Why doesn’t Microsoft just kick everyone’s ass?

I’m sort of a computer aficionado, a geek if you will. I’ve always had a cutting edge computer, often quite literally as I’ve cut my hands countless times while building my new bad ass PC. What confuses me is the fact that my computer doesn’t feel any faster than the computer I had 10 years ago.  It takes about the same amount of time to boot up, it’s about as responsive when I click or open something, and it locks up, crashes or plain malfunctions with about the same frequency. The major difference in my computing life has been an increase in internet speed, multimedia and gaming.

How is this possible? Microsoft is a huge, rich company with almost limitless resources, why do they seem incapable of taking advantage of the exponential increase in computing power that’s taken place over the past 10 years? My 2 year old Macbook is so much more responsive than my 1 month old super duper cutting edge PC workstation, it almost makes me want to blog about it. Is this some sinister plot to keep us upgrading, to always feel like the hardware we own is somehow inadequate? I feel like I’m constantly chasing some magical hardware setup that will finally not bog down when I open a new windows explorer window. Does it seriously take 5-10 seconds to figure out what my folders and icons look like in the same folder I open everyday with a system that’s so tweaked you can’t even buy one that fast from a store?

Is Apple so good because they are not mainstream and therefore don’t fall into the Budweiser/McDonald’s trap? Could Microsoft build something truly awesome if they wanted to, or have they gotten so bloated as a company they basically function as efficiently as the George W. Bush administration, thieving and bullying included?

  1. Windows Vista – People hate it and actually downgrade to an OS that came out 8 years ago.
  2. Office 2007 – A dog and a resource hog.
  3. Windows mobile phones – I had one of these, it made me think Naomi Campbell wasn’t trying to hurt her assistant, her Windows mobile phone had just frozen again.
  4. Zune – Turd.

Sleek, streamlined companies like Apple and Google are moving in to kick Microsoft’s ass with their simple, clear, responsive, flexible products. Will Microsoft be able to respond, or will they continue to thrash around like a headless chicken with nothing to do other than trip itself up, bump into things and, when it can get the firepower, shoot itself in the foot?

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3 Comments on “Why doesn’t Microsoft just kick everyone’s ass?”

  • 9 April, 2009,

    Why doesn’t everyone just kick Microsoft’s ass? The satisfaction would be shorter lived but more fulfilling in an instinctually primitive karmic sort of way.

  • Stiffie
    9 April, 2009,

    The Zune is indeed a turd. A co-worker bought one and I finally had to tell her I hated her music player and never wanted to answer another question about that POS again.

  • thegleek
    15 April, 2009,

    sometimes at night, microsoft is under my pillow.. subjugating me to ear-violence… its indescribable it is. they make me do things. say things. everyone places the blame on me. but i’m hear to face the music and confess that the sins of my doing was indeed that of microsoft’s greater plan.

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