You only get windows laptops and desktop from Microsoft, but they are highly secure (similar to what apple achieves).
Everything else needs a windows pro license (with tight checks).
I’m fairly sure that would improve windows’ security posture by a huge lot.
They make the majority of their money from businesses with lucrative support contracts, Azure, Active Directory + Office Enterprise suite, etc.
They make the majority of their money from consumers via stuffing Windows with "promotions" (ads) and from Office 365. It is services. Windows barely earns them anything.
Hell, the fact that they're thinking about opening up the Xbox to Steam and have official tutorials on running Gamepass on iOS and Linux should tell you that they don't care what OS on which device you use, so long as you are subscribed to their services.
In an environment like that, a vertical integration play makes little sense. You want your services to be on as many platforms as possible, not attract ire and roadblocks from your partners.
On top of that, they don't have a phone platform onboarding people to the whole hardware ecosystem. Even for Apple, Mac + iPad + AirPod profits are dwarfed by iPhone profits.
If they want to compete with Apple using Apple’s strategy, they may face a losing battle.
What package handler ? Installing things on macOS is still a mixed bag of disk images with the app to move yourself, or .pkg files or the App Store.
The thing is so broken that brew is the first thing I install on a new Mac.
they're probably referring to homebrew. which quite honestly, makes MacOS barely bearable. The terminology sucks and the ruby language doesn't help. MacOS without homebrew is unbearable.
unix: pkg-add, apt, rpm etc. Windows: intallshield, Teams' "stealth, backdoor like" installer, Office's "annoying" installer, etc. Basically: every program on Windows has its own installer.
Microsoft backwards compatibility got them massive market share but also backed them into a corner. Package Managers only work if there is some constrants but I came across software that was dropping .ini files into C:\Windows\System32 in 2017.
During covid and the supply/demand mismatch as everyone rushed to WFH I was wondering if they could repurpose the cheap S xboxes as cheap desktops. Essentially a reversal of the original 'xbox as a trojan horse' idea, instead of using consoles to get windows in the living room, it's to get windows in the home office.
Besides, the antitrust regulators would absolutely hate this.
I think they are tried with secure boot, but pushback from Linux people and maybe fear of anti-trust stopped them (for now).
And maybe if they do this, hardware vendors may fear a market split where they loose Linux people to other vendors. Not that many people but it still is revenue loss. I know I will never ever bye a microsoft only device. Bad enough Smart phones are locked down, at least I can ignore the phone.
Secure boot as far as Linux is concerned is extortion from the users.
One of the reasons they're still much more prevalent than Apple is because they don't.
they should copy 1-to-1 what apple does, since it's a proven strategy. it's also proven that it's not a monopoly (in the us, at least), so it's a safe game to play.
It'd be nice to have consumer windows laptops that are as safe as macbooks, because Microsoft can enforce the presence of TPM and can drop hardware support when it deems necessary (because it's the only producer of consumer windows laptops).
No one seems to care, I expect the AI PCs to eventually sell for 75% discounts.
To be honest, I kind of understand they don't want to do that. I bought a Surface Pro 8 some years ago and is probably the worst computing hardware I've experienced in a long time. Even basic things like thermal management is horribly broken when using Windows on it. Running Linux on it gave a slightly better experience, but seems so backwards that they cannot even make their own hardware work well, I thought the combination of hardware+OS by same company would lead to a better experience but nope.
It is the same with their software. It seems that every team is working independently. They are basically not able to release a "distribution" due to this. I wonder how many versions they need to have a unified look and feel like they in Windows 3x and later in NT4 to Win 7.