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Comment by TomMasz | Hacker News Reader

Windows 7 was the last really good Windows. MS lost sight of the goal after that.

I really wish MS had stuck with the Windows 8/Phone direction - bright square blocks that didn't waste space, which felt like it was a full refutation of the transparent everything of Vista that was still there to some extent in 7.

Looking at macOS 26, it's hard not to compare it visually to Vista given the transparency emphasis. Hopefully in a few years an Alan Dye-free Apple will move in a different direction.

Funny enough, the awful UI in Windows 8 (especially the start menu) drove me to become a mac daily driver.

Oh, the initial screens in Win8 were quite awful and offputting for most people who used earlier Windows versions, but the actual UI widget designs felt good.

Nadella lost sight of the goal. Windows 7 was Ballmer.

Nadella more than 10x'ed the value of Microsoft. I doubt many MS execs think it was the wrong call to move Windows work to the B team.

EDIT: somehow people seem to think I'm defending MS here. I'm not, I'm concurring that MS willingly turned Windows to shit (by moving it to the B team) because they thought they could earn more money elsewhere (and they were right). I don't like it, but I bet the people who got filthy rich over it do.

I'm assuming they were referring to a non-monetary goal.

That mindset is why every tech product is turning to shit. They're not consumer focused. All Nadella cares about is making the stock price go up and extracting value.

It’s the same with Apple. Sure, their product is proprietary, but the producers are not the only ones with a stake in it.

At some point we went through the looking glass where the stock is the product.

Is this a new phenomena? Stocks aren't new. Why is the modern market treated like this? Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?

Companies with insufficient competition treated customers badly always. Antitrust enforcement weakened since the 1970s. And investors demanded short term gains.

It's the private equity era. Much like how legislative behaviour is now dictated by the wealthy even to the point of contradicting the will/desire of informed voters, corporate behaviour is now dictated by private equity investment to the point of contradicting the demand from informed user/consumers.

> Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?

You should really really read about Dodge vs. Ford case. It all started with that case.

Through Azure, Office, LinkedIn, gaming. Not so much Windows.

They're fucking up even gaming, that awful gamebar is a pain to disable. Had to do it from powershell and even after it's gone Alt + W won't work in games.

I have a de-bloated win11 build running on my gaming rig, and I still occasionally get the prompt "no program to open link: ms-gamebar://" or something similar

Indeed! That's why they moved Windows to the B team.

Stock price does not equal good software. Quite the opposite because your trying to exploit the end user for more profit.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted. Ideally downvoting would be for unconstructive posts, or posts with good info / good contributions that are presented unconstructively.

You’re just being controversial.

That’s not a strong enough reason to downvote someone.

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't participate in HN discussions like I used to because the HN crowd and I don't agree on much, and down-votes is not an engaging counter-point.

It’s possible the HN crowd has more lurkers lately with things getting more controversial.. maybe seeing your voice more would help bring balance.

After all, you might be part of a silent majority!

Fwiw I think it’s perfectly fine if people downvote me if they disagree with me. I think that’s an unavoidable effect of having up/down arrows, regardless of what the rules say. If i say something controversial I expect some downvotes. I just hadn't expressed myself clearly enough initially, everybody took me as a “money makes right” capitalist (not a weird assumption, theres plenty of those here on HN) and fortunately could still edit to clarify.

Microsoft CHANGED the goal. Cloud makes bucket loads more than consumer - it also has awesome vendor lock-in and juicy monthly fees!

MS didn't lose sight of anything. They've been after the money for a while, and they just followed the money.

I don't like what Microsoft has done, but I annoyingly admit they're doing what's in the best interest of their bank balance.

I find Win10 to be a much more refined and polished experience, only ruined by telemetry.

Windows 10 is decent if you have the Pro version. 7 is good but is a PITA on touchscreen or HiDPI devices, although I have to say even 10 still has its bugs. Never tried 11 though, I'll keep riding 10 on my machines.

Windows 10 was the start of the forceful push towards use of Microsoft accounts and telemetry, dark patterns to achieve that and weird features nobody wants like like Bing search in the menu or the help opening bing in Edge rather than an actual help or your browser of choice, all that to improve random KPIs without considering user satisfaction.

Compared to that, Windows 8 was misguided but not a strong attempt at disrespecting user consent.

Windows 7 kind of pulled me back from Ubuntu. Alas it was only for a few years.

Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, mainstream Windows 7 support ended in early 2015. The dark ages continue.

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