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Windows was once quite exciting, it punched above its weight and enabled people to do stuff that they didn't know they wanted to do but were grateful for it. T

Windows was once quite exciting, it punched above its weight and enabled people to do stuff that they didn't know they wanted to do but were grateful for it. This energy is now in the browser with Chrome being where the innovation is at. Microsoft can do whatever they like with their venerable operating system but the days of it being exciting and newsworthy are over. The fun is elsewhere and they have missed the boat with mobile and the internet browser. I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. Personally I prefer linux and will never believe that the Windows file system will be performant enough to be better than linux, not that this matters for everything but it does if dealing with data. And there is no way for them to fix that due to legacy issues. Decades ago they were going to make a file system more like a cool relational database, that dream died too.

jayd16 8y ago
>I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. That's just biased to macbook pros. I might be biased because I work in gaming but windows workstations are pretty great and getting better. Meanwhile, dealing with Apple's increasing anti-professional hardware offering is getting worse every year.
- ascar 8y ago
  I thought the same thing. It's also very biased towards developers. The biggest market is not developers and power users. It's office workers, which need email and office, and it's PC gamers and VR enthusiasts that need powerful hardware. Both of these markets are heavily Windows dominated, because it just works better than Linux and Apple. (because Apple has shitty hardware for games and is way more expensive for office usecases) The casual market is already in the hands of smartphones and maybe tablets. They don't need a laptop to surf the internet, write emails and play casual games.
rbanffy 8y ago
> I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. When I buy a Dell or a Lenovo laptop, I'm confronted with a bewildering range of computers. I can build a machine that works for me in a couple hours, most probably (and I like the dual storage options). When I buy an Apple, I choose size, processor, memory and storage and that's it. It takes 5 minutes (I have to deselect the UK keyboard and order the US one from here). I had top-of-the-line Dells and Lenovos die on me for no reason. I never had an Apple do that since the late 80's. My wife had a MBP in the trunk when the car was totaled in a rear collision. The computer lived the rest of its life with a scar in one corner and a bent ethernet connector (that still worked flawlessly despite the marginally non-standard shape). I sometimes indulge in server porn - I wish Oracle, HPE, Dell, and Lenovo allowed us to check prices and configure their 8-way servers more easily - just to check what a single node can be configured with, but, when buying a machine to do actual work, I want as little headache as I possibly can, hence my work laptops tend to be Apples. The OS is also nicer, and that's part of the fewer headaches. > Decades ago they were going to make a file system more like a cool relational database, that dream died too. I watched that dream die multiple times. Even if it lived, I doubt it'd perform well in comparison to file systems that do nothing but make sure the files are properly written and quickly read. I like the idea of metadata that can't detach from the file it belongs to, but assigning meaning to it is something that's better dealt with a couple layers above the FS.

jayd16 8y ago

>I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. That's just biased to macbook pros. I might be biased because I work in gaming but windows workstations are pretty great and getting better. Meanwhile, dealing with Apple's increasing anti-professional hardware offering is getting worse every year.

ascar 8y ago
I thought the same thing. It's also very biased towards developers. The biggest market is not developers and power users. It's office workers, which need email and office, and it's PC gamers and VR enthusiasts that need powerful hardware. Both of these markets are heavily Windows dominated, because it just works better than Linux and Apple. (because Apple has shitty hardware for games and is way more expensive for office usecases) The casual market is already in the hands of smartphones and maybe tablets. They don't need a laptop to surf the internet, write emails and play casual games.

rbanffy 8y ago

> I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. When I buy a Dell or a Lenovo laptop, I'm confronted with a bewildering range of computers. I can build a machine that works for me in a couple hours, most probably (and I like the dual storage options). When I buy an Apple, I choose size, processor, memory and storage and that's it. It takes 5 minutes (I have to deselect the UK keyboard and order the US one from here). I had top-of-the-line Dells and Lenovos die on me for no reason. I never had an Apple do that since the late 80's. My wife had a MBP in the trunk when the car was totaled in a rear collision. The computer lived the rest of its life with a scar in one corner and a bent ethernet connector (that still worked flawlessly despite the marginally non-standard shape). I sometimes indulge in server porn - I wish Oracle, HPE, Dell, and Lenovo allowed us to check prices and configure their 8-way servers more easily - just to check what a single node can be configured with, but, when buying a machine to do actual work, I want as little headache as I possibly can, hence my work laptops tend to be Apples. The OS is also nicer, and that's part of the fewer headaches. > Decades ago they were going to make a file system more like a cool relational database, that dream died too. I watched that dream die multiple times. Even if it lived, I doubt it'd perform well in comparison to file systems that do nothing but make sure the files are properly written and quickly read. I like the idea of metadata that can't detach from the file it belongs to, but assigning meaning to it is something that's better dealt with a couple layers above the FS.