Rant spawned by Angry Birds discussions

Angry Birds, an app that I know primarily through Dale's iPhone, has had a lot of talk lately.  Apparently Microsoft, in its quest to market its new phone, erroneously indicated that Angry Birds would be available on the new phone.  Whups.  The game's peoples have tweeted about this and said nope, no such plans right now, but nothing against MS.  I read quite a number of  comments which consequently bash Microsoft.

This led me to the following rant.  Personally speaking, from the point of view of a few issues I've had somewhat recently, it's quite annoying to have meaningless errors or a white screen of death as an add-in crashes Outlook.  First, I think add-ins are evil and no one should make them in the first place.  They ruin perfectly good, working software.  Second, no Office product should allow these add-ins to take over.  If they're allowed at all, then have some sort of extra programming that will ignore the add-in if it tries to do something evil to the program's functionality.  Then people could be more appropriately angry at the add-in developer instead of the the program's developer, because the add-in would simply cease to function. Instead, the app crashes, restarts, then pleasantly asks if you'd like to disable the offending add-in.  Disable?  No!  I want it to get temporarily shut down while the problem is occurring, then permitted to be enabled once it stops being an ass!!  Have a little menu under "Help" that has a list of add-ins that are getting disabled so you can go up there and see what's going on if you want, not be forced to deal or else cope with constant app restarts.  Zheezh.  This doesn't hold to just Microsoft.  I recently witnessed something similar with a rather expensive Autocad product.  Although, in this case, the app still worked, at least.  It's just the cryptic error that was ticking me off.

Now, all that said, there are Windows 7 features that are totally slick.  The snapping, the minimizing, the keyboard control that is BUILT IN.  Windows 7 is the flagship now.  Leopard is still nice, but for me, it's still not quite as intuitive because, well, I'm used to Windows.  Prefer it for my Office experience, most definitely.  Each has their place, though, as I've often said:  When I'm using Photoshop, I can't imagine using it on a pc again.  I cannot live without iPhoto, iTunes, iWeb.  Egads.  GarageBand may be useless most days but for those times when I get the musically creative itch, there it is, waiting for me, a free app WITH THE OS!!  You cannot, with any honesty, say that a Mac is not worth the money. You can only say it does not meet your needs (if it doesn't).  Which in all truth, it really might not.  Nothing wrong with that.

I would love to have a dedicated Linux box in the house, but I consider Linux to be an offshoot of Unix, an open-source mess with good (albeit sometimes snobbish) intentions.  I suppose I have become a sort of narcissistic diplomat when it comes to operating systems, in that I feel everyone should get off their high horse and acknowledge that not everyone has to like one thing, but everyone should agree that we don't all have to agree.  How's that for hypocrisy?  Or is that an oxymoron?  I'm not sure, but it's kinda funny.  I've always entangled myself in such things... don't listen to anyone.  Now listen to me.  Yeah, thanks, self.  That makes sense.

Anywho, if you like tinkering, Linux is great.  If you like developing, you can really chase any of the Big Three.  If you like creating or little fuss, go get a Mac.  And if you're used to Windows and like it, go out and get it.  I don't give a rat's petoobies.  I try to recommend based on what you need and can afford!

~w