fairly good job of looking at the pros and cons of various OS’, without the silliness of most such discussions. The only aspects of it I think are a little unfair are the “Price” and “Installation” scores, both of which rate Mac OS better than either Windows XP or Vista.
On the price side, while it is true that you can buy Mac OS for less than Windows, you cannot (at least if you are a typical user) install it on your existing, non-Mac hardware. So the true cost of a typical user switching to Mac OS includes the cost of buying a completely new computer, at a premium price.
On the installation side, again the comparison is not quite fair. Both Windows and Linux are general-purpose OS’ which have to be able to install on a wide-range of hardware and almost unlimited permutations of hardware configurations. Again, Apple does not have this problem with Mac OS, since Apple tightly constrains (though not as tightly as it used to) the hardware configurations with which Mac OS must contend.
Overall, though, not a bad article.
Here is an interesting post on the prevalence (or at least existence) of conspiracy-theory-types within the free software movement (actually, they exist within any community). However, this article points out something which I have said before, which is that these people, and other zealots in the open source world, do far more damage to the credibility of open source as a whole than any opponents of open source ever could.
Eventually, the pitch “we are better because we are not Microsoft” is just not enough, and in fact, begins to hurt the movement.
I was reading this interesting post Coté’s Excellent Description of the Microsoft Web Rift « SmoothSpan Blog, as well as the post to which it refers. It is an interesting discussion of the fears many have with respect to choosing to work with Microsoft technologies versus non-Microsoft. The chain is worth a read, whether you agree with the ideas or not.
One statement I found particularly interesting was
This thing he calles “lock-in fear” and the extreme polarization (encouraged by Microsoft’s rhetoric, tactics, and track record) that you’re either all-Microsoft or no-Microsoft is my “web rift”.
While I would not disagree that Microsoft strongly encourages the use of its tools and technologies (after all, that is what most companies do, isn’t it?), I see far more rhetoric and tactical positioning on the part of non-Microsoft, anti-Microsoft, and Open Source communities insisting that one must be 100% non-Microsoft (and preferably not even play nice with anything Microsoft), or you are obviously a Microsoft fan boy.
I guess that the point that I am making is that a large part of the “lock-in fear” is created not by Microsoft’s behaviour, but by the behaviours of the anti-Microsoft crowd.
Soviet Microsoft: Stockholm Syndrome Among Unswitchable Windows Users
This crap is getting ridiculous. First Microsoft is the Soviet Union, and now anyone who does not agree with the “Microsoft is an evil empire” crowd and switch to inferior desktop environments such as Linux, or closed, over-priced systems like Mac (both of which I like in the right context, and both of which I have developed software on) is obviously mentally impaired and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
People, get a freaking life. This is bloody software, nothing more. If you like it, buy it and use it. If you don’t like it, DON’T. Either way, stop playing amateur psychologist, political analyst, or whatever else you are playing, and please, please, please STFU.
This is a very amusing analogy, since it was the “free market economy” which created Microsoft’s success, and continues to sustain them. They are not being propped up artificially through government subsidies or bailouts, as so many companies in other industries seem to be. They are not trying to force governments or the courts to force their competitors to give up proprietary information or abandon markets to make it easier to compete.
In reality, it is the open source community, the “capitalism is evil” crowd, and those lobbying to take Microsoft down legislatively or litigiously who more resemble socialists/communists – “all intellectual property belongs to everyone”, “the government should intervene to level the playing field”, and other such crap.
The reality is, if you truly believe in the world of “free markets and open ideas”, the you believe that better ideas, smarter people, and better business models will ultimately prevail. This is the world in which Microsoft has played successfully for 20+ years. It is this model by which others can ultimately defeat Microsoft. It is Microsoft’s competition which seems unable to live within this model.
FredSpace 
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