…YOU WILL BE ASSEMILATED … WE WILL ADD YOUR TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN … RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!
Yeah, I work on the dark side, slaving like every other busy worker, trying to meet deadlines, get the work out, or trying to, without getting run over by Microsoft!
Why do I know this about myself? Every other worker drone is unaware of his plight. Not me. By night I work on a Macintosh!
Almost eighteen years since 1984. People breathed a sigh or relief when that year passed, collectively thinking to themselves how lucky they were not to be living in George Orwell’s nightmare. Little did they know that Big Brother was alive and well, prospering in Albuquerque and plotting the domination of the world, one computer at a time.
Bill Gates has succeeded, folks. At least where I work he has. Our days are busy with work. Good, honest work. We hope to build something great and wonderful. Yet we all work on Windows, and we all use Microsoft Office exclusive of other applications. I cannot begin to describe to you how much he controls how we do things and even what we can accomplish. Everything we do depends on his applications working. Well, they don’t work very well, and our product suffers.
Oh, the apps do work, after a fashion. If Microsoft Office were a car, I would be in the dealership with it quoting them the Lemon Law!
Take this word processing application I am using. I am amazed at how big it is! Bloatware is what defines it. It never crashes more that once or twice a day. If it does, I can usually find a certain cryptically named file off in an obscure folder somewhere, where I can perform a complicated incantation to retrieve what I lost in my document. Usually it is much easier and faster just to retype what is missing. Funny, this is the most stable application I have on my laptop.
Suppose for instance that I want to make the byline at the top of my article begin with a small “b.” Never happen. MSWord makes it capitalized for you. You have no choice, unless you sneak back up there after a few sentences and change it, immediately moving your cursor elsewhere. It will then allow you to have your byline begin with a small “b,” but it will underline it in red, and if you spell check your work, it will insist on trying to fix it for you. Minor detail, I know, but this typifies the whole paradigm of control that Big Brother puts in all his software.
Today, I spend several hours trying to cut and paste a simple table into an MSWord text document. The table had the same fonts and line spacing that the document had, so you would think this would be an easy task. Just paste it in and get back to business. Not so! After trying so many ways to do this, and having the table populate my page in unchangeable big ugly letters and triple line spaces, I was faced with a choice. I could paste it in as a picture, but then no one could later edit it if they needed to. Or I could call the Microsoft guy and ask him how to do it.
You can guess what he said. “Sorry, you will have to build that table in your document. They cannot be imported.” Although I am getting a certain fatalistic mindset just being around these types of people, I did try another avenue. I called a Mac WP specialist. “Oh yeah. I have that problem all the time in MSWord. Why don’t you use a real document processing application like Quark or PageMaker?”
Turns out the solution we finally found was to first import a Style Template into my document, so the poor table could see it when it came into my document. I still got garbage when I pasted it in, but now at least the table would respond to my changes in type and line spacing, so I could fix it.
You see, that is really not any solution. I still have to mess with the table big time just to place it in every document that it must go in. Lots of needless hours added to an already tight schedule.
This kind of control is everywhere in Windows and in any of the Microsoft applications. Even Mac people who use MSOffice complain to me that their MS software is capricious, doing what it wants, instead of what the user needs.
Want to change how a window opens on the desktop, so that you can see the type and date? Go ahead and change the window. It’s easy enough. Now go away for a while, and then open the window once more. What do you see? Now your files are displayed in big and slow thumbnails. How did that happen? That is not what I want it to do! %@&$#%@&!
I want to dial up my built in modem at night so I can move a file to my home server. First time I did this, it was easy. Simple to type in everything you need, including your password. Bad luck, though. The server kept rejecting my dialing. It took a long time to find out that Microsoft puts it own password in your dialup dialog box, so you can easily dial up their Microsoft Network (fat chance! I will never use their Password — I might as well leave my credit cards on the street!)
So what does that mean, they changed my password to theirs? It means that regardless of what I type in, MS will change it to their own. Can’t be fixed. Can’t be deleted. Can’t be modified. It really means that I must type in any password I need to use on this OS every time I want to dial up any account. Thanks MS!
It goes on and on. Features that you are used to in the free and open Macintosh environment go missing in Windows.
Formatting in Excel is one place this is so. No global changes to your text there. You have to format things bit by bit, and hope the next time you open the document they will still be there the way you left them. What? You opened it and printed it, but it got changed somehow, so now you wasted all that plotter paper? Dummy! Never print any document you open without checking to see what Windows changed on it first!
Now open Quicktime to see a clip you need for your presentation. (Windows Media Player cannot even see the file). Opps! “Your System Preferences have changed. This application cannot be used now.” Like I said. Big Brother is watching you, cause he just screwed you again.
Want to find that file you just saved? Good luck! MS puts it where it wants. You have to play scout to find it. Open a folder in an app to find a file? You hunt and you find it. Need to do it again? Sorry, you get to start your search all over again, because MS can’t remember the last place you were.
Sorry if I sound so bummed. I am. Working on the dark side does that to you. I have been living in George Orwell’s novel. I have been assimilated by the Borg. Resistance is futile. Big Brother, the Borg, Microsoft — its all the same to me anymore.
I work hard at my job, just like all the other good people around me. I am proud of my company, because it has a high ratio of brains to mass, and there are very few bureaucrats there. Yet we are all just helpless drones in our working environment, walking where Microsoft tells us, and doing things the way Microsoft wants us to.
And don’t think that MS doesn’t know what you do on your computer any time you sit down to work on it, or write an email to anyone, or compose/design/invent your next opus. MS is there to look over your shoulder, pondering how well you comply. Thwarting every independent thought. Orwell would have been proud.
I am also continually amazed at how many man-years of productivity are lost to this insane world-leader-wannabe, and his continual interference and meddling in every facet of our business.
The next time you see someone who works in the Windows environment, don’t despise them for working on the dark side. Pity them.
Most of them will never know the freedom you have working on your Mac. You lucky User, you! You have the freedom to choose. You can do all your work without ever giving Bill Gates a dime. You have the most sophisticated and elegant operating system on the planet. Everything you do on the Mac works. If something should not work for some reason, you can usually fix it without resorting to tech support, or even a manual, for the Mac is most forgiving, and after a time, is almost like a friend.
So take pity on those people enslaved to the dark side. Who knows, the next PC user you bump into might be me.
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