grantheaslip

My point of contention isn't which style of rendering you or I prefer, it's whether or not you're justified in ignoring (if not intentionally sabotaging) the UX of the vast majority of users because of said preference.

I never claimed there was any objective standard -- you did.

I think properly-hinted fonts look better (or at least more readable) than OS X, and I did even when I used a MacBook as my primary machine from 2007-2010. It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's a different preference.

But to your "poetic justice" point, is this about revenge for perceived injustices, or about providing the best experience for users? Because the fact is that most sites are overwhelmingly viewed by Windows users. When it comes to professional work, you can't be making decisions with huge UX implications out of spite. Most people haven't even heard of ClearType, and shouldn't be caught in the crossfire of your bizarre crusade against it.

If you're unknowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you're not testing, you're (at best) lazy and unprofessional. If you're knowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you harbor a decade-old grudge, you're an childish asshole who should be out of work.

I think the others who replied to this are missing the point -- he's complaining about the number of sites with fonts that look blurry, jagged, or just plain hideous on many text rendering engines (especially, but by no means limited to, Windows).

One could argue this is Microsoft's fault, and there's probably some credence to that, but it's kind of beside the point. Far too many sites seem to have been designed on OS X and not tested anywhere else, and it's an obnoxious, lazy, and frankly elitist practice that needs to end.

Another related syndrome are sites designed on professional-grade monitors, with no thought given to how they're going to look on the other 95% of screens. This kind of shit is like engineering a car in California and just assuming it will work well in February in Montreal.

That kind of mindset is a lot easier to espouse when you (and a lot of the visitors to this site) are in one of the few industries that wasn't particularly affected by the recession, and for that matter is arguably in the midst of a bubble.

We're all lucky -- if your chosen profession (and, say, one that you invested 8+ years of expensive American college to get into) was an industry that had the air sucked out of it in 2008, you might not be so condescending.

I do get what you're saying, and I think there definitely is a type of person you're describing, but you're oversimplifying a measurably more complicated problem.

Gruber does seem to know a lot, thought I'm not sure that talking about type on your podcast or working for a company that develops a text editor exactly proves that. That said, he's clearly got a snarky agenda about Android, which makes me take anything he writes about it with a grain of salt.

What annoys me is not so much Gruber or other bloggers having an opinion, it's the followers who take what they write as fact. Roboto probably isn't a font for the ages, but it seems to do what it set out to do very well. The people who worked on it aren't idiots.

Android has its issues, but I'm sick of the little cabal of Apple writers who portray it and everything surrounding it as a trainwreck.

I have no idea how much you know about type design, but I get the sense that the vast majority of people disparaging Roboto don't actually know shit about typography, and are just parroting what's been said by a handful of bloggers (many of whom also aren't particularly well versed). If a lot of these guys were asked to rate a bunch of unnamed fonts without the benefit of the internet to tell them what they think about them, they would probably make some terrible font snob faux pas.

I'm not an expert of typography, but to my eyes, it's a nice, clean, readable screen font. So is the Droid font family. It's not my absolute favourite, but there are more pressing issues in the world.

It’s funny you say that, because what ultimately soured me on buying Apple products was my iPhone 3G being effectively bricked by the 4.0 update, two years after I bought it (and, theoretically, days after some other people bought it from AT&T).

Microsoft may rebrand stuff in weird ways sometimes, but they don’t often kill stuff off prematurely. I’d actually argue the opposite: that they often hang onto stuff for too long.

As to your examples, PlaysForSure was only really killed from the perspective of manufacturers, or if you heavily bought into the MSN Music Store. The Kin was an extenuating circumstance, but no doubt a huge fuckup. Zune may be getting a rebrand, but I’ve heard no reason to believe a Zune player won’t continue to work with Windows 8.

All you’ve really done is name three failures of a company that has hundreds of projects. One could do the same thing for Apple, Google, or almost any other tech company.

People have already given some good reasons why this article is nonsense (or at least unnecessarily reductionist), but what pissed me off about it the most is the underlying assumption you see in so many anti-Microsoft articles: that the only reason anyone uses Microsoft products is because they don’t know any better.

This is such a juvenile, condescending, and back-patting way to look at Microsoft, and I’m fucking sick of it. I prefer Windows, I prefer Office, and I prefer C#, Visual Studio, and ASP.NET MVC. I used a Mac as my primary computer from 2007-2010, and I used Linux from 2010-2011, and I ended up back on Windows by choice. I used an iPhone, I used Android, and I ended up Windows Phone by choice. I’ve programmed in Ruby (Rails and Sinatra), Python, JavaScript, Node.js, and am currently writing an app in ASP.NET MVC by choice. I’ve used OpenOffice, I’ve used Google Docs, I’ve used Evernote, and currently use OneNote, Word, and Excel (backed by SkyDrive) by choice.

Implying people using Microsoft stuff are just sheeple who haven’t seen the light yet is as fucking stupid as claiming that people only use Apple products because of marketing and design. I have no problem with people using Apple products, Linux, or anything, I just hate the anti-Microsoft circle jerk that certain subsets of those communities sustain themselves on.

I may be taking this too far, but I think there’s more to it than IE. Many in the “hacker” community seem to wrap themselves in the flag of “open”, but only when it’s in their favour.

It’s the people who argue for a decentralized, open-source alternative to Facebook, but embrace Google+. It’s the people who explain how terrible it is to tie your business to a single vendor, but decide to build businesses on iOS. It’s the people who tell you they would never put any personal documents on the cloud, but embrace Dropbox. It’s the people who claim to support open, DRM-free data formats and think the Khan Academy is the future of education, but think iBooks textbooks are great.

Like I said, I don’t have a particularly strong attachment to open source and open data formats — I just hate the way people use openness and standards as a prop. Saying standards aren’t necessary when WebKit has neat new features is (loosely) analogous to only supporting democracy when the party you vote for wins.

As others have said, what Microsoft did was arguably worse, but I generally agree: Apple and Google are industry darlings, and because of this are getting away with things people would be crying bloody murder over if Microsoft did them.

I get the distinct sense that a lot of people don’t really care about web standards so much as they care about their favourite company controlling standards. If it were Microsoft who was forging ahead with new features, would the MacBook-wielding, Gmail-using technorati be so enthusiastic?

I’m not even entirely against the new -webkit- stuff, I just hate the hypocrisy from people who claim to be all for web standards, except for when there’s a shiny new feature that only works in Safari, Chrome, and iOS. Microsoft has arguably been doing the best job of respecting web standards since IE9, and they get very little credit for it.

I’m not in the position of supporting a family, but is that really enough to support a mortgage, car(s), daycare (if we’re assuming both parents are working), putting kids though university, buying supplementary insurance, etc?

I get the sense that “average” is no longer middle class unless you really loosen the definition of middle class.

Sure, ununionized labour would be more employable, but these would be lower-class jobs, not the middle-class jobs that the west of today was built on. Nobody’s going to be able to support a family at middle-class standards on $10-15 an hour.

For some reason, the broader socioeconomic discussion the western world should be having has been condensed to creating jobs. But jobs aren’t a binary thing; and they’re means to an end, not the end goal (an equitable society in which the average person can be a member of the middle class).

If there was legitimately no demand for these products, then sure, they should move on and make something else instead. But there is a demand for them — it’s just that many of the people consuming it are stealing it. This is what laws are there for.

Again, I know this analogy isn’t perfect, but what you’ve said is not all that different from telling a shop owner who was robbed that maybe he should do something else instead.

Fair point — I was being a bit facetious — but the fact remains that if a critical enough mass of people steal/copy Windows, it’s no longer economically viable. Every user who hasn’t paid for it is being subsidized by those who have.

Windows may not be the best example since it’s so massively profitable, and sells a lot to enterprise customers and OEMs who won’t pirate it. That said, I suspect the business case for producing high-budget, non-mass-market consumer content (say, HBO shows) is starting to tip. How many people pirate Game of Thrones for every one that pays for it?

In the end, we live in a capitalist society — the people making software, movies, music, books, etc. have to get paid for the stuff be made.

So you’re saying that because people are stealing their software, Microsoft should throw away their business model?

If people were stealing iPads from Apple stores, would you suggest Apple should “figure [that] out for themselves”?