Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?

MrSplog asks: "I'm doing a short project on Microsoft and its impact on society. A considerable part of this project has been looking into people's perceptions of Microsoft and the heavily negative bias of that perception. Since Slashdot is one of the world's forefront leaders on Microsoft hatred, I wanted to know: just why do you hate Microsoft? Please be as descriptive and as thorough as you like. Counter arguments and positive comments are also appreciated."

I dont *hate* Microsoft.....

Oh, I don't *hate* Microsoft. In fact, I have friends who work there and have made money off of Microsoft stock. I still use Word (although Pages is coming on strong and if I could get EndNote compatibility, I'd switch entirely) and Excel and root for the company on occasion. Where I object to Microsoft is in their shoddy products. Almost every product I've used of theirs that came out at version 1.0 has royally sucked. Their whole concept of bringing products to market is date/deadline driven rather than quality or product driven, much less consumer driven. Classic cases of abysmal products were Windows v1-3, Win-98 and ME, the Zune, Bob, that first tablets and the ultra portable systems I've previewed (error messages that were too big for the display for instance), and of course their always changing interface standards and poor security issues.

Saying all that, I actually had a pretty good Micron PC running Win 95 that was remarkably stable. Of course upgrading it to Win98 was a unmitigated disaster. Win NT was a very stable OS, that was just cryptic to use and administer. Win2000 was pretty decent, and it almost made me switch my home system from MacOS to Win200, but like most products they have simply used their monopoly status to make the right changes very late in the game if ever. How long did it take them to adopt all characters for file names?

Where I really started getting disgusted with their business was after I saw company after company run out of business due to business practices that bordered on illegal and in some cases blatantly crossed the legal line. I always tended to prefer the MacOS, but was fairly platform agnostic (using Windows, Solaris, Linux, Irix, MacOS) for whichever task needed the appropriate platform, but with the advent of OS X, I've become a strong advocate for the Macintosh platform which brings up another issue entirely.... Microsoft has for decades now used Apple as their R&D lab. It's an obvious and well known joke, but if you are familiar with OS X, just wait until you get to play with Vista. Come on now, there are some very smart folks at Microsoft, so why can't they come up with ideas and products on their own? My take on it is that it is an efficiency issue combined with a management issue with too much oversight at the early and mid stages of the game. For instance, how many programmers are there on the Windows development team? Its in the thousands for sure, perhaps tens of thousands all told. For OS X, the number of full on programmers numbers in the hundreds. Under 300 for sure last time I checked a couple of years ago. The whole Quicktime team numbers around 30-40 whereas the Microsoft Media Player team is well into the hundreds. We could go on and on here, but to answer your question, this scientist at least does not hate Microsoft. I've just watched the company for years, purchased some of their products and have found a product from another company (Apple) that meets my needs and does not get in the way of my work the way Microsoft products tend to do.

Re:I dont *hate* Microsoft.....

Oh, I don't *hate* Microsoft. In fact, I have friends who work there and have made money off of Microsoft stock.

Big karma hit incoming, ouch!

Keep It Simple Stupid

While people complain that microsoft lacks functionality and treats its users like idiots, they miss the fact that they're successful *because* they lack the functionality that will confuse users. We technocrats have a tendency to think that just because we can manually configure network settings everyone else can too. Microsoft makes a product that does what everyone needs it to and they keep the market cornered because of it. The 80% that still use IE use it because they don't have (or don't believe they have) the technical skills to use firefox.

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

Huh? I'd go so far to say that Microsoft products try to incorporate too much functionality at the expense of time spent fixing bugs and achieving stability. How else can they get away with releasing new versions of Office every couple of years unless they try to implement 'new functionality'. You could argue that they only get away with it because of their monopoly status, of course.. people don't like Windows because they like it, they use it either because they don't know any alternatives, or just because everyone else is already using and developing for it, and it's a hassle to switch.

If people knew there was an OS they could get easily that didn't crash as often, had all the same functionality and games, and didn't have to run antivirus,antispyware,blah blah, they would switch. In fact if they developed Linux for my Wii then that could be my main machine - most of the reason I don't ever stick with Linux is that I want to play the latest games (without any annoying glitches), or even last year's games - I tried for days to get GTA: SA working properly on various versions of Cedega and WINE..

I've not tried Mac OS recently, maybe I should? I think more games are being developed for Mac OS these days, unfortunately I consider a lot of games to not be worth my money these days too [/crabbity old youth]

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

Bjarne Stroustrup once said: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses." (http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/bjarne-stroustrup-o n-c-and-why-software-sucks/1310 [moskalyuk.com])

This might easily be reworded as: "There are just two kinds of software: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

That's true. We do complain about Microsoft because we use the software. I mean that's gotta be it right. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that a lot of us are forced to use Microsoft products daily.

I think a better question for this article would be...Why do people defend Microsoft so often? What exactly drives Windows fans. It's not their freedom. It's not the stability of their system. It's not it's ease of use. Maybe they steal Windows on torrents, because surely no one is just backing something because they paid for it. Wait maybe that's it. Could it be that the reason a lot of people are defending Windows is because it's the product that they bought. Hell I don't know, but this has been a question on my mind for a long time. I can see the drive behind defending Open Source Products. I can see why Linux and BSD people can be proud of their OS. I can even understand why Mac users are proud. I could just never understand how anyone could be a Windows "fanboi".

Some possible causes that I can think of would be:
1.) User didn't have a computer before 2001 and has only used XP(possibly used 2k and XP only).
2.) Purchased MS product so feel the need to justify said purchase.
3.) Stole MS product and is under the disillusion that the product was free.
4.) Has never even attempted to use anything else.
5.) Believes everything they were taught in school.

I could probably add to this list.

I'm currently attending an online class where we were comparing Linux and Windows. Only two people in the class had tried Linux. Everyone else had only used Windows. Those who had only used Windows kept going on and on about how user-friendly Windows is. I'm thinking, "compared to nothing, I can see your point." Windows is user-friendly only if you know how to use it. In a lot of cases, if you really know how to use it, you don't want to use it anymore. Most people really don't even know how to use it. Yet they'll stand up for it. It amazes me that they believe they are computer savvy because they can log into slashdot or digg and post their comments.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about all Windows users. Some people have a legitimate reason to use Windows. GAMES. That's right it has games. That's the biggest selling point I've heard so far. Most of these gamers have a Wii, an Xbox360, and a PS3. Hey here's a thought. Play games on your consoles, and stop using that as a reason for using Windows.

There's a fair amount of Windows fanbois on slashdot these days. I'd say they probably outnumber the Linux fanbois even. So all of you, instead of asking us why we hate Microsoft so much, why don't you ask yourself what it is you love about it? They have way more money than you. They could probably sue you for a license agreement you have broken at one point. Their software phones home and reports on you without you knowing. The new flagship OS, Vista, is sluggish to say the least. You'll love your new computer you are forced to buy just to run it at a medium pace. But hey, you'll finally be able to enjoy those visual effects that Mac and Linux users have been enjoying for years. Oh and it's supposed to be the most secure version of Windows ever. So maybe it's not as secure as Mac and Linux, but at least you can rag XP users once you switch.

This may sound like one large flame, but really its just an honest question. Why do you love Windows so much? Explain why it's so much better than Linux and FreeBSD. Try to do it without mentioning games, cause we have consoles for games. You should be the one justifying to us why we should spend 150 bucks on an OS. We shouldn't have to sell "free" to you.

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

Just a Few:

1. As a college student I paid under $20 for my copy of WinXP, but would have had to pay ~$45 for MacOS X. Although this doesn't tend to defeat your argument, it sure does lower one of the reasons not to use Windows and makes OS X the one which needs to prove itself.

2. I know how to use Windows. These were skills I built up before ever owning my own PC, mostly when I was living at home using my parents PC, and my Dad used Windows because it was built on DOS, the earliest OS he knew. What you say above is right once you get to know how to use Windows you don't want to anymore, but alas I've already paid for it and have a box which does pretty much everything I call on it to do, so there isn't any reason to need another PC or to switch.

3. I have very rarely been called on to know/learn a piece of software that doesn't run on Windows. I have on the other hand been called on to know/learn Power Point, Word, Excel, InDesign, and many others. This is excluding text editors run on Linux machines for my CS classes, but then they haven't cared which one I use so on WinXP at home I use Notepad++, and in lab on Linux I use nedit.

4. If I want a Linux box I'll build one and will be able to do it on the cheap. So I'm not worried about getting one right now, when I'm college style poor, I'd rather have steak once in a while.

5. My friends/relatives/co-workers/group-members know how to use Windows and thus I don't have to try and explain Linux everytime they want to do something on my computer; this happens quite frequently I might add.

6. The games, I know you tried to blow this off with consoles but thats not a valid argument, because as a cheap/poor college student I can't afford to buy an XBox 360 or a PS3 or a Wii or whatever. And I don't enjoy console gaming as much either so atleast let me have my own preferences in that realm, without just telling me that my preference doesn't matter. I don't own any consoles and don't really plan on buying one for a good while.

As a note I would not consider myself a Windows "fanboi" but I do feel Windows is right for me, right now, and I feel anyone telling me I'm wrong is really in no place to say so. Your choice of OS really boils down to circumstances and that is all there really is to it.

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

"My Ford will outrun your Chevy any day." Seriously, some people just take brand loyalty too far.

I don't hate Microsoft, but I can tell you three reasons I like Microsoft a lot less than I could: I've been in the computer hobbyist scene heavily since the early 90's, I've been working in the field full time since 1998, and I have a good memory.

There was a time when you had more than one solid, corporate-backed choice for an OS on your PC. OS/2 version 3.0 was solid as a rock and it was reasonably easy to port software between OS/2 and Unix-based OSes. It ran DOS software, and even ran Windows 3.x software. Digital Research had a good alternative DOS version. What did Microsoft do? They told whitebox computer stores that if they wanted to preload DOS and/or Windows on any systems, they had to have a license for every system they sold. So if you bought a box with OS/2 preloaded, you paid for DOS and OS/2. If you wanted DR/DOS, you paid for two versions of DOS. That trick is not just dirty, but patently illegal. They also signed a cross-license deal with IBM on MS-DOS & PC-DOS and Windows & OS/2. They pretty much committed to IBM that OS/2 would replace Windows 3.1 and that they'd both profit from it. Then, at the height of OS/2's rise, Windows 95 came out using much of what IBM taught Microsoft and its programs were conveniently incompatible with OS/2.

Microsoft loves to spread FUD about other companies and about Free Software / Open Source projects. They've been so busy telling people that other products won't meet their needs that Windows, Office, IIS, and Internet Explorer had security almost totally neglected until Slammer, Nimda, and other widespread problem attacks made non-techie news. They have a habit of buying small companies "for their innovative products", then canceling all of their products or keeping just one product out of a broad catalog (Visio, anyone?). They make gratuitous changes to file formats and network protocols without any technical merit just to thwart compatibility efforts by the competition. Meanwhile, their upper management talks about Linus Torvalds being anti-competition, suggest Richard M. Stallman is some kind of Trotskyite, and says that small businesses having access to less expensive software will _hurt_ the economy.

Microsoft has some real quality products. They have some people there who really know what they are doing, and I'm sure many of their employees are willing to coexist with other sources of software. Their operating systems, office suite, and web browser have traditionally been their poorest quality software while they really should be some of the highest. Their management should focus more on making Microsoft's products better and their operations more lean while spending less time attacking others. It would probably help them more in the long run.

Besides, it's just downright distasteful for the biggest player to resort to such desperate tactics all the time. They haven't been the underdog in about 30 years, but they act like they are guerrilla freedom fighters doing their business in back alleys. It's time to stop being the bully and to show some confidence in your products, Mssrs. Ballmer and Gates. If you make your software so much better than the competition as you claim it is, you'll have nothing to fear.

Re:Keep It Simple Stupid

Nah you're right, the article doesn't come across as fanboish. It does however state the question, "Why do you hate Microsoft?" It presumes that one has to hate Microsoft in order to use another OS. It's like saying that the reason I don't drive a Ford is because I have a hatred for Ford. My first car could have been a Honda and since they never gave me any trouble, I've always owned one.
My point is Linux is free. OpenOffice is free. I shouldn't have to justify why I use these products over MS Windows and Office when each costs more than $100. Instead of pirating Windows and Office, perhaps I've just decided I like the price of Linux and OpenOffice. The article is asking us to justify why we don't use Microsoft, and how many times do we have to do this. This is the only market where people want you to justify using a free product over one that costs money. They should be making the product worth buying. They should be the ones making the sales pitch to us. I should have to make a sales pitch for free products. Do the Windows fanbois really know how backwards this situation is?

Re:I dont *hate* Microsoft.....

one could argue Microsoft products are shoddy because they support a mind blowing number of hardware configurations. Apple's job is much easier...but do you want to be restricted in what kind of computer you want? If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light. And you have to thank Microsoft for at least part of that.

One could argue this only

if several other OS's didn't exist which run perfectly fine on tons of hardware (*BSD and Linux). And the sad part is, M$ has all the vendors producing drivers SPECIFICALLY for their operating system. All they have to do is provide a stable kernel and easy/efficient module system for these drivers, and they'd be golden -- every advantage is on their side there. This opposed to Linux and *BSD, who are still more or less reverse engineering many of their drivers.

Re:One could argue this only

Part of the reason why their job is mind-numbingly complicated is because they need to support legasy software. A whole lot of 16-bit DOS apps written 15 years ago still run on current versions of Windows. These are not ports, or recompilations, but the same binaries. I doubt the same can be said of Linux or MacOS, especially with the latter so efficient at cutting off support of applications with major release.

Re:One could argue this only

I doubt the same can be said of Linux or MacOS, especially with the latter so efficient at cutting off support of applications with major release.

Mac OS X does the smart thing. Rather than screw up the OS with legacy support, it provides an emulator for the "classic" Mac OS to run applications inside of. Thus you get the best of both worlds.

To put it another way, Super Wing Commander works fine on my Mac. The DOS WC games either fail miserably or need tweaking to get working. (Obviously, both require a slowdown utility.) IMHO, the Mac ends up having superior backward compatibility.

Re:One could argue this only

Windows does use emulation for legacy apps. It uses the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) for DOS apps and WoWExec (Windows-on-Windows) for 16-bit Windows apps. Their 64-bit OSs have WoW64, which emulates a 32-bit machine.

Re:One could argue this only

Part of the reason why their job is mind-numbingly complicated is because they need to support legasy software. A whole lot of 16-bit DOS apps written 15 years ago still run on current versions of Windows. These are not ports, or recompilations, but the same binaries. I doubt the same can be said of Linux or MacOS, especially with the latter so efficient at cutting off support of applications with major release.

I guess you've never heard of DOSEMU [dosemu.org], a program that uses the Linux kernel call "vm86" to run 16-bit DOS programs in the vm86 mode of 386-compatible processors ? Most 16-bit DOS applications I've tried on it have worked just fine.

Or you could use DOSBox [sourceforge.net], which is a complete emulator (meaning it emulates the processor too, unlike DOSEMU). The odd DOS app that didn't work under DOSEMU works fine under DOSBox.

It's the support for Windows applications (via Wine [winehq.com]) that is less than perfect under Linux, but it is improving. Then again, it could hardly be getting worse ;).

Re:One could argue this only

And the sad part is, M$ has all the vendors producing drivers SPECIFICALLY for their operating system. All they have to do is provide a stable kernel and easy/efficient module system for these drivers, and they'd be golden -- every advantage is on their side there. This opposed to Linux and *BSD, who are still more or less reverse engineering many of their drivers.

This is actually what's causing the damn trouble. Many companies who build hardware apparently can't code drivers worth shit.

Yeah, there are the certification things that MS has started giving to drivers, but often times they drivers aren't certified, and what are you supposed to do?

MS is such an absurdly large company, I don't know why the hell they can't have a 'drivers' division.

You know, in the real world, the purpose of an OS is to talk to the hardware. It's mildly ironic that MS includes all sorts of junk in an OS that doesn't belong there, but doesn't bother writing actual hardware drivers, which, you know, is something like half of the actual 'OS', with managing access to devices being the other half.

Now, OSes tend to come with a bit more than that, like shells and lots of APIs, but the real 'operating system' part is 'this is a hardware device, this is how I talk to this specific thing, this is how programs talk to me to get me to talk to it'. The fact MS is slacking on the 'this is how I talk to is' is just hilarious. It's how to write an OS without writing half the OS, I guess.

Of course, MS also doesn't include all sorts of other pieces of standard OSes, like CD and floppy imagers and image writers and image mounters, or network sniffing utilities. You know, actual hardware tools that OSes should come with. Even their text editor sucks.

They're too busy throwing in crippled applications like WordPad and Windows Movie Maker and Paintbrush. Not to mention various network clients like IE and Outlook. Almost always to target some competition.

Re:One could argue this only

They're too busy throwing in crippled applications like WordPad and Windows Movie Maker and Paintbrush.

Hey, I was with you up to here, but I won't hear you dis Paintbrush, it's the best application they've ever written. Gotta be the only app they've not kitchen sinked.

Re:One could argue this only

I won't hear you dis Paintbrush

I agree enthusiastically. Maybe Paintbrush isn't the best app Microsoft ever wrote, but I can't imagine life without it. It is absolutely the right size for 90% of my drawing needs, especially since it now can handle GIF, JPG and PNG's in addition to BMP.

What else would I use to edit, crop and save screen shots when I'm writing documentation?

Re:One could argue this only

The reason Paintbrush is the best application they've ever written is because Microsoft didn't write it.

I've got installation media for Windows 2.03 kicking around somewhere which came with my first Microsoft mouse and it's actually ZSoft PC Paintbrush which was bundled with the mouse.

The mention of ZSoft was dropped in Windows 3.0 and apart from support for things like GIF and JPG now, the application has changed very little since Windows 2 (Well if it ain't broke...)

Re:One could argue this only

Yeah, or just like how Mac OS X targets people who want to use computers but don't know or care how they work.

Oh, wait -- OS X does include disk image and network-sniffing utilities! And a functional command-line, for that matter!

If OS X can do it, Microsoft has no excuse not to.

Re:One could argue this only

Of course, if they did bundle apps such as that, everyone would cry 'foul' and 'monopolistic practices' and other such guff. Microsoft's biggest problem is that they are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Re:One could argue this only

While undoubtedly some people would cry foul at the examples given in the grandparent post, I think most people(who have enough computer knowledge to know what disk image or network sniffing software is) can tell the difference between a piece of software bundled into an OS to edge out competitors, verses a utility that provides useful and direct access to basic computer functions.

Re:One could argue this only

Microsoft writes lots of drivers. They have drivers for all sorts of standardized hardware with open specs, like OCHI USB controllers. What Microsoft doesn't (and can't short of reverse engineering) write drivers for are pieces of proprietary hardware. The same reason that the only good Linux nVidia video drivers are a binary from nVidia is the reason that Microsoft doesn't write nVidia's video driver either.

Of the 118 driver modules currently loaded on my system, 100 of them are (C) Microsoft Corporation. The others are 5 for VMWare, 2 for my nVidia video card, 1 for the nVidia nForce MCP net adapter, 1 for the Realtek 650 sound, 1 for the OpenVPN virtual TAP adapter, 1 for the crappy Macromedia safedisc copyprotection driver, 2 for Daemon Tools, 1 for Process Explorer, and 4 for the cd burning software. Of the non-Microsoft drivers that are supporting real hardware, that's 4 drivers for 3 devices. There are only three devices on my system that Microsoft didn't write drivers for. If Linux were running on this system, I'd want the binary nVidia drivers for video and networking (AFAIK nForce2 networking still isn't supported in the mainline. It definitely wasn't when I built the machine).

Microsoft definitely has a drivers division.
I do agree about Microsoft fixing the wrong things most of the time in their OS, though.

Re:I dont *hate* Microsoft.....

If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light.

While we're arguing hypotheticals, I'll point out that if it were really up to Apple, IBM would have put the necessary resources into developing low-power and high-speed PowerPC chips, the lack of which being what drove Apple into the Intel transition. If there were no Microsoft, and as a result, the same level of R&D going into today's x86-derived processors were instead used to develop the PowerPC line powering Apple's presumed monopoly, then the Intel transition would not have been desirable.

You're right in that competition is a good thing; I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one. But I think the parent was saying (and I agree) that they are Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors which earn that company such widespread disapproval.