3 ms·

In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among people who were interested in open source 20 years ago? Sure! But who else doesn't like them? The general

by btilly 3y ago

In what court of public opinion did they lose? Among people who were interested in open source 20 years ago? Sure! But who else doesn't like them? The general public of people our age thinks good things about Microsoft. Even my siblings find my dislike of Microsoft bizarre. The only thing about Microsoft that most people my age ever hated was Clippy. And even Clippy is now generally liked. And developers under 35 seem to find it bizarre that if I call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Just as I once found it strange that developers from the 1980s thought of IBM that way.

petsfed 3y ago
Amongst e.g. PC game nerds who really started playing in the late 90s, there was always a sort of low-level antipathy directed towards Microsoft. It's non-specific, and its certainly not actionable, but there was always a little bit of bitterness that "oh, here's a new update to windows, how many of my games will it break?" Couple that with "I have to buy a copy of windows when I buy a new motherboard?!".
no_wizard 3y ago
Things like "M$" and "Micro$oft" (and many other ways Microsoft was lampooned that I can't recall) where common when I was in highschool (~2008). Not with everyone, but any of the tech literate kids (not even say, the kids who made games in their spare time) were aware of these things, which by that time, gaming was getting to be more mainstream, and there was more exposure to these "in" jokes to a different crowd. They seemed to persist well passed the sell by date, as it were. They definitely took a huge hit in public opinion. I'm from a middle of nowhere town, its not tech adjacent or focused, and these were common online forums where we interacted at the time (and by some extension the broader public ones). Even teachers would poke fun at Microsoft from time to time, as I recall
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
I don't think Clippy is liked as much as he's a common thing people can agree on and as such he gets a lot of attention. Same for MS, it's not an accident that even non-technical folk moved onto chrome away from IE/Edge even though IE had huge marketshare at one point.

by btilly 3y ago

petsfed 3y ago

Amongst e.g. PC game nerds who really started playing in the late 90s, there was always a sort of low-level antipathy directed towards Microsoft. It's non-specific, and its certainly not actionable, but there was always a little bit of bitterness that "oh, here's a new update to windows, how many of my games will it break?" Couple that with "I have to buy a copy of windows when I buy a new motherboard?!".

no_wizard 3y ago

Things like "M$" and "Micro$oft" (and many other ways Microsoft was lampooned that I can't recall) where common when I was in highschool (~2008). Not with everyone, but any of the tech literate kids (not even say, the kids who made games in their spare time) were aware of these things, which by that time, gaming was getting to be more mainstream, and there was more exposure to these "in" jokes to a different crowd. They seemed to persist well passed the sell by date, as it were. They definitely took a huge hit in public opinion. I'm from a middle of nowhere town, its not tech adjacent or focused, and these were common online forums where we interacted at the time (and by some extension the broader public ones). Even teachers would poke fun at Microsoft from time to time, as I recall

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

I don't think Clippy is liked as much as he's a common thing people can agree on and as such he gets a lot of attention. Same for MS, it's not an accident that even non-technical folk moved onto chrome away from IE/Edge even though IE had huge marketshare at one point.