Why do People hate Microsoft Windows ?
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| Why do we hate microsoft |
Windows gets a lot of hate for being bloated, "crappy", not many features, often crashing, etc. But, the haters don't appreciate the engineering challenge we are given with.
- Hardware Explosion: Windows is required to support every darn hardware you have got. There is a combinatorial explosion when it comes to options from different vendors we have to support. From the sleek ultrabooks to
INR 12,317.39 netbooks and millions of things inbetween, the engineers there have to support. Apple never had to worry about such an issue. - Software Explosion: When we designed features, we should also think about every darn software in the world that used to run in Windows to provide backward compatibility. Whenever we broke the compatibility, we used to get angry mails from our partners. Many of the compatibilities were broken in Vista and thus it got trashed. Some of these darn programs were last updated in 1990s, but users (enterprise ones) still expected us to stay compatible.
- Channel Explosion: Microsoft sells through every darn channel possible and often Microsoft had little control over the channel. Vendors like HP often irritated in the kind of bloatware they added after we shipped the OS to them. Instead of hating HP/Dell/Best Buy or whomever is adding the crap, blame gets assigned on the most visible target on your screen: Microsoft.
- Competing against your past: Every web developer hates IE 6. So does Microsoft. The browser was ok when it was launched. But, the whole world changed since IE 6 was launched and the enterprises are reluctant to move away from the legacy stuff. Although by IE10, Microsoft has narrowed the gap with modern browsers, the legacy stuff gets used by enterprises and Windows get hated for no fault of theirs. Blame it all on corporate America that move like tortoises. On the other hand, there are no OSX "Puma" guys who expect their Mac to work with software released for Mountain Lion.
Everyday we analyzed millions of crashdumps (the little thing that you send when your computer crashed and prompts you to say "send error report") and sometimes it would be mindboggling to see the kind of errors we get from associated hardware and applications. Also, some high priority support issues get propagated from the support teams to our product teams and it will often be WTF (why are they using it this way?).
In short, in the quest to support everybody, everything, everytime, Windows adds a lot of unnecessary crap.
But, when you are supporting a sizable chunk of world's computing infrastructure and have to make your product with the lowest common denominator in intelligence, you have little choice. No other company has to worry as much about the compatibility issues as Microsoft does. In the end, although Microsoft has probably failed to make a mark in online & mobile world, Windows is still the leader in its business. To stay for 20 years at the top, in this business, is no mean achievement. But, that kind of a success is at a price.
Although many of the Microsofties are not always happy with the quality they produce, there is a satisfaction that they are making products that a poor kid in India/Brazil or a grandma/grandpa in midwest or a small company/local government in Europe can use to get their job done.
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