The Vista Horror
Dec. 26th, 2006 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurThanks to my apprentice Aaron/Gundormr for this fascinating article, which tears into Windows Vista quite thoroughly. The upshot seems to be that the usual arguments about the politics of DRM have simply been a distraction from the real problem with Vista, which is that, in implementing DRM comprehensively, they have rendered it a *wretched* operating system to use for most media use -- not just a nuisance, but deliberately breaking all sorts of high-fidelity applications. It argues, quite effectively, that the home consumer just plain shouldn't buy it, and that uptake of this OS by consumers will cost the industry as a whole a fortune.
When the history of 2006 is written, the interesting technology question may well be which was the bigger screwup: the PS3 or Vista. Both started with specific goals that made a certain amount of sense in isolation, but in following those goals too far they shot themselves in the foot.
(And may I say, it annoys the hell out of me, because the .NET underpinnings of Vista are really lovely tech -- cutting-edge, even innovative in some ways. If they had left the DRM crap out entirely, I think I would really have liked this version of the OS...)
When the history of 2006 is written, the interesting technology question may well be which was the bigger screwup: the PS3 or Vista. Both started with specific goals that made a certain amount of sense in isolation, but in following those goals too far they shot themselves in the foot.
(And may I say, it annoys the hell out of me, because the .NET underpinnings of Vista are really lovely tech -- cutting-edge, even innovative in some ways. If they had left the DRM crap out entirely, I think I would really have liked this version of the OS...)