Reasons Why Monopolies Are Bad, #82

[jducoeur]

Every time I am tempted to point out that Microsoft does sometimes get things right, they come along and prove just how very wrong they can sometimes get it.

I just tried to log into Windows Messenger. It informed me that there was a new update, which I would have to accept in order to proceed. Okay, saith I, this is fairly normal, so I press okay. It clicks, whirrs and hums as I keep working.

And then it reboots my machine. No asking of permission, no warning -- it simply shuts down all of my programs and reboots.

I ask myself whether these people have any conception of good UI engineering, and I'm forced to conclude that they probably do. They just don't care. They don't have to -- they're Microsoft, and they go where they want to today.

(Yes, yes -- I hear all of the Apple mavins snickering into their sleeves. We'll take the sermon as read, okay?)

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Do you (does anyone?) know of any utilities that will let a user "take back" a little control of their Window$ boxes? E.g., that sits between the registry and everything else and plays traffic cop, or does the same for things like reboot requests/etc.?

Cause yeah, I run into that crap at work too, and it pisses me off.

[asim.livejournal.com]

Do you (does anyone?) know of any utilities that will let a user "take back" a little control of their Window$ boxes?

Somewhat -- check out the SysInternals (http://www.sysinternals.com/) folks for some nice tools, most of which are freeware.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Did you look at the home version of Previx? That does a lot for the registery, but not for boot requests.

A lighter version of that is in SpywareBlaster (but it focuses only on spyware) and even lighter is the innoculation feature of SpyBot S&D

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Finally, a technical issue I can comment on!!!!!

I completely agree with you, Justin.

It's "Screw the customer" thinking.

Liam

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It prompted me to shut all my other windows (including Outlook!) before rebooting.

[jducoeur]

Not in my case: as far as I could tell, it unilaterally decided to shut them all down, and then rebooted without any intervention from me...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Consider GAIM, then. Or Trillian.

[jducoeur]

Not an option -- as part of my job, I need to be running all of the primary services on a regular basis, to check integration. I run GAIM on my home laptop, but for work I need real MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Sametime, etc...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Mount a scratch monkey?

[jducoeur]

An option, but too inconvenient to be practical. I may find Windows Messenger stupidly broken at times, but it's only worth so much effort to work around it. (At work. At home, I can do what I like...)

[tpau]

why? my apple laptop does this all the bloody time...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I hear all of the Apple mavins snickering into their sleeves.

Undeservedly, in that they've no proof that Apple would perform any better if they were in Microsoft's position. Power corrupts, and all that. Comparing the current practices between Apple and Microsoft is... well, comparing apples and oranges. :)

[mindways]

*chuckle*

I like the products that Apple makes, and appreciate their innovation greatly - but insofar as evil corporate practices go, I think that were they in Microsoft's position, they'd be just as bad - or quite likely even worse.

Despite my constant irritation with Microsoft, I'm very glad that Apple didn't win its "look-and-feel" lawsuit all those years ago...

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this has always been one of my biggest problems with Microsoft's effective monopolies in various product areas -- not only do you sometimes get better products from their competitors, they do better work when they have competitors.

[jducoeur]

Oh, much. It's very conspicuous that they shut down IE development completely for several years as soon as Netscape was effectively kaput, declaring that they had done everything that could be done with browsers. Now that Firefox has become a threat, they're suddenly waking up their development teams again.

Microsoft is a textbook example of the problems with monopolies: they *only* do good work when they have effective competition...