[PeaceTed]

One would assume but I do wonder how much long term damage they are doing for short term gains with this drive?

I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it.

At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose through quality degradation rather than Linux to openly out wit. There is still a long way to go and MS could turn their boat around but they would have to stop chasing this data scrapping scheme of theirs to begin with. But how addicted are they to that cash flow? They are probably far more interested in keep share holders happy short term than customers long term and that is not a brilliant strategy if you want to have a life time of decades.

[bee_rider]

I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0. The development of their competition is ad supported, community supported, or built into the price of hardware.

Turn the boat around? To where? Nobody would be willing to pay for their product even if they were to start trying to make it appealing.

[tpxl]

> I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0.

The price of the windows license has been included in the price of PCs for literally decades now. Every computer you buy with windows preinstalled nets Microsoft a couple dozen dollars.

[galangalalgol]

None of their products have a decent moat left, and all are heavily competed. Focusing on making azure competitive while accepting it is a commodity industry with commodity margins is how they stick around. But they will be a value stock, not a growth stock. That is ok, as long as you know that is what you are.

[CamperBob2]

I would be MORE than happy to pay for an un-enshittified version of Windows. They won't take my money.

[sylens]

I think a lot of power users would prefer to pay somewhere between $50-$100 for a Windows license if it meant the enshittifcation wasn't included

[akho]

The issues people cite all primarily affect consumer desktops. I don't think they see decades of lifetime there; it's a dying market, so they milk it.