[olug] Microsoft is out of control!

[John DiMartino]

Well... they got all that legacy BSD code in there :)


On May 6, 2004, at 10:52 PM, Sean Kelly wrote:

> 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
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