How can a company this big fail so hard in what one would consider their main* product still baffles me.
*Yes, they probably make more revenue in Azure or Office365 licenses but at least when I think “Microsoft” I immediately think Windows.
*Yes, they probably make more revenue in Azure or Office365 licenses but at least when I think “Microsoft” I immediately think Windows.
If Microsoft discontinued Windows and switched to just providing web apps, the competition would be a lot stiffer.
ATM windows still has enough of a moat that they can comfortably do the former.
Their moat, for now, makes this possible.
The only thing that surprises me is the lack of any additional cost to end users. It’s almost as if the majority shareholder is Blackrock.
https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Munich-Plans-to-D...
Apple doubled their marketshare since the M1 chip came out.
You can just go out and buy laptops from multiple OEMs with Linux preinstalled, and it’ll run all your business apps (Slack, Google Workspaces, Zoom, Spotify, etc, everything works). That would have been unheard of in 2010.
You can even play a huge number of Windows games on Linux, and the most popular PC “console” is a Linux system from Valve (with another releasing this year). Microsoft has no control over the PC gaming market like it did back in the heyday of DirectX.
I think Microsoft should be all-hands-on-deck trying to build reasons for customers to use Windows.
I personally think Windows 11 is pretty good and is the most “going in the right direction” version we’ve seen in a long time, but it could be better. Yeah there have been missteps but the windows team does seem more free to just add stuff they wish had been in Windows for years but never got approval to go for.
OEM laptops with Linux distributions pre-installed are only available on online shops known to HN/Reddit demographics.
Apple has close to 20% of new PC marketshare globally which is too much to represent only the high end of the market.
Lenovo and Dell are not some fly by night unknown PC manufacturers.
edit: if it doesn't translate well, I'm just fucking with you
Combined with some digital independence movements outside the US, I have some hopes that Windows monopoly starts to crumble.
Very few products Microsoft sells would be worth buying by themselves. They exclusively make mediocre products that are merely the default choice once you've been hoodwinked into buying into Windows or XBOX. If the break Windows, all the money disappears.
You run your Windows Server as a DHCP server? That's $5/mo for the clients to get a DHCP lease.
Of course, one CAL covers all services for the entire client, but it's still funny to me.
Without any of that, does Office make sense anymore compared to something like GSuite?
Create a user, apportion a 365 licence and boom, they have email, Teams, OneDrive etc. Add them to some groups and they have all the files they need.
Excel is better than Sheets in ways which are important for 0.01% of users, but that is all.
I find so many companies that use GSuite still buy Office licenses for select employees. There is plenty of places that will just go all in 365 for that reason alone.
Those people won't fuss with installing linux and getting rid of Microsoft even though Windows is doing nothing for them that Linux cannot do just as easily.
If there are people in your life that do not use computers to make money or play video games or edit photos and videos but they do use computers, swap them to linux and let them get on with their lives.