Steve Jobs wannabe Sinofsky seems to turn Microsoft more and more into something that resembles a Linux distro company at the end of the 90s. We have the fanboi army, we have the compatibility-is-bad mindset, we have the über-arrogance of the guys in charge (despite the availability of more mature products in the targeted marketplace [tablet] and the obvious problems of Win8), we have the complete disregard of the current reality and customers and instead a messianic focus on some mythical future - Metro and apps in Microsoft's case, Year Of the Linux Desktop in the case of their forebearers. Also, a healthy dose of stupid politics, at the expense of the customer, is there as well. Non-GNU software is bad! Let's make it as miserable for the customer as possible if he runs commercial software! New Microsoft: Desktop is bad! Let's make it a hassle to run the desktop and desktop software! And not to forget the complete snottiness: Windows 8 - Linux, is perfect! Everyone who says otherwise is a moron!
The similarities are stunning.
The old Microsoft never thought its products were perfect, and that mindset is one of the reasons they won the desktop. In the Kingdom of Sinofskiana though it's sunshine everyday and Notro is gift from the gods.
I have to give rare kudos though: If you dared to criticize Linux in the good old times on their forums you received tons of abuse and got banned. Microsoft's Windows 8 forums on technet are full of negativy, yet they don't get deleted usually. I hope it stays that way. (though, the admins of this forum seem to have more itchy fingers)
here's more how MS "transforms" to semi-freetardism:
Standards-even-if-it-hurts. According to freetard orthodoxy, a fart app is more valuable than a program that could generate stock market predictions without fail, if the former is "open" and/or adheres to standards. Same bug is creeping into MS. They have raped their .NET stack (worse: annoyed their WPF/SL devs) in favour of.. HTML! In opposite to that look what the
"real" Jobs did: Steve Jobs blasted Flash not because HTML is great, but to take out a competitor to Apple's proprietary offerings.
Ideology over function: Metro apps would profit from chrome. The Skype app is a hassle compared to the desktop version. But, ideology says no! Notro must be chrome-free, it's what the design language says after all! That's freetard-think, just like kernel devs won't allow binary drivers/blobs, even though the customer would profit from it. But GNU says no, sorry.
We-support-only-good-standards: One reason why Linux audio is subpar, is because just when an audio stack gets entrenched, a new one appears that has a slightly better design in theory but is completely untested and underdeveloped. Of course the community ditches the old one, implements the new one, hillarity ensues, the cycle repeats, but the ideology is served. Same thinking with MS: The mail app in Windows 8 doesn't support POP3. IMAP is supported though, because it's "better" in ways only nerds care about, even though POP3 is far more prevalent. Users are screwed, but the ideology got served. Worse, instead of not just offering ther POP3 option, THERE IS a POP option, only when you click on it the programs angrily berates you for using that shitty POP standard. It reminds me of "Spread Firefox" fanatics from 2004 "How do you dare to visit my site using the 90% market share browser!? Go away, scum!"
GNU/Linux quest: That's minor, but the whole Metro yada reached almost FSF's Linux naming quest. Microsoft even wanted to ban apps from the store if they contained "Metro" in the name (what's if your app is about the Paris Metro?). Thankfully this has been averted.
There are more examples, but that's it for now. Since mid 2011 MS seems to transform into a bad Linux distro. And they deserve to be criticized for that.
