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Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

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Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#51

Post by bestnameever »

frameset wrote: post #26
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.

It's telling that to defend Apple against the charge of stagnation you immediately attacked Windows.

They only attacked Windows at the very end of their statement.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#52

Post by bee_rider »

hirsin wrote: post #13
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.

Yes, the article should really be titled "Is Windows just tech debt to Microsoft?" and could have been published five or six years ago.

It would be a short article.

“Yah”

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#53

Post by raziel2701 »

cratermoon wrote: post #10
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.

Microsoft has definitely angered consumers in the gaming space. Look what they've done to Minecraft, or the formerly beloved studios they bought out. The Game Pass price hike was not well-received.

Yeah there's lots of complaining but until they move to linux, stop buying their games and cancel their subscriptions nothing will change in the enshittification path.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#54

Post by Spivak »

blizdiddy wrote: post #3
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Yeah, this book was hugely influential https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF... And came to the conclusion that many firms like DEC and Xerox did not sufficiently move to new technology because their customers were not interested and didn’t feel served by it, at least not until it had decades to improve. Today we have the FOMO dilemma where executives all read that book and no way they are goin…

The “CTO” at my small employer used this book to explain why we needed to stick with Perl and Oracle 9i in 2020.

It sounds like your CTO took the opposite message of the book. Well the modern interpretation anyway. But can't really argue with not rewriting working code, even the Oracle licensing is probably is probably nothing in terms of cost. Might wanna update to a supported version though.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#55

Post by mschuster91 »

eviks wrote: post #49
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #16

A more interesting question to me (and one where MSFT employees here would have some insight) is to what degree is Windows' recent ABYSMAL fucking quality the result of AI, outsourcing, or bad management? You can also feel the difference in healthy employees vs. unhealthy, when you switch between something like VSCode (polished, fast, intelligent UI, not buggy, consistently improves) and Explorer (paleolithically slo…

> VSCode (polished, fast, ...) and Explorer (paleolithically slow, In what world is VSCode fast when its startup time is multiples of Explorer (which had in recent news decided to preload itself to mask that issue) and they are the result of exactly the same fundamental shift from native to web native

The competition is IntelliJ, which can be slow as molasses.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#56

Post by chongli »

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.

I prefer fusion power as the go-to vapourware technology. It’s been “10-20 years out” for 70 years and counting.

I don’t see any reason to believe that “AGI office workers” will be ready to go by 2030. All signs right now are pointing to a looming plateau in their capabilities.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#57

Post by Nextgrid »

llbbdd wrote: post #33
bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

No, consumers are not tech debt to Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft is shifting away from consumer technology. The difference is Microsoft is squeezing every last drop of profit from consumers on their way out. That’s not debt, that’s an asset. In 25 years Microsoft will be similar to Oracle. Maybe they’ll have investments in some consumer brands, but largely they will be selling to enterprises and governments.

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.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#58

Post by tremon »

GeekyBear wrote: post #24
crazygringo wrote: post #9

> Number one is that Microsoft just does not feel like a consumer tech company at all anymore. At least in terms of Windows/Office, Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. They've always been focused on corporate sales. There have always been consumer-focused side areas, from Bob to Encarta to MSN to Xbox. But Microsoft's bread and butter has always been corporations. I don't understand how the author think…

> Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. The Zune wasn't consumer tech? Windows 95 was definitely consumer tech. Windows XP was about making the Windows NT line accessible for home users going forward. Weirdly, Windows Phone was aimed at consumers at a time when they really could have leveraged integrations with products like Exchange and Office to stand out.

They already had Windows CE and ActiveSync, the bane of many an IT support worker. It might be they expected phones to remain consumer-only, and the business world to keep using PDAs.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#59

Post by Mountain_Skies »

bestnameever wrote: post #51
frameset wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's telling that to defend Apple against the charge of stagnation you immediately attacked Windows.

They only attacked Windows at the very end of their statement.

And the second sentence.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#60

Post by sevensor »

robotswantdata wrote: post #37
qgin wrote: post #17

Nobody seems to want to use Copilot, but Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing. They can just provision however many virtual coworkers to a Microsoft Teams instance and you'll be handing off documents and chatting with the AGI workers pretty much as you would any other remote worker. Microsoft doesn't have to be first or best here. Just owning the plumbing of so many presen…

For the average office task they don’t seem far off being competent, at least to the average workers quality. Ai builder with gpt5 + workflow triggers is very capable already. 1-2 more model generation hops needed plus a bit more “agent” plumbing before its game over for the excel and word jobs.

Which average office tasks would those be? Writing project proposals? Putting budget numbers into a shared spreadsheet? Composing a progress report? Preparing presentation slides for an executive status update meeting? Writing performance reviews? Taking mandatory compliance training? Going to planning meetings?

One or two of these, I could see. Automated progress reports would be nice. But a lot of them aren’t about document generation, but about human accountability, about being a person who commits to something in writing. Automating away paper pushers means all the accountability lands on their bosses, leaving them nowhere to hide. It will be quite something if we manage to rewrite the corporate social context like this.

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