It honestly is humorous that he'd recommend Macintosh over Windows NT in 1995. I say 1995 because he just harped on Windows 95 constantly. 1995 meant System 7.5, which was honestly the most lackluster of the System 7 releases. 7.5 itself was notoriously bug-riddled and crash-happy, so his suggestion was made out of spite and if anybody listened to it, they were setting up themselves the bomb.
It's just so hilarious to look at pages like that from back then - and I remember seeing them when they were new! - and seeing someone go on and on and on about how a 1.0 product (Windows 95) wasn't living up to marketing hype (what product ever does?) and honestly approaching everything MS with that instant and total bias that made the anti-MS movement so insufferable for so long.
I still see it at times, and it still irks me the same way. Always the same thing. "bell Gaites jus so evul" and "They cuddntt do sth right v dey had 2! lolololol!!!!111eleven"
The truth is that the argument is approaching a decade old. It's not the same Microsoft that churned out the mediocrity that was Windows 9x. Windows XP was a product that out-lived its usefulness, and as such was stretched beyond its intended means. In the late 1990s when Windows NT 5 was being developed, the issues that assailed Windows XP didn't exist. When the thing was allowed to go for six years without a replacement, it somehow found a place in peoples' hearts.
I don't see how. Windows XP was, IMO, incredibly uninspired and disingenius. It was well-made for 2001, but by 2003 it was already showing its age. It shitty bitmapped graphics framework was the same vintage as the one that Apple had gotten rid of when they retired OS 9... Except that GDI was never as good a Bill Atkinson's QuickDraw. Ever.
Now there's Aero's GPU-accelerated goodness to match with Quartz Extreme and whatever desktop compositor Linux uses this week. Ubuntu does a good job of hiding it, is it still Compiz?
Still, the point is that a lot has changed. Windows 9x followed by Windows XP - which was actually quite mediocre and still is and always will be - showed a company that seemed to not care, but take a look at how the company had to alter and evolve after the game changed. Windows XP hade to tighten up. Windows NT 6 integrated real security, but lots of people whined their faces off over the minor nusiance of UAC so it got nerf'd.
Strange, I get asked for admin credentials on Linux and Mac OS X just as often, but nobody whines about those.
End of story.
