With the release of SP2, it’s official:
Windows [the operating system] really does actually suck bigtime.
I know people have been saying it for years, but up until now I haven’t really agreed with them. There are two main reasons for this change of heart: Mac OSX and WindowsXP Service Pack 2. OSX is beautiful, and with every release looks more and more like computers are supposed to look, whereas SP2 is like the final ugly straw on an ugly camel’s disfigured back.
As Steve Jobs once said: "Microsoft has no taste."
I’m a heavy computer user. I’m a freaking computer programmer for chrissake! And yet, my current installation of WindowsXP is as kludgy and damaged as I have ever experienced. After installing SP2 my DVD/CD writer stopped working properly. My emails come up with broken image icons [this is because images are being blocked for privacy reasons, but there is NO visual distinction on the page between a missing image and a blocked one]. File associations are also getting weird, so that even though I associate *.vnc files with RealVNC, for some bizarre reason Acrobat keeps trying to open them. Not only is XP not beautiful, I am coming to regard it as not functional.
Grrrr!
If you are a long time Windows user, I recommend you wander into a cafe sometime and go stand behind the nearest PowerBook user for a few minutes. Feel the anger building inside you as you begin to understand just how rapidly OSX is leaving Windows for dead in both usability and style. Gnash your teeth at the fact that the iLife apps bundled with every Mac leave for dead all of those shitty shareware/freeware apps you’ve tried in the utterly vain hope of finding a decent piece of software which will let you manage your photos, or burn some digital video to DVD.
[ If you were to tell me that you had just shot some video and burned it to DVD, I would assume you must be using a Mac, because hardly any Windows users I know have machines set up to do it. Windows Movie Maker doesn't know what a DVD is, you see ]
It’s not that being creative isn’t possible using Windows; just that it’s less likely.
And it’s more than just the software; In case you hadn’t noticed, Mac hardware is clean and well designed [except for overheating batteries], whereas Windows desktops and laptops are almost universally disgusting looking, with stupid recessed bits and sticky out bits and badly placed superbright LEDs etc. They are also much noisier, and they’re not even necessarily cheaper!
It’s hard to be a programmer when you lose faith in your chosen platform. Even though Windows is by far the dominant OS – and is therefore here to stay for the forseeable future – I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve just woken up on the wrong bus.
