Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I'm not quite sure I get the strategy.

For people who need Windows for some business requirement, this lets them use less Windows, and have a Mac or Chromebook as their hardware. The result: less Windows.

For people who don't currently use Windows, does a slower, internet-only Windows present a compelling product? Windows doesn't really sell itself (other than as a gaming platform, but we have Nvidia's streaming platform for that), it's a default but if you've not got a business need most people either already have Windows (because the PC was cheap or they play games) or they aren't going to go looking for Windows.

As Windows becomes more and more of a platform for ongoing revenue (read: ads, subscriptions), it's likely to become less attractive for that second group, and that first group will spend less time with it (and see fewer ads).

I get that on-demand cloud machines make sense for many businesses, but I'm not sure that aligns well with my (very naive) understanding of Microsoft's priorities here.

>Windows doesn't really sell itself (other than as a gaming platform, but we have Nvidia's streaming platform for that)

And the Steam Deck shows that you can run nearly any Windows-based game locally on a machine not running Windows at all (Wine/Proton on Linux, but a Steam Deck user doesn't have to worry about the details; it just works).

Two thoughts:

A) Consumer Windows PCs and laptops have been getting cheaper and cheaper. You can get a Windows laptop for $200 at any Walmart. That's $200 in 2023 dollars versus for example $1000 for desktops in 1997 dollars. Microsoft's money off of Windows consumer licenses has to be declining.

B) Windows may be dying but Active Directory isn't, plus everything moving to cloud.

For the business side, it started with Microsoft's hosted email service - a subscription service many, many businesses saw value in using over hosting their own email. What's happening is the amount of things hostable is growing until Microsoft basically has Active Directory completely in the cloud. Then businesses can run with even less IT staff than they do now, but still have all the access control that Active Directory offers, even among non-Microsoft products that support SSO.

>> I'm not quite sure I get the strategy.

It's to get enterprises and consumers to pay for Windows twice:

1) once for the Windows that runs on hardware and controls devices (traditional Windows)

2) continually for Windows and related services that run in the cloud (Windows 365, CoPilot, etc.) on a subscription basis

One big area will be security.

Yep, this is Microsoft's answer to the terrible Citrix user experience, which is a non-trivial component of burnout in healthcare.

Every hospital basically tells their staff, several times a day, via an electronic health record system served over Citrix: we don't trust you, and you time is worthless, fuck you. All in the name of security.

What is so bad about Citrix nowadays? I’m not in the loop anymore but I did Citrix about 15-20 years ago (geez…) and it was working very well and our users liked it. So that was Metaframe XP on Windows Server 2000 and 2003 back then.

Ummmm, we use Citrix to get remote desktops and it's fine. Seems like somethibg specific to your setup that's the problem.

Actually, what most hospital IT systems are trying to do is provide “follow me” desktops and an easy to replace endpoint. There are two major private clinic/hospital groups here in Portugal, and at least one of them uses Raspberry Pis and smartcards in doctors’ offices (most of which are interchangeable or need to provide for staff rotation).

It is a pretty sweet system (I noticed no lag as they pulled up my exams and clinical data, including radiology and charts).

It's not the Citrix that says that

It's the fucking EHRs

The people who write the specs are so far from the end-users the result is mind-bogglingly terrible for said end-users

That the same people who obsess about their IDEs subject their ultimate end users to these monstrosities of inefficiency is some kind of sick joke

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