Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is driving users away

christitus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 422 posts

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#291

Post by masfoobar »

Microsoft has been driving me away since the Windows XP days.

Before that (and being young and not exposed to anything else) viewed Microsoft's OS as the best thing since slice bread. I was able to code and do things with Visual Studio 5.0/6.0. In my eyes nothing could compare.

One day, my mouse pointer would slowly move down the screen without touching it. Thinking it was a virus or something, did a reinstall of XP. A few months later, the pointer was playing up, again.

There were other things but it was the start to my journey to GNU/Linux. I was barely exposed to GNU/Linux a year or two before but due to lack of internet at that time, could not grasp the change being a Windows user.

This time I purchased a book on Ubuntu and realised how cool this really is. It also made me appreciate programming. I no longer was 'clicking the play button' on Visual Studio. Now I was understanding how to compile with gcc.

Since then I would choose GNU/Linux over Windows most days of the week. The only exception is my job.

For example, I have one job that still uses legacy software. We are talking programs originally written in the late 90s in Visual Basic 6. I have to use Windows. Some program before I joined moved over to .NET and SQL Server. My goal is to move away from Microsofts tools. No more Windows Servers. Using (perhaps) Go, Postgres, etc. The Company would save a lot more money as well. Baby Steps.

I don't hate Windows, but I still have to install it on one laptop and the amount of stuff I don't want gets annoying!

Most of the time I am using Debian, both on my (other) laptop and as a Server machine.

I could say more but that will do.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#292

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

M95D wrote: post #282
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #245

"I've been a lifelong Windows user since the 90s and even MS-DOS back in the 80s, but things are changing. I've been using other operating systems more and more." OK, that's one user. But clearly he is still using Windows. Microsoft has not "lost" him. He is just complaining. He even provides a solution re: printing for other Windows users that implies his readers are still using it, too. "Microsoft is in a panic fro…

Bad article. Microsoft does NOT care about users. It cares about corporate licenses and ads. It will force you to use windows at work. Imagine watching commercials 8h/day. That's the future. You can't avoid it.

s/You can't avoid it/Windows users can't avoid it/

Not sure who "you" refers to, but NB. I do not use Windows. And I rarely use a graphical interface.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#293

Post by shiroiushi »

rincebrain wrote: post #97
pdimitar wrote: post #28

Microsoft has been driving users away for no less than 10 years now and nothing much is changing IMO because Windows is what most people think of as "the computer". Non-technical users think they have no other choice, they shrug the defects off and try to get their job done. Though the article kind of piqued my interest by claiming that Microsoft "is in panic" -- any proof that they are indeed bleeding users more tha…

Really, among people under 25, a lot of them see "the phone" as the computer, and treat using desktops as a burden any time it happens.

It's not just them. Even software engineers under 35 don't use desktop computers any more, except at work. At home, for personal use, they just use phones, unless they're into the latest video games.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#294

Post by noobermin »

Linux is also removing tools people use. Just the other day I found out hcitool and rfcomm were removed from bluez, yet another thing I now have to handwrite myself even when I just want to tinker.

Sure, you can still do things like I can write to a socket using python over using rfcomm, but isn't it the same as this article? It's gets in the way of gnome and friends wanting to "cater the experience" plus it's legacy now (meaning "I don't want to read someone else's code, blegh!") So out it goes! Developers in foss seem to love label things "legacy" to remove, not just in windows and mac land.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#295

Post by mike_hearn »

disqard wrote: post #256
bhewes wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This i find fun to watch as they sit down at a desktop and co work together through the desktop interface.

Can you share any anecdotes, or some more details? I've been watching this "app generation", and I've read Prensky's nonsense about "digital natives", so I'm always interested in concrete examples of how it's playing out. Thanks!

For example, students now regularly turn up at universities unable to use files or folders. They have to be given basic IT lessons before they can start to work with data.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#296

Post by npteljes »

bediger4000 wrote: post #221
npteljes wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People won't change, because people don't use their PC for the OS. This is why it's important to have systems that bundle Linux, for example, with the UX worked out as much as possible, like how it is on the Steam Deck.

Sure Windows is for the most part, libWord, libExcel and libPowerPoint. Linux (and BSDs) are important to people who want to do things that are hard to do in a tightly integrated office suite.

I don't think this is the point, and many other technologists, including past myself, doesn't seem to get it.

Much to technologists dismay, people's technology choices doesn't really involve the technology itself. The thought process is more similar to choosing a car for its color. This is what large enterprises realize, and which is why they shift focus away from the product or service itself, to how the product or service gets into the users hands. Apple is chosen by the people, so they focus on UX, image, status, on being an aspirational product. Microsoft has a different focus, it's businesses, government, education. They aim to be infrastructure, a public service that's proprietary.

What is common is that all of them is that they all build a moat. Consciously making it hard for people to switch. Microsoft does this by making its services and formats into standards, but not opening up the standard itself, and also making it hellishly complex. So now, if you want to interface with your government, you can send your document in docx. And what views and edits docx is MS Office. And what platform that runs on is Windows. That's it, and that's why the OP article is sensationalist. Microsoft is not driving away people by making their lives more complex, the people have nowhere to go, and they are often not the ones choosing Microsoft in the first place.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#297

Post by mike_hearn »

disqard wrote: post #257
Swizec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any proof that they are indeed bleeding users more than what is deemed normal? They are, but not to other OSes. More and more people associate computers with something you use for work (and work provides) or for school (and school provides). All personal computing happens on a phone. My partner, for example, uses her personal laptop about once a year to do taxes. Otherwise it sits in the closet. Even I use an iPad…

> All personal computing happens on a phone This makes me sad, and is scary, etc. However, putting emotions aside, can we extrapolate from this? Could the next "killer app" actually be an even tinier device? A smartwatch? Or have we reached a local extremum (phones)? And what does that say about attempts to regress towards larger screens (AR/VR headsets)?

Phones dominate not because of screen size but because the operating systems they run are fundamentally more user friendly. iOS/Android were the first time experienced OS engineers were able to go back to the drawing board and rethink the whole stack from scratch. They learned a lot of lessons from what worked and what didn't on generalized desktop computers and were able to build something people prefer using.

That's a rare opportunity. I hope someone gets a chance to do it for professional workstation computing one day. The Windows codebase has IMHO reached end-of-life. The Linux community isn't going to stray far outside the bounds of the 1970s era UNIX design. Apple does OK but they can't/won't change the macOS UI in any meaningful way and not enough people write native Mac apps to justify trying to do anything interesting there. ChromeOS is basically just a large screen smartphone OS experience with some Linux virtualization on the side. We're caught in a local minima.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#298

Post by shifto »

alisonatwork wrote: post #239
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. It is. At Windows 7, they pretty much had desktops right. Everything mostly worked. They'd finally fixed the crashing problems. (How? The Static Driver Verifier validated that third-party kernel drivers would not crash the rest of the system, and a classifier applied to crash dumps routed similar crash dumps to the same maintainer.) The UI was reasonable for a de…

On the flip side, Windows 8 was a superior interface for the Surface and similar devices to either 10 or 11. While I wouldn't want to go back to 8 due to subsequent quality of life improvements for developers like WSL and winget, I still miss the UI every day. It looked clean and simple and worked great with a touchscreen and keyboard alike. Trying to navigate a Surface on Windows 11 with the utterly useless widgets…

For the longest time, I was a die-hard MS guy, fully immersed in their ecosystem. From my Surface Pro to the Lumia Windows Phone, I embraced every facet of their landscape. It was like the stars had aligned perfectly, granting me a seamless and efficient workflow across all my devices. But then, as if the planets themselves shifted out of harmony, everything fell apart and now we are here.

We get these slivers of full-integration from time to time. We see it today with the Vision Pro. It's not hard to imagine what could be! But I'm not counting on it anytime soon.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#299

Post by Zardoz84 »

alisonatwork wrote: post #239
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. It is. At Windows 7, they pretty much had desktops right. Everything mostly worked. They'd finally fixed the crashing problems. (How? The Static Driver Verifier validated that third-party kernel drivers would not crash the rest of the system, and a classifier applied to crash dumps routed similar crash dumps to the same maintainer.) The UI was reasonable for a de…

On the flip side, Windows 8 was a superior interface for the Surface and similar devices to either 10 or 11. While I wouldn't want to go back to 8 due to subsequent quality of life improvements for developers like WSL and winget, I still miss the UI every day. It looked clean and simple and worked great with a touchscreen and keyboard alike. Trying to navigate a Surface on Windows 11 with the utterly useless widgets…

The fact is that Windows 8.1 was far better that the shit hole that Windows 10/11 has become. Windows 7 was the last great Windows. Windows 8.1 was the last decent/good Windows.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#300

Post by Zardoz84 »

pierat wrote: post #225
whiplash451 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could turn off auto-update I would not mess with that bit these days

There is a difference between: 1. Updates have been applied (in the middle of your crucial thing). Reboot in 60 seconds. Fuck you if you think you can cancel haha. 2. Updates for the following packages are available. Apply: Now or later. Windows is #1. Linux is #2. Linux does it right. Sometimes, you're in the middle of something, and delaying makes sense. But shutting down on a 3d print job, or in the middle of a ga…

Also, in Linux you can update and keep doing stuff. Even a full distribution version update! I remember playing Stellaris at the same time that Kubuntu was being updated to the 22.04 LTS version.
Post reply on HN