Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

wewewedxfgdf

Microsoft could have made Windows:

able to run on any hardware

free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage

lightweight, simple, stripped of all cruft and extras

consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies

But they didn't - so people are looking for alternatives.

View on HN

As much as I like many Windows versions, the corporate idiocy of the company behind the OS is indeed something else.

This is true with a lot of companies. If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!) maybe they'd think twice before doing boneheaded things

Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem

I remember I was at a Python conference some years ago and every Microsoft dev I saw had a MacBook. So no, I don’t think they use their own product internally.

The only thing worse than work-from-office is mandatory work-on-windows.

If only there was something Microsoft’s developers could do about that…

As an aside, I used to know a number of MS heads who ran Windows on Mac Intel machines because they preferred the hardware (~2014 MBP) and/or because they ostensibly worked at Mac shops and were handed one upon entry.

If I still had to use Windows I'd want a laptop with home/end/ins/del/pgup/pgdn keys, and alt/win in the right place.

The last issue is solvd in software, the first one has a good workaround in software

Long ago at this point when my job required windows, the best experience for me was running it in a VM on a MBP. Actually worked quite well since it was easy stop/start windows and segmented work off on its own.

Using Windows as a python dev is a complete pain.

"I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem"

They don't make money (put bread on the table) by selling Windows any more. That is soooo 2000s.

Income is from data mining and from subscriptions to cloudy offerings that are mostly MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

Oh, and hyping their perceived value to the point that the term "meme stock" is no longer just a joke.

If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!)

Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...

Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem

Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.

With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal. Azure, Office and Copilot will sustain them.

Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.

>With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal

How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?

Hmm, it does line up with that from my perspective too.

It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.

>the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.

Who's the "whale" in this context? Windows users who subscribe to copilot? Enterprise? Advertisers?

Enterprise.

Enterprises are the whales. Microsoft sells user management, Office, Copilot, Outlook, etc... all bundled together for more per seat per year than a consumer will spend or generate in the whole lifecycle of their device. Nevermind Azure.

So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.

And based on historical trends, they are doing the clever thing. If there are enterprises today still running IBM mainframes, MS is probably right to expect that today's enterprise contracts will be paying off at least 40 years down the line -- especially when you factor in the motte of regulatory traps and labyrinthine compliance checks.

Yeah I can't blame them. Just as I can't blame Nvidia for ripping off the hyperscalers. It is terrible for consumers though.

The only positive is all the interest in Linux and software optimization though.

Consumers need to remember how to wield a pitchfork

The challenge is that consumers in the case of Windows don’t generally choose Windows. Someone else chooses it for them.

The term cloud feudalism is not new, but now I'm thinking it feels like humanity is being dragged to the feudal ages because more and more everything happens online now. You want to work? Be a peasant for Uber Eats, they have all the power and you have none, they set the rules as they please and all you can do is grin and bear it, or try move from one feudal domain to another (i.e. work for a different delivery app).

That’s a funny way of spelling “guillotine”.

Never ascribe to stupidity, that which has been proven to be malice.

Yeah, they delivered whatever they delivered on purpose. Sometimes I imagine MS is playingn Lemmings with their users to reach their corporate goals.

I doubt the various shitty parts of Windows (not the forced AI/whatever) is due to malice, unless you mean employees maliciously trying to destroy the company.

Hanlon’s razor applies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I would say the malice is from management, investors, and product leads. Developers just do what they are told. Microsoft is choosing enshitification versus quality. CEO needs to pump that stock and having enterprise locked into without alternatives helps them.

I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.

Or are they trying to move users onto other platforms, more modern platforms that users are more comfortable paying for.

Desktops existed before punching in your credit card numbers was a common thing, that history is hard to shrug.

Xbox for gamers, mobile for everyone else and business editions of windows for the enterprise.

> Microsoft is choosing enshitification versus quality

and, unfortunately, they are not alone. Google has been doing this for years and Apple is slowly following suit.

This

Minimum 50% of cases (in anything). Probably higher

Hanlon's Inverted Anticapitalist Razor says to never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by greed.

I get the impression that a lot of the old guard are long gone from the Windows team or have no influence. Raymond Chen is still around but not sure how much he actually works on Windows day to day.

Microsoft was founded in 1975. 1981 was the first DOS release. 1985 was the first release of Windows. 40 years working on windows is a long time, I would be surprised if anyone for the original team is left at this point. Even someone joining out of college in 2000 is now 25 years in, is 57, and could feasibly be retiring....

You mean 1990. Someone graduating college in 1990 would have been about 21. That was 35 years ago, so they would be about 56 in 2025.

Math is hard.

Cmon man, it's a comment not a research paper. Off by one isn't worth a follow up snark

Their main point was it is off by 10; then they introduced an additional confusing question of “is it off by 10, 11, or 12?”

Off by 10+1. Someone who graduated college in 2000 = 25 + 22 (4 years of college from 18) = 47, not 57, and not anywhere close to the retirement age. It might be pedantry, but the original comment should have said 1990, not 2000.

Weird flex of pedantry even for HN.

Says who? I did a gap year service project and graduated at age 23. My business partner did a 3-2 program and graduated at 23.

Plus, anyone working as an engineer then has a 8 figure net worth and the overwhelming majority moved on long ago.

True. I meant to say that it feels like the people who know what's going on have long departed and it's junior web developers left to pick up the pieces.

I don’t think that math is quite right. Graduating from college in 2000 would be 47, not 57 unless they were 32 when they graduated college.

That's in Microsoft years. Working there makes you get older faster.

Yeah I made an arithmetic error, meant 1990.

The toxic culture from Gates will never go away

which brings the points about demographic, experience and wisdom.. the artefact we see and manipulate is the results of a certain group of people... when it changes, don't expect anything

When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?

Just look at google and their chat softwares... you either make something new, or someone else does and you're left behind... be it ads in their start menu, spyware "AI", or paid solitaire.

When did any manager get promoted for keeping software stable?

A few industries reward that. Telcos and other parts of critical infrastructure come to mind.

I worked for a telco for four years. It was horrifically stupid and rewarded the dumbest possible outcomes.

Is goal is increase revenue! Create project to roll out fibre to a new rural community. Sign up all 40 houses in that community at $100 a month.

Project cost $10 mil.

Bonuses and promotions for increased revenue!

That pays for itself in 20 years and most of those customers won't have better choices in the next 50. The core of that infrastructure will probably oitlive most people on the team. Sounds like a good long term stable business.

20*12*40*100=960000

They're $9.04 million in the red.

Hah, I missed a zero. ;D

$250k per house is an absolutely insane level of mismanagement.

No, no they all got bonuses and raises because they increased revenue.

That's actually an example of the very long-term strategies that are common in that industry. There are still active phone lines which were installed over a century ago.

The employees inside really wanted to build this. The company decided not to.

I'm not so sure about that. If Microsoft actually removed all the cruft, then they would need around 5% of the employees currently working on it. They'd all be unemployed.

You’d be surprised how many legitimately want to improve the product. This idea that we’re powerless to disobey our incentives is so reductive.

>free for basic usage, paid for commercial usage

And lose all the OEM license money?

won't someone think of the shareholders?

Windows is now less than 10% of their revenue, last I saw. I think Windows is more valuable to keep people in the Microsoft ecosystem, than as a source of direct revenue.

Do they make more money from OEM licenses, or from bombarding Windows users with OneDrive and Copilot 365 advertisements?

What if it's actually the AI-derived "user profile," sold to advertisers/govts, after their mandatory bot scans all your drive.

Just hypothetically... of course they're not actually doing this?

----

Anywho, doesn't matter cause my Xeon went from Windows 10 to Linux, this year. Still rocking a Win7Pro Core2Duo (as my second favorite machine).

Perhaps Microsoft plans to bundle Windows into its "Microsoft 365" subscription for the consumer market.

That's an OS for the users.

Windows is an OS for the people who use the users.

Microsoft's slogan in the 90s was "where do you want to go today?"

Now, it should be "where do we want you to go today?"

Thanks for the 90s nostalgia. I just realized how much I miss these days and their optimism.

Make it sound more empowering:

"Let Copilot decide where you want to go today!"

They basically did that though for basic usage. Not activating windows only stops you from changing the background and removes the watermark for activation.

It’s also illegal in most countries

So is exceeding the speed limit...

Honestly Windows 7 was the best OS they ever built. It just went downwards from there, and they abandoned it essentially.

I don't understand what's going on at Microsoft, but they leave huge stacks of money on the table. LTSC versions weren't "popular", they were the least worst option for a lot of industries. And now they kinda completely ignored all customer feedback.

XP SP2 was pretty good too.

As was Windows NT & 2000 for their time.

Win2k is where it was at. It was also my last windows os ....

Microsoft managed to make every other release of Windows good.

95 good, NT 4 bad, 98 good, 98 SE bad, 2000 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good...

The plan with Windows 10 was to light their desktop market share on fire in the hopes they could see iPads in the distance and try to chase them. Windows 11 was codenamed "give your toxic ex a second chance."

I kind of remember 98SE being an improvement. Otherwise agree though

Nah, 98SE was a clear improvement over the base 98.

It’s not about giving you a clean experience, it’s about setting you up as a constant cash cow hooked into and paying for all their services.

I hate adobes current business model and for that matter fusion360 as well. It’s all internet required bullshit but it’s making them tons of money and there are no viable alternatives.

Luckily Linux exists.

I'll add, with no disrespect intended to BSD, because they're serious OSes, but GPL is also a really good thing to have

Yes, the GPL (by design) is what kept Linux from being embraced, extended and then extinguished

Only the last part, as there have already been plenty of corporate interests infecting Linux.

It could be a nice OS, if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to make it awful.

I run Active Directory at home, for various reasons. I’ve got Group Policy in a good enough shape now that I’m not terribly troubled by Microsoft’s enshittification but it took substantial effort to get there, and it requires some work to maintain.

> consistent in it's UI and cleaned up from 40 years of inconsistencies

... While also maintaining their famous backwards compatibility?

That would require empathy.

lol, what's your point really? alternatives exists since very long time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com