I particularly liked/empathize with:
> 12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what
> happened.
:) Adam
If Microsoft Built Cars
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a
new car.
2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason,
accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and
fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some
strange reason, you'd just accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you
bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more
seats.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as
reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would
only run on five percent of the roads.
6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to
their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced
with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars,
forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for
many years.
9. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft gas and all auto fluids but the
packaging would be superb.
10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
11. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what
happened.
13. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their
engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders,
multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-
valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.
14. There would be an "Engium Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be
slower on most existing roads.
15. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which
would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft
Cassettes. Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use
existing stuff.
16. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own any
roads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars
free, including IBM!
17. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11),
then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to
drive much faster, and on more roads!
18. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow
your friends, and then copy it. To prevent this, Microsoft would
convince all the car frame manufacturers to ship with Microsoft
car automatically, receiving a smaller licensing fee in exchange for
ubiquity.
19. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganize the
ignition for a few days before it worked.
20. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to
each other.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are
happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought.
-- Steve Jobs