Okay all you Microsoft Fanboys… Here’s your big chance.
Recently, Apple made an announcement that because of incompatibilities with Vista, iTunes users should hold off on upgrading until the new version of iTunes arrives. Microsoft fanboys ’round the blogosphere jumped on this as proof of Apple’s arrogance, proof that Apple doesn’t really care about its iPod owners, and so on and so forth. I’ve heard every line of bullshit imaginable from Microsoft fanboys who roundly criticized Apple for its misstep. At one point, on Digital Media Thoughts, I made the point that the Zune, Microsoft’s own closed system and player, doesn’t work with Vista out of the box, and we all had a good chuckle.
Well, it gets worse than that.
First off, we’ll talk about the Zune. Here’s a user who can’t get his purchased music to play on his newly upgraded to Vista computer:
“I decided since my P1610 was running flawlessly under WinXP that I would try to upgrade that OS to Vista, much as my family and friends would be needing to do since they are not very computer savvy. At least, I wouldn’t want them wiping their system clean and doing a clean install because I know that would create big problems for them, much as it will a lot of consumers. Big mistake. UPDATE on the Zune situation: Further mucking about shows me that the music downloaded from the Zune Marketplace will now play fine on the Zune player. It will not play on the PC side, however. Now I’m wondering if it’s a file permission thing that Vista has imposed. Who knows?”
Very nice, Microsoft. I’m just wondering. If it’s Apple’s arrogance that stops them from having a fully functional version of iTunes for Windows Vista, what’s stopping you from making your Zune software work with your newest operating system? Should we blame Apple for that, too?
Jeremy Charette, a colleague of mine at Digital Media Thoughts wrote the following:
Actually, Apple has posted a support topic which covers installation of iTunes in Windows Vista, as well as how to avoid the known problems with using an iPod with Vista. If you follow the instructions, you shouldn’t have any trouble. Says something about Apple however, that they’ve had access to Vista for months now, and still haven’t released a bug-free, Vista-compatible revision of iTunes.
Jeremy’s not a MS fanboy, but he raises the question that needs to be answered by Microsoft also. If it “says something” about Apple, imagine what it must say about Microsoft?
Now we take it a step further. If Apple’s lack of support of a third party piece of hardware or software demonstrates their arrogance, what does it say that Microsoft’s Xbox doesn’t work with Apple’s Airport Basestation, which is a standards-compliant B, G, and N router?
Microsoft’s tech support apparently is telling customers that Apple routers are not recommended. So would you be willing to entirely disable security on your wireless network to connect to your Xbox? That’s apparently one way of making the connection work. Some readers report that turning off security and closing their network (not advertising the SSID) and using MAC address filtering work. You can join the Xbox/Airport Extreme discussion here.
So in other words, Microsoft is advising you not to use Apple routers. Funny how the reaction to that doesn’t seem as strong as the iTunes reaction, huh? I mean, if Apple’s telling people not to use Vista until they can get the bugs worked out with iTunes is based on arrogance, what about Microsoft’s arrogance telling you to avoid a certain kind of router because they can’t get the bugs worked out with it?
My point?
Things break. Hardware is incompatible. In the computing world, it’s just the way it is. None of this is any more a demonstration of Apple’s arrogance than it is a demonstration of Microsoft’s laziness. Shit breaks. Shit needs to be fixed. The only difference is that when Apple stuff doesn’t work, it’s their arrogance, and when Microsoft stuff doesn’t work, it’s apparently Apple’s arrogance also.
Technorati Tags: apple, microsoft, hardware, double standards
