It isn't really the end of Windows - it's the end of Windows' dominance of Microsoft mindshare.
Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears.
None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only means the OS has matured enough for the needs of present and any future needs will be addressed as and when they arise - instead of inventing the future they will abide with it on their own schedule.
This allows Microsoft to focus on things that truly matter for the future without killing Windows or spending a lot of resources on advancing/supporting it. It's not hard to imagine Windows stays a very dominant client OS for a long time to come - even if the overall PC market share continues to decline, because none of the alternatives are there and nobody is going to invest the resources to get them there.
I will also add that Satya's success lies in speeding up this strategy that started late under Ballmer and also in executing so well on it. Considering the scale of what MS is doing - Office ports to iOS, Android, Windows 10 releases, Azure, ton of other Enterprise stuff (Exchange, O365, Development tools, cross platform stuff like .NET Core, VS Code etc) - the change of course and the success they are having with it all - you can't argue it's not a phenomenal achievement.
Satya is having enormous financial success in chasing much needed markets, but the jury's still out on ditching MS's strengths in large software development in favor of a no-support permanent beta culture at a moment when the latter is showing its ugly side.
They also will never drop windows because it's probably gonna be an extremely useful platform when the next generations of devices will come up, think of AR.
The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too.
They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible to be tailored to whatever comes. Of course it would be crazy for them to drop it now
I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle.
One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.
Even though Win10 attempted corrective action it always struck me that it was still accepting the fundamental thesis of Win8. They still kept with the Orwellian redefinition of phrases like "Windows app" to mean very recent, immature and unproven technology. They were still talking about ARM devices that don't let you do a straightforward recompile of old code. They were still pushing the Store as the only means to distribute software, where even Apple has not succeeded in changing people's habits on the desktop.
I hope that with a weaker organization, people keeping the lights on for Windows will know to not shake things up too severely and ease up on pushing some of these silly ideas. I somehow doubt it. I've been hoping for that for... 7 years?
> One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.
With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain point for Windows and it's only been getting worse, the Store introduced a sandbox like that found on iOS and Android. ARM, iOS, and Android showed that modern hardware and software can produce power efficiencies that put x86 and Windows to shame. UWP introduced hardware independence and a modern development framework that would put Windows Apps on a level playing field with iOS and Android.
The problem was that Microsoft thought that merely by virtue of their existence, developers would adopt UWP/Store despite the path forward being a huge pain in the ass. We see how that played out. With Windows 10 we've seen a course correction and a change in strategy. You can have traditional Applications sandboxed in the Store, and you can have UWP Apps outside the Store. Microsoft bought Xamarin and is folding it into UWP, the intent is to not just have hardware independence with UWP but also OS independence.
I feel like they started gathering metrics and then had no idea how to interpret them, and the result was Windows 8. "The Start menu only gets clicked on a few times per day. That must mean no one uses it, so let's remove it". Are you kidding me? It's like they really have no clue there. Some of these things are just so blindingly obvious you are left with no words...
It would have helped if they hadn’t done everything they could possibly imagine to fragment windows as much as possible. Six SKUs of Windows desktop, then on top of those two entire desktop UI environments in desktop and Metro, then Windows on ARM, then shifting from one new development stack to another, then another. Then mandating store apps. This was foot shooting on full automatic, clip after clip. I switched to a Mac desktops in 2007 before Vista so I watched all of this with stunned bemusement and to be honest have little idea how it affected users and Devs reliant on the platform, except from reading the occasional article by Paul Thurrott.
>One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows.
Presumably, given that the opposite has happened, in that case, "targets" would not have been met by "Q4" and important team members would have to be "let go".
As you point out, this is not new. I would pin the start of this trajectory on the introduction of Windows Activation with XP. It's all variations on the theme of restricting the user's freedom. It hasn't been your software since 2001. It's theirs.
It felt like somebody on very high level decided to have unified experience for both tablets and desktops. Then those people who told this is impossible to do (well) in given timeframe were ignored. Windows 8 was what they managed to scrape together before running out of time. Delay was not an option as the tablet hardware launch was depending on the OS.
One thing I love about Windows 10 which may sound silly. The Netflix app. I can download anything downloadable on Netflix. I can't do this basic thing on my Macbook Air sadly cause they have no desktop app. Small thing that makes me enjoy Windows 10.
As a developer, the Windows target is baffling. I briefly considered porting a few apps I wrote over to Windows just to re-learn the platform again. Might be fun! Back in the day, the choice was easy: MFC/Win32
Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat’s next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all of these, learn the trade offs, and hope I bet on the right horse, but then again I could also choose to simply leave this crazy platform alone and work on more features on the platforms that are more comfortable.
They bet the farm on “store”. Why? Because they must have done the math and realized that the enterprise and “creative pro” desktop with classic expensive desktop apps is a dead end. Was that calculation correct? Who knows. But I have to think they did that analysis very carefully.
Wasn't old windows desktop technology the one proven to be bad? I mean I can say this because I like windows, but people have made fun of windows bugs and viruses for three decades now..
Granted, Windows Store still sucks ass years later its introduction, but building a new ecosystem with unified and modern tooling was probably a necessary step for them to make
or if Windows 8 had set one UI default for tablets and the other default for desktops. The OS was faster and had better load times. It was a far cry from the failure of Windows Vista. It was just that start menu that really killed it for most people.
Remember at that time Windows 8 was the MS solution for tablets and MS was getting killed in the tablet space as iOS took off. Windows 8 wasn't officially out until a year after the first iPad. They had to get it out asap.
What strikes me is that their latest bet seems to be universal web apps. I have nothing against UWA in themselves but I very much doubt that the mass of Java/VB/C#/C++ developers that write the bulk of Windows apps will suddenly move to JavaScript. And if you ported your app to the web why bother with UWA.
This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they already own a huge part of it. If they don't care, they should sell it to someone who does.
I'll be interested to see how this bifurcation of the Windows team plays out. Windows 10 has been a mixed bag - some nice new features but also a lot of half baked buggy stuff. The evergreen nature of Windows 10 feels like the right move, but I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate. There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't.
I'm not a huge fan of using my tablet or phone for things. I almost always prefer using a "real" operating system. I know that puts me in the minority to an extent, but I'm not the only one. The problem is, neither major desktop OS is moving in a direction I like. I guess I'm just getting old and cranky.
This morning I noticed I have a 3D Objects folder pinned to the This PC item that I can't remove. I also have Mixed Reality Portal and Mixed Reality Viewer that I can't remove.
Why on earth are those apps part of the default install? Worse though - why doesn't Microsoft make it easy to uninstall them? I don't want their crappy news, weather, contacts, maps, music, and other default apps. They should make the apps so good users want them, not force install them and make them uninstallable.
> There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't.
In all honesty that's been my impression of Windows since its inception. The only time I can recall ever feeling like Windows was deserved market leader was with Windows 2000: Linux wasn't mature on the desktop, OS X wasn't yet released or literally only just released and OS 9 was god awful (worse than the Win 95 in my opinion). The only platform that really competed in technical merit was BeOS and we all know how that ended up.
Win 3.x felt like a huge step backwards from what Atari, Amiga and Apple were doing. Windows 9x was an improvement but slow and buggy. Windows XP took a long time to mature - years and two service packs in fact. And before then it was basically just a slower (bar start up time), uglier version of Win 2000. And by the time Microsoft recovered from the cluster fuck of Longhorn OS X and Linux were both streets ahead in terms of stability, usability and even just basic features.
There are obviously people who genuinely warm to Windows and prefer that as a platform - good for them; variety is the spice of life and all - but from a technical standpoint Windows has always felt like it's had a multitude of low hanging fruit which aren't trendy enough for Redmond to invest development time in (case in point: why did it take until Windows 10 before shortcut keys were added to cmd.exe? And then why did MS stop there? The terminal emulator still totally sucks compared to nearly every other ever made!)
>I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate.
An OS should be stagnant. Its job is to get out of the way as soon as possible, not to constantly wow its users with cool stuff. Any user-facing change will break existing workflows and force people to learn new habits.
Change is bad. That goes for every piece of software, from OSes to web browsers to libraries. Stagnation should be your goal.
Microsoft can't do things properly. Without constant pointless novelty they couldn't convince people to buy a new version every few years. That business model has made them a lot of money, but making money and making good software are nearly orthogonal goals.
EDIT: Maybe I've misunderstood you. It sounds like you're talking about bugfixes, which certainly something Microsoft should work on.
> Smartphones first addressed needs the PC couldn’t, then over time started taking over PC functionality directly
I still don't understand how anybody gets any real work done on a smartphone.
Has work suddenly gotten so simplistic that most people really don't need a keyboard? They're dragging and tapping and writing IM-like sentence fragments riddled with autocorrect typos? And this is acceptable? Seriously?
I think that's the mistake Ballmer made with Windows Phone. He and the other leadership saw the rise of the smartphone and thought "that's the future". The reality is more nuanced; the smartphone created a new market, but it definitely hasn't supplanted the existing "home computer" market, or even really hurt it in any way.
Microsoft should have recognized that, recognized they were late to the party, just let Google & Apple have it, and instead focus on integrating with their products and doubling down on the "home & professional computer" segment they already lead in. But they were late to that as well because of Ballmer's mistake, which gave Apple the in to position the iPad as an up-and-coming product in this segment.
I can get do a lot of writing on Huawei Mate 9. Droid Vim works amazingly fine for editing. For writing Swype keybord feels faster than writing on full keyboard. I can have my GIT repo on the phone. Jira also has app. So basically a lot of low level tasks is no problem. Of course big project with a lot of files, compiling and building is not going to be on the phone but you can have CI/CD pipeline and do not have to compile locally.
"Management" needs email + spreadsheet, spreadsheets are not good enough on phone screen, but on tablet I think those would do. Just like reading code files with a lot of lines.
I think most of the work is thinking about meat and core of the problem. Writing it down with typos or not is not a problem. You do not write corporate communication statement that will go to millions of customers every day. I do not mind getting email from coworker with typos. When I ask my boss about 5 mins conversation I am not going to write "Dear sir or madam can I have 5 minutes of your time. Sincerly, O.". More like "Hi, Can we talk for 5 mins?". Work is not simplistic writing it down or improving later depends on context. You have great idea and phone, write it down, if you have to show it to millions of customers, then at least 2 other people have to read it anyway.
So are mom and pop businesses using Chromebooks and Ipads to do their accounting now? Last I checked Windows was still pretty dominant in both Enterprise and midsize businesses, though I could see a food truck being run from a phone (theoretically).
Microsoft is squandering the decades of work humans put into drivers, an OS codebase that is unique and omnipresent, and if they can't see how useless and crap all their other services are without the conceptual core that powered their rise to sucess, then they will die.
- windows domains
- group policy
- roaming profiles
- drivers written for in-house equipment, ranging from machining to mass spectrometry, done over decades, and basically compatible back to NT 4, until M$ screws everything up...
They just don't know where their bread is buttered, and their bean counting practices are evidently obscuring it, as they keep doing stupid crap decisions like Office365.
They should stabilize and streamline what they already built...
When my child gets older and leaves home, I won't be saying its the end of him. He has just matured.
Similarly, this just marks the maturity level of Windows, where there really is no significant innovation in operating systems release after release. Nothing like win 3.1 -> win 95 etc. Its been that way for a while. Obviously its cash that motives this move from Microsoft, however I wouldn't want Microsoft changing the location of the start menu every release just to stir up the market and justify a release (for example) every year.
I remember a cherished time where the next operating system release felt like an upgrade to myself as well as my PC. I could do more than before. No longer. We have it all nowadays and have became spoilt.
Just because Microsoft is desparate to unshackle themselves from a loss-leader doesnt mean its about to happen anytime soon, albeit an announcement like this will certainly goose the stock. The only person angrier about missing the app-store cloud-based moneytrain is likely Larry Ellison whos already furiously trying to saw off the Oracle Database boat anchor.
You're going to need to convince your channel partners this is a thing that has to happen, and you're going to expect a revolt because so many tertiary industries are contingent upon Windows and its licenses. The tear-down for everything from the Windows app-store to the ballmer-era brick and mortar "windows store" is going to be significant. There are also laboratories, power plants, hospitals, and prisons that all rely heavily on Windows, so expect to be on the hook from state level government for quite a while...the "end" of windows also confirms the wastefully squandered effort to get Germany to obsolete its massive and very functional Linux deployment.
You'll also need to have a substantive marketshare in, say, cloud in order to start deprecating Windows. Outside of Redmonds own inflated reporting, Azure isnt exactly a competitor. Most devs would rather walk off a cliff than learn a new API --one that only Microsoft uses-- for cloud that is not EC2 compatible in any way. Conversely there are more than 40 providers of cloud services that all managed an EC2 api for objects.
I think its impossible to understate how much damage Ballmer did to Microsoft. That being said: I think Microsoft is in a fantastic position right now under Satya.
Windows isn't going anywhere, and they're accepting the reality that it might just be a "portal" into web technology in a similar vein to Chromebooks. This is a reality Apple refuses to accept, for better or worse. But, Windows still comes with those massively powerful internals that enable more powerful professional experiences for the users that need them.
This is, really, the only platform in the world that champions both. MacOS obviously has those powerful foundations and can run webapps natively, but its not something christened by Apple. iOS is the same way, but with less powerful foundations. ChromeOS? Android? Linux Desktop? They're not even considerations in this world.
Then you consider the massive success of their Xbox and Azure divisions, and I think anyone who bets against Microsoft right now isn't doing it cogently. They have a lot of legacy and Ballmer's strategic mistakes to get right, but I legitimately think they'll come out of the next 5 years in a better financial position than Google.
Better title would be the end of the Windows Division at Microsoft. Certainly not the end of Windows - it's an enormous revenue generator for Microsoft. But I believe it shows that they believe the future lies within Azure, AI and Microsoft 365. This will probably help them focus.
I'm surprised no one mentioned this but the biggest takeaway for me is that it moves Windows one step closer to becoming open source. We're still many steps away and it's going to be more like the hybrid model of Android or even OSX/iOS/Darwin and but it seems much more feasible now, even if it starts with baby steps.
Early Windows was a great platform for the users that it served. But every few years, the Windows product itself had one of those "off years." It arguably started with NT 4.0 for workstations, then again with Windows ME, then Vista, and then arguably 8.
This interleaving strategy was okay when they were the only market player, but now that there's actually good competition in the computing space (read: smartphones and chromebooks), it's not so good. All of the little sacrifices that Windows has to make to move itself forward are cuts that make people reconsider using it in the first place.
I honestly wonder what world it would be if every Windows release had "stuck the landing." If we had a super solid Vista and a super solid Windows 8, would Microsoft even be in remotely the same position as they are now? Probably not, because it would actually have been the preferred choice, and not just the default.
To read things like this and everyone's comments, you would think that Microsoft isn't making a mega-ton of money every quarter, which they are. Everyone keeps talking about Azure and AWS like there isn't room for both and that Azure hasn't been growing like crazy.
I would love for Microsoft to launch it's own Android-compatible ecosystem, starting from the open source base of Android and building alternatives to Google's proprietary technology (location & mapping, email, browsing, app store etc.). They are one of the few companies who have the capacity to do that and already have products in place to cover 80% of what is required.
While I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft, there is nothing I dread more than a closed platform controlled by a single company, and Google is moving more and more aggressively in that direction. There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.
Microsoft's Windows and Office products are now in the product position of commercial trucks. Every business of any size has some commercial trucks. Businesses buy them, use them, maintain them, and replace them when necessary. They're not exciting, but they get the job done. Nobody thinks about them much.
Microsoft should just accept that they sell a commercial product for businesses and make a good solid product that needs little attention and gets the job done. Like Mack trucks.
What I don't understand is, with Apple and Microsoft moving to "services" business-models, who do they see as providing the hardware for this future they envision? I don't think we are near the point where either laptops or phones are a commodity. If nobody want to make hardware their first priority, how is anyone going to ensure the best experience for the customers using their serviceS?
Apple is not moving to services, they are very much a hardware company. Services are for them more like a thing to make the hardware more attractive.
Microsoft has not really been in hardware space before (except consoles, otherwise it was mostly accessories). I believe they jumped to laptops, tablets and desktops to have full control of the user experience.
So clearly the market has chosen, and walled gardens where users don't have the freedom to run their own code or apps, their own OSes prevented with locked bootloaders, locked apps (no ability to interfere with apps running on YOUR device, e.g. read their data), ... and so on is now the default policy.
Never again will one app be compatible with others without a business agreement between them ... because that just can't be allowed (dixit $100 million per year+ managers at these huge companies, and I'm sure it's 100% coincidence that this would allow small companies to compete with them. Totally unrelated to this decision). Can't work in the cloud, can't work on android, can't work on IOS. And for that matter, can't work on UWP.
And of course let's not forget that the massive cost, that everyone's data is now 100% accessible to law enforcement and civil courts (and thus to anyone with the money to sue you) is just acceptable damage. After all, that doesn't affect $100 billion plus companies much at all.
Their argument is that it can make web banking unsafe. Yes ... that's true. It can.
What is does 99.999% of the time however is enforce the market dominance of really large players.
But, like people walking into a camp during WWII, nobody holds a moment of silence when they enter the compound with the large barbed wire. Nobody regrets what's happening when they lock the gate. Only years later, when all the bodies are found ... then we stop and think.
This is them locking the gate. Now comes years and years of really really bad applications, and exploiting the lockin.
And yes, the only system not in a locked ecosystem is the PC ecosystem (needless to say, this is the ecosystem that ALL of these large companies use, MS, Google and Apple, for themselves. And now they're locking it for the rest of us)
[+] [-] blinkingled|8 years ago|reply
Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears.
None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only means the OS has matured enough for the needs of present and any future needs will be addressed as and when they arise - instead of inventing the future they will abide with it on their own schedule.
This allows Microsoft to focus on things that truly matter for the future without killing Windows or spending a lot of resources on advancing/supporting it. It's not hard to imagine Windows stays a very dominant client OS for a long time to come - even if the overall PC market share continues to decline, because none of the alternatives are there and nobody is going to invest the resources to get them there.
I will also add that Satya's success lies in speeding up this strategy that started late under Ballmer and also in executing so well on it. Considering the scale of what MS is doing - Office ports to iOS, Android, Windows 10 releases, Azure, ton of other Enterprise stuff (Exchange, O365, Development tools, cross platform stuff like .NET Core, VS Code etc) - the change of course and the success they are having with it all - you can't argue it's not a phenomenal achievement.
[+] [-] cpeterso|8 years ago|reply
https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...
[+] [-] pishpash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Micoloth|8 years ago|reply
The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too.
They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible to be tailored to whatever comes. Of course it would be crazy for them to drop it now
[+] [-] asveikau|8 years ago|reply
One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.
Even though Win10 attempted corrective action it always struck me that it was still accepting the fundamental thesis of Win8. They still kept with the Orwellian redefinition of phrases like "Windows app" to mean very recent, immature and unproven technology. They were still talking about ARM devices that don't let you do a straightforward recompile of old code. They were still pushing the Store as the only means to distribute software, where even Apple has not succeeded in changing people's habits on the desktop.
I hope that with a weaker organization, people keeping the lights on for Windows will know to not shake things up too severely and ease up on pushing some of these silly ideas. I somehow doubt it. I've been hoping for that for... 7 years?
[+] [-] cptskippy|8 years ago|reply
With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain point for Windows and it's only been getting worse, the Store introduced a sandbox like that found on iOS and Android. ARM, iOS, and Android showed that modern hardware and software can produce power efficiencies that put x86 and Windows to shame. UWP introduced hardware independence and a modern development framework that would put Windows Apps on a level playing field with iOS and Android.
The problem was that Microsoft thought that merely by virtue of their existence, developers would adopt UWP/Store despite the path forward being a huge pain in the ass. We see how that played out. With Windows 10 we've seen a course correction and a change in strategy. You can have traditional Applications sandboxed in the Store, and you can have UWP Apps outside the Store. Microsoft bought Xamarin and is folding it into UWP, the intent is to not just have hardware independence with UWP but also OS independence.
[+] [-] orev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corey_moncure|8 years ago|reply
Presumably, given that the opposite has happened, in that case, "targets" would not have been met by "Q4" and important team members would have to be "let go".
As you point out, this is not new. I would pin the start of this trajectory on the introduction of Windows Activation with XP. It's all variations on the theme of restricting the user's freedom. It hasn't been your software since 2001. It's theirs.
[+] [-] jpalomaki|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat’s next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all of these, learn the trade offs, and hope I bet on the right horse, but then again I could also choose to simply leave this crazy platform alone and work on more features on the platforms that are more comfortable.
[+] [-] alkonaut|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Micoloth|8 years ago|reply
Wasn't old windows desktop technology the one proven to be bad? I mean I can say this because I like windows, but people have made fun of windows bugs and viruses for three decades now..
Granted, Windows Store still sucks ass years later its introduction, but building a new ecosystem with unified and modern tooling was probably a necessary step for them to make
[+] [-] djsumdog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ynniv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric_b|8 years ago|reply
I'm not a huge fan of using my tablet or phone for things. I almost always prefer using a "real" operating system. I know that puts me in the minority to an extent, but I'm not the only one. The problem is, neither major desktop OS is moving in a direction I like. I guess I'm just getting old and cranky.
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
This morning I noticed I have a 3D Objects folder pinned to the This PC item that I can't remove. I also have Mixed Reality Portal and Mixed Reality Viewer that I can't remove.
Why on earth are those apps part of the default install? Worse though - why doesn't Microsoft make it easy to uninstall them? I don't want their crappy news, weather, contacts, maps, music, and other default apps. They should make the apps so good users want them, not force install them and make them uninstallable.
[+] [-] laumars|8 years ago|reply
In all honesty that's been my impression of Windows since its inception. The only time I can recall ever feeling like Windows was deserved market leader was with Windows 2000: Linux wasn't mature on the desktop, OS X wasn't yet released or literally only just released and OS 9 was god awful (worse than the Win 95 in my opinion). The only platform that really competed in technical merit was BeOS and we all know how that ended up.
Win 3.x felt like a huge step backwards from what Atari, Amiga and Apple were doing. Windows 9x was an improvement but slow and buggy. Windows XP took a long time to mature - years and two service packs in fact. And before then it was basically just a slower (bar start up time), uglier version of Win 2000. And by the time Microsoft recovered from the cluster fuck of Longhorn OS X and Linux were both streets ahead in terms of stability, usability and even just basic features.
There are obviously people who genuinely warm to Windows and prefer that as a platform - good for them; variety is the spice of life and all - but from a technical standpoint Windows has always felt like it's had a multitude of low hanging fruit which aren't trendy enough for Redmond to invest development time in (case in point: why did it take until Windows 10 before shortcut keys were added to cmd.exe? And then why did MS stop there? The terminal emulator still totally sucks compared to nearly every other ever made!)
[+] [-] bigmanwalter|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdginionio|8 years ago|reply
An OS should be stagnant. Its job is to get out of the way as soon as possible, not to constantly wow its users with cool stuff. Any user-facing change will break existing workflows and force people to learn new habits.
Change is bad. That goes for every piece of software, from OSes to web browsers to libraries. Stagnation should be your goal.
Microsoft can't do things properly. Without constant pointless novelty they couldn't convince people to buy a new version every few years. That business model has made them a lot of money, but making money and making good software are nearly orthogonal goals.
EDIT: Maybe I've misunderstood you. It sounds like you're talking about bugfixes, which certainly something Microsoft should work on.
[+] [-] ohazi|8 years ago|reply
I still don't understand how anybody gets any real work done on a smartphone.
Has work suddenly gotten so simplistic that most people really don't need a keyboard? They're dragging and tapping and writing IM-like sentence fragments riddled with autocorrect typos? And this is acceptable? Seriously?
[+] [-] 013a|8 years ago|reply
Microsoft should have recognized that, recognized they were late to the party, just let Google & Apple have it, and instead focus on integrating with their products and doubling down on the "home & professional computer" segment they already lead in. But they were late to that as well because of Ballmer's mistake, which gave Apple the in to position the iPad as an up-and-coming product in this segment.
[+] [-] ozim|8 years ago|reply
"Management" needs email + spreadsheet, spreadsheets are not good enough on phone screen, but on tablet I think those would do. Just like reading code files with a lot of lines.
I think most of the work is thinking about meat and core of the problem. Writing it down with typos or not is not a problem. You do not write corporate communication statement that will go to millions of customers every day. I do not mind getting email from coworker with typos. When I ask my boss about 5 mins conversation I am not going to write "Dear sir or madam can I have 5 minutes of your time. Sincerly, O.". More like "Hi, Can we talk for 5 mins?". Work is not simplistic writing it down or improving later depends on context. You have great idea and phone, write it down, if you have to show it to millions of customers, then at least 2 other people have to read it anyway.
[+] [-] badprose|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twoquestions|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justaaron|8 years ago|reply
- windows domains - group policy - roaming profiles - drivers written for in-house equipment, ranging from machining to mass spectrometry, done over decades, and basically compatible back to NT 4, until M$ screws everything up...
They just don't know where their bread is buttered, and their bean counting practices are evidently obscuring it, as they keep doing stupid crap decisions like Office365.
They should stabilize and streamline what they already built...
[+] [-] laythea|8 years ago|reply
Similarly, this just marks the maturity level of Windows, where there really is no significant innovation in operating systems release after release. Nothing like win 3.1 -> win 95 etc. Its been that way for a while. Obviously its cash that motives this move from Microsoft, however I wouldn't want Microsoft changing the location of the start menu every release just to stir up the market and justify a release (for example) every year.
I remember a cherished time where the next operating system release felt like an upgrade to myself as well as my PC. I could do more than before. No longer. We have it all nowadays and have became spoilt.
[+] [-] nimbius|8 years ago|reply
You're going to need to convince your channel partners this is a thing that has to happen, and you're going to expect a revolt because so many tertiary industries are contingent upon Windows and its licenses. The tear-down for everything from the Windows app-store to the ballmer-era brick and mortar "windows store" is going to be significant. There are also laboratories, power plants, hospitals, and prisons that all rely heavily on Windows, so expect to be on the hook from state level government for quite a while...the "end" of windows also confirms the wastefully squandered effort to get Germany to obsolete its massive and very functional Linux deployment.
You'll also need to have a substantive marketshare in, say, cloud in order to start deprecating Windows. Outside of Redmonds own inflated reporting, Azure isnt exactly a competitor. Most devs would rather walk off a cliff than learn a new API --one that only Microsoft uses-- for cloud that is not EC2 compatible in any way. Conversely there are more than 40 providers of cloud services that all managed an EC2 api for objects.
[+] [-] 013a|8 years ago|reply
Windows isn't going anywhere, and they're accepting the reality that it might just be a "portal" into web technology in a similar vein to Chromebooks. This is a reality Apple refuses to accept, for better or worse. But, Windows still comes with those massively powerful internals that enable more powerful professional experiences for the users that need them.
This is, really, the only platform in the world that champions both. MacOS obviously has those powerful foundations and can run webapps natively, but its not something christened by Apple. iOS is the same way, but with less powerful foundations. ChromeOS? Android? Linux Desktop? They're not even considerations in this world.
Then you consider the massive success of their Xbox and Azure divisions, and I think anyone who bets against Microsoft right now isn't doing it cogently. They have a lot of legacy and Ballmer's strategic mistakes to get right, but I legitimately think they'll come out of the next 5 years in a better financial position than Google.
[+] [-] kerng|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candybar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shank|8 years ago|reply
This interleaving strategy was okay when they were the only market player, but now that there's actually good competition in the computing space (read: smartphones and chromebooks), it's not so good. All of the little sacrifices that Windows has to make to move itself forward are cuts that make people reconsider using it in the first place.
I honestly wonder what world it would be if every Windows release had "stuck the landing." If we had a super solid Vista and a super solid Windows 8, would Microsoft even be in remotely the same position as they are now? Probably not, because it would actually have been the preferred choice, and not just the default.
[+] [-] holtalanm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] youdontknowtho|8 years ago|reply
Amateur tech punditry at its finest.
[+] [-] cornholio|8 years ago|reply
While I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft, there is nothing I dread more than a closed platform controlled by a single company, and Google is moving more and more aggressively in that direction. There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Microsoft should just accept that they sell a commercial product for businesses and make a good solid product that needs little attention and gets the job done. Like Mack trucks.
[+] [-] alkonaut|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mediocrejoker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpalomaki|8 years ago|reply
Microsoft has not really been in hardware space before (except consoles, otherwise it was mostly accessories). I believe they jumped to laptops, tablets and desktops to have full control of the user experience.
[+] [-] urda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candiodari|8 years ago|reply
Never again will one app be compatible with others without a business agreement between them ... because that just can't be allowed (dixit $100 million per year+ managers at these huge companies, and I'm sure it's 100% coincidence that this would allow small companies to compete with them. Totally unrelated to this decision). Can't work in the cloud, can't work on android, can't work on IOS. And for that matter, can't work on UWP.
And of course let's not forget that the massive cost, that everyone's data is now 100% accessible to law enforcement and civil courts (and thus to anyone with the money to sue you) is just acceptable damage. After all, that doesn't affect $100 billion plus companies much at all.
Their argument is that it can make web banking unsafe. Yes ... that's true. It can.
What is does 99.999% of the time however is enforce the market dominance of really large players.
But, like people walking into a camp during WWII, nobody holds a moment of silence when they enter the compound with the large barbed wire. Nobody regrets what's happening when they lock the gate. Only years later, when all the bodies are found ... then we stop and think.
This is them locking the gate. Now comes years and years of really really bad applications, and exploiting the lockin.
And yes, the only system not in a locked ecosystem is the PC ecosystem (needless to say, this is the ecosystem that ALL of these large companies use, MS, Google and Apple, for themselves. And now they're locking it for the rest of us)