You're entirely right, but they need to maintain Windows in order to promote those services. The OS and their various applications have a symbiotic relationship where they prioritize each other.
If Microsoft discontinued Windows and switched to just providing web apps, the competition would be a lot stiffer.
They literally tried that strategy with Internet Explorer 6 a long time ago where they didn't really update it for years, only doing the bare minimum. The result was a downward spiral in market share that they were unable to stop once they started trying again, ultimately resulting in IE effectively becoming obsolete.
Because browsers are one of the very few components that actually need to catch up to the rest of the world, but they've already outsourced most of that work to Chromium.
If this is the case, Windows seems like it should be very important. Otherwise they can't deliver their subscription services. I'm not going to subscribe to cable TV if my TV is broken.
The largest Microsoft subscription account is the United States federal government. Windows/office/whatever else for every federal employee pays the company enough to continue development and offer it to the masses. I’m certain that the ability to collect habitual data on users is valuable to both Microsoft and the powers that be, for advertising and criminal investigation.
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.
There's no realistic competition because the amount of work to switch your OS ecosystem, especially for businesses, is huge. So the product doesn't have to be good, you can just slam ads in the Start menu or whatever.
At one point the product is getting so bad that the cost of switching becomes a real consideration. It seems that every other year I hear about businesses and governments making the move.
The competition is more fierce than it has been since before Windows 95 started the complete domination of the desktop market.
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.
Monopolies destroy everything. This isn't a binary it's a spectrum. You don't even need total control of the market, just extreme dominance of it, to see this effect begin.
The business version of Windows doesn't have ads in the start menu. That's the consumer/home version. The "Pro" flavors of Windows are quite a bit more pleasant and I don't think there is any downside even on a home computer.
I was thinking about this very thing today. Personally, I see the Windows OS as a core competency of Microsoft. If the OS is bad, then the company is being run badly. In the same as when you go to a fine restaurant and the kitchen have the polished pots and pans you can see, generally things are going to be great. Its the attention to detail, If those small details are right, then the whole meal will be good. And currently the whole meal is crap with windows.
Why does it matter (from the company's ability to fail perspective) what you immediately think of? (yeah, Windows isn't their main product, quick search says it's 10% revenue vs 40% for servers, 22% office, and 9% gaming, so wouldn't that decline be relevant in explaining why it's neglected and fail?)
Windows for personal computers and Office are the only products that make Microsoft relevant. No one on god's green earth is choosing Windows Server on its own merits: They're picking it for software compatibility reasons stemming from software being written on, and exclusively targeting, Windows Desktop. Hell, most of the office suite is chosen because it's easier to buy more stuff from somebody you're already buying stuff from than to find someone new. No one has ever chosen Teams as the best product in its space.
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.
Windows server compared to any linux server os is extraordinarily inferior in every regard except for the AD Domain services interface, which is a leftover from probably Windows NT that they haven't screwed with in the interim so it still functions.
The funniest part about Windows Server licensing that I find is the requirement to have CALs (Client Access Licenses) - $5/mo a pop for each device using _any_ service provided by the Windows Server.
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.
If you aren't running Windows, you probably aren't using Office. Half the reason for Office is Exchange, and half the reason is the integration of Exchange with Active Directory.
Without any of that, does Office make sense anymore compared to something like GSuite?
Yea. Even if you are all MacOS shop, Office has Desktop Applications that run on MacOS.
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.
I’m mostly not running Windows, but I dislike web apps, so GSuite is out. I could use Numbers, but I need cloud file storage that works on Android, and Office 365 vs Google One are roughly the same price for the storage I need, so I don’t see any particular reason to put the effort in to migrate from Excel/OneDrive to Numbers/Google Drive.
I've tried it several times, and it's not for me. I want my spreadsheet program to have a UI and UX that's polished for the idiomatic standards of the platforms (macOS and iPadOS) I'm running it on.
Ok, so it's an important dependency, but the fact that it's a small product line can still explain the neglect. For example, is it baffling that companies don't invest time/money in open source libraries they use even though those might be important for their main products?
No, they have choices, but many people just want to turn on their computer, watch a few videos, read some emails, pay some bills and then go do something else.
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.
I always see articles like this and have never had it happen to me. It's definitely something that affects specific hardware and/or software combinations instead of just poor QA.
*Yes, they probably make more revenue in Azure or Office365 licenses but at least when I think “Microsoft” I immediately think Windows.