Microsoft - a good gone bad
My first personal computer was a radio shack trs-80. It was a wonderful little machine. There was a Sargon chess program that always beat me.
On that system, Microsoft BASIC functioned as the operating system and it was good and a cassette recorder served for data storage which was not so good.
It functioned as a DOS - a disk operating system among other things. It handled things like saving data to a storage medium and also reading data. It would save data and read from media like a cassette tape. It wasn't a graphic based system. You had to type a filename to read the contents of a file rather than double click with a mouse.
A high point was when I got an actual disk drive with a real disk operating system called TRSDOS. Later with MSDOS I could write batch files that would open my email server and show me all the new mail that I could enable with a keyword like "open new mail".
Recently I encountered the latest iteration of the Microsoft operating system and it was not a good experience. It wouldn't let me log on because it didn't like my password. I couldn't access any of the pictures I've made in the last year. I was shocked.
After jumping through a bunch of hoops my pictures were recovered.
But the impression that I took away was that Microsoft is a bunch of nasty jerks.
What do you do when the DOS screws up by doing things like denying access to your own data in the name of protecting you from hackers?
Cory Doctorow coined a term for this kind of thing: enshittification. A service starts off seeming benign and once it becomes essential the developers 'improve' the service so as to maximize the developer's profit against the actual needs of the user.
Not long ago I had a Windows10 computer that was working quite well. I got a notice saying that support for that system was ending. I looked into upgrading - at $150 or so. Turns out that Win11 wouldn't run on that computer. It was 5 or 6 years old and the hardware was out of date.
The computer world is divided into ecosystems; that is, sets of software get created that depend on a certain underlying DOS. Apple, Microsoft and Linux are some examples. This is part of what enables enshittification. I have ubuntu (linux) on one of my computers. When I first started using it it was hard to find even a printer that worked.
A couple of years ago my main computer was a windows/ubuntu dual boot system that I liked. Windows didn't like it at all and one upgrade completely corrupted the boot system on the harddrive and nothing would work. I had to replace it with another drive and reinstall - just ubuntu this time.
I lost Photoshop. That turned out to be a silver lining in the cloud. Now after lots of practice I'm getting fluent with the GIMP which cuts one more tie to the Windows ecosystem.
Photoshop is another example of a good gone bad. I first used it in 1986 when it first came out on a Mac when I was in art school. Then I used it for years when I worked in pre-press in the printing industry. It got better and better and was optimized for the graphic arts industry and got to be the industry standard. It was good software - not only good in itself but it also became a good way of communicating among designers and printers.
Then it went bad. It started pushing updates on the industry. Each would have a new feature that appealed to graphic designers that came with a new file format. The whole industry had to update their software at hundreds of dollars a pop. Then the updates started happening every six months.
At least - if you were outside the industry you could buy it and just ignore the updates. It would be your possession. Then Windows crashed my copy.
Photoshop changed its business plan - they moved to a subscription plan where the subscription just gave you access to software that they could update anytime they wanted for a mere $30 a month. A former user says "oh yeah - you want to change the gui and file format when you want without telling anyone" . Declines
The GIMP is free even on Windows. It's produced by a community of volunteer coders in an open source environment. The coders take pleasure (it seems to me) at continually adding new capabilities without making old capabilities unavailable. The GIMP even makes it easy for coders like me with modest abilities to add new capabilities.
One thing that Microsoft wants us to accept is that profit is the main motive for business and that it's OK for business to operate in a way that maximizes profit. To which one can only say 'ayup' with a sardonic raised eyebrow.
The GIMP shows that volunteers having fun in a community might be a huge factor in a community beyond business interests.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.