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Why can Mac developers absolutely never resist making dated Win9x / Windows XP / BSOD references every time they make a port of their software to Windows? Zed d

Why can Mac developers absolutely never resist making dated Win9x / Windows XP / BSOD references every time they make a port of their software to Windows? Zed did the same thing recently and it was just as overplayed. Developers please, when you do this, you are telling your audience, the people you want to pay you money for your work, "Yeah, we think you suck, but here's some thing we finally got around to porting over" - why would you do that?

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
dustbunny 11mo ago
It's "we think windows sucks" And they are right. The enshittification of windows is by far the most egregious example in modern software. Windows is disgusting. The start menu is disgusting. The bloat, slowness, lack of design cohesion and flakiness has real consequences. Its not "you suck" it's "windows used to be better" and to me it seems objectively true that it used to be better
- p_ing 11mo ago
  Windows used to require a reboot to change an IP address. Windows used to BSOD when the graphics stack crashed. Used to come without a built-in firewall exposing all sorts of vulnerabilities to the public Internet. Used to not isolate critical kernel components to 3rd party software. (And Windows has always had a hodge-poge of UI designs dating back to NT4/Win95 which contained Win3.x design elements) The list can go on about how it most certainly, objectively, was not "better".
  - ronsor 11mo ago
    The Windows kernel has certainly improved—BSODs are now rare—but the userspace has only gotten worse. The end result is a decline in usability and dozens of new ways for your OS to enter a permanently unusable state without a BSOD.
    - p_ing 11mo ago
      There are gains and losses in UX, I agree. I avoid the ads stuff via Pro (though not completely the telemetry, that said it's for games and a separate Enterprise device for Windows-only PoSh). I think the big spot for 'Recent' on the start menu, which I disable recent, is a waste of space. But I don't use the start menu in the way of Windows' past; it's always Win+type what I want. We did gain with things like tabbed Explorer or a right-click menu not infested by COM extensions taking ages to load. I'm not aware of any of these 'dozens of new ways' to make Windows unusable in the way I use it, then again Windows doesn't really force any one happy path, there are often five different ways to do one thing.
    - dangus 11mo ago
      That’s just your opinion, man. Like, what do you mean by “permanently unusable state?” This is all just vague nonsense. Windows bad because Microsoft, or something. I’m gonna guess you’ll come back and say something dated or exaggerated like “OneDrive nags you all the time” (nope, it can be fully uninstalled in windows 11 just like any app).
      - ronsor 11mo ago
        > That’s just your opinion, man. > Like, what do you mean by “permanently unusable state?” I mean ways for the OS to lock up in ways that require a reboot. This is an objective criteria.
        dangus 11mo ago
        Sounds like you don’t know what the word “permanent” means. If you can reboot and everything works again that doesn’t sound all that permanent. I use all three major OSes regularly and none of them lock up in ways that require a reboot with any level of regularity, never mind entering a “permanently unusable state.” In my experience I find that at present in 2025, rebooting Apple systems seems to fix occasional little wonky problems [1], my Linux laptop needs reboots or hard restarts for occasional sleep issues, and my Windows 11 desktop’s most frequent problem tends to be graphics driver crashes while playing games (and that’s partially my fault for choosing AMD instead of Nvidia). That is the kind of problem that used to cause full system lock-ups but Windows 11 actually manages that failure relatively gracefully. But the point is that the only operating system I interact with that never has any issues on the OS level are my Linux servers, but that’s really an entirely different use case with much less complexity and risk than a desktop workstation. And even then it’s common practice to manage Linux servers as cattle rather than pets and just destroy/replace them when there’s an issue. [1] Out of all the desktop operating systems, I think Apple has the highest quantity of hastily added features that ship with rarely-fixed minor bugs, while the Windows team doesn’t even attempt to add features at anything close to Apple’s pace. macOS has this struggle to keep feature parity with iOS and the iPhone which itself has a economic mandate to iterate quickly. For example, since iOS 26 I’ve been having random issues with Guided Access and the screenshot tool on iOS that only resolve when I restart the phone. I’ve also needed to cycle Bluetooth since iOS 26 on occasion to get my AirPods to connect successfully.
  - dustbunny 11mo ago
    Try telling these reasons to your aging father who no longer understands how to print a file the government sent him because windows has changed windows explorer so much that he doesn't even understand that it's part of the OS anymore. The disaster that is the ever shifting UX of windows is having serious harm on our senior citizens. I've fielded several issues like this from many different seniors I know. We've left these people behind and it's a shame that is having serious consequences. Yes, things are better under the hood. But the surface, the UX, is a mark of shame on our entire industry.
    - jpalawaga 11mo ago
      This is a strange take. Should we never ever change UI because grandpa can’t learn the updates?
      - dustbunny 11mo ago
        This is reductive black and white thinking that simply refuses to deal with the real problem that I clearly illustrated. Microsoft windows is a critical tool that society continues to build dependence on. The poorly executed redesigns of key windows features has consequences unlike the vast majority of software systems. With Microsofts great power, comes great responsibility.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
vintagedave 11mo ago
I agree this is in poor taste. It feels a little insulting -- and I get why they didn't think that, but, I can read that into it, a 'you're still using Windows, never getting yourself out of that rut' sort of vibe. I think people who do this think that people who use Windows perceive that the Mac experience is smoother, and may have some sort of Mac envy. The end of the video gives this away: it's the Think Different font. It's a direct callback to the _idea_ of Apple vs Microsoft, not the reality today of Apple vs Microsoft. I know many devs who use Windows exclusively, but they are in two camps: a) Super old-school: still maintaining Windows desktop apps; that's what their career has been and there's no need for anything else. b) WSL-based, VSCode-using devs who are one step away from just using Linux. These are the folk who fifteen years ago would have been using what was then still OSX. But these folk don't use Windows as Windows: they use it as a semi-Unix.
- LoganDark 11mo ago
  I think if all you want is a Unix, you're better off with Mac, or at least you would have been before the Apple Silicon transition broke Windows support, and Valve stopped supporting Proton on Mac, and CrossOver still doesn't support Unreal Engine, etc. Stuff like games and proprietary drivers is what keeps people on Windows, I think. Either that, or just a distate for the Mac's design language / user experience, which is also completely fair. Back in 2016 or so, I had a triple-boot on my MacBook Pro: - macOS for daily driving, and most development - Windows for Windows-specific development, gaming, and proprietary drivers or IDEs (Texas Instruments programmers; Samsung / OnePlus flashing; some other embedded tooling) - Arch Linux for Linux-specific development, usually involving the GPU, which I couldn't get to work in a VM; and also just for fun These days I simply cannot do most of those things with Mac hardware. I can't even run Asahi yet, because M4 Max.
  - nozzlegear 11mo ago
    I play World of Warcraft on my M1 Mac, and my wife plays it on her M4. It's native on Apple Silicon and runs like a dream. So, much like Linux, gaming on a Mac is totally possible depending on which games you want to play. We only play World of Warcraft and were able to dump our Windows machines completely.
JosephRedfern 11mo ago
I think you're being oversensitive, especially in the context Raycast adding support for Windows. The whole purpose of Raycast is to improve productivity and UX, be that under macOS or Windows. It'd be a pretty shitty launch announcement if the blog post didn't mention the problem that they're trying to solve. Edit: I'm not sure if the post was edited after my reply, but ATM there's no mention of BSODs - the closest I can see to a dig at Windows is: > You know the feeling. Search that can't find your files. Apps buried in menus. Simple tasks that take too many clicks. Your computer should be faster than this. It should feel like everything is at your fingertips. That’s why we built Raycast.
- anaisbetts 11mo ago
  That's certainly what the app itself does (I'm even using it myself!), but I just don't understand why they couldn't resist putting in these overused digs.
microtonal 11mo ago
Windows had a good run from Windows 2000/XP-ish [1] to Windows 7, maybe 8.1. Any tech person who lived through the 90ies knows that 95/98/ME was a tire fire. With Windows 10 and 11 the enshittification started in a big way and it became a vehicle for analytics, pushing ads and Microsoft stuff, and now forcing their on AI on users. All the ridicule is well-deserved IMO. There is an alternate universe where Microsoft would have continued Windows in the 2000/XP/7 tradition and it would be a solid operating system, serving the user, underpinned by a very good foundation (after all, the original NT people were stellar engineers that worked on VMS before). [1] Earlier NT versions were also quite good, but most consumers didn't encounter it.
theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
Nah man. Windows 10 and on are hot garbage and everyone knows it. XP was the golden age and this is just a play on nostalgia to when Windows was actually useful. I’ve been off of Windows for a few years now and any time I need to use a Windows system it’s just a constant reminder of how terrible everything is.
- NicuCalcea 11mo ago
  I feel the same way about macOS, I used it for several years for various jobs and now will literally not accept a job offer if they force another Macbook on me. Point is, if you're selling something to Windows users, don't say their choice of OS sucks.
  - anaisbetts 11mo ago
    Same tbh. macOS is my last resort, I find so much of it incredibly frustrating, from the literal constant permission nannying, the unrepentant "We broke your shit, deal with it" that comes with many many updates, the horrendous UI of Tahoe, it's the worst. Apple might have great (though boring) laptop hardware, but jeez louise does macOS ruin the whole thing.
    - NicuCalcea 11mo ago
      I had so many issues with it, but the one that annoyed me the most is app icons in the menu bar being hidden behind the physical notch, meaning I couldn't see them unless I was connected to a second screen. It showed me the whole "Apple is amazing at design" stereotype was just that. Oh, and the Music app would launch whenever I hit the play key, even with Spotify open in a tab. Not once did I ever want to open Music.
  - theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
    I used to be a diehard Mac guy but now I insist on having a Linux workstation. My preference is Suse but I’d settle for Ubuntu if it means I don’t have to use MacOS.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
perching_aix 11mo ago
On some level I understand. These products are solutions, implying that there exist problems that they're thus solving. How they go about presenting these is a matter of taste, and apparently this is just the taste these people tend to have.
thomaspaulmann 11mo ago
Fair and point taken. If you want to know a bit more about the video, we shared a bit more here: https://x.com/peduarte/status/1991510075505070260 https://x.com/peduarte/status/1991510075505070260
RicoElectrico 11mo ago
Exactly, at least dunk on something relevant in 2025, otherwise you come over as someone out of touch.
ls-a 11mo ago
Raycast is built using Rust. So the rust toxicity has to be there in their community
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  Non-sequitur
blackcatsec 11mo ago
Yeah. This is generally the type of thing that turns me off to working in the Linux/MacOS world. It's just a near constant "We're living in the 90s" attitude towards everything Microsoft does or has done. It's just absolutely insufferable. I know more about both Windows AND Linux than most Linux Systems Administrators that I encounter. I know more about how making them work together in an enterprise than any Linux Administrator. I understand more about literally every underlying protocol AND how to manage those items on Linux and Windows, from DHCP, DNS, Networking, etc. For all intents, I could be a pretty bad ass "Linux guru"--and for the most part, I hold my own quite well. I know how to manage SSSD, understand integrating Linux and Windows environments into harmony with each other. But my peers often see something in Windows they dislike, or a single thing that Microsoft hasn't really bothered to improve, and holy fuck in their minds the sky is falling and it's the absolutely worse thing they've ever had to do with a computer. So I keep one foot outside of that world because these people are just fucking insufferable to work with and around.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

dustbunny 11mo ago

It's "we think windows sucks" And they are right. The enshittification of windows is by far the most egregious example in modern software. Windows is disgusting. The start menu is disgusting. The bloat, slowness, lack of design cohesion and flakiness has real consequences. Its not "you suck" it's "windows used to be better" and to me it seems objectively true that it used to be better

p_ing 11mo ago
Windows used to require a reboot to change an IP address. Windows used to BSOD when the graphics stack crashed. Used to come without a built-in firewall exposing all sorts of vulnerabilities to the public Internet. Used to not isolate critical kernel components to 3rd party software. (And Windows has always had a hodge-poge of UI designs dating back to NT4/Win95 which contained Win3.x design elements) The list can go on about how it most certainly, objectively, was not "better".
- ronsor 11mo ago
  The Windows kernel has certainly improved—BSODs are now rare—but the userspace has only gotten worse. The end result is a decline in usability and dozens of new ways for your OS to enter a permanently unusable state without a BSOD.
  - p_ing 11mo ago
    There are gains and losses in UX, I agree. I avoid the ads stuff via Pro (though not completely the telemetry, that said it's for games and a separate Enterprise device for Windows-only PoSh). I think the big spot for 'Recent' on the start menu, which I disable recent, is a waste of space. But I don't use the start menu in the way of Windows' past; it's always Win+type what I want. We did gain with things like tabbed Explorer or a right-click menu not infested by COM extensions taking ages to load. I'm not aware of any of these 'dozens of new ways' to make Windows unusable in the way I use it, then again Windows doesn't really force any one happy path, there are often five different ways to do one thing.
  - dangus 11mo ago
    That’s just your opinion, man. Like, what do you mean by “permanently unusable state?” This is all just vague nonsense. Windows bad because Microsoft, or something. I’m gonna guess you’ll come back and say something dated or exaggerated like “OneDrive nags you all the time” (nope, it can be fully uninstalled in windows 11 just like any app).
    - ronsor 11mo ago
      > That’s just your opinion, man. > Like, what do you mean by “permanently unusable state?” I mean ways for the OS to lock up in ways that require a reboot. This is an objective criteria.
      - dangus 11mo ago
        Sounds like you don’t know what the word “permanent” means. If you can reboot and everything works again that doesn’t sound all that permanent. I use all three major OSes regularly and none of them lock up in ways that require a reboot with any level of regularity, never mind entering a “permanently unusable state.” In my experience I find that at present in 2025, rebooting Apple systems seems to fix occasional little wonky problems [1], my Linux laptop needs reboots or hard restarts for occasional sleep issues, and my Windows 11 desktop’s most frequent problem tends to be graphics driver crashes while playing games (and that’s partially my fault for choosing AMD instead of Nvidia). That is the kind of problem that used to cause full system lock-ups but Windows 11 actually manages that failure relatively gracefully. But the point is that the only operating system I interact with that never has any issues on the OS level are my Linux servers, but that’s really an entirely different use case with much less complexity and risk than a desktop workstation. And even then it’s common practice to manage Linux servers as cattle rather than pets and just destroy/replace them when there’s an issue. [1] Out of all the desktop operating systems, I think Apple has the highest quantity of hastily added features that ship with rarely-fixed minor bugs, while the Windows team doesn’t even attempt to add features at anything close to Apple’s pace. macOS has this struggle to keep feature parity with iOS and the iPhone which itself has a economic mandate to iterate quickly. For example, since iOS 26 I’ve been having random issues with Guided Access and the screenshot tool on iOS that only resolve when I restart the phone. I’ve also needed to cycle Bluetooth since iOS 26 on occasion to get my AirPods to connect successfully.
- dustbunny 11mo ago
  Try telling these reasons to your aging father who no longer understands how to print a file the government sent him because windows has changed windows explorer so much that he doesn't even understand that it's part of the OS anymore. The disaster that is the ever shifting UX of windows is having serious harm on our senior citizens. I've fielded several issues like this from many different seniors I know. We've left these people behind and it's a shame that is having serious consequences. Yes, things are better under the hood. But the surface, the UX, is a mark of shame on our entire industry.
  - jpalawaga 11mo ago
    This is a strange take. Should we never ever change UI because grandpa can’t learn the updates?
    - dustbunny 11mo ago
      This is reductive black and white thinking that simply refuses to deal with the real problem that I clearly illustrated. Microsoft windows is a critical tool that society continues to build dependence on. The poorly executed redesigns of key windows features has consequences unlike the vast majority of software systems. With Microsofts great power, comes great responsibility.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]

vintagedave 11mo ago

I agree this is in poor taste. It feels a little insulting -- and I get why they didn't think that, but, I can read that into it, a 'you're still using Windows, never getting yourself out of that rut' sort of vibe. I think people who do this think that people who use Windows perceive that the Mac experience is smoother, and may have some sort of Mac envy. The end of the video gives this away: it's the Think Different font. It's a direct callback to the _idea_ of Apple vs Microsoft, not the reality today of Apple vs Microsoft. I know many devs who use Windows exclusively, but they are in two camps: a) Super old-school: still maintaining Windows desktop apps; that's what their career has been and there's no need for anything else. b) WSL-based, VSCode-using devs who are one step away from just using Linux. These are the folk who fifteen years ago would have been using what was then still OSX. But these folk don't use Windows as Windows: they use it as a semi-Unix.

LoganDark 11mo ago
I think if all you want is a Unix, you're better off with Mac, or at least you would have been before the Apple Silicon transition broke Windows support, and Valve stopped supporting Proton on Mac, and CrossOver still doesn't support Unreal Engine, etc. Stuff like games and proprietary drivers is what keeps people on Windows, I think. Either that, or just a distate for the Mac's design language / user experience, which is also completely fair. Back in 2016 or so, I had a triple-boot on my MacBook Pro: - macOS for daily driving, and most development - Windows for Windows-specific development, gaming, and proprietary drivers or IDEs (Texas Instruments programmers; Samsung / OnePlus flashing; some other embedded tooling) - Arch Linux for Linux-specific development, usually involving the GPU, which I couldn't get to work in a VM; and also just for fun These days I simply cannot do most of those things with Mac hardware. I can't even run Asahi yet, because M4 Max.
- nozzlegear 11mo ago
  I play World of Warcraft on my M1 Mac, and my wife plays it on her M4. It's native on Apple Silicon and runs like a dream. So, much like Linux, gaming on a Mac is totally possible depending on which games you want to play. We only play World of Warcraft and were able to dump our Windows machines completely.

JosephRedfern 11mo ago

I think you're being oversensitive, especially in the context Raycast adding support for Windows. The whole purpose of Raycast is to improve productivity and UX, be that under macOS or Windows. It'd be a pretty shitty launch announcement if the blog post didn't mention the problem that they're trying to solve. Edit: I'm not sure if the post was edited after my reply, but ATM there's no mention of BSODs - the closest I can see to a dig at Windows is: > You know the feeling. Search that can't find your files. Apps buried in menus. Simple tasks that take too many clicks. Your computer should be faster than this. It should feel like everything is at your fingertips. That’s why we built Raycast.

anaisbetts 11mo ago
That's certainly what the app itself does (I'm even using it myself!), but I just don't understand why they couldn't resist putting in these overused digs.

microtonal 11mo ago

Windows had a good run from Windows 2000/XP-ish [1] to Windows 7, maybe 8.1. Any tech person who lived through the 90ies knows that 95/98/ME was a tire fire. With Windows 10 and 11 the enshittification started in a big way and it became a vehicle for analytics, pushing ads and Microsoft stuff, and now forcing their on AI on users. All the ridicule is well-deserved IMO. There is an alternate universe where Microsoft would have continued Windows in the 2000/XP/7 tradition and it would be a solid operating system, serving the user, underpinned by a very good foundation (after all, the original NT people were stellar engineers that worked on VMS before). [1] Earlier NT versions were also quite good, but most consumers didn't encounter it.

theoldgreybeard 11mo ago

Nah man. Windows 10 and on are hot garbage and everyone knows it. XP was the golden age and this is just a play on nostalgia to when Windows was actually useful. I’ve been off of Windows for a few years now and any time I need to use a Windows system it’s just a constant reminder of how terrible everything is.

NicuCalcea 11mo ago
I feel the same way about macOS, I used it for several years for various jobs and now will literally not accept a job offer if they force another Macbook on me. Point is, if you're selling something to Windows users, don't say their choice of OS sucks.
- anaisbetts 11mo ago
  Same tbh. macOS is my last resort, I find so much of it incredibly frustrating, from the literal constant permission nannying, the unrepentant "We broke your shit, deal with it" that comes with many many updates, the horrendous UI of Tahoe, it's the worst. Apple might have great (though boring) laptop hardware, but jeez louise does macOS ruin the whole thing.
  - NicuCalcea 11mo ago
    I had so many issues with it, but the one that annoyed me the most is app icons in the menu bar being hidden behind the physical notch, meaning I couldn't see them unless I was connected to a second screen. It showed me the whole "Apple is amazing at design" stereotype was just that. Oh, and the Music app would launch whenever I hit the play key, even with Spotify open in a tab. Not once did I ever want to open Music.
- theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
  I used to be a diehard Mac guy but now I insist on having a Linux workstation. My preference is Suse but I’d settle for Ubuntu if it means I don’t have to use MacOS.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

perching_aix 11mo ago

On some level I understand. These products are solutions, implying that there exist problems that they're thus solving. How they go about presenting these is a matter of taste, and apparently this is just the taste these people tend to have.

thomaspaulmann 11mo ago

Fair and point taken. If you want to know a bit more about the video, we shared a bit more here: https://x.com/peduarte/status/1991510075505070260 https://x.com/peduarte/status/1991510075505070260

RicoElectrico 11mo ago

Exactly, at least dunk on something relevant in 2025, otherwise you come over as someone out of touch.

ls-a 11mo ago

Raycast is built using Rust. So the rust toxicity has to be there in their community

bigyabai 11mo ago
Non-sequitur

blackcatsec 11mo ago

Yeah. This is generally the type of thing that turns me off to working in the Linux/MacOS world. It's just a near constant "We're living in the 90s" attitude towards everything Microsoft does or has done. It's just absolutely insufferable. I know more about both Windows AND Linux than most Linux Systems Administrators that I encounter. I know more about how making them work together in an enterprise than any Linux Administrator. I understand more about literally every underlying protocol AND how to manage those items on Linux and Windows, from DHCP, DNS, Networking, etc. For all intents, I could be a pretty bad ass "Linux guru"--and for the most part, I hold my own quite well. I know how to manage SSSD, understand integrating Linux and Windows environments into harmony with each other. But my peers often see something in Windows they dislike, or a single thing that Microsoft hasn't really bothered to improve, and holy fuck in their minds the sky is falling and it's the absolutely worse thing they've ever had to do with a computer. So I keep one foot outside of that world because these people are just fucking insufferable to work with and around.