I rarely use windows and rarely had to in the last two years that I’ve owned a Mac. Before that, I was a Linux user for some years. But those of us who don’t use Windows all know that frustrating moment when you realize you need an installation of Windows to do something.

There is Wine, which works for some things, though admittedly, not always that great. There’s virtualization, which it seems matured greatly in recent years.

But I ask myself, why don’t I actually use Windows? Surely, you can get used to anything, and there are certain aspects of it that are tolerable, but maybe I needed a reminder. So I installed a copy on a virtual machine, booted it and off I went.

Retro’s not too bad
I really hated the new XP look after a while, much in the same way that I hate the vista look. But somehow I’ve grown to really like the old standard look. Why? I don’t know, maybe it’s familiar. Maybe it’s more to do with the fact that it’s easier on the eye. Or maybe it’s just to do with the fact that IT’S SIMPLY UGLY. And so I stuck with the old look on purpose.

That’s not a big deal, is it? I can deal with that.

Annoyance kicks in
I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST PRESSED THAT BUTTON. It’s the windows key. I was doing something in full screen on the virtual machine and Command-tabbed out of it only to realize that the I PRESSED THE WINDOWS KEY.

The first problem with windows is that they don’t give you the tools to fight their own stupidity. So you have to get external tools to do the job.

Fine, I install it, much better now. I’m happy at least. I don’t have that thing getting me out of full screen now at least.

Idiotic software designs
Installing programs is usually done via wizards in Windows. Due to the lack of a complete unified installer, programmers rely on things like:

• InstallShield
• NullSoft’s NSIS
• Various self extractors and such
• Praying.

Apple solved the problem already. Programs are packages, you put them in your applications folder or wherever you like. For the uninitiated, this is what it looks like:

The file named DOSBox is an actual application. It contains everything you need. All you have to do is drag it to your favorite folder (/Applications is usually it). That’s ALL you have to do.

Hell, even on Linux installation processes are usually summed up as ‘apt-get install emacs‘ or ‘emerge emacs‘ or at worst as extracting a tarball and typing in ‘./configure && make && make install‘, where as on Windows installation processes are all different and horrible in their own unique ways.

I’m going to make a point and try to install audio drivers. No big deal, just audio drivers for a very simple card. So I downloaded a .exe file from the vendor’s website, I launch it and get a screen. “Reading package contents”. The Bar fills up completely and there it is extracting files. Then it appears that wasn’t the ACTUAL installer, and it needs to start another InstallShield installer inside it.

This process takes quite some time, though. But, hey, look! Something’s happening! It’s taking up all of my screen space to do stuff, yay!

So I had my screen space ninja’d by an installer which was launched BY an installer. I think I must be trippin’ serious balls here because this is what I see:

Another installer. Another progress bar.

But this is what really ticks me off about software for Windows. They are intrusive as hell. This is merely a sound driver by same I think Taiwanese company. They somehow thought it’s a good idea to add this useless program to my startup called “SOUNDMAN.EXE” which does practically nothing.

No matter what sound card I was using under Linux, I always, with no exception, used the same tools to control it. Alsamixer. And though some hardware will rightly need extra utilities to deal with them (such as the wacom tablet I had), those utilities don’t run on start up.

In other words, they don’t bother you unless you use them.

Mac OS includes every single printer driver out there, and that’s cool because they’ve all been tested and approved by Apple so you don’t need their Printer Monitor X 2™ to use their printer, but Apple’s own printer monitor, which fits uniformly into your OS X desktop.

The CEO says I’m speshul
Some companies think it’s a good idea to make their software look different. That is to say, throw everything the OS developers have done out the window and substitute it with their own stuff. You guessed it: they never fit into the overall design. For instance, software that I like a lot:

But don’t get me wrong. I like what it does and not how it does it. Why even waste time on skinning those widgets? Who the hell wants to see that?

Why can’t we all learn a lesson from software windows software and avoid that stupidity?

Update: Check out this atrocity.

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