>The world isn't full of middle managers micromanaging engineers and laughing all the way to their overflowing bank accounts. Now this isn't what I think eithe

>The world isn't full of middle managers micromanaging engineers and laughing all the way to their overflowing bank accounts. Now this isn't what I think either. It's the top executives mainly that drive this stuff, since they set the direction for the company. Middle managers are just pawns, except for the ones who are empire-builders trying to work their way up. Also, I'm not claiming that all companies are this bad, but I think MS is a unique company, and Windows a unique product, because of its monopoly status. Other companies really can't afford to piss off their customers too much because they'll just jump ship. MS doesn't have this problem with Windows. Remember how paranoid they were about Linux back in the early 00s? Now they don't seem to care at all, and I think it's because they figured out they had nothing to be worried about after all: almost no one was going to stop buying or using Windows (or even if they did stop using it, they still bought a license with their PC anyway; the addition of pre-loaded crapware also changed the economics here so they weren't worried about actual license fees from individuals). >If the world was really as dismal as you think it is, microsoft would destaff the entire windows team and just let the ecosystem rot while reaping in their locked in revenue. Of course, they can't just go to this extreme. They'd keep taking in money, but things would go down eventually, and they wouldn't grow revenues either, and remember, Wall Street wants never-ending growth. And as you point out, the ecosystem is important (as Apple has shown); they make a lot of money from all that other stuff too. Windows itself might not even be that much of a money-maker these days. >Of course like any big company, they make plenty of bad choices - like telemetry, the "watch everything you do" AI assistant, and so on. MS can afford to do a lot more bad stuff like this, because Windows users aren't going anywhere. It's why they can bake ads into the OS. >I'm sure some of them are exactly who you think they are. But some - I suspect most - of them really want to do a good job and make products their customers want to use. I'm sure there's some of them too, but they're not pulling the strings. They do get to work on cool stuff now and then of course, like the interesting kernel features you listed, but those are in support of their long-term goals (like being prepared for a post-x86 world). >Did you know companies can't use the NFC chip in Apple phones - in my phone, which I've already paid for - without being paid millions of dollars for the privilege? I'd love it if I could pay for public transit in my city using my phone, which I own, but my government doesn't want to pay the extortionate price apple is charging No, I didn't know that. It doesn't surprise me though; Apple was like this with Firewire too, and it's why Firewire is dead now. But that's weird too, because here in Japan Apple users routinely use their phones for the public transit, and I kinda doubt the IC card companies paid that much, though I guess it's possible. (Android users use their phones too, but only if their phones are Japanese models. iPhones however all have the Felica NFC chip needed for Japanese transit systems.)