Things I Hate About Microsoft Products

I have been around computer technology long enough to know that there are pros and cons about everything. For that reason, I'm not a Microsoft hater, or a Linux hater. Ok, I am an Apple hater, but that's for pretty specific reasons.

Windows 11 is my daily drive. I have two Windows laptops plus a high-end Windows desktop. I pay for an Office 365 subscription. If I didn't like Microsoft's products, I wouldn't spend my money on them, especially with all the free, open-source stuff available, In many ways, Microsoft makes superior software that people think is worth paying for. 

That said, there's a lot not to like. So, here are some of things I hate about Microsoft products. It is neither an exhaustive list nor the final chapter in things to hate about Microsoft products.

1. Some Microsoft products won't close on exit, minimizing to the taskbar instead. Copilot doesn't even come up with a reasonable manner to set it to close. This should be an affirmative setting. Everyone else has a way to toggle this behavior. Frankly, whatever the reason is for not having such a setting, it's really up to the user to decide if they want that behavior.

2. Office Online will sometimes insist I create a Passkey for Office 365. The ability to turn off this tendency to interrupt what I'm doing to make me cancel no fewer than three prompts is irritating. Worse yet, it doesn't go away forever. Every once in a while, it pops up again. You used to be able to turn this off, but Microsoft eliminated the setting to do so. This behavior is either bad programming or evil intent. 

3. Settings on Windows, Edge, and Office keep moving around. It's nearly impossible to remember where some settings are because they are not in the same place after an update. Some products such as Edge, do this all the time. Yes, products evolve but thoughtfully not randomly.

4. On that same note, Microsoft keeps hiding settings for things like minimize on close and Passkeys. Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away.

5. Copilot is too stupid to notice when these settings have changed. It constantly gives bad support information. What's worse than an AI giving bad information? Giving bad information about itself and its creator's other products. 

6. OneDrive can't sync a file if it's open and hence insists on marking it as an error. Microsoft should either figure out open file sync or stop marking it as an error. One of these is personal vault which is designed not to stay open. The feature is actually an error. What?

7. Widgets are so limited they are a waste of taskbar space. Just put the weather int he lower corner and be done with it. It's the only widget anyone really uses anyway.

8. If you use an alternative browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, Windows still wants to open Edge. That's just stupid. or it's evil. Take your pick. Maybe Microsoft is trying to force Edge on those who are not into it. I actually like Edge. It has a lot of useful features I like to use regularly. If I choose differently, however, then respect that. It makes Windows seem inconsistent. 

9. Speaking of Edge, they need to rationalize tab management. At the moment we have Tab Groups, Collections, and Workspaces. Each does something a little different. There is some new Copilot tab management, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how that works. I'm not motivated to figure it out because I have some many options right now.

10. Speaking of Workspaces, why don't they automatically reload/update websites when you open them? There might be some underlying technical reason but really, that's bad UX. We expect that a tab will reload when we open it. 

11. Microsoft seems hell bent on gathering my private information. I'm always playing whack-a-mole with privacy settings. And those settings move around (see number three) or get hidden (see number four).

12. It's entirely stupid that there wasn't a version of Windows 11 that older machines (I'm talking machines only a few years before Windows 11) could upgrade to. A lot of folks are either stuck with buying a new machine or flying without a net now that Windows 10 is no longer supported.

13. And having to reboot after every update is annoying and dangerous. I'm betting lots of people put off critical updates because they don't have the time to go through one or more reboot cycles. Figure out how to update software in place.

14. And why do we still have to alter the registry to do certain things. This is not some kind of Windows hacking. Microsoft's own support documents tell you to do this all the time. You gotta love it when they tell you to alter the registry and then flash a "Danger! Danger Will Robinson!" message at you when you do. Seriously, there should not be a reason to monkey with the registry in 2026.

I'm sure I'll think of more. Microsoft is a big company that makes complex software. They've also adopted a bit of the Apple paternalism over the past few years. Many of the things I hate about their products relate to that behavior. I predict it will only get worse with all this AI stuff. We are going to be expected to treat tech support like a session with a therapist only with less concrete results. 

Shaking the Smartphone OS Cocktail

The difference between a mélange and a mess is balance. A mélange mixes together disparate elements into a cohesive combination by carefully balancing each part in relation to the other parts. A mess, by contrast, has no balance. It’s a jumble of confusing elements that fight against each other. It’s why one bartender can make the perfect cocktail and another a horrible brew with the same ingredients.

The smartphone OS market right now is a mess not a mélange. Rather than a handful of operating systems that compliment each other we have too many that do the same thing and fight with each other. While this will eventually shake out, at the moment it is a confusing mess for the consumer.

I’m about to step up to a smartphone. It’s been a long time coming. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what value these devices had. They had neither the software or power that I crave in a computer nor, in most cases, the sound quality I want in a phone. Both of those situations have changed. The devices and apps have become more powerful and hence, more useful. The sound quality has also increased dramatically. This is a great time to buy these devices too. Prices are dropping and data coverage expanding.

It’s the operating systems that are holding me back. There are too many of them to choose from. Smartphones are not like old school cell phones. In my old mobile phones the operating system really didn’t matter. The carrier and phone did but not the OS. Whether you bought a phone from Nokia, LG, Samsung, or Motorola, the features of the phone and phone company (flip or stick? service in the desert?) decide your experience.

No longer. Now, like a computer, you have to decide on an OS and boy are there a lot of them. Ticking off the major ones in my head I came up with Apple iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows 7 Mobile, and RIM’s BlackBerry 6 OS. That’s five major smartphone operating systems I can come up with using no research. All with incompatible apps, offered on different devices that have different features, on different carriers, and available in different countries. If I was starting from scratch, I would need a matrix of carriers (probably only the major ones like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Nextel), device manufacturers (the ones I’ve mentioned plus HTC and RIM) and five operating systems. All before I got to the features of the phone. At a minimum that’s a 4X6X5. For you math geeks that means as many as 120 combinations. Even if I eliminate some combinations as non-existent, such as Blackberry OS with anything but a RIM device, it’s still a big number before heading out to look at the phones that support my X by Y by Z combination.

Complicating matters is that smartphones are only one slice of the mobile pie. I have to take into account that I might want a pad device someday. That makes the OS choice even more important since I wouldn’t want more than one mobile OS with incompatible apps. It’s bad enough that my laptop and phone will have different applications and operating systems. No need to make it three different operating systems.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were clear distinctions between any of these operating systems and their apps. Perhaps from the point of view of the folks who design them and the analysts who cover the mobile market there is. To consumers, however, it’s all the same. You have gestures, even if they are different. You have apps, even if they are different. You have buttons and some type of virtual keyboard, even if they are different. At best, ones choice is determined by whimsical personal preferences.

The thing is, the OS matters. Just like any other computer, the smartphone OS determines what applications are available for your platform. Which operating systems a software developer writes for depends less on technical details and much more on market share. My choices will be limited by which OS app developers think will provide them the most exposure in the market. Most software companies don’t want to develop for an operating system that won’t have much market share or be around very long.

I’ve been in this industry long enough to know this won’t continue. Sooner or later there will be a shakeout and half of these operating systems will disappear. Some won’t that should but will be marginalized like Windows CE. Others will become nothing more than user interfaces in much the same way Apple’s OS turned into UNIX under the covers but has kept its Apple GUI. Still others will disappear altogether.

The problem is guessing which ones will live and which will die. No one wants to buy a device that will have an obsolete and discontinued operating system. It’s like buying a Palm device anywhere between 2000 and 2005. If you knew then what we know now you wouldn’t have. I have a desk draw full of obsolete devices like my old Palm devices.  They are, for all practical purposes, museum pieces.

I generally don’t like to make predictions (since they are frequently wrong) but here’s what I think will happen:

• Apple iOS – keeps going. Apple simply doesn’t care about the wider market. That and the cognoscenti love their Apple crack.
• Android – generous licensing will insure that it continues to evolve. It lives!
• Windows 7 Mobile – another failed attempt. Sorry Microsoft. I actually like Vista and Windows 7 on the desktop. The mobile OS is too little too late. It dies. Microsoft money insures it dies slowly and painfully. Please Mt. Ballmer, do a deal with Google and move to Android while you still can.
• WebOS – really? I get that HP paid good money for Palm but with all the other choices, why would I want this. The tablet market? And this from a company who’s last homegrown OS was HP/UX. It dies and HP switches to Android merging whatever is good about WebOS into it.
• Blackberry OS – this is a tough one. RIM has an enormous and fanatical installed base but it’s slipping. They had the first viable smartphone-like device which helped get them established. At the time you had to rely on their closed system for email. Now, that’s a liability. I’ll bet that they quietly move to something else but with Blackberry extensions so the old guard can feel happy. My guess is that it will be Android too.

Given where the market is going, the basic mobile phone probably has only a few more generations before they are all smartphones. There will be basic versions for the cheap, the Luddite, and the burner phone market. Those will still be smartphones, just lobotomized ones.

In the meantime, there are too many choices and that will hurt the market. Consumers like simplicity. Until recently, mobile phones were fairly simple devices with a small number of functions. As long as the major bases were covered (make and receive calls, SMS, a couple of toys like tip calculators) you were fine. Now they are computing endpoints with all the same problems as a laptop. Too many operating systems makes it overly complicated. It can’t continue like this.

For the smartphone OS folks who I’ve just insulted remember this: This was the same situation in the personal computer/workstation market in 1990. You had DOS, Apple, dozens of UNIX flavors, CP/M in all of it’s variants, as well as proprietary workstation operating systems. Remember IRIS? Ask your kids (huh? what’s that?) and you will feel old. I loved developing for Apollo’s Domain OS but where is it now? Next to the VAX in the Smithsonian. The market demanded simplicity, leaving Microsoft with the lion’s share. It didn’t matter that DOS was inferior to UNIX or Domain OS. Microsoft still ate their lunch. That UNIX, Apple, and a few others still exist is no solace. They are niche players now, not majors.  Windows and Linux make up the majority of the market by fulfilling different needs. They compliment each other.

Since I have to bet, I’m betting on Android. I’m locked into Verizon with no burning need to change which makes the decision easier. Choosing Android eliminates Apple and RIM devices too, further simplifying things. I almost don’t care what the phone is now. I’ll probably decide on price.

Novell Rides Off Into The Sunset

The curtain comes down for yet another 80’s era pioneer. Novell is finally throwing in the hat (not a Red Hat mind you) and selling itself off to Attachmate for the ungodly sum of US$2.2B. There are a couple of interesting questions about this acquisition but first a moment of silence for an historic old ship that has run up on the shoals of competition. At one point they were as hot as Google. But like Sun and other companies of my youth they didn’t keep up and will soon be no more.

Why sell now? Because Novell is obviously not going anywhere. At one time they had the number two PC server operating system, have the number two server Linux and generally were number two in a many things. You can’t be number two without eventually ending up on someone’s shoe. So, if someone offers you enough money to float a missile cruiser, you take it. That’s being responsible. Or maybe the rent’s too damn high. (Caution: Sound is too damn high in this web site).

Why US$2.2B? Got me. I mean that’s not that much of a premium over Novell’s market cap but it’s a lot of money for a company that is a shade of its former self. Part of why that number is so high is because Microsoft (through CPTN Holdings LLC) dropped US$450M into the pot. They have a lot of cash. For them, this is like buying a pack of gum. Still, I have a hard time seeing this pay off for Attachmate. Unless it’s not about paying off for Attachmate per se. (I love foreshadowing…)

Who? Attachmate? I know what you mean. Who the heck are these guys that they can go out and buy Novell. That’s like Meritline (a purveyor of cheap Chinese electronics) buying Best Buy. Seems backwards. Attachmate has a product portfolio that looks like a hodgepodge of data center management products. The deal makes sense from a product point of view in that Novell has their own hodgepodge of data center tools and technology. So, depending on what stays with Attachmate and what goes to Microsoft, you will have a company with a huge collection of somewhat related technology. Combine them into certain combinations and you have a bunch of companies. The funny thing is that Attachmate is nearly as old as Novell but you don’t think of them like Novell. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Attachmate is owned by a group of private equity groups. That, plus it’s product portfolio mélange, makes it look like a rollup. Rollups keep going by rolling up more companies and selling them off in combinations. It’s like cooking – a little of this, and a little of that, a pinch of something else and Voila! you have a dish you can sell to investors. That might be where the pay off is.

Why should we care? Really we shouldn’t but we do. Whenever a company with a history like Novell’s gets absorbed and turns into little more than a brand it’s sad. We really should if something bad happens next like SUSE Linux goes away, reducing competition in the Linux market. But really, I doubt that will happen and if it does there’s still OpenSuse, right? If you’re a Novell customer of course you care. You don’t know what these guys at Attachmate (or Microsoft) might do and that has to mess with your head. Otherwise, it’s not a game changing acquisition.

So, what does happen next? My guess is that they package up SUSE Linux with some other stuff and spin it off to investors or another company.  If I’m the folks in Redmond I want the identity management IP. That would go along way to creating online services and backend software for trusted Internet environments. Attachmate absorbs the rest and moves on its merry way. Depending what it gets for the other pieces of Novell (like SUSE Linux and ZenWorks) and what it can combine with its own products and sell off, it might make money on this. This is not about product engineering. It’s about financial engineering. And in this type of financial engineering one plus one can equal three.

I wave my hat to Novell as it rides off into the sunset. We’ll miss you amigo.

More on the Microsoft Word Patent Infringement

I am truly fascinated by the Microsoft-i4i patent infringement case. What's not to love. A small company takes on one of the biggest money makers from one of the biggest companies and wins! Today, Groklaw ( www.groklaw.net) published links to the court documents along with some commentary. It's really good stuff.

As I have (repeatedly) mentioned before, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a technologist and business person. Some of the arguments presented in the documents are technical legal arguments. I won't even begin to comment on those.

I also won't comment on the whole idea of software patents. I'll let the folks at Groklaw do that. In this case it really doesn't matter because it's not what the case is about. The core issue is whether Microsoft should have known better and done something different before adopting OpenXML.

What caught my attention immediately was how the court got the subtle technical arguments presented to it. Clearly, this is not a case of some judge living in the DOS age. Despite Microsoft's protests to the contrary, the court understood the technical arguments and simply didn't agree with Microsoft. Too bad for the boys in Redmond – someone found a judge with the geek gene.

The opinion goes even further and says that there is no evidence that the jury didn't get it either. In a way, the court says that unless you can prove that the jury is stupid, you shouldn't assume they are. Truth be told, the technical aspects are not that hard to understand. Despite all kinds of obfuscation, it appears (at least to the judge) that the jury understood the issues well enough to decide rationally. As normal people become more sophisticated about software and computers, the “ jury is a bunch of technology dolts” argument will be harder to make.

Here are a few additional thoughts based on the court documents:

1. The court understood that a metacode was like a programming instruction designed to manipulate content for display. The definition it used was “an individual instruction which controls the interpretation of the content of the data.” This is dead on. A file of codes mapped to the content is the metacode map called out in the patent claims. I do have to wonder if this definition could be applied to other types of instruction-to-content mapping schemes like CSS. However, the patent is pretty narrow (which is probably why it was defensible). Further study is required.

2. The Finisar vs. DirectTV ruling popped up. The short form of Finisar is that if you sell a component of something that is important to the product and infringes, the whole darn thing infringes. You can't buy an infringing LCD component, put it in a TV and say “TV's aren't patentable!” Sorry. Doesn't work that way. It was used in legal arguments around contributory infringement. Finisar is something to watch out for when you buy components. If you put something in that infringes on a patent you might be hit over the head with it, even if you get it from someone else. Know the IP situation at your vendors!

3. What is even better is that i4i's claim to infringement was proven, in part, by a Microsoft email! An email from an employee that indicated they knew they were infringing. From the court's opinion:
   “ i4i even presented an internal Microsoft email from January of 2003 containing i4i’s product name, the patent number, and a statement from a Microsoft employee that i4i’s technology would be made “obsolete” by the accused WORD product (which admittedly added XML functionality to the previous version of Microsoft’s WORD product).”

   It almost seems like a joke that Microsoft, who sells products to manage email for eDiscovery, could get hit over the head with a smoking gun email. Probably created in Outlook and sent from Exchange. For this alone, Microsoft should be embarrassed.

4. I love the arguments about what a data structure is. It was almost Clintonesque, on the order of “depends what 'is' is.” Even Microsoft's own expert had to concede that their own previous arguments support the i4i definitions. And you wonder why the jury didn't believe Microsoft. That and the email maybe.

5. Obviousness was obviously argued. Microsoft based it's obviousness argument on the inventors' own previous software. The inventors themselves disputed this and apparently the jury believed them. Again, who are you going to believe? They guys who invented it in the first place or the alleged thieves? Discuss amongst yourselves.

6. At one point, Microsoft must have argued that since the USPTO was willing to reexamine the patent, that shows that it could be invalid. I like that one a lot. The judge, not so much. The court rightly points out that looking something over a second time is not that same as saying it's invalid.

In the end, reading the court documents provides a picture of a jury and judge who actually understood what the deep issues were. That's encouraging. You hear so much about juries and courts that give enormous awards based on emotion because they don't understand business, technology, medicine, or science. That does not appear to be the case here. Big message here – don't rely on stupid juries. They aren't so stupid.

A couple of other takeaways. One, even mighty Microsoft can be hit in the head with an email. Get control of that now. This is an example where someone has to train folks not to write this type of email in the first place. I'm still chuckling over this one.

Second, take software patents seriously. It is clear that Microsoft knew that this patent existed. They just assumed they could get away with ignoring it or beat i4i into submission. Such arrogance should not be tolerated in any company. All of this unpleasantness could have been averted. I bet Microsoft could have bought out i4i for much less than the litigation is costing them.

And finally, whether you like or dislike software patents, this is an argument in favor of them. i4i, a real company and not a patent troll, would have had their technology stolen from them without the protection of the patent. The system worked and protected the small inventor against the giant corporation. Huzzah for patents!

I promised I wouldn't comment on software patents, didn't I? Sorry about that but I couldn't resist.

How Microsoft Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Netbook

There has been a number of news stories lately about Microsoft and netbooks. The upshot of the articles has been how amazed people have been that Microsoft is not overtly hostile to netbooks. The second round of news was that folks at Microsoft consider many netbooks to just be little notebooks.

Why does this surprise anyone? Many computers sold as netbooks are basically notebooks with small screens and cramped keyboards. They have nearly the horsepower of a desktop computer with hard drives nearing 200GB and one or two Gigabytes of RAM. This is a far cry from the original netbooks which had tiny four or eight Gigabyte solid-state hard drives and and 512MBs of memory.

Most importantly, these new netbooks/notebooks run Windows. If nothing else this should make Microsoft sing with glee and do cartwheels. When the first netbooks were introduced with Linux as the OS, many immediately predicated the demise of Microsoft. Clearly, the rumors of its death was greatly exaggerated.

While the original netbooks were okay (and only okay) for Internet access at Starbucks, they were close to useless for nearly everything else. Why? Because most people use Windows applications not Linux applications. If you want to take any of your important applications with you, you can't. Like that presentation that you are flying in for. You don't need a big honking laptop for just that. But you do need PowerPoint. And, while I love OpenOffice.org (I'm writing this using the Writer application) it just isn't want what most people use. Neither are online applications.

For Microsoft, it gets even better. Most netbooks use Windows XP. They get to drag a little more revenue out of their dying old product and get set up for Windows 7. What's not to love? More money!

All of this money also comes with the gratification that they kicked Linux, as a desktop OS, right in the teeth again. They also proved that that the desktop OS still matters and that not everything is online yet and might never be.

Finally, for those who really want a netbook to be what it was supposed to be, our buddies in Redmond will soon roll out an online (and viable) version of Office. You will be able to access it from your Windows 7 notebook and show the customer your PowerPoint presentation. Microsoft everywhere, no matter where your office is.

It is no surprise that Gates and Ballmer are not intimidated by netbooks. They own the netbook market. I can see them doing their happy dance right now. And it's not pretty...