[virgilp]

Read all of it. Go beyond just the title, and it should tell you that Paul Graham was more right than wrong with this one.

- Google was, for a while, the "gorilla in the room" - their decline is recent. But Paul Graham got it right, that Google was more scary than MS.

- Microsoft was "dead" in 2007, same as Apple was before Steve Jobs came back. The revival started with Satya Nadella, 7 years later. It is still a shadow of its former self, MS dominated the industry like no other player ever did (or is likely to do, again).

- The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on. And again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists, still makes money, nobody really cares".

Did the "all ycombinator founders use Macs" rub me the wrong way, when used as an argument as he did? Yes. But I also kinda' understand it(*), even though I still think he should've steered away from that argument.

(*) you can interpret it in the sense of "the future is already here - it is just very unevenly distributed"; that's probably what he meant. He knew full well the market share.

[ethbr1]

The problem with "all use Macs" is that Apple has always been a great hardware company with an underfunded software side.

MacOS has so many problems or unsupported features it isn't funny, while Windows was fine.

>> I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly

Hmm. The lesson here is probably don't assume you understand a competitor's strengths and weaknesses via secondhand experience.

And the things MacOS historically did better, having a shell and integrating with unix-like software, have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.

Furthermore, a few companies started making Windows laptops that weren't bricks. While Apple's software budget is now mostly iOS/device-focused.

[virgilp]

This was not meant to transform into "windows vs mac, which is better". But I happen to have used both, recently, and can tell: no, Windows got closer but is not quite there on the "having a shell" chapter. It still has too many, and too different. Powershell.NET is powerful, but is also "alien" to many people - you have to know .NET! Scripting is meant to be quick & hacky, not "real software that needs a release cycle", and in that sense Powershell.NET, while miles better than whatever MS previously had, still misses the mark. You know how you can tell? Because it works perfectly fine on Mac, but has 0 adoption there.

WSL2 is... ugh, ok, much better that WSL. And actually decent. But, as the name implies, is a linux environment. Not a native Windows terminal.

> a few companies started making Windows laptops that weren't bricks

I am honestly, genuinely interested in a windows-based laptop that is as good as a Macbook Pro (or at least very close). Would like the flexibility to move away from Apple. Am interested in battery life, compute power (i.e. internal processor speed, ssd speed, memory size, decent gpu), screen, keyboard & touchpad, and overall build quality (the last one is almost guaranteed if it is close in quality on all the other dimensions).

[ethbr1]

Any of the "ultrabooks" with decent IPS screens, keyboards, metal bodies, and battery life.

Dell XPSs were a decent option for the last decade+ (especially the refurbs), but Dell seems to be going through a rebranding exercise [0], so those will now be Dell Pro/Premium models? Maybe?

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-de...

[beart]

I've struggled for years with windows notebooks waking up from sleep/hibernate randomly, particularly the Dell models. Happens all the time, cooking itself inside my bag. Doesn't matter what sleep, power, etc settings I've messed with. Can explicitly put it to sleep and then stand there for 60 seconds and watch it wake itself back up. The built in power diagnostics features of windows are unable to explain why this happens, or in anyway prevent it.

This experience has kept me from spending money on any portable windows machine.

[virgilp]

I don't think battery life is close. It was the number 1 criterion on my list.

[dijit]

the performance for electron apps on Windows is terrible, even my threadripper 7960X feels laggy in slack compared to my fanless macbook air M2.

[wink]

> have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.

I'm gonna need a source for that quote because no, no one besides a couple of Windows admins ever acknowledged parity, just "meh, if I have to".

[wobfan]

While I consider myself of being part of a Linux-y bubble, I can definitely see people around me, who are, or where, in the same bubble, using PowerShell more and more and more. And, this is the interesting part, every single one of them has been saying that PowerShell is way better than e.g. Bash, or whatever you wanna compare it to. This is also because of the much more modern architectural design of Windows NT, which is and has been miles ahead of Linux, because it could learn from it's failures when it was developed. Same for PowerShell. It could learn from the mistakes that Bash made, and still has to live with.

Still, obviously, this is anecdotal evidence at best.

[throwway120385]

I'm a fair hand with the Linux shell and utilities, and I can say that PowerShell provides a lot of useful analogous capability in the Windows environment. I don't totally understand the model for PowerShell but the times I've had to dip into it it's been pretty good.

[lotsofpulp]

> - The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on. And again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists, still makes money, nobody really cares".

IBM shareholders and employees can only dream their demise was in the same sense as Microsoft’s.

[pjmlp]

I bet everyone on Linux that depend on stuff IBM and Red-Hat contribute to, really care, a lot.