[fsloth]

"I think it’s as simple as it being a better experience for the type of people who would buy the Home edition. ... allows MS to provide a lot of the services people expect using Android or iOS as their primary devices.

This. 100 times.

The main compute device people as a population are familiar with is the cellphone/tablet, and usage patterns that differ from this are becoming the odd man out.

Consumer tech. Commoditization. Etc.

We've come a long way from the 1970's. The computer as a commodity is actually not the same as a computer as a gizmo for the technically minded enthusiast.

[blendergeek]

Android devices give the users this choice. Android devices are definitely made for regular consumers.

Already, on Windows 10, all normal users used an MS account. The only way to get around it was to set up a computer without internet and then click some non obvious buttons while the computer begged for an MS account. If the goal was making it easy for normal users to have an MS account, Windows 10 succeeded.

The change here is that power users no longer have the choice to not use a cloud account. This change provides no benefit to the average user.

[saba2008]

>We've come a long way from the 1970's.

And going for a full circle. No more personal computers, just terminals connected to corporate systems, which have full control over data and usage.

[skohan]

And it's a shame if you ask me. PCs and laptops are so powerful now, and all that hardware is mostly just going toward running chrome tabs.

[bool3max]

... as opposed to doing what?

[skohan]

Native software

[Spivak]

Another big one is being able to reset your laptop password without having to take your PC into the shop for someone to break into it. And if you turned on Bitlocker let's hope that they saved their recovery key or escrowed it to their MS account.

This is the biggest feature for my relatives who no longer feel dependent on a "tech person" to help them out.

[hulitu]

> This. 100 times.

> The main compute device people as a population are familiar with is the cellphone/tablet, and usage patterns that differ from this are becoming the odd man out.

(Smart)phones and tablets are not computing devices any more than a refrigerator. You cannot do any real work on them. Even finding a text editor, let alone editing, is a challenge. Other stuff like SW development or CAD/CAE is the same.

> Consumer tech. Commoditization. Etc.

Nothing to do with it. Just pure control and data collection.

> We've come a long way from the 1970's. The computer as a commodity is actually not the same as a computer as a gizmo for the technically minded enthusiast.

We are back in the 1960 with disabled user interfaces. When you need to search the internet to disable dark patterns is the same like reading the source code to check with which options to invoke the shell.

[matthewmacleod]

You cannot do any real work on them.

This is obviously and objectively untrue, and this attitude contributes to the exact problem that’s being pointed out above.

You can make a decent and convincing argument that consumer devices should be more open without trivialising the (very much real) work that many, many millions of users do with them.

[tpush]

> (Smart)phones and tablets are not computing devices any more than a refrigerator. You cannot do any real work on them.

Nonsense, of course you can. 'Real work' isn't just programming or whatever. Writers, painters and musicians do plenty of 'real work' on tablets and such.

[throwaway675309]

Agreed. However I would just like to point out that since Apple refuses to provide a proper file shell or means to manage your files across applications on iPads (and iPhones as far as I'm aware) without resorting to some type of cloud situation, I prefer to use DAWs that run on native os systems like windows or macOS.

[fsloth]

Agree, my productivity with phone UI:s is near zero. But that's what billion people use.

I agree with the "get of my lawn" sentiment but that's not how the world uses computers anymore.

I don't see how this can work either but it seems it does and shows no signs of returning to sane Xerox-park derivatives I prefer.

There are power users and their needs are catered for but in terms of market share expert users are a diminutive niche.