Microsoft . . . Really?

I was more than a little surprised to read news of Artemis 2 crew using Microsoft products on their current Moon mission.  R e a l l y ?  Why would they do something so ridiculously risky?

Apparently, NASA chose Microsoft as the crew-facing OS since they all run it in their homes. INTEGRITY-178 tuMP (Time-Variant Unified Multi-Processing) is the realtime OS being used to control mission-critical systems. Phew! It's bad enough that Trump has installed a Musk-buddy NASA director from the private rocketman sector. I feared corporo-governmental corruption had driven them to choose Microsoft products over much more reliable and secure computing systems. Hell, they even chose to use Microsoft Surface Pros as well. Ugh!

After using Microsoft crapola for more than three decades in my home computing setup, I took a job supporting Apple mobile products for a year to evaluate their new iMacs and iPad. Seeing how much better they were than anything Microsoft ever turned out over that time span, I decided to dump Microsoft and switch to Apple Mac OS and iOS to start using exclusively in my own company operations. It was a wise choice I have never regretted at all.

Getting rid of the clunky/junky Microsoft software and related Wintel hardware was a joy. It was also wonderful to rid my desktop of the gigantic CRT monitors I had used for 20+ years.

And as I put the new Apple rig to great practical use, its powerful improvements over the old gear and software were significant. After performing some compute-intensive task using the Apple rig I frequently wondered if I had imagined how much more efficient and delightful an experience it was, but it wasn't my imagination. As months passed, my little startup numbers told the truth of it. I have never used Microsoft junk since then and I have zero regrets for it.

The first Apple rig was a 2011 iMac 27" with an iPad2 and a 2nd generation Apple TV unit connected to a 42-inch AKAI flatscreen TV costing a small fortune when I purchased it. The TV flaked out almost immediately after purchase. A DIY fix replacing China-made capacitors fixed that problem, but the Apple gear required no service at all until I retired and began replacing them with new models–a Mac Mini, iPad 6th generation tablet, and a 4K Apple TV.

By then I had retired and delighted in using the new Apple rig on projects entirely of my choice and for nothing but pleasure. This home/studio computing Shangri-La persisted until the day the USFS played with fire like a bunch of nitwitted children and burned it all to ashes.

A new Apple rig of current model and software versions has recently replaced what was destroyed by that wholly preventable, dimwit-made catastrophe. And as has always been the case with Apple products, it is a delight to put it to use in this mode of recovery I'm in now. I shudder to think of the headaches and failures I'd have suffered using a Microsoft rig for this.

I sincerely hope the Artemis 2 crew survives using Microsoft junk during their historic mission.