[Rotundo]

The blog post sums up why users of Windows might want this.

However, this is not what Microsoft wants or needs. Microsoft is doing just fine by providing businesses what they need: a platform that can be tightly controlled and is easy to administer for large user counts.

[thewebguyd]

Yes 100%. All these discussions around Windows always miss the fact that consumers are not Microsoft's core customer, and haven't been for a long time (outside of GameDiv/Xbox).

The fact that consumers use Windows is a nice side effect for keeping mind share and to get people familiar and preferring windows when they enter the workplace. That's it. It's an accidental userbase that exists to be exploited.

Microsoft's money comes from Azure & Office(365). If you're not spending millions on enterprise support/software assurance (or whatever they call it these days) contracts, you pretty much don't exist to them.

[oreally]

One thing you're missing out is their corporate strategy to treat their other products as some form of adspace.

[rawgabbit]

I don't believe businesses "need" Microsoft. Microsoft is entrenched in corporations for a variety of reasons and none of them because Microsoft is technically any good.

[thewebguyd]

It's a little bit of both.

Microsoft's core product is minimizing operational risk, not the software itself. You can piece together your own stack using best of breed options, but you're going to pay double the price or more, and introduce a ton of friction and risk.

Some businesses (everyone outside of the SV tech echo chamber) "need" Microsoft because its risk mitigation, which is the highest technical feature a business can ask for. Backwards compatibility, EntraID is good, and the compliance/purview stack solves nearly all regulatory headaches OOTB.

OTOH yeah there's a bit of legacy entrenchment, both from Microsoft's monopolistic behavior but also because they were the only ones with an "IT In a box" solution for non-tech companies. Having a cohesive identity, security, and device management ecosystem that can scale to hundreds of thousands of endpoints with a few mouse clicks takes a lot of engineering effort that not many others were doing at the time.

[amanaplanacanal]

I retired a few years ago, but Windows was on every desktop in the environment (close to 5000 installs). They did some software development in house, but the great majority of folks ran some sort of COTS software. Replacing all that would not have been cheap or easy.

They didn't run Windows because they liked Windows, they ran Windows because it was required by the software they needed to run.

[bigfatkitten]

Most businesses of any sophistication need specialised software developed only for Windows.

The local car dealership runs factory diagnostic software on Windows.

The two-way radio shop tunes and programs radios using vendor software written for Windows.

Your dentist runs their practice management software runs on Windows, and they Windows software to control other expensive equipment like X-ray machines and 3D scanners.

[rawgabbit]

Those businesses need their software; Windows is an unfortunate side effect. Well those businesses are in a world of hurt as Microsoft forces them to upgrade to Windows 11. e.g., many ATM machines still run on windows XP because the big banks can shoulder any financial loss but small businesses can't. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck...

[vazark]

That's the catch-22 problem. The underlying logic and software rarely care about the platform. They are usually just built Windows because that is the default OS on anything that is not a Mac.

[WillAdams]

I dunno that it's that easy to administer --- time was, one of the concerns about NeXTstep was that it was so easy to setup/administer and so reliable that there was so little work involved, IT departments had to be downsized --- say rather that administering Windows is in-line w/ current budget projections/expectations.

[thesuitonym]

It is easy to administer. Nothing come close to Active Directory + Group Policy, not even Entra ID + Intune. Windows in the enterprise is just a completely different beast to what you see in the home, or even small businesses.

[WillAdams]

If it's so easy to administer, why is my work computer a never-ending series of updates and reboots and annoyances such as a printer list which scrolls through several screen worths of clicks before I can find the right printer?

[thesuitonym]

Probably because you insist that your computer be on at all times, never save your work, and don't allow it to reboot while you're away.

That, or your IT team sucks. The problem with Windows being so easy is that any idiot can do it, and they often do.

[9x39]

Rolling out the updates to a fleet is the easy administration he’s talking about, which is neither optional nor a trivial task.

Printer administration and Windows printer UX are different too, although the endless-printer-list-oh-god-its-not-even-alphabetical situation is more of an admin oversight to a clunky and low priority situation than anything. Small comfort, no doubt.

[bigfatkitten]

The downside of it being so easy is that many talentless hacks got jobs maintaining Windows environments for a living, including in your IT department.

[theandrewbailey]

> No telemetry, no spying, no ads, no AI, no .NET, nothing.

How will MS PMs meet their quarterly targets without Windows phoning home every moment someone is using it? \s