9 ms·

> Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more importa

> Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on You state that as fact, but I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform. Letting this go has really hurt the brand IMHO, and creates a very low bar for third parties.

andi999 5y ago
What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?
- rocqua 5y ago
  I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware is nicely built and well integrated with the OS. I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware. The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it. Personally, I use all of them for different purposes. I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates. I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me. For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one. Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. That’s one case of “it came with the computer”. But Microsoft was really clever at giving all the functionality companies want for their corporate issue computers. In the mid-2000’s very few companies offered Macs as desktops because of that. I only have a work MacBook because it can authenticate against AD and has all the management automation required by my employer. That’s also why a Linux laptop wasn’t an option.
        wayneftw 5y ago
        > That’s one case of “it came with the computer”. No, that's the reason why it comes with the computer in the first place. You don't think that PC manufacturers just decided for everybody do you? Microsoft won for a one reason - they have products that solve problems better than anything else.
      - spr93 5y ago
        You must not have been around for the 80s and 90s' "desktop wars." Microsoft did everything they could to undermine innovation and they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity. The Microsoft you grew up with was not the Microsoft of Gates and Ballmer. Those were dark years. That Microsoft created new APIs, runtimes, and frameworks not for technical reasons but in order to lock customers in or disadvantage competitors. That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs--they were short-term tactics, not well considered approaches.
        wayneftw 5y ago
        > You must not have been around... No, you. > they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity. In order to lock people in to something you have to have something of value to offer... so, your argument defeats itself. > That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs...blah blah blah Pfffft. Yeah it's so unmanageable that every single IT department on earth is running Windows all day every day. Even my personal PCs are running perfectly without so much as a hiccup. What a mess!
  - exoque 5y ago
    The only way of MAYBE having a consistent experience on linux is to only use applications written for the DE of your choice isn't it? Use firefox on KDE and the consistency is already gone.
    - golergka 5y ago
      Android had a pretty consistent UI experience.
      - ismayilzadan 5y ago
        No it hasn't. Just buy a phone from let's say Samsung and install any Google app. Google app will have a different UI look and feel than rest of the system.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Is that any different to Firefox on macOS? In a way Firefox's current UI design aligns with the win 10 modern stuff, but that's more luck for MS than Firefox making a big effort to fit in, since it's mostly the same everywhere
  - molasses 5y ago
    Oh come, Linux's UI is completely inconsistent, between toolkits, desktops, distros and the like.
  - gorjusborg 5y ago
    what? people are going to switch to linux for a more consistent UI? UI consistency just isn't that important to most people. See: electron applications.
- signal11 5y ago
  Strategically, worrying about the low end “worse” competitor is more worthwhile than the higher end competitor. Eg IBM were not undone by a better mainframe. In Windows’s case the “worse” competitor is ChromeOS and Chromebook, and Microsoft’s basically thrown in the towel when it comes to native apps, so with time everyone who doesn’t need pro Photoshop or AutoCAD could just use a Chromebook. Note that you can run Word for Android on Chromebooks full-screen already.
  - HellDunkel 5y ago
    You forgot about PC gaming. Kid growing up with Windows is a huge advantage. I think it cannot be overstated and Mircosoft played this game well.
    - mcny 5y ago
      I know stadia is so poorly managed that it is not even a worthy competitor but the concept is sound and nVidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s x cloud will eventually work well enough on Google Chrome that between that and Proton, Windows’ gaming advantage should become a little diminished over time? I haven’t used android games on chrome os but things like candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?
      - HellDunkel 5y ago
        Interesting thought. Is it really stadias management to blame or are there other limits hard to overcome?
      - jimmydorry 5y ago
        The problem is the massive gulf between "works well enough" and "pleasant experience". Console users would still balk at the terrible performance of Stadia... let alone PC users that are used to being first class citizens in terms of experience and responsiveness. Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare metal. All of the above is moot though if you are not within a few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for most of the world is absolutely the case.
- pier25 5y ago
  Maybe is not about gaining but stop losing users to MacOS and Chrome os. And one day Google will release desktop Fuchsia.
- kaliszad 5y ago
  That would be for the USA or Canada. Everywhere else, macOS is perhaps a rounding error. ChromeOS gains some traction and is probably more popular than macOS in the education market at least. Windows is still king at least in the world we consider as somewhat developed.
chakkepolja 5y ago
For the first half I thought it was sarcasm.
sorbits 5y ago
> It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform Their Office suite may have been internally consistent, but I did a bit of software for Windows 2000 (back when it was the latest version), and I found the UI of Windows (in general) inconsistent, scrollbars would e.g. have subtle difference between applications. I ended up using Qt for my own work, as I couldn’t figure out what was the official / dominant style to follow.
Joeri 5y ago
The ecosystem was never uniform. In the 95/2000 days there was a lot of 3.11 UI everywhere, in the 7/8 days a lot of XP UI. Office always had its own UI conventions, often being the playground where new ideas were tested. It's not so much that microsoft let things go as it was taken from them. When computers became networked we needed ways of easily distributing applications across that network in secure, reliable and always up to date ways. Windows never had a good solution to that (not even today), because every install was fraught with peril, and every app had to roll its own update mechanism. Meanwhile the web was sandboxed and up to date by definition, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry for networked software. Anything that could move to the web did move to the web, which opened the door for chromebooks, which in turn fragmented the OS market, which made it uneconomical for companies to invest in a windows native codebase. Microsoft could have stopped this had they leaned hard into the concept of an app store and sandboxing around 2000, and hadn't stumbled so badly when it came to extending windows to mobile. I'm pretty sure that modernizing the entire windows UI doesn't change a thing for windows market share. But the reason to do it is not because it makes economic sense, it is because they should have pride in the products they make, and want them to be well-made.
andyjohnson0 5y ago
> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users who are used to a more integrated user experience might be deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it or (b) they choose to use it because it's the shortest path to doing what they want to do. I'm sure Microsoft know this and understand the tradeoffs very well
- bennysomething 5y ago
  I use it because it supports any bit of hardware thrown at it, with little fuss. I tried to go all Linux many times, gave up, I just wanted something that works.
  - molasses 5y ago
    It doesn't always work. I have two machines, one that has issues with a north bridge, which initially prevented shutdown and prohibits, suspend and hibernate. And another where the Bluetooth dies until reboot on an Intel wireless card. Another machine wouldn't upgrade due to a wireless card, that took about three days of troubleshooting. My Linux boxes glitch too. I rarely have stuff that just works.
    - BuckRogers 5y ago
      Hardware vs software issues right there.
  - bkallus 5y ago
    The exception to this is older hardware. My ATI Radeons are still useful as 1080p graphics adapters under Linux, but they are totally unsupported by Windows. My laser printer is in a similar situation.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  Most people use it because most people use it. It's what's compatible and widespread, and comfortable and known. It's the reason that people send docx files.
webmobdev 5y ago
I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I hope you jest. Windows has far bigger problems than the uniformity of their UI - there's the whole forced update thing, the whole "we really need to spy on literally everything you do on our OS" approach, online advertisement built and integrated with the OS (based on the spying) ... these are the major issues that they need to fixed urgently if they wish to retain their userbase. Windows has been a continuing shitshow since Windows 8 ...
- molasses 5y ago
  I tried win 10 recently on older hardware with 2gb ram. Long story short: totally unusable. Turned on Win 8.1 on machine with 2gb ram. That was pretty usable and almost pleasant by comparison. I used to think that distro was a stinky turd. The UI in 8.1 was very inconsistent and gave me hives. 10 has changed markedly already between big updates.
aasasd 5y ago
> creates a very low bar for third parties The bar for third parties was always nonexistent. That was precisely the advantage of Windows which permitted the boom of development for it in the 90s–2000s.
kavalg 5y ago
All this, plus the fact that Win10 has become increasingly unstable for me in the last 6 months (random restarts, nasty performance problems with WSL2 etc.) that it simply isn't worth the money anymore, unless you have some apps that only run on widows (e.g. games :))
- pix64 5y ago
  Honestly, it sounds like you have faulty HW.
  - kavalg 5y ago
    It could be. I only use it on my Lenovo idea pad S540 AMD / Ryzen 5. However, the overall user experience with Win10 just doesn't click with me, compared to e.g. Ubuntu Desktop. The thing feels slow, bloated and unstable. Not to mention the tendency to always stay connected and report telemetry of many kinds (you notice this when you are on a slow / intermittent connection).
thrower123 5y ago
Holding Windows back from gaining on their 90+% market share?
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. Big companies just love to jack around with Windows, and do things like prevent users from changing their desktop backgrounds (in the name of "security," of course), and Microsoft has always bent over backwards to give them the ability to do any stupid thing some corporate IT drone can think of, so they continue to be loved my companies around the globe. There's a _fundamental_ difference in the way that Microsoft and Apple have approached making an operating system. One treats it like a layer of software in an entire stack that someone else owns and controls, and the other makes PERSONAL devices. And it shows. And, of course, the Microsoft-slobbering trade press can't imagine a scenario where they don't try to prove that YOU should be running Windows because the numbers -- inflated by the Fortune 1000 -- says it's what "everyone" is running. Meanwhile, more than half the people I know now run NOT-Windows for their personal computing. Let's break out the corporate purchases from sales data, and then let's talk about actual, personal market share, and whether better UI/UX would help Microsoft in a heads-up battle against macOS or ChromeOS.
- kaliszad 5y ago
  I have been in the corporate environment for more than 6 year more on the administrator/ engineering side of things. Currently, I am about a year at OrgPad - a very small and quite alternative startup. Two extremes so to say. ;-) In my experience, Windows is still the target for most specialized or business software. Most of these things also demand a Windows Server component. Typical suspects are: "Personalmanagement" timesheet software basically (accounting working hours, vacation, bonuses etc. and making sure the right receipts are printed at the end of each month and more, like when somebody leaves the company, is ill or the is "Kurzarbeit" because the union with the employer settled on this). Another suspect is software for insurance and taxes, energy management (which in a stainless steel foundry is an important piece of software and keeps at least a handful of people fully employed), logistics software (usually also with needle printers that are able to still print "Durchschlag" carbon paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper which is fast and handy for the drivers). There is special software for measurement and production with complex machines, ovens, mills, spectrometers, microscopes, x-ray machines etc. Oh and then there is the internally developed application, that keeps running the company and will be replaced sometime during the next 10 years with a different Windows native app if it is ever finished. And there is the MS SQL administration in addition to group policy for all the Windows computers everywhere that also is best done from a Windows computer. People are used to Windows, older generations in middle and slightly eastern european countries (former east Germany/ DDR included) especially. There just were no Macs in any company besides maybe a top design studio in the capital or regional hub. This is a big factor. In most companies, ordering certain behaviour just doesn't work in practise. In companies, every purchase is oriented towards "Abschreibung" or the amortisation period that is determined by "Abgabenordnung" if I am not mistaken - basically the tax. To be most efficient on paper, you have to use the device at least for the duration of the period determined by the state tax books, else you will have a bad tax audit etc. Anything that hasn't followed the rule will raise an eyebrow and somebody will have to explain otherwise you will likely pay more in taxes or whatever. I don't understand this stuff at all but I was told it works something like that and therefore you do so much accounting stuff such as inventory of basically everything that costs at least X, every piece of software, where you also get Microsoft and Oracle and other audits from time to time... If you are not in the business of selling/ writing enterprise or specialized software in some capacity, you don't really have to care. Most things work using a web browser nowadays, even some enterprise software some companies use. Some software is just more performant or can access certain APIs that aren't available in the web browser. Also, it is very hard to support anything for 10+ years in the webbrowser. Stuff just breaks too frequently on the web, even compared to Windows 10. In the end, people usually buy Windows, because it really is the only platform that actually works for 99,9% of things. You can spend a long time to support the CEO's Mac, because it is the CEO. Of course, most things running a web app or supporting infrastructure can be Linux or UNIX-based without an issue, but the OS on people's desks just is Windows and it will stay like that for a long time. There are few companies that have the resources to support something else on the desktop as well. I bet, these are in the software or hardware development or creative/ design/ art business and not much else. Education is a very special market, really anything goes there. Simple things tend to win, but what simple is changes school to school. :-) There are schools that it seems don't know what to do with their money and have dedicated IT department, supporting anything Apple, Google, Adobe, AutoDesk and Microsoft is not a problem there. There are schools that cannot even equip one IT classroom and students have to share computers each with a different OS and updates barely work because the internet connection is flaky.

andi999 5y ago

What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?

rocqua 5y ago
I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware is nicely built and well integrated with the OS. I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware. The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it. Personally, I use all of them for different purposes. I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates. I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me. For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one. Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. That’s one case of “it came with the computer”. But Microsoft was really clever at giving all the functionality companies want for their corporate issue computers. In the mid-2000’s very few companies offered Macs as desktops because of that. I only have a work MacBook because it can authenticate against AD and has all the management automation required by my employer. That’s also why a Linux laptop wasn’t an option.
      - wayneftw 5y ago
        > That’s one case of “it came with the computer”. No, that's the reason why it comes with the computer in the first place. You don't think that PC manufacturers just decided for everybody do you? Microsoft won for a one reason - they have products that solve problems better than anything else.
    - spr93 5y ago
      You must not have been around for the 80s and 90s' "desktop wars." Microsoft did everything they could to undermine innovation and they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity. The Microsoft you grew up with was not the Microsoft of Gates and Ballmer. Those were dark years. That Microsoft created new APIs, runtimes, and frameworks not for technical reasons but in order to lock customers in or disadvantage competitors. That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs--they were short-term tactics, not well considered approaches.
      - wayneftw 5y ago
        > You must not have been around... No, you. > they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity. In order to lock people in to something you have to have something of value to offer... so, your argument defeats itself. > That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs...blah blah blah Pfffft. Yeah it's so unmanageable that every single IT department on earth is running Windows all day every day. Even my personal PCs are running perfectly without so much as a hiccup. What a mess!
- exoque 5y ago
  The only way of MAYBE having a consistent experience on linux is to only use applications written for the DE of your choice isn't it? Use firefox on KDE and the consistency is already gone.
  - golergka 5y ago
    Android had a pretty consistent UI experience.
    - ismayilzadan 5y ago
      No it hasn't. Just buy a phone from let's say Samsung and install any Google app. Google app will have a different UI look and feel than rest of the system.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Is that any different to Firefox on macOS? In a way Firefox's current UI design aligns with the win 10 modern stuff, but that's more luck for MS than Firefox making a big effort to fit in, since it's mostly the same everywhere
- molasses 5y ago
  Oh come, Linux's UI is completely inconsistent, between toolkits, desktops, distros and the like.
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  what? people are going to switch to linux for a more consistent UI? UI consistency just isn't that important to most people. See: electron applications.
signal11 5y ago
Strategically, worrying about the low end “worse” competitor is more worthwhile than the higher end competitor. Eg IBM were not undone by a better mainframe. In Windows’s case the “worse” competitor is ChromeOS and Chromebook, and Microsoft’s basically thrown in the towel when it comes to native apps, so with time everyone who doesn’t need pro Photoshop or AutoCAD could just use a Chromebook. Note that you can run Word for Android on Chromebooks full-screen already.
- HellDunkel 5y ago
  You forgot about PC gaming. Kid growing up with Windows is a huge advantage. I think it cannot be overstated and Mircosoft played this game well.
  - mcny 5y ago
    I know stadia is so poorly managed that it is not even a worthy competitor but the concept is sound and nVidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s x cloud will eventually work well enough on Google Chrome that between that and Proton, Windows’ gaming advantage should become a little diminished over time? I haven’t used android games on chrome os but things like candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?
    - HellDunkel 5y ago
      Interesting thought. Is it really stadias management to blame or are there other limits hard to overcome?
    - jimmydorry 5y ago
      The problem is the massive gulf between "works well enough" and "pleasant experience". Console users would still balk at the terrible performance of Stadia... let alone PC users that are used to being first class citizens in terms of experience and responsiveness. Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare metal. All of the above is moot though if you are not within a few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for most of the world is absolutely the case.
pier25 5y ago
Maybe is not about gaining but stop losing users to MacOS and Chrome os. And one day Google will release desktop Fuchsia.
kaliszad 5y ago
That would be for the USA or Canada. Everywhere else, macOS is perhaps a rounding error. ChromeOS gains some traction and is probably more popular than macOS in the education market at least. Windows is still king at least in the world we consider as somewhat developed.

chakkepolja 5y ago

For the first half I thought it was sarcasm.

sorbits 5y ago

> It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform Their Office suite may have been internally consistent, but I did a bit of software for Windows 2000 (back when it was the latest version), and I found the UI of Windows (in general) inconsistent, scrollbars would e.g. have subtle difference between applications. I ended up using Qt for my own work, as I couldn’t figure out what was the official / dominant style to follow.

Joeri 5y ago

The ecosystem was never uniform. In the 95/2000 days there was a lot of 3.11 UI everywhere, in the 7/8 days a lot of XP UI. Office always had its own UI conventions, often being the playground where new ideas were tested. It's not so much that microsoft let things go as it was taken from them. When computers became networked we needed ways of easily distributing applications across that network in secure, reliable and always up to date ways. Windows never had a good solution to that (not even today), because every install was fraught with peril, and every app had to roll its own update mechanism. Meanwhile the web was sandboxed and up to date by definition, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry for networked software. Anything that could move to the web did move to the web, which opened the door for chromebooks, which in turn fragmented the OS market, which made it uneconomical for companies to invest in a windows native codebase. Microsoft could have stopped this had they leaned hard into the concept of an app store and sandboxing around 2000, and hadn't stumbled so badly when it came to extending windows to mobile. I'm pretty sure that modernizing the entire windows UI doesn't change a thing for windows market share. But the reason to do it is not because it makes economic sense, it is because they should have pride in the products they make, and want them to be well-made.

andyjohnson0 5y ago

> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I'm having a hard time believing that. While some Mac users who are used to a more integrated user experience might be deterred, I'm not sure that the os's ui esthetics really affect windows adoption. My feeling is that most people who use Windows do so because they're either (a) told to use it or (b) they choose to use it because it's the shortest path to doing what they want to do. I'm sure Microsoft know this and understand the tradeoffs very well

bennysomething 5y ago
I use it because it supports any bit of hardware thrown at it, with little fuss. I tried to go all Linux many times, gave up, I just wanted something that works.
- molasses 5y ago
  It doesn't always work. I have two machines, one that has issues with a north bridge, which initially prevented shutdown and prohibits, suspend and hibernate. And another where the Bluetooth dies until reboot on an Intel wireless card. Another machine wouldn't upgrade due to a wireless card, that took about three days of troubleshooting. My Linux boxes glitch too. I rarely have stuff that just works.
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    Hardware vs software issues right there.
- bkallus 5y ago
  The exception to this is older hardware. My ATI Radeons are still useful as 1080p graphics adapters under Linux, but they are totally unsupported by Windows. My laser printer is in a similar situation.
bruce343434 5y ago
Most people use it because most people use it. It's what's compatible and widespread, and comfortable and known. It's the reason that people send docx files.

webmobdev 5y ago

I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. I hope you jest. Windows has far bigger problems than the uniformity of their UI - there's the whole forced update thing, the whole "we really need to spy on literally everything you do on our OS" approach, online advertisement built and integrated with the OS (based on the spying) ... these are the major issues that they need to fixed urgently if they wish to retain their userbase. Windows has been a continuing shitshow since Windows 8 ...

molasses 5y ago
I tried win 10 recently on older hardware with 2gb ram. Long story short: totally unusable. Turned on Win 8.1 on machine with 2gb ram. That was pretty usable and almost pleasant by comparison. I used to think that distro was a stinky turd. The UI in 8.1 was very inconsistent and gave me hives. 10 has changed markedly already between big updates.

aasasd 5y ago

> creates a very low bar for third parties The bar for third parties was always nonexistent. That was precisely the advantage of Windows which permitted the boom of development for it in the 90s–2000s.

kavalg 5y ago

All this, plus the fact that Win10 has become increasingly unstable for me in the last 6 months (random restarts, nasty performance problems with WSL2 etc.) that it simply isn't worth the money anymore, unless you have some apps that only run on widows (e.g. games :))

pix64 5y ago
Honestly, it sounds like you have faulty HW.
- kavalg 5y ago
  It could be. I only use it on my Lenovo idea pad S540 AMD / Ryzen 5. However, the overall user experience with Win10 just doesn't click with me, compared to e.g. Ubuntu Desktop. The thing feels slow, bloated and unstable. Not to mention the tendency to always stay connected and report telemetry of many kinds (you notice this when you are on a slow / intermittent connection).

thrower123 5y ago

Holding Windows back from gaining on their 90+% market share?

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

> I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. Big companies just love to jack around with Windows, and do things like prevent users from changing their desktop backgrounds (in the name of "security," of course), and Microsoft has always bent over backwards to give them the ability to do any stupid thing some corporate IT drone can think of, so they continue to be loved my companies around the globe. There's a _fundamental_ difference in the way that Microsoft and Apple have approached making an operating system. One treats it like a layer of software in an entire stack that someone else owns and controls, and the other makes PERSONAL devices. And it shows. And, of course, the Microsoft-slobbering trade press can't imagine a scenario where they don't try to prove that YOU should be running Windows because the numbers -- inflated by the Fortune 1000 -- says it's what "everyone" is running. Meanwhile, more than half the people I know now run NOT-Windows for their personal computing. Let's break out the corporate purchases from sales data, and then let's talk about actual, personal market share, and whether better UI/UX would help Microsoft in a heads-up battle against macOS or ChromeOS.

kaliszad 5y ago
I have been in the corporate environment for more than 6 year more on the administrator/ engineering side of things. Currently, I am about a year at OrgPad - a very small and quite alternative startup. Two extremes so to say. ;-) In my experience, Windows is still the target for most specialized or business software. Most of these things also demand a Windows Server component. Typical suspects are: "Personalmanagement" timesheet software basically (accounting working hours, vacation, bonuses etc. and making sure the right receipts are printed at the end of each month and more, like when somebody leaves the company, is ill or the is "Kurzarbeit" because the union with the employer settled on this). Another suspect is software for insurance and taxes, energy management (which in a stainless steel foundry is an important piece of software and keeps at least a handful of people fully employed), logistics software (usually also with needle printers that are able to still print "Durchschlag" carbon paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper which is fast and handy for the drivers). There is special software for measurement and production with complex machines, ovens, mills, spectrometers, microscopes, x-ray machines etc. Oh and then there is the internally developed application, that keeps running the company and will be replaced sometime during the next 10 years with a different Windows native app if it is ever finished. And there is the MS SQL administration in addition to group policy for all the Windows computers everywhere that also is best done from a Windows computer. People are used to Windows, older generations in middle and slightly eastern european countries (former east Germany/ DDR included) especially. There just were no Macs in any company besides maybe a top design studio in the capital or regional hub. This is a big factor. In most companies, ordering certain behaviour just doesn't work in practise. In companies, every purchase is oriented towards "Abschreibung" or the amortisation period that is determined by "Abgabenordnung" if I am not mistaken - basically the tax. To be most efficient on paper, you have to use the device at least for the duration of the period determined by the state tax books, else you will have a bad tax audit etc. Anything that hasn't followed the rule will raise an eyebrow and somebody will have to explain otherwise you will likely pay more in taxes or whatever. I don't understand this stuff at all but I was told it works something like that and therefore you do so much accounting stuff such as inventory of basically everything that costs at least X, every piece of software, where you also get Microsoft and Oracle and other audits from time to time... If you are not in the business of selling/ writing enterprise or specialized software in some capacity, you don't really have to care. Most things work using a web browser nowadays, even some enterprise software some companies use. Some software is just more performant or can access certain APIs that aren't available in the web browser. Also, it is very hard to support anything for 10+ years in the webbrowser. Stuff just breaks too frequently on the web, even compared to Windows 10. In the end, people usually buy Windows, because it really is the only platform that actually works for 99,9% of things. You can spend a long time to support the CEO's Mac, because it is the CEO. Of course, most things running a web app or supporting infrastructure can be Linux or UNIX-based without an issue, but the OS on people's desks just is Windows and it will stay like that for a long time. There are few companies that have the resources to support something else on the desktop as well. I bet, these are in the software or hardware development or creative/ design/ art business and not much else. Education is a very special market, really anything goes there. Simple things tend to win, but what simple is changes school to school. :-) There are schools that it seems don't know what to do with their money and have dedicated IT department, supporting anything Apple, Google, Adobe, AutoDesk and Microsoft is not a problem there. There are schools that cannot even equip one IT classroom and students have to share computers each with a different OS and updates barely work because the internet connection is flaky.