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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty neat, but Windows feels like it's in a weird place right now.

For gaming, Windows is awesome. But this machine would be terrible for anything other than casual games.

For other software, everything interesting and exciting is coming out on iOS, macOS, or Android. Outside of gaming, there doesn't seem to be any excitement or energy behind Windows anymore. When was the last time Twitter was buzzing with talk about some Windows program?

Of course, the big market for this is running Office and a browser and that's probably enough to justify the machine. That might be a big niche, it just isn't very interesting.

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> When was the last time Twitter was buzzing with talk about some Windows program?

To be fair when was the last time it was buzzing about some iOS or MacOS app that wasn't just an Electron app that was also available on Windows.

I remember the times when a Mac/iOS app like Clear or Coda would come out and everyone would be so hyped about it but it seems as far as I can tell those days are long gone. Which is sad as a Mac user but since the app store raced to the bottom it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort for developers to ship 3 highly tuned versions of their software for 3 Apple platforms.

I mean you can look yourself, look at the top ten free/paid on the Mac and iOS app stores, it's grim.

Sketch

Sketch is almost 8 years old, and was released before the AppStore Mania died out and before Electron/CEF became a de-facto app platform for desktops.

Windows has other market leading software that isn't on a Mac. 3ds Max comes to mind.

If you are going to say an 8 year old program is tired, then why mention 3ds Max? It has to be 20 years old by now.

Grandparent comment pointed out that there are no recent big Mac-specific AppKit/Cocoa-based blockbuster apps in a post-Electron world.

Parent mentions Sketch and a counter-example.

I pointed out it wasn't really valid.

Mentioning 3dsMax was indeed inconsiderate of me, because it didn't add up to a discussion and subverted it instead. My bad.

> Electron/CEF became a de-facto app platform for desktops.

Nah, like every fad it will join HTA in a couple of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

Though lots of designers are migrating to Figma, which is web-based and works just fine on Windows. (I'm a designer and just moved to Figma after 4 years on Sketch and am definitely seeing lots of peers do the same)

Pokemon Go?

Are you really playing Pokemon Go on your Macbook Air, Pixel Chromebook, or iPad?

The question was:

>when was the last time it was buzzing about some iOS or MacOS app that wasn't just an Electron app that was also available on Windows.

In the context of the release of a new Surface Tablet!

Surely one would typically buy a Surface Go and also buy an iPhone to play Pokemon Go.

You'd be surprised how many people play it on an iPad. You'd also be surprised at how many middle-aged to elderly play it. These two things may be correlated.

Pixelmator

Transmit 5. Tweetbot 3. OmniFocus 3. If it has to be something new, Retrobatch.

procreate - a painting app, exclusive to iOS is tremendous. There is simply no equivalent on any other platform.

> For other software, everything interesting and exciting is coming out on iOS, macOS, or Android. Outside of gaming, there doesn't seem to be any excitement or energy behind Windows anymore. When was the last time Twitter was buzzing with talk about some Windows program?

If you live in a Sillicon Valley / Apple tech bubble, then it might seem so. But that's just your filtered bubble and bias - because you're invested into other ecosystems, you of course follow people who gush over and praise those products.

There's plenty of software still constantly being released on the most popular operating sytem in the world. You just decided to ignore it all.

The iPad is my only Apple device. Most of the time I'm writing Windows desktop software in Visual Studio using C++.

I never decided to ignore Windows software at all but maybe you're right and I've inadvertently shielded myself from it. Somehow though, I still am seeing exciting projects in Linux (software defined radio has piqued my interest this week). I also see a lot of news around iOS and macOS stuff but maybe that's just because those platforms have so many high profile fans.

Aside from gamers, Windows feels mature and conservative. I run into a Windows fan about as often as I run into an Oracle fan.

So what's cool and new in the Windows ecosystem? Who are the fun startups focused on Windows?

"Aside from gamers" is an odd qualification. That's like saying "aside from SUVs and trucks, Ford is not doing well, so they stopped making sedans" or "aside from beer commercials, NFL games don't get many advertisers."

I've used Mac, Linux, and iOS for years and had long abandoned Windows, but when I built a game PC this winter, I bought a retail copy of Windows. Mac hardware is not upgradeable enough, and Linux takes too much time.

At this point it's not like Mac is some innovation hub either.

I'm guessing, the Surface Go wasn't designed with gamers in mind.

If Ford made a small, efficient engine I might ask what they are going to use it in. Aside from SUVs and trucks, what is it that people are buying from Ford that makes the small engine interesting?

Nobody is talking about cool new Windows software and so the Windows ecosystem feels stagnant. With the number of Windows machines out there, you know that can't be true.

>So what's cool and new in the Windows ecosystem?

Speaking as someone who's more of a designer, Octane Render which is a GPU accelerated rendering engine and Oculus Medium for VR sculpting both feel completely next generation VS anything on iOS/Mac.

(I know Octane technically ships for mac but it requires a Nvidia GPU which Apple hasn't shipped for many years)

Name some major new software for Windows (i.e., not updates of older applications). I'd especially be interested in whether there is new consumer software.

I'm not sure I understand the point of asking for the names of "major new software for Windows".

Most major areas of consumer software have been satisfied in some form or another on both of the dominant operating systems.

Is there any "major new software for Mac" that isn't simply a re-interpretation of something else that already exists?

It might just be a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence, but I hear much more about new software on macOS than I do on Windows even though there are 10 Windows machines out there for every Mac.

Pixelmator, Bear, Things, Highland, and Drafts are all newish Mac-only applications that I know about because of Twitter and podcasts. With Windows having an installed base an order of magnitude larger, I should be able to name 50 cool Windows applications and I can't think of many. ResophNotes is the last new application I installed.

Pixelmator and Things are hardly new. I've been off Mac for maybe four years, and I had been using those apps for at least a couple of years before I switched back to Windows.

As for Bear, Highland and Drafts, Bear is the only one worthy of mention. Highland and Drafts on the surface seem a lot like remixes of iAWriter to me.

Keep in mind that Mac users seem to be more likely (yeah, yeah, citation required) to evangelize apps than Windows users do.

As for cool Windows apps... off the top of my head:

I just bought a license of Groupy (https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/), and it was money well spent for me. I get that a future version of Windows will probably make it a feature, but I get a lot of value out of it now.

DisplayFusion (https://www.displayfusion.com/) is another utility I can't live without. It's great whether you use one or multiple monitors. If you are thinking of buying it, Steam is the cheapest way to get it on multiple computers.

People switching from Mac might like Quicklook (https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NV4BS3L1H4S).

If you've got a lot of sound sources and want to manage playback volumes, EarTrumpet is pretty great (https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH516XP).

Mailplane users on Mac would probably like Easymail on Windows (https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH626NC).

The first thing I always install on Windows is CMDer (http://cmder.net/), which is also great for switchers who think they're going to miss the Mac terminal.

Codesector (http://www.codesector.com/) makes a couple of great utilities worth paying for in Teracopy and DirectFolders.

> Mac users seem to be more likely [...] to evangelize apps than Windows users do

I 100% agree and I think it's a shame. There's not enough joy in Windows world.

Thank you for the list of applications. I'm going to check them out. Groupy looks immediately interesting to me because I prefer to work on a single monitor (I do use virtual desktops though).

Groupy is great. You can create your own "Coda" (the Panic app for Mac) by grouping Sublime, a shell and a browser in the same group. Makes development and testing much less painful on a single screen. I usually throw in a db query tool and source control app into the group as well.

Ah I was just missing Sets (which was in recent fast ring Windows builds, and does the same thing, but was pulled due to bugs and slowness). Giving Groupy a try as a replacement!

I should have said, 'name major new software for desktops'. There's plenty for mobile, by comparison.

> Most major areas of consumer software have been satisfied in some form or another on both of the dominant operating systems.

I think that attitude reflects a lack of innovation in both hardware and software for desktops/laptops. At least migrate some things from mobile, such as more cameras, touch, accelerometers, payment systems, etc. Why can't I pay online as easily on my laptop as I can on my phone? Where's the facial recognition logon?

>> At least migrate some things from mobile, such as more cameras, touch, accelerometers, payment systems, etc. Why can't I pay online as easily on my laptop as I can on my phone? Where's the facial recognition logon?

That's a hodgepodge of things in your list. Some of those are hardware (cameras, touch, accelerometers).

You make it sound like there's a huge divide between paying with your laptop (which is site based, not app based) compared to a phone. I personally don't think it's that much of a big difference (I use 1Password to fill in credit card fields, which works fairly well). I actually prefer to buy and pay for stuff on a computer over a phone, but that's just my own preference.

As for the facial recognition logon, you can always use Windows Hello if you've got a supported camera (which, by the way, relatively few people have). That API is available to Windows developers and has been used in apps in the Windows store.

> Where's the facial recognition logon?

Weird you mention this, the Surface line has been shipping this for years.

This will probably actually run more games than you'd expect. Intel does a pretty decent job with the iGPUs in their low power embedded processors. I'd expect anything from before 2010 or so to run fine, along with more modern e-sports type stuff. I bet it will run Fortnite just fine.

I have a Windows 10 tablet from 2015 with an Atom x5 Z8500, and it will run pretty much any game Valve has made - DOTA 2, anything running on the HL2 engine, etc - at 40+ fps in 720p. The iGPU in that thing has 12 EUs and will hit 600mhz, while the Pentium 4415Y in the Surface Go has 24 EUs and will hit 850mhz.

For years I used windows and Mac side by side and my impressions was always that windows was less refined but perfectly solid and slightly faster at first with a tendency to slow down over time and much better for games and 3d. For the last four years I’ve been Mac only but recently got two new windows laptops for testing. I don’t know what’s going on with windows. It’s far worse than it used to be. The UI is horribly inconsistent. Performance is randomly sluggish. The built in browser is unbearable. And even games don’t seem to run well.

The single worst thing is the way windows trackpads work. It feels like time traveling to 1997.

The day that I can just set my phone down in front of some monitors will be the day I am happy. I need Windows to do this and be able to run Visual Code at a minimum, preferably an instance of VC and 2 instances of Visual Studio. Also needs the bandwidth of 5G. 4G is almost there but just not quite enough. We live in rural West Georgia and DSL is the only game in town. Both parents work remotely at least 50% of the time and kids are going through GCA/K12.com because of accelerated school.

I need my only "hands on" compute platform to be a phone.

That was the great opportunity for windows phone. It's still there - the other players still haven't caught up with the powerful windows ecosystem yet.

Yeah the last I saw Continuum seemed dead. It made sense when Jobs took the iPod to the iPhone. It makes sense to scale back the OS and make the Phone the only desktop you will ever carry. Unfortunately I have to pay the bills and MS does that here right now.

> That was the great opportunity for windows phone. It's still there - the other players still haven't caught up with the powerful windows ecosystem yet.

Can't be done because there's no x86 smartphone chip. Intel, in their infinite brilliance, killed off their smartphone chip project in April of 2016.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/227523-intel-kills-upc...

Windows 10 runs on ARM, which should aromatically include most if not all Windows .net CLI application.

However, if MS got serious about this I suspect Intel would quickly slap an x86 chip together.

Wasn't there an HP-made phone that tried to do this with Windows Continuum?

It's not Windows but Samsung's Dex platform will let you run Linux on your phone and then connect to a monitor, keyboard, mouse via dock so that you can carry your desktop around with you in your pocket.

And I'm told it pairs well with shadow (gaming pc in the cloud).

Windows is definitely the worst part of anything Microsoft puts out.

I really hope there is a new, light and fast operating system being worked on in Microsoft Labs. Something with a Linux core for developers with a brand new desktop environment could compete with MacBooks.

I don't think they are.

For many years Microsoft Research worked on an entirely new OS, codename Midori (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)), and it actually went into the incubation phase (which is Microsoft speak for "This is no longer a research project. We are turning it into a product") Then it got cancel around 2 or 3 years ago … just before it otherwise would have become a beta.

Today, they are not working on a new OS AFAIK. They are working on something called Andromeda. They have been working on that for, I don't know, 4-5 years or something like that. It is not a new OS. It is windows 10, but they have turned it very very very modular. It has a new adaptive shell named cshell as its party trick. Andromeda is really about that shell. Not so much about the modularity.

The new shell, they are working on, can adapt to any screen size or form factor on the fly and enable Microsoft's wet dream: Turning a phone size device into a tablet sized device.

You know from sci-fi movies "stretchable screens". you have a small phone size device, you stretch it and suddenly you have a book/newspaper/something-with-a-bigger-screen devices. Then you squeeze it back into phone size and put it into the pocket.

Windows need a new shell for when those types of monitors become available and it is the redmonds wet dream to be the ones that comes with those devices.

You might have stumbled across articles lately that Microsoft is about to launch (or have cancelled launching) a new device with 2 screens that you can turn in to 1 screen and there by turning a phone size device into a tablet).

That is andromeda and apparently is has been delayed (or maybe cancelled. Who knows) because the software is not ready. The "not ready part" is this adaptable shell.

(https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-andromeda-everythin...)

It's hard to believe that such a stretchable device is feasible. Just can't imagine how that might work.

Windows 10 IoT Core lately (on the insider previews) has a graphical shell that is FAR beyond what I ever thought I'd see on that platform.

That platform is limited in ways that are difficult to describe succinctly, and even with those limitations, it is a useful platform for lightweight touch interfaces. Probably not as light as Linux can be made to be, but pretty freakin' lightweight, nonetheless.

The only graphical apps that run on IoT Core are UWP apps (except for browser applications) and UWP applications handle resizing and spontaneous display resizing and changes in orientation very well. Web browsers handle this fine also, of course.

I would bet that a motivated developer could create most of what you are describing relatively easily.

> Something with a Linux core for developers with a brand new desktop environment could compete with MacBooks.

I think that competing with MacBooks is first a matter of build quality. It's the hardware much more than the software that absolutely stands in my way of switching.

I think it's hard for another company to win over current Macbook users. Maybe they lost a couple with the whole keyboard fiasco but they will fix it, they're not stupid.

Also, Windows 10 is a really great operating system and they keep dominating the OS market share. The majority of enterprise users use and prefer Windows.

I think most of the times we are not being honest about the real impact of productivity between different solutions. Is a proficient developer on Windows less productive than a proficient developer on macOS/Linux?

Probably there are some differences; but is it really significant?

What about build quality? I know Macs have god-tier touchpads, but if I'm at a desk I carry my mouse around and get by just fine. If I forget my mouse; I'm stuck with the clitoris of my old Lenovo, which I hate but I do my job just fine and don't stress over it.

I know we like to nerd out on our choices; but the general market doesn't really care that much and that's why Windows keeps owning.

> The majority of enterprise users use and prefer Windows.

I think the enterprise CIOs use Windows because switching isn't a consideration; they've made an enormous investment in it, and cost of switching also is astronomical - consider hiring / training an all-new IT staff, development team, etc for the new platform, then recreating/repurchasing and redeploying all software running natively, then retraining every user. Whether or not they like Windows is a non-issue.

I completely agree. But from my experience, there are actually a lot of users that really like Windows. In a corporate environment it works really well, and that's a good reason to appreciate it.

And the fact that CIO/CTOs are not willing to migrate to a new OS may indicate that those "efficiency and productivity gains" macOS users brag about may not be significant :)

I really understand the difference between different UIs and hardware, I'm an Linux with i3wm user myself; but I'm not blinded to the fact that even though I may think I'm more productive on a given software/hardware environment; those are not the factors that really weigh in (without going to extremes of course).

> there are actually a lot of users that really like Windows. In a corporate environment it works really well, and that's a good reason to appreciate it. / And the fact that CIO/CTOs are not willing to migrate to a new OS may indicate that those "efficiency and productivity gains" macOS users brag about may not be significant :)

IMHO, the users' opinion of the OS is meaningless and even a signal of problems. Users should only have to deal with applications (beyond clicking an icon to start the app); the OS is IT department's job. If users have to think about the OS, the IT department isn't doing its job an users are being distracted from doing their jobs (of course, that is a big generalization). Windows has much that IT staff like, such as Active Directory and Group Policy.

As a developer I’d manage if I had to use Windows, but it wouldn’t be comfortable at all and things like Windows’ horrible font rendering would continue to grate on me no matter how long I use it.

I’d fare better with some flavor of Linux but I’d need time to tweak my setup to be just right.

A big part of my attraction to macOS is that most things are set up as I prefer right out of the box, with the extent of tweaks necessary being little more than spending 5 minutes in system preferences and downloading Alfred.

> Maybe they lost a couple with the whole keyboard fiasco but they will fix it, they're not stupid.

(And the TouchBar fiasco.) I would love to think they're just on a temporary excursion that will be corrected, but it sure seems like Apple doesn't care about the PC experience any more and are just moving rather than innovating. I really want to switch, enough that I tried switching to an X220 a while back, but the hardware of even the best just doesn't seem on par.

Surface book 2 is actually pretty great.

They already have Linux on Windows now. They are beginning to thin out Windows and put it in different packages for different application uses. That's the point of their new Andromedia OS.

Windows Shell for Linux (Kernel).

I've been wanting this for years. With .Net Core, PowerShell for Linux, MS SQL for Linux, and WSL, I feel like (hope) that that is where they are headed, and if so, it's going to be awesome. A Linux OS with Windows on top and full compatibility for DirectX, games, Office, etc.

Ugh, one can dream...

The NT kernel has better hardware support than the Linux kernel (among other advantages), and the design of NT means that you can run Linux apps on the NT kernel without going through the Win32 APIs with WSL. Why do you need to rebase the system on the Linux kernel?

For funsies.

Don't think Microsoft would go that far for funsies.

A new OS would have to either implement all the old interfaces of either Windows or POSIX, or face an adoption failure due to lack of apps.

On the other hand, where's the excitement around the iPad? Several notable companies don't even make iPad apps, and some just have a scaled up iPhone app. The big draw for the iPad is Kindle, Office (or Office-ish products) and a browser.

The PRICE ! Ipad is damn cheap nowadays.

I just bought an ipad 2018 (with pen support) for 329€ [0] new in Paris. VAT included. I wanted something to show my decks on the go and not having to put "geek mode on" with my laptop. Im all for diversity, but not at any price. I would consider that surface for 3/7 - 4/7 of the price of the ipad. More is Microsoft not wanting my business. I just saw 399 on MS side. Not.

[0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-9-7

What is your "mission"? $329 is a lot of money if all you do is use mobile apps and you already have a phone whereas for this new surface 399 gets you a computer where you have tablet functionality as well as full OS.

Surface is wonderful at showing and creating presentations :)

399 USD is 340 Euros, so that's only a 10 Euro price difference

I'd easily pay 10 Euros extra over an iPad for a fully functional computer - Seems like an easy choice

iPad is the best computer ever made. Microsoft will never make anything remotely as good.

That's because it built something better: a computer that actually allows you to run any software you want.

If I can run Linux on it, I might actually be interested.

You might be able to. The previous model of the Surface Go (called the Surface 3, non-pro) ran Linux ok.

You completely miss the point. When you're in the kitchen do you use your specialist kitchen knives or a Swiss army knife?

399 USD + VAT (EU prices are tax included) is ~399€ (after adding also the premium for "consumer protection laws").

My laptop is a Windows machine with a Linux VM often running and I do the same things on that machine that I did a decade ago.

My tablet is an iPad and it is by far my favorite computer to use. The killer feature for me is the Apple Pencil combined with Good Notes and Procreate. I just worry because the software is so cheap I'm not sure its priced sustainably.

Another app that I just started using is Drafts and I'm quickly starting to feel like it could be a game changer for me. It has me thinking I would want to get an Apple Watch to use with it but I think I would need an iPhone and I don't really want to move off of Android for my phone.

I love those use cases myself! However, you and I are by far not the mainstream audience. Hate to say it, but the ipad/ipencil ecosystem is too expensive for the average person. To your point about sustainable pricing, bulk of the money is going to Apple in this equation, rather than to developers building on the platform.

> Hate to say it, but the ipad/ipencil ecosystem is too expensive for the average person

The $329 entry level 9.7 inch iPad now supports the Apple Pencil (as well as the new cheaper Logitech Crayon...), so not so sure this argument holds up. This $399 entry level Surface doesn't come with the stylus as standard either, with stylus the Microsoft tablet hits $499.

the medium surface (i5) usually sell at costco for 350 with pen and keyboard.

Do you mean for $1350? It definitely doesn’t sell for $350 total

lol. it's $799, no idea what I was thinking about when i posted 350.

What do you do that still needs a full Linux VM rather than using WSL?

These days, probably nothing. I have a Ruby on Rails environment that I work in occasionally and the path of least resistance is to continue using the VM I already have.

Not the OP, but I have Windows Firewall set to block outgoing connections by default, which renders WSL mostly useless due to the way firewall rules work. This is supposed to be fixed in the next major update, so I may move over. There is still something nice about being able to snapshot my Linux VM and reset it after making a mess while hacking on something.

I code mostly on leased VPSs and servers, and some on a MacBook, but like you my iPad Pro is my favorite computing device. I spend a ton of time working and playing on it.

I write most of my code in leased environments as well, which is great because I can just use vim anywhere. I have run into some issues with keyboard shortcuts that make the iPad difficult to use if you're heavily reliant on vim shortcuts though.

It's so close, yet just far enough to make me prefer my Macbook for coding.

Agreed, I also do most coding on a MacBook, even when SSHing to a server. But being able to SSH on iOS and Android devices is nice.

There are still far, far more proper tablet apps for iPad than for Android or Windows. I owned a Google Pixel C tablet for a bit but ended up returning it because android tablet apps were so rare. If I wanted android phone apps I’d just buy an android phone!

I currently own a 9.7” iPad Pro and I’d say at least 80% of the apps I have installed, maybe more, have proper iPad UIs or at the very least have light tablet adaptations.

I use my surface pro 4 still as a daily driver (its outdated compared to these specs). Book annotation is awesome, the ebook store is nice if you like to use the pen to take notes. I use the Linux subsystem all the time (Ubuntu) and i have vscode installed and write node/go/python and lots of arduino/esp8266 code on my surface.

the utility/portability is amazing..

BTW, what do people find interesting/exciting from Apple these days?

As I mentioned on another thread, this would make for a great consumption device ala iPad which can in a pinch actually allow you to do work, albeit in a compromised form factor.

So you’d take it with you when you normally would not take anything or take the plunge and take your full laptop with you.

It’s like an accessory to your main laptop. There’s probably some use case for that situation, and this is their answer.

> For gaming, Windows is awesome.

Eh... kinda. It certainly has the best hardware available for the task, and is still open enough that developers need not get approval to distribute software for it, or create software for it, but one wonders how long that will last.

See: https://youtu.be/rWrHfGfzoOE?t=6757 for additional ranting. (from that time to the end, there are some unrelated Q&A).

I would challenge anyone to find a better computing platform for gaming than Windows. It's not about the hardware, it's the compatibility. People have been worrying about MS locking the platform down since Windows 8 was released nearly 6 years ago, and we're no closer to that now than we were back then. I'm an Apple user, but I'd be surprised if Apple didn't turn macOS into iOS before Microsoft turns Windows into iOS. That's just not how Microsoft operates.

Well, they are bringing iOS APIs into macOS.

And killing off compatibility with a significant portion of games that were released (via removal of 32-bit support and just general AppStore churn due to yearly subscriptions). Meanwhile even old Win95 targeted games run on Win10.

> Meanwhile even old Win95 targeted games run on Win10.

I just threw away my copy of Civilization II because Windows 10 couldn't run it (I think it was 16 bit code).

That's a shame. I personally find that nowadays, older games tend to run better on Linux with Wine than on Windows 10.

Civ 2 for instance runs flawlessly on Wine. Even on Windows 7 I had to install a fan made patch to get it to run without crashing.

I didn't even think of Wine. I wonder if I could have made it work under WSL + Wine?

Civ 2 should run in DOSBox, graphical stuff under WSL is a hassle.

Oh no! There are mods to make the game compatible with 64-bit Windows 10.

https://github.com/FoxAhead/Civilization-II-64-bit-Editbox-P...

16bit code arbitrarily doesn't work in 64bit Windows, but I'm guessing it would probably have worked in Win3.11 under DOSBox.

The big sea change for me over the past four or five years is the number of games that are getting a simultaneous release on Steam.

I play mostly fighting games (when I can find the time), and those, for the most part, used to be the exclusive domain of consoles.

Outside of some first party exclusives (like Nintendo's Smash series), just about every major fighting game franchise outside of Virtua Fighter (and who knows, that might even show up hidden in a release of Yakuza) is now on the PC. They're coming out so often that I can't even keep up now. And while I know there are Steam haters out there, it has been great for me. I buy games only when they're heavily discounted, so I now have a huge library that is a fraction of the cost of some of my old console purchases.

Yakuza 6 has Virtua Fighter 5 and Yakuza Kiwami 2 has Virtua Fighter 2. Neither are announced for PC, but they just did 0 and Kiwami, so signs are good?

In the meantime, there is Dead or Alive 5, which is built on the same engine and has a few VF characters in it (and more importantly, the ones I like to use).

IIRC, DOA6 has been announced too, and I would expect that to show up on PC.

On the other hand, Microsoft does their damnedest to remove the user's ability to control updates, keep you from disabling their "no really, just for improving your Windows experience!" telemetry, force-install AppStore apps you didn't ask for, and reset settings back to defaults on feature updates.

They certainly seem like they're ready to lock the platform down at any moment if they decide it suits them. Meanwhile, the experience of using Windows gets crappier and crappier. It's becoming more and more difficult to believe that they aren't intentionally trying to kill off desktop computing.

Microsoft is well aware of that, they went as far as not making first party titles exclusive for the Xbox, and releasing them on W10.

It's a competitive advantage and they won't be giving it up so easily, they know a lot of people would drop Windows in a heartbeat were not for it being "the" PC gaming platform.

Even if Apple decides today to invest heavily in having games as first party citizens in macOS (something that they never showed interest in), they would still need to deal with the 20+ years of backward compatibility and huge existing library that Windows has.

Considering how for Microsoft is moving to open up their services, I have a hard time believing the sky is falling crap. They're embracing Progressive web apps, keeping their js engine updated, allow apps on xbox/windows and they've ported everything to every common platform on their core suite(s).

I think that's just further evidence that they intend to kill off the desktop. I'm sure they'd much rather have everyone subscribe to web-based cloud services they access from their tablet, phone, or X-Box.

Casey's a really smart person, who contributes a lot to the indie gaming scene, I have a lot of respect for him. But this rant of his you've linked to isn't really meaningful to this discussion.

1) Half of this rant is complaining about how terrible Razer is as a company. Razer's software and hardware problems are well known and well documented, none of that is Microsoft's fault.

2) "Pop-ups during gameplay" is part of what you get from having an open operating system. Sure, it might sound nice for Windows to ban anything from interrupting gameplay (as Casey says, "no gamer would ever accept a popup during gameplay -- it's absurd to even consider").

But people really do want that. Removing it would mean you can't get incoming call alerts (Skype), it would mean VoIP indicators couldn't warn you if you are/arent on a hot mike, it would mean you can't use the Steam in-game overlay, it would mean you could never have FPS counters or software-based screen recorders (like FRAPS), and so on. All of that is useful to one user, and "annoying popup spam shit over my game" to another user.

Microsoft actually tried to block popups over gameplay in UWP and PC gamers rejected it specifically because it prevented popups from Steam / Fraps / Nvidia / AMD from running overtop of games - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/microsoft-needs-to-st...

Windows has to straddle this line of being a somewhat open operating system, while appreciating that 95% of it's userbase will intentionally break their computer and blame it on Microsoft when given the power of an open operating system. If Windows let average folks easily disable updates, for instance, lots of people would do it and then break their computers, or complain about Windows getting "viruses" or getting "hacked". That's not just conjecture, we have over twenty years of computing history where Microsoft tried to trust users to update on their own, with dire consequences. (See WannaCry https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/13/nhs-cyber-attack... where Microsoft fixed the vulnerability before it could be exploited, but users blocked/delayed the security update containing the fix)

This rant also drastically underestimating how much effort goes into making Windows work. Does anyone remember Sony's PS3 + Linux fiasco? Sony literally could not flip a switch and have a Windows PC competitor out the door "tomorrow", the idea alone is ridiculous, and drastically undervalues the work required in operating systems.

> "Pop-ups during gameplay" is part of what you get from having an open operating system. Sure, it might sound nice for Windows to ban anything from interrupting gameplay (as Casey says, "no gamer would ever accept a popup during gameplay -- it's absurd to even consider").

> But people really do want that. Removing it would mean you can't get incoming call alerts (Skype), it would mean VoIP indicators couldn't warn you if you are/arent on a hot mike, it would mean you can't use the Steam in-game overlay, it would mean you could never have FPS counters or software-based screen recorders (like FRAPS), and so on. All of that is useful to one user, and "annoying popup spam shit over my game" to another user.

Unless I'm mistaken, the pop ups you're talking about that people want are a) optional, and b) do not steal focus and probably don't take up 30% of the center of screen the way Windows Update, the one he's complaining about and that Microsoft practically forbids you from turning off does. Further, Windows updates rather frequently break the OS install, which was one of his other complaints. So not only do you have forced, in-your-face focus-stealing update notifications, there's a not unrealistic chance it won't even work. Even if your system does survive the update, I can assure you from experience that something probably broke. I know because I've had to block updates at my job frequently because they freaking break software, often Microsoft's own software. In other words: people kept turning off the updates because Microsoft really sucks at updates. The cost of potentially being infected is actually much less than the cost of Windows's forced update bullshit.

That's what his real complaint is: MS doesn't produce a quality product and it doesn't give a shit about that fact either. And it's people like you, who just assume that users are retards and have to be treated like children, that make modern computing suck so much.

I guess I just have an old-fashioned idea of what "personal computer" means. I think it means that it's my computer, meaning that I should be the one ultimately in control.

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