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The End of Windows

stratechery.com

211–220 of 617 posts

Re: The End of Windows

#211
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.

Re: The End of Windows

#212

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 correctiv…

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...

Re: The End of Windows

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Linux is definitely ready for full time Desktop use as long as gaming isn't needed. 7 years only Linux and I feel great about it. I highly recommend Linux Mint with Cinnamon to anyone just starting out.

Solus is great for gaming, and very user friendly, too.

Re: The End of Windows

#214
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata: most of the SMBs I know are using web/cloud-based accounting products, and like it for varying reasons (not having to manage / upgrade the software, easy to collaborate with their accountant) but a major one is being able to access their accounts from anything with a web browser.

And there's the catch-22: how do you access the web when the desktop OS's are all gone? Tablets and phones don't cut it and there isn't a single stable desktop OS that hasn't been getting progressively worse for the last 5 years.

I don't agree with the premise that phones and tablets won't cut it for this, but if you need a hassle-free OS for accessing the web then ChromeOS is it.

Re: The End of Windows

#215

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 correctiv…

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.

Re: The End of Windows

#216
post #6

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 tabl…

>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.

Re: The End of Windows

#217
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.

During a AWS demonstration at work. The Amazon guy specifically mentioned, AWS is a more lucrative option for large companies than small ones, simply because it was an easy one time way of culling large teams in big companies who were adding very little to nothing in return in value.

Yeah, that ought to be a great sales line.

I'd be wary about how the real world actually deals with that, but there is no lack of large companies jumping on short term costs cuts without looking at the risks.

Re: The End of Windows

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, my wife runs her own bookkeeping business and pretty much all of her clients are using Quickbooks on Windows workstations, with no real desire to try anything new. I know a couple people myself that are using cloud-based accounting products but they seem to be the exception. In both cases they are tech businesses, which perhaps makes them more open to trying something new than a typical small busin…

I'll take a guess and say that these are all older businesses. Businesses that started before the advent of cloud software will continue to use QuickBooks because that's what the owners know, and why fix something that isn't broken? But newer businesses that started in the last few years will be much more likely to use cloud software because it's so much more convenient.

There are non-technical reasons to prefer locally hosted accounting software. Privacy is one if them.

Re: The End of Windows

#220

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…

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.

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