Incrívelmente simpres!
Não sei também como dizer isso delicadamente. Na impossibilidade de ser gentil, serei curto-e-grosso: a Microsoft não destina o Windows para pessoas particularmente inteligentes.
Não que todos os usuários de Windows sejam burros ou semi-analfabetos - não são. Muitas pessoas extremamente inteligentes usam Windows. Costumam ser pessoas que precisam dele, ou que, por alguma questão que desafia a lógica, gostam dele, ou ainda que não se importam nem um pouco com que software rodam nem, assim como com salsichas, como ele é feito. Assim como na população geral, essas pessoas particularmente inteligentes não são maioria.
Mas eu preciso também dizer que não é uma demonstração inequívoca de brilhantismo quando alguém paga caro por um produto inferior, ou mesmo quando paga R$ 10 do camelô ou ainda quando baixa de um torrent qualquer. E comprar software pirata é sinal de desonestidade mais do que de esperteza.
Sendo direto: a maioria dos usuários de Windows, assim como a população em geral, não é composta, para usar um anglicismo, pelo "best and brightest". Ao contrário - a Microsoft faz o possível para, se não atrair, pelo menos não espantar o "worst and dimmest". Faz sentido: ela quer o maior público possível para seu software e ser seletiva (alguns diriam "elitista") não seria a melhor estratégia. De elitista basta a Apple. Microsoft é povão.
Precisamente por isso, não fiquei nem um pouco surpreso quando me apontaram, no site da Kalunga (um dos grandes parceiros da Microsoft), a imagem abaixo:
Agora... Eu esperava um pouco mais de cuidado e atenção. Ou, se não cuidado e atenção, pelo menos alguma supervisão adulta sobre quem faz o site.
Por outro lado, considerando tudo o que eu disse acima com toda a delicadeza que consegui me permitir, o anúncio está sob-medida para o público-alvo.
Nota:Até o momento (domingo, dia 1/11), a aberração não foi corrigida. Está lá. Basta abrir a página, descer pela coluna da esquerda até encontrar um flash de "Lojas especiais" e clicar no "Microsoft" nele. O link do meio do texto não vai funcionar por defeitos de construção do site que nem vale a pena discutir aqui.
A picture for users of lesser OSs
All in all, GNU/Linuxes are pretty mundane operating systems. There is nothing too fancy about them - It's more or less a collection of operating systems good ideas (Andrew Tanenbaum will never read this, fortunately), rolled out as a kernel (Linux itself), with a very polished userland (GNU, plus other programs that particular distros select) on top of it.
Its roots date back to the 70s, to Unix - it was made to its image. Current versions of both are quite similar and a Linux user will be pretty much at home on OSX, BSD, Solaris or AIX.
But those 70's ideas do not mean Linux is an old-fashined OS that brought nothing new to the world of operating systems.
One of the nicest things GNU/Linux introduced is comprehensive software package dependency and update management. With it, if you want to install a program, you can pick it from a list and, like by magic, all libraries, resources and everything else the program depends, plus the program itself, are installed. No need to browse the web after an installer, no need to run programs as a super-user, nothing. Everything quick and simple. And then, when the time comes a new version of something in your computer becomes available, the machine warns you and prompts you to install it, regardless of where it came from, as long as its publisher is registered with the software management system (like the Chrome browser and the VirtualBox VM tools in the picture you see, as well as Skype, which you don't see in the picture because mine is up-to-date). Software components are neatly divided in packages that depend on each other. Need a DVD burner? Codecs will be downloaded with it.
And then, when something becomes unnecessary or obsolete, the machine offers to delete it and conserve disk space.
Other operating systems attempt to accomplish the same with a variety of tools, but none, perhaps with the exception of OpenSolaris (because they hired the guy who designed Debian's package management), has anything that comes even close.
Cool, isn't it?
Como previsto anteriormente...
Como já prevíamos, os fumantes foram apenas os primeiros.
Parece que os obsesos são os próximos.
Ainda que eu não seja nenhuma das duas coisas, acho que vale a pena pensar se é isso que nós queremos.
A bit of vaporware (or "Microsoft's Secret Newton Killer")
One of the funniest things about Microsoft is how predictable they are. Each and every time they perceive a threat to their cash cows - be it Windows, Office or completely new models of software distribution, they have the power of concocting an underwhelming and barely credible product that is either utterly fictitious, as to damage the sales of their competitors that actually have taken the time to develop real products, or is so infuriatingly flawed that it hampers the credibility of the whole model its competition is trying to steer the market towards.
I first observed it with Windows for Pen Computing, a response to the Newton, to the Momenta and to the GEOS-based Tandy and Casio über-PDAs. Then there was the Cairo/WinFS database/file system that was never delivered, a more generic confusion tool for the times some other vendor promised a better way to manage data. It span decades without as much as a working prototype.
I also remember the flurry of multi-touch things after Jeff Han demo went viral. From Surface to silly interaction on a precariously balanced notebook screen. There was a video of that one here, but Microsoft canned Soapbox as soon as they realized they could not compete with a Google-backed YouTube and the video is toast.
More recently, we saw Project Natal overpromise a sci-fi worthy way of interacting with games, complete with a special-effects covered video, over the more realistic and obviously less impressive offerings from Sony and Nintendo that were actually being launched. Did you see articles on the stuff being introduced at the same show? Me neither. It was all Project Natal.
Milo and Kate is quite impressive, but if Microsoft can do that, I don't know why they are wasting their time launching Windows versions - they could release a notebook version of HAL-9000. Or Skynet.
And now, under the buzz of a gigantic iPod Touch, an iNewton or whatever the Apple tablet may be called, Microsoft shows this: the "astonishing" (according to Gizmodo) Microsoft tablet, with software working so well you can't possibly trace its Windows heritage.
It's like Apple pretending the Knowledge Navigator was to be a real product about to launch instead of a fancy concept.
But, again, that's the Microsoft and that's why we love them.
At least I do. They make me laugh.
And, just to finish it off, the classic video of the Longhorn PDC2003 video. Unless you want to be disappointed with Courier or Natal, consider how this video relates to the actual shipping Windows Vista:
