6 ms·

Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working. I keep hearing

Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working. I keep hearing praise for Nadella but all he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions.

juped 2y ago
Ballmer would never have put honest-to-God advertisements in Windows Solitaire.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  I always had the feeling MS was squeezing competitors and software vendors, not users directly. The user hostility have made me move me to Linux systems.
- spacechild1 2y ago
  Let alone ads in the start menu!
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    To be fair, Windows 98 came with almost-ads in the stock Active Desktop wallpaper - and promos for AOL/CompuServ/Prodigy.
    - znpy 2y ago
      AOL was stuff that people actually used however. It wasn't "random stuff". For many people in the 90ies it was like the brand "AOL" was a synonym of "internet".
  - 1980phipsi 2y ago
    Or screw up search on the start menu
- squarefoot 2y ago
  As a 100% Linux user with good memories of that era (flying chair, Linux==cancer, etc.) I may be the best person here to actually defend Ballmer, having for sure no hidden interests in doing that. Everything changed in those years: Google was cool, Linux desktop almost non existent, cryptocurrency not even in the head of its creator, AI was a myth and the best voice recognition could offer was the hilarious "double the killer" demonstration [1]. How can we compare CEOs actions separated by two decades? Ballmer did what was perceived as useful for its company back then just as Nadella is doing that now. Perspectives have changed, hence companies and their CEOS had to adapt. I'm 100% sure that if Ballmer were MS CEO today, he would include advertisements as well, as today putting advertisements in every free corner of the known Universe is perceived as acceptable, if not necessary, which was not the case 20 years back. [1] context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc
- 486sx33 2y ago
  Exactly
rowanG077 2y ago
This is true for me as well. I do have a VR gaming machine which I don't think will linuxify soon but I would if I could. Nadella has grown Microsoft no doubt. But in the process has trashed Windows. One of the most valuable pieces of software. I wouldn't be surprised this will bite them in the long run a lot.
- globalise83 2y ago
  Our company is absolutely full of Microsoft products (all the Office 365 stuff, PowerBI, Azure, Microsoft SSO etc. etc.), yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Windows is no longer a necessity to work in a mostly-Microsoft environment, and that strategy is making Microsoft fabulous amounts of money.
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    Tools like PowerBI are quite good, the data pipelines are amazing, but at the end of the chain Microsoft always makes mistakes so that something good like PowerBI will only remain an advanced Power Point version. If you go a bit deeper the platform is fairly locked down behind artificial restraints. Azure has good parts, auth with Microsoft is perfect for software in the office world and goes beyond the usual LDAP Active Directory. But on the other hand it is quite slow to a degree that it really affects productivity. The damage is probably in the billions/trillions for their many customers. That is the real price of office cloud versions.
  - gtirloni 2y ago
    > yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Exactly this. Today I can switch from Linux to macOS to Windows and 99% of what the average users does can be done in the browser. Worse, in a smartphone. So it was very smart of Microsoft to realize Windows was going to stop being a hard requirement for most use cases.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      honestly that was the case about a decade ago. small / boutique MSP I was at cut costs by buying everyone white-label laptops, since one of the manufacturers was a client in LA and SF. anyone who really wanted a windows license could get one, but most of the staff used Unbutu, with some AD and other stuff on the backend
madisp 2y ago
With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Of those three, the only one that drives revenue to MS is GitHub.
  - cjblomqvist 2y ago
    Not true, at least not according to MS themselves. MS have done several studies and adoption of these tools drive adoption of Azure. That's why MS invests in it. They've been quite clear about this. The one platform/OS was Windows. The new platform/OS is Azure/Cloud. It's almost like saying Google doesn't make any revenues from search, only from selling ads.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    VS Code is also low-key keeping Windows relevant as a developer OS. If something else came along which was truly very excellent but was only working well with Linux, and VS Code was not there to be the de-facto go-to solution for most new devs, it could eat away more of Windows marketshare. So I see VS Code as a slight moat, also in its promulgation of dotnet-isms. So I think VS Code drives some revenue Microsofts way in a pretty diffuse but real way.
    - KptMarchewa 2y ago
      I'm not sure how it's improving Windows relevancy, second most popular IDE group - Jetbrains ones - are on Windows too.
      - actionfromafar 2y ago
        That's why I wrote slight. VS Code is more of a backstop to make sure developing on Windows doesn't suck. Don't let Windows fall behind kind of thing. Every cross platform thing is biggest on Windows by default because Windows is the biggest platform.
StableAlkyne 2y ago
> he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions Windows doesn't even make up 1/5 of their income, and in contrast a bit over half of their income is Office and Cloud* The real money is in enterprise IT and cloud services. The average consumer doesn't keep their prebuilt computer long enough to buy another version of the OS. They don't need to keep a niche within a minority (privacy-oriented customers who would buy an OS) happy with Windows to continue drowning in revenue. It seems like he has done a fantastic job, if the goal was to decouple their fortune from Windows. *Based on googling and a lazy reluctance to dig through their earnings calls
- _thisdot 2y ago
  It's a mystery to me why they haven't made Windows free yet. Surely they make much more money from users using Windows than buying Windows
  - saghm 2y ago
    It basically already is, at least for consumers. You can download an .iso of whatever the latest Windows version is and install it, and although it will prompt you to put in a product key, nothing stops you from continuing to use it if you don't. You can't customize certain cosmetic settings, and there's a small watermark in the bottom left corner, but it's hard to imagine that it being fully functional otherwise is an oversight rather than something they're fine with. The only people who will go through the effort to install it like that and keep using it are the ones who are least likely to pay for it.
    - nilamo 2y ago
      This is true: my gaming PC had that watermark for nearly 10 years. You can't change the wallpaper, remote desktop doesn't work, but that's the only downside to not paying for windows (and using Microsoft's free iso, instead of pirating a key). It's quite clear to anyone who's tried it (at least since Win10), that Microsoft does not care at all if you pay for Windows.
  - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
codegeek 2y ago
Since Nadella took over, Microsoft stock has gone up from $30 to $400 with a market value of over $3T. Satya understood that for MS to compete, they have to get out of the "Windows Only" mentality. For example, .NET Core was a huge thing when it finally came out. I don't think that he has made any terrible decisions for the company. May be for some users like you, sure. But not for the company overall.

juped 2y ago

Ballmer would never have put honest-to-God advertisements in Windows Solitaire.

rightbyte 2y ago
I always had the feeling MS was squeezing competitors and software vendors, not users directly. The user hostility have made me move me to Linux systems.
spacechild1 2y ago
Let alone ads in the start menu!
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  To be fair, Windows 98 came with almost-ads in the stock Active Desktop wallpaper - and promos for AOL/CompuServ/Prodigy.
  - znpy 2y ago
    AOL was stuff that people actually used however. It wasn't "random stuff". For many people in the 90ies it was like the brand "AOL" was a synonym of "internet".
- 1980phipsi 2y ago
  Or screw up search on the start menu
squarefoot 2y ago
As a 100% Linux user with good memories of that era (flying chair, Linux==cancer, etc.) I may be the best person here to actually defend Ballmer, having for sure no hidden interests in doing that. Everything changed in those years: Google was cool, Linux desktop almost non existent, cryptocurrency not even in the head of its creator, AI was a myth and the best voice recognition could offer was the hilarious "double the killer" demonstration [1]. How can we compare CEOs actions separated by two decades? Ballmer did what was perceived as useful for its company back then just as Nadella is doing that now. Perspectives have changed, hence companies and their CEOS had to adapt. I'm 100% sure that if Ballmer were MS CEO today, he would include advertisements as well, as today putting advertisements in every free corner of the known Universe is perceived as acceptable, if not necessary, which was not the case 20 years back. [1] context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc
486sx33 2y ago
Exactly

rowanG077 2y ago

This is true for me as well. I do have a VR gaming machine which I don't think will linuxify soon but I would if I could. Nadella has grown Microsoft no doubt. But in the process has trashed Windows. One of the most valuable pieces of software. I wouldn't be surprised this will bite them in the long run a lot.

globalise83 2y ago
Our company is absolutely full of Microsoft products (all the Office 365 stuff, PowerBI, Azure, Microsoft SSO etc. etc.), yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Windows is no longer a necessity to work in a mostly-Microsoft environment, and that strategy is making Microsoft fabulous amounts of money.
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Tools like PowerBI are quite good, the data pipelines are amazing, but at the end of the chain Microsoft always makes mistakes so that something good like PowerBI will only remain an advanced Power Point version. If you go a bit deeper the platform is fairly locked down behind artificial restraints. Azure has good parts, auth with Microsoft is perfect for software in the office world and goes beyond the usual LDAP Active Directory. But on the other hand it is quite slow to a degree that it really affects productivity. The damage is probably in the billions/trillions for their many customers. That is the real price of office cloud versions.
- gtirloni 2y ago
  > yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Exactly this. Today I can switch from Linux to macOS to Windows and 99% of what the average users does can be done in the browser. Worse, in a smartphone. So it was very smart of Microsoft to realize Windows was going to stop being a hard requirement for most use cases.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    honestly that was the case about a decade ago. small / boutique MSP I was at cut costs by buying everyone white-label laptops, since one of the manufacturers was a client in LA and SF. anyone who really wanted a windows license could get one, but most of the staff used Unbutu, with some AD and other stuff on the backend

madisp 2y ago

With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.

rbanffy 2y ago
Of those three, the only one that drives revenue to MS is GitHub.
- cjblomqvist 2y ago
  Not true, at least not according to MS themselves. MS have done several studies and adoption of these tools drive adoption of Azure. That's why MS invests in it. They've been quite clear about this. The one platform/OS was Windows. The new platform/OS is Azure/Cloud. It's almost like saying Google doesn't make any revenues from search, only from selling ads.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  VS Code is also low-key keeping Windows relevant as a developer OS. If something else came along which was truly very excellent but was only working well with Linux, and VS Code was not there to be the de-facto go-to solution for most new devs, it could eat away more of Windows marketshare. So I see VS Code as a slight moat, also in its promulgation of dotnet-isms. So I think VS Code drives some revenue Microsofts way in a pretty diffuse but real way.
  - KptMarchewa 2y ago
    I'm not sure how it's improving Windows relevancy, second most popular IDE group - Jetbrains ones - are on Windows too.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      That's why I wrote slight. VS Code is more of a backstop to make sure developing on Windows doesn't suck. Don't let Windows fall behind kind of thing. Every cross platform thing is biggest on Windows by default because Windows is the biggest platform.

StableAlkyne 2y ago

> he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions Windows doesn't even make up 1/5 of their income, and in contrast a bit over half of their income is Office and Cloud* The real money is in enterprise IT and cloud services. The average consumer doesn't keep their prebuilt computer long enough to buy another version of the OS. They don't need to keep a niche within a minority (privacy-oriented customers who would buy an OS) happy with Windows to continue drowning in revenue. It seems like he has done a fantastic job, if the goal was to decouple their fortune from Windows. *Based on googling and a lazy reluctance to dig through their earnings calls

_thisdot 2y ago
It's a mystery to me why they haven't made Windows free yet. Surely they make much more money from users using Windows than buying Windows
- saghm 2y ago
  It basically already is, at least for consumers. You can download an .iso of whatever the latest Windows version is and install it, and although it will prompt you to put in a product key, nothing stops you from continuing to use it if you don't. You can't customize certain cosmetic settings, and there's a small watermark in the bottom left corner, but it's hard to imagine that it being fully functional otherwise is an oversight rather than something they're fine with. The only people who will go through the effort to install it like that and keep using it are the ones who are least likely to pay for it.
  - nilamo 2y ago
    This is true: my gaming PC had that watermark for nearly 10 years. You can't change the wallpaper, remote desktop doesn't work, but that's the only downside to not paying for windows (and using Microsoft's free iso, instead of pirating a key). It's quite clear to anyone who's tried it (at least since Win10), that Microsoft does not care at all if you pay for Windows.
- 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

codegeek 2y ago

Since Nadella took over, Microsoft stock has gone up from $30 to $400 with a market value of over $3T. Satya understood that for MS to compete, they have to get out of the "Windows Only" mentality. For example, .NET Core was a huge thing when it finally came out. I don't think that he has made any terrible decisions for the company. May be for some users like you, sure. But not for the company overall.