What the hell is wrong with the state of computing?
Computer security gets a lot of attention these days, because people like my mother introduced us all to concepts like "address book hijacking" and "virus chain letters". Current common wisdom is that you must secure all aspects of your computer, ranging from file encryption to network firewalls to constant updates to your virus program. But are they really helping? Are they really worth it? Are they even useful? Unfortunately, all the best security tools are effectively useless in the hands of the average user.I was given the task of repairing a 3 year old laptop that was having serious software errors due to a corrupted installation of Windows XP. I formatted the hard drive and did a clean install using the original XP disc that came with the computer. I installed a few apps that the client needed, including "Spybot S&D" to help secure the system. I did not connect the laptop to the net, so it never had an opportunity to do any updates. I went to the client's house armed with a copy of Office 2007 and a Linksys wireless router; I installed the router and configured it to operate with the client's cable modem, and within moments the house was bathed in wireless net goodness. Upon trying to install Office 2K7 I was informed that XP SP2 needed to be installed first. OK, I guess this probably is a pre-SP2 XP disc, so let's go get the updates.
This is where is all went to hell.
I'd love to bitch about what it was like to deal with receiving almost 70 "critical" updates, and how long it took, and how depressing it is when you think the updates are finally done ( downloading 68 of 70... 69 of 70... 70 of 70!! YAY!) and you then see it say "Installing 1 of 70...", gah... and you think you are halfway done but realize after a few minutes that each update is taking anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to install! But really, that is to be expected when you install XP from a three year old CD. Ya know how updates seem to come out like six a week? Multiply that by the age of my install CD and OF COURSE I am going to have to suffer through a lot of updates. This is Windows, and that is the price of admission.
The problem was that every time these new updates wanted to make significant changes to the system, especially the registry, Spybot would throw up an alert. Now for me this has never been a problem because Spybot clearly states what it is protecting (such as "Browser Helper Objects", more commonly known as "all those spam toolbars my friend Farrar has clogging up Internet Explorer") and it offers you the choice of preventing the proposed change or allowing it. But it isn't so simple for my client, as she does not have decades of low-level experience with computers (that's what she pays me for), so she isn't at all clear on what Spybot was telling her. She found it an endlessly frustrating experience, put totally over the top when she tried to change IE's default page from MSN to Google, and Spybot kept throwing up alerts that she didn't understand and not allowing her to change her home page.
So I walked her through uninstalling Spybot.
The naive among you might be crying out "why didn't you just teach her how to use Spybot?", but anyone with a significant amount of computer experience can tell you first-hand that you cannot impart a lifetime of knowledge to someone, no matter how "right" that may be. In an ideal world everyone would be as computer literate as I am, and we wouldn't need any hand-holding, and we wouldn't "accidentally" launch a virus someone sent us in an E-mail because it was called "funnymovie.avi.exe", but that isn't the world we live in. If it was I wouldn't get these good-paying IT gigs to fix "broken" laptops. :)
Microsoft and Apple have screwed us all. With each new release of Windows and MacOS they added more and more features, ranging from the grandma who wanted to view JPEG photos in her file browser to the video game developer who wanted more video power and control over the system to the network administrator who wanted the ability to grade and prioritize traffic on a per-application or per-port basis. Do those three things sound like the demands of the same customer? HELL NO. So why do the major operating systems (I'm going out on a limb to call the Mac's user numbers "major" but what the hell) insist on being all things to all people? OK, you cannot practically have "Windows for Architects" or "Windows for Nuclear Power Plants", but I have never been able to understand why they don't offer a more basic OS for my mom.
When the very first iMac had been pre-announced I was surprisingly excited, even though I had never owned a Mac myself. The word was that this was a significantly simplified computer, designed for... gasp... YOUR MOM! It was rumored to be a closed box system, with any minimal expansion needs handled by USB instead of cracking open a tower case and installing cards. It was also going to ship with a more modern and straightforward OS, again for your mom and not a Computer Science student! Well, this sounded perfect! I always thought that the modern OS's gave too much power to users who could not manage it, like my mother. The Mac had one pretty good concept I saw in business use; the Finder (it's GUI) could be locked down to a simplistic mode where you had minimal options to screw up. I saw a lot of secretaries in the late 80's running a stripped-down locked-down version of the Finder, and those systems always ran reliably. I figured the new iMac system would be like that, but with just enough additional control to satisfy more modern needs. Unfortunately, that is not at all what Apple delivered. The iMac came with the latest version of the MacOS, not revolutionary but merely evolutionary and not really related to the release of the iMac, and it was even more feature-rich than before. Not what I had hoped for. I have never been that naive about OS announcements since, as I realized they ALL claim to be major revolutions that will clear your arteries and render anthrax inert, and they are NEVER more than obvious incremental updates that barely keep pace with the times.
Windows screws us especially bad, because due to its phenomenal popularity in the late 80's and early 90's it became THE platform of choice for everyone. Being the platform of choice to everyone means Microsoft had to throw in a little this and a little that in order to please everyone. This just pleased more and more people, who told all their friends that Windows would do whatever they wanted. More diverse demands were placed on the OS, and Microsoft gleefully responded by giving the common man more and more of what he asked for.
Reminds me of a quote I have posted elsewhere on this site...
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
--H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
I'm reminded of this because Vista and OSX are reminiscent of the president in Mencken's reflections; they have transformed from lean, mean, fighting machines that get work done to marginalized atrocities. Or maybe I'm just thinking of Dubya. Hard to say! ;)
Ignorant soul that I am, partially literate and all, I know I have heard some old quote like "jack of all trades, master of none" which I could explain in English (or Murkin anyway, for my UK readers) but instead I'll use another analogy, as I really love a good analogy. This is akin to a Swiss Army knife; oh, they are great when you are stranded in the mountains and you need to clean a trout or you'll die of starvation, but ask any fisherman what they think of the fish scaler on a Swiss Army knife and you'll get laughed into the next county. How about cutting a tree? Well, the Swiss Army knife may come with a blade that is laughingly referred to as "the wood saw" but you will be limited to wood about 3" in diameter, and you will be in sheer friggin' hell as you spend a good chunk of your life trying to chip away at a branch with this ode to uselessness.
This is basically what I think of the current approach to consumer operating systems.
What the big guys need to do is create an all-encompassing platform initiative, where a whole new class of hardware and software is defined. The hardware should be a mostly closed box, RAM expansion only, with everything else handled by USB 2.0 or other connection technologies that don't involve opening the case. The operating system should NOT be anywhere NEAR enough for a power user like me; it should be tailored to the typical mom-and-pop-and-the-kids experience. This means it will only do certain tasks, such as photo organizing and editing, music and video playback, word processing, internet surfing, E-mail, IM, etc., and NOT be able to act as a server, NOT be able to host web sites, NOT be able to crunch numbers for advanced CAD, NOT be able to even run Photoshop! Frankly, the OS should be more akin to a Pocket PC (called "Windows Mobile" these days). For those who have not used a Pocket PC, the concept is simple; it looks and feels like Windows, but it is damn near impossible to hurt the operating system (deleting basic system files is impossible). The control panels for networking options are simplistic in the extreme, and advanced users like myself often find ourselves a bit frustrated as we wish for a bit more control "like we have on regular Windows". You know what? It isn't needed! I have taken a Pocket PC out of my pocket and connected to a strange network, WEP key and all, in less time than a laptop user could find their network settings (much less comprehend them). Pocket PCs run in only two resolutions, 320x240 and 640x480, mostly due to the fact that high-resolution handheld screens have only recently been available, but this is a great metaphor for a simpler Windows; why can my mother select 800x600 in 16 colors and using any of a multitude of video drivers, when she only wants to work at 1024x768 in 24bit color? According to my web site logs the majority now operates at a minimum of 1024x768, and almost all 15"-17" LCD monitors work best at this resolution or you get those awful LCD "fuzzies" where nothing is sharp. So why doesn't Windows offer a version where you can only run at 1024x768? The next most common screen size I see in my logs is 1280x1024. Between those two resolutions that covers about 75% of all users who browse my site. So, why offer other resolutions at all? Hardcore computer gamers need to run many different resolutions, but those guys are not my mother! The computer itself should only be capable of producing a very few resolution options, the monitor should be designed to only do the same few resolutions, and the operating system would present you only with options that are going to work.
Most Pocket PC apps are nowhere near as sophisticated as their desktop counterparts; Pocket Word and Pocket Excel probably offer 5% of the functionality of their desktop brothers, but they are the 5% you actually USE! Outside of a business or school environment I have never seen the average person use headers and footers in Microsoft Word, and indeed Pocket Word does not support them, it just plain ignores them if present in the document and cannot add them itself. Does this reduce the usefulness of Pocket Word to someone like my mother? Not in any way! Do you think she uses headers and footers when she writes a letter to a family member? Yeah, right.
The twisted irony is that the capabilities of desktop hardware and operating systems are far more than the average person needs (or can handle), but thus far companies like Apple and Microsoft refuse to risk alienating their customers by removing their options. They are looking at it the wrong way. Here is the pitch for a new computer system in my ideal world.
System A:
-Windows Uber, the OS that pwns j00r b0ks and give you total control. Do anything... as long as you know how!
-The Black Box, the hardware that is totally modular and allows you total control, as long as you know what you are doing!
-MS Word, Stone Tablet edition. Total control over the formatting of your document, as long as... well, you get the idea.
System B:
-Windows that Works, an OS that feels just like regular Windows but comes with less than 10% of the baggage you don't need!
-The White Box, a machine that has nothing more threatening than USB ports my mom can plug her printer, camera and DVD burner into.
-MS Word, Shopping Lists & Thank-you Notes edition. Do I even have to go there?
Now, picture me and my mom at CompUSA. Which one does she buy? It would seem obvious, except for one thing. Who makes the apps for this new system?
Software authors from the 80's will tell you they do not miss the old days of having to support incompatible platforms with multiple versions of the same software. One for the Amiga, one for the Atari ST, one for the C64, one for the IBM PCjr, one for real IBM PCs, one for Macs, one for Apple (][e or above!)... the list seemed endless. This is like having special gasoline for Fords, special gas for Chevys, special gas for Hondas... very costly since each one is effectively a totally independent products from all the others. So, if there were a version of Windows that was not compatible with "regular" Windows there are a lot of software authors who would stay away from it, perhaps because they lack the resources to manage two products, or lack the expertise, or what have you. There are others however who would embrace the opportunity to sell to a whole new market that is clamoring for an unprecedented level of stability in their applications.
Microsoft would need to rigidly screen such applications before "blessing" it and allowing it to install on "White Box" machines. That right, I am suggesting a computer where you cannot install any old hunkashite you find on the internet. While this "blessing" would undoubtedly only allow commercial developers with decent budgets to offer software that could be installed, I believe the users would rather know "for sure" that a program will work than enjoy the benefits of an open system where you can install any shit piece of shareware some lazy college kid wrote. You wanna do that? Buy the Black Box like me!
I doubt it will ever happen. Microsoft and Apple would have to admit they HAVEN'T been giving us easier to use systems each year. New hardware and software models would have to be created from scratch. Selling applications would have steeper requirements of the authors. But the market wants it, and this would be a whole new sub-industry, which would mean billions of dollars a year. I wish it would happen sooner rather than later, as I don't think I can take one more "fix my broken computer" E-mail from a friends or family.
(C) 2007 Don Stratton
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