We’ve all seen those commercials that show the with-it young guy with his Mac and the middle-aged, leisure-suited, out-of-it wimp trying desperately to defend the virtues of Windows. Inevitably the digs at Windows refer to its unreliability. They don’t need to refer to its annoying security breaches which prompt you to download security updates almost as often as your anti-virus program downloads new ways to keep those menaces in check. That the windows guy with his glasses bears a passing resemblance to Bill Gates only reinforces the computer.
Several of my friends with Macs are always gently chiding me to junk my Windows machine when it gets into trouble with something. Last summer we were putting together a conference presentation which our partner’s Dell did not seem to be able to deal with. Meanwhile the Mac was purring away having no problems with anything.
Yet there are times when I find Steve Jobs almost as insipid, stubborn and monopolistic as Bill Gates. Both remind me of those know-it-alls in school who lorded it over the rest of us who were still struggling with keyboarding while they mastered the intricacies of Javascript or were on their way to becoming millionaires with some new video game idea.
The battle between the two of them reminded me of the old wars between beta and VHS when video recorders first came out. Since most of us are too young to remember that let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there were two ways to watch a movie at home–one was called VHS and the other was called Betamax. Beta was the child of Sony and actually the better of the two, but Sony would not license the technology to other manufacturers, so to watch a Beta movie you had to buy a Sony. VHS, on the other hand, licensed its technology to anyone who wanted it. The result was you could buy all kinds of VHS machines. Guess who won this battle?
Steve Jobs has persisted in his refusal to license Apple/Mac technology to other manufacturers. To buy the operating system for Mac, which to me is clearly superior to Windows, you have to buy a Mac. Bill Gates, on the other hand, has license deals with all the major computer manufacturers to put Windows on their machines. As a result guess who controls most of the market? Get this Mr. Jobs?
What keeps Macs from going the way of Beta is that Windows is so bad. That plus a loyalty among Mac users that borders on the obsessive. There are times when trying to talk to Mac user is like trying to talk to that smart-ass kid in the commercials. But the main reason has nothing to do with operating systems it has to do with one word: Office.
Over the years Microsoft Office–particularly Microsoft Word and to some extent Powerpoint and even its lousy email program and its browser–has become the de facto standard of workplaces across the country. When I submit articles or book manuscripts they want them in Word. Many years ago, the de facto standard used to be a program called Word Perfect–which is still better than Word but is going the way of Displaywrite and WordStar.
The main reason for this is that by controlling both the operating system and the application, Microsoft has a leg up on anyone who wants to develop another office system. Plus the sheer inertia and pain-in-the-ass factors that make changing to another platform a huge expense for businesses, nonprofits, schools and government agencies keep people wedded to Office.
From an equity perspective, this seems to me akin to John D. Rockefeller’s famous vertical integration model. If Bill Gates controls both the operating system and the applications, he controls what goes on computers. Various lawsuits have been filed to “break up” Microsoft much as they were filed to break up Standard Oil, but apparently our current legislators have less guts than their predecessors because Congress has done little to reign in the power of Microsoft.
This is one of the most outrageous equity issues of our times, for who controls how we process information controls the form and quality of that information. Add to that the various ominous little hints that Big Brother Bill is watching over your machine and you get the impression the country is being run out of Washington state not Washington, D.C. Bill Gates has become the man we love to hate much as people a century ago hated John D. Rockefeller.
There is, of course, a third way–Linux. But frankly Linux is for geeks. Just do a search for Linux and various pieces of hardware or software and you will get the idea. Plug and Play may be nicknamed Plug and Pray for a reason, but that is nothing compared to the code writing you need to do to make your video card work with Linux.
Linux has improved on this, but it still has one major problem–it can’t really run Office. Apple can, but it always seems one release behind and those releases seem to have problems. Now there are Office alternatives out there, some of them even free. I beta-tested Open Office several years ago and liked it a lot. Unfortunately my editors won’t take manuscripts from Open Office and its Windows conversion leaves much to be desired. Windows, of course, won’t convert to Open Office and its Word Perfect conversions have been a joke for over a decade (the most notorious of which is that it changes the Word Perfect extension–wpd, to the Microsoft extension doc).
Now I need to make a confession here. I have been building my own desktop machines since 1985–that was back in the day when memory chips came in banks and you had to set the polarity right on each of many chips to even get the darned machine to work. One of my mentors was Jack Chiu at–get this–Ubyte Computers. That was back when guys like Jack were not put out of business by Best Buy and the Geek Squad. What I have come to like is that for me upgrading is relatively cheap and painless. Want more speed–add a new chip. Want the latest sound card–plug it in.
Periodically I upgrade the entire motherboard. This allows me to pick the best motherboard rather than the junk found in most desktop systems sold in stores. A few years ago one of those manufacturers was even found guilty of using recycled motherboards.
There is one catch to this–you can’t do it with a Mac. If I want a new motherboard for a Mac I have to buy a new Mac. The difference is considerable–about $500-$1,000 depending on the specs you want. The thought of spending that much money every few years is what has kept me from buying a Mac. If Steve Jobs would get off his high horse and license his operating system like Bill Gates so I could build me own machines I’d buy a Mac in a heartbeat.
That is until two weeks ago when I spent several days trying to rid my computer of some so-called malware that had worked its way past my double firewalls, virus checkers and anti-spyware programs. My Bill Gates hate meter jumped several notches and I started thinking about getting a Mac. I won’t bore you with the details because if you own a PC you have probably been through a similar experience. All of these are due to the fact that Windows has as many security holes as a piece of Swiss cheese and the mice–in the form of online hackers–seem to delight in taking bytes out of Gates’ latest offering.
It seems to me we have not a technological problem but a political and equity problem. The main reason Gates has a monopoly and the main reason people fail to adopt Linux or Mac has to do with Office, not Windows. There are several political solutions to this. First, break up Microsoft. Unfortunately that has about as much chance as George Bush does of making it into the Presidential Hall of Fame. Instead, President Obama could do much to level the playing field by adopting something like Open Office as the de facto federal standard. Or at the very least he could allow documents to be submitted with Open Office.
You want a stimulus package–if the federal government were to junk Office and convert to an open system like Open Office–which, by the way, is FREE– it would save enough to resolve the mortgage crisis. Federal software contracts should be subject to the same scrutiny and open bidding as a new jet fighter aircraft. In the long run the software will actually cost more money.
So here is my recommendation for the month: have a fair and open bidding on Office software for federal departments. Make cost one of the factors in point scoring. Make cross platform–including Linux and the net another. Gates will undoubtedly lowball his price–he might even be willing to give away Office to the feds. This is where criteria number three comes in–the software must be available to federal contractors and others who deal with the federal government (meaning, of course, all of us) at the same price it is available in the bid.
Think how the world would change if that would happen. No more paying out the nose for “upgrades.” No more typing in codes just to get the software to work. No more compatibility issues. No more having to deal with Word’s notorious quirks. And, most of all, no more shoddy code writing that lets in stuff like what attacked my machine because without a monopoly Bill Gates would finally have to write a program that works without weekly security updates. Oh yes, good bye blue screen of death.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
