Microsoft back in the days was hailed as the innovator, the inventor, the creator, the new wave… you name it.

I still remember back in the days of DOS computers (copy c:myfiles*.* to A:directory), and when Windows 3.1 came out, my dad installed it on our computer. This must have been 1993 or so. It was quite cool. Everybody went “WOW!!!”

And then Windows 95 was released, making a jump from a software to an OS at the time.

And then remember when they came up with Windows 95 PLUS! package? You could change Themes on your windows system! You could skin it, change the cursors, change the bar colors, background, sound, everything! It was phenomenal. It created a new breed of nerds making creative themes for Windows 95 PLUS! package.

And then the deterioration began. Windows 98 started having a lot of bugs such as crashing, or not shutting down properly. Bug patches became a common thing for Windows OS’s. And then there was Windows 2000 or NT, which I didn’t even bother switching to. At the time I wasn’t too into these things so I don’t know the exact reasons why a lot of people never bothered switching. Perhaps it was built more as a server system? I can’t remember that well.

And now we’re on XP. Windows XP. The security bugs. Every week there was a security patch. Spyware. Microsoft itself had to make a few pieces of software (the Anti-Spyware Beta, the Malicious Software Removal Tool) to counter these things as well. And remember Service Pack 2? Security became such an issue that usability was sacrificed to a certain degree.

This is perhaps when Apple regained its confidence. They saw the complaints from the people about these complicated issues that were bound to come on the Microsoft platforms which are DOS-based still, and soon they started their rebound. Back in the mid-90’s, Apple Computers seemed doomed to stay as a specialty computer manufacturer who supplied only for the special breed of graphic editors, movie editors, and such breeds. But no, they’ve come back huge.

I won’t even mention the fact that Mac computers are, natively completely immune to viruses, and can now run Windows software on them as well (read this previous post about Parallel on Mac OS X). Even apart from that, many small ideas were stolen from Apple by Microsoft, as you can see in the above video insert from Youtube.com.

Let’s also compare browsers. How about Internet Explorer 7.0 vs Firefox? Let’s see how Microsoft became the follower, not the innovator.

1. Tabbed browsing - Firefox had it all along. Microsoft scrambled to get to it as of version 7.
2. Embedded Google search WITHOUT having to install a separate toolbar - Microsoft has it in Version 7, but still, unlike Firefox, it doesn’t have the other search engines configured. It only has Live.com search on it, and you need to add the rest on your own.
3. Advanced source-code viewing - IE still hasn’t done that yet. Firefox will show you the source code in a neat color-coded format, whereas IE will still display it in raw text. Utterly useless.
4. Plug-ins - People are able to create plugins for Firefox to make life easy. Very soon I will make a list of my favorite FF plug-ins, but for now, let’s just say there are plugins in Firefox that are so handy for web-development and analysis that I cannot live without them now.
5. Javascript Console - Firefox’s Javascript console will tell you exactly where that faulty javascript code is and visibly show it to you. Not to mention the error messages are very explicit. But IE? No, it still shows a very vague explanation, and I still don’t know how they generate the line number on where it went wrong. It won’t just show the code. If your files use the PHP command “include” then you need to add up those lines to find out where exactly the faulty script is at. Also, FF lets you manually type in scripts you want to run, as if they were embedded within the HTML. What a great troubleshooting tool!!!
6. Embedded RSS feeds - while Firefox had the foresight that RSS feeds would become huge, Microsoft didn’t until, FF showed it to them. RSS feeds can be natively added to FF on the bookmark, and you can simply click on it to see the title of all the feeds. It’s amazingly handy. IE added something similar only as of IE 7, but I still had errors trying to add feeds through feedburner.com. I gave up.

So. That’s just a few things I can think about.

If you can think of any more, please add them as comments, and I will add them to my post giving you full credit!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under General, Web Development, Hot Issues, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.