After reading some various articles on the web talking about the ‘Mojave’ experiment and the tech press’s negative knee jerk reaction to it (I guess because geeks think they have to be convinced of something and the regular masses don’t matter), it got me thinking. What are the root causes of the things that have given the Tech press something to complain about, and what’s truly at the heart of these causes?
Let’s start off with UAC, or User Access Control. (Again, I try to target my blog entries for everyone, not just the geeks.) UAC is that ‘annoying’ prompt that you get anytime an application tries to do something that requires administrative rights. UAC is one of these ‘necessary evils’ that must exist in life for a couple of reasons. (In fact, you should rarely see a UAC prompt.) Really, the only time you should ever see a UAC prompt is when you install a new application or device, or you yourself are making a system change that could be potentially dangerous. So why do we see them more often? For that my friends you need to blame the developer of the application that is causing the prompt. For years, essentially since XP SP2, Microsoft has been telling developers ‘it’s time you started playing by the rules.’ Lazy programming is the cause of all those UAC prompts. Software doesn’t need administrative rights to run or perform virtually any of its operations and yet, due to lazy programming that has been a constant leading to security breaches and vulnerability. In fact, during the last black hat the Vista machine that ‘got hacked’ was hacked through Adobe Flash. Is Vista to blame for this? Applications need to run at the user rights level and with UAC in place they are now being forced to play by the programming rules and write secure code that runs within the correct parameters. (They do this only kicking and screaming blaming MS the entire way.) Since running the RTM version of Vista up to now, the number of UAC prompts I have ran into have dropped to 1/3 what they used to be. This is due in large part to application vendors releasing newer versions and updates so that their application plays within the rules. (Microsoft is also an offender in this area as some of their own applications didn’t play by the rules causing these prompts unnecessarily. Microsoft really needs to set the example here and they’ve been updating the offending software.) This trend will continue until soon UAC prompts will be few and far between and you’ll forget why this used to irritate you so much.
The second major issue is hardware incompatibility. This is primarily in the areas of video cards and printers. The reason for this is the underlying engines for these hardware types were drastically upgraded in Vista and rightly so. The engines driving these devices were so old and archaic they didn’t allow the OS to take advantage of many of the new features and technologies taking place in these arenas. Microsoft, wisely, decided to build a new platform ground up to ensure that not only could the OS take advantage of current technologies but to ensure it could continue to take advantage of future technologies. In doing so they warned hardware vendors years (yes, years, in fact I think the new video driver framework was essentially finalized 3 years before Vista’s release) in advance that Vista would only work with drivers following the new framework. Unfortunately the hardware vendors didn’t prepare in time and we all suffered from driver pain for over a year. As for printers, many of the manufacturers (HP especially) just decided not to even write drivers for older hardware as they deemed it ‘too expensive’ and besides, it forces people to buy new printers. Sounds like a win-win for them especially when they can just blame it on Microsoft when customers call to complain.
So, in summary, let me make a prediction. Windows 7 (which I would assume is essentially going to be a more polished feature rich version of Vista with no major under the hood changes) is going to be widely accepted with great acclaim and enthusiasm and said to be ‘what Windows Vista should have been.’ This is essentially like complaining about pioneers who started building a city and saying 20 years later ‘this is what the city should have always been like.’ If Windows Vista had never existed and Windows 7 came out it would be facing the same painful transition period and bad press that Vista had. Vista was a new engine and platform (or foundation if you will) that will allow Microsoft to build great new Operating Systems for at least 3 more versions without any major transition period. In fact, it’s this ‘Vista’ foundation that will take Microsoft through until the next major Operation System shift, Midori.
And if you think Vista was a big change, just wait until Midori hits.
Posted
Aug 01 2008, 09:58 AM
by
Matt Freestone
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