Gary Wisniewski posted part 2 of his 5 part series on fixing Windows and Microsoft at-large. When I saw the first post yesterday, it prompted me to have a mini braindump of the issues I've found to be issues a lot of people don't always recognize immediately.

I've had a chance to read through Gary's new post twice now, and I'm not sure how I feel just yet. I don't think it's because I'm not a "well-educated computer scientist" (read: idiot) but rather because I'm extremely pragmatic when it comes to technology. After my first pass through the posting, I was surprised by the negativity of the tone overall and felt it was very much in the style of Michael Moore. It includes facts here and there with some quotes from reputable sources tied together with lots of heavy editorial assumptions that are kind of slipped in nonchalantly.

After reading through it the second time I was able to focus on the facts a little more, and I realize that a lot of thought went into it. I do recognize that Gary's working to make a valid point about why Windows should be scrapped in favor of Linux (or starting over from scratch even), but I don't think I even agree with the problem as Gary defines it to begin with. I don't think he's wrong exactly, I just think we're from very different schools of thought.

While I don't agree with Gary's trajectory on this, I think there are two points that are pretty valid from my own personal perspective:

1. There is a lot of ammunition being spent making a case against Windows as an operating system. While I'm indifferent to the problems Gary points out, I am dead-set against his opinions on how they can be "fixed". I don't care how big the codebase is. I don't particularly care about how big the footprint is, within reason. I don't care how flawed the architecture is. All I care about is that the OS does what my customers and I expect it to do and that the apps we build don't break. If it takes Microsoft 10 years to ship each new OS, that is better for us because it means less budget gets spent on migration and more on core projects. However, if the rug gets pulled out from under billions of users by drastic changes for questionable improvements, we're all screwed.
2. There are smatterings of anti-Windows sentiment in broadly sweeping statements and quotations taken somewhat out of context that would indicate that people are fleeing Windows due to the problems Gary outlines. I don't see it at all. Sure, it might be true that there are people who have decided to leave Windows for something else, but they are few and far between. It's very easy to say that people are upset about the virii, malware, etc, that have hit Windows over the past few years, but the fact is that they're just not leaving Windows in the droves anti-Windows zealots want you to believe. In fact, the best indication of why people would leave Windows can always be found by looking at the latest Apple advertising. Apple is a very capable company. They do research. They know how to maximize their chances of winning new customers. During the worst days of XP security threats, they were selling "security & reliability" as their major features. So were Sun and Novell for that matter. I'm sure that won them all some Windows customers. However, Sun and Novell have both fizzled in the desktop arena, whereas Apple has revamped their Mac marketing as the premium social computing desktop. Their research obviously indicates that security & reliability aren't big enough issues to drive people away from Windows, so they've picked a better angle.

I'm interested to see where this goes. I'd love to see Gary's ideas lead into something great for Microsoft. I just hope the next post isn't an anti-Windows pro-Linux anything-but-Microsoft rant guised in an editorial. I get enough of that from the Windows team as it is

5/30/2006 10:42:21 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [2]  
Tracked by:
"Being Negative about Windows" (Trial By Fire) [Trackback]
"Does Microsoft need a new OS codebase?" (m0t0r's Society) [Trackback]