Mommy and Dad… wait no that’s not even close to right… Second Cousin Ed and Second cousin once removed MJ are fighting…. Personally I don’t care. I think its a good thing that if MS found things that needed patching that they did it. Before the master ships to the public or after, when you find a mistake you fix it, and fix it fast. And and I am going to take a hit to my Apple fanboydom here, but fast fixes is not something the big fruit is known for. Redmond is far more experienced at fixing flaws here and it shows.
Apple malware blogger Ed Bott took some time off from his important beat today to comment on my previous post about the major Windows 8 service pack released prior to Windows 8 itself even being released. Bott:
Yes, heaven forbid that a major computing company should release an operating system and then release major updates in response to user feedback and telemetry from hardware partners.
Wait. What’s that, you say?
Why, yes, the golden master of OS X Mountain Lion, version 10.8 was released on July 9, and Apple released a major update, 10.8.1, on August 23, only 45 days later, to address a long list of issues.
What Bott fails to mention is that OS X Mountain Lion was actually released — as in to the public — as in shipped — on July 25. In other words, a month after its release, Apple patched some issues. And yes, this is normal for all software makers, obviously. What Apple did not do is patch the “finished” software prior to its release, which is what Microsoft is doing here.
Look, it’s great that Microsoft is trying to fix things before launch. As I said, I just don’t see it as a great sign that Microsoft felt the need to push major fixes after they declared RTM and before they actually shipped the software. That combined with the fact that a not insignificant amount of people testing these builds of Windows 8 are suggesting that it’s half-baked strikes me as problematic.
Maybe I’m wrong and everything will be just fine. Or maybe Windows 8 will sweep the nation just as strongly as the Apple malware epidemic clearly is.
