[npteljes]

>Microsoft is driving off professionals with their sheer ineptitude at product development.

I wish that was the case. For one professional they drive off, they keep 1,000,000 whose employer decides their OS for them. Same as hospital software and baby clothes: it's not the end user whom they primarily sell to. Their best version of Windows, the LTSC, is not even available to normal customers.

[onetimeuse92304]

It is the professionals, power users who in the end shift markets.

Corporations are nothing else than collections of directors and managers who have their own preferences which definitely influence their decision making.

More and more companies allow using MacOS. Small companies allow MacOS and then grow into large companies that still allow MacOS.

It is taking time, but don't underestimate the power of power users.

[npteljes]

What I experienced is that the level of reaction from the professional users is much lower than mine. While I was alarmed even back in the mid-2000s that Microsoft wants to validate files for authenticity before using them (later evolved to Trusted Computing that we know of), even IT people around me didn't mind too much. So what I'm stating is not that power users can't shift a market - although debatable - but that even the power users don't care to a point to change their OS.

The second thing is what Microsoft got better at PR over the years. They, I think, very successfully respond to shifts in the market with products like WSL, which lessen the direct power user need to actually change the OS.

Furthermore, the IT job market just shifted so that the employers have more powers now, not the employees. This means that push for change from below, like for the 4 day work week or a user-favorable change in the computing environment is less likely to happen.

I do, however, see the changes that you point to, but I think that they are small, and I think that they will plateau before reaching market domination. Microsoft will be god damned to hold onto the moat that they dug, whether that be the Windows platform, the Office file formats, the email server software, the gaming libraries that they built, or anything else. Better technology or viable alternatives won't budge them, it will be either mismanagement, regulation, or a more aggressive competitor.