I think it really sucks

I would say so. Despite having some of the top brains on the planet it managed to develop Windows Vista, which was completely unremarkable. Innovation is not a term in Microsoft`s vocabulary.

As straightforward as this question is, it's very multi-layered since Microsoft is in so many different fields of business.

As far as Windows itself, the OS tries to be too many things to too many people and, in the end, ends up sucking in comparison to its competition. Microsoft is forced to design its OS without prior knowledge of the hardware configurations it will run in or the software it will control. On one side of the coin, Apple creates its own software and hardware and can, therefore, design the one to run smoothly with the other. On the other, the various Linux distributions can be so extensively modified that it doesn't really matter what configuration you have. Add to that Microsoft's insistence on backwards compatibility (which just increases the amount of configurations Windows needs to be able to run on) and you have a recipe for disaster.

In its other areas of business, Microsoft remains a necessary evil. Time and again, consumers are forced to buy Microsoft's products because they are cheaper (most times) and more widely used instead of because they are the best on the market. As an example, look at Microsoft's Office Suite: before Office 7 came out, people complained that the Productivity Suite was bloated and lacking many common features. When Microsoft investigated, it found that many of the features people requested had already been implemented but the program was so unwieldy that no one could find them. By then, people had already started turning to OpenOffice and Google's online offerings.

All in all, Microsoft, as a company, has focused on getting its eggs into as many baskets as they possibly could. They are never the worst, but they are never the best. They are just ubiquitous. This style of business serves to lower our expectations and decrease the overall quality of the marketplace. In this way, Microsoft is like the Ford and IBM of old.

(damn that was a lot of writing)

I wouldn't say "There is no way Linux can catch up with the GUI aspect of an Operating System." (and I am not a Linux fanboy). Linux is the most customizable OS there is. You could spend your entire life just customizing the login screen (not that you would want to).

But I would agree that Microsoft does not "suck." At the very least, it's provided a lot of competition for Mac OS X and Linux. And, in this case, competition leads to innovation.

Your facts are wrong, it was actually windows 3.1 that introduced the GUI operating system concept. But regardless that was over ten years ago. Very little has changed since XP operating system, which was quite a while. So historically I guess you could say that microsoft was innovaitive but in recent times Microsoft is very uncreative.

they charge way too much

There's plenty of literature about Microsoft's suckiness

Microsoft sucks with extreme consistency.

Microsoft produces the highest level of "design by comittee" products ever achieved in the history of commerce.

Some of Microsofts products are so entirely mired in a culture of mediocrity and being all things to all people that they have no hope whatsoever of producing anything that excels at it's purpose for any one individual.

The existence of products that are very specificly targeted at a singular or small set of purposes provides a stark contrast to the genericly functional Microsoft paradigm. Since these products have more narrowly targeted designs they are better able to fullfil the desired functionality and ease of use that their users want to experience.

This comparrisson causes a reaction umong those that experience better performance using non-Microsoft products, particularly when this exposure comes after a long exposure to only Microsoft products. The resultant disatisfaction is frequently shared with others. If these others have not experienced the comparisson first-hand then they are very unlikely to be accepting of the suggestion that the Microsoft products that they use to good effect are inferrior. This often elicits a rebuttal based soley on their limited experience without any effort to test the suggestion.

These actions cause a opinionated division between the two parties that frequently persists until experience with other products occurs naturally for the inexperienced party.

Personal comparrisson of Microsofts products with other more carefully targeted products frequently reveals a lack of focused and polished commitment to a purpose. This is experienced by the user as "Suckiness".

Suck is, frankly, an insipid word to use in this argument. It is, however, inferior to other products on the market, and I'll explain why.

Microsoft runs its computing conglomerate like a company, and that is its worse flaw. Companies are creatures of the 20th century: in a high-tech company where innovation and expansion are vastly more important than consolidation Microsoft established its position as the de facto operating system producer, then, like all companies, grew a middle management that was far too large and proceeded to relax in a languid stupor.

However, does the product "suck"? It still has value in that it is still the operating system that is embraced by the companies that produce device drivers, and therefore those companies still exclusively program for that system. The vast majority of the problems that occur on a linux machine come from the fact that they don't have the necessary drivers to allow all the disparate components to work properly.

Frankly, the system isn't made for Apple and Linux, and that is why they suffer with relatively low market shares. The expensive nature of Apple's product design makes it infeasible for businesses (by far the largest purchaser of computers), and Linux's open-source philosophy severely cripples its ability to interface properly with the actual component manufacturers. The competitors themselves are vastly superior to Microsoft in terms of their products, but its the fact that Microsoft is still given to power to define the rules of the market that keeps Microsoft from tanking.

Of course. They shit their pants with 'that' thing Vista. I'm using Linux and I'm happy - no need for microsoft shitz. Then can do at least great mouses & keyboards (I own these).

But it's their biggest product, and what they are most well known for. If OS X was a piece of garbage you better believe that people would be saying that "Apple sucks."

The fact is that Microsoft fails at so many of it's major products. Vista is a disaster, plain and simple. It's so shitty it makes me dizzy. Should we start talking about the Zune? No? Alright, fair enough. Even the Xbox, a product that is very successful and seemingly well designed still suffers from what I'd like to coin "Microsoftisms." Red rings of death, for instance and the often bizarre way it handles game data.

Hahahaha!! Kernel panics every week, eh? If you're experiencing a kernel panic every week something is seriously wrong with your OS, like maybe you accidentally dropped high-powered magnets on your iMac.

You know how many kernel panics I've seen in the last four years running two different Macs during that time? Zero. Zip. None. Since about 10.2 OS X has been far and away the most stable and smooth running OS I have ever used. I can't speak for Linux, haven't ever really used it, but the Mac OS is solid.

I'm not a fanboy or anything, Apple has their problems (like their laptops consistently being faulty), but your assessment of OS X and kernel panics is completely out to lunch.

You're assuming I believe OS X is a solid operating system based solely on my own experience, which is not the case. In addition to being a Mac user for 8 years I also sold Macs for a year and a half. I am also a graphic designer whose peers nearly all use OS X, so my opinions of the operating system are not just based on only my experience.

Having said that OS X isn't bulletproof, and hardly perfect. Some people will have bad experiences, and that's true of any product really. However, if your 25 MacBook Pro's at your high school are crashing because of Microsoft Word or Firefox then the IT staff at your school should be downloading updates for both OS X and the software in question, which would likely solve the problem. I should also point out that if Microsoft Word and Firefox are crashing the OS, and everything else seems to run peachy, isn't it possible that OS X is not the culprit?

As for Apple's hardware advantage, if that's what it takes to get a computer to run smoothly, well maybe that's just what makes Apple not suck and Microsoft suck.

Either way you're kind of arguing both sides of the issue. On one hand you're saying "oh, well OS X machines run awesome cause they're designed with specific hardware in mind" and on the other you're telling me OS X doesn't run well because your computers at school crash all the time. So which is it? Does OS X run well or run shitty?

Here's what you said originally:

"OSX works very well on the hardware Apple supplies"

Here is what you're saying now:

". . . the reason many people think OSX is rock solid is that it runs on streamlined and often expensive hardware . . ."

You'll forgive me if I'm still confused.

I wouldn't lie to you and say that OS X never crashes, never has a kernel panic, and never beach-balls for hours until I'm ready to smash my iMac through a tree stump. But for myself, and those who use Mac around me, those moments are few and far between, much less than the hair pulling I experience using Microsoft software.

The thing is, as near as I can tell you're telling me that OS X runs well because of high-quality hardware (which isn't always true, I don't know about now, but there was a time when Apple was using the shittiest of shitty motherboards for their iBooks, the name of that manufacturer escapes me though) and Windows struggles as a result of poor or inconsistent hardware. I would assume you mean to say if Windows had the same hardware advantages as Apple they would be on par with the OS X. Okay, that's fair enough.

microsoft is going into a complete downfall. windows vista is crap and all computers running on that operating system should be burned. apple is revolutionizing the mp3 and computer that we know. soon they will be the only company to buy from for computers and mp3's. mac operating systems are the best and always will be.

That's not an argument.

No, this question does...

"Micosoft" doesn't exist.

Even the "worst" companies provide innovation, be it directly or non-directly. By releasing a new operating system after a whole six years without a revision, they've seriously pressured the Linux and OSX crowd to update. Things like the new Aero [storage of bitmap renders of the window's contents] is really customizable, and a vast step up from XP. While it does require stricter performance, the step up in security and stability from 98 to XP was worth it. The same can be said about Vista -- I've not yet had a system-level crash. When a driver fails, it doesn't blue screen -- it simply reloads the driver. That's more than I could say with my experience from Ubuntu or OSX [kernel panics every week].

Microsoft has come a long way with their innovative products. There is no way Linux can catch up with the GUI aspect of an Operating System. Linux may be twice as secure as Windows but how many novice users would want to use abstruse Linux system? Also, there is no real alternative to Microsoft Office products. They are just ingenious.

If not for Microsoft Windows 98, people would be suffering with non-GUI based systems and would have been satisfied with it.

No, they are the reason that computer/software development has come so far.

Despite me hating Microsoft, I do give them credit. 'Sucking' is far too broad, but any company that is as close to a monopoly as Microsoft is knows what its doing, even if what it is doing is dubious. If the question was "Is better than Windows" I would say yes, but Windows itself hardly sucks.

Microsoft must first be judged as an unit to make respond to this argument.

If I view Microsoft as a whole and average all of their efforts and actions then I personally conclude that they do not suck. They produce effective software and hardware solutions for various uses. These products and hardware are useful in their roles and are successfully deployed in real world situations with a high degree of efficacy.

Sucking is a condition of underperformance. Underperformance is based on comparrison to a stated target level. Setting this target level is a function of defining a desired result.

Since Microsoft achieves success in meeting the majority of expectations that are set in using their products they do not suck.

You can't just really label the whole company Microsoft as they "suck" because you get annoyed at them every once in a while. Okay.. maybe more than once in a while, but still.. they have 51 billion in sales last year. In terms of a business, they obviously don't suck. They are an extremely healthy company.

Do they make the best products on everything they do? Of course not. There are better OS out there that is for sure. But take Excel. There is nothing that comes even near as good as microsoft excel. So saying that microsoft sucks.. is a little harsh. It is not a company that is liked as much as Apple... but that does not mean it sucks.

Microsoft is a company, not a product. What you are arguing against is Windows, a product developed by Microsoft. Microsoft are creating a multitude of other products and evaluating Microsoft's "suckiness" based on a sole product is hardly accurate.

Microsoft is no longer as relevant as it once was. Computing as we know is about to change,

I'm not entirely sure what 'suck' means (assume smuttiness) but Windows XP runs faster and crashes less than every distribution of Linux I've tried on the same hardware. Price and some functionality issues keeps it off my system however.

So just because you think it's secure, it means that everyone else has the same conclusion? OSX works very well on the hardware Apple supplies. That's hardly the sign of a good operating system, more the sign of a good business strategy. The reason Vista crashes is almost always bad hardware configurations.

If you buy a new computer, built after Vista was released, you're going to have a good experience with the OS.

And, by the way, the 25 MacBook Pro's that my high school art department uses all have a problem with Microsoft Word or Firefox. Whenever you use the browser or office suite, the whole OS will freeze up or shut down unexpectedly. Almost 50-75% of the time, nobody uses them. It's not the same experience for everyone, keep that in mind.

I'm arguing that the reason many people think OSX is rock solid is that it runs on streamlined and often expensive hardware. I'm not arguing both sides : despite the specific hardware, it doesn't run well in all scenarios. You are arguing that OSX is the most stable argument, and I'm simply adding a shred of anecdotal evidence : not all users will have the same experience. Our school's IT department is clearly lackluster : the number of times I've fixed a "broken" Dell PC by editing a field in BIOS peaked this year at around ten to fifteen. However, if OSX was the rock solid operating system you make it out do be, it is doubtful our reproducible errors would be occurring so frequently. All updates for OSX and available Software are done over the local network weekly, though, so that is not the problem.

Okay, how can I write this.

OSX runs well because of it's streamlined and high-quality hardware. Most computers ship with more than 1GB of RAM, which is great for stablity. A lot of people who think XP is "slow" have 256/512MB. Despite this, however, it is not stable in every situation. In many situations, it will still freeze up. It is not perfect for everyone.

yeah it has its problems but most people who say it sucks, use it themselves