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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Scoble says - tell me why our products suck
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Scoble wants to know why people think Microsoft products suck (see the linked article - it is his question :) ). Well. I'm sure everyone remembers just how fond I am of MS Word. Just follow the link - I don't feel like going off on another rant about the wonders of stupidly smart software. I will say this as a general comment - ship these things with the (supposedly helpful) features off. I can enable things like dancing menus by myself if I'm feeling like being disabled, thanks.
The primary issue has to be security though. To figure out just how bad this is, all you need is a PC running any Microsoft client OS and a child who uses that machine regularly. You end up having to clean off various pieces of spyware on a regular basis - whether you have a firewall installed or not. And no, SP2 for XP doesn't help - the so called security we all held our breath for is fundamentally broken. I'd actually disagree with the author of that piece in one important respect - it's actually worse than nothing. With nothing, you might realize that you need a firewall. With SP2's badly implemented firewall, you probably won't.
The basic problem for MS is a nasty legacy issue. Everything they've done over the last 15 years placed individual and group productivity ahead of security - which is why every OS up to XP shipped with a variety of services actively listening. It was obvious around 1998 or so that this was a really bad idea - and yet MS kept plowing straight ahead, shipping completely vulnerable products for years. I've seen the results - you've seen the results. Friends and associates who beg you to help them with their PC problems, attacks that come swarming at you the instant you go online - the poor decisions made from the mid 90's forward will haunt us for years given the slow update cycle that people live on.
Bottom line - we are in the market for a new PC. The top of my list is going to be an Apple product, because I'm tired of living in the insecurity swamp that MS has created. SP2 was a half-assed response to the problem. If they want to be taken seriously, they are going to have to start being serious - which means shutting up about the wonders of Tablet PC's and paying attention to fundamentals. Nifty writing recognition doesn't impress me when so many PC's are 0wned...
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