Reply to post: Re: Sad really to see MS in such a state now

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Updraft102

Re: Sad really to see MS in such a state now

MS is now stuck in the 90's, they have no choice but to try to keep Windows desktop relevant despite the everyone slowly going mobile and cloud services.

Not everyone. Not every computing-related task lends itself to one of these toys people call smart phones... real work is still done on real hardware, and a lot of us still (and will always) prefer PCs instead of "fondleslabs."

I question how much "going mobile" is happening these days. How long have smartphones been around? It seems to me that everyone who was going to go mobile would have done so by now. My doctor's office has PCs in every exam room, and so does my pet's veterinarian, and my dentist. They're used for everything now, including the display of X-ray images on their large screens. Am I supposed to believe that these are going to go away and be replaced by a six inch smart phone, with the older-than-a-millennial doctor squinting at the tiny screen? Mobility, in this case, isn't needed; the exam room is a fixed location, and trying to cram a smart phone into that setting because "the world is going mobile" would just be stupid.

So yeah, PC sales are declining. PCs used to be obsolete in a year, and now a six year old PC is still competitive with brand new gear (I am using one that old to write this). People don't buy PCs every year or two now... they're like any other mature market, where people only buy new when the old one no longer works. Like toasters, microwave ovens, and refrigerators-- none of which are considered obsolete or "in trouble" because people use them until they die instead of replacing perfectly good kit every other year just because.

These PCs still need an operating system, and until recently, that would usually have been Windows... but now Windows is a "cloud service," not an OS, so what is a person who doesn't wish to be "serviced" by Microsoft (aka "everyone") to do?

If Windows 10 is supposed to be Microsoft's attempt to keep desktop Windows relevant, I have to laugh at the irony-- I've been one of the Windows/PC stalwarts who has used Windows for approaching three decades now, and now that I've done my bit to make MS what it is today, they give me... this? I'm using Linux Mint to type this right now, and that's wholly because of Windows 10. If their desperate attempt to keep Windows alive is killing Windows, what then?

I'm not certain that MS wants Windows to be relevant or alive. None of the antics of Microsoft make any sense if you presuppose that MS wants to keep Windows vibrant and healthy going forward. If you consider that perhaps MS is trying to monetize Windows and squeeze Windows customers for all they are worth in the short term, while giving it the bare minimum of maintenance and testing possible so that they can save even more money, with the eventual goal of destroying Windows so they can simply write it off and forget it ever existed... then it makes perfect sense. Revenues from Windows will go up, stock prices will rise, and people will cheer as the new CEO struts around and pats himself on the back for getting Microsoft's groove back, while the product that got MS to where it is now is chipped away and sold as scrap, bit by bit, until nothing's left. Most analysts will not notice this... they will just see the increased Windows revenues and pronounce Windows healthy, even though the revenues are only up because it's being liquidated. Microsoft has a lot of lock-in, and people (including the corporate decision makers) will initially tolerate the monetization abuse, so it will take a while to reach the breaking point and for the exodus to begin. Only when it does will the analysts begin to catch on to the liquidation of Windows. They'll think it was a recent thing; they will never realize that the intentional destruction of Windows began in 2015.

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