Why grapefruit still suck

You know you’ve arrived as a journalist when your contemporaries start using your material as inspiration. This week, it’s Ed Bott — ZDNet’s “Microsoft Report” blogger — who’s taken a cue from the master. In his missive titled “Remembering Windows XP’s early days,” Mr. Bott attempts to rebut my recent post about “Comparing Windows versions” by digging up comments made by former InfoWorld staffer P.J. Connelly and attributing them to yours truly.

That the quotes in question came from Mr. Connelly (I merely contributed the test data for the article), and not me, is likely a moot point. Mr. Bott was looking for a cheap-shot opportunity to use against InfoWorld, and my name popped-up next to P.J. on the byline.

To be clear, I had my own reservations about Windows XP. However, my concerns had less to do with lowered performance than with my own selfish desire (shared by many of my colleagues) to see the the NT code base remain separate from the “mainstream” (i.e. consumer) Windows product line.

Remember, Windows 2000 Workstation (as it was called back then, to differentiate it from the server version) was never a mainstream desktop product. Rather, it was the next logical evolution of Windows NT Workstation, the high-end, “power user” OS that uber-geeks ran because Windows 9x was too unstable for “real” computing. The great unwashed still ran Windows 95/98/98SE/Me, and given Windows 2000 Workstation’s miniscule installed base, most 3rd party hardware and software vendors were reluctant to put time, money or resources into developing for it.

Those of us who were die-hard NT fans (I’ve been using it, in one form or another, as my primary desktop OS since 1992) didn’t care. We made do with what we had, and side-stepped the poor driver quality and half-hearted technical support by being choosy about our hardware. It was a wild and woolly time for the NT community, and despite some superficial similarities to Windows 9x — most notably, the sketchy plug & play support and semi-functional explorer GUI — Windows 2000 Workstation was very much an “NT” release.

Enter Windows XP.

When Microsoft first announced in late 2000 that they were developing yet another NT-based desktop OS — this, only a year after shipping Windows 2000 Workstation — I thought they were joking. Then, when I learned that they would be using this new release to “unify” the Windows 9x and Windows NT code bases, I started to get mad.

How could they? Surrendering my precious NT to those bastards from the “DOS/Windows” crowd! My OS was pure! It was Dave Cutler’s baby! A VMS clone! A real OS! These other guys were heathens, responsible for the infamous “UAE”, the Win16Lock semaphore and EMM386! In other words, a bunch of lazy hacks!

Ultimately, my fears proved unfounded. The newly integrated Windows development team managed to pull-off an engineering feat by marrying the best parts of Windows NT — robustness, stability, security — with the usability features that made Windows 9x so maddeningly difficult to abandon. And the industry — hungry for an upgrade cycle — embraced Microsoft’s new stepchild with excitement and enthusiasm.

Fast forward to today and the scene is quite different. Windows XP, not Windows 9x, is the dominant OS. There is no desktop bifurcation — everyone is running the NT code base, which is now fully supported by both hardware and software vendors.

And, most importantly, there are no glaring holes in Windows XP that threaten to undermine its position on the desktop (Windows 9x was a huge liability to Microsoft’s enterprise strategy).

Bottom Line: None of the pressures that drove customers to Windows XP — the rickety Windows 9x underpinnings, the desire to unify Microsoft’s disparate Windows architectures and leverage NT technologies across a broader user base — exist today.

It’s a different world, one that’s — by and large — satisfied with Windows the way it is. This is why I will continue to call out those who try to downplay “Save XP” by equating resistance to Vista with the earth-shattering transition that was Windows 9x-to-Windows XP. That move was truly apples-to-oranges, while Vista remains more of a grapefruit. And as we all know from experience, grapefruit suck.

Here’s hoping that Windows 7 is something a bit more palatable. Like a mango. Or a kiwi. I hear that papaya is nice this time of year. Maybe I’ll go out in the yard and cut a few …