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  1. #1
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
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    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    Apple had its moment, and completely wiffed it. Read it and weep. The upshot is that we could have had a thriving windowed GUI environment a lot sooner.

    I'm not sure one needs a technological "comparison point" to be unhappy with how Microsoft behaves. And if you absolutely need a similar yardstick, why not compare the bullies from Redmond to the unwashed hippies of Linux?

  2. #2
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Thumbs down Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur
    I'm not sure one needs a technological "comparison point" to be unhappy with how Microsoft behaves. And if you absolutely need a similar yardstick, why not compare the bullies from Redmond to the unwashed hippies of Linux?
    I don't believe in using absolute points of comparison outside of a church.

    So it is down to relative contrast. MS is by no means the worst of the bunch, heck one only needs to work with other IT vendors to know how much stuff is kept 'in-house','specialized architecture', 'specific hardware supported only'... when a lot of it is about locking people into contracts and sucking out as much revenue. MS gets a lot of stick purely because MS is so large, and a lot of these complainers haven't had to deal with Oracle or Cisco or any of the telephony/VoIP vendors... all of which can be quite nuanced/picky about who and what they work well with. Apple is merely the other store bought home user OS alternative... there are plenty of freeware out there... but then the user would generally have to blame themselves for tech support issues and thats not the point when trying to pass the buck now is it. So no point bringing up Red Hat and the rest as they would require expert knowledge or self introspection... neither of which the home user wishes to put effort into as much as blaming the man for all his woes.

    MS still sucks from time to time, but it doesn't take much effort to find far worse. It does take effort to get better computing... as that requires end users to RTFM.
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  3. #3
    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    You're missing the point entirely. If Cisco doesn't play well with an app, what do you do? You buy other hardware. You'd be hard pressed to find a company with more monopoly powers in the IT industry than Microsoft. They have it, and they love leveraging it to "encourage" us to adopt their new offerings by forcing users into closed standards of which they have sole control. DirectX is a good example and their legal woes over bundling IE are also well-documented. I think another one in the making is the 'Games for Windows' iniatiative as it implements Live features to tie in with the 360 and inexorably herds people into subscriptions.
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  4. #4
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    You don't exactly run a non-Cisco app on Cisco hardware or vice-a-versa. Heck Call Manager will run only on a very limited scope of non-Cisco hardware and that is because CM was not developed orginally in house. Look at Cisco video conferencing at first you had to use a very expensive (rebadged with from product X to Cisco) camera that only had an extra chip in it that the software checked to make sure it was badged Cisco. Cisco IOS on the whole runs on Cisco hardware.

    Likewise on the whole Apple apps run on apple OS that runs on Apple hardware.

    MS isn't the worst, its the biggest... and it probably is the biggest because it had the most open standards... which is something it keeps forgetting and shooting itself in the foot everytime it tries and corner a market.
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  5. #5

    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    Cisco products and home PC OS products is not the best comparison. Putting the server market aside, it is undoubtedly the home PC software market that M$ have been controlling pretty much since day one. When they first bundled IE with Win98 this was M$ attempting to control the way home users access the net as well - a goal which they have almost succeeded in.

    M$'s grip on the home PC is a wholly different issue to Cisco systems dominance in the networking hardware market or Apple's policy of their own OS on their own hardware. There is a simple solution to the Apple issue: Don't buy an Apple. With an Apple you can choose not to buy it, with a load of PC hardware and the latest games when you've put it all together you still need the missing link: M$ Windows.

    M$ have the almost absolute monopoly in the home PC gaming market due to DirectX. This gives M$ effective control of the gaming market. So if you want to play a game, such as M2TW, you need to run an M$ OS on your otherwise open hardware platform. Apple aren't exercising this kind of leverage over consumers. In the past some developers such as ID Software looked set to release most of their games as Linux ports. Also ID and some others used OpenGL as their main graphics API and not Direct3D. Many late 90's early 00's games had the option of either Direct3D or OpenGL this welcome option has now disappeared. Back then things seemed to be going in the right direction, now it is clear in retrospect that the first indications of the situation we are now in were there.

    The failure of OpenGL has has been put down to it's lower performance in latter years compared to Direct3D but in fact this failure is more so that of M$ to provide a decent and up to date reference driver (I wonder why!?) to ship with it's Windows OS. In the past it was almost always necessary, especially in the case of the old 3dfx cards, to go into the windows\system32 folder and remove the M$ Opengl32.dll file and replace it with the one provided by the graphics card manufacturer. This would then yield a huge performance boost over the M$ reference driver. M$ were simply steering the user towards Direct3D with the ultimate objective of gaining leverage over the gaming market and destroying the cross platform gaming dreams of many.
    Last edited by caravel; 12-28-2007 at 15:26.
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  6. #6
    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    So they're pretty successful in their business.


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  7. #7

    Default Re: What is Microsoft's problem?

    They're cut-throat in their business approach and this is no reason to applaud or admire them.

    M$ don't put out a quality product they merely got lucky back in the days of M$ DOS vs IBM DOS and as a result of this they can now force their software, which is mostly composed of a plaigarised concoction of other developers', down consumers throats.
    Last edited by caravel; 12-29-2007 at 01:44.
    “The majestic equality of the laws prohibits the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread.” - Anatole France

    "The law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught, and the great tear it up.” - Anacharsis

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