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Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

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Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#101

Post by tonymet »

Consumers are leads and beta testers. Microsoft's business is licensing and reselling -- directly and via Azure. Their primary concerns are keeping businesses and developers happy. Consumers are a distant third.

There is value in training consumers on Windows & Office so they are familiar when coming to the office. MS needs to retain endpoint dominance in the workplace. They can't survive on server alone. Windows & Office endpoints are essential to their business. This is the leads channel.

They add pizazz to features and beta test them to consumers . Consumer licensing is moderate revenue but minimal income for Microsoft. Thus consumers are really beta testers.

So Microsoft will continue to provide low quality consumer experiences that don't fit the consumer market that well. The consumer market isn't their goal. It's a means to their actual business.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#102

Post by tiltowait »

munificent wrote: post #86
blitz_skull wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Apple Stan, I don’t understand what you’re referring to. MacOS is light years ahead of Windows in so many arenas, I’m not really sure what you could be referring to when you say “stagnation”. Every OS ever released has issues at launch, not sure if that’s what you mean by “regression”. But man… windows has been garbage for the better part of 2 decades now.

The question is not whether MacOS is ahead of Windows. As an Apple user since the Apple IIe, I agree it's still the best OS by a mile. But that has basically always been true, at least since Mac OS X. (I liked the earlier OSes too, but they really did crash all the time and have no memory protection, so arguably Windows had some compelling advantages.) The interesting question is whether recent MacOS releases are ahe…

> Of the top of my head, I can't think of a single feature that MacOS has shipped since 2020 that I care about.

They all kind of blend together, so I asked Claude to give me a list of major features since 2020. Here are those that I've enjoyed:

* Universal control * iPhone mirroring * Stage Manager * Container CLI

Granted it's not a giant list, but each release does have little refinements here and there, and Claude may have missed some (it didn't mention container CLI, for instance; that was from my memory). I also omitted some features I don't care about (like Safari profiles and some other window management stuff).

What features are you hoping for? Aside from a tiling WM, which won't happen, I'd be happy just with refinements and bug fixes.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#103

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rconti wrote: post #14

The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever. It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility…

> What _is_ weird, and nonintuitive, is that the (by all accounts) higher-cost vendor would be seen as ascendent in this market.

It actually kind of makes sense. Apple has stopped caring but Microsoft is actively hostile. You then have people who can afford it switching to Apple, but the higher price deters everyone who can't, which in turn reduces the pressure on Microsoft to clean up their act.

The interesting thing is Linux. It's starting from a smaller base but in the last couple of years the growth rate is even higher than macOS.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#104

Post by sofixa »

mschuster91 wrote: post #50
fooqux wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing While I don't disagree with you here, that's a helluva big bet. It'll have to happen soon enough that other companies aren't able to pivot in time, and despite what Altman says, I just don't see it happening at that timescale.

> While I don't disagree with you here, that's a helluva big bet. And yet, one that Microsoft has the best chances. Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams. Google has its Workspaces thing plus its web wannabe-equivalents to Office, but that's it. And AWS is an infrastructure provider. Microsoft in contrast? They're everywhere and most importantly, whatever is in Office 3…

> Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams

Depends on the BigCorp. One of the most quentessential BigCorps out there, IBM, is deep into Apple stuff. As far as publicly shilling for Macs with extremely questionablly extrapolated data - they did a pilot with power users for a year, and came out saying Macs cost less in hardware and support than equivalent Windows Lenovos over the full lifecycle of the machine; which is literally impossible to know a year in a pilot with power users compared to the 4 year lifecycle for all sorts of people.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#105

Post by pezezin »

Nextgrid wrote: post #57
llbbdd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm young, I'll take that bet. In 25 years windows will still have greater than 50% consumer computer marketshare out of sheer momentum.

I'd be very surprised if "consumer computer" will be anything but a niche thing in 25 years.

I have been hearing the same for the last 20 years, if not longer, and yet the consumer computer remains strong.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#106

Post by sofixa »

qgin wrote: post #47
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing How many more weeks? Also, is this before or after flying cars?

Looking like 2028-2030 but it's a moving target. Since we're basically getting flying cars next year at the World Cup, I guess it's going to be after flying cars.

> Since we're basically getting flying cars next year at the World Cup

That's so funny. Regular people can't hahndle regular cars. Self-driving cars barely handle 2 dimensional space within very specific confines and rules, in good weather. Existing airspace is congested to the point of being problematic in most metro areas around the world.

"Flying cars" might be replacing some private heliopters, maybe. But they aren't going mainstream any time soon.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#107

Post by llbbdd »

mekoka wrote: post #88
llbbdd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm young, I'll take that bet. In 25 years windows will still have greater than 50% consumer computer marketshare out of sheer momentum.

If the last 15 years are any indication, in less than 15 years, Microsoft will make Azure Linux their main OS and they'll skin the desktop edition to resurrect Lindows. It'll take a 2-5 years campaign to move most of the remaining Windows user base to it. Oh and also, it'll probably be free.

In 15 years, Windows will still be running hospitals and governments and Linux will have dropped back well below 5% desktop usage because using Linux on the desktop in the modern day is an ideological decision and literally never a technical one

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#108

Post by butterknife »

sedatk wrote: post #93

> The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot That's a quite unfair take, especially when it fails to compare it with what things of note Linux distros have added over the last five years. Valve made Windows emulation better, yes. That's it. What else? Actually, I wouldn't even call Copilot a thing of note. It's just ChatGPT-in-a-popup at the moment. A real thing of note is WSL…

Clipboard history? Screen recording? Polished web browser? And none of these are available on most distros?

I think you ought to try "most distros" before making such claims.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#109

Post by solumunus »

qgin wrote: post #47
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing How many more weeks? Also, is this before or after flying cars?

Looking like 2028-2030 but it's a moving target. Since we're basically getting flying cars next year at the World Cup, I guess it's going to be after flying cars.

Ok Elon.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#110

Post by BirAdam »

andersonpico wrote: post #67
hamdingers wrote: post #6

Author is using Microsoft and Windows interchangeably, this post is only about Windows. Gaming is a bigger business for Microsoft than Windows and that can only ever be consumer focused. There's no mention of Xbox, nor an awareness that Microsoft published games are playable on the Steam Machine.

I don't think gaming is really bigger than windows. Gaming revenue is 23B in 2025 and Windows+Devices is 17B, so just in this metrics they're already close; but you have to factor how much of their 120B Office+Productivity line on their annual report only exist because people use Windows. If you take LinkedIn and Dynamics out of the equation you get approximately 100B in Office, Teams, SharePoint and stuff like that…

Microsoft is pushing the web-based O365 really hard tho.
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