[windows2020]

Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand. My first experience with Windows 11 was figuring out some dumb workaround to use a local account.

When I think back to Windows 7, the good feeling isn't nostalgia. It was the last user-focused Windows.

Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs. Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will realize very important parts of Windows are going downhill and remember what made Windows great.

[snovymgodym]

I'm not convinced Microsoft cares about the Windows market share in consumer PCs or the small amount of money they make from selling Windows licenses to regular consumers.

If they did, Windows wouldn't be so usable unactivated and the MassGravel activation stuff would have been patched already.

They built up their almost-monopoly when it mattered in the 90s and the 2000s, and now their market position is basically secured.

For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

[somenameforme]

The reason they don't meaningfully enforce their copyright on consumer PCs is precisely because they do care about their market share. If you buy a computer with Windows (or get it installed) in what I suspect is the overwhelming majority of the world, it's an 'illegitimate' copy and it works 100% fine, including operating with Microsoft's servers.

As you mentioned, they could trivially stop this if they wanted to, but they don't. Because if this were not possible, there'd be billions of more PCs out there running instead what would most likely be Linux. Enabling people to use Windows without paying is a key component of their strategy of maintaining market dominance, especially on a global level.

[keyringlight]

I think the biggest 'threat' to windows for general users has been mobile, besides that it seems like it's mostly running on momentum from the ecosystem of decades ago. The challenge is that most migrations for established users of any system take effort, and right now the effort of running activation/account requirement bypasses is low effort compared to changing to and learning a new OS.

The way of framing it which works for me is that there doesn't seem to be much reason to move to windows, if you were starting computing with a blank slate and could pick anything, why would someone want to pick windows? Most people need a mobile anyway which serves a lot of consumer needs. Gaming is a big one if you're not happy with mobile/console, but there's the wine/proton on linux route although there's a subset that won't work or has compatibility issues (from minor paper-cuts to major). And then there's those that need specific windows-only software with no alternative elsewhere.

[baq]

Also note this strategy is in its fourth (or fifth?) decade and is also very successfully deployed by adobe et al. It’s also why Linux won on the headless server, though why FreeBSD didn’t I’m not sure; GPL marketing at the right time, perhaps.

[overfeed]

> though why FreeBSD didn’t I’m not sure

The same reason why Ubuntu won the server market (for a while): by capturing the home-desktop/laptop market first, and then worming its way to employer environments by way of familiarity. Linux had broader driver coverage for consumer hardware; there was a time when running *BSD on fragmented consumer hardware was a crapshot.

[Gud]

Linux was already dominant long before Ubuntu.

the answer is because of the AT&T lawsuit against university of California in the 90s that dragged and tainted the BSD code base.

[overfeed]

I said Linux won for the same reason as Ubuntu (winning the distro wars), I did not say Linux won because of Ubuntu. Ubuntu:Linux Distros::Linux:server OSes

[newswangerd]

The funny thing is that I would be totally willing to pay for a license if in exchange for no ads and no needing a Microsoft account.

[breakingcups]

You can! Windows 11 Enterprise.

[Krssst]

Where can a license be bought? When I tried on a legitimate site I got denied for not being a company.

[hattmall]

>those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

To an extent sure, but when people that grew up as home consumers not using Windows become business leaders they won't have the brand loyalty to Microsoft that the current aging out generation does.

If Google doesn't characteristically fumble the bag their dominance with ChromeOS in schools has potential pay major dividends in 10-15 years.

Windows centric software development is pretty much completely driven by business leaders 50+ years old on the young end.

[snovymgodym]

A striking amount of business software runs on Windows because Microsoft was dominant during the peak PC era (e.g. 1990-2010). The companies running that stuff aren't doing so because old guys think Windows is good, they're running it because it's been built already and there's no real reason to change.

The next generation of business leaders already didn't build their companies on Windows or any other PC operating system because web apps replaced desktop apps and mobile devices overtook PCs in market share.

But it doesn't really matter to Microsoft. Microsoft isn't really the "Windows Company" anymore and hasn't been for some time. Azure, Office365, Sharepoint, etc. revenue dwarfs what Windows brings in and wouldn't be affected by Windows losing market share because everything is a web/electron client for a cloud service now.

In some ways, I suspect Microsoft views the Windows market share as more of a liability than an asset these days, because it makes them responsible for bad press events like BlueKeep and WannaCry. Business customers frequently buy support contracts with their licenses, whereas private consumers expect indefinite updates for a one time $120 fee. Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if they were intentionally letting consumer Windows slowly fade away.

[cm2187]

Hum, how much of the success of azure is due to enterprise customers being in the windows ecosystem already? And what happens when the next enterprises are not?

[onraglanroad]

Around 60% of Azure VMs are Linux. Between that and WSL it sometimes seems like Microsoft is putting more effort into being a Linux company than a Windows one.

Who could have predicted that back in the Slashdot days!

[unethical_ban]

They're putting effort into being a cloud corporate software provider.

Entra, outlook365, and cloud hosted solutions. VMs in the cloud are niche.

[binary132]

What percentage of new computers are sold running windows again? I suspect the reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.

[Telaneo]

Macs were at a bit over 10% market share in q4 2024[1], but it's also worth noting that the PC market is shrinking as a whole. Windows still has most of the pie, but the pie itself is getting smaller, since many find phones to be a better (and cheaper) experience than Windows, and I can't say that I blame them.

I'm curious how inflated the numbers are from business sales, since the default option there is still Windows, even if you don't actually use any software that needs it (i.e. you just need a web browser). Consumer sales of PCs is probably only going to trend downwards, and it only got a small spike from people buying PCs for COVID.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/26/mac-market-share-growing-fast...

[pixl97]

>many find phones to be a better (and cheaper) experience than Windows, and I can't say that I blame them.

With that said at least using native apps on phones is becoming more and more of a risk. If you can get away with a browser that's fine. But if you need native phone features you are at the risk of Apple/Google cutting off your entire business for some hidden reason and nearly zero recourse. On that note people have been getting more worried about Apple starting to treat their desktop OS like a phone and locking it down more.

[pjmlp]

Even OEMs that have the option to select Linux, e.g. Dell, Lenovo, have "works best with Windows" all over the place, one needs to be rather persistent to track down the Linux as pre-installed OS options.

[lenkite]

> If Google doesn't characteristically fumble the bag their dominance with ChromeOS in schools has potential pay major dividends in 10-15 years.

There will be no ChromeOS anymore - just Android - and it will soon be locked down hard so that you need to pay Google or host ads/harvest data for every app.

You just need to make your choice of Tyrant landlord.

[makeitdouble]

The crucial part: these business leaders won't see the ugly consumer side.

Enterprise windows is completely different, in that most of the crap we complain about will either be disable at the MDM level, or from the start depending on the license. A CEO being issued a windows laptop isn't barraged with ads, nor do they care if their account is local or not. It will "just work".

[bigmattystyles]

I don’t know, I work for a massive (benevolent of course) corporation and it’s still pushy with Lock Screen ads, copilot, etc… and it definitely doesn’t just work. Maybe for the CEO it does though…

[makeitdouble]

It might depend on how much your IT departements cares about customizing your setups. The efforts described in TFA for instance don't cover auto install scripts which are still free to create whatever local account is needed, provided it's done through the fleet management mechanisms.

Much of the scripts to "debloat" windows also rely on MDM entry points and overriding user preferences with higher privilege.

[mlrtime]

I remember in the early win7 days when I built computers there were many powertools to debloat the install, I had fun running them.

Doesn't this exist today for W11 that makes most of the complaints mute? Or is MS getting better at the cat/mouse game?

[alsetmusic]

> Lock Screen ads, copilot

We have a mandate on-high to block this crap at the MDM level. It's more about your company than the biz world overall, I think.

[pjmlp]

That is mostly a thing on US school system.

[SoftTalker]

Do we believe that we’ll be using anything like today’s PCs and operating systems in 10-15 years time? I mean, that’s been the case since the 1980s, but now we have usable (if imperfect) AI.

[dmantis]

Two reasons why so at least professionaly:

- Reliability. For anything that needs deterministic result and not even 99.9% of chance that it's generated correctly and not hallucinated. E.g. health, finance, military, etc. There is no room for "you're absolutely right". For the same input an algo must give the same output.

- Privacy. Until we have powerful local models (we might have though in 10 years, I don't know), sending everything to some cloud companies, which are already obliged by court to save data and have spy and ex-military generals in their boardrooms, sounds a bit crazy if it's not about an apple pie recipe. Web chat interface isolates important data from non-important, but we can't integrate it fully in our lifes.

[setopt]

Personally: Yes, I do. Likely, voice assistants and other AI tools will have a bigger market share in a decade, sure. But I doubt an interface like Alexa can replace a PC-like setup for most of the «real work». Instead, I imagine we’ll just continue the trend of laptops and tablets with AI assistants integrated in better ways, and perhaps a wider adoption of AR/VR in some sectors. Tre The tech that could replace today’s PC setup is a neural interface, but I doubt that NeuraLink et al will be anywhere near mainstream in a decade.

[toast0]

> But I doubt an interface like Alexa can replace a PC-like setup for most of the «real work».

Most people, and most workers simply don't do what you call real work that needs a big screen and a keyboard. I think most of the kids at my child's school don't have a computer at home (other than the district issued chromebook) and likely won't ever own a personal computer.

People do everything on their phones. Google recently said Chrome OS is going to end next year... I don't know what schools are going to do.

[setopt]

I don’t doubt that a conventional laptop or desktop will be far less common in a decade.

But both iPads and Android tablets have keyboard cases. Even many phones can these days be plugged into USB-C docking stations that enable the use of a big screen and keyboard when needed. I agree that most non-programmers will probably end up using phones or tablets with an external keyboard, and even for programming it is kinda usable.

Those schools will probably just switch to Android netbooks or Android tablets with keyboard cases.

Still, I think that’s very different from AI technologies killing the PC form factor. The hardware and software might change, but I personally think the «screen and keyboard» form factor will remain the default for «work» for the next decade.

[bluescrn]

How will we interact with this AI?

Talking to machines is a horrible experience, especially if you’ve got loads of people all trying to do it in an open-plan office.

Operating systems and CPUs may come and go, but there’s plenty of life left in the mouse and keyboard yet.

[onraglanroad]

Call centres manage it; they use headsets.

Alternatively it could be people working from home.

Though, with the state of "prompt engineering", I'm now imagining legions wandering down the street, speaking into Bluetooth headsets, desperately entreating an AI to do the task they've been assigned...

(you get better results if you sound like you're about to cry)

[pixl97]

>Call centres manage it; they use headsets.

Eh, what? No, they use headsets to talk to the customer and type on a keyboard.

Worse it's always great when you can hear background noise.

[getnormality]

If something displaces Windows in the consumer PC market, I wonder how long it is before those new OS consumers start to want to use what they're comfortable with in the business as well. Windows will start to feel like some weird legacy system. By the time business starts moving away, it will be too late for Microsoft to save.

[morkalork]

This already sort of happened with kids using chrome books and android phones getting their first office job and having no clue about windows.

[Root_Denied]

I think you're right that they don't care about the money from Windows licenses, but they seem to be pivoting to trying to pull data from consumer desktops for AI training. That's arguably way more valuable and no one besides Apple (or potentially Google) gets that kind of data.

As more and more public accessible areas start becoming so inundated with AI generated material, that makes the walled gardens where generated content is not AI generated that much more valuable for training.

[ChrisArchitect]

Whether they care about consumer market or not, they know that most of the consumers aren't going to care about this problem. Hardly anyone would bat an eye at using their already existing Microsoft account/email address and internet connection to log on to their PC. They're almost 100% headed to get on the internet to do whatever anyways. These people are connected to the cloud 24/7. In the same way hardly any Apple user cares that they need an Apple account to get into a bunch of things/phone/whatever. This is a nerd/tech-niche problem.

[Woodi]

> For Microsoft's purposes the main way of making money from Windows is from business and enterprise sales, and those sales will exist pretty much indefinitely.

Yes, and making corporations and smaller businesses donate their stuff via official spyware os, clouded "services" and "agents" is perfect opportunity for spyware creator :) It is hard to blame them for wanting this :) Except that, probably, will explode in their faces...

[axus]

Small businesses don't like creating Microsoft accounts either. Limit 30 software activations per email address or something like that. And retail Office stops working after 365 days offline.

[willis936]

"How did Microsoft go bankrupt?"

Two ways: slowly then all at once.

[somenameforme]

It being the year of Linux is definitely a meme at this point, but Microsoft's trying their hardest to make it a thing.

Steam's latest survey [1] shows Windows losing 0.19% marketshare. 3/4 of it went to Mac, 1/4 to Linux. 0.19% over a single month is a fairly significant shift, especially because the Steam survey is biased towards Windows gamers to begin with (Windows has 95.4% marketshare on the Steam survey), so it's probably understating the shift.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

[snailmailman]

I’ve had multiple friends who are not tech savvy ask me about steam os. Because they basically only use their gaming PC for gaming, and they are frustrated with windows.

None have actually switched yet, but also 10 is still supported, and steam os isnt quite ready from what i understand; (nvidia driver issues?) although I assume that’s changing quite quickly. I haven’t looked super recently.

Personally I run bazzite on a machine I’ve got hooked to a tv. It’s basically steamOS and works great for gaming. I can’t speak to the desktop mode, but as long as it’s passable, windows sets the bar pretty low. Main issue is that some multiplayer games intentionally don’t support Linux for anti-cheat reasons. :(

[OccamsMirror]

I don't run Windows at home. My gaming PC is running Ubuntu. Very rarely do games not work perfectly. It's also usually underfunded indie games.

[breakingcups]

10 is no longer supported in 7 days, unless you activate ESU. Officially this requires a Microsoft account, but there's always the Massgrave way.

[philistine]

PC ownership is NOT a zero-sum game. You assume that lost marketshare must be replaced by something else. I'm confident this is not people replacing their PC for a Mac, this is people who stopped using a PC completely.

Microsoft, by ruining Windows, is not leaving the field open for a replacement OS; they're slowly killing the PC itself.

[somenameforme]

I think you can approach this 3 different ways:

Mathematical: If this were the case then all competitors would have seen an increase in marketshare proportional to their existing marketshare. This isn't what happened - Mac saw 3x the increase of Linux, even though Linux has greater marketshare on the survey.

Statistical: It's often said that the PC is dead or dying, but that's a misrepresentation of the issue. 25 years ago, a new computer was dated in 3 months and obsolete in a year, so PC sales were huge. Now a days, a ten year old PC is still fine for just about everything, even including relatively high end gaming. So sales have plummeted, but ownership rates are around historic highs. [1] The main limiting factor is money. More than 96% of households earning $150k+ have a desktop/laptop, while only 56% with income less than $25,000 do. The overall average is 81%.

Pragmatic: PCs are still necessary for many types of games as well as content creation. Mobile devices and tablets (to a lesser degree) are limited by their input mechanisms to a subset of all experiences, and there's a pretty big chunk of people that utilize experiences outside that subset.

[1] - https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acs-5...

[raxxorraxor]

I don't worry much about that. I has been often said that PCs would be dying. Seems it was mostly marketing. It survived consoles and Xbox is probably dead. I have no illusions that Microsoft has the same mismanagement in store for Windows, it didn't have sensible patronage for years.

[keyringlight]

I don't think it's dying, what I think has been happening and will continue to happen is that unless you're an enthusiast the PC presence is gradually being shrunk and tidied away in a corner and forgotten by many. For many having a 'home PC' would be a relic, similar to how they don't have anything like a dedicated stereo system for playing audio which might have taken up a significant amount of space (possibly more than a PC) years ago.

[somenameforme]

This is definitely not the case. PC ownership is near record highs right now. I cited the stats in a peer comment. [1] The only real hurdle is perceived cost. More than 96% of households earning $150k+ have a desktop/laptop, while only 56% with income less than $25,000 do. The overall average is 81%.

Mobile, and to some degree tablets, just offer a generally poor interface for many aspects of computing from gaming to content creation, and I think that's mostly intractable.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45499483

[raxxorraxor]

Compared to most people that don't have a dedicated PC it is certainly true. But for media consumption in general PC is quite fine.

[keyringlight]

Sure, but I guess this depends on what model you have of someone doing media consumption, are they going to fire up their PC to watch/listen to media, or their phone, or (smart) TV, or a smart speaker?

[jama211]

I’d wait until they dip below 90% market share before I’d say it was “dying”

[OptionOfT]

There is no Microsoft in this story. There is the structure of the company which roll up to the CEO. And they have 1 priority: make the shareholders happy.

This has caused incentives to shift thought the company. No more long-term work. Only short term stuff, where each change needs to make impact somewhere.

This is why you see CoPilot in 20 places in Edge. This is why OneDrive shows you nagging screens to upload your data there.

And this is why the OOBE now makes it harder. That change is used by a PM / Developer to justify their existence in the company at review time.

[jeroenhd]

The thing is, Microsoft did plenty of user-hostile stuff back then. Games for Windows Live with its weird DRM and making games unplayable after shutting down, for instance. And the push for using all kinds of "Live" services. Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days. .NET framework applications had their own special kinds of installers, Microsoft Silverlight thrived for a short moment, and the introduction of their (initially mediocre) antivirus program also wasn't well-received by the industry.

They just never shoveled their crap into the OS itself. It was always recommended addons, recommended freebies, and recommended optional features that came along with other products.

When MS started unifying everything into Just Windows, all of the crap they pulled with separate software packages merged into one digital blob, Windows 8/8.1/10/11.

With Windows 8, I can at least appreciate the attempt to unify things so they are easier to use for consumers (if only they hadn't bunged up Windows Phone, repeatedly). I wonder what Windows would be like if they hadn't tried to the Windows 8 experiment.

[pndy]

> Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days

That's essentially Microsoft Account nowadays, which went thru few rebrandings on the way. In XP it was promoted via Windows Messenger with popup message which for less experienced people would suggest that in order to access the Internet they need this "passport".

Considering how many sites now offer (still optional) logins with apple/meta/microsoft accounts I wonder if the goal here is to be the provider of identity for sites and services and at the same future-proofing for any digital ID checks govt's may introduce

[pjc50]

There was for a few years a South Korean national identity scheme which linked your national ID card to .. an ActiveX control. Making it not only IE-only but effectively tying it to IE6.

[pndy]

Oh yes I remember reading news about that and being dumbfounded how's that actually possible

[al_borland]

> compatible with Windows programs

It seems with each passing year this becomes less important, as more and more apps are either web based or cross platform.

[gjsman-1000]

To the average consumer, Windows doesn't matter much anymore.

To enterprises, Microsoft has them under lock and key with Office 365, basically forever. LibreOffice is nowhere near a replacement for Excel in an enterprise setting.

[stackskipton]

I wouldn't say it's Office365 as much as "What are my other options?"

MacOS is good option BUT cheapest laptop option is 1000 bucks. Dell has 16 inch with 16GB of RAM for 600.

There is Linux but Linux Desktop still is not ready and mass management of it is very painful.

So you default to Windows. It works-ish, won't break the bank and just about every piece of software you need works with it.

[philistine]

Office 365 is absolutely not what you seem to describe. I run a small non-profit and I am banking hard on Office 365 while I use a Mac.

O365 is the Office suite of apps, an Exchange server, OneDrive with a ton of storage, access to unlimited Teams meetings, and tons of doodads and doohickeys we don't need. That my Windows using colleagues could potentially install Enterprise Windows on their own laptops (we're a BYOD employer), is irrelevant for us. Any fleet of trashy PC we need for frontline staff already comes with a Windows license.

[800xl]

I agree with your overall point but I'm starting to regularly see older M series MacBooks on sale for around 600 or 700 dollars brand new. Maybe they are using the strategy of selling older hardware for less like they did with the iPhone SE.

[stackskipton]

Cheapest 16GB of RAM (Minimum I think for most workers) is 759 for 13 inch M3 Macbook Air. 15 Inch is 929.

That's getting affordable but still does not beat 600-700 decent Dell machines you can get.

[trollbridge]

A $600 - $700 Dell laptop's CPU does not come anywhere close to an M4 Macbook Air, which you can get right now at Best Buy in a 15" version for $999.

The Mac will also have a faster SSD and (not sure about this) a faster memory bus architecture. And a better GPU and better ability to use Thunderbolt docks / have 3 external 4K displays.

[philistine]

Apple is still selling the M1 Macbook Air for 600$ at Walmart (only in the US).

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-3-inch-Lapto...

[mschuster91]

The thing is, the storage on Apple devices is so unbelievably fast, you can get by on 8GB just fine. Even with clogging up hundreds of Chrome tabs. Swap is barely noticeable.

Memory management on Windows devices in contrast is utterly painful. The RAM itself is already slower simply due to physics (can't beat the SoC proximity with anything socketed), storage I/O usually has to cross through a lot of chips (same thing, Apple attaches storage directly to the SoC), and then the storage itself that you find on cheap devices is actually SATA under the hood or bottom of the barrel NVMe, no competition at all to Apple. Oh and the storage and RAM are both adequately cooled on Apple devices, so Apple can drive them much much harder unlike the Windows world where often enough the only thing that gets cooled is the CPU and GPU.

Yes, I do think Apple wants far too much money for RAM and SSD storage upgrades, but it's undeniable that even the more expensive ends pack a lot of punch.

[coin]

Mac costs more but are easier to support from an IT perspective, at least that's what many say.

[al_borland]

I work in a large enterprise and I see more and more people move to macOS every year. We use Office 365. I run the Office apps on my Mac. We backup with OneDrive. We collaborate with SharePoint. We use our AD accounts to login on macOS, use InTune to manage endpoints. My Mac even has Defender on it now.

Microsoft is still getting their money, just slightly less from Windows itself.

[baq]

I’m willing to bet it’s about the hardware. Windows laptops almost all universally suck in at least a few areas: display, touchpad and wake from sleep at the most inconvenient times. Give me a MacBook which natively boots Windows and I’ll use it, if only because it has WSL2. If it boots Linux, even better. (Naturally, those three usually broken things must work on either.)

[mlrtime]

It depends on the industry... go to any (non-ms based) tech company and every developer will want a mac. Nobody will chose windows if asked.

Other less developer related companies are moving more towards mac as well.

This is just my anecdote between being in/out of tech for the last 25 years and have gone from: "Here is your windows laptop" to "Do you want windows or macos" to "here is your macbook"

Now, if they would just give us the Max.

[baq]

I've got the same experience, just saying that if I was offered 'here's a mac, we can put windows on it' I'd actually pick that option, because I love the hardware, but I'm very not impressed with macos.

[comte7092]

Most of the office apps sans excel are basically just the web apps though, office 365 for the most part is cross platform.

[diego_sandoval]

LibreOffice is not a real contender to replace MS Office. The real alternatives are:

- OnlyOffice - WPS Office - Google Docs.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> To the average consumer, Windows doesn't matter much anymore.

> To enterprises, Microsoft has them under lock and key with Office 365

In between are a bazillion businesses who depend on couple of apps and/or devices that are Windows only or near enough.

[trollbridge]

Large enterprises are switching to Google Sheets. The largest private employer in Australia, for example, pretty much has switched to Sheets now.

[userbinator]

Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs.

That's either Linux with WINE, or a "custom distro" of Windows from the remaining neighbourly hackers in the modding scene (they can't embed the hostility everywhere and as deep as the kernel, although they are most likely trying.)

[soraminazuki]

WINE it is. I can't see any point in playing cat and mouse with an actively hostile OS. When a new Windows update starts stealing IMAP credentials[1] before the modding community catches on, it's game over for the user. Better to not use anything based on Windows.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453

[userbinator]

New Outlook is exactly the sort of thing that the modders would not want you to use anyway.

[halJordan]

Ah, young people. This is the company that innovated a brand new style of monopolization and then lost a monopoly case about it.

[dehrmann]

I'm not sure if Microsoft knows it, but it doesn't care about or need Windows anymore. Office has native apps and is on the web, Xbox is doing its own things, dotnet has been freed from Windows, and Azure doesn't need Windows. Computing is generally moving away from the personal computing model, so Windows is just less relevant.

[mh-]

I was with you until you listed Xbox - their consoles are dying in the market.

They've adopted a strategy of calling everything "gaming" Xbox, and seem to be going all-in on Gamepass subscription revenue along with making their first-party games available on other platforms. I'll be surprised if there is another flagship console following the Series X.

We'll see how that works out for them.

[aeon_ai]

They also just botched a price increase.

Microsoft is floundering right now.

[doodlebugging]

XBox Game Pass looks a lot like the last straw to me. Looks like a(nother) cash grab.

[tjpnz]

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." - Don Mattrick

[RedShift1]

Office on the web sucks though. Slow AF and can't handle large documents.

[ainar-g]

There's always ReactOS[1], a project for a bug-for-bug compatible Windows clone. It used to mostly aim at Windows 9x compatibility the last time I'd checked, though, but that could probably change. And if anyone wants to create a Win7 clone, at least some of the groundwork has already been made.

[1]: https://reactos.org/

[sugarpimpdorsey]

Sorry, but ReactOS is not seriously usable. Not to insult the work done on it but it is an experimental OS.

[Delk]

"Compatibility with Windows programs" is a massive undertaking in the first place, as evidenced by the huge amount of development effort that has gone into Wine without quite reaching 100% bug-for-bug compatibility. (The level of compatibility they've achieved is truly impressive but it's really difficult to get to 100% for a large existing base of arbitrary applications.)

Reliable real-world compatibility requires not only implementing Windows APIs as documented (or reverse-engineered) but also discovering and conforming to quirks, undocumented features, and permissive interpretations of the specs or even outright bugs in Windows that some applications have either intentionally or unintentionally ended up relying on over the years.

I don't know if modern apps would tend to be better engineered to actually follow the spec and to only build on features as documented but for example older Windows games were sometimes notorious for being quite finicky.

And of course if the goal is a full-scale independent OS rather than a compatibility layer on top of an existing one, there's the whole "operating system" part to implement as well.

[gjsman-1000]

> Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand.

Microsoft realized after Windows 8 and Windows 10 that literally nobody, outside of niche tech circles, has positive associations with the Windows brand, or views "Windows" as a selling point beyond "runs my old software." As such, it doesn't matter to them anymore.

It's like being the PR department at your local electricity provider or oil refinery. Keep the politicians happy, but people on the ground is a pointless endeavor.

[diego_sandoval]

Pretty much.

I remember when new Windows versions were still an event: you could read about it on the magazines, people would get excited to try them, people would debate about how pretty/ugly the new UI was, etc.

Nowadays new Windows versions are like some unwanted background noise. I don't even know at what point Windows 10 stopped being the new version and 11 came out, but it went totally unnoticed to me until I heard that Windows 10 was close to EOL a couple of months ago. And then you start dreading the moment that you'll have to migrate and uninstall all the Xbox crap again that they force on you, etc.

[high_na_euv]

>I remember when new Windows versions were still an event: you could read about it on the magazines, people would get excited to try them, people would debate about how pretty/ugly the new UI was, etc.

Lol. You can verify your claims in 1 minute just by simply googling

It is still huge topic

[hshdhdhj4444]

I liked Windows 7. I also liked Windows XP SP2 before that.

But you’re right that since Windows 8, Windows is just something I’ve tolerated.

That being said, Windows 11 seems nice, but it looks like Microsoft is pulling the same stuff again.

[fortran77]

Not true. I like Windows 11, and I think it's the best desktop OS out there.

[wslh]

Sincerely curious about why do you think it's the best desktop OS and/or where it excels.

I understand that the Windows kernel is pretty advanced but I find difficult to find that it ends up in a good desktop OS (e.g. UX)

[mastazi]

I'm not parent and Windows 11 is my least favourite desktop OS, but there are some things where I prefer Windows to Mac OS, for example multi monitor user experience, or the way full screen windows work (F11) and the ease of maximising windows without having to double click on the title bar. Also I like the way home/end/pgup/pgdown keys work. I much prefer how it renders text on non hidpi screeens. Finally I like how there is only one taskbar and no top bar, which results in more real estate on small displays.

Some Linux DEs also do these things well BTW. In fact I use Linux for most things at home. (I use Mac at work and my only Win device left is used exclusively for gaming).

[Marsymars]

> Sincerely curious about why do you think it's the best desktop OS and/or where it excels.

Hey, so I'm a different user, and I wouldn't claim it's the best desktop OS, but split between macOS/Windows for desktop use, there are definitely things about Windows I appreciate. Off the top of my head:

* It has pretty approachable "config as code" built-in - with "winget configure" and some yaml files, you can define the apps you want, the Windows config, the registry settings, etc. without the overhead of MDM or something like Ansible.

* UI scaling took a long time to get good, but it's more flexible than macOS now for pixel-perfect output on displays that aren't multiples of 1440p. (e.g. 4K)

[vladvasiliu]

> UI scaling took a long time to get good, but it's more flexible than macOS now for pixel-perfect output on displays that aren't multiples of 1440p. (e.g. 4K)

We can't be using the same windows. At work we have 27" 5k displays which I use at 200%, so a perfect multiple of the usual 100% I use everywhere else. The screen is blurry 99% of the time. The only reliable way to get it sharp is to boot the PC with the screen attached. Of course, if I go to the toilet and the screen turns off, when I come back it's just like hot-plugging it: a blurry mess.

Apparently, updating the graphics driver also works, so I suppose it's enough to restart just that instead of the whole OS. Don't know how to do that, though. The resolution is reported as the correct one, changing scaling options doesn't help. 100% looks sharp enough, but it's unusable for me.

And I don't use any old app, it's mostly new outlook and edge. But even the start menu is blurry! There's also the fact that afterwards, tray icons' menus tend to appear in random places, but I understand that apps draw those, so I guess this isn't completely windows' fault.

My work machine dual-boots Linux, which is what I actually daily drive, and these screens have pushed me to switch to Wayland. Now there are some rough edges there, but the high-dpi is handled perfectly (same setup as windows: everything 100% except for that one screen at 200%). This is using Sway and mainly Firefox, Chromium and Alacaritty. Native GTK apps seem to work fine, too, but I don't use many of those.

edit: not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

[Marsymars]

> edit: not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

200% scaling works if you only want "looks like 1920x1080", but if you have a 27" 4K display, I'd typically want "looks like 2560x1440" or 150% scaling - if you do that on macOS, the desktop is rendered at 5120x2880 and then downscaled to 3840x2160. So you're getting both higher resource draw from rendering the desktop at a higher resolution and losing pixel-perfect rendering.

It won't be a problem for most people, but it's enough of a problem for me that I won't use macOS with scaled displays.

[whyoh]

>The screen is blurry 99% of the time. The only reliable way to get it sharp is to boot the PC with the screen attached.

That sounds like a (graphics driver) bug. It's not something I ever experienced on Windows 10, even when occasionally connecting an additional display set to 150% scaling. I believe you, though, bugs do happen.

>not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

I think his point is that on macOS you pretty much have to use 200%, whereas on Windows it can be any value (though multiples of 25% are recommended).

[icameron]

I like windows 11 family settings. I can let my kids play Minecraft on old corporate castaway Dells, which I setup from bios/pe to do a clean reinstall. Then I can manage screen time limits and content restrictions from an app on my phone. All free.

[eimrine]

And your proprietary vendors manage privacy limits for both of you.

[BruceEel]

> Or better yet, maybe Microsoft will realize very important parts of Windows are going downhill and remember what made Windows great.

Microsoft have done 180's in the past. I still hope that at some point they'll see the light and what you say here above will suddenly click and become evident to them. Windows, and DOS before that, did not succeed by holding customers as hostages.

[blasphemers]

Part of Satya reorg in 2018 moved windows into a weird leadership structure where it was part of bing iirc. I think they recently finally fixed that org mistake and hopefully they quickly push an improved windows 12.

[jauntywundrkind]

I remembered something weird like this, & went looking for coverage last week. I thought it'd maybe gotten divied up between Azure Services and like some ads or online experience thing? I ended up giving up, so much noise and I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I'd love to see some coverage. Incredible seeing Windows broken up like that & internally sold for parts, just total throwing it to the MBA wolves to milk some money out of, it felt like & seems like.

[kasabali]

I remember listening it from Paul Thurrott in a podcast, and it wasn't only 2018, it was reorganized several times during Satya's lead. no wonder it sucks

[GiorgioG]

As a .NET developer for 20+ years I’m down to my last Windows box - a gaming rig I pretend I have time to play on. Everything else is a Mac.

[hu3]

mac window management is borderline unusable and I'm tired of installing 5 tools to fix it.

Looking at Tahoe, seems things are getting worse.

[GeekyBear]

Mac window management using gestures has been miles ahead of anything available in Windows for over a decade.

[bigyabai]

That's news to me. I've got a Magic Trackpad right in front of me and I'm still using it to tile windows into corners.

[Atlas26]

Hasn’t been true for years now as a 10+ year mac and windows user

[philistine]

> I'm tired of installing 5 tools to fix it

Are you installing those tools regularly? I have a couple of invisible helper apps but Time Machine backups and Mac-to-Mac Migration Assistant has made those apps transparent. They're always there.

But you know what, I think I know where you are mentally. I was there 2 years after I first bought a Mac. I wanted a clean Mac. Nothing untoward, nothing that wasn't Apple. I got rid of that feeling and learned to love the Mac as a platform, to love the Mac because of its vibrant third-party developers. That's why I use a Mac even though Apple is often a bad steward of this wonderful bicycle for the mind.

[mschuster91]

> mac window management is borderline unusable and I'm tired of installing 5 tools to fix it.

There's exactly two you need to get macOS eye-on-eye with Windows: Hyperswitch for an alt-tab that actually works and SizeUp to get a "window arrangement like Windows with Win+arrow keys".

Further migration pains can be eased with a Windows keyboard layout bringing special characters to where they belong in muscle memory (that however can and will bring pains with anything Adobe, their apps absolutely do not like non-Apple keyboard layouts and will refuse to load keyboard command presets) and Karabiner to map Ctrl+C/V to reduce hand strain.

[bashwizard]

Raycast is all I need. AeroSpace if tiling windows is your thing.

[mythz]

Damage has been done, Windows has become synonymous with user-hostile ad/spyware OS. Everything under the "Windows" brand is meaningless to me now.

Can't think of a single feature Windows could add to get me to switch back from Linux.

[perryh2]

If you _have_ to use Windows 11, check out this useful tool called Win11Debloat: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

[bashwizard]

This is another good one: https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

[ta12653421]

Does this allow to:

- remove all this Games & XBox related stuff? - remove everything pre-installed but not used stuff? (Internet Explorer legacy?) - remove all this "fancy" Icons & links: Video/Music etc. in Explorer - deselect to install most of all these Background Services?

And: Does it work for the Windows Server versions as well?

[octo888]

> Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand

Well their stock certainly isn't tanking. Do they care about anything else?

[0rdinal]

Their reputation is irrelevant, at least whilst they maintain an OS monopoly. Enterprise customers don't care because all the issues you described are not present on Enterprise editions. The vast majority of users want a machine that "just works".

I would never use a machine running Windows 11 S mode whilst a good chunk of the home PC market would likely not notice a difference.

[vladvasiliu]

Enterprise edition is as much of a clownshow as the others. I actually run one such edition at work and since a few weeks ago I've noticed in the "home" screen of the settings a new tile, inviting me to add my microsoft account to benefit from something or other.

Now, this is a machine I mostly use for goofing out, so it actually has my microsoft account connected to it. It's fully entra id joined: I log into my windows session with my office 365 account, which has a full license (p2 or whatever it's called), I can see the bitlocker key in entra id, the works.

Now, curiosity got the best of me the other day, and I figured I might just as well click that button. Guess what? It didn't work! It apparently doesn't support business accounts!

On my home pc (pro edition, which I use for photoshop and the occasional game), which does have a consumer microsoft account, that tile doesn't show up.

[sebtron]

Who needs a brand when you have a monopoly?

> maybe Microsoft will realize very important parts of Windows are going downhill and remember what made Windows great.

What made Windows great were the contracts with hardware manufacturers to have it installed by default on every single PC ever sold.

[cobbaut]

> When I think back to Windows 7, the good feeling isn't nostalgia. It was the last user-focused Windows.

I think Windows 98 was the last user-focused Windows. At least then all the useful settings were a single right-click away, and it just worked without invading your privacy.

(WinME never worked and WinXP was the first in a long series of shareholder-focused Windows.)

[rowanG077]

> Maybe someone will develop a new user-focused OS that's somehow compatible with Windows programs.

Nothing as user focused as linux, and it's mostly compatible with windows programs with wine. Important to note though that user focused is not the same thing as easy to use.

[r00t-]

I'm a linux fan but calling linux user-focused is insane.

[hamandcheese]

I think perhaps you are conflating user-friendly and user-focused.

Linux, and open source in general, is infinitely more user-focused than anything from Microsoft, since open source is often built for users and by users.

But if you don't have great computer skills already, Linux can be extremely un-friendly the moment you step off the beaten path.

[mnw21cam]

Linux is user-friendly. It is just very particular about who its friends are.

[secstate]

I mean, unless you know the various arcane aspects of Windows, it's pretty hilariously un-friendly when you step off the path, too. After a decade of using Gnome exclusively, whenever a friend asks for help with Windows, all I can do is shrug and suggest reinstalling and/or living with the pain.

[john01dav]

It's user-focused in the sense that the user's goals drive the design. The good non-profit distributions, such as Debian and Arch, would never even try to require or push an online account, since that is contrary to the user's interests.

[opan]

Not disagreeing with you, but your comment brought back memories of Ubuntu One, and the amazon spyware(?) search thing. Ubuntu is kind of the Windows of the GNU/Linux world in that they repeatedly do user-hostile things that test everyone's limits.

[john01dav]

Yeah, I would not use Ubuntu if I can help it. I'd still rather use it over Windows. This is why I specifically said "The good non-profit distributions," and not "Linux distributions" or some other broader phrase.

[thaumasiotes]

I'm sure that's why they weren't included in the examples of "the good non-profit distributions". It's not like Ubuntu is going to be overlooked. But they are malicious.

[avhception]

The snap disaster really was the final nail in the coffin for me. That bug report about ~/snap has to be the hottest bug in their bugtracker, and they simply don't seem to give a shit and pretend it's fine. All the while naive users like my father or colleagues at my workplace shoot themselves in the foot by thinking "what's that folder doing in my home directory? Delete." I'm not sure if that's still the case, but there was a time when that simply hosed your whole snap installation.

It's also completely ridiculous when you run "docker run ubuntu; apt install whatever" only to find out that "whatever" is now a snap and won't run w/o getting into nested containerization. For packages that got the snap treatment, window tracking for the Gnome dash was broken for ages if, god forbid, you wanted to create a custom .desktop file to add some parameters. Completely broke the custom launchers I created.

I created bug reports, I tried to work with them. Others did, too. Some of these reports approach 10 years now.

I am purging Ubuntu from all of my employers systems, replacing it with RockyLinux. Only one major application still to go. Friends and family get Debian, that transition is already completed.

[ekianjo]

Nobody forces you to use Ubuntu. Thats the thing. If Ubuntu fucks up, I can switch to another distro at the blink of an eye and nothing of value was lost.

[sugarpimpdorsey]

Developer goals drive the design, not users. It's how we ended up with such navel-gazing insanity as GNOME 3.

[lostmsu]

I think in Linux developers drive the design more than users.

[estimator7292]

Linux developers are the primary users of Linux if you think about it

[lostmsu]

There are no primary users. And no, Linux developers are a minority.

[esseph]

Lot of network admins, sysadmins, security -types.

[Ekaros]

Only for given value of user...

If user is linux nerd well yes. For more casual users there is way too many weird annoyances and problems. Maybe not with single version, but migrating between or at end of LTS support...

[wildzzz]

Linux is user focused but not user friendly. Of course there are exceptions, anyone can use a steamdeck without ever having to leave the steam app.

[jackyinger]

I beg to differ. There is less corporate BS on Linux than any mainstream OS.

The software if largely by users for users.

Obviously it caters to the power user, but it also works well for extremely novice users. It’s those savvy with Win/Mac that get screwed switching. I’d encourage them to put a bit more into trying.

[jwrallie]

I don’t even mind logging in on a personal laptop but we have shared computers at work to operate machines. It does not make any sense to login with your account in one of those.

[anonymous982347]

Developing a new consumer-grade OS is literally not possible. I don't mean it would take a herculean effort like the software ecosystem issue takes to address, I mean actually not possible regardless of how much effort any development team put in. Virtually all hardware on the open market is made for Windows, largely powered by proprietary, closed-source drivers. Linux gets some afterthought from a percentage of vendors, but even for it, hardware support is in an absolutely atrocious state. Hardware vendors will obviously not give the time of day to any uppity new OS. This relegates any attempt to a hobbyist project targeting virtual machines or obsolete hardware. The only way a new player could enter the game is by using Apple-level money to develop their hardware in-house, but any kind of corporation fronting Apple money to do that would certainly not be aiming to produce a user-driven experience.

[toast0]

Drivers are a lot of work. IMHO, do some core stuff, and then build in driver adapters. NDIS wrapper, linuxkpi, etc.

If you want to work hard to make things easy, I bet you could build a hypervisor that does pci passthrough for each device to a guest that runs a different OS driver and rexports the device as a virtio device, and then the main OS guest can just have virtio drivers for everything. It can't be that hard to take documentation for writing Windows drivers and use that to build a minimal guest kernel to run windows drivers in.

That indirection will cost performance and latency, but windows 11 feels like more latency than windows 10 too, so eh. You can also build native drivers for important stuff as needed / over time.

[mschuster91]

> It can't be that hard to take documentation for writing Windows drivers and use that to build a minimal guest kernel to run windows drivers in.

ReactOS has been working on that for like, what, the last 20 years and still is far from generally usable.

[pjmlp]

Not really, the same people are doing their best to kill XBox brand as well.

By the way they also already did enough damage to those of us that were keen into doing Windows development, due to how WinRT has been managed.

Now only game developers, and big names with existing native applications are left.