While criticizing Microsoft for a  While criticizing Microsoft
for a lack of innovation is certainly mostly legitimate, think
of how cleverly they implemented the progression from
DOS/Windows 3.1 on the front end and Win NT 3.1 on the backend
to today's (virtually interchangable, from a high-level
development perspective) Win2000 and WinME.  This is in stark
contrast to the nightmare that awaits Mac users with OS X. I
like lots of parts of the Mac user interface, but I find myself
gnashing my teeth every time I use a Mac (for example, the
machine in the corner of my office right now) because, while I'm
using Fetch to FTP a file up to a server, I can't do anything
else substantive in the foreground due to the piss-poor
multitasking. I feel like I'm running Windows for Workgroups
again...  On the other hand, obviously Unix has optimal
stability, but the world's worst user interface. I've been
pretty skeptical of Apple's ability to reconcile these two
extremes, a view that is greatly supported by this article on