food for thought - swift 5 released - bottom types, string interpolation, and stuff.

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

On 4/15/19 7:34 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 07:18:17PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> [...]
>> Dunno. I haven't really used Apple devices much in a good while (not a
>> fan for various reasons), but based on what I have seen, Windows
>> Update is faaar worse as of...around Win7? XP? I forget...and has only
>> gotten *worse* with Win10. And I'm not talking OS upgrades, just the
>> ordinary regular updates.
> 
> Two decades after graduating from college, I thought I had finally grown
> out of my college years' anti-MS Linux zealotry, only to be rudely
> awakened when one day my wife's Windows laptop popped up a notice that
> there were important security updates to be installed, and upon clicking
> "OK", it suddenly ended up upgrading the *entire lousy OS* to Windows 10
> -- with no option of backing out, and which took who knows how many
> hours, during which my wife could not get any work done.  I beat a hasty
> retreat back to my former stance of not touching Windows with a 10-foot
> pole for any non-toy purposes.

Yup, exactly. But what adds insult to injury is that in post-XP 
Windows-land this sort of "abruptly locked out of your own machine for 
the whole day, can't even pack it up to drive home" is common even for 
ordinary updates, not just the OS-upgrade ones.

That *might* have been acceptable if they had ever bothered to address 
the patently absurd amount of time it's always taken to install Windows 
Updates ever since "Windows Update" was first introduced. (What the hell 
is it even doing?!?!?!? Downloading and overwriting three entire 
OS-sized blocks of data wouldn't take this long!!! So what in the hell 
are they *continuing* to waste their own customer's time with???) I can 
download and install an All-GUI-Bells-And-Whistles-Linux installation in 
*less* time than it frequently takes Win7 through 10 just to update 
itself with the latest patches. So just how incompetent are they?

And on top of that, there are SOOOOO many perfectly-capable machines out 
there (including mine, as it turns out) where Win8/10 are rendered 99% 
non-interactive for literally an hour or more upon booting just because 
of Windows Update and/or other such default "background" services. 
(Unless you jump through enormous hidden hoops to kill the 
services...which doesn't always even survive the update!)

I've been...umm...conned...into trying to "fix" other people's computers 
just because, as it turned out, the non-optional, no-warning, guerilla 
Windows Update forced them into shutting down their computers in the 
middle of an all-day update, which, unsurprisingly (*HINT!**HINT!* 
Microsoft! *HINT!**HINT!*, left their OS installations corrupted. And 
*that* was on Win7! Win 10 is famously even *more* forceful about 
incompetently-slow upgrades!!!

I still (technically) have a Win10 dual-boot on my machine (upgraded, 
legitimately, from factory-installed 8.1), just for the ability to run 
non-wine-compatible tools (and games) when I need to. But personal 
experience had conditioned me to be SO incredibly afraid of booting into 
it (lest I face the wrath of the Windows Update Of Death commandeering 
both my machine and my life for as much as a day or so), that I haven't 
*dared* do so for well over a year. From what I recall, 8.1 was only 
slightly better.

It's ***NO FREAKING WONDER*** smartphones and tablets have been making 
PCs look like yesteryear!!!! It's *not* because of "mobile" devices 
being so much better (they objectively AREN'T, not by a longshot)...It's 
because first, Microsoft has managed to equate its own shitty operating 
system with "Laptop" and "PC", and THEN managed to fuck it all up so 
incredibly badly, that even something as patently shit as the iOS and 
Android devices are...actually manage to look good by comparison to 
Microsoft's complete and utter platform-destroying epic-scale ineptitude.

Apple never managed to achieve anything remotely resembling majority 
marketshare on PCs and Laptops what with MS's stranglehold over that 
mindshare (nevermind Apple's insane marketing-driven insistence that 
Macs somehow aren't Personal Computers, I mean f*ck, it was Apple..or 
rather Apple's *GOOD* co-founder Wozniak...who pretty much *INVENTED* 
the personal computer! But *no* they're not "PCs"...ok, sure Apple, 
fine, whatever...) But, despite MS's stranglehold over "PC"/Laptop 
mindshare, Apple easily won a major share of an alternative 
-to-"PC"/Laptop platform. Sooo...Anyone out there *really* wanna try to 
claim Apple's mobile success was in anything less than *huge* part due 
to the fact that they...just...simply...*didn't* screw it up as absurdly 
horrifically bad as MS continues to screw up, poisoning the well of the 
entire category of PCs/Laptops?

>> Do Apple devices regularly do force-updates just upon normal
>> shutdown/startup and then take as many as 4 or even 8 or so hours to
>> complete? 'Cause I've seen that on many people's Windows computers
>> many times.
> 
> Nothing surprises me anymore, after MS had the audacity to force-feed
> Windows 10 down my throat under the guise of a "security update". :-/

Ehhh...no surprise to me that MS had the audacity to pull that. It was 
extremely unfortunate, criminal even IMO, but the writing there was 
already on the wall. The REAL bets here are all on what clearly is a 
cutthroat industry-wide race to see which monolith 
(MS/Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon/some-underground-newcomer) can secure 
the crown of "World's Largest Anti-Human T&rd".

I can guarantee you one thing though: The winner of *that* mis-title 
will NOT be one formed under the "Socially Responsible Corporation" 
notion that a pathetically minuscule *3* states out of 50 even offer. 
Such an organization would be at a severe disadvantage in that race.