No, but pissing off people who love computers the most is a terrible idea.
The Windows 98-7 era made me like the system and aspire to be a developer for it. I remember wanting to make my own window!
Now it is simply a hostile wasteland that I regard with suspicion and resentment. There is no love for it left. I now use Linux and bear with OSX when I need to. Windows 8, but especially 10, made a hardcore Unix freak out of me.
Microsoft can't put a quarterly cost on it, but over time losing people who care will cost them everything.
> pissing off people who love computers the most is a terrible idea.
back when balmer jumped up and down in a presentation yelling "developers, developers, developers", they were still good (despite balmer's terrible leadership).
I think they're just losing the battle for mindshare now. Users would more easily move to macs, if they're a casual consumer of tech, and linux if they're more hardcore. Windows has no raison d'etre except for the gaming space imho, and i would hope that the steam deck propels WINE and linux onto gaming and remove the final hold from windows.
I don't know man. Half the developers I know are now using a Microsoft tool to write code (more among web developers). Nearly everyone is using a Microsoft site to host their code, or relies on code hosted there. WSL and the new terminal have removed a couple of major roadblocks to using Windows for development, and Azure is doing gangbusters. Office is cross-platform and still ubiquitous in the corporate world and isn't going anywhere as long as they have active directory and all the other corporate management tools. They may be losing consumer mind share, but I don't think they really care that much. At this point consumer Windows is only valuable to them as a marketing platform so there's no point in retaining it if they don't use it as such.
That seems right. “Processes” (which includes LinkedIn and Office) and “intelligent cloud” are the largest part of their operating income.[1] “More personal computing” (which includes Windows) was less than a third, only 27%, of their total last year:
(In millions, except percentages) 2021 2020 Percentage Change
Processes $ 24,351 $ 18,724 30%
Intelligent Cloud 26,126 18,324 43%
More Personal Computing 19,439 15,911 22%
Total $ 69,916 $ 52,959 32%
VS Code, GitHub, LinkedIn, and their pervasive telemetry are definitely part of a broader strategy.
>Windows has no raison d'etre except for the gaming space imho
Enterprise.
Either cloud with Office 365 + Azure AD + Intune to get Office/Teams/Sharepoint/Onedrive echosystem and manage clients PC settings and updates over Intune.
Or do it on-prem with Windows server, AD domain, Group policy, Fileshare server and all that. Some enterprise software that is not a SaaS may still require this.
Fair enough, but this implies that this use case is for a business context, in a business environment. All my comments are only applicable to the home/personal use context.
I don't care what spyware/crapware microsoft chooses to add to the enterprise setting.
> back when balmer jumped up and down in a presentation yelling "developers, developers, developers", they were still good (despite balmer's terrible leadership).
My memory is probably faulty so corrections welcome, but wasn't "developers, developers, developers" a while before he became CEO?
The Windows 98-7 era made me like the system and aspire to be a developer for it. I remember wanting to make my own window!
Now it is simply a hostile wasteland that I regard with suspicion and resentment. There is no love for it left. I now use Linux and bear with OSX when I need to. Windows 8, but especially 10, made a hardcore Unix freak out of me.
Microsoft can't put a quarterly cost on it, but over time losing people who care will cost them everything.