I don’t know about anyone else but I’m getting really really bored with the recent upsurge in MS bashing. Its really prevalent in the web design industry as a lot of designers are Mac users.
It comes in many flavours. First their is the odd blog post with a reasonable proposition that turns into an MS (oops, sorry ‘M$’) bashing fest. Or there’s the full on blog attack.
MS (damn, did it again, I need to write ‘M$’ for full ‘kewl’ points right?) have just released their Developer toolbar for IE and yup, you can bet that announcement got its fair share of idiocy too.
Most of the complaints centre around how uninovatory Microsoft are. Well duh. Thats not their strength. You know thats not their strength, they’ve never traded seriously on that being their strength. Stop moaning about it. However, what they _are_ good at is responding to demand. They watched how Konfabulator panned out then launched Gadgets. They watched how Tiger panned out and they’ll soon launch Vista. They watched how Firefox panned out and saw how good some of the extensions were/are and did their own…..um, whats wrong with that?
Here’s one of the things that rankles me: if they _didn’t_ do these things then these same people would be moaning about how Microsoft are sticking with the same old crap that nobody likes. There truly are times when Microsoft cannot win. They appreciate how good something is and implement a similar system/product and get accused of being uninnovative. Stick with what they’ve got and they get accused of not being able to move forward.
Here’s another thing that rankles me: without the Windows PC, the vast majority of those doing the moaning would not be in the line of work they are currently in. Corporate websites require visitors. Next time you wonder who pays your wages (or who funds your clients ability to finance design work) take a look at the OS stats for your clients site visitors.
Windows made the PC easy for the mass market to use and to get on the web with. Whilst Mac dither about for months designing a _mouse_ , the average price of an internet ready Windows PC is still falling. Whilst precocious designers complain about how Gadgets are really Widgets or what ever, Windows users continue to ramp up web sales.
This recent spate of Windows bashing is totally misplaced. So what if Vista uses a ‘plastic’ style interface? So what if Desktop X wasn’t the first to support widgets? So what if the new IE toolbar resembles the Firefox extension? Are any of these things holding back innovation on the web?
Why don’t you redirect some of that moaning into areas that Microsoft really _do_ need a good kicking about? Like full CSS2.1 support. Or why it took nearly half a decade to get an upgrade to their flagship web product?
Oh, and if you really want to know why PC’s (both Win and *nix) sell better than Macs, try changing the memory on a Mac Mini.
Left Brain Right Brain 
I’m guessing people expect more from Microsoft, and get frustrated at seeing the world’s largest software company releasing things that other people did last year.
Without the complaining, who knows what Microsoft might be up to today.
You feeling OK there Kev ;¬)
I guess so Simon but then again, no one complained about the lack of a web developer toolbar for IE and we still have one and people still moaned about it.
I’m not saying Microsoft are angels from Heaven but the constant smirking does get a little tedious.
Toxie: I knew you’d have something to say about this ;o)
I slated MS unmercifully over IE and will do again if 7 is a bag of pants but if it doesn’t break my designs and doesn’t look innovative thats plenty good enough for me.
I agree. I agree that it’s tiresome to hear people giving out, giving out, giving out continuously. I think it’s illegal to say anything positive about anything MS ever do, and, much as they piss me off sometimes, the moaning pisses me off just as much.
They can’t post the simplest piece of information on the IE7 blog without being shouted down.
Don’t compare hardware-upgrade methods on Macs (all made by Apple) and Windows computers (none made by Microsoft).
Read what I wrote Joe, not what you think I wrote.
I was having a similar discussion with someone earlier, http://www.dotdragnet.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=17&t=24608&s=56d95222cbeaf1197ae0d81d6d7dc2ad
And obviously dunno if youve seen my views in me blog before as well.
“Toxie: I knew you’d have something to say about this ;o)”
But did you know that’s all I was going to say about it ?
I personally dislike Microsoft mainly for their anti-competitive practices, particularily on the small number of occasions where they have been caught with their pants down and somehow manage to dodge the bullet.
The other thing that I have issues with is that I would like a product that is reasonably priced, reasonably bug free and no where near as bloated by meaningless crap as their usual fare is. I mean, really, how hard is it to cut down on code from the last version of Windows that is never actually used but is still included anyway? The fact that they overcharge merely exacerbates the other problems.