This is in response to a comment about my last post.
I expected something revolutionary and significantly better than what was currently on the market. Microsoft consistently does this with other applications. Sql Server is, in my opinion, FAR superior to Oracle and MySql. .net kick’s Java’s behind. Visual Studio is so far ahead of the competition that using anything else is painful. For those of you that live and die by Eclipse, VS 2005 is clearly a superior product. The XBOX 360 is also much better than just about anything else, although the WII comes close in sheer fun.
So why isn’t the operating system and browser far superior to the competition? Microsoft has 70,000 employees for crying out loud! They had 100 or so developers working on WPF alone!
My point is this: They started from the Server 2003 core and then modified it. It took them 5 YEARS and it looks and feels like Service Pack 3 for XP.
Why couldn’t they have released this incrementally? After all, we know that it can run without Aero, and we know that the .net bits can be back ported to XP, so why the large release?
There’s got to be a better way to do security. Surely the smart folks at MS can come up with a way to monitor the intent of an app to determine that’s its going to do something that would be perceived as bad and notify the user appropriately.
The logic you used for why they are being restrictive is the same logic that people use to explain why communism is a good thing. The “people” are too stupid to run their own lives, therefore, the big government must come in and do it for them. I don’t buy that. I think a better solution would be to anticipate when an application is going to do something bad and stop it and notify the user then. No, that’s not going to be easy, but it’s possible. Assuming that everything that touches something that some developer in a cubicle somewhere decided could possibly be used badly is something that should be blocked is stupid. Start with that, but then take it another step. Look what the change is going to be and if it is, block it (roll it back) and notify. Yes, that's hard.
You should have a more user centric view of the world. In general, software isn’t for the developers, it’s for the users. Calling the users stupid serves little purpose other than demonstrating your lack of concern for your customer.
Software is for the user and should behave how the user expects it to, not force its will on the user. The stuff that the user can’t see is only important if it meets that goal. The general user population DOES NOT CARE about the bits inside of the machine. They only care about whether or not the software helps them do what they want to do.
Software does “magically” develop from ideas. Coming up with the ideas tends to be the hard part. The “programming” aspect is merely a constraint of time and computing power. WinFS was innovative, but it was cut. Aero is a mac look alike. WPF and WCF are innovative, but they’re not the “OS”. Maybe my standards are too high.
Anyway, this is too long already.