[rollinggoron]

Why would Microsoft not want this? They make money off of selling Windows licenses, not selling hardware (Yes, I'm aware the Surface exists). The more available hardware to install Windows etc on, the more $ Microsoft makes.

[oofbey]

Balmer or not, Microsoft is still in direct competition with Apple for much of its core business. So encouraging customers to buy a laptop where they get $50 for the windows license and if they're lucky another $100 in software sales, but their key competitor gets >=$1000 of profit -- yeah, it's pretty clearly a bad business choice.

[sgjohnson]

Not really. OEMs pay significantly less for Windows licenses than they are retailed for.

And Windows sales to consumers haven't been a core part of their business for a while now. It's all about cloud and enterprise.

[oofbey]

Just looked at the earnings report and I have to agree with you. Windows + Office was 25% of MS's revenue in 2021, but I suspect you're right that the big majority of that is not consumer-driven. FWIW just 2 years back, Windows + Office was 40% of revenue, so this segment is very rapidly becoming less important.

[MBCook]

Making sure that windows works properly and keeping it working for however long they want to support it has got to cost a bunch of money. The question is, will they ever sell enough Windows licenses for M1(/2/3/etc.) Macs to make up for that investment, let alone profit?

I kind of doubt it.