Microsoft needs some 'wise guys' zdnet.com
I'd volunteer, but this is in the Scorsese sense, somewhat out of my field. Microsoft seems to have plenty of experience in the "offer you can't refuse", department, on the offering end anyway, but I guess they got other problems.
This is one Paul Somerset, a fan of Bill and Microsoft on the antitrust front anyway. But, he's tried out Windows 98, and like everyone else seems to have found that rumors of sucking less were greatly exaggerated. Even though he presumably approves of the "Chrysler car radio" antitrust analogy, he's up for tearing down other parts of the automotive analogical warfare front.
So instead of fixing the steering and the brakes and the engine, they added a bunch of chrome. Was it a coincidence that at the Win98 launch,
Windows guru Brad Chase demonstratd Microsoft's upcoming graphical extravaganza called Chrome? Or that Bill Gates's nifty rollout speech was largely about how PCs are like cars?
Except that analogy falls apart fast. Upgrading from one car to another is a snap. A five-year-old Lexus is almost as good as a new one. You can't get lucky in the back seat of a PC. And these days there are a lot more CPUs in a car than a computer (true).
And mercifully, cars and their cpus don't crash anywhere near as often as Windows. I'm sure the Yorktown sailors would be much happier with automotive style computing, too.
The rest of the column is good for a laugh, I'll let it speak for itself. Mr. Somerset seems to miss some of his own irony, though.
Cheers, Dan. |
