Windows Resentment
In the late 90s, when I’d walk into a computer lab or office and see nothing but Dell boxes running Windows, there was this pure, clean hatred that just flowed through me. I knew it was pointless—I wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind by getting angry about it—but the pointlessness made it worse somehow. Everyone around me thought this was just what computers were. A pale blue screen, wait for it to load, buy the antivirus, get infected anyway. They had no idea what they were missing.
The thing about Windows then was that it wasn’t even good. It was buggy, it was slow, it was designed by people who clearly didn’t care if you could actually do anything creative with it. But Microsoft had gotten lucky—caught Apple when they were weak, locked down enough hardware manufacturers, made something that was just good enough and cheap enough that it became the standard. And once something becomes the standard, that’s it. You’re not selling quality anymore; you’re selling inevitability.
What got to me most was watching designers I respected use it without complaint. I’d watch them work around crashes and stability issues like they were just part of the job. Windows didn’t make it easier to make beautiful things; if anything, it got in the way. The whole system felt like it was designed to push you toward a specific way of thinking, a specific way of working. But everyone was too embedded in it to see it as a choice.
I get that I sound like a zealot when I talk like this, and maybe I was. But there’s something to resenting a monopoly, especially one that keeps people from exploring alternatives. The people using Windows weren’t stupid—they were just trapped in a cycle where nothing else was available at work, at school, in the store.
I’m not angry about it anymore. It’s been long enough that it almost feels quaint, the ferocity of those arguments. But I still think about that moment when you’d show someone a Mac or use Linux and watch it click for them—the way a system could actually get out of your way. That feeling stuck with me more than the anger ever did.