Why Does Windows Still Suck?

Mark Morford of SFGate asks the seemingly obvious question:

Why Does Windows Still Suck? / Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn’t everyone on a Mac?:

Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?

I don’t know. If I knew, I could fix it.

I’m not a Mac die-hard, despite working for Apple. I’m a unix guy, from way, way, way back. And I’m honestly not a huge fan of computers; they’re tools, but I don’t care about them the way I care about muscle cars or motorcycles or knives or power tools. They’re just a tool that makes what I do a little easier.

But over and over I look at people running windows and I say, why do you put up with this?

There used to be a couple of easy answers. Old Mac OS pretty much sucked rocks too, if in a different way than windows sucks rocks today. Old Mac OS could do one thing at a time well but computers don’t do just one thing at a time. So that was fine. Ok, so there was no software, no games.

And yeah. Macs were more expensive and slower.

But you see — all that has changed. First, there was OSX, which has most of the strength of Unix, plus all of the strength of old MacOS. It’s got more basic usability than any other OS, ever. Its’ also got the durability, stability and flexibility of the Unix platform it’s built on. Most of what I can do on my linux boxes or solaris boxes, I can do on my OSX Mac.

Then there’s the performance. Clock speeds are a lie; what we really care about is actual measurements of performance. On that scale, the Mac’s at least comparable; in many benchmarks it smacks down PC’s with higher clock speeds.

And then there’s software. The “It won’t work on Mac” argument, more and more, is out the window. Games are coming out on Mac; almost all the major desktop tools work on OSX. And they’re better looking and more stable on the Mac than they ever were on windows.

And then there’s the price question. Ok. Fine. You win. Only, Apple now has a great machine at a price-point that can take on any starter PC, and in most cases will out-perform it.

Now, I don’t expect everyone to run OSX. I don’t expect everyone to run Linux either. There’s a niche for an OS that runs on cheap hardware and will run older consumer apps. It’s there. But that market isn’t the average user; the average user wants easy, stable, solid, and cheap. The Mac is every one of those things but cheap, and is closing in on cheap.

Kill your fucking PC’s, people. or load Linux on them and use them as servers. Quit bowing to the Evil Thing that dwells in Redmond. There are bettter options out there.