Why is Windows buggy?

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From - Sat Sep 11 06:55:37 1999
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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Subject: Re: SCO in Trouble?
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 18:13:44 -0700
Organization: Committee to Maintain an Independent Xenix
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On Fri, 10 Sep 1999 21:09:09 GMT, "Gumby"
<greenslabofclay-spammersgotohell@yahoo.com> wrote:

>I wonder if we are so busy looking at SCO and Linux; we may be missing
>Windoz 2000?
>I won't try it until final release.
>Anyone think this OS is going to just wipe the slate clean?

It doesn't matter.  Most users of Windoze 95/98/NT will upgrade to
Windoze 2000 in the futile hope that there will be fewer bugs, better
stability, and more dancing paper clips.  Whether it works or not
seems to be a minor consideration.

However, let's pretend that MicroSloth actually delivers on its
promises, Windoze 2000 works as advertised, and the GUM (great
unwashed masses) immigrate to the latest greatest OS en mass.  What
can MicroSloth offer next?  Not much methinks.  Therefore, why bother
deliverying something that works well in 2000, when a buggy version
will sell more copies of Windoze 2001, followed by Windoze 2002, ad
nausium?  Buggy software sells updates.

Naturally, nobody at MicroSloth will admit that their buggy software
will sell more updates than if the stuff worked in the first place.
Never mind that the Information Weak Magazine survey of Windoze 2000
early adopters, with sufficient spare time to fill out the survey,
resulted in "improved stability" being the number one requirement.
Microsloth can't give them what they want or they'll never want to
upgrade.

Don't believe it?  I've got 3ea customers that insist that I make
their Xenix boxes play well into 2000 and beyond.  Why?  Because they
are utterly reliable, almost zero maintenance, and do everything they
need.  They have their number one goal of reliability and are not
willing to give it up for any number of features and functions.  If
Xenix had been an unstable abomination like NT4 SP5, it would have
been in the dumpster years ago instead of running well for 10 years.

Microsloth and SCO know all this but will never admit it.  SCO has
tried everything short of violence to get customers to upgrade or
immigrate from OSR5 to UW7.  New features, bigger servers, cool admin
tools, monster systems, and industrial strength hardware support were
not sufficient for most of my customers.  They want reliable
mediocrity and not much more.  SCO did a horrible thing by actually
delivering the stability that MicroSloth has been promising and is
paying the price with some conservative and paranoid tightwads as
customers.

Now, contrast that with the typical Microsloth customer.  All they
want is stability, but all Microsloth offers are new features and
functions.  They want the bugs to go away, and get more acronyms and
dancing paper clips instead.  They want networking that will not lose
its shares or spray RAS garbage packets into the network, and get even
more protocols and IP mutations that will break.  Microsloth may
listen to their customers, but they're doing what's most profitable
for Microsloth.

The effect is also self-perpetuating.  Features get added faster than
bugs get fixed.  It's a natural law or something.  This effect
eventually results in a bloated monster OS with deteriorating
reliability.  Windoze 98 was suppose to be mostly bug fixes.  It's no
more stable than Windoze 95 and still requires substantial patching
and tweaking.  The flakey applications that run on Windoze 98 don't
appear to be any more stable than running on Windoze 95.  98 is also
slower than 95.  However, Windoze 98 is considerably bigger and is
therefore better?  It's also amazing that NT is known to "crash less"
implying that it still crashes often.  Crash less than what?

So what about the computers for the rest of us?  Well, Apple tried to
push that and delivered yet another monster OS with the same upgrade
motivation.  New features are nice, but the bug fixes are what the
customers really were after.  The real "rest of us" were out buying
Palm Pilots.  It has none of the baggage that the other OS's were
dragging around.  Windoze compatibility was at the end of an optional
cable.  What is there is rock stable, simple, easy to use, intuitive
and fast.  3Scum will eventually trash it by growing it into a bloated
"real" operating system, but meanwhile we have the stability we need.

So, there we have the logic:
  In order to sell upgrades, it has to be noticeably buggy.
  In order to be sufficiently buggy, it has to be big and bloated.
  In order to look like an improvement, it has to have new features.

Now, get on with life and don't bother me.


# Jeff Liebermann   150 Felker St #D    Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831.336.2558 voice           
# 831.426.1240 fax             http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl
# 831.421.6491 digital_pager   jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us  

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