

Changing My Mind On Microsoft - bedris
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/07/changing-my-mind-on-microsoft.html

======
powertower
> My personal gripe was how poorly Microsoft thought about and handled
> security issues. My Linux computer is _as far as I know virus free_.

He is comparing Windows 95 to Ubuntu 11.04 (if you follow the link in that
sentence)!

> They [devs] did not bother developing for other platforms because those
> platforms were economically irrelevant and the Microsoft developer tools
> worked.

Then he doesn't even make the connection to virus writers targeting Windows
between 199x-200x.

> Windows security issues are everywhere and it did not need to be so.

Sorry, but that's mostly due to the desktop market size and Windows' share of
it.

Everything after Windows XP had security at its core.

Blame the users who are clueless, that are emailing viruses to all their
contacts, download Trojans and warez with backdoors, etc.

And again, he is comparing decades old MS OSs to latest versions of Linux and
OS X.

> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
> unless they are demented or brain-dead.

Completely false statement.

~~~
archangel_one
> > Windows security issues are everywhere and it did not need to be so. >
> Sorry, but that's mostly due to the desktop market size and Windows' share
> of it.

No, it's not. It's mostly due to Microsoft ignoring security for years because
it wasn't important to them. They didn't have to have everyone running as root
by default in all versions of Windows before Vista (AFAIK in XP Home you can't
actually set up restricted users). They didn't have to have lots of open ports
offering things like RPC to the world. They didn't have to have all files
executable by default, based solely off the hidden part of the filename in
AnnaKournikova.jpg.exe.

There are now supposed to be 300M Android devices worldwide, which is within
an order of magnitude of Windows' numbers 10 years ago, and you don't see
Android phones being compromised remotely within fifteen minutes of being
connected to a network. There's no equivalent of Blaster or Sasser or anything
close to that level.

It's partly due to Windows' market share that it got targeted so heavily, but
those opportunities wouldn't have been there if they hadn't ignored security
for so long.

~~~
powertower
I think you've missed the point on multiple fronts...

> and you don't see Android phones being compromised remotely within fifteen
> minutes of being connected to a network.

Again, why do you (and others) keep comparing today's Linux/Android/OS X OS
with a 10-15 year old Windows OS.

Windows security has been at its core since after XP, and by all knowledgeable
accounts is just as good as Linux's ... as long as you know how to use it /
deal with it. Today 95% of the problem is clueless Windows admins, and bad
user decisions.

As far as my own experience goes, I've ran Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP,
Vista, and all the rest never having been compromised. So it is possible at
least.

What you're doing is the same when people complain about IE 6 vs. the latest
version of Chrome...

IE6 came out in 2001, and at that time was the most standards-compliant and
feature full of all the browsers on the market (well, except for IE 5.5 for
MacOS).

> They didn't have to have everyone running as root by default in all versions
> of Windows before Vista (AFAIK in XP Home you can't actually set up
> restricted users). They didn't have to have lots of open ports offering
> things like RPC to the world. They didn't have to have all files executable
> by default, based solely off the hidden part of the filename in
> AnnaKournikova.jpg.exe.

Of course they had to do all that. The Windows users back then were generally
not very savvy and anything that got in their way was a disaster waiting to
happen. Also it was a different time. Even today most Windows home users don't
even understand the file-system with it's drives, devices, directories, subs,
and files. And you wanted them to understand user security and how it plays
with applications that they ran? No.

> but those opportunities wouldn't have been there if they hadn't ignored
> security for so long.

I guess they should have gotten a time machine to the future to pull all that
work and knowledge back to the past. Windows XP should have been based off
Windows 7.

My point is that what is possible today, was not possible 10, 15, or 20 years
ago both from a tech and user point of view... Just because someone can do OS
security good today, dosn't mean you can blame someone else for not doing it
good decades ago.

~~~
archangel_one
> Again, why do you (and others) keep comparing today's Linux/Android/OS X OS
> with a 10-15 year old Windows OS.

You argued that Windows was targeted solely because of its high market share.
I'm drawing a comparison to another platform with high market share; there
simply wasn't anything comparable ten years ago. And it is not obvious to me
that it's not a valid comparison; Microsoft were a huge company who had been
developing Windows for fifteen years at that point. Android is a lot younger,
so you could just as well expect it to be less mature and therefore less
secure.

And yes, I know it is possible to run it without being compromised. You
obviously knew what you were doing; millions, even tens of millions of others
didn't know and wound up with their computers zombified into botnets. That
wasn't all because of their ignorance; there were times when a newly installed
XP machine would be compromised less than fifteen minutes after being
connected to the internet, which wasn't enough time to install the patches it
needed. That can't be considered that user's fault, especially when they've
just sat through half an hour of being told how they're installing The Most
Secure Version Of Windows Yet!

> Of course they had to do all that. The Windows users back then were
> generally not very savvy...

Now you are missing my point. Microsoft didn't _have_ to do anything. They
could have built an operating system that was harder to use but more secure. I
contend that it's even conceivable that they could have built an operating
system that was roughly the same for ease of use, but still more secure; maybe
they'd have been slower to market or had to compromise elsewhere. The point is
that security was not a priority for them for years, they obviously just
weren't that concerned. That may ultimately have been the right path for them,
because they arguably didn't pay a high price really, but I don't personally
consider it the technically best course.

> My point is that what is possible today, was not possible 10, 15, or 20
> years ago both from a tech and user point of view... Just because someone
> can do OS security good today, dosn't mean you can blame someone else for
> not doing it good decades ago.

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree. I don't see why you think
security is only something that can be achieved now and why it couldn't be ten
or fifteen years ago. In the Unix world, people have known not to run as root
for decades; Microsoft chose to ignore that for a long time and ultimately
have been forced to shoehorn it back in for Vista. They could have done that
in XP, if not long before; it certainly had the capability for it, they simply
cut that out of XP Home and chose bad defaults for XP Pro.

~~~
powertower
> And it is not obvious to me that it's not a valid comparison; ... Android is
> a lot younger, so you could just as well expect it to be less mature and
> therefore less secure.

There is a reason why PC games are so much more advanced in their design,
graphics, and game-play today than they were 10-20 years ago.

By your logic, there is little reason why Crysis 3 should not have been
developed 15 years ago. If they can do it now, and the product/market fit for
it is good now, why not 15 years ago!

That's just not how it works.

> In the Unix world...

Different world, different people, different needs/wants.

Microsoft didn't ignore anything; they have maintained a billion users for
more than a decade. And profited more than most companies with an increase in
sales every single year. They did something right, more than they did
something wrong.

Easy-of-use was a priority for them over security until after XP because...

1\. It would have impacted their users negatively (do you remember the
response due to the new security in Vista?... people couldn't handle a pop-up,
couldn't understand privileges, etc).

2\. There previous OSs started from a single-user standpoint and it's
difficult to change that (and maintain backwards compatibility, 3rd party
drivers and software, support, etc).

You make things seem so easy. That's not how it works.

~~~
archangel_one
No, that is a totally different thing, and a fairly ridiculous comparison. You
clearly can't have Crysis 3 15 years ago because the computers weren't
powerful enough. Please don't apply a bad metaphor and tell me that's my
reasoning, because it clearly wasn't.

Security does not require computing power, it needs careful code. By _your_
logic, OpenBSD would have been an insecure mess 15 years ago, and nobody's web
server would be getting hacked today. _That_ is not how it works.

~~~
powertower
I've pointed out how ridiculous it's to blame Windows 95 for not being what
today OSes are.

Since that wasn't good enough, I then pointed out how ridiculous it would be
to compare IE6 (circa 2001) with the latest version of Chrome (2012).

But that wasn't good enough either.

So in the most general of ways I gave you one even better, which BTW had a
small part to do with PC performance and more to do with everything else.

> OpenBSD would have been an insecure mess 15 years ago, and nobody's web
> server would be getting hacked today.

Have no idea what logic you're talking about.

I think we'll just have to disagree.

------
skrebbel
> _Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
> unless they are demented or brain-dead._

I'm 29 now, switched to mostly doing C# two years ago, and I _love_ it. Its
mix of pragmatism, familiarity and modern constructs is unparalleled, and no
other truly modern language has this good IDE support.

The only thing I don't love about it is the vendor lock-in, but in reality
this is a smaller problem for many applications than it seems.

~~~
jmcqk6
Yeah, the author is apparently unaware that C# is one of the few truly multi-
platform languages, which runs on Android, iPhone, OS X, Linux, windows of
course, and whatever other platform the mono people have since added.

I don't even get the complaint about vendor lock-in. What does using C# lock
you into (especially compared to the use of other languages)? Sure, it's
possible to use C# in such a way that you're stuck with microsoft tech, but
it's not mandated that this is the case.

~~~
skrebbel
Good point.

The lock-in is mostly such that if you code in C# on Windows first, getting it
to run on Mono later may be difficult, if you didn't pay close attention to
what you were doing from the start. In this sense, it's rather different than
e.g. Java.

But not too different from all that POSIX-specific Ruby and Python code out
there, admittedly.

~~~
X-Cubed
Yeah, but that statement applies to pretty much any language really, not just
C#.

If you code your Java app to expect to find documents in /home/<user>/ or link
your Java app with binary libraries that are platform-specific, then you're
going to have the same trouble.

Cross-platform support is rarely (if ever) a matter of just compiling into a
new binary.

------
steve8918
I read Bronte Capital all the time. He is a hedge fund manager in Australia,
and it very good at sniffing out fraudulent stocks or short-worthy stocks and
shorting them.

I'm not too confident in his ability to assess technology though, and I think
he may be a bit premature on this MSFT call.

I do believe that Windows 8 is a mistake made out of desperation. Given that
the change in interface will confuse a lot of people, I think enterprise will
be wary of making the switch because of all the massive retraining it will
require. Any type of little change in enterprise environments will always
require retraining, so I think enterprise adoption will be very slow to adopt.
Maybe MSFT will wake up and change the interface back and have some sort of
switch to change back-and-forth before it ships a final version though.

~~~
mcguire
* __Prediction: __this will wind up with a lower corporate take up rate than Vista (ie next to none).*

* __Prediction 2: __this will accelerate, rather than slow down, the rate at which enterprises take their enterprise specific software into platform independent programs*

* __Prediction 3: __by stuffing this up Microsoft has just about lost its bet on moving the retail computer market into docking cloud computers. Apple will do this. And they will do it by stealth.*

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have survived Vista experience without too
much injury. And having had some experience with enterprise platform
movements, accelerating a "glacial" speed is still pretty slow. And finally, I
still have doubts about Apple's capability and interest in the general "retail
computer market". (Although I could be wrong about that.)

------
cs702
Whether one agrees or not with the facts and reasoning of the author (a
successful hedge-fund manager with a widely followed blog), this blog post is
important in and of itself because of what it represents: a tectonic shift in
the business community's perception of Microsoft.

The _business_ community is now openly doubting the future relevance of the
Windows platform!

~~~
bryanlarsen
No, this is historically very typical for Microsoft.

Windows ME sucked. Windows XP was great. Windows Vista sucked. Windows 7 was
great.

At least that was the perception. Reality is more nuanced, of course.

And business is very conservative, they never upgrade immediately.

For business, the alternative to Windows 8 is Windows 7 or Windows XP. It
isn't OS X or Linux or Android. Microsoft does better if they switch to 8, but
they don't lose if they don't.

~~~
evo_9
There were no serious threats to their dominance before; now they have iOS,
Android and even OS-X is starting to gain more marketshare than I'd be
comfortable with if I were ballmer.

~~~
cbaleanu
I really don't see the point that many HN users keep comparing apples with
oranges. iOS and Android have no relevance in this discussion as they are not
real OS'es. You cannot develop on them, you cannot do work on them except for
replying emails and browsing some webpages. And that's how it will remain.

OSX is great, but please post the link from Apple store where you can get a
decent working laptop for under $500. Good luck with that.

From a developer's perspective, I think we should keep a more clearheaded
approach to this entire debate and not turn HN into a fanboy forum.

~~~
fpgeek
You can't develop on them?

Try this: <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui>

with a Transformer or another Android tablet with a Bluetooth (or in some
cases USB) keyboard.

~~~
cbaleanu
If you are going to be carrying around an external keyboard / dock to make
your tablet behave like a laptop why not go for the real thing?

------
tiernano
> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
> unless they are demented or brain-dead.

Hmmm.... i am 29, i write C# and .NET for a living... there are a few lads in
the office that are .NET Dev, under 30... I must be in a black hole then...

~~~
selter01
or brain-dead

~~~
bstewartnyc
How does one know?

------
dneb7
His attack on using developer tools was harsh, but I'm over 30 so it didn't
apply :)

But seriously, I'm afraid he is close to the truth. As a career Windows
programmer, I have great fear for the future after having tried the 2012
preview -- I've never felt so lost on a computer in my life. For my own
selfish sake, I keep praying they'll make some changes before final release.

~~~
maayank
move to greener pastures. Install Linux in a VM and start to program some
hobby project on it.

~~~
dneb7
In my case, I sell my own software. So having a market that will buy my
software is first priority. Providing support all day is not how I prefer to
make a living. (that's fearful me talking)

I'd love to know the percentages of independent Windows devs that make a
living selling software vs percentage of Linux devs that can make a living
selling software. Sure, big companies will employ both, but how does it work
out for the small guys?

Edit: I will admit Linux and its ecosystem are looking more and more
attractive all the time...

~~~
maayank
You don't have to go full time into it. Just putting some hours in the week to
toy with it. Doesn't have to be Linux - can be Mac[1] and Objective-C as well,
just diversify yourself for learning & (maybe, future) profit.

------
jiggy2011
The "nobody under 30 writes MS" statement is obviously false at it's core but
perhaps it means something slightly different?

I imagine most of the under-30 devs working on MS software are being hired by
established companies to work on enterprise type software or for consultancies
building websites using ASP.net etc.

What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from scratch?
For example startups, they tend to be using stuff like Ruby/Python/JS etc.

So the question is , what happens when the old guard start to retire? How many
will stick with MS because that is what they have used to that point , or will
there be interest in switching to newer tools to build newer systems?

~~~
kenjackson
_What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from
scratch? For example startups, they tend to be using stuff like Ruby/Python/JS
etc._

As someone who was under 30 during Microsoft's heyday (90s) I can say that
most developers under 30 then also didn't use MS tools. Borland tools ruled
the roost until VC6 and VB6 (around '98). And most young developers out of
school back then knew Unix, not Windows.

My point is that it's a myth that there existed some time when all young
developers used MS tools. In fact I'd argue that in terms of mindshare MS
devtools are near their all-time high in popularity now -- it's that the
Windows OS isn't as popular as it once was among the under-30 crowd.

------
SlipperySlope
Essentially ...

"Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
unless they are demented or brain-dead. Firstly the kids out of the colleges
know the platform agnostic stuff well. Secondly when half the computers
leaving factories either run iOS or Android (that is are smart-phones) nobody
sensible will write in a way that does not allow easy porting to these
platforms."

~~~
freehunter
Under-thirty checking in as a user of Microsoft developer tools. There is
still little out there that can beat C# all-around. There still is no
alternative for Visual Basic.NET. XNA is still a quite popular game
development framework.

Kids out of college know what their college specialized in. This is either
Java or Visual Studio, and chances are when they graduate they'll get jobs at
a company making corporate desktop software on Windows. The best way to
discourage an aspiring programmer is to tell him/her "yeah it works, but it's
not _cool_."

~~~
jobu
He's over-generalizing with that statement, but I would definitely agree that
most start-ups are using RoR or LAMP, and not anything from Microsoft.

~~~
topbanana
Most software isn't written at start-ups, of course.

------
fingerprinter
> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
> unless they are demented or brain-dead.

I see most people saying he is wrong here, though I can't think why.

Are there people who thing A. writing software for windows? B. are targeting
the windows phone? C. deploying to a cloud (private or public) using Windows
servers?

If you are targeting a phone, it is most def either iOS or Android, probably
both. If MS, a distant third (and at that point you'll probably be using
PhoneGap, Titanium or HTML5).

The number of people actively developing new desktop apps for Windows has to
be tiny. Maybe even smaller than tiny.

And if you are deploying to anything other than Ubuntu, you're crazy (and
potentially fiscally irresponsible...BizSpark not withstanding).

I get that some people might be using the dev tools, though I would wager (no
numbers on this, just gut) that the number of MS Web Devs is far, far fewer
than the same open source web devs (PHP, Ruby, Python, NodeJS, Clojure etc).

So, I don't get why people say he is off base.

Frankly, the only people I can see still using MS stuff are the big
corporates. IMO, MS is riding the long tail into obscurity. Though, with their
financials, it would still be a long, long tail.

~~~
jgeralnik
(Anecdotal counterpoint) For the vast majority of the students at my
university, visual studio is the reach-to solution for any problem. They would
much rather figure out how to write ASP.NET because visual studio is "awesome"
than go around running node.js (what's that?) from a command line.

~~~
spamizbad
Anecdotal counterpoint to your counterpoint - I saw the same thing 10 years
ago when I was in school (Comp-Sci students gobbling up Visual Studio). It
seems the more things change the more they stay the same...

Despite this:

-Qualified .NET developers continue to be difficult to find. Also, they make slightly less money than their Java counter-parts for reasons I don't fully understand.

-The 00's are regarded as Microsoft's "lost decade"

-Microsoft's tools gained little traction among startups... although MS-based ones do exist. The most notable being StackExcahnge however that was created by industry veterans not out-of-college whippersnappers.

Don't count on computer science students to create Microsoft's future. Many
will drop the major for something easier.

------
RyanMcGreal
I made the decision to jump ship from Microsoft developer products about five
years ago. I could already see the writing on the wall. I swapped the
remaining proprietary tools I was using on Windows XP over to open source
alternatives and jumped from VB6 and .NET over to Python. Then, when it was
time to replace my PC, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 instead of Vista. Never looked
back.

------
geon
> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
> unless they are demented or brain-dead

The gamedev community is very MS centered. There are a few people doing
handheld stuff, or homebrew console hacking, but the majority use Windows and
Direct X. A lot of people use C#, or even develop for the Xbox 360.

------
varelse
Say what you want about Microsoft, and acknowledging the past decade has been
a real disappointment, I wouldn't count them out just yet...

If I compare Microsoft's handling of the OEM PC industry of the 1990s to
Google's handling of the Android ecosystem, the latter is utterly laughable in
comparison _cough_ Nexus 7 Screen issues _cough_. That alone is reason enough
for me to think they could return. They just need the right leadership. And if
you think such a transition is impossible, compare the Apple of today to the
Apple before Steve Jobs returned...

------
stcredzero
_> In the late 1990s Windows developed huge market power. Whilst not strictly
a monopoly the company had plenty of monopoly characteristics. Sure you could
buy a Macintosh - but that market was so small that people did not develop
software for Macs and hence Macs were for people who did not need a wide range
of software._

So is this, in addition to careful attention to typography, the explanation
for why Macs were big with designers? (Many designers do the vast majority of
their work in a handful of programs, and one in particular.)

------
RandallBrown
Platform agnostic tools have hardly done anything on the desktop or mobile. If
you're writing a mac app without Cocoa or a Windows app without .NET (or other
various Microsoft technologies) you're going to have a bad time.

Python and Ruby might be first class languages on the web, but they're never
going to be on the desktop/mobile. (Yes I know about things like RubyMotion)

No devs under 30 work on Microsoft stuff? Even if you take that to mean "No
dev under 30 _wants_ to work on Microsoft stuff", that is ridiculous.

------
Patient0
To my mind, Microsoft ought to be putting all of their corporate weight behind
Mono. CLR, F#, C# are all technically superior to JVM, Scala and Java IMHO and
many others. But what holds alot of people back from .Net in the enterprise is
that they want Linux in the server room, not Windows. If Microsoft really put
their weight behind Mono then I think lots of enterprise customers would ditch
Java in favour of .Net

------
sixothree
How can I say this gently.. Windows 8 looks like ass. I don't know a single
person running it today. Things do not look good for Microsoft in this release
cycle. I don't think the following one will be any better.

------
huggyface
_All internal computer now run as virtual machines (not desktops) running on
two mondo-powerful Linux servers. The virtualization platform is Citrix.
Nobody has a functional box under their desk any more._... _The company has
got rid of the desktop computers entirely (sorry Dell and HP)_

What? How are they accessing these virtual machines? Mind meld? In most cases
where companies use VDIs the desktop machines are the standard old Dells and
HPs because they actually cost less than "dumb terminals" (aka thin-clients).
And that's accepting the questionable notion that VDIs are the future.

 _Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools
unless they are demented or brain-dead_

We have been on a hiring binge lately and it is very difficult to find
candidates who know anything _but_ Microsoft tools. Sure they might know
github, but there is a very substantial part of the workforce that stills
crawls into Microsoft's bosom.

In general this blog post is completely detached from reality. There is the
"startup" culture, of course, where everyone runs an iMac and develops iOS and
Ruby/MongoDB apps for their EC2 cluster, and then there's the many magnitudes
bigger general computing world that holds zero similarities.

~~~
127001brewer
_... it is very difficult to find candidates who know anything but Microsoft
tools._

This may depend on a variety of things, such as the job location and desired
skill level, but this _blanket statement_ is false. For example, it seems that
a significant number of Hacker News participants - who are developers -
develop in other languages and platforms.

 _... completely detached from reality._

My personal opinion is that developers who don't learn other languages,
platforms, and tools are completely detached from reality. There will always
be (perhaps seemingly a majority of) people where being a developer is just a
"job" and learning new _things_ isn't necessary. But, again my personal
opinion, this ultimately harms yourself.

Finding good people is _hard_. Many others have written about this, but don't
be discouraged that there's _only_ Microsoft developers out there.

~~~
untog
_There will always be (perhaps seemingly a majority of) people where being a
developer is just a "job" and learning new things isn't necessary._

Absolutely. And I don't begrudge those people- I initially learnt .NET myself
and then broadened my horizons, but many of my previous co-workers have
families, time consuming hobbies or other such interests. There's not
inherently wrong with having "just a job", if you're content with other things
in your life. It seems like a specifically (oddly) US-centric view that there
should be anything wrong with that.

~~~
127001brewer
_There's not inherently wrong with having "just a job" ..._

I agree.

In the context of this conversation, finding good people is _hard_. There was
an article in The Atlantic that discusses this basic idea and more:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-
big-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-big-jobs-
myth-american-workers-arent-ready-for-american-jobs/260169/)

Here's a quote from the article that makes a good point:

 _... When firms were asked why they have difficulty hiring, 55% picked "lack
of available applicants," but essentially the same percentage, 54%, said
candidates are "looking for more pay than is offered" (many more than the 40%
selecting lack of "hard" skill). This is an important reminder that the labor
market is a market._

The labor market is a _market_.

------
gitarr
I agree with most of the article, but the "The Ubuntu Unity failure" was only
a temporary one.

The author says it got better, but in reality Unity already overtook Windows'
UI and it will overtake Apples UI with one of its next iterations.

As a younger (though not that young) developer I have to agree that using MS
developer tools is the wrong way of doing things for most new software, not
all of them though, it sure has its uses. But I am strongly against
proprietary software that only runs on one OS as that will only lose you
business. Even the game platform Steam seems to have gotten to that point, a
Linux port is on its way.

~~~
dneb7
The great thing about propietary software and one OS (Windows specifically, OS
X too though) is people using those operating systems expect to pay for their
software. I'd love to come out with a Linux version of my software, but I'd
then be competing with 10 free versions, and worse, a mindset that expects
everything to be free. I gotta eat!

~~~
jiggy2011
There is definitely a hunger in the Linux community for quality commercial
applications in areas where open source has not traditionally managed to
perform so well (Image/Video editing, games etc).

You would certainly have limited luck trying sell a C compiler or package
manager to Linux users for sure, but there are certainly areas (including some
developer tools)where there could be a market.

If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing
with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for
Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated
30 million) but you are competing with _The Gimp_.

There is a subset of Linux users who would never consider any commercial
software, but this is pretty small percentage, at least that is certainly what
Valve is banking on.

Mac users do expect to pay for software sure, but Windows users? Not so much
since Windows seems to be the platform with the highest piracy as well as
countless horrible "freeware" programs.

~~~
icebraining
_If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing
with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for
Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated
30 million) but you are competing with The Gimp._

And Krita: <http://www.krita.org/>

------
ybother
Wait, so he's saying that he's moving from MSFT to AAPL because AAPL has
better lock-in? Personally, I'm staying with MSFT because MSFT has already
learned the follies of relying on lock-in and is moving on where AAPL is
repeating MSFT of the 90's mistakes.

