[olug] Microsoft is out of control!

[Sean Kelly]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 05:26:13PM -0500, John DiMartino wrote:
> What I don't get is what is MS offering that isn't already in OS X?  OS 
> X runs better in every incarnation on older hardware.  What is MS doing 
> to make each version of their OS that much more bloated?  Don't they 
> spend any time at all cleaning up and optimizing code?

I imagine they do spend some time doing it, but they have a hell of a lot
more legacy to carry around than Apple does. Every time they roll out new
APIs, system calls, etc, they have to keep the old ones. They've got to
support crap that goes back ages. OS X is pretty new, written with a
totally different design model, and not dirtied up with history yet. That
is also likely why Apple can roll out new versions so fast, such as the
upcoming 10.4 "Tiger".

Microsoft can't really do what many opensource things do and just say "We
no longer support doing X using the Y API." They would drive developers
away quick.

> The fact that they add more and more worthless stuff without actually 
> doing anything quality with thier OS is just a reminder of why the court 
> should have broken them up and forced some competition down their throats.

Doing something "quality" with an OS as big as Windows isn't exactly easy.
I've seen some of the work that has had to go into FreeBSD throughout 5.x
development. There is a hell of a lot of grunt work compared to "wow, what
a neat feature!" There has been more work than any end user will ever
understand. SMPng is/was a total bitch. Now magnify this by 50,000 to match
the Microsoft codebase.

You also have to remember that Microsoft designs the operating system and
adds things that the big time hardware and software developers want.
They're not entirely designing for you. They're designing for companies
that want to sell you those flashy programs. So, Microsoft is better off
adding APIs than they are flashy features. Apple isn't really in this boat
yet, since there are way fewer Apple developers, both open and commercial.

-- 
Sean Kelly         | PGP KeyID: D2E5E296
smkelly at zombie.org | http://www.zombie.org