Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

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"Microsoft made Windows 10 exactly the same as Mac OS, iOS or Android"

...which is precisely what a large portion of the userbase who chose Microsoft did not want.

In fact the upgrade is still free through the "assistive technologies" loophole, which while MS has officially said they would close "very soon"...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4vmz19/regarding...

...that was 7 months ago and yet the page is still up and AFAICS lets you download the upgrade installer.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgra...

(I have not tried actually running the installer, because I have no intention to deliberately use Windows 10.)

Also, MS has posted the full ISOs for free download on their site, so if you're really desperate and know how, you could just download them and crack it yourself. That would be unheard of a few years ago. The general message seems to be louder than before, although it has been the same for many years: if you really don't want to pay for it, we still want you to use Windows 10.

> "Microsoft made Windows 10 exactly the same as Mac OS, iOS or Android" ...which is precisely what a large portion of the userbase who chose Microsoft did not want.

Do you have any evidence that it's a large proportion of the user base? Windows 10 already makes up the majority of PC usage share in the USA and the UK (on Statcounter), and Microsoft says corporate adoption is at unprecedented levels for a new version of Windows. (Mostly pilots at this stage, obviously.)

More people use Window 10 than have used all versions of Mac OS going back to 1984, and in its first month, it had more users than Linux got after 20-odd years.

There are always hold-outs: I gather some people still cling to OS/2 and maybe even Amigas. There used to be a cult that said you'd have to prize XP out of their cold dead hands.

However, the fact is that Windows 10 absolutely has to work for the US Defense Department (which is already switching to Windows 10), Bank of America and practically all the S&P500, so you can be confident that it will.

>if you really don't want to pay for it, we still want you to use Windows 10.

Hasn't that always been Microsoft's modus operandi? They could have cracked down on pirated versions of their software (Windows, Office), but they didn't because they knew that piracy helped in making their software the de-facto standard.

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