Why does Windows software suck so fucking hard?

[The Question]

Beyond a comparison between Windows 10 and macOS 10.15 "Catalina" -- I'm leaving macOS 11.0 "Big Sur" out of this because it hasn't been released yet -- let's talk about 3rd party apps for the two platforms.

Why does software made for Windows still look like it's straight out of the 1990s? Why do Microsoft's own apps -- even basic shit like its free email client -- consistently fail to perform even their basic functions? How the fuck, in the 20xx's, can such a major software company fuck up email?!

Right, back to the third party apps. Take a gander, if you will, at Corel WordPerfect.

Welcome back to 1996, baby.

How about RSS readers? Here's Reeder 4 for macOS:

Fucking gorgeous. And intuitive. And powerful. What's the Windows competition? Well, so far the top of the Redmond-lovin' heap is Readiy. Goes a little som'n' like this:

Not that it's necessarily bad-looking -- compared to anything else on Windows, that is -- but compared to its macOS rival, it's clunky as fuck.

Oh, and speaking of email -- I actually wasn't going to, because I did eventually find one email app for Windows that isn't complete shit, and that's MailBird. Still, MailBird nevertheless sucks rotten leper cock compared to Airmail:

Granted, there are some apps that have gone cross-platform, such as Scrivener -- of course, since Scrivener originated as a Mac app that was later ported to Windows, the Windows version is a full 2 generations behind its elder sibling, development wise. And there are some Mac apps you can't even get on Windows, such as Ulysses.

"A man uses the machines you build to sit down and pay his taxes. A man uses the machines I build to listen to The Beatles while he relaxes!" goes the quote -- but, if anything, it's only half true. Windows is great for gaming. And that's... about all it's good for, really. Because it seems like only game developers give the platform the respect it's due. Everybody else is still churning out skeuomorphism-themed, half-functional garbage.

Bitch all you want about Apple's "walled garden" -- at least it isn't overrun with fucking weeds.

 

[jack]

I ffucking HATE 10 with a passion. Problem is my ryzen chips arent very compatible with anything else. It's a Ryzen 7 3700 X 8-core processor, 32GG ram and the card is an AMD radeon RX 5700 XT. It's a Mazerati. Works pretty seamlessly with 10, but 10 insinuates itself in fucked up ways. Keeps loading Edge, even though I changed the name in the llibrary.. Keeps updating whenever it wants and then makes me reset my password. Locks up if I try to block One Drive, which I refuse to use. I've asked Dell if this system would work on any other OS and they said not only no, but it would void the 3 year service warranty I have on the box. PLus it has fucked up my keyboard so I type one thing and it does all this weird shit so I have to proof everything. 16 times in this post

FUCK

 

[jack]

"Oh, and speaking of email -- I actually wasn't going to, because I did eventually find one email app for Windows that isn't complete shit, and that's MailBird. Still, MailBird nevertheless sucks rotten leper cock compared to Airmail:"

You should try Thunderbird. Solved all my email problems and updates nicely as necessary.

 

[The Question]

I have. If there's an email app for Windows 10, I've tried it at this point. Had this piece of garbage for 9 months now, so I've re-familiarized myself with the pit of suck that is Windows.

Here's a little sidebar: There are Mac users who talk shit about Windows -- who have never used Windows.

There are, it seems, a lot more Windows users who talk shit about macOS who have never spent a quarter of an hour with macOS.

I dismiss both sorts.

On the other hand, I've used both. I am intimately familiar with both. And Windows, speaking from a fully actualized frame of reference upon which to make an educated comparison, really does suck profound dick. (The one exception to that, as already conceded above, is where it comes to gaming. But that's the developers' doing, not Microsoft's or the hardware OEMs.)

Apple's "walled garden" software approach may shut out a lot of apps -- but that is, my friends, a good thing. It keeps out the garbage. It keeps out the trash apps.

And because Apple is as OCD / anal / whatever-you-want-to-call-it as they are, when it comes to quality control, a Mac with a Core i5 and 8Gb of memory typically outperforms a Windows PC with a Core i7 and 16Gb of memory. Know why? Because the software on a Mac isn't fucking sloppy. 3/4th of the performance overhead on a Windows machine comes from software running legacy code introduced in Windows NT back in the 1990s. Add to that that Windows is "compatible" (barely) with everything including Peruvian dog shit and it's weighed down under ten tons of totally unnecessary, not to mention hopelessly antiquated legacy code that bogs down even the most (raw numbers specs -wise) powerful Windows machine.

Macs run better because they run without the burden of all that ancient shit code bogging them down.

 

[The Question]

I ffucking HATE 10 with a passion. Problem is my ryzen chips arent very compatible with anything else. It's a Ryzen 7 3700 X 8-core processor, 32GG ram and the card is an AMD radeon RX 5700 XT. It's a Mazerati. Works pretty seamlessly with 10, but 10 insinuates itself in fucked up ways. Keeps loading Edge, even though I changed the name in the llibrary.. Keeps updating whenever it wants and then makes me reset my password. Locks up if I try to block One Drive, which I refuse to use. I've asked Dell if this system would work on any other OS and they said not only no, but it would void the 3 year service warranty I have on the box. PLus it has fucked up my keyboard so I type one thing and it does all this weird shit so I have to proof everything. 16 times in this post

FUCK

Basically, Windows is a billy-goat OS. A billy goat will eat anything. Likewise, Windows will run on anything. What it won't do is run well on anything. It aims for far-reaching mediocrity rather than selective excellence.

 

[Starship Coyote]

Microsoft products service the lowest common denominator. They are designed so that the stupidest fucking person can sorta use it. I'm on a Windows 10 box right now, but I do my work on a Lenovo laptop that I loaded Linux Mint on.

Oh, and fuck Apple.

 

[jack]

I'd like to figure out how to run Ryzen on another OS

 

[The Question]

Not sure why you'd say 'fuck Apple'. Maybe you're one of those users I pointed out in the OP, who has logged exactly zero hours on macOS and therefore does not personally understand the difference in performance between the two OSes.

Let me break this down: In the desktop space, there's one major competitor to macOS: Windows.

No, I'm not discounting Linux out of hand. I'm discounting Linux because for all intents and purposes, it's even less compatible with the working world than Windows is, and its apps are even more clunky and un-polished. While Windows is amateur-hour, Linux can't even get into the fucking club.

Same with gaming. Games ported from Windows to macOS are a rarity; that said, games ported from Windows to Linux are barely an afterthought.

Or maybe you're saying 'fuck Apple' on the mobile market. You know what the alternative to Apple is on the mobile market? Android. Owned by Google. Google, who spies on its users and sells every byte of your information it gets its hands on, with or without your permission.

Apple's worst sin on its mobile devices? It wouldn't (maybe it's even true that it really literally couldn't) give the feds access to some terrorists' iPhones. Well, you know whose fault that was? The Obama administration's for letting the sand niggers in in the first fucking place. Don't blame Apple for not cooperating with the feds to clean up a mess the fucking feds made themselves.

What Apple's refusal or inability to unlock an iPhone for Big Brother does prove is this: If they can't or won't narc on sand niggers, they also won't narc on you. And that means that between "sell your pale ass down the river" Google and Apple, Apple wins with a seismic bitchslap.

 

[The Question]

Microsoft products service the lowest common denominator. They are designed so that the stupidest fucking person can sorta use it. I'm on a Windows 10 box right now, but I do my work on a Lenovo laptop that I loaded Linux Mint on.

Oh, and fuck Apple.

Also, Lenovo does look like a good OEM. If I was to buy a Windows box by choce (rather than because I had no other option) it'd be a Lenovo machine.

 

[The Question]

Double Post.

 

[Chuckles51]

Not sure why you'd say 'fuck Apple'. Maybe you're one of those users I pointed out in the OP, who has logged exactly zero hours on macOS and therefore does not personally understand the difference in performance between the two OSes.

Let me break this down: In the desktop space, there's one major competitor to macOS: Windows.

No, I'm not discounting Linux out of hand. I'm discounting Linux because for all intents and purposes, it's even less compatible with the working world than Windows is, and its apps are even more clunky and un-polished. While Windows is amateur-hour, Linux can't even get into the fucking club.

Same with gaming. Games ported from Windows to macOS are a rarity; that said, games ported from Windows to Linux are barely an afterthought.

Or maybe you're saying 'fuck Apple' on the mobile market. You know what the alternative to Apple is on the mobile market? Android. Owned by Google. Google, who spies on its users and sells every byte of your information it gets its hands on, with or without your permission.

Apple's worst sin on its mobile devices? It wouldn't (maybe it's even true that it really literally couldn't) give the feds access to some terrorists' iPhones. Well, you know whose fault that was? The Obama administration's for letting the sand niggers in in the first fucking place. Don't blame Apple for not cooperating with the feds to clean up a mess the fucking feds made themselves.

What Apple's refusal or inability to unlock an iPhone for Big Brother does prove is this: If they can't or won't narc on sand niggers, they also won't narc on you. And that means that between "sell your pale ass down the river" Google and Apple, Apple wins with a seismic bitchslap.

As much as I don’t care for Tim apple’s politics, the reason I stick with iPhone is privacy. Google is just plain evil!!!!

 

[The Question]

As much as I don’t care for Tim apple’s politics, the reason I stick with iPhone is privacy. Google is just plain evil!!!!

Right there with you on that. I don't like Apple's policies or corporate culture any better than anybody else does. Their rejection of Gab's Dissenter from their App Stores (both iOS and, in its browser extension form, the Mac App Store) tells me just whose side of the 1st Amendment vs Censorship fight they're on.

But there are workarounds for that; on iOS, you can turn any web page into an "app"; on macOS, there's the Dissenter standalone web browser.

But Apple won't sell their users' information, and that's Google's entire fucking revenue model. Apple charges a premium for their hardware, true; for Google, on the other hand, you are what they're selling.

 

[The Question]

I am really fucking hoping there's a second stimulus check. Regardless of which trim level, as soon as that happens, as soon as the money is in my account, I'm going back to Mac, most likely in the form of a Mac Mini.

Since gaming isn't the point of a Mac (and since integrated UHD 630 graphics wouldn't pump out any better performance regardless of the CPU it's mated to) I'll be opting for the base model with Core i3, customized at Apple in one respect only; an internal 1Tb SSD. RAM is user-upgradeable, as mentioned the CPU is largely irrelevant, but the internal storage can't be upgraded. I'll probably upgrade the RAM later to 32Gb. If I get the gaming itch badly enough, an eGPU will satisfy.

 

[Volpone]

I think you're the only person who's used WordPerfect since 1991. Saying Windows software sucks if you're not using Office is like...I don't have a metaphor. I guess it is kind of like complaining about how hard it is to do open heart surgery while wearing boxing gloves.

 

[The Question]

I've used Office. Only decent software Microsoft makes (well, mostly decent; Outlook doesn't apply anti-spam rules consistently). And they charge through the nose for it. Mailbird is both better and cheaper. Of course, what Microsoft wants $7/mo. for, Apple throws in as part of macOS, for free, and their versions are decades better than Microsoft Office in every way.

People complain about the "Apple tax" on their hardware, but it actually balances out -- that is to say, it would balance out, if Microsoft's OS and apps were as good as Apple's. But they aren't. Microsoft software is clunky, inelegant, and sagging under the weight of bloated frameworks intended to make it work (with varying levels of mediocrity) on everything from modern gaming rigs to Kazakh goat shit. Because it runs on damn near everything, the weight of all that compatibility means it runs like shit on everything that runs it.

Back to the "Apple tax": Microsoft has the same thing, but on their software -- and their software is almost always "juuust short of worth it", making a Mac -- "Apple tax" included -- the better value when it comes to general use scenarios.

Gaming is where Windows PCs have the clear advantage, of course, over Macs (that should go without saying, I'm only saying it anyway so you know I'm not entirely biased lol) and even over consoles. Why is that? Well, stands to reason that game devs don't share Microsoft's "Make it run on everything!" mindset. Games have more stringent system requirements, so a machine that doesn't meet them won't run the game. Those systems that can run the game can typically run it well., Ironically, while Windows fans tend to pooh-pooh Apple's "walled garden" approach to software, their favorite game studios do the very same thing -- and to good effect.

 

[The Question]

Fun video, from a guy who is by no means an Apple fan:

 

[Starship Coyote]

Right there with you on that. I don't like Apple's policies or corporate culture any better than anybody else does. Their rejection of Gab's Dissenter from their App Stores (both iOS and, in its browser extension form, the Mac App Store) tells me just whose side of the 1st Amendment vs Censorship fight they're on.

But there are workarounds for that; on iOS, you can turn any web page into an "app"; on macOS, there's the Dissenter standalone web browser.

But Apple won't sell their users' information, and that's Google's entire fucking revenue model. Apple charges a premium for their hardware, true; for Google, on the other hand, you are what they're selling.

You also have the problem of Apple being just as much in bed with the NSA as Google is. Hell, any American-based tech company is compromised with at least back-doors if not the dubious practice of its backend tech being cloud based.

 

[The Question]

I don't know if I agree with that. As a general assumption, it makes sense; on the other hand, there's evidence against it, viz: the FBI had to whine and threaten trying to get Apple to unlock iPhones, ultimately failing to get their way. Eventually they had to pay somebody to create a machine to jailbreak the things.

Of course, maybe that was just "user privacy theater." Maybe it wasn't. Either way, selling their users isn't part of Apple's revenue model -- that's why there's an "Apple tax" at all. They make their money where they're supposed to make their money. Google makes their dollars off selling their users.

 

[Starship Coyote]

I don't know if I agree with that. As a general assumption, it makes sense; on the other hand, there's evidence against it, viz: the FBI had to whine and threaten trying to get Apple to unlock iPhones, ultimately failing to get their way. Eventually they had to pay somebody to create a machine to jailbreak the things.

I said NSA, not FBI. The two agencies don't share common ground when it comes to electronic surveillance.

If the FBI had an exploit they could have used to break that phone, they're not going to burn it on a goddamned phone, thus alerting everyone to the exploit, when they can seek legal recourse.

Of course, maybe that was just "user privacy theater." Maybe it wasn't. Either way, selling their users isn't part of Apple's revenue model -- that's why there's an "Apple tax" at all. They make their money where they're supposed to make their money. Google makes their dollars off selling their users.

You keep saying that, but I think you're slightly naive about the relationship between tech companies in the US and US intelligence agencies.

 

[The Question]

I said NSA, not FBI. The two agencies don't share common ground when it comes to electronic surveillance.

Maybe it's naive of me, but I'm not worried about the NSA eavesdropping on my emails. There's nothing in them that's of any use to that stratum of the spook-o-verse. In fact, the only problem I have with even Google monetizing my data is that they're getting paid for my information while I'm not.

If the FBI had an exploit they could have used to break that phone, they're not going to burn it on a goddamned phone, thus alerting everyone to the exploit, when they can seek legal recourse.

If they had such an exploit, I'd suppose they'd have just quietly used it instead of pitching a fit at all.

You keep saying that, but I think you're slightly naive about the relationship between tech companies in the US and US intelligence agencies.

Again, my issue isn't the relationship between tech companies and intelligence agencies. It's between tech companies and for-profit information brokering. I have no doubt that Apple cooperates with some suit-and-tie alphabet soup fuckers somewhere, somehow. There's not much point in me objecting to that since, A. they all do it, and B. because they all do it, there's no way to "vote with our wallets" to discourage them doing it.

What I object to is monetizing that information -- which Google does and Apple does not. There's the fulcrum on which the lever of decision rests.