[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[William Kirkland]

Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 23:42:27 -0500
From: Doug McLaren <dougmc at frenzied.us>
Subject: Re: [geeks] Subject: Re:  Microsoft Surface...
 >
 > On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 08:51:57PM -0700, William Kirkland wrote:
 > | Microsoft products are crap, because Microsoft imposes limitations
 > | used to ensure that their products are not compatible with similar
 > | products.  Microsoft has not provided innovation, only marketing.
 > |
 > | ... so yes, Apple who does innovation is received with awe and  
wonder.
 >
 > Wow.  Those are some remarkably broad brushes you're painting
 > Microsoft and Apple with.

Yes, I did ... and similar to another discussion on this board, I too  
feel that profiling is appropriate. Including it's use when comparing  
the ethics and products a company produces especially the how ...

Microsoft tends to acquire a company with a particular piece of  
technology they find interesting. Apple tends to invent and design.  
Sun also has a much better tendency to invent rather than acquire  
technology.

 > Microsoft has done some pretty remarkable things over the years.  And
 > so has Apple.  And both have done some pretty underwhelming things
 > over the years as well.

Yes, they have marketed well. You are proof of that.

 > As for Microsoft deliberately making their products aren't compatible
 > with competitor's products, that's really only true for a small  
subset
 > of their rather large product lines -- and I'm not even sure it's
 > really been *proven* rather than just theorized anyways.

Others have already posted a partial list of things Microsoft has  
done to "help" technology along ... and I may have missed it, but I  
did not notice anything indicating the great leaps backward Microsoft  
attempted with Microsoft Java ... as I recall the first paragraph of  
the java specification REQUIRED that the code be cross platform  
compatible, yet Microsoft's implementation would not run on any  
platform except another Microsoft platform.

I think that qualifies as deliberate ...

Maybe you would rather talk about the lame gui that Microsoft  
uses ... I personally do not see that much difference with it an  
Apples, but when compared to X11 the Microsoft gui SUCKS! ... when  
was the last time you started your application on one system and used  
an entirely different system for the i/o on an entirely different  
system? That capability has existed in the X11 gui since it's inception.

 > For example, this Microsoft optical mouse I'm using rocks.  And it  
was
 > only like $15.  Which products did they go out of their way to  
make it
 > not work with?  Not sure -- the same model certainly works fine on my
 > Mac.

While I do not know off hand who first developed an optical mouse,  
the first ones I saw were out long before Microsoft thought of an  
optical mouse.

Oh, what about SCSI ... that was such a nice decision to go with  
IDE ... today, we are still limited to two disk drives on each bus.  
Microsoft chose IDE because Apple was suggesting SCSI. The only  
reason that IDE is cheap, compared to SCSI, is the quantity of sales.  
*IF* Microsoft would have shifted when they saw their decision to be  
less than optimal, we could have 256 devices on one SCSI bus,  
including the use of multiple computers on that same bus.

 > --
 > Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzied.us     Life - Sexually transmitted,  
always > > fatal

I like your signature.

--
bill.kirkland at gmail.com