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It isn't really the end of Windows - it's the end of Windows' dominance of Microsoft mindshare. Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always upd

It isn't really the end of Windows - it's the end of Windows' dominance of Microsoft mindshare. Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears. None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only means the OS has matured enough for the needs of present and any future needs will be addressed as and when they arise - instead of inventing the future they will abide with it on their own schedule. This allows Microsoft to focus on things that truly matter for the future without killing Windows or spending a lot of resources on advancing/supporting it. It's not hard to imagine Windows stays a very dominant client OS for a long time to come - even if the overall PC market share continues to decline, because none of the alternatives are there and nobody is going to invest the resources to get them there. I will also add that Satya's success lies in speeding up this strategy that started late under Ballmer and also in executing so well on it. Considering the scale of what MS is doing - Office ports to iOS, Android, Windows 10 releases, Azure, ton of other Enterprise stuff (Exchange, O365, Development tools, cross platform stuff like .NET Core, VS Code etc) - the change of course and the success they are having with it all - you can't argue it's not a phenomenal achievement.

cpeterso 9y ago
You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architecture https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...
- bhauer 9y ago
  That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is still 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now. * A surprising number of people still have Flash installed. I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but also because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?
  - dannyw 9y ago
    You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).
    - bhauer 9y ago
      > (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750). To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone, let alone a computer. I think we're actually talking about computers that are very old and have never been upgraded or new computers in the $200 to $400 range.
      - badestrand 9y ago
        My 1-year-old MacBook Air runs 1440x900 with 8 GB and it cost >$1.000 IIRC. So neither "very old" nor $200-$400 range.
        vetinari 9y ago
        MacBooks Air, Macs Mini and Mac Pro during last few years were ancient as soon as manufactured. Apple is being criticized for not updating these model lines. So yes, the innards of your 2017 MBA are very old. It has Broadwell generation (circa 2014) CPU/GPU, and one optimized for power draw at that (i.e. a slower one).
      - majewsky 9y ago
        > 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. In 2002, the most common resolutions were 4:3, not 16:9, not only because notebooks were not mainstream yet. > 4GB [RAM] was common in desktop computers in 2005. That's the time when notebooks became mainstream iirc. I purchased a gaming notebook in 2006, it had 1 GB RAM. I also bought a midrange notebook in 2009 which also came with 1 GB. (I later upgraded to 2 GB aftermarket.)
Micoloth 9y ago
They also will never drop windows because it's probably gonna be an extremely useful platform when the next generations of devices will come up, think of AR. The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too. They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible to be tailored to whatever comes. Of course it would be crazy for them to drop it now
- Joeri 9y ago
  The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too. Every single incarnation of windows mobile / phone was well tailored for the mobile hardware of the day. What sunk windows phone was not that it was slow, it was that it was late to go touch-first and failed to differentiate enough to make up for it. That and tightly controlling the vendors while up against android made the quality of windows phone itself irrelevant.
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    You seem to be suffering from the same delusional thoughts that affected Myerson. This is such an utterly clueless explanation of why Windows Phone failed that it’s kind of stunning. Until, of course, you remember the culture-induced myopia I described yesterday: Myerson still has the Ballmer-esque presumption that Microsoft controlled its own destiny and could have leveraged its assets (like Office) to win the smartphone market, ignoring that by virtue of being late Windows Phone was a product competing against ecosystems, which meant no consumer demand, which meant no developers, topped off by the arrogance to dictate to OEMs and carriers what they could and could not do to the phone, destroying any chance at leveraging distribution to get critical mass… Interestingly, though, Myerson’s ridiculous assertion in a roundabout way shows how you change culture…In this case, Nadella effectively shunted Windows to its own division with all of the company’s other non-strategic assets, leaving Myerson and team to come to yesterday’s decision on their own. Remember, Nadella opposed the Nokia acquisition, but instead of simply dropping the axe on day one, thus wasting precious political capital, he let Windows give it their best shot and come to that conclusion on their own.
pishpash 9y ago
Satya is having enormous financial success in chasing much needed markets, but the jury's still out on ditching MS's strengths in large software development in favor of a no-support permanent beta culture at a moment when the latter is showing its ugly side.
- dralley 9y ago
  I kind of expect that the "let consumers be the beta testers and fire all our QA" approach is going to majorly bite them in the ass at some point and lose a lot of goodwill.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    The thing I don't fully understand about Nadella's strategy is what Windows is supposed to be any more. Clearly if all these whizzy subscription-based online services are going to be useful, people need a device to access them. For simple communications and information consumption, the modern generation of devices like smartphones and tablets works just fine, but for anything more involved or with a significant creative element you still need something more like a PC. However, it looks like Microsoft is isolating the online services from the client platform in order to de-prioritise Windows, which inherently makes Windows itself more replaceable. That creates a huge potential gap in the overall tech market, particularly once Windows 7 reaches end-of-support and a lot of people are going to be wondering about what they can do if they don't want Windows 10. (After all, if they did want Windows 10, why are so many people still not using it?) There obviously aren't that many businesses that would be in a position to exploit such a vulnerability and start building not just a viable alternative client OS but a viable alternative ecosystem around it, but there are some. Apple could be a threat from one direction. Traditional big tech companies like IBM could be a threat from another. With the foundations available with modern OSS stacks, an unexpected alternative from (or sponsored by) the likes of Red Hat might be less likely but not totally out of the question either, or even a curveball from the likes of Intel. So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? If the current focus on Cloud everything wanes, but Microsoft has voluntarily given up its long-standing dominance of the more traditional parts of the industry by neglecting Windows as a platform in its own right, where does that leave their online services five or ten years from now? Maybe the likes of Satya Nadella are just much better connected in the big boardrooms than a mere geek like me, and they're confident that the emphasis on Cloud everything isn't going anywhere any time soon. But now we've been doing that for a while and the gloss has worn off a bit with all the real world problems of reliability, security, leaks, costs, and so on, I can't help wondering whether Nadella is mostly playing to Cloud-obsessed big investors and at some point those investors will prove to have been throwing good money after bad because they didn't know any better.

cpeterso 9y ago

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architecture https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

bhauer 9y ago
That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is still 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now. * A surprising number of people still have Flash installed. I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but also because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?
- dannyw 9y ago
  You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).
  - bhauer 9y ago
    > (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750). To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone, let alone a computer. I think we're actually talking about computers that are very old and have never been upgraded or new computers in the $200 to $400 range.
    - badestrand 9y ago
      My 1-year-old MacBook Air runs 1440x900 with 8 GB and it cost >$1.000 IIRC. So neither "very old" nor $200-$400 range.
      - vetinari 9y ago
        MacBooks Air, Macs Mini and Mac Pro during last few years were ancient as soon as manufactured. Apple is being criticized for not updating these model lines. So yes, the innards of your 2017 MBA are very old. It has Broadwell generation (circa 2014) CPU/GPU, and one optimized for power draw at that (i.e. a slower one).
    - majewsky 9y ago
      > 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. In 2002, the most common resolutions were 4:3, not 16:9, not only because notebooks were not mainstream yet. > 4GB [RAM] was common in desktop computers in 2005. That's the time when notebooks became mainstream iirc. I purchased a gaming notebook in 2006, it had 1 GB RAM. I also bought a midrange notebook in 2009 which also came with 1 GB. (I later upgraded to 2 GB aftermarket.)

Micoloth 9y ago

They also will never drop windows because it's probably gonna be an extremely useful platform when the next generations of devices will come up, think of AR. The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too. They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible to be tailored to whatever comes. Of course it would be crazy for them to drop it now

Joeri 9y ago
The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too. Every single incarnation of windows mobile / phone was well tailored for the mobile hardware of the day. What sunk windows phone was not that it was slow, it was that it was late to go touch-first and failed to differentiate enough to make up for it. That and tightly controlling the vendors while up against android made the quality of windows phone itself irrelevant.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  You seem to be suffering from the same delusional thoughts that affected Myerson. This is such an utterly clueless explanation of why Windows Phone failed that it’s kind of stunning. Until, of course, you remember the culture-induced myopia I described yesterday: Myerson still has the Ballmer-esque presumption that Microsoft controlled its own destiny and could have leveraged its assets (like Office) to win the smartphone market, ignoring that by virtue of being late Windows Phone was a product competing against ecosystems, which meant no consumer demand, which meant no developers, topped off by the arrogance to dictate to OEMs and carriers what they could and could not do to the phone, destroying any chance at leveraging distribution to get critical mass… Interestingly, though, Myerson’s ridiculous assertion in a roundabout way shows how you change culture…In this case, Nadella effectively shunted Windows to its own division with all of the company’s other non-strategic assets, leaving Myerson and team to come to yesterday’s decision on their own. Remember, Nadella opposed the Nokia acquisition, but instead of simply dropping the axe on day one, thus wasting precious political capital, he let Windows give it their best shot and come to that conclusion on their own.

pishpash 9y ago

Satya is having enormous financial success in chasing much needed markets, but the jury's still out on ditching MS's strengths in large software development in favor of a no-support permanent beta culture at a moment when the latter is showing its ugly side.

dralley 9y ago
I kind of expect that the "let consumers be the beta testers and fire all our QA" approach is going to majorly bite them in the ass at some point and lose a lot of goodwill.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  The thing I don't fully understand about Nadella's strategy is what Windows is supposed to be any more. Clearly if all these whizzy subscription-based online services are going to be useful, people need a device to access them. For simple communications and information consumption, the modern generation of devices like smartphones and tablets works just fine, but for anything more involved or with a significant creative element you still need something more like a PC. However, it looks like Microsoft is isolating the online services from the client platform in order to de-prioritise Windows, which inherently makes Windows itself more replaceable. That creates a huge potential gap in the overall tech market, particularly once Windows 7 reaches end-of-support and a lot of people are going to be wondering about what they can do if they don't want Windows 10. (After all, if they did want Windows 10, why are so many people still not using it?) There obviously aren't that many businesses that would be in a position to exploit such a vulnerability and start building not just a viable alternative client OS but a viable alternative ecosystem around it, but there are some. Apple could be a threat from one direction. Traditional big tech companies like IBM could be a threat from another. With the foundations available with modern OSS stacks, an unexpected alternative from (or sponsored by) the likes of Red Hat might be less likely but not totally out of the question either, or even a curveball from the likes of Intel. So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? If the current focus on Cloud everything wanes, but Microsoft has voluntarily given up its long-standing dominance of the more traditional parts of the industry by neglecting Windows as a platform in its own right, where does that leave their online services five or ten years from now? Maybe the likes of Satya Nadella are just much better connected in the big boardrooms than a mere geek like me, and they're confident that the emphasis on Cloud everything isn't going anywhere any time soon. But now we've been doing that for a while and the gloss has worn off a bit with all the real world problems of reliability, security, leaks, costs, and so on, I can't help wondering whether Nadella is mostly playing to Cloud-obsessed big investors and at some point those investors will prove to have been throwing good money after bad because they didn't know any better.