Replacing Windows? (Premium)

I’ve been using and evaluating Windows for over 20 years, but I’ve always tested its most important competitors as well. This provides a perspective that I find lacking elsewhere. After all, how could I know that Windows was “better” if I’d never used the alternatives?

But yes, I’ve strayed.

In the 1990’s, I began using various Linux distributions, and this was so long ago that when I first downloaded this system, I did so using 1.44 MB floppy disk images. For Slackware.

I also used various versions of IBM’s OS/2, and was convinced it was superior to Windows until, of course, Microsoft yanked the key feature—Windows application compatibility—that made this system viable in the first place.

I tested BeOS when it was ported to x86 in the late 1990’s, positive that Jean-Louis Gassée was onto something. (I still wonder about this.)

I tested OpenStep, briefly, and then the first and only x86-compatible versions of the Rhapsody Developer Preview after Apple purchased NeXT. (I soon after tested Windows NT for the first time on the same PC, a Dell laptop.)

When Apple started dual-booting Mac OS X with its Classic Mac OS, I purchased an iBook specifically for testing purposes. And have spent the intervening 17 years purchasing and using more Macs than have most Apple enthusiasts.

During the 2000’s, I also continued testing various flavors of Linux, and for many years I regularly maintained at least one PC specifically for this purpose. Later, I purchased at least two netbooks that came with Linux.

Most recently, I’ve tested Chrome OS on various Chromebooks and other PCs. And I’ve tested Apple’s iPad Pro to see whether the company’s vision of the post-PC future was fact or fiction. (It’s a bit of both.)

And that’s just the PC-like platforms. I’ve obviously spent a lot of time testing various phones, tablet, and other mobile devices, and tons of home-based digital media solutions of all kinds. I used proprietary PCMCIA-based wireless networking cards before the Wi-Fi standards were a thing. MP3 players of all kinds back in that era. And much more. But let’s stay focused here.

Windows.

It occurred to me this week that it seems like I’ve been actively seeking to replace Windows ever since I first started using it. That’s not strictly true, of course. But in many ways, this testing has been like speed dating, a chance to peek off to the side and see if there was anything interesting out there.

And heck, I hated Windows at one point. Did not respect Microsoft at all.

When I was an Amiga user in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, right when Microsoft was moving comfortably into its industry dominance with Windows 3.x, I had nothing but contempt for the company. It was second rate, and so were its products. Especially MS-DOS. And especially that hack that ran on top of it.

But there were little things that drew me, in time, to Microsoft and to Windows.

Windows for Workgroups 3.11, for example, was an early peek at the underpinnings of Windows 95: It worked with 32-bit processors, could be configured for 32-bit disk access, and provided integrated networking capabilities. Windows NT was even more interesting, of course, but in the early-to-mid-1990’s, it was a non-starter on normal PCs.

Microsoft Office 4.x—which included Word 6.0—was also a major factor in me reevaluating Microsoft. These products were so much better than anything on the Amiga that it was like a wake-up call. I was able to get early access to the software because my wife worked for a training company at the time and they were writing materials for it.

Soon thereafter, I began my writing career, starting with books about Visual Basic 3, Excel (5.0, I think, whatever the version in Office 4.x was), and then, finally, Windows 4.0, which was soon renamed to Windows 95. And then related products like Plus! 95, Office 95, and the initial version of The Microsoft Network (MSN).

And I came to really like and prefer Windows, especially, but also these related products. Came to respect Microsoft and the software it made as both matured. (Though the U.S. antitrust trial uncovered some unflattering information about the company that triggered a years-long period of doubt.)

Until it finally happened.

I actually defended Microsoft. In public.

Sometime in the mid-1990’s—probably 1995 or 1996—I was at a party in San Francisco, and was listening to some techie types talking about Apple, and how much better the company’s engineers and programmers had to be than those at Microsoft.

“You’re nuts,” I told them, interrupting the circle jerk.

Apple, I explained, only needed to make its software run on a single platform, the Mac, which it controlled. Microsoft, meanwhile, had to deal with literally millions of hardware configurations, thanks to the open nature of the PC and the explosive availability of peripherals of all kinds.

“That Windows boots up at all is a miracle. That millions of people get real work done it every day is all you need to know about the quality of this product. Microsoft clearly has better engineers and programmers than Apple. Clearly.”

In subsequent years, I moved between Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 9.x and then followed the rest of the world to the NT code base for good with the releases of Windows 2000 and then XP. During that time, I started the SuperSite for Windows as well, perhaps the ultimate defense of Microsoft and its products, and ran that site for 15 years. (And then Penton ran it into the ground because they are terrible.)

There were good years and bad years.

Windows XP was a high, but then major security vulnerabilities happened immediately, and Microsoft hit pause and started its Trustworthy Computing initiative.

Windows XP also begat special OS versions for tablet PCs and Media Center PCs, neither one of which took off in the market. (And a related effort around Windows Home Server which likewise was a bust.)

Longhorn was the biggest high of all, in October 2003 when it first announced. And then we found out it was all faked. And when Longhorn crashed under its own weight, Microsoft spent a year developing Windows Vista instead.

Vista wasn’t as bad as people still claim it was, but whatever: Microsoft improved it and then replaced it with Windows 7, which was excellent.

And then insanity won out. Microsoft released Windows 8, the most embarrassing product it has ever created—there’s no reason to argue otherwise, folks—and a product so bad, and so ill-timed, that it may literally be responsible for the decline of this platform.

As with Vista, Microsoft worked quickly to fix this problem—I later found at that the firm knew it was shipped a dog a year before it released Windows 8 but was helpless to stop it—first with various point releases. And then with Windows 10.

Windows 10.

Sigh.

This one is hard for me. There is a part of me that revels in the fact that the Windows phone team, which Steven Sinofsky had previously treated so poorly, had, in effect, successfully launched a coup and taken over “big” Windows. I love that this happened. And I love that Windows 10 returned the focus to where it belonged, on traditional PCs, and away from the “touch-first” nonsense of Windows 8.

And yet, Windows 10 has always been problematic. And it’s gotten worse over time.

Windows 10 is stuffed full of advertising. There have been years of pointless updates that benefit few users, driven by a Windows Insider Program feedback loop that overly emphasizes the wishes of the nerd minority over the majority of the normal user base. And it ships with crapware for some reason. The most recent versions have more than ever before.

Through all this time, I continued evaluating the competition. Mac OS X, now macOS. (And now much more interesting that it’s on Intel.) Linux, of all stripes, though the “year of desktop Linux” has, of course, remained elusive. And then Chromebook, most recently with Android app compatibility. And iPad Pro.

I’ve never been actively seeking to replace Windows, not really.

But I have to admit that the work Microsoft has done internally to undermine Windows—the ads, the terrible features, the crapware—has caused a real crisis of faith. And … I do wonder about the future.

So I’ll keep evaluating, keep testing, and keep hoping that Microsoft finally figures it out and stops treating this product—and the people who use it—so poorly. There are small signs of change, like the recent focus on productivity and refinement, which I really do appreciate. But I’m a worrier. And I just hope it continues.