Microsoft tipping

[Alan Jackson]

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:11:46 -0600
Alma J Wetzker <almaw at ieee.org> wrote:

> In my view, M$ puts ease of use above everything else; Security, stability, 
> scalability, *ility.  They will steal or buy anything to keep ease of use at 
> the forefront.  They actually spend money on R/D for ease of use.  I am still 
> afraid that without that goad in the open source community, ease of use would 
> not ever be a goal.  Speaking as a programmer; Once the program is working, I 
> want to be done.  Spending lots of time making some useless, unneeded 
> interface to a working program just isn't that interesting (or fun).  In fact, 

Maybe I'm odd, but I don't find Windows easy to use. I find it obscure,
confusing, inconsistent, and frustrating. And my 80 year-old father
feels the same way about it. Usable software lets you guess at the behavior
and usually get it right. Ever tried to cut and paste between various
Office products? It doesn't work. You have to make a special incantation
to get it to work correctly, and even then, some things simply don't work.

Do the menus on Word and Excel have the same functions in the same place,
called the same thing? No. That ain't usable.

And I won't even mention how my wife's machine goes tits-up bluescreen
at the drop of a hat, and did so out of the box. (but I did, didn't I)

No, people buy Microsoft because they buy the illusion that computers are
hard and only Billy can save them. But the kids know better. For them 
computing is easy and natural and once they discover that you can have
a robust, consistent, logical, friendly OS, they will drop Bill like a
hot rock.


-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Alan K. Jackson            | To see a World in a Grain of Sand      |
| alan at ajackson.org          | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,         |
| www.ajackson.org           | Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand |
| Houston, Texas             | And Eternity in an hour. - Blake       |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------