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Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?
- PaulHoule 11mo agoYeah, this book was hugely influential https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari&channel=30 https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF... And came to the conclusion that many firms like DEC and Xerox did not sufficiently move to new technology because their customers were not interested and didn’t feel served by it, at least not until it had decades to improve. Today we have the FOMO dilemma where executives all read that book and no way they are going to end up like DEC or Xerox so you get things like Windows 8, really a lot of what Microsoft has done since then has been in the same vein. We’re yet to see a “big tech” company die from the FOMO dilemma but maybe 20 years back we’ll see Google or Facebook or Microsoft in that frame.
- blizdiddy 11mo agoThe “CTO” at my small employer used this book to explain why we needed to stick with Perl and Oracle 9i in 2020.
- Spivak 11mo agoIt sounds like your CTO took the opposite message of the book. Well the modern interpretation anyway. But can't really argue with not rewriting working code, even the Oracle licensing is probably is probably nothing in terms of cost. Might wanna update to a supported version though.
- groundzeros2015 11mo agoWould that have failed? It still works
- marcosdumay 11mo agoWell, almost the entire book is about how companies like DEC and Xerox just could not move to the new technology, whatever their decision makers decided. I really don't understand the executives that read it and decide that "yeah, we are doing that impossible thing, disregard the sensible alternatives the book shows or thinking of something new!"
- PaulHoule 11mo agoWindows 8: some people in the early 2010s (me!) thought laptops were cooked…. My hackathon kit from then was a dirt cheap Android tablet, plastic clip, Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth mouse. It looked so sleek compared to the MacBooks and gaming laptops everybody else had. I don’t think Microsoft was crazy chasing the tablet dream but I was the only one. Meta Quest: Facebook has users, advertisers and all sorts of people who depend on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and such. Facebook knows that platforms like that fail eventually and doesn’t want to be the next MySpace so it has been struggling to get them into a virtual reality platform that, on a certain level, is well executed, but that people don’t have enthusiasm for. VR games for the Quest platform are pretty good but there are so many good flat games that I barely have time for them. I’d make the case that the 8GB MQ3 has enough RAM to run carefully optimized games but not enough for ordinary people to author content (some of why Horizon Worlds is dead: no way McDonalds is going to build an experience if they can’t import an SVG or PNG of the Coca-Cola logo to out in the cups and instead have to painstakingly make it out of solid geometry using the controller by hand… and the same is true for small businesses and enthusiasts) —- we are seeing 16GB headsets from Apple, Samsung and Valve now and maybe it will be better but quite probably it won’t. I know though that if Zuck gives up and somebody else succeeds he’ll have the most terrible regret.
- marcosdumay 11mo agoTablets weren't actually disruptive at the time. That said, no, Microsoft wouldn't be crazy to make a tablet facade for Windows. What made them stupid (still not crazy) was to remove the desktop facade from their OS that sold exclusively to desktop users at the time.
- righthand 11mo agoLink to Worldcat book information: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1423132421 https://search.worldcat.org/title/1423132421 Alibris link: https://www.alibris.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-When-New-Technologies-Cause-Great-Firms-to-Fail-Clayton-M-Christensen/book/28077633 https://www.alibris.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-When-New-Tech...
- ruined 11mo agothanks, gp's google link was unusable for me (apparently my activity is unusual)
- Legend2440 11mo agoYou see this happening right now with LLMs. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc are incredibly worried about being disrupted. But all they can really do is try to shoehorn AI into their existing products (OSes, search, social media), which is a difficult sell to their existing customers. Ultimately, LLMs will probably find their place in a new product category instead.
- cameldrv 11mo agoThis more recently happened to IBM (as a computer manufacturer). If your platform is not accessible to hobbyists, the next generation will not be familiar with it, and when they go get a job, it probably won't be with the technology they don't know. Then, assuming there is a credible alternative, the inaccessible technology will die out in a generation, as we've seen with IBM mainframes.
- amelius 11mo agoYes, many companies even start with hobbyist tools. IBM proves that going all B2B is not a good idea. The other end of the problem is Apple which is a consumer company, but they prohibit companies to use their hardware for building new things. Both approaches suck for consumers and/or startups, but Apple's approach at least works for them from a business perspective.
- sofixa 11mo ago> Then, assuming there is a credible alternative, the inaccessible technology will die out in a generation, as we've seen with IBM mainframes Unfortunately IBM mainframes are still around. No new customers, but existing ones are too afraid of touching it because it's usually the result of decades of spaghetti hence they're locked in for the forseeble future. So they'll keep renewing contracts and refreshing hardware periodically. IBM prints money with this stuff, and use some of it for all their acquisitions of various software companies (biggest one was Red Hat) to leverage their massive B2B sales org to sell oher stuff to those existing customer relationships.
- PaulHoule 11mo agoTo their credit, IBM is still making zArchitecture chips that aren’t completely humiliated by x86 and ARM. Note also since 2000 IBM helped improve the Linux kernel and got it working in zArchitecture so if a business that has old COBOL or CICS applications wants to run some Linux apps in virtualization on the same machine they can.
- bikelang 11mo agoI agree that a cheap MacBook and the steam machine are presenting a perfect storm situation for windows to lose some serious marketshare with casual/consumer users. Itll be interesting to see how or even if Microsoft reacts to this.
- TitaRusell 11mo agoMicrosoft dropping the ball on smartphones is their real problem. Desktops are on the way out for consumers.
- hamdingers 11mo agoAuthor is using Microsoft and Windows interchangeably, this post is only about Windows. Gaming is a bigger business for Microsoft than Windows and that can only ever be consumer focused. There's no mention of Xbox, nor an awareness that Microsoft published games are playable on the Steam Machine.
- cratermoon 11mo agoMicrosoft has definitely angered consumers in the gaming space. Look what they've done to Minecraft, or the formerly beloved studios they bought out. The Game Pass price hike was not well-received.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- raziel2701 11mo agoYeah there's lots of complaining but until they move to linux, stop buying their games and cancel their subscriptions nothing will change in the enshittification path.
- cratermoon 11mo agoWhy do you think the Steam Deck and Steam Machine are getting so much attention?
- hirsin 11mo agoYes, the article should really be titled "Is Windows just tech debt to Microsoft?" and could have been published five or six years ago.
- bee_rider 11mo agoIt would be a short article. “Yah”
- andersonpico 11mo ago
- reilly3000 11mo agoIDK I started running Bazzite on my workstation after Win11 died on me a couple weeks ago, and if it is the premier experience for Linux desktop gaming then we aren’t there yet. It is great as far as distros go, don’t get me wrong. But WiFi dies after waking from sleep, and bluetooth worked once then died. I had to hack on it for a bit, then do it again with immutable OS patterns in mind. MS is certainly leaving an opportunity open for a new desktop OS. Would anyone dare offer a commercially supported consumer Linux OS?
- rcarmo 11mo agoThat's weird. I've been running it for years and it's been rock solid--but I've done so on Ryzen mini-PCs with very standardized hardware, and am not using it as any kind of desktop--purely as a game machine.
- d3Xt3r 11mo ago> But WiFi dies after waking from sleep, and bluetooth worked once then died. That sounds like a hardware compatibility bug to me and not Bazzite's fault - I don't have those issues on my ThinkPad Z13, nor on my GPD Win Mini 2024.
- NegativeK 11mo agoI both 100% agree with you and also don't think our opinion matters. The general consumer isn't going to hear "the manufacturer hasn't upstreamed stable drivers to the kernel" and suddenly stop blaming Linux if the hardware works in Windows.
- graemep 11mo agoThe general consumer does not install an os and hardware with linux reinstalled tends not to have these problems
- __aru 11mo agoHow I see it is, of course you won't have a good time with Linux if you don't have compatible hardware. The stuff you're mentioning (flaky Wifi and Bluetooth) is a hallmark symptom of incompatible hardware, or newer hardware with immature drivers. I personally use Linux for all my devices, but I'm also very intentional on making sure ALL my hardware is compatible with Linux. If you have all hardware compatible with the mainline Linux kernel, generally you can achieve a ChromeOS-level of system stability and reliability. But as soon as you introduce incompatible hardware, all of that goes out the window. It's why I only recommend Linux to users that have compatible hardware.
- bitmasher9 11mo agoNo, consumers are not tech debt to Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft is shifting away from consumer technology. The difference is Microsoft is squeezing every last drop of profit from consumers on their way out. That’s not debt, that’s an asset. In 25 years Microsoft will be similar to Oracle. Maybe they’ll have investments in some consumer brands, but largely they will be selling to enterprises and governments.
- llbbdd 11mo agoI'm young, I'll take that bet. In 25 years windows will still have greater than 50% consumer computer marketshare out of sheer momentum.
- Nextgrid 11mo agoI'd be very surprised if "consumer computer" will be anything but a niche thing in 25 years.
- llbbdd 11mo agoIt might be just a remote UI over "Windows Cloud Eternal" at that point but if by then we've moved to "Apple Forever OS" or "The Eternal Year of the Linux Desktop" I'll make a balanced diet out of hats
- joseda-hg 11mo agoHonestly, a Phone/Dex style thin client that you connect to a bigger screen and that remotes into Windows Cloud Eternal seems like a solid sale for them They sell you compute, plus a phone that gets renewed every 2-5 Years
- pezezin 11mo agoI have been hearing the same for the last 20 years, if not longer, and yet the consumer computer remains strong.
- crazygringo 11mo ago> Number one is that Microsoft just does not feel like a consumer tech company at all anymore. At least in terms of Windows/Office, Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. They've always been focused on corporate sales. There have always been consumer-focused side areas, from Bob to Encarta to MSN to Xbox. But Microsoft's bread and butter has always been corporations. I don't understand how the author thinks it was different at any time in the past.
- nobodyandproud 11mo agoThey’re angering corporations too. Those risk-adverse behemoths are slowly coming to terms with Microsoft breaking their platforms and bread-and-butter applications.
- d3Xt3r 11mo agoIndeed. Previously, every Patch Tuesday we used to pray that nothing would break in that patch cycle. Now we expect that things _will_ break, but hope that that whatever Microsoft breaks won't affect us, or is something minor, or gets patched quickly. Also, thelast few months have been a nightmare for or us as we were doing our migrations to Windows 11 and found how much of a steaming pile of poo it was - I mean, we already had an inclination, but it was even worse than the rumours. Never seen a shittier OS in my life, and that's even after considering Windows ME.
- GeekyBear 11mo ago> Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. The Zune wasn't consumer tech? Windows 95 was definitely consumer tech. Windows XP was about making the Windows NT line accessible for home users going forward. Weirdly, Windows Phone was aimed at consumers at a time when they really could have leveraged integrations with products like Exchange and Office to stand out.
- tremon 11mo agoThey already had Windows CE and ActiveSync, the bane of many an IT support worker. It might be they expected phones to remain consumer-only, and the business world to keep using PDAs.
- tyleo 11mo agoAnother point not mentioned in this article is that Windows desktops are incredibly slow these days. I did some compilation tests on a 2025 Windows desktop with an i9 vs some MacBooks and a new top-of-the-line Windows machine can’t even keep up with a bottom-tier M1 MacBook Pro. https://www.tyleo.com/blog/compiler-performance-on-2025-devices https://www.tyleo.com/blog/compiler-performance-on-2025-devi...
- catlifeonmars 11mo agoSome of that may be due to cpu architecture differences. What you have done is more or less an apples to oranges comparison.
- Hammershaft 11mo agoThese are interesting results! You should post this without burying the lede that a 4 yo M1 outperforms a top of the line new intel laptop.
- layer8 11mo agoDid you turn off Microsoft Defender for the relevant directories? Otherwise you might be measuring malware scan performance more than compiler performance.
- rconti 11mo agoThe web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever. It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility in the pre-webapp days. What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market. All the more weird for two reasons: 1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world. 2. Apple isn't trying, either! They're seemingly doing their best to abandon and alienate their desktop OS users. A decade or more of stagnation or regression in features and usability, capped off by Tahoe this year. It feels like Apple and Microsoft are just waiting for the desktop OS to die, waiting for mobile to take it over; so we can all just shut up and stop asking for filesystems and terminals so they can sell us iPads and Surfaces, and they can finally be free of this ancient burden of selling desktop computer OSes. And the consumers keep buying the stupid things, demanding product in a market that the vendors don't want any part of.
- blitz_skull 11mo agoAs an Apple Stan, I don’t understand what you’re referring to. MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas, I’m not really sure what you could be referring to when you say “stagnation”. Every OS ever released has issues at launch, not sure if that’s what you mean by “regression”. But man… windows has been garbage for the better part of 2 decades now.
- cocoa19 11mo agoIf light years means not inundate the OS with ads, shove AI down our throats and redesign every app with regressed UX, then sure.
- drw85 11mo agoActually in the latest MacOS release it constantly trains local models for all kinds of junk without asking you at all. I had to disable all that AI garbage in the settings after researching a bunch of local inference and training processes that were grinding my MacBook to a halt every time it woke up from sleep.
- IAmNotACellist 11mo agoA more interesting question to me (and one where MSFT employees here would have some insight) is to what degree is Windows' recent ABYSMAL fucking quality the result of AI, outsourcing, or bad management? You can also feel the difference in healthy employees vs. unhealthy, when you switch between something like VSCode (polished, fast, intelligent UI, not buggy, consistently improves) and Explorer (paleolithically slow, unstable, buggy, crashy, the worst version is always the latest).
- eviks 11mo ago> VSCode (polished, fast, ...) and Explorer (paleolithically slow, In what world is VSCode fast when its startup time is multiples of Explorer (which had in recent news decided to preload itself to mask that issue) and they are the result of exactly the same fundamental shift from native to web native
- mschuster91 11mo agoThe competition is IntelliJ, which can be slow as molasses.
- eviks 11mo agoVisual Studio is the competition to IntelliJ
- IAmNotACellist 11mo agoVSCode starts up the same as any other IDE, and is responsive and snappy when using it. Explorer starts up about 100 times slower than any other file explorer, and is exceptionally while using it too.
- eviks 11mo agoVisual Studio is the one to compare to "any other heavy IDE", vs code is slow as a text editor due to chrome, not its ide features , and there are plenty of code editors with plugins that start much faster, though I won't make up 10000 times, it's only around 10
- qgin 11mo agoNobody seems to want to use Copilot, but Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing. They can just provision however many virtual coworkers to a Microsoft Teams instance and you'll be handing off documents and chatting with the AGI workers pretty much as you would any other remote worker. Microsoft doesn't have to be first or best here. Just owning the plumbing of so many present-day workplaces with Teams and Office will make it hard to beat them.
- jen20 11mo agoA new Turing test: when all the AGI worker bots would rather gargle razor blades than use Microsoft Teams, we might be close.
- aeve890 11mo ago>use Microsoft Teams Shit like this make rogue AI scenarios totally plausible. I won't wish that on my worst enemy
- otabdeveloper4 11mo ago> when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing How many more weeks? Also, is this before or after flying cars?
- qgin 11mo agoLooking like 2028-2030 but it's a moving target. Since we're basically getting flying cars next year at the World Cup, I guess it's going to be after flying cars.
- chongli 11mo agoI prefer fusion power as the go-to vapourware technology. It’s been “10-20 years out” for 70 years and counting. I don’t see any reason to believe that “AGI office workers” will be ready to go by 2030. All signs right now are pointing to a looming plateau in their capabilities.
- amarant 11mo ago2026 will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop!
- liveoneggs 11mo agoI am, unironically, considering this for my dad's computer: https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/ https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/
- ivell 11mo agoWith Android 17 coming with desktop mode, there is a good chance of that.
- Root_Denied 11mo agoUnironically it might actually be 2025. In the last 18 months we've seen a lot of maturation in various linux distros trying to make them "out of the box" usable by people who are not all that technical. More GUI utilities, better stability, compatibility layers for gaming driving adoption, and dead simple setup. Valve has been doing a lot of the work driving adoption from gamers with Proton, PulseAudio is suddenly way more functional and compatible, working Nvidia GPU drivers (565+), and immutable spins on distros have all made it so that linux overall is more approachable than ever. I think we'll look back at 2025 and see it as the inflection point where suddenly linux became a viable alternative to Apple/Microsoft in a way it wasn't before, driven in part by development targeting a new demographic along with the spotlight on both the technical and consumer issues with OSX/Windows (such as patches bricking hardware, attempting to crowbar AI into everything, and antagonizing their customer base with things like subscriptions and data harvesting).
- o_m 11mo agoThe way Microsoft are ruining Windows makes it seem like enterprise users are the tech debt they want to get rid off. Like making their servers non-deterministic by serving random ads or leaking secret content to their AI. It makes sense that they would rather have their customers run Linux on Azure, so they don't have to do R&D for their own OS.
- loumf 11mo agoI think of it a different way. The consumer market (if Microsoft doesn’t value it) is holding them back from paying tech debt. The fear of regressions is a good reason to not touch stuff. If you do value a market and ignore this, the consequences can be fatal (see Sonos). But if you don’t, then doing the minimum is rational.
- apples_oranges 11mo agoI think it’s just like Steve Jobs said: they have no taste. That never changed and it causes them to fail time and again with innovations
- __aru 11mo agoI actually think Microsoft is often ahead of it's time with it's consumer-facing products, but executes very poorly. So they have good foresight, but "very bad taste" when it comes to execution. Microsoft was early to making tablets, smartphones, living room PCs, etc. They just royally screw up the execution of each product category every time. Maybe it'd be a fun idea for to take some of Microsoft's failed consumer ideas, and revisit them 10-15 years later to see if some other company successfully executes on it.
- drw85 11mo agoMaking a bicycle with square wheels is not being ahead of it's time, though. Most of the time MS is actually delivering something successful is when they are very late or bought it and put their sticker on it.
- layer8 11mo agoThe problem with the last 15 years of Windows is the way that Microsoft did touch it, a lot.
- eviks 11mo ago> Considering Apple’s focus on consumers first What does it mean specifically for the OS? What were the exciting improvements you've noticed that would entice that switch? Is the liquid glass design that is making it harder to read text "costumer first"? > The third thing is gamers. Gamers use Windows largely because they have to But also not entirely to game, so the case for an OS where almost all the basics/apps are even worse, why would they switch?
- Anonbrit 11mo agoMost people I know under 30 are either running games or chrome. Word-processing etc (the odd tune they need it) is all in the browser
- boznz 11mo agoFifteen years ago every piece of hardware supported windows and windows was arguably more friendly for casual developers than Linux with things like Visual Basic and Delphi so a lot of novel and very custom software was written (guilty as charged). The good thing is that most of these still work, as windows has thankfully not fucked with the underlying Win32 libraries. The bad thing is that this one piece of custom software was probably written by someone of retirement age and it is probably what's running the company. This is just life, the same will happen to your latest wiz-bang program you wrote today in ten or fifteen years, good companies insist on the source code and/or plan for obsolescence, others become cash cows for the software industry or die.
- lousken 11mo agoNo, Microsoft products are the tech debt everywhere
- llbbdd 11mo agoSomeone should come up with an alternative
- arbirk 11mo agoNot rick roll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZSkM-QEeUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZSkM-QEeUg
- LAC-Tech 11mo agoPeople need to have realistic expectations of large corporations. The old microsoft is dead. It's not coming back. I'm sorry if you used to like what they did - all those people are gone now. Just the name is the same.
- Mountain_Skies 11mo agoIf the government forced Microsoft to divest itself from Windows, I'm not sure Microsoft wouldn't be thankful for the excuse to jettison it.
- sedatk 11mo ago> The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot That's a quite unfair take, especially when it fails to compare it with what things of note Linux distros have added over the last five years. Valve made Windows emulation better, yes. That's it. What else? Actually, I wouldn't even call Copilot a thing of note. It's just ChatGPT-in-a-popup at the moment. A real thing of note is WSL2. It's a total game changer. Windows has got many quality of life improvements over the recent years such as an extremely polished web browser, clipboard history, Windows Sandbox, screen recording, OCR, automatic private info redaction, Markdown support in Notepad and many more. None of those exists on most distros. Most distros lack the features below, out of the box, which Windows has supported for years: - "reset this PC" functionality - a built-in anti-malware - Touch/Face login - Ability to enable FDE post-installation - Hybrid-sleep - Fast fractional HiDPI scaling - Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly I agree that Microsoft needs to stop letting product groups get their way with screwing up user comfort on Windows for the sake of their arbitrary goals (like shoving Microsoft accounts, Teams, and anything Electron-based down our throats) and keep it as a solid, bloat-free system that everyone can safely rely on. But, dismissing the existing pros of Windows is just unfair. Despite all the cons, it's still a very good OS. Disclaimer: I had to switch to Fedora on my old machines because Windows 11 weren't supported on them. That's an exceptionally rare incident where Microsoft dropped the ball on backwards compatibility. But that doesn't mean Windows itself is bad.
- butterknife 11mo agoClipboard history? Screen recording? Polished web browser? And none of these are available on most distros? I think you ought to try "most distros" before making such claims.
- d3Xt3r 11mo ago> Despite all the cons, it's still a very good OS. I disagree, "a very good OS" wouldn't leave major issues unfixed for 5+ months and counting: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/ https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-... If Windows was "a very good OS", us Windows sysadmins would've been out of a job a long time ago! A good portion of our job involves trying to fix or workaround things that Microsoft breaks every Patch Tuesday, logging tickets with Microsoft, dealing with the asinine Microsoft Support (who don't even know how to extract .cab files from the logs generated by the Microsoft Support Tool!), and implementing fixes and workarounds for unwanted "features" they manage to sneak into the latest update. Actually, I concede that it is "a very good OS" - it is very good for keeping me employed!
- tonymet 11mo agoConsumers are leads and beta testers. Microsoft's business is licensing and reselling -- directly and via Azure. Their primary concerns are keeping businesses and developers happy. Consumers are a distant third. There is value in training consumers on Windows & Office so they are familiar when coming to the office. MS needs to retain endpoint dominance in the workplace. They can't survive on server alone. Windows & Office endpoints are essential to their business. This is the leads channel. They add pizazz to features and beta test them to consumers . Consumer licensing is moderate revenue but minimal income for Microsoft. Thus consumers are really beta testers. So Microsoft will continue to provide low quality consumer experiences that don't fit the consumer market that well. The consumer market isn't their goal. It's a means to their actual business.
- erikerikson 11mo ago> a version of Linux that is optimized for gamers Bazzite has been great for me so far except for a few exceptions to okay with friends. With the end of support for 10 and the hostile crap Windows has become, I'm trying to see how to transition. Anti-cheat and business agreements seem to be the only real remaining barriers. And to the original question: no, consumers are moat to the enterprise licensing pot of gold.
- BirAdam 11mo agoMicrosoft really should just open source Windows and completely abandon the OS market. They make their money on things like gaming, Office, and Azure. At this point, Windows is just a loss leader for other products. Outsource the dev cost with open source like phone makers do with Android.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jongjong 11mo agoWhen I started using Linux about 10 years ago, whenever I bought a new computer, I would keep a partition for Windows just in case for dual boot... Nowadays I just wipe it all clean. It's weird to think I'm still paying for the Windows license because I like to buy from a physical store and they don't have alternatives. Microsoft has become a bit like Oracle... You don't need what they make anymore but you have to keep paying for it. It's like the company has entered into retirement and society is still supporting it... But the difference is it never dies of old age to make room for new generations of companies.
- crnkofe 11mo agoGotta say the article hits the right notes. I'm one of the peeps thinking about whether I actually still need Windows. I'm not a power user of office and photoshop. I could in fact live with various online office-alike suites or Linux Libre office. I also no longer need a particular piece of software that only runs on Windows. The HW I have is well supported on Linux nowadays. The only real reason for still running it is games and most of those I still play run crossplatform in large-part due to Steam. The new features being announced sound like a MS board-cooked joke. Agentic OS? For who? Secretaries? Small businesses that need local AI crawlers to find - what - 3y old invoice? I don't get it. And lets not forget their plans to turn the octopus into a subscription-based model which to me sounds horrific and likely the final step to purging it off my machines. Still a good choice for non-tech-savvy users and for users forced into it due to OS-exclusive software. Hopefully not for long though. More competition in the space should hopefully spur some innovation.
- prng2021 11mo agoI disagree. I think one of the main reasons most companies still give their employees Windows machines and use Windows Servers to support those employees applications (ie Outlook and Office) is because most of the world has grown up using Microsoft Windows and Office at home. If there was another world where most people grew up using MacOS, there’s just no way MS would have as much market share in the corporate world.
- anal_reactor 11mo ago> I just do not see excitement there. I feel like the culture at large has shifted from doing what's exciting to doing what's safe, from actor's point of view.
- Havoc 11mo agoThe way they’re treating windows users sure seems to support that view
- o999 11mo agoThe proliferation of cheap agenting tools integrating with every SDLC stage makes building open source software faster and cheaper, which decreases the competition barrier with Microsoft's deep pockets, and decrease older propietary software market value significantly.
- Jean-Papoulos 11mo agoThe reason they are abandonning desktop is that it's much easier to serve ads on a mobile platform than a desktop one.