| Wednesday, April 19, 2006 |
17:12 - Microsoft's Copland
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp
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You know, one could read this article by Windows pundit Paul Thurott on the sorry state of Windows Vista today with a kind of mean glee. But I can't. It's really, really sad. And I say this as someone who has secretly, if not overtly, hoped that something like this would happen to Microsoft ever since I touched my first Unix machine ten years ago.
It's devastating—not least because Thurott has been one of Vista's biggest champions over the past three years, and now he feels completely betrayed. He rips feature after feature, ridicules crappy interface decisions with the zeal of a Mac geek, and demurely acknowledges areas where Vista's only real successes are where it's copied Apple. I hardly even have the heart to pile on myself by pointing out things like how the "attractive" interface of Windows Media Player 11 is full of confusing and redundant elements like actions listed along with data sources and needlessly detailed rating systems, or how the "glass windows" he likes so much end up looking like a baroque gold picture frame around a photo of a construction site latrine when they contain things like icons from the Win95 era. And I won't even bother coughing "Cargo Cult" under my breath when I see things like their new obtuse permissions-enforcement model (UAP) or their see-if-you-can-guess-which-window-is-on-top "Aero" interface, which—honest!—isn't meant to evoke "Aqua" at all, no sir.
The overwhelming feeling, rather, is one of sadness—because today, the way Thurott describes Mac OS X and Linux is as ever-present, hungry competitors, not as laughable also-rans. Which means that even the 800-pound gorilla realizes that it has to compete to win. And if this—dare I say it—quagmire of software development is the extent to which Microsoft can compete with the state of the art, then even Apple and Linux won't have a need to push themselves as hard anymore in the future when they're the only ones still running the race.
It's a rare time right now: an era of genuine competition in the operating system space. Customers are getting more and better features and a better computing experience almost with each passing day now, a far cry from the heady days of the Internet's youth when we all had to juggle incomprehensible acronyms and Trumpet Winsock and SLIP/PPP logon scripts and modem init strings and other strange phone-hacker jargon, and deal with ad-hoc third-party geek-authored tools to perform even the simplest tasks. Laptops today are so good that they can be used as complete desktop replacements, not the dim-screened, overpriced fashion accessories they once were. iPods are cross-platform, and so is the Internet and all useful file types. Computing is more transparent than it's ever been before, and for that we can thank a complacent Microsoft and an Apple virile enough to reclaim its lead in innovating in the market. But too much of that same formula will threaten to bring about an end to this era of advancement before its final fruits can really be harvested.
I find myself hoping Vista comes out when they now say it will, and that it includes some features that Windows users can honestly crow about. The game of leapfrog is what makes the tech world flourish, and both sides need someone to try to jump over.
Via Doug M.
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Brian Tiemann
