John Francis wrote:
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 01:12:31PM -0500, Adam Maas wrote:
If Windows was only available on as tightly-constrained a hardware
platform as Macs, and had as few applications available for it, then
it would be both as reliable and as consistent as the Mac is today.
Windows suffers, mostly, from trying to be all things to all men.
While there are still a few nasty details hidden under the covers
for the software writer (the asynchronous event delivery mechanism
is one such example that comes to mind) it's amazingly easy to create
applications that have the same look-and-feel as Microsoft apps.
Not everybody does that, of course, but most of that inconsistency
can be laid at the feet of the application developer.
I agree entirely. Although you might note that with OS X, there are far
more apps available to run on OS X than on Windows, and Application
creation is ridiculuously simple (I created my own Mac web browser in
about 15 minutes, using only tools included with the OS). There are
distinct advantages to selling a unix-based OS.
But Window's issues are a combination of poor design on the DOS-derived
versions (95,98,Me) and the inherent compromises necessary in making the
NT-descended versions compatible with the DOS-derived versions (This
applies to both UI and API's).
-Adam