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Windows Vista: Overfyldt og brugerfjendtligt
Microsofts næste Windows-version, som kommer til at hedde "Windows Vista", er (igen!) udsat, (denne gang) til februar.
Hvad kan Microsofts trofaste kunder så vente sig til den tid? Forbes.com var til demo for en måneds tid siden, og betegner det, de så, som Not People Ready:
The new programs are phenomenally complex, with scores of buttons and pull-down menus and myriad connections among various applications. A Microsoft VP zipped through a demo, moving information from Outlook to Powerpoint to Groove to some kind of social networking program that lets you see how your colleagues and your colleagues' colleagues rate various Web sites.Hvad værre er: Mens intet tyder på, at Microsoft i Vista har tænkt sig at gøre noget for sikkerheden, der blot kan bringe dem i nærheden af at røre ved Unix- eller Linux-systemers kappeflig, har de til gengæld tænkt sig at begrave al funktionalitet i nyttesløse sikkerhedsadvarsler, der skal få brugeren til at føle sig sikker og samtidig redde Microsofts ansigt, når folks computere alligevel bliver fyldt med virus og spyware.
Meanwhile, 500 tech buyers sat there in the dark, their eyes glazing over from the sheer mind-numbing pointlessness of most of this stuff. The audience laughed out loud when the Microsoft guy showed off a kludgey system that lets you fetch Outlook e-mail messages using voice commands from a cell phone.
(...)
Even more ironic is that Microsoft has ginned up a new slogan, "People Ready," which apparently is meant to describe its software, or maybe it describes companies that use its software, or whatever. Who knows? It's one of those phrases that means anything, and so means nothing. Who makes this stuff up? Do they actually pay this person? And is Microsoft just figuring out now that its programs are used by--gasp--people?
(...)
Worse yet was the grumbling afterward in the press room. Why the hell did they drag us here? we wondered. We'd been promised big news and some earth-shattering announcements by Microsoft flacks who insisted this was something we shouldn't miss. Instead, we got a demo that was about as compelling as a root canal followed by a 15-minute press conference with Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive who seems incapable of speaking at any level softer than a bellow. Ballmer took a few potshots at IBM, claiming the computer giant doesn't innovate anymore.
No one mentioned the fact that in 1997, Microsoft held a similar event in New York City to declare that IBM's "big iron" was dead, because Windows NT--remember Windows NT?--was going to "scale up" and replace the mainframe. I wonder if Ballmer ever feels like the guy in Groundhog Day, reliving the same press conference, over and over. I know I do.
Eller, som vi læser hos Bruce Schneier, der citerer en analyse begået af Paul Thurott:
Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?Det værste er, som Schneier observerer, at alle disse advarsler slet ikke gør noget for brugerens sikkerhed - alt, hvad de gør, er at give en falsk tryghed og sørge for, at Microsoft kan fralægge sig ethvert juridisk ansvar, når (ikke hvis) det alligevel går galt. I en tid, hvor virus og spyware er en evigt voksende plage, byder Microsoft på en forbedring, der alt i alt er ... mindre end ingenting.
Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog (Figure) explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ... shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?
OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window (Figure). Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What's the big deal?
What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
Til gengæld skal du givetvis have ny computere, for Windows Vista kræver så meget hukommelse og processorkraft, at du skal have mindst 1 GB RAM og en af de allernyeste CPU'er for at kunne komme i nærheden af, hvad du i dag kan gøre med en tre år gammel PC med 256 MB RAM.
Tjah - var der nogen, der sagde "århundredets chance for Apple og Linux"? Hvis det skulle have nogen interesse, så kommer den hidtil bedste og mest stabile version af det tidligere omtalte Ubuntu Linux den 1. juni - nok en sikrere investering end at vente endnu et halvt år på Microsuck.
Update, 25. april kl. 14.05:
Andreas Nylandsted Benediktson siger:
Fint indlæg. Man kunne tilføje at Ubuntu jo er gratis, så der er ikke engang tale om en investering. Mac OS X 10.5 kommer til vinter, det bliver også spændende.Og så spørger han, hvorfor man ikke kan lægge kommentarer ind direkte. Vel, fordi jeg desværre ikke har fået det til at virke endnu!
Men det kommer (forhåbentlig).