In short: the article bashes Windows 7 because of the terrible experience of managing security, OS updates and software updates.
The main thing Windows lacks is nice package management for external non-MS software and updates. Linux has been great at this from the word go. Steam did this for games on Windows, centralizing updates and keeping everything running smoothly. Apple's new App Store for OS X provides one place where all software you buy through the store can be simultaneously updated. Years ago I hoped Google Pack would expand to a full software distribution system to manage all this complexity for users, but it never happened.
To paint this as Apple vs Microsoft is to miss the bigger point. Regardless of how you trivialize the experience the author had with Windows, many people share it. Hell, a lot of the same is true for OS X; even with the app store. Likewise, the experience on the iPad is just as the author describes. The bigger question is, which will people prefer?
This is where it gets much broader. This isn't Microsoft vs Apple. This is space shuttle vs passenger car. One you simply get in and drive. The other you need a lot of training and a hell of an intellect to operate. I think it's pretty obvious which one your average person is going to prefer.
I disagree. Its more of a ferarri w/ manual transmition vs toyota prius. While you can do some good shit to break that ferarri, the prius can break, but its simple, just drive, just gas and break, no third pedal no thinking, simple small quiet. Oh you can't race it but thats ok you drive the speed limit anyways, gives you a nice rear-view camera so parking is a breeze, low gas usage, YAY! For the price of an ipad I can buy a windows box with specs an ipad can only dream of. For the price of an imac I can buy a machine with enough power to let it degrade in performance for 5 years and still not approach the imac's performance.
I think its not a shuttle vs car analogy. More of a GM vs
Tesla analogy. GM is dying because they stick to the old "what works", "were too big to fail" approach, while tesla is sticking to "were more expensive, but we make a damn superior product"
1) Why was there 3 antivirus tools installed. Generally its a bad idea.
2) OMG ANTIVIRUS S0X0RS! I WILL BUY L33T H4X OS THAT HAS NO VIRUSES! Get over it. Windows is the most popular consumer-grade os EVER to date. Exploits exist for it. Wait hold up, remember the ipod explot that roots your "ip" by going to a website and clicking a button which exploits a PDF reader problem? THAT GAVE YOU UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE OS AND UNDERLYING EVERYTHING. It was used for good, could have been used for making your system a pure spambot using up your wireless data limits. Sorry dude, you suck.
3) The game maker no longer exists. So basically you are expecting a game that is very old to just work on any operating system that has a Windows in it's name without a compatibility upgrade especially when coming to Win 7 (a improvement on lots of cruft that was on xp). Maybe windows defender WAS right and the damn disk had a real virus on it, oh wait did you have a hacked copy? Try using old mac os (pre x) programs on osx. There will be issues. Shitty performance is a big one. I cannot play warcraft 2 on a ppc running 10.4 because it requires an old macos and does emulation, the hardware requirements for warcraft 2 is a 166mhz processor damnit. Ever hear of problems running new games on old versions of "ip"? Well sorry the market is so tightly controlled that you can't even install it on the "wrong" device. If the game existed for the "ip" and was not compatibly your article would have been "to play this game: turn on my ipad, jailbreak it, fuck up, brick, get a new one, jailbreak, install game, does not work, get pissed, damn you steve jobs! this is why balmer is l33t h4x0r" please see the flip perspective of this whole mess. If you tweak windows just right you can probably get this thing working. Worst case install XP mode that MS provides and get windows xp full compatibility WITH a sandbox so it can't hurt you. So windows actually wins in this one.
4) Windows updates... ah the age old story. Sorry dude, I had times when I spent 4 hrs upgrading windows in an office; they had not run windows update in 5 yrs. You gotta run this shit incrementally. Just connect once a month and let it simmer. You CHOSE to wait while it worked vs just letting it download and install when you are shutting the machine down. Notice you didn't follow the "measure twice, cut once" approach. You didn't try to see what is the problem with the game and look up to see the company not existing that probably its just incompatible crap, instead you chose to assume your approach of waiting for the update was the only good solution and the right one.
I always right-click drag executables to desktop, asks me what to do like create shortcut. It even gives you VISUAL hints as to what it wants to do while dragging. Yes it could be better like assume dragging a .exe/.bat file onto the desktop = create shortcuts (seriously MS, small bug, been how many years? and still not fixed)
EDIT: Sorry I missed the java update. There is no JVM on the ipad. You can't run java apps on it. The end. MS Does not control java, you chose to install it on your machine, deal with it. Don't want it, dont use java tools. Not to mention that you can redistribute the OpenJDK with your application as part of itself so there is no requirement to have java installed and running on your machine, it can just be packaged with say your game or application and just run without any update nagging. Not MS's fault.
I hate MS just as much as the next guy, but please put blame where blame belongs.
The main thing Windows lacks is nice package management for external non-MS software and updates. Linux has been great at this from the word go. Steam did this for games on Windows, centralizing updates and keeping everything running smoothly. Apple's new App Store for OS X provides one place where all software you buy through the store can be simultaneously updated. Years ago I hoped Google Pack would expand to a full software distribution system to manage all this complexity for users, but it never happened.