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By now pretty much everyone has heard of the Mojave experiment. This is the now-infamous experiment where Microsoft gathered a bunch of people and told them they would be given a preview of the new upcoming OS called "Mojave". These people were given a guided tour (they weren't allowed to touch it themselves) and eventually told that their regular coffee had been secretly replaced with Folgers, er... that the OS was actually Vista!
If that wasn't enough, we now hear that Jerry Seinfeld is going to be given the sum of $10 million to appear in an upcoming set of commercials designed to take back Microsoft's good name and hopefully do some damage control against the negative public opinion that the Mac vs. PC ads have been spreading.
So what's really going on here? Well, what's going on is that I don't think people are giving enough credit to the Mac vs. PC ads. Those ads have created Vista-haters out of people that have never seen or touched the OS. Their picture of the OS is a big, bulky, bloatware-filled, slow, randomly freezing, un-hip, behind-the-times OS that does everything Leopard does, but in a slower, more ugly, untrendy way. People are more than happy to maintain that impression because it has become fashionable to bash Vista.
Back in the day, when I was full of ideals about how Linux was going to take over the world and that me running 3 Linux boxes in my college dorm was an omen for the future ... it was fashionable to bash Microsoft. Everybody did it. Anti-Microsoft sentiment was as common in casual conversation as the old "Yeah, that's what she said...." quip.
But here I am now, having either contributed to or solo written 13 books all on various aspects of the .NET Framework, and I've spoken at Apple's WWDC twice. Gone are my ideals about what Linux will do for the world, replaced with the calm practicality of knowing what a good operating system is, and why.
So the real question remains, Is Vista really as big a piece of crap as everyone says it is? The quick answer is no, of course not. But there's more to it than that. To see the reason for Vista's languishing public opinion, you need to go back in time several (4, I think) years, back to the time of Longhorn. It was a euphoric time when we were all excited about what was to come. Security in the OS would be a priority, allowing users to feel secure and making apps play nice with security. In addition, the device driver model was changing - device drivers would no longer be a ripe, juicy source of hacking back door entry points, nor would they be a way to crash unrelated apps because an ancillary driver failed. Security and device drivers were going to change everything... and that would require WORK.
Let me bottom line it. App developers were given 3+ years of notice that Vista was going to make apps run in a more secure fashion, so we had to get of our asses and start integration testing with Vista to make sure our shit would still float. Then you've got all the hardware manufacturers who were told something like 300 years (well, not quite that long, but you get the idea) in advance that Vista drivers aren't the same as XP drivers, so get off your ass, get on board, and make your drivers work for Vista.
Was this too much to ask? Maybe, but change requires effort, and it is no more than Apple asks when it makes a drastic rev to one of it's devices. Apple is notorious for making huge breaking changes between OS revisions, and people bitch and moan but they deal with it because they know the change makes the environment better for everyone.
Except here's the thing: we didn't deal with it. Hardware manufacturers bitched, moaned, and didn't roll new drivers. Application developers took the lazy approach and said, "Screw it, my shit still works on XP, so it should be fine on Vista. After all, Vista still runs the XP SP2 kernel right??"
So now we've got a perfect storm brewing, but it's not complete yet. The final piece of the puzzle is assinine marketing. The ridiculous number of editions of Vista, coupled with the inability for any sales person in any retail shop to properly recommend minimum system requirements, and the lawsuit-inspiring "Vista ready" logo crap. NOW you've got a perfect storm:
Just about every problem I have had with Vista itself (as opposed to an individual application) has stemmed from device drivers. When Vista crashes (which it hasn't done, at all, in the last several months) it's usually because of a device driver, and then it's usually because of my graphics card drivers. The drivers for certain mobile graphics cards are notorious for making Vista nearly unusable (tried a Lenovo T60p lately running Vista??)
So here's the moral of the story (I know, took me long enough to get here, right?): Vista is actually a damn fine Operating System. I love it. The new Aero GUI is great, and a great deal of the GUI changes have made it easier to get things done than they used to be. First and foremost, I'm a .NET developer and there is no better OS playground for .NET developers than Vista. Yes, there are annoyances here and there, and silly shit like totally random time estimates when recycling items in my bin, but by and large, Vista is great. If you ended up with an underpowered system because of the marketing blunders, Vista will beat your machine into submission. That's not Vista's fault, that's 100% of the fault of people who didn't have the balls to come out clean and say "You need 2GB RAM and a 512MB video card for Vista to feel as good as it should feel". And you should have a 7200RPM drive if you're on a laptop, and ... you get the idea.
Personally I hope the new marketing campaign works and helps the public opinion related to Vista and Microsoft. However, I'm skeptical because marketing is largely to blame for the negative opinion that exists about Vista right now and I don't think blindly throwing money at marketing people and hoping something sticks is going to fix the problem.
Just to clarify my long-windedness: Vista has a bad reputation. Part of it
is earned, part if is caused by manufacturer and software developer slow
adoption rate, and part of it is caused by negative ad campaigns.
Regardless of all those, I love Vista and like it more than XP.
good analysis in general. However, I'd point out that part of the problem
with Vista is the security system is poorly done. installing Parallels
Tools shouldn't require 5 or 6 dialogs asking me if I allow installation of
unsigned drivers. It should require one for the whole installer. Asking me
over and over again if I will allow an application to run was dumb. It
should only ask once.
I have a high spec (4gb 10k-rpm) system, and it seems to now work about
half as fast as when Vista was first installed. For me, the problem is
that Vista is *slow* and keeps getting slower. I can logoff and re-login
four times on my Mac, in the same time as it takes for me to do the same
thing once on Vista.
What?!
I wont disagree that driver people are partially at fault, but nevertheless.. I work on computers every day and have been for over 10 years, I have used Vista for over a year. It sucks on every PC that is within reasonable price. Could it be fixed?
for me vista is (almost) total sh*t. I hate it!! Aero is to heavy for my
computer that was bought in January. its constant disabling the hibernation
is making me mad. I generally prefer XP, mainly because of it low hardware
use.
I'm sorry to say this, but Vista being as it is is the fault of Microsoft
in genreal.
I was in the beta-test for Longhorn and have seen many bugs that stayed in
from beta through RC all the way to release.
And yes, developers should have drivers ready, but how can they if they
don't get the right specifics? Just wiggle it? The only thing to do is go
with what you know and that did produce poor work. Until now, the kernel is
not designed to actually work with 3rd party drivers, so why blame
developers if they can't get it to work?
It's like selling a car with a welded-shut bonnet so you can't put in a new
battery without damaging the car. Why blame the battery-manufacturer?
And don't forget that even Microsoft itself could get Livecare to work
properly.
Plus the argument that Vista just needs a few gigs of RAM, half a
gig of Graphic Memory and a huge cpu (certainly at releasedate) and it will
run fine.
Most people didn't have those pc's before Vista came out, so you won't see
them upgrade from XP. Sure they won't tell their friends it's because of
their old computer, it's more fashionable to blame it on Vista.
That's my point exactly. Disabled hibernation is a hardware mismatch/driver
failure problem. Vista isn't (obviously) supposed to be doing that. This is
something you should be complaining about to your hardware provider, the
people who should be testing this crap before they sell the device to
users.
I used Vista for a few months and found no compelling reason to keep it
around when I had to switch back to my old XP machine. If anything I
appreciated not having the Cancel or Allow prompt ad nauseum. I made sure I
purchased a laptop before June when one would have to buy a "downgrade
license" to use XP.
I respect your opinion on this matter, and I understand that people who
like Vista are probably pretty frustrated with the current perception.
I have a Mac and a PC. The Macbook runs leopard and the PC runs Vista.
And you know what? I love them both. The key with Vista in my experience,
though, is to remember that PC manufacturers are the devil.
I am enjoying this short span of time in which I have brand new hardware,
running Vista x64, and I can look down my nose at everyone scrapping with
problems with their 1 GB of RAM or Pentium IV. I don't even have a paging
file anymore and that tastes like a blue raspberry blow-pop.
