Hate on Windows
If you know me, you probably know that Windows and I have some problems, some philosophical, some technical, and some ethical. But the main reason for writing this upcoming rant isn’t to accuse anyone who uses Windows. I’m criticizing Windows as an idea and as a product. I’ll get to Microsoft as a corporation soon, but that needs some groundwork first, starting with its products and ideas.
Windows has a very weird start, and the main reason is that IBM needed an OS for its first PC and Microsoft didn’t have one.
In 1980, IBM went looking for an operating system and approached Digital Research, the makers of CP/M, the standard at the time. IBM asked them to sign a nondisclosure agreement before discussing the project, and Digital Research refused. Kildall later said the deal failed over terms, so the story is disputed, but either way, no deal was made.
IBM then turned to Microsoft, which had no OS. Meanwhile, Tim Paterson, working at Seattle Computer Products (SCP), built 86-DOS by copying CP/M’s design: its system calls and behavior, so CP/M programs could run on it. Gary Kildall called that stealing. Paterson says he wrote the code himself from CP/M’s published documentation, and no court ever ruled otherwise. But the result was a CP/M clone, and SCP sold it to Microsoft: first a license for about $25,000, without telling SCP that IBM was the customer, then a full purchase for about $50,000 more. Microsoft also hired Paterson. Then it sold the system to IBM, and the man whose design started it all got nothing.
In 1981, IBM launched its PC with PC-DOS, which Microsoft also sold to other manufacturers as MS-DOS. IBM offered CP/M-86 too, but at about $240 against $40 for DOS, which effectively killed it.
In 1985, Microsoft released Windows 1.0: MS-DOS with a graphical interface on top. That’s where the word “Windows” started its journey.
In 1986, after SCP’s owner challenged how the deal was made, Microsoft paid SCP $925,000 to settle. No court found Microsoft guilty of anything, but the payment shows the deal was disputed from the start.
That’s where it all began, and it matters. Knowing the history helps us understand why things look the way they do today, and not just for Windows, but for anything. History makes it easier to understand and to judge.
Now I’ll go on with the main reasons that made me write this rant.
If you’re a CS student, work in the field, or have taken an Operating Systems class, you probably know what an OS is fundamentally for: managing the hardware resources, giving the programs above it something sane to talk to, and then getting out of the way. That was the purpose operating systems were created for.
But Windows offers far more than that. It ships with a browser, a media player, a store, a built-in assistant, cloud accounts, telemetry, and ads in the Start menu. So the question appears: why is that a bad thing? Isn’t more better?
Not necessarily. Every extra component adds code and complexity. More code can mean more bugs, more security vulnerabilities, a larger attack surface, and more resource consumption, even for people who never asked for those features. Not every component runs with the highest privileges, but the more deeply software and services are integrated into an operating system, the more they can affect its security, performance, and behavior. Updates are a good example. Windows Update installs changes on its own schedule, and on Home editions you can only postpone it for a limited time. A restart you didn’t choose, in the middle of your work, feels small until it happens again and again. At that point the system is managing your time instead of your hardware.
Microsoft seems increasingly interested in building its own version of Apple’s ecosystem, where the company gets to control more of the user’s experience. It seems to want to turn Windows into a toll road: a road you already depend on, with toll booths placed along the way. You either take the route the company wants you to take, or you spend your time finding workarounds and putting up with the friction. And the frustrating part is that Microsoft seems to want the control of a tightly managed ecosystem without delivering an equally coherent experience. But the wider problem of Microsoft’s corporate interests and how they shape its products deserves a section of its own.
Still, none of that is the main reason I left Windows.
The biggest reason is that I felt I wasn’t learning anything. I was learning how to survive inside the system, how to get things working and work around its limitations, but I wasn’t learning much about the system itself. And that bothered me.
If I spend hours on my computer every day, shouldn’t I make it fit my needs? Shouldn’t I build a workflow that saves me time and effort instead of constantly adapting to someone else’s decisions? And shouldn’t using a computer teach me something along the way?
Exploring different operating systems and tools can teach you how your computer works, introduce you to new ways of solving problems, and expose you to communities you might never have discovered otherwise. It can open your eyes to the fact that there are many ways to use a computer, many tools to choose from, and many things you can change instead of simply accepting them as they are.