Good on Microsoft for doing this. I essentially hated my i7 laptop after upgrading it to Win8, until I paid $4.99 for Start8. Glad they've come to their senses. But it begs the question... why does it take them 6 months to realize the mistake, then another 6 months to release an update that is essentially a minor patch? It annoyed me paying for Start8, but seriously... almost a year to get an option to boot to desktop and the start menu back, when I could pay $5 to get it from a 3rd party basically on release day. No one gives a crap about having more Metro tiles... These options should have been added in via a Windows Update patch months ago, and instead we get a preview in June with release in time for the holidays...

To me this just boils down to... people want Office on their iOS devices. Rather than make the _hundreds of millions of dollars_ they would earn by delivering versions of Office for iOS, Microsoft has instead been content to use it as a carrot to try to get people to use Windows Phone and Surface devices. Whenever they learn that that strategy is stupid, they will make a ton of money. Until then, they're just leaving money on the table and alienating precisely the people that are trying to give them money. Microsoft: you _are_ Office. Put it on every platform, iOS, Linux, whatever. Get over yourselves. People want Office on whatever device they're using, give it to them and make the money. BTW, Excel on Mac is crap. Fix it. I'm not going to switch away from Mac OS, but I will keep entertaining alternatives to Excel until you quit providing crap versions of Excel on Mac. Office should be awesome on every platform, and available on all platforms. Quit trying to push MS products with Office, just make Office great, and you will make tons of money.

My apologies for not being clear enough. The second part of my post was simply this: there's nothing stopping people from just installing Chrome or Firefox on existing XP machines to access Google Apps. Both browsers are free and run fine on XP.

So, for your organization, all the users of said multimillion dollar tools can keep using XP and IE 6 or 7 or whatever... and if they need to use Google Apps they can just install Chrome or Firefox. No need to upgrade machines or anything. So this few hundred bucks per computer or 'billions of dollars' you're talking about doesn't exist. There's no cost, just installing a free web browser and using that for Google Apps instead. Hence the lack of sympathy.

As far as my assertion that people should quit using IE; guilty as charged. Sure things were different 10-15 years ago. I don't think your firm really made a mistake. But to choose to use products that require IE at this point, when Microsoft keeps breaking old apps with new versions *and* requiring that you upgrade your OS to use the new versions... it's not smart. Not to mention it ties you to Windows platform when you can use Chrome or Firefox on Mac or Linux (which you can install on all those old machines running XP).

On the one hand I feel bad for folks that work in IT for companies that have apps they use which require IE. On the other hand, it's getting *really* tough to have sympathy. In a world where you have web browsers like Chrome and Firefox that are available on every major platform *and* free, what type of organization decides to use applications that only work in some version of IE? And furthermore, what is stopping those organizations from just installing FF or Chrome on every user's machine so they can access whatever applications they need to use that don't work right in IE? Nothing. Unlike IE, FF and Chrome work on basically every version of everything.

Quit making stupid choices, then complaining when those choices hurt you.

It's pretty easy to guess where you're currently working. I work there too. Rather than compare the two offers, I'd consider a third option: shaking it up a little bit at your current employer. Talk to your manager and say that you just got a great unsolicited offer from another firm, and it made you realize that though you love the company, the fact that you're even considering it is freaking you out. Talk about some of your challenges, and that you think maybe you need to try something different. You like a whole lot of things about your job, you're just a little bored. Fix that part instead of taking a huge risk for slightly more money.

If it makes you feel better, there's no way Google patented because they want other people not to use it. They just need it for ammunition whenever Apple sues them directly. Apple's continued ridiculousness has made people realize that they should patent the s**t out of everything, obvious or not, so they can negotiate effectively with Apple when they throw their (also BS) patents around. It's clearly not 'we invented it first' but rather 'we got the patent for this obvious idea before you did,' and Google has admitted this many times. Google's stated philosophy is basically 'patent everything you think of so we can be equipped to handle all these stupid lawsuits, though we fully acknowledge the patent system is broken and will continue to push for reform'.

If I'm Apple, I'm starting to recognize the ramifications of my actions. Good luck bringing an LED LCD TV to market Apple, Samsung will sue you into oblivion. They've made rounded-corner rectangle TVs for years and you haven't, hence you copied off of them (!!) and deserve to not be able to compete. And good luck sourcing displays for anything from Samsung, that $1BN tag you hung on them means they won't ever sell displays to you again. And that's why you won't be able to sell as many iPhone5's as you want, because Sharp can't even manufacture the displays they promised you, while Samsung ships millions of better ones.

Apple can partner with Facebook and Twitter all they want, but only because both of those guys have the same 'screw everyone else' philosophy and it makes sense for them to work with you. They'll screw Apple in a second, just like Apple would screw them. Meanwhile, Apple can no longer partner with Google or Samsung for anything. How good of an idea is that for them in the long-term? Samsung makes the best displays, Google makes the dominant web browser...

So let me get this straight. For essentially the last 50 years we've been teaching children 'Don't have sex, it's dangerous!!' and, 'There are gangs and crime outside, you shouldn't be on the streets at night!'. And now that people have found something to do with their time while they are busy not having sex and not going outside and socializing at night... it's somehow a bad thing? Now all of a sudden it becomes "The kids these days, they never go outside and enjoy life and their environment. They never have real interactions and relationships with members of the opposite sex!!" Make up your mind already, this is what you wanted remember? Or psychologists like Zimbardo (an idiot, I took his class at Stanford) could just quit caring and realize that people are just going to do whatever the fuck they want with their time. It's not like the planet is underpopulated or something. If some folks want to jack it and play video games their whole life, who cares-- there are plenty of motivated people out there that are doing whatever you think is Really Important(tm) for people to be doing with their time.

I really like TotalFinder. Folders on Top is great, even better is the fact that cut and paste can actually be used for folders and files (why is this disabled in Finder, WHY!?!). I just wish the author of TotalFinder would tweak out the file copy dialogs and logic. If we could have file transfer rate information that would be great (again, why not Finder?!?). I would also of course like intelligent queueing for multiple file copy operations, but I suppose that's a pipe dream-- even Windows Explorer doesn't do that. It boggles the mind that neither MSFT nor Apple has added this-- if I'm copying a bunch of stuff separately to a spinning disk, queuing it will massively reduce total transfer time.

I fully admit that Mac OS X is a better OS than Windows, but coming from Windows Explorer it's very, very surprising how much Finder sucks. I can't exactly go back to Windows since only 1 of the 4 machines in our house isn't a Mac, and thus all of our external drives are formatted HFS+, but I really do miss Explorer. It's a testament to how bad Finder is that the knee-jerk reaction from Mac zealots is 'just use Spotlight!'. Uh, yeah. If keeping your files disorganized and then using search to find them is the ideal solution, what does that say exactly? Why keep adding worthless things to the OS like Launchpad and Mission Control when the core file browser is so bad? I don't get it.

Sorry, but I'm not misinformed. I'm keenly aware of this, because I use a Mac every day for work. Have used Lion since it launched and previously Snow Leopard and Leopard. It's grey with stoplights, iTunes and iPhoto are still brushed aluminum. Finder is worthless for organizing files unless you replace it with TotalFinder or PathFinder, which I of course have. Want to cut and paste files? Nope, need a replacement finder. Want to merge folders? Nope, you can either replace or stick the files in manually. Want a proper tree view? Nope. Want folders to be shown on top? Use a replacement finder. The point is, the architecture of Mac OS X is superior to Windows. The hardware designs are superior to PC hardware. Finder and the UI? Nope.

Take away the one thing that differentiates you from Mac OS X-- the fact that your UI isn't ugly. We like Aero. If you make your UI ugly, why not just use OS X with it's ugly brushed aluminum and stoplights. Works for me. Metro is cool on tablets and phones, ridiculous and stupid on desktops. Clearly we've got this 'every other release is crap' thing going on with Windows now. But keep in mind that it's easier than ever to switch to Mac these days. Sure the UI is ugly, but the architecture is clearly superior to Windows, and 80% of the time we're using a web browser anyway. Make the UI suck and there's nothing left. Sure, Windows Explorer is superior to Finder (in basically every way), but that's not enough to keep us from using Mac OS X. If you thoroughly ruin the UI, there aren't many good reasons left to use Windows.

I see all these articles about how this is a stupid post, and that obviously every company should bar the use of company funds to buy competitors products. My reaction is entirely the opposite. If you want your products to be great, you *absolutely* want your staff to be exposed to as many of the competing products as possible.

Do all of you honestly think it's a good thing for MSFT employees not to be exposed to iPhone, iPad and Macbook Pro products? Really? They're way behind, and it's clearly in their best interest to understand why it is that consumers are flocking to their competitor's platform. If I were in charge of the Windows Phone team I'd want everyone that works for me to have an iPhone and iPad, because that's who we need to beat. If they want to grow their market share, they're going to have to get people who have iPhones and iPads to buy their stuff. Those people won't unless Microsoft builds a product that is even better.

By the same logic, do you think it's advantageous for a Ford employee to never drive a Toyota? Or a Nissan? It's ridiculous to think that a company actively wants its employees not to try out competing products, yet expects them to create products that are superior. How do you know what you need to do to appeal to the customers you don't have when you have no idea what those customers are experiencing? These are the people you are directly competing with in the marketplace. To not have your employees exposed to them and experience them at all is just idiocy. If all you want to do is keep your existing customers, fine. But if you want to take market share from competitors you have to appeal to consumers of those products. Creating a strategy to do that without even understanding what you're competing with is impossible.