
The End of Windows - samsolomon
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/
======
blinkingled
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.

~~~
cpeterso
You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from
Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry:

[https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-
architectu...](https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architecture)

~~~
bhauer
That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways.

* In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is _still_ 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category.

* In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is _still_ 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now.

* A surprising number of people still have Flash installed.

I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser
on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's
modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply
slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but _also_
because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?

~~~
pmontra
Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people
that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different
needs. They are the vast majority of buyers.

A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking
together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything
is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start to appear
in the lists. Guess what people buy most? The cheapest stuff.

By the way, the new laptop must be Windows because anything different will be
too difficult to cope with after 30 years of training. He's replacing the old
one (only 2 years old) is getting too slow. Probably a malware party but
disinfecting that machine it's a hopeless effort. That one and the previous
ones were periodically cleaned and/or reinstalled but there is no way to
change those ingrained clicking habits. No adblocker because my friend wants
to see ads and they could actually be useful in his business. I told him that
he'll be back with a slow PC soon and that he's wasting his money, and I've
been wasting my time.

~~~
gruez
>I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB

why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?

~~~
wolfspider
I run an IMac with 32gb because I’m a SharePoint developer. A 2012 VM running
AD, DNS, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and a SharePoint farm all running takes up
16gb easily. The other 16gb goes to VS Code, XCode, Slack, multiple browsers,
Outlook, Docker at times...etc.. Then I gotta shut it down and boot up the
SharePoint 2010 VM sometimes which gets 12gb a little less I suppose.

------
asveikau
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?

~~~
ryandrake
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
Here's how simple I think it is:

Out (but not gone/forgotten): Win32 (hand-coded C, C++ MFC, C++ ATL and
related alphabet soup [aka back in the day the choice wasn't easy, either],
VB6, .NET WinForms, etc), WPF/Silverlight (a .NET only XAML platform)

In: UWP (C++ with XAML, C#/.NET with XAML, JS with HTML/CSS)

Just three UI platforms to consider (Win32, WPF, UWP), two of which are mostly
deprecated and not recommended if you are building a fresh application or
porting one to a new UI. The remaining platform (UWP) gives you language
choice (C++, C# or other .NET languages, JS), but not UI design
framework/markup language choice (XAML, unless JS and then HTML).

If you are doing a fresh port of a C++ application from another platform, the
choice seems pretty simple to target the UWP and use XAML to define your UI.

~~~
cm2187
Except that with Win7’s dominance your UWP isn’t going to run on most of your
clients for many years. In a corporate environment it sorts of kills it from
the outset. I think Microsoft made a big mistake by not making UWP win7
compatible.

~~~
WorldMaker
Windows 7 doesn't have "many years" left. Windows 7 has less than two years
left in its support lifetime. (2020 is when extended support ends.)

In the mean time, if you, in a corporate environment, must Windows 7 until the
bitter end in 2020, you can use WPF as a bootstrap step towards UWP. The XAML
is similar between them and a lot of the coding paradigms are same (MVVM
patterns), and if you architect well (.NET Standard 2.0 libraries) you can
share 100% of your business logic between a WPF application and a UWP
application.

Xamarin.Forms also has an open source WPF renderer if you'd prefer to further
go the cross-platform route. (Xamarin.Forms supports UWP, iOS, Android,
macOS.)

I agree that I think Microsoft should have had the .NET Standard, XAML
Standard, WPF Xamarin.Forms development stories in place sooner to better
leverage developers that need to support older Windows, but many of those
pieces are in place _now_ if that is what corporate developers were waiting
for.

------
ynniv
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.

~~~
ckaygusu
> macOS isn't business-level stable.

Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top
notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because
of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005
era, and it kind of stuck around.

~~~
nulagrithom
The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient.

Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of
desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where
all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it
easier to hire someone to do it as well).

What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten
really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning.
Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major
version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?)
Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows.

But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual
desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just
log in to their box from anywhere.

Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.

~~~
rconti
I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but
thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not
stability.

That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was
virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.

~~~
nulagrithom
> The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.

From the medium to enterprise range, maintenance and stability issues are
often one in the same. Breaking automated maintenance and/or deployment leads
to instability.

Keep in mind I don't mean "kernel panic" levels of instability or even
"programs crashing" levels of instability. The smallest of changes can cause a
mountain of work in large environments. Simply changing the icon of an often
used program can cause a deluge of tickets.

This level of stability and control is something that macOS doesn't even come
close to recognizing.

------
eric_b
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.

~~~
bigmanwalter
Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

~~~
arcbyte
Is there a laptop you would recommend?

~~~
prolikewhoa
Dell XPS 13.

Works with Linux out of the box as Dell made all of the driver's work for
their developer edition's in Ubuntu. Battery life and and the 3200x1800 screen
are phenomenal. Well made and Dell's warranty process is actually fairly good.
It's no Apple warranty, but does the job.

------
ohazi
> 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?

~~~
013a
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.

~~~
shinratdr
> 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.

This is demonstrably wrong. The home computer market isn't even a market that
exists in many parts of the world. To see that phones can supplant the home
computer market almost entirely in Africa and India and say it has no effect
here is crazy.

You can already watch it happen. Will people need a computer to do long form
typing? Maybe, although for many a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard will
suffice.

Will an average family of 4-5 need more than one though? Will many people just
get by sharing a laptop one family member got from work, or an old clunker
they use just to edit essays for school? Absolutely.

Will smartphones and tablets kill home computers? No, not for a long time.
Will they pretty much cap any growth in that market, and turn them into trucks
when they were formerly cars? Without a doubt.

~~~
jake_the_third
> The home computer market isn't even a market that exists in many parts of
> the world.

That doesn't make GP's statement demonstrably wrong. The home computer market
isn't a market that exists in many parts of the world because it never existed
there in the first place.

The smart device market may have affected the growth of the home computer
market, but I also believe that it hasn't supplanted its existing users by any
meaningful measure. At least, not yet.

------
twoquestions
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).

~~~
Spooky23
Windows 10 is really difficult for businesses entrenched in Windows to deal
with.

The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like
fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it
pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft
has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client
computing in different ways.

~~~
gr3yh47
I know I'm in a minority here, but having used every windows since 3.1, IMO
windows 7 was the absolute pinnacle of windows design, and from a ux
perspective I think the best desktop os period (could still be improved,
there's definitely individual features that are better in other OSes). I
really wish they had stuck with the UX/design and mostly just improved
performance/added useful stuff rather than throw it all out and start over.

~~~
ropeadopepope
You're not as big of a minority as you think. Windows 7 is still the most used
desktop OS by quite some margin. MacOS hit its pinnacle at about the same time
(Snow Leopard, Summer 2009).

------
justaaron
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...

~~~
remir
It's not the end of Windows. The title of the article is a bit click bait-y.

Without the "we need to dominate the market and be everywhere" people pushing
devs to implement feature nobody wants and have to deactivate anyways, Windows
will get better for the people that love (and need) to use it.

~~~
zamalek
> The title of the article is a bit click bait-y.

The article itself implies the same. It's very clearly a case of putting the
cart before the hearse.

~~~
dmix
I don't see anywhere in the article where Windows is going away or no longer
being invested in... if anything it's going to get more focused on in terms of
a pure client OS perspective than some mixed bag of services + built-in apps +
OS.

This should be good for Windows as it will focus on what it's good for.. being
the base system for drivers, windowing, app launching, etc. While the
services/cloud gets decoupled from it allowing more flexibility for their
developers/programs to work across multiple platforms.

------
laythea
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.

~~~
dmix
The more comments I read on here the more it seems people have only read the
headline, or have only a surface level grasp of the content, without really
understanding what the author is saying.

"The End of Windows" = "The End of Windows as the core foundation of the
various Microsoft divisions/services/apps"

It does _not_ mean the end of Windows as an important part of Microsoft...at
all.

Rather it's about decoupling Windows from the rest of the other divisions to
reflect the reality of today's non-PC centric world where Window's is merely
one client among other mobile/cloud/AI/IoT/etc clients.

As others have pointed out, the perfect example is how Ballmer didn't want to
release Office for iPad until Windows had a touch screen version to compete
with it. It means more flexibility for both the company and for Windows, which
is win-win for Microsoft consumers and Windows users.

~~~
majormajor
Generally I think we call that "clickbait," no? :)

Headlines like that make some people _less_ likely to actually read the
article, especially on HN.

------
nimbius
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.

------
013a
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.

------
kerng
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.

------
candybar
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.

~~~
w0rd-driven
Windows is touted as the largest git repository. What service like Github or
Gitlab could handle something that massive? I'm sure they could scale
eventually but if that ever happened MS would likely have to house the
repository and at that point they might as well keep it closed source or open
source with a subscription cost that goes into the infrastructure upkeep.

I'd honestly love for more portions of Windows to become open source and
slowly work up to the full repository. I think there would be an immediate
influx of 0days as people find holes but I would hope they would close
quickly. It's still a very big gamble to let go of something you've literally
built your foundation on but I do hope that instead of Windows silently going
into oblivion that they'll open it up for the masses, even if they would no
longer have the resources to support it. I feel like someone or company would
step up.

Having said all that, I'm going on 4 years in mostly macOS. The missteps in
High Sierra are pretty abysmal but not the end of the world. I hope Apple
really changes their processes to keep the OS stable but I see this downward
trend in just about all PC-like operating systems. It's like everyone sees the
end of the line coming and they're just half assing every move they make. I
think Meltdown/Spectre was a major blow that has probably single handedly
slowed all momentum to a standstill. Granted my sample size is very small but
I really hope I'm just looking at this big lull right before an
evolution/revolution.

------
Shank
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.

~~~
thriftwy
Unarguably 8! My mother owns Windows 8 laptop and she is still stuck every
time she falls into "blocky start" menu or or any of Metro apps.

She just doesn't understand what is happening anymore, and how to exit this
mode which she never asked for. What helps here is that all those apps are
absolutely useless.

It's a disaster disaster disaster.

------
holtalanm
i would have stopped using windows years ago if i could get games to run
decently on linux.

~~~
jimktrains2
There are many games that run well in Linux, including a large portion of the
Steam library!

If you meant a specific game to run, well then you need to weight your pros
and cons and stop whining when you make your decision.

Alternatively, dual boot.

~~~
MikkoFinell
Alternatively, grow up and stop playing games.

~~~
Asooka
That's not really what "growing up" means.

------
youdontknowtho
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.

Amateur tech punditry at its finest.

------
cornholio
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.

~~~
bitmapbrother
I'm always baffled whenever someone comes up with these wacky Google Android
replacement suggestions. It's as if they selectively choose to ignore history
and the billions, that would be futilely squandered, pursuing something that
has absolutely zero chance of ever succeeding or even being profitable. I'm
not sure what fantasy world you reside in, but replacing Google's proprietary
apps and services with Microsoft's proprietary apps is not only a
significantly less value proposition for the consumer, but there's absolutely
no incentive for the consumer or OEM to even remotely consider such a
platform. You will never have the ecosystem and you will never have the
developer support and whatever developers and OEM's you do manage to bribe
over they'll quickly abandon the platform once the payola dries up.

>There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products
on devices Google does not approve of.

I think you meant to say there was until Google closed that loophole.

------
Animats
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.

------
alkonaut
You can have my windows when I can game properly somewhere else (and no, no
you can’t).

~~~
TheForumTroll
Xbox and PlayStation. The "problem" is that you want to game on your PC, not
that there isn't another viable option.

~~~
weirdwitch
Can you point me to the console version of Dota 2?

~~~
Sylos
I mean, that particular game does run exceptionally well on Linux. I think,
even quite a bit better than on Windows, unless your GPU's drivers for Linux
happen to be shit, of course.

But yeah, the overall point still stands. If you have a particular game that
you don't feel like you can substitute and it's not available on a platform
that you'd like to switch to, you're probably not switching to that platform.

------
mediocrejoker
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?

~~~
jpalomaki
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
Right, given the *soft in the name, Microsoft has never seen itself as a
hardware company and every move it has made into hardware (except Nokia) was
reluctant and to fill a need for software they couldn't convince hardware
friends to make at scale for them.

Microsoft started building mice because they wanted to add a wheel to them to
make working in Office applications better.

Microsoft started building 2-in-1 tablet laptops (Surface) because they'd been
calling it the future for a decade and no one was paying attention.

For the most part Microsoft's hardware strategy is at its best in "if you
build it, they will come (and copy it as soon as they understand why you built
it)" mode.

------
candiodari
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)

------
MichaelMoser123
Windows desktop was always driving demand for Windows enterprise, why else
would you need exchange servers and CIFS/SMB file servers? Who would buy MS
SQL server licences without the larger lock in effect? Maybe they think that
the cloud has broken this dependency, but I think they are bringing ruin over
the house of Redmond (in the long run)

------
mariusmg
About that reorganization :

"Today, I’m announcing the formation of two new engineering teams"

"Windows: Joe Belfiore will continue leading our Windows experiences and will
drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem"

How does this exactly means they are giving up on Windows ?! Seriously,
wishful thinking much ?

~~~
oaiey
They are not giving up Windows. They just adjusted the organization to reflect
the fact that Windows itself is no longer as important as in the 90s.

------
hoodoof
Windows is still a mess... inconsistent interface, multiple ways to configure
the same thing, the registry.....

I know it's not the same market circumstances but this feels alot like the
decision to stop development of ie6 after Microsoft beat Netscape.

------
dgudkov
Windows used to be the biggest market differentiator for Microsoft. What does
Azure do that Amazon or Google can't? What would make Microsoft uniquely
different if it had no Windows?

------
eljimmy
Microsoft really should have pursued creating a version of Windows
specifically for gaming. I imagine there are lot of users who only use Windows
for that purpose.

~~~
e12e
They do have the Xbox..

~~~
eljimmy
Yeah, I meant for PC gaming.

------
keithnz
I think it would be better titled :- windows is dead, long live windows!

I think this article better explains things
[http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft-
is-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft-is-splitting-
up-windows-in-its-latest-reorg/)

------
osullivj
No mention of Windows popularity as crypto mining server OS, due to superior
GPU driver SW.

------
pmarreck
Ballmer must be the #1 executive who has gotten the farthest on the least
intelligence.

~~~
cornholio
Ballmer had a perfect 800 score on his SAT math section. He kept the company
expanding revenue and profits for a decade and a half, which is an eternity in
Internet time. His Windows on mobile strategy was a few years late from being
a huge success (agreed, that is also an eternity).

~~~
azemetre
Are we seriously equating business intelligence with a high school aptitude
test that covers rudimentary mathematics?

------
bradb3030
There's a book "Zone to Win" by Geoffrey A. Moore that describes these various
transitions for Microsoft and it suggests that it's intentional to transition
one business unit at a time.

------
pier25
So Windows will basically keep on existing to run Office and Visual Studio?

------
z3t4
People are still loyal to Windows, because that's what they are used to. And
PC's and laptops still has Windows pre-installed.

------
partiallypro
Mac OS is far closer to death than Windows.

------
gsich
Still the best desktop OS, sadly.

------
shard972
If windows 10 is the end then i think It's safe to say I will never be
returning to windows for as long as I can help it.

Between it's spyware and its tendency to just do things without telling you,
without giving you an easy way to stop, it is just not something that feels
comfortable enough to use anymore for power users.

It feels like whatever I gain in convience, is lost when trying to figure out
what windows is doing with all that CPU/RAM/Network usage or how to disable
some new service that I have 0 interest in.

------
walterbell
Dear Microsoft,

If you’re not using the PC, can we have it back?

— General Purpose Computing

~~~
jacquesm
General Purpose Computing using PC's is a thing _because_ of Microsoft (and
IBM). Without those two there would have never been a PC in the first place.

The forces against general purpose computing are to be found on 1 infinite
loop and 1600 Amphitheatre parkway.

~~~
andybak
I rode a PC wave that nearly completely bypassed IBM/Microsoft:

1\. The "home" computer boom: ZX Spectrums, Acorn, Commodore, Atari with maybe
an Apple II or a CPM machines for more serious use. 2\. The Atari ST or Amiga
wave. WIMP and productivity software as well as gaming and content creation
3\. At this point I did switch to Windows but I could just have easily
switched to Mac. Apple didn't cease to be a force at any stage. They
maintained a strong base in home use and content creation only losing the
enterprise.

In our alternate history there was also room for Next or BeOS. You never know.

Now what MS/IBM did enable (accidentally to some degree) was an open hardware
platform. However if they weren't around then other players might have stepped
in. Maybe CP/M succeeded in going 16bit, GEM might have caught on or the Apple
clones might have found a way to legally survive.

On final reading I realise you might have meant "PC" in the narrow sense. If
so then you're correct in a trivial sense. If not then I disagree.

~~~
pjmlp
> Apple didn't cease to be a force at any stage. They maintained a strong base
> in home use and content creation only losing the enterprise.

They almost went bankrupt around 1994.

If it wasn't for Microsoft money and the merge with NeXT bringing Jobs back,
they would have been gone.

Up to iPod's success Apple was meaningless pretty much everywhere outside US.

~~~
isostatic
It's amazing how much they nearly lost it all. In the late 80s early 90s apple
was a fairly common sight in education, 10 years later it was windows
everywhere outside of degree level STEM (where it was *nix of some sort)

~~~
jacquesm
Given the context of this thread note the irony that Microsoft actually bailed
out Apple to polish up their image for anti-trust reasons.

[https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/](https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/)

------
Froyoh
Offtopic: What font is used on that webpage? It's very comfortable to the eye.

~~~
mpnordland
Firefox Dev tools say Freight Sans Pro

------
gaius
The end of Windows is the year of the Linux desktop

~~~
lucaspottersky
Linux desktop will never thrive. I'm sorry to tell you that.

it's more likely that some other player just releases a completely new OS to
replace Windows. just like Chrome replaced IE (and not Firefox).

~~~
gaius
_Linux desktop will never com_

Exactly.

------
joshmarinacci
I'm excited by the end of Windows, or really the end of dominance of desktop
OSes. This means we will have the freedom to innovate again and do some really
wild things.

------
grewil2
I won't support OSes such as Windows and MacOS until they give me the same
core user freedoms that you get with GNU/Linux.

