[juneau-lug] Re: Microsoft... What you are buying...
- From: Nels Tomlinson <nelstomlinson@xxxxxxx>
- To: juneau-lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 23:56:58 -0800
Jeremy, you prompted a few thoughts.
First, I started using MS products with DOS 1.0. Before that, it was
CP/M, Honeywell's mainframe OS, VMS and a hex debugger on a 6502-based
single board computer. I stopped using computers for a few years
shortly after the IBM AT's came out (i.e., pre-Windows). When I got
back to using computers, I couldn't get a computer without Windows, and
Windows was a horrid, awkward bugger compared to DOS. I just wasn't
used to it, and I didn't want to get used to it.
Eventually, I got so disgusted that I decided to try this Linux thing
I'd heard about. I knew it was sort of unixy, so I figured it couldn't
be too bad. I'd had to work on Altos boxes running SCO Xenix, so I knew
unix had a usable command line, and I didn't mind giving up the GUI. I
installed Redhat 6.0, and it had the command line, AND the GUI, and they
worked together! I was hooked.
After some experience, I've found a lot that I prefer the GUI for. I
now think the command line isn't always easier than the GUI, but it
didn't seem that way to me when I started using Windows.
Second, for anything that you can do on a Windows PC, there is probably
a non-unixy analog on Linux, and it will often be inferior to the
Windows original you are used to. There is usually also a unix way to
accomplish that same task, and it is (once you're used to it) usually
far superior to the Windows way.
At work right now, our editor is struggling with typesetting a book. It
has dozens of tables and graphics, and hundreds of references to those,
scattered through the text. It needs a table of contents, and should
(but won't) have an index. Since she's doing this on a PC, she's using
Pagemaker. She's been plugging away at this for weeks now, and has
about a fifth of it done: the easy fifth. She may not be using her
software to it's fullest extent, but it certainly seems terribly
primitive in comparison to LaTeX. I could have completed the project in
a week, and had it look better than her finished product will, just
because the unixy way is FAR more efficient. She'll never try that way,
of course, since it precludes using a mouse.
The moral is that it's all a matter of what you're used to. Someone who
starts ``computing'' with Windows will think that's the way things are
supposed to be, and if he tries to use something different, he's going
to struggle terribly, because he literally can't do things the way he's
accustomed to. He can still do the same things, but not the same way.
The vocabulary and the mindset are totally different.
If you're trying to use Windows when you're used to Unix, you have
exactly the same problem. All the old familiar stuff is missing, or
subtly broken. You can't make progress by trying the usual way; you
have to learn the Windows way. Even installing Tweakui and Cygwin only
takes you so far.
I think that all the comparisons of Windows and Linus I've seen miss
this important point: the two are different! You just can't use one the
way you use the other. Both are surprisingly capable, and easy to use,
but only if you use each as it was intended.
The attempts by Gnome and KDE to make a seamless desktop with object
oriented cut and paste are making Linux a little more Windows-like, but
they don't seem to be doing any harm to the underlying system, so I
guess that's ok.
As for mail-merge, I haven't tried to do that for years. I'll have to
see if I can get emacs to do that, perhaps with LaTeX.
Here's a third thought: MS (and all the proprietary software makers)
make software for sale. It might be optimal for building Stuff For
Dummies, but none of us like to use it ourselves.
Here's why I think we don't like it: MS designs for ease of learning,
because that's what sells to the mass market. We want ease of use,
which usually precludes ease of learning. That's what makes the
difference between emacs and Word. You can set a monkey down in front
of Word, and quickly train it to do work. Emacs takes a long time to
learn, and a monkey may never get up to speed, but the time spent pays
off in a big way if you use it for very long.
There's software for what we used to call ``power users'': people who
used the application all day, every day, and could justify spending many
hours learning to shave seconds off tasks. Then there's software that's
easy to learn, for folks who are never going to care if something takes
an additional few mouse clicks. There will never be many power users of
any sort of software, so we'll never see MS making software for serious
use. We're a niche market, and MS can't be bothered.
That's why we use mostly Libre software: it isn't made for sale. It's
made for serious use, by power users who are serious about investing
time in learning. Sometimes, serious users will refuse to implement
features which would sell, because it would be wrong not to. Read the R
language mailing lists for some examples of this. Obviously, this stand
would be impossible for a proprietary software company to justify.
Openoffice, Mozilla, Gnome and KDE again are starting to dumb things
down a little, but again, it's optional so not a problem. I suspect
that these things will soon get to the point that you can use something
like Visual Basic to glue the parts together. In the mean time, emacs
still works just fine, in it's own way, for all the things they do.
Nels
Jeremy C. Hansen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As I move out more and more into the world where I engage in application
> development I think about what Microsoft is doing and realize, it isn't
> the application itself that costs so much. It is the thousands of hours
> of research and development that go into building a good application.
>
> Microsoft has managed to accelerate the way we do business on the
> computer by simplifying the process that is required to do things. They
> have pretty much mastered the three-click philosophy; they pour
> thousands of hours into finding the features that will be most utilized
> and are most desirable and organizing them in a way that makes intuitive
> sense. These are the reasons that we find ourselves back to MS
> products. They have flattened the learning curve. They are most often
> slow to market, and when they are quick to market they have buggy
> software. They purchase good software companies (IE. Visio) and
> integrate them, have you seen what you can do with Visio, you can tap
> right into Microsoft SQL Server and execute DDL. To myself that is
> impresive, and they have made this possible through the purchase and
> integration of the products. Now Visio would have never of made this
> possible themselves. This is a good all Microsoft, TOTAL SOLUTION
> approach to doing business. If you want a real tool because this is
> what you do for a living, sure you can go open source or buy $4000.00
> Erwin or $15,000 RationalRose package.
>
> As linux users I think that we have been able to compromise because of
> the price tag, availability of substitutes, and we are technically
> inclined. We know that we can't do a mail merge with Abiword and Gcalc
> yet (As far as I know, last time I used it). But we know of ways to get
> around this. For my mother, an average PC user, she was able to figure
> out how to do a mail merge with Excel without any instruction and then
> teach me how to do it. What we do and are unique user needs can be met
> with an open source solution. But for a user, Microsoft is a very
> appropriate solution.
>
> Another thing that I haven't seen yet is a large Microsoft Office -
> Equivelent that is as stable as Microsoft Office XP, I give kudos to
> those developing server solutions (Apache, etc.), but I get a little
> bitter when people say OpenOffice or Abiword is better then Microsoft
> Office.
>
> Security is another issue, people say, "Microsoft Products are so
> Insecure," times are changing, they are stiffening this up, but there is
> a huge obstacle here, you have how many people hating Bill Gates and
> Microsoft and very few people attacking the open source world. We know
> that there are holes in the open source environment, go look for
> yourself, they are there and they are ready to be exploited, but it
> isn't 100 million people hating open source, it is a 100 million hating
> Microsoft, turn the tides on that figure and I bet we find more holes
> then you would ever imagine. Turn America loose on open source and
> implement some IM clients and we'll find some holes, I am sure.
>
> I agree, there are many points to be argued here, but I hope that maybe
> there is some englightening factors about the amount of research that
> goes into the product and development at Microsoft. Don't forget the
> 30,000 jobs MS provides and how much they influence how much your job is
> worth as a technology person. They have a substantial influence I would
> imagine (positive impact) with setting the standard at a tech job being
> worth $70k w/ early retirement, without outliers like that we would see
> tech jobs lower then that. Mechanics already make more then we do. ;)
> Honda bills out at $70.00/hr.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeremy C. Hansen
>
> PS. If you want to chat about this some more I'm interested in what
> people have to say. This is kind of just a brain dump and I thought
> that maybe it would be worth pointing out.
>
>
>
>
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