Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak
neowin.net
neowin.net
But then I realize that I already pay for a work-focused OS, because Windows wasn't free - I bought a (somewhat expensive) copy of Windows 10 Professional when I built my current machine, and they still try to do all of that crap. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you have to buy Windows 12, then pay a monthly fee to keep using it, then get bombarded with ads and all your activity tracked and then sold to third parties.
> Now, references to a subscription model were found in the latest Windows preview builds, suggesting that Microsoft is finally going to force users to pay a monthly subscription to use Windows, right? No. These references are almost definitely tied to the newly discovered "IoT Enterprise Subscription" edition of Windows 11, not the client version of Windows vNext.
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/no-o...
The $oftware boys already have a full explainer about why $aa$ is the best thing since open source, so why shouldn't Microsoft jump on board too?
C'mon SaaS devs, tell me again about value add and how you love paying monthly for the software you use...
Not some crazy "not made in house - gonna code it myself" crap... that seems like some weird personal thing.
Approach software as a set of tools, with the expectation that you must learn and master its use, but then you will be functional and productive for a long time.
That's what stand-alone installers or self-hosted alternatives are. They require more learning, but they don't sell you out, close down, jack up the price, or turn off features because it's "not generating new users".
They also don't randomly rework the UI nearly as often because "if it's not shiny we can't sell it".
But they do require more work and learning up front. For me, at least... that tradeoff is a clear and easy win.
---
Good software is like good woodworking tools - hard to master, but very productive once you're there. SaaS is always the opposite: Super easy to start, incredibly frustrating to be a power user.
Saas doesn't want power users - it wants more subscriptions.
This does not scale to end users.
Image editors and the like are pro tools, not mass market tools. You either use them well or you don't have a job.
If you're wondering why word processors and spreadsheets don't count is that for most jobs you just use them incidentally, it's not your day job. And there is a very small minority that masters them, but it's just that, a minority.
The solution is... centralization, on a smaller scale. Maybe that's a home network admin, or a whole street, neighborhood, city, community. I don't really know.
It's not reasonable to think everyone needs or wants to manage their network and services, of course. The cost to ensure everyone has this specialized knowledge is terribly high, it will waste what else they could have known instead.
Now to provide these kinds of services as a city or community is certainly not free, even if the software is free. It costs people's time, experience, and knowledge. It requires powerful enough servers to handle requests and storage for everything.
Another thing to mention is that these open source services are probably full of very critical and damaging exploits, but they are not seen or cared about yet because these services are not mainstream popular or often not public facing at all. Popular open source services have had many of their high level exploits discovered, and closed source things are scrutinized differently.
Step 1 was to make TPMs ubiquitous. As soon as everyone's computer can make attestations on behalf of (or, more accurately, against) them, then it's game over. I bet Microsoft starts splitting out app features and charging for them individually similar to how Adobe does with Acrobat.
Microsoft has never said that.
Edit: since people are still confused.
1. What was said was "...and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10". This was said by a Microsoft developer evangelist, never it was an official corporate position or an announcement. And most certainly no one said "ever".
2. You could argue "the last version" meant "the most recent".
3. When Microsoft has been reached for a comment, they produced a usual corporate speech about how Windows 10 is going to be "reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service" (whatever this means) but they never confirmed there won't be the next version.
And to an extent the basic idea they did agree to has been true. 11 was a free upgrade for machines that were eligible to run it. I didn't need to go out and purchase a new Windows version.
From their perspective, the latest Windows 11 update is just Windows 10.0.22621.2361!
But also, internal interfaces and external interfaces are rev'd so teams tend to talk about the different interfaces they work with (ie. dxgi 1.2, dx12_3, wddm 3.2, UMDF 2.1) or the different internal versions of apisets.
Games is/was my only need for Windows and I finally ditched my Windows machine last year. I have had to give up on playing some incompatible titles, but there is still a wealth of options available.
When I started college in the early 2000s my one and only computer dual booted so I could run games and Windows-only university software on the Windows side and everything else under Linux.
In the middle of college, I went full Linux with Wine for some games but moved the rest of my gaming to console.
After college, I went back to dual booting because PC gaming was the more economical choice and I had bills to pay.
Then I went back to full Linux with Wine for a number of years because I didn't have a lot of time to play anyway and keeping Windows running was a pain.
After I made the jump to full time employee from contractor I went two machines - a Linux machine for everything but gaming and a gaming machine for gaming, moving the gaming machine to the every day driver for a couple of newly built gaming rigs.
Now I'm full time Linux with Proton for most games and a single GPU-passthrough for anything that doesn't run on that.
I could probably spend my entire time gaming and never touch a title that doesn't run under Proton and still have plenty of things to play with my friends and plenty of new releases to try.
It is amazing how much a company run by former Microsoft employees has dumped into never having to deal with Windows again. It's been good for their bottom line too.
You love to see it.
enterprise rigs normally come blank, and get imaged in-house from corporate standard image masters (and against corporate licensing)
The features option will make more O/S options like photo and video editing apps a subscription type model. Pay $10 a year and get the advanced features.
Either way, I think this should help Apple and open source operating systems.
Says who, exactly?
Why should bug fixes be included?
If they should, for how long should they?
They have already been doing this.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/1790329/i-paid-for-microsoft... https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/microsoft_windows_sta...
Perhaps you mean third party ads from their ad network? https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us
Wait, they already do: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/ad-products/...
> Kiss goodbye to any privacy you thought you had.
If you haven't already, it's too late.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3684413/how-to-protect...
https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/
> Either way, I think this should help Apple and open source operating systems.
Doubtful. They've not cared so far, I don't know what's going to really have to change.
Most folks I know don't really care about the OS, but many or all they apps they've learned are only on Windows. So they see themselves as trapped.
It will only be required if you want to disable the native data collection and advertising.
maybe to begin with
then the ads and the tracking appear later anyway
But then, perhaps I've not been looking hard enough (I mostly use Penguin).
The worst never had globally free GPS or the Internet. It was all always totally private orgs with subscription services.
Somehow we ended up in a time line where there is this great mainstream full stack os where not only do you get the full source code you also are allowed to use and distribute it with very few restrictions. All of which is based on the critical generosity of a few key individuals. It is easy to imagine a history where this did not happen at all.
The coolest thing is, say you are a snob like me, "Ah yes, your source code based os project is very nice and all but it's inclusiveness has made it far to big and messy for my small hipster mind" there are multiple source code based operating systems to choose from! Really it is pretty great.
Those strings could be anything - For all we know, it's just tracking office 365 subscription status/enterprise enrollment, or tracking windows account notification subscriptions, or any of a hundred other valid reasons.
Those terms are just too generic to be particularly meaningful.
There isn't a world where I would pay a subscription for an OS, given the plethora of good and stable distros of linux (and OSX)
It's a good learning exercise, and the community over at /r/vfio + their discord is pretty helpful.
Some madlads take it a step further and create something similar to wslg, but with the host programs overlaid over the guest desktop, https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/yrqcq4/2in1_os_with_l...
I haven't done it again on my upgraded machines and instead use a dedicated Windows gaming machine. Proton should work fine for the games I play as it doesn't need any (incompatible) anti-cheat software--just haven't got around to it.
The critical difference is that amortization decreases your cost per unit time with use. More use, better value.
Subscriptions do not work that way. Having to pay $50/year for a 5 year old laptop doesn't excite.
This isn't even necessarily in the vendor's control. For example, Google Chrome just stopped loading TLS encrypted sites on my partner's MacBook this past week and displays a lovely pink banner over every tab saying the OS is no longer supported.
Companies are not held to any standards for support and the amount of support they give varies based on the product. Apple has provided decades of support for some products but considerably less for others because they shared an architecture or platform that was eventually dropped. Google is notorious for just dropped support for products on a whim.
And subscriptions won't fix this problem.
So yes, we exist too.
But, no complaints, linux windows all of it work flawlessly.
Most of my machines are that old or older.
> If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?
No. I only look to upgrade if the system stop working or if it can no longer perform as I need it to.
Nobody else could, because it would require Microsoft to agree to something that's against their interests.
LSW, if you will.
> what do you consider is a correct price to pay in advance for all future changes ?
You don't. Outside of security updates, which should never be charged for, you pay for the software as it exists when you buy it. When future changes come around, you buy the upgrade (if you want it).
It's the tried-and-true method of charging for this stuff.
Why shouldn't you be charged for for security updates?
Sure
But don't expect to get any updates to what you paid for - after all, updates are no longer the same OS
Rolling this out would be a business disaster studied for decades.
I've know enough people already honked off about all the gorp in Windows 11 that many of them are refusing to move from Windows 10. This would be the icing on the cake to finally get them broken free from Windows as an OS.
This, sadly, won't break the hegemony of Office 365, though.
Hell, I don't even know what's the difference between Windows 7 and 11
Edit: some references: https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/824c74574893...
The first being auto-HDR. I don’t have to manually switch my displays to HDR when I launch a 3D game with HDR support, and I don’t have to have the awful always on HDR on my desktop.
The second being Windows 11 remembering window position when you disconnect and reconnect monitors. It’s great being able to take my laptop off the dock with two monitors, then bring it back and my windows go back to where they were in each display. Windows 10 just puts them all on the primary display.
I wonder if Windows will be included with GamePass™
Mass exodus to Linux won't happen, but W11 may become the next XP that people won't upgrade from for decades. And then the price of hardware+subscription will be compared to buying an otherwise overpriced Mac...
Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows.
Microsoft is insisting on driving away their most important but least numerous users as hard and as fast as they possibly can.
No metrics will show the consequences of these decisions, and no one will be punished for tragically abusing the commons. I tiny vocal minority is lost, sure, but who cares? They were troublemakers and hard to market to! Good riddance.
The uptake of the each new Windows version is slower and slower than the one before. The excitement and innovation has been replaced by telemetry and built in crapware.
People stood in line to buy a copy of Windows 95.
Hardly anyone will install Windows 12 on purpose.
And the suit-wearing MBA will probably say "yup, that's fine, it's harvest time!"
Finding information about subscriptions is unsurprising.
Microsoft already has a chunk of this infrastructure in place with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which in my experiences works pretty well. I've been playing a lot of Starfield on cloud streaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop on WiFi, even public WiFi at places like cafes and tethered on my phone.
We currently have two main versions of Windows 11 - Home and Professional, which cost a set price and include free updates for the lifetime of the operating system.
That it plays games is just a bonus.
macOS of course has cmd+tab, but that switches apps not windows.
Windows 11 adds snap layouts, for which there is currently no analog, but this will let you do the side-by-side thing from earlier versions of Windows as long as you can tolerate the fullscreened windows becoming their own Space. (I actually find this preferable myself, but YMMV.)
I use macOS as my main driver, though.
The thing about ads is that quite often whatever you will pay to remove it, someone will pay more to put it back. Paying to remove ads is a signal that you’re the exact kind of person they want to send ads to. So not having ads has to both be either a moral position instead or a long term sustainability position. Microsoft expect their monopoly status to sustain them and have been ratcheting up their abuse of their monopoly to extract more money. In my view they’re on track to losing that privilege.
Just recently YouTube has started blocking videos due to add blocker presence. I already pay producers via patreon and I guess I will just go watch over there. YouTube is a bad habit I need to break and their new policy will help me do that.
Oh, and while I’m shitting in windows; the defender has made file access almost unusably slow, and I get intermittent stuttering both in games and with music on an absolute overkill of a computer speced this way precisely because it needs to run windows.
This is an odd incentive. One might consider it as a reason for using Windows as long as possible, since the bottle would be of a mature vintage and worth more?
It's kind of like the furniture store that refunds people's mattress purchases if the baseball team wins. Given the advantage of not making people's purchase free retroactively, the promotion is kind of like betting against the team even though it is proclaimed as if it is in support of the team.
People refuse to pay (intentionally or financially) and they won't receive security updates on older OS and see how the world unfolds.
It's already a mess that people are using so many different Windows versions and MS took the effort to beg users to upgrade. They will be unwinding that effort altogether not to mention bug the developers to support so many different OS versions.
Apple has always been right that they release OS upgrades freely and see how much saner it is.
But there's no way I'm buying into more ads and bullshit from MS; if this comes to fruition I'll hold on to debloated Windows 10/11 for as long as I can then begrudgingly move over to the least disruptive distro of Linux I can find :(
I think Chromebooks might do well in that environment, especially for naïve users (though they have their uses even for advanced users; I like my Chromebooks and their Linux VMs). You buy the machine, plug it in, and it fires up almost immediately; and your machine has software support now for 10 years at no cost (if you trust Google to deliver on that). I suspect that many canny purchasers will compare Microsoft's subscription cost to Google's ($0), and decide accordingly.
My guess (and my track record is clear, in 1976 I predicted that Apple would be bankrupt within a year) is that Microsoft will offer a combined Windows/Office365 subscription, and a barebones “free” Windows that nags the user to “upgrade”.
i agree with your overall point. tho for me, i suspect the price would need to be significantly less than than that (PC price included.)
my main driver is linux, but im on windows for probably 40% of work stuff. however, i have incredible subscription fatigue. its to the point now that i forego products regularly if i cant just buy it outright. i’ll happily even pay more than i would over time just to 1) not have to manage and deal with the constant little pin pricks of soooo many subscriptions, and 2) to feel like i own the thing.
if windows goes subscription, i will almost certainly just move to mac for the things i cant do with linux and if my read of others is correct, i suspect many many others would do the same.
I feel they'd have to up that kind of pressure by a lot to get people to switch not just to a new version, but now even one that requires a subscription.
So if this ever becomes reality, I expect a massive campaign of FUD, dark patterns and deliberate incompatibility to get people to leave the old versions.
That's a fun thought exercize, at least for me :)
In my mind ReactOS conjures images of building the pyramids with a team of three—completion date estimate sometime between forever and eternity. Never has there ever been a software project that's been so long in gestation and still going nowhere.
Unfortunately, I've given up on ReactOS but what I'd really love to know is why it's taken so long. Given the long saga of Windows and of MS's abuse of its users—many of whom are annoyed and disgruntled because they've little or no option but to continue to use Windows—then you'd think there'd be an almighty rush to develop a Windows clone. But no, there's stuff-all interest and it's always been so.
I'd go as far to say the failure of ReactOS is one of the strangest and most curious events to occur in software history. One perhaps can understand why ReactOS was never developed in the US or even any Western country but why hasn't say Russia or China or other ex-Eastern Bloc countries thrown money into its development (seeing that much of its development already comes from that part of the world)? You'd reckon there'd even be both a strategic and financial advantage for these countries (as there was during the Cold War when they threw huge sums into developing an alternative source of tech).
All Windows branded as NT as well as 2000 (the first NT not branded as such) predate Windows 8 by over a decade, so I don't understand why you'd think one of them would be number 9.
Edit: Just realized GPs joke... There never was a Windows 9... And it isn't even that late...
Of course, that would leave out the consumer line starting with Win 95.
https://trackerninja.codeberg.page/post/latest-google-chrome...
Includes 1TB cloud storage - cheaper than copy of Starfield.
Right now, we have software that we expect that keeps being updated, but the company gets a one time payment. With a subscription, things get more stable financially and the company can adjust the budget accordingly.
It also incentivized keeping Windows good and working so those subscriptions don't get cancelled.
I believe Dell also offers a variant of the Dell XPS that is cheaper for having Linux?
The have the OS choice (Windows Home, Pro, or "No OS") with the price listed for each.
"No OS" is $0, the windows ones aren't.
My guess is that we'll be looking at something in the range of $5 USD per-month with some kind of bundle deal around $100 USD per year that includes MS365. A best case scenario would be some type of MS365 family plan that includes a Windows license.
It's going to be the same as when Adobe switched to subscriptions. The internet will be filled with people proclaiming how great it is for everyone because "updates aren't free", but then we'll see the total cost of ownership go up drastically.
I think we'll see a solid 3x increase in the total cost of owning Windows for anyone that keeps their computer for 10 years. That's about where Office got priced. It broke even at about a 3 year lifecycle IIRC, so any individuals or small businesses that ran a longer lifecycle saw a dramatic increase in cost.
> It also incentivized keeping Windows good and working so those subscriptions don't get cancelled.
Lol. For most people, they need it and don't have any other options, so the status quo is going to be paying a subscription, watching ads, and giving up all your personal data. The subscription is a price increase, not a move to give us a better product.
If they bundle it with MS365, that's the time to break up Microsoft. If it were up to me they'd get split into so many different companies that each product within the Office suite would be a separate company. Excel should absolutely be it's own company at this point.
As for business, yeah they're probably going to bundle it on MS365 and deal with it. Even for consumers, how many home Windows PC users don't use Office?
> I think we'll see a solid 3x increase in the total cost of owning Windows for anyone that keeps their computer for 10 years. That's about where Office got priced. It broke even at about a 3 year lifecycle IIRC, so any individuals or small businesses that ran a longer lifecycle saw a dramatic increase in cost.
Maybe they're hoping that a lower initial price will lure in more users? Are the people with longer lifecycle easier to extract higher prices from for some reason?
I agree. Consumers being able to confidently and simply calculate total cost of ownership is archaic — it only got Microsoft to $2.4T in valuation. What consumers really want is to get MSFT to $2.49T and we’ll happily accept a black box of personal and business costs to get them there
Unless Microsoft decides to change the price later of course. In which case you'd have little recourse since changing OSes is hard.
Exactly! Before you could add the cost of hardware and Windows together and come up with a single number that reflects how much money you’d spend before retiring a pc once the hardware gives out. With this innovative new model we can simply forecast the number to be higher or lower, or ideally just leave it blank until we fill it into the spreadsheet at hardware EOL.
> Consider that the normal one time price will only last for as long as you use the
Which can be decades if people aren't artificially forced to abandon the os.
Ah yes, Microsoft. The company known for being so cash poor and not making money from their OS.
If I have to pay a tax to make software for Windows work flawlessly on Linux, I would take it (I already donate to Wine).
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
So there's nothing new here, because MS already started down this path years ago, we're just commented midway through. If they'd gone cloud at Win8, no one would have gone for it. At Win12, after this gradual descent into "listen to my voice, you don't even want a local account, you can't even remember why you ever wanted one in the first place, this is so much less of a hassle", it'd be a fairly easy sell to the masses.
Throw in an yearly subscription plan that buys your company permission to run windows server, where your hardware can act as access point, syncing with MS's infrastructure, but isn't the primary data host, and that sure sounds like something Microsoft would absolutely love to be in charge of.
You own a license to use software
I heard there will be the year of Linux desktop since maybe 15 years but there's a reason that hasn't happened.