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Comment by ynniv | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they already own a huge part of it. If they don't care, they should sell it to someone who does.

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They're not abandoning Windows or the ecosystem. This is just the end of it as the tip of the spear/driving force for MS strategy. Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure.

One of the points the article makes is that Ballmer's MS would do things like not release Office for iOS because that would potentially eat into Windows marketshare. That no longer will happen. MS sees its more important to get o365 everywhere they can.

From my perspective, switching small businesses over to Exchange Online and other o365 services - The future is bright for MS in that space. These SMBs we've switched over have gone from using a version of Office they purchased forever ago and an old Exchange license to paying 50-100 a month for Office 365.

Not saying that you are wrong, but iOS office was in development long before Ballmer left, so never isn’t as true as “not soon enough.”

I agree that getting Office to run on Android and iOS is a bright future, but that doesn't mean you put Windows in the corner with "some other stuff". Maybe there are too many people on it and they've gotten too comfortable? Spin it out into a company with half the staff and let it soak up its own sun.

The problem with Windows is operating systems are a commodity. You shouldn't care about it. You are about opening your documents on your desktop and phone - you don't even care what program opens the documents.

Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs.

Which is to say Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.

If that were true, Linux on the desktop would have already won and this decision wouldn't be controversial. I think what's preventing this is that making a productive desktop operating system is more difficult than we think.

No. Linux on the desktop has some specific list of pros/cons. Windows can be better by enough, even if inertia is the only advantage.

Isn't that my argument?

You seem to be arguing that is enough to make windows not a commodity.

The desktop matters less and less.

The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.

Not at all; if you want to consume a lot and create a little then your thesis is right, but the desktop is king for creators. There are a slew of very mature Windows only software out there serving many fields of endeavour for which there are no competitors in either FOSS or other OSs.

> There are a slew of very mature Windows only software out there serving many fields of endeavour for which there are no competitors in either FOSS or other OSs.

Can you list some? That sort of software is my favorite genre and I'm always interested to hear about different ones.

Apologies for the delay in replying. I use MS Project and an add-on called SSI Tools daily, both essential for CPM based project management. Also MS Outlook plus Clear Context for PIM and communications functionality. There's also MindManager which is a highly functional mind mapper plus a couple of plug ins for it.

Eh. Creator software comes in two tiers. Dilettante tier (e.g. lower-end Photoshop) is actively ditching desktop altogether, while higher-end (think of Color, the motion picture colorizing system) either run on Macs or on such dedicated machines that they might run Wintel but are not "desktops" anymore.

(Then there's scientific software -- Stata and Matlab and that stuff. But ten years ago Matlab, like gagh, was best served in higher-end minicomputers and now everything is Python and can be ran on a cheap VPS or on AWS.)

Besides the sheer gobsmacking convenience, there's also the fact that it's way more fun for bean-counters to have higher OPEX in exchange of lower CAPEX. It really kicks the llama's ass.

Are you kidding? I'd be ecstatic to go purchase a new boxed copy of Windows 11 Pro 2018, so long as it was basically Windows 7 shell with Windows 10 kernel and security updates, no UWP/Cortana/store/telemetry addons, and settings that stay set.

I'd even buy the Windows 12 Pro 2021 version when the time came for fundamental internals shifting like wider WSL access.

You might but no one else would. Most people use the OS that came with their computer until it dies.

You might but no one else would.

I would. An update to Windows 7 that worked well with modern hardware and had modern security updates but otherwise ignored almost everything Microsoft have done in more recent versions would be a significant improvement on anything currently available for those of us who value stability and security over bells and whistles.

I would and have. My last PC was built with Vista. I bought 7 when it came out and then 8. I'm far from the usual user though. My point was that regular people will not.

> Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.

That is surely overstating it, at least for definitions of "long" meaning <= 20 years. If you assume that Windows is more or less "done" their engineering expenses could be low, and revenue significant, merely serving the corporate and various niche (gaming, etc) markets which are still heavily bound to Windows. Their market share is declining in some niches (such as CAD) and maybe even overall (to OS X), but negative revenue and market share growth does not necessarily mean quick extinction. Some dinosaurs take decades to bleed out.

> Nadella is (rightly, imo) focusing more on o365 and Azure.

Windows is a perfect example of no focus at all. Maybe this makes sense for a true mainstream OS.

To be honest, I wonder if Azure, Exchange online or Office 365 can really be their future. Why not use AWS, Scaleway or a local service. It's cheaper and better.

> macOS isn't business-level stable

amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook.

Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it worked in the past) that would be their Kodak moment. All Nadela is doing here is emphasizing efforts on staying competitive in cloud/o365 which is where he thinks they can continue to grow and stay competitive and bring in revenues from enterprise clients. Less and less companies want to lease/run their own windows/database servers, and with technologies like containers a lot of companies are now going with open source solutions.

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

they can still take advantage of existing cloud technologies running on their own servers.

And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.

This is where Microsoft is going with Azure. Compared to other platforms, setting up a local instance of Azure is pretty painless and allows you to spin up resources locally that are identical to the Cloud.

You're thinking about your own app servers. No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it.

> No one cares about the cost of Windows when you're running someone else's proprietary desktop software on it

This is a small and shrinking corner of the market. Valuable. But still a corner.

It may be shrinking, but it isn't small.

> the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux

They haven't really up until now have they? MS licenses are not a big part of the IT budget compared to the people needed to run an in-house data center (typically staffed 24x7)

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter.

No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.

During a AWS demonstration at work. The Amazon guy specifically mentioned, AWS is a more lucrative option for large companies than small ones, simply because it was an easy one time way of culling large teams in big companies who were adding very little to nothing in return in value.

Yeah, that ought to be a great sales line.

I'd be wary about how the real world actually deals with that, but there is no lack of large companies jumping on short term costs cuts without looking at the risks.

From the point of view of upper management in a large enterprise, paying a third party with whom they have an SLA and someone to sue for infrastructure which may go down vs. paying their own staff to build and maintain the infrastructure that may go down often either isn't a difference in risk or, actually, the former seems to be better-managed risk. It's the same reason they often prefer to buy support contracts even for OSS rather than supporting it internally. Part of the analysis that probably gets overlooked from the outside is that employees aren't just a predictable cost they also are a risk.

> isn't a difference in risk

Really? People incentivised into looking for your best interests vs. a managed organization incentivised into dissolving your contract and gaining on average. I can't imagine anything that could create more different risks.

What people seem to do all the time is looking at an SLA and believing the real world must behave the way things are on paper; because there's a signature there. People do this even after being recently burned by the same partner. Some people have the same trust for in house staff, but the usual on high management is to have the exact opposite bias.

Hmm, not convinced about that.

My Boss is smart and he'd wonder what the business plan would be should say 5 years down the line you want to move away from the cloud for some reason.

You threw away decades of accumulated knowledge about the company and it's systems to save some money upfront.

He thinks on a longer scope than most bosses I've known though (largely because his family own the group so he doesn't have to answer to shareholders).

But if your business is to produce, say, cars, why would you want to maintain this knowledge in house. You certainly want to understand your systems, but do you really want to deal with physical datacentres, updating the underlying OS, replacing drives, etc. You kind of want it outsourced to specialists.

It seems like my comment is being evaluated without proper context. Sure, some companies are moving some of their data into someone else's datacenter. Is that 50% of companies? Are they moving their core business data? Like when there's a network outage, they can't do business? When there's a partial data loss, they close their doors?

When we're talking about an entire ecosystem going away, the new one has to have almost 100% adoption. Windows desktop is going to exist for a really long time, especially when everyone else is giving up on desktops.

Those 2 statements are completely different issues.

And yes, companies are entirely moving their systems and data. Salesforce runs their sales team. Oracle and SAP runs their ERP and finance. And now AWS/Azure runs their IT infrastructure. They use email from Google or Microsoft, along with hundreds of other SaaS products used day to day by employees. New startups are even more invested and start using other vendors for every non-core activity from day one. This is what a strong global business ecosystem enables and is a massive advantage for everyone.

With the developed world being increasingly dependent on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, the next big fuck up is going to be interesting. We have seen multiple datacentres from the same cloud provider going offline simultaneously in the past. And it is safe to assume that hostile foreign state actors took notice of this critical dependency. Whether it is because of malice or mistakes, I can’t help thinking that this massive concentration is like a snowball increasing in size while it’s going down the slope.

Indeed. If/When another major conflict comes to the developed world, you better believe major cloud DCs will be pretty high up on the cyber and (if it comes to it) kinetic target lists. Never have so few facilities been relied upon for so much by so many.

Which is why Microsoft has on-prem and hybrid offerings for most of their products. Actually this is one place where they’re way ahead of AWS and GCE.

Same with SAP. They have a cloud offering (Hana Enterprise Cloud) which can connect to existing on-premise SAP deployments. That way, they can up-sell existing customers into the cloud and then slowly migrate them to even more subscriptions.

Disclaimer: I work at SAP, but not in the same division. And not in sales either, so take my word with a grain of salt. ;)

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter.

I guess the 5 years I spent at a massive tech company shutting down our datacenters didn't happen and all the recruiters offering me huge amounts of money to move their stuff into aws aren't real.

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter

[CITATION NEEDED]

This is very myopic. Establishes businesses are huge customers (both current customers and potential customers), for cloud providers.

>Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter

You are incredibly unbelievably wrong here. I work for a vendor known for incredibly high prices and have knowledge of basically the entire infrastructure of every one of my clients, and nearly all of them have a massive cloud strategy that's in-place right now. I even have clients shipping their security and compliance logs to the cloud, or sending them from cloud to cloud.

Actually the more medium-sized businesses are the ones most hesitant to move to the cloud, because of the lack of cloud expertise on their teams. But even then... it's still a huge strategy. They're all consolidating physical datacenters and using Amazon or Azure or Google.

I suppose time will tell... Many companies will never do this.

On the topic of cloud strategies and infrastructure, what are your thoughts on the Mulesoft acquisition? Does this foray into infrastructure software really make it that much easier for CRM to sell the rest of their SaaS stuff? Obviously a lot of CRM and potential CRM customers have hybrid models today, does this really help them dive two feet in with Salesforce for their pending 'digital transformation'?

Also, I don't want to get off topic but how does SIEM space fit into the infrastructure stack you see in the future? In security, what about the firewall vendors trying to become the central hub for managing the new security needs brought about by the cloud (CASB, endpoint, virtual firewalls, etc?). What about SaaS only Iidentity & access management solutions like OKta?--I hear they are a game changer, but is a cloud-only solution really the best positioned seller for something like this, especially considering the hybrid structure of most large orgs today (on-prem & off-prem/public cloud)?

I can’t talk too much about Salesforce and Mulesoft since I’ve never used them and don’t have many clients asking me about them.

When it comes to next-gen security appliances, I see them enhancing the SIEM, but not replacing it. Too many regulations require centralized log management, and organizations depend on a central alerting and monitoring platform. I do see these security platforms making the SIEM cheaper and dumber, though. Whether it’s a storage-based pricing like Splunk or an event Rate pricing like QRadar, licensing costs a lot. Which means it costs a lot to feed a bunch of dumb logs into a system that makes information out of dumb logs. As long as you already have a Palo Alto, you might as well feed the IDPS logs into your SIEM and forget the rest: it’s fewer logs, cheaper licensing, and less hardware needed on the SIEM. You already have the Palo doing the intelligence.

With regards to hybrid clouds that are popular today, you see a lot of SIEMs go to the cloud. You can ship logs cloud-to-cloud, which saves bandwidth backhauling it to the enterprise. It is a challenge for security logging to get data from there though. Oftentimes it costs extra to send logs, or can’t be done at all. Amazon wants you to use Cloudwatch. Microsoft wants you to use Security Center. It’s a pain to centralize it all. That’s going to have to change.

Thanks. Interesting....

To your last point: sounds like it should change, but not that it necessarily will. I can’t fathom the cloud providers would allow an independent third party come in and take this business from them, despite how much easier it would be for the customer.

I thought splunk was usage based pricing, not storage based? But yes, I have heard similar things on how quickly it can get expensive, sometimes without any warning when they get a bill 10x what they expected...

Thanks for your time.

You have entirely missed the last 2 decades of this happening and at a rapidly accelerating pace. I'm not sure what you think "business critical functions" are but every company outsources at least some important components that could easily put them out of business if something goes wrong, whether that's cloud servers or payroll or manufacturing supply chains, etc. It's called risk analysis and yield management and is well understood by every successful team.

When it comes to "someone else's datacenter", I think you'd be surprised at just how few companies even own a datacenter, let alone their own racks. Even the major clouds lease their own space from actual datacenter builders and operators.

"Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter."

Established businesses do this all the time.

>No one has an Android device on their desk at work

If you mean as in a desktop PC then no, but smartphones is becoming more and more important and Apple is not strong outside the US. Around here almost everyone has an Android phone as a work phone and I see more Chromebooks by the day.

I also want to point out that i believe that saying they abandon the ecosystem is missing the point. They don't. They just don't let Windows dictate what the rest of the business does.

I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense.

There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server.

With Android being a clusterfuck of vendor specific bloatware and not having a single concept of a clean install, Microsoft should focus on keeping a clean Windows install equivalent to a fresh Mac install.

I agree with what you're saying and I think they need to keep Windows 10 around at least for a little while longer.

Everyone hates when Microsoft changes something core and foundational about Windows and thus there has been little change in certain areas of the OS for the last two decades. That build up of cruft has become untenable and Microsoft attempted to address major pain points like the Control Panel with Windows 8, then 8.1, and still in 10. The problem is that rewriting something like the Control Panel would consume 100% of developer resources for an entire OS Dev cycle. Can you imagine if Microsoft announced Windows 11 and the only difference between it and 10 was a new control panel?

Windows 10 is the perfect opportunity to start fixing cruft. It's already controversial but not universally hated, they got the majority of people to adopt it through free upgrades, and they've introduced the semi annual upgrade cycle that allows them to gradually introduce foundational changes gradually. With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.

> With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.

And with every shift towards ads or trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop, they alienate users off of it. I switched to OS X as soon as I saw the writing on the wall with Win8 (and Wine on OS X got stable enough to play GTA San Andreas, tbh).

Also, I wonder if it would be possible to get Windows 7 userland to run on a Win10 (and with it, WSL) kernel. Now that's something I'd switch back to Windows for.

> And with every shift towards ads

You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices? Or do you mean up I have to open the App Store to apply MacOS updates and click past the ads?

Windows 10 adds some shortcuts to the start menu during the bi-annual updates, they're annoying but once they're deleted they don't come back. They also have an add in Explorer for OneDrive that also goes away permanently when dismissed.

If I had to choose between MacOS/iOS Ads, and Windows 10 Ads, I'd choose Windows but ideally they'd both stop it.

> trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop

Windows 8.1 and 10 don't require UWP apps to be full screen. And actually the Settings App in Windows 10 is fantastic because it responsively adapts and is usable whatever size you make it.

MacOS on the other hand won't allow you to resize most settings windows and they're fixed to a size that's comparable with a 90s era Macintosh despite MacOS only working on machines with high resolution displays.

> I switched to OS X ... with Win8

So you've never used Windows 10 first hand then and you're just spouting things you've read to validate your decision?

> You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices?

wtf? I don't use iCloud and don't get this nag. I only get a single question when I reimage my test computers or wipe a test device, that's it.

> Windows 8.1 and 10 don't require UWP apps to be full screen.

The start menu is enough for me to permanently turn me away. Or this stupid "tile" interface. What's that crap even for?

> So you've never used Windows 10 first hand then and you're just spouting things you've read to validate your decision?

No, it's these things that I always encounter when having to fix other people's computers. Plus I do not really like that Windows 10 has un-opt-out-able telemetry (yes, you can turn it off by hacks, but every random "update" will turn it back on again).

> I don't use iCloud and don't get this nag.

Are you signed into it though? I'm not and it nags me to sign in.

> The start menu is enough for me to permanently turn me away.

Which one? 8, 8.1 and 10 all have very different start menus.

> Or this stupid "tile" interface. What's that crap even for?

In Windows 10 it's not unlike Dashboard in MacOS.

> Are you signed into it though? I'm not and it nags me to sign in.

No, I don't use it in any form.

> Which one? 8, 8.1 and 10 all have very different start menus.

And they're all not the Win95-to-Win-7-era one. I need a working menu with nothing else, especially not tiles or ads.

> In Windows 10 it's not unlike Dashboard in MacOS.

Which Apple doesn't force one to use, thank God. Programs folder in the Dock, that's it (although, I admit, I'd prefer a list/menu...).

> Are you signed into it though? I'm not and it nags me to sign in.

That's not an 'ad' - there is a ton of OS-level functionality that's tied to your iCloud ID and account, you can ignore it if you want, but it's not an 'ad' if they want you to use it...

>Windows 10 adds some shortcuts to the start menu during the bi-annual updates, they're annoying but once they're deleted they don't come back. They also have an add in Explorer for OneDrive that also goes away permanently when dismissed.

Also ads on the lock screen, ads in the start menu ("app suggestions") and (Edge) ads from the toolbar. Just off top of my head, maybe I missed some.

Win 8.1 does require UWP apps to be fullscreen. Win 10 does not.

>You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices? Or do you mean up I have to open the App Store to apply MacOS updates and click past the ads?

I don't get asked to use iCloud every time I unlock a Mac. Additionally, I don't recall a Mac ever displaying ads in their file explorer asking me to upgrade my SkyDrive storage. Nor do I ever recall Mac OS ever installing third party bloatware apps and games and making them front and center in the Start menu. I also don't recall ever having to proactively prevent the mass collection of "telemetry" data when installing Mac OS.

> I also don't recall ever having to proactively prevent the mass collection of "telemetry" data when installing Mac OS.

To be fair, it will ask you once at profile creation if you agree to sending telemetry. To the best of my knowledge though, Apple respects the choice and does not reset it quietly like Windows does.

Windows 10 privacy controls are intentionally designed to be skipped by the average consumer.

Let's have a look at the "Get Going Fast" screen

https://media.askvg.com/articles/images5/Customize_Privacy_S...

You'll see at the very bottom a Customize Settings button that is nearly invisible. It's located on the left side, shaded in a color that is different from the other buttons and the text size is substantially smaller than the standard button text size.

The majority of users will have missed this and just clicked on the Use Express Settings button.

Let's have a look at what is turned on by default:

Personalization

1. Personalize your speech, inkling input and typing by sending contacts and calendar details, along with other associated input data to Microsoft.

2. Send typing and input data to Microsoft to improve the recognition and suggestion platform.

3. Let apps use your advertising ID for experience across apps.

4. Let Skype (if installed) help you connect with friends in your address book and verify your mobile number. SMS and data charges may apply.

Location

1. Turn on Find My Device and let Windows and apps request your location, including location history and send Microsoft and trusted partners location data to improve location services.

Connectivity and error reporting

1. Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots. Not all networks are secure.

2. Automatically connect to networks shared by your contacts.

3. Automatically connect to hotspots temporarily to see if paid Wi-Fi services are available.

4. Send full error and diagnostic information to Microsoft.

Browser, protection, and update

1. User SmartScreen online services to help protect against malicious content and downloads in sites loaded by Windows browsers and Store apps.

2. User page prediction to improve reading, speed up browsing, and make your overall experience better in Windows browsers. Your browsing data will be sent to Microsoft.

3. Get updates from and send update to others PCs on the Internet to speed up app and Windows update downloads.

> With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable

And some folks get the really big money for "driving business initiative", "spearheading new projects" and stuff like that.

How is Android relevant? It's not a PC OS, and doesn't seem like a real Windows alternative in the same breath as MacOS or Linux.

Project Treble should help for your last point.

> hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server.

What's the use case for a "hard core Linux dev" and WSL? I've tried it. It failed miserably for Rails development when it was released. I logged bugs. I went back to what I was doing. Maybe it's gotten good now?

>With Android being a clusterfuck of vendor specific bloatware and not having a single concept of a clean install, Microsoft should focus on keeping a clean Windows install equivalent to a fresh Mac install.

Speaking of Windows OEM bloatware clusterfucks here's your typical Windows HP OEM Windows clusterfuck:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1GyAI5d-Yw&feature=youtu.be...

The author didn't characterize his position accurately. He meant "Windows Server", not "Windows Desktop". Similar to how IBM sold off it's laptop business to Lenovo, the strategy is basically saying that "We're a business services company, there's no growth left in the end-user ecosystem anymore, because all of that growth is in mobile, which we suck at, so let's just double down on what we are growing at: cloud services and office productivity services".

That Windows we all know, both desktop and server side, is not dead. The economics on the server side are diminishing (20~30 year outlook) and Microsoft won't be around if they don't do something about it now.

IMHO it's a very smart strategy, people just didn't understand what Ben was saying because he didn't articulate it correctly (which I do find with his content, but it's less often the case)

If that's true, yes, Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. It wouldn't explain the remapping of Office, though.

Office is Office365 rebranded - which just means the lock-in is a monthly subscription instead of a license. The lock-in is further exploited because email is the cornerstone of any business productivity suite and it'll be hosted on Azure now (which is a huge lock-in to their ecosystem).

> Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time.

Most definitely not. There are a ton of Microsoft Certified Somethings that will refuse to administrate Linux servers unless their life depends on it.

Source: I work at SAP's internal cloud unit. We have to support Windows VMs (begrudgingly, if I may say), even for payloads that could run on Linux.

Inflexible workers will be separated from their jobs eventually, its just a matter of time.

What makes you think that? Those inflexible workers are also those who make the purchasing decisions. A shop full of Windows admins will not switch to Linux unless forced to (and vice versa).

And many will eventually be outsourced. In fact, systems administration as a profession is on the downswing due to the cloud. This site itself is largely focused on "disrupting" inefficiency with automation.

Not only due to cloud; even if you have local bunch of immutable OS instances like CoreOS or RHEL atomic running containers, you don't need a big staff babysitting server OSes.

Yes, conflated cloud and containers in my head when writing that comment.

This article is way too long to make a simple point - which is that Windows is not being abandoned but is no longer the flagship. Cloud infrastructure and services are leading the way, so Azure and AI is now the forefront.

Sticking with something just because it's a large majority is a great way to fail when that something fades into the background.

> macOS isn't business-level stable.

Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.

Business is full of "just good enough" solutions, and loves control. Apple has shown that breaking backwards compatibility doesn't bother them, they're not going to build IT control features to the same level, and ... maybe macOS is going to be sacrificed at the alter of iOS? We're not sure these days. Meanwhile, custom Windows software from forever ago works just fine today, and that's good for business.

The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient.

Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well).

What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning. Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?) Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows.

But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just log in to their box from anywhere.

Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.

Agreed. To get anything close to this with Apple you need to go to third party tools such as Jamf.

I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.

That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.

> The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.

From the medium to enterprise range, maintenance and stability issues are often one in the same. Breaking automated maintenance and/or deployment leads to instability.

Keep in mind I don't mean "kernel panic" levels of instability or even "programs crashing" levels of instability. The smallest of changes can cause a mountain of work in large environments. Simply changing the icon of an often used program can cause a deluge of tickets.

This level of stability and control is something that macOS doesn't even come close to recognizing.

I can agree with the stability of the tooling since Office products have become the de-facto standard of "enterprising" and MS doesn't really sweat herself to keep OSX tooling pristine. The original statement sounds like it is a statement about the stability of the operating system itself, which I'm sure it is good enough to support personal and business computing needs.

> As far as stability goes, macs are top notch.

My MBP and its periodic gray screen of death begs to differ. Apple really needs to shore up its QA.

It's possible they mean stability in terms of length of support. macOS as an operating system is more "user-stable" if you will, than Windows- i.e. less crashing. But Windows is that way because of the massive legacy interoperability in that codebase. Windows didn't just work because of marketing, it worked because when Microsoft supports something they do it for Enterprise-lengths of time- and with the proper Enterprise tooling ecosystem that Windows has. Ironic that what, probably (some of this is assumption), makes it attractive to Enterprises also probably makes it difficult for them to deliver a OS as solid, to the user, and excluding High Sierra, as macOS.

They literaly broke enterprise provisioning between the last beta and final release of High Sierra pretty much preventing update of huge fleets of enterprise MacBooks. That's not something business customers appreciate. And that's only the tip of the iceberg ignoring things like my MacBook deciding to fail to boot after a High Sierra security update.

I always thought one of Apples strengths was that they ignored the enterprise market, Windows has always been compromised by the need to support both home users and corporations.

Re: seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of

I suspect it's a mere marketing strategy to jack up their stock price and gain a "cool factor". MS will go wherever the market/profits leads them.

Their cloud is commercially successful, a rarity for new MS products actually, and that's where they currently see future growth. But if Windows stays a nice cash cow, they'll quietly milk it.

"Productivity" applications still need a real GUI, something the Web has yet to do right cross-browser: CSS/JS/DOM is a mess. I believe we need a WYSIWYG standard to get GUI's right. The server side can still scale the window & widgets per device size under WYSIWYG, so it's a myth that WYSIWYG is anti-mobile. The client-side auto-flow approach sucks for efficient UI's.

> Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of?

They aren't abandoning the desktop Windows ecosystem, they’ve just demoted Windows from a single desktop and server org that the rest of the firm orbits to something that serves the areas where there actually is expected to be growth.

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