Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

[TheBilgeRat]

It's not dying. It's just that sales are tapering off, because there's more competition in the market, and people are less inclined, I think, to do the habitual 2 or 3 year upgrades that was so common in the 90s and 2000s

This.  I upgraded to an I7 from my pentium 4 not because I could do more work on it, but just because of a desire to get back into time-wasting PC games.  I didn't really NEED to upgrade.  I still have that p4 - it was my main computer for 7 years.  the rollover is certainly slowing down.

[TheBilgeRat]

...What I'm finding though is my MacBook (laptop) is starting to gather dust.  I now pretty much only need it in hotels during overnight stays.

Also this!  I am finding the same thing, although I don't have an iPad.  Big I7 for games and programming, iPhone for most else, and my macbook is kind of a glorified notebook and the apple platform to test my java programs on or how webpages render in Safari.  My feeling is the laptops are the doomed form factors.

[TheBilgeRat]

:roflmao:

Now that IS funny!

Windows grows out of a CLI based OS (MS-DOS), but Apple Mac's (which have always been GUI based) are the choice for command lines.

BTW - Glad to see a few other Vista users here. Win7 has completely underwhelmed me.

Mac is BSD.  Why is that funny?  The only work I can't get done on my mac is XNA development.  Windows has a similar issue with iphone development.  I just wish it was as easy to get hackintoshes running as it is to dual boot windows on a mac.  My win 7 install has been the best windows experience I have had to date.  Vista was mediocre, the 64 bit version was buggy, and my machine was quickly reverted to XP.

BUT, like i tell all my friends, upgrading for the sake of upgrading is stupid.  If the system as it stands does exactly what you need, then that is the right system.

If an OS3.x machine(or system 7...I liked me some macOS) ran java, python, eclipse, visual studio, and xcode and did it in "realtime" I would need nothing else.

[TheBilgeRat]

Because Mac IS BSD NOW.
Its kind of like jacking up a car and driving a new one underneath it.
Exactly what about Macs has any relationship to its origins?
Three ISAs, multiple radical OS changes, definitely your Grandfathers axe.

Well, I'd say that "it just works" is still pretty solid.

They codified their end user experience and continued to deliver that solidly across multiple OS revisions, hardware revisions, and staff "revisions".  I sure wish Amiga had figured that one out.

[TheBilgeRat]

Fascinating how a thread that was introduced to denigrate Microsoft has provoked so many defensive responses.

I was using OS9 on 68000 based computers before Linux existed.
Minix was around, BSD existed on college servers, and Microsoft was still pushing Xenix.
But the Mac crowd was using a graphic based OS with no command line (on a black and white display) and X86 machines were running a criude CLI based OS that was basically a copy of CPM.

So now, two decades later, you young punks think you can educate ME?

You're just using systems that have finally caught up to ideas I was advocating in the 80's.

You tell 'em! :lol: