I’ve been a user of a ton of operating systems over time. In the past ten years, I have been an everyday user of the big three, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, for long stretches of time. I switched from Apple to Windows/Linux last year, and I’ve largely been OK with it, but I’ve complained enough about all three that I realized that they all suck.
Of course, they suck for completely different reasons, which is part of the frustration. And each have places where they shine. Why can’t there be a nice combination of all three? That would be perfect.
Why Mac OS X sucks:
- Apple is becoming a controlling, closed system, and with the advent of the Apple App store, developers have to go through an approval process to get their apps on the store, there are specific things you can’t include in an app in the store, and there will come a time when most people get their software through the store, so there will be less and less incentive to maintain non-app store versions of software apps
- These days, you can find most kinds of software for the Mac, but there still is a relative paucity of apps in comparison to Windows.
Why Windows sucks:
- Viruses, Trojans and Worms, Oh My!
- Although I have only seen the Blue Screen of Death once in my year of Windows 7 use, there are still inexplicable slow-downs, crashes, and weird problems. And it takes FOREVER to boot, even with Soluto.
- Internet Explorer
Why Linux (in my case Ubuntu) sucks:
- I have to go through arcane (and luckily for me, fairly painless) procedures to get simple things to work (like plugging a headset with a mic into my jack!)
- Hardware manufacturers ignore Linux for the most part
- Most software developers don’t make Linux versions
The only good news I can see is that the operating system is getting less and less relevant. And, on balance, for me, Linux is winning. Now that dropbox and scrivener work on Linux, and I’m moving from Quicken to some online cloudish thing (suggestions?), I can pretty much leave Windows behind. (Oh, there is still Netflix. Sigh.)
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