Joel Spolsky has hit the nail right on the head, yet again. This time, he’s talking about Internet Explorer 8 and the decision whether or not to automatically follow web standards, and the eternal flame wars that are going to erupt over it. He also points out that this is the same reason that Windows Vista has gotten such a lukewarm response in the market (I don’t think it’s the entire reason, but it’s certainly part of it). It’s worth a read.
He’s right about IE (except people should just use Firefox 😉 ) and wrong about Vista. (I guess you can take a Microsoftie out of Microsoft, but you can’t take the Microsoft out of a Microsoftie? 😉 )
Vista doesn’t not work because they’ve improved it and due to that old programs don’t work with it. It doesn’t work because they “improved” it in a broken way, and also added DRM that interferes with both hardware and software, so programs don’t work with it.
The DRM may be why a lot of techies are avoiding Vista, but it’s failing in the general marketplace primarily for the reason that Joel says: because it won’t run peoples’ programs.
Is the reason for the incompatibilities and performance problems with programs and drivers mere adherence to “standards” though, or some more negative reason?
The reason for that, according to Joel, is that the idealists have taken over at Microsoft, and decided to scrap backward compatibility in the name of moving forward. As an explanation for MS’s behavior (toward Windows, IE, and likely other software) in recent years, it makes a lot of sense.
That doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad idea, but then again, Microsoft seems to know how to take a good idea, and implement it badly; starting with Windows 1.0 😉 I’m not sure however if I want to call Vista a case of “idealism”, it seems to me more of a case of pragmatism, the pragmatic fact that they needed a product out of the door and needed one quickly, even if it was quite broken.