false 2 1 false false Sun Mar 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 10:55:56 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 11:09:32 -0700 2009
Stephenson wrote this book in 1998 and '99, and in it he rails against Windows and the Mac OS for taking away the power of the DOS prompt and making us all view computers visually. A professional writer, he believes that written commands are inherently superior to visual control of the computer - and fails to realize that unless you're using 1s and 0s to tell the computer what to do, you're pretty much communicating in metaphors anyways.

Instead of these frustrating and flawed graphical user interfaces, the author argues, we should all get turned on to Linux, the free and powerful operating system designed by masses of volunteers. Great idea, except that - as Stephenson himself acknowledges - Linux is HARD to figure out, especially for the novice. The average novice wants to check e-mail, write in a word processor, surf the Web, and delegate the intense stuff to someone else.

Even Stephenson admits that Linux is a bit of a bear to use if you're, say, a writer and not a coder. So after gradually building the case for this operating system, he changes allegiances to BeOS. Ironically, Be had already largely been abandoned by its developers by the time this book came out. It was completely dropped in 2001.

When I call this book anachronistic or dated, it's because of Stephenson's advocacy for computer systems that were already waning as he wrote, and because of his naive - though still, in some circles, widely held - belief that Linux has any chance of taking hold in the real world.

Yet many of his complaints about the failings of Windows and Macs are the same complaints that I have with the operating systems today. And they're underpinned by a clever assessment of the business models that drive Microsoft and Apple down similar yet different paths. You could take much of the content of the first third of this book today, and transpose it into the competing "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials. Ten years later, the same arguments fly back and forth and still neither dominant competitor really has a computer system that meets all of our needs.]]>