Why No One Loves Microsoft

While many techies evangelize their chosen technologies with religious zeal, Microsoft actually has to pay technology evangelists (the most passionate of whom even quit). Michael Singer presents two viewpoints on why no one loves Microsoft.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst and founder of the Enderle Group, suggests Microsoft did have a religion and a passionate audience up until 1995, but Microsoft never really nurtured them and they died off.

“Now Windows is just part of the PC,” Enderle said. “There are still those that admire the company and Gates, but the passion that exists around FreeBSD, Linux, and Apple simply has no analog in Windows. Great products come from passion — when Windows lost that, it lost its heart.”

Dan Kusnetzky, principal analyst with the Kusnetzky Group, blames corporations for the complacency.

“As long as organizations and individuals adopt the Microsoft way of doing things, they find it easier to adopt a Microsoft tool for the next thing they wish to do. This approach leads to market control, not to an emotional rush,” Kusnetzky said.

And what about the seeming lack of Microsoft fanboys? Resignation is the feeling.

“My sense is that once they’ve started down Microsoft’s path, they quickly discover that Microsoft’s creative use of incompatibilities keeps them on Microsoft’s chosen path,” Kusnetzky added.

I’ll tell you why I don’t love Microsoft: they’re fucking whiners. They whine about piracy, they whine about Google, they whine about the Third World. Hell, their whole business model was invented in a whine by Bill Gates thirty years ago. Whiners will always try the most negative, most myopic solutions to their problems — hence Microsoft’s reliance on spyware, bundleware, DRM, FUD, and incompatibilities.