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Our love-hate relationship
with Microsoft: hate
2004.06.12 — Business | Technology | by Derek Jensen
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Microsoft's chief's inauspicious start. [SmokingGun] |
This is part two of a two-part series.
Microsoft has changed the world for the better, but it's not a perfect world. Microsoft has a maddening habit of fixing things that aren't broken and not fixing things that are broken. Most of my complaints don't have to do with stability (which is much better these days) or even unfair business practices (take it to court, weenie). My complaints center around the Windows interface.
Security
Of course, plenty has been documented to show that Microsoft has a tough time keeping Windows secure. But it's a big system that has evolved slowly and has had to deal with thousands of hackers coming at it from unsuspected directions (direct, LAN, dial-up, cable, and now wireless connections). Still, security does not seem to be a top priority with Microsoft until holes are exploited.
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Why didn't Microsoft invent anti-virus, anti-worm, anti-spyware, anti-popup features? |
Why didn't Microsoft invent anti-virus, anti-worm, anti-spyware, anti-popup features? These are all work-arounds and fixes to the basic function and security of the operating system (of which the web browser is an integral part, remember).
Meanwhile, MS goes on with new ventures like .NET (formerly Passport), which themselves are coming under fire for weak security.
Display
The Windows display needs to operate on percentages of screen size, so that most applications behave more like Powerpoint's display, scaling images and text together regardless of resolution. Instead, as I raise my screen resolution, all the images get smaller and harder to click on and text gets smaller and harder to read. I suppose Microsoft expects that I will get a bigger monitor so that the physical size of the objects remains about the same, but laptop makers haven't got the memo.
My new Thinkpad has the same size screen as my old one, but the native resolution is 1400x1050 instead of 1024x768. Many users over 50—precisely the same ones who need smoother, sharper text—have to set their resolution 800x600 in order to be able to read the text. Perhaps Microsoft thinks they should get 27-inch monitors.
The place that the problem is most noticeable is in Internet Explorer, which has only a weak text scaling feature that can't override poorly designed websites (of which Tysto was one until recently). So, on my machine, many websites occupy only about half the screen, forced to do so in order to ensure that screen elements like pictures and text remain in the right places relative to each other.
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You've got to admit that something is wrong with an interface that gives you a dozen different ways to start an application. |
Applications
You've got to admit that something is wrong with an interface that gives you a dozen different ways to start an application. When you install an application, it often automatically puts an icon on the desktop, in the Programs menu, in the quick-start part of the taskbar, and/or in the top part of the Start menu. Some go further and add an icon in the Startup menu and sometimes in the Favorites menu. Sometimes they even add an invisible entry in the registery so the application starts every time you start Windows and you have no way of stopping it. What a mess.
The registery is a particularly vexing piece of Windows. It's a mysterious black box to most users, yet it gets used and abused so much by applications, viruses, and worms that most users have to edit it sometime. The Regedit program isn't even a part of the Control Panel.
It's not a control panel. It's an unkempt tool shed. |
Speaking of which.... The Windows Control Panel is out of control. It contains dozens of icons, each of which has dozens of arcane settings, some of which are redundant with each other. XP tries to help by grouping them into a handful of categories. This only forces the user to search them laboriously. It's not a control panel. It's an unkempt tool shed.
Taskbar
The central control for Windows is of course the Start menu. The old menu popped up with a linear list of options; the new XP menu pops up with a weird two-column table of options, some of which open (eventually) as menus to display other icons and some of which don't.
Worse, the new XP Pro task bar is twice the height of the old one so that Windows can jam more icons on it. This obscures a big portion of my carefully-designed wallpaper, dammit. I used to use the "auto-hide" feature, but I got fed up with it popping up and down all the time.
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"Look at me now! Oh, please, look at me! Maybe I'm displaying an important dialog box right now! You won't know until you click on me!" |
Why do icons for new windows on the taskbar flash incessantly? I'm ignoring them for a reason, yet I feel compelled to click on them to see what they want. They usually only want attention. "I'm ready!" they shout. "Look at me now! Oh, please, look at me! Maybe I'm displaying an important dialog box right now! You won't know until you click on me!"
Microsoft has built a strong, world-changing set of tools for our modern age. They're not perfect, but they're also not as shoddy or worthless as some detractors claim. Those detractors long for a sunny world of Apple products without considering that Apple might easily have evolved into a much worse dictator. If you think that Bill Gates is a Hitleresque autocrat, imagine if the equally ambitious Steve Jobs controlled both the hardware as well as software.
Look for part one, Love.
f e e d b a c k
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