[HN Gopher] The Lightness of Windows
___________________________________________________________________
The Lightness of Windows
Author : ingve
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-06-28 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| CA0DA wrote:
| This is interesting, compared to another current front-page HN
| post, " I Will Never Use a Microsoft Account to Log Into My Own
| PC" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27659988
| criddell wrote:
| I can see why Microsoft might insist on Windows Home users
| having a Microsoft account, but I don't get the reason for
| Windows Pro users also being required to have a Microsoft
| account.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Why should my mom be forced to make a Microsoft account to
| use her computer?
| criddell wrote:
| She should probably be given the option to upgrade to
| Windows Pro.
| esclerofilo wrote:
| Because she won't back up her files, and if she gets
| ransomware she'll lose them. But if she has a Microsoft
| account, they'll be on OneDrive. Which she would never have
| set up if it wasn't for Microsoft's nagging.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And why should Microsoft be the one to decide that?
| f00zz wrote:
| I've tried to uninstall OneDrive from my wife's computer
| a few times, but the cursed thing keeps coming back.
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| To be fair, they aren't (at least not yet). You can still
| set up a local account.
|
| As for why/whether Microsoft should decide that, it's
| kinda their call. Plenty of other apps/services/devices
| require an account of some type. (effectively) All
| require agreement with their terms of service.
|
| By your logic, why aren't you irritated that Microsoft
| requires any type of account at all for Windows (same for
| any other OS)?
| esclerofilo wrote:
| Because (1) no one else can and (2) after a ransomware
| attack, they get the blame.
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| Exactly. Windows Defender comes with Windows for free,
| and does a pretty good job protecting home users.
| However, ransomware is still the most prolific cyber
| threat for home users, and Defender can't do much against
| it if the malware executes before Defender can
| stop/detect it.
|
| Integrating OneDrive automatically for Photos, Documents,
| etc, can seriously aide in protecting those important
| files for end users, since the un-encrypted versions of
| their files will still be available on OneDrive after a
| successful attack.
|
| What if Defender was only an option for Microsoft account
| users? Then it'd be "look at these greedy assholes that
| just want to collect all your data", when really it'd be
| an effort for them to protect the reputation of Defender
| by forcing full functionality by default.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'll preface by saying I'm glad Windows Defender doesn't
| do this automatically, but there are security software
| suites which do provide some protection against
| cryptoware but at the cost of performance. They tie into
| the write commands at the OS level and cache the changes
| while it watches the behavior. If it thinks the actions
| are probably malicious, it locks out those flagged
| processes from being able to make any additional file
| changes and rewinds all the changes those processes have
| made.
|
| I've yet to actually have it work in in actuality (I have
| never experienced a ransomware attack either
| professionally or personally) but I've definitely
| experienced secure delete programs attempt to do a low
| level overwrite with random data get interrupted by such
| systems. I once told sdelete.exe to wipe an entire
| directory. It furiously ran, did a bunch of disk IOPS,
| halted a minute or two into the process due to a
| permissions error, and all my files were fine. A second
| or two later the security software notified me of a
| cryptolocker infection it prevented and happily showed me
| the command I had entered moments before.
|
| Its no free lunch though. IOPS performance is a little
| lower and there's more CPU/RAM usage per IOPS when the
| protection is on.
| njovin wrote:
| With XBox I'm unable to play offline games if Xbox knows it
| needs an update, even if I have the network connections
| disconnected. There's no logical reason for this. I was in a
| situation last year where I had purchased an Xbox with a game
| that was allegedly playable offline but was unable to play it
| because the Xbox Live service was down (but somehow the
| console knew it was lacking an update).
|
| In light of this, I don't trust that some future outage of a
| Microsoft service would prevent me from logging in to or
| using my own computer, which is totally unacceptable.
| EricE wrote:
| You can skip it with Pro. It's easy to overlook, but the
| option is there.
|
| You can also set up a new Windows 10 Pro installation without
| a network cord plugged in and it dramatically simplifies the
| setup process skipping the whole MS account dance other than
| telling you that you can do it if/when you connect the
| machine to the network later.
| criddell wrote:
| I thought Windows 11 was going to insist on a Microsoft
| account?
| krylon wrote:
| I don't think they would do that for the Pro/Enterprise
| version, because many large companies running domains
| would not go for that.
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| Did we watch the same Windows 11 announcement? It was horribly
| cringey and corporate.
|
| I swear at one point a presenter said something like "the start
| button is in the center because the product puts you at the
| center," and assertions about how Windows enhances how you
| "engage with the product"
| sedatk wrote:
| I agree. And the start button wasn't even at the center. A
| random app is in the center. Start button is still on the left
| of a centered group of icons.
|
| I don't think I've seen Panos Panay less enthusiastic than this
| in any of his presentations.
| stakkur wrote:
| _" What gives Microsoft more freedom-of-movement, though, is that
| Windows is no longer the core of its business. This remains CEO
| Satya Nadella's biggest triumph"_
|
| Apple recognized this years ago about its OS, of course, but I'm
| not sure I agree with the statement above. The entrenchment of
| Windows in the enterprise is huge for Microsoft, and keeps the
| door propped open there for most of their efforts.
|
| What I mean by 'keeps the door propped open' is that a generation
| of 'Microsoft stack' developers and development has created a
| corporate infrastructure landscape that has been paved and fenced
| by Microsoft's Windows (and to a degree, the .NET ecosystem).
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. If Windows were not the core, bundling Teams
| with it wouldn't be a big deal.
| mdip wrote:
| This article sums up a lot of my thinking pretty well, and at the
| same time, I didn't find any of it particularly earth-shattering,
| and that it was all a rather obvious place they've been
| heading[0] but I realized after I reflected on it for a moment
| that ... this industry sometimes makes you think in terms of
| minutes, not years, and ... holy crap, are we really here?
|
| Shortly after Microsoft started realizing the threat that
| i-devices posed to the entirety of their business (anyone who had
| used an iPhone/iPod Touch saw what was coming), they reacted by
| digging in/"patriotism", with policy changes like: "We'll buy
| anyone who wants one a Windows Phone 8 device..." because... they
| were already buying almost everyone an iPhone that asked for one
| and they needed a way to say "we're going to make it a lot harder
| for you to show our customers that you prefer an iPhone". My best
| friend and I had jobs developing/architecting large MS-related
| things so we regularly assessed the marketability of our
| skillsets. We both concluded: "Microsoft has one way out of this:
| give away[1] Windows, probably need to start making Office/Linux
| work or provide easy integration points for the OS community to
| integrate with AD/Exchange[2]". I, separately concluded, that I
| needed to start using a Linux desktop, full time, because no part
| of me believed they'd do it. It's, culturally, too foreign for
| them.
|
| And then, they started executing on exactly that plan,
| consistently. When they'd make the inevitable "Microsoft-centric"
| decision and get blowback, they'd unexpectedly listen, and either
| thoroughly explain, or resolve.
|
| Windows 10 isn't _free_ as anyone who 's built their own desktop
| knows. But it's effectively become the last version of Windows
| you buy, upgraded for life, and they made that retroactive to
| Windows 7 (do they still do this? not sure). Stuff mostly _just
| works_ with regard to Linux interop -- NFS is a problem in some
| contexts, but most of the things that seemed like they existed
| "just to make it painful to interoperate between the two
| platforms" are gone, and a lot of that is because Microsoft put
| money behind intentionally making "The Enemy OS" work, with care
| spent to not just "make it work" but _fix the parts that aren 't
| quite good enough" continuously.
|
| The best part of it, though, is they're operating as the
| "opposite" of their past behavior with open standards/Linux in
| general. I wouldn't have been surprised to see an OK
| implementation of Linux interop on Windows (Windows Services for
| Unix was the start of that idea), with no attention paid to
| getting MS apps running at all on the Linux side. I'd have been
| quite surprised if they wrote _anything* for Linux, but they made
| the important things _work well_ on Linux.
|
| I'm an enthusiastic full-time user of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, with
| all of _one_ disused Windows OS running in a virtual machine, who
| writes software almost exclusively in C# (console, web and even
| an occasional GUI, at home, anyway).
|
| It's not just that they "open sourced a bunch of really important
| things", but it's _how_ they approached opening up things like
| .NET Core. They completely failed with the full framework 's
| "Shared Source" crap. They recognized the complete loss of trust
| that _all_ of us (I am and have been a happy-minus-a-few-things
| Microsoft customer all of my career).
|
| How many companies much smaller than Microsoft release their
| "frameworks/libraries/tools/software" as Open Source products but
| simply refuse to accept a single Pull Request. Basically,
| "Developing it transparently" -- a good thing -- but failing to
| "develop in the open". How many tiny little edge cases around the
| variety of framework Collections required me, in a high-
| performance scenario, to write an ugly hack because my
| performance edge-case was not worth fixing. They didn't opt to
| "develop in the open" and accept only internal PRs. They didn't
| take it to the next step and "benevolently, (but probably
| reluctantly) accept the occasional PR). They _encouraged_
| developers to submit pull requests using swag /recognition and,
| most importantly, willingness to accept PRs that aren't all that
| important to Microsoft (or maybe anyone but that one developer if
| it doesn't negatively impact anything). They even hosted it on
| GitHub, despite owning/pushing a competitor at the time, because
| "that's where everyone really is". A look at some of the core
| logic around collections (and _enum_ for Pete 's sake), turns out
| that all of those previous edge cases are not only solved,
| they're solved really, really well[3].
|
| God, please give me a time machine so I can see the reaction when
| I explain all of this to 12-years-ago me. I "would will have
| been[4]" more likely to think that this future version of me
| appeared out of some alternative timeline that I'd never actually
| see.
|
| [0] Not a dig at the author/topic, I just felt that he was
| explaining something that "most people who care at all about this
| topic already knows".
|
| [1] Ideally "open source it" but I knew that was extremely
| unlikely simply because of legal reasons that are far more
| complicated than I care to understand.
|
| [2] This was a long time ago; I'd say "Office for Linux" is a
| necessity, and is acceptable (and I prefer to use Outlook web, no
| matter the OS; it doesn't endlessly hang), today with the
| decision to write a Teams for Linux (albeit, with fewer features)
| client.
|
| [3] I was downright disappointed that a really nice generic Enum
| library that I wrote is completely pointless in .NET Core. Every
| single thing that was 10-100 times faster in that library is now
| slower than just using the built-in stuff. And .NET's
| implementation uses less memory.
|
| [4] See Douglas Adams commentary on the difficulties of time
| travel and grammar.
| 5555624 wrote:
| > But it's effectively become the last version of Windows you
| buy, upgraded for life, and they made that retroactive to
| Windows 7 (do they still do this? not sure).
|
| I upgraded -- for free -- a laptop running Windows 7 to Windows
| 10 about six months ago, long after the free upgrade period
| ended. I have a Windows 7 box that brings up a nag screen that
| Windows 7 is out of date and I should upgrade to Windows 10.
| This screen shows up every few days. So, they still do it.
| prepend wrote:
| I begrudgingly switched to Macs about 10 years ago, but still use
| Windows at work and admin my kids' machine because they wanted to
| build their own and play games.
|
| Windows at work is locked down and I guess functional for the
| thousands of people who want to write word docs and just need
| things to work.
|
| My home Windows is a nightmare to admin and has made my kids not
| like computers (particularly sad because my youth was spent
| poking around widows). It has malware despite all the Windows
| bloat that constantly pegs the CPU. It also frequently prompts
| for admin for unknown reasons. It also will force updates that
| take an hour. It also has things that don't work, like screentime
| that blocks the UI but still allows processes to run, with audio
| and video.
|
| I have a pinhole and it's constantly calling out to numerous
| services.
|
| It's such a terrible experience from an admin and user
| perspective. I hope windows11 helps. I suspect that we'll just
| give up games and buy a ps or xbox and the kids will live on iPad
| or android with a game system.
|
| Windows has an opportunity to be a hub, but their stuff is so bad
| right now.
| [deleted]
| sedatk wrote:
| > The Internet dramatically reduced application lock-in
|
| and smartphones brought it back.
| thrower123 wrote:
| It's a very weird perspective to think that Mac's 5% market share
| actually matters and is a threat to Windows.
|
| I'm utterly unimpressed by what I've seen thus far about Windows
| 11, but that is just a clownworld take.
| handrous wrote:
| They're barely even competitors, IMO. Apple's where you go to
| pay a premium for the closest thing to a just-works, well-
| integrated OS & device ecosystem that the market provides, for
| home users or individual pros (or small businesses that don't
| do much in the way of "fleet management").
|
| Microsoft (rather, some manufacturer shipping MS-bearing
| machines) is where you go if you don't want, for whatever
| reason, to pay a premium for that, or you need the best
| business-oriented integration & management the market provides.
|
| That covers about 99% of all personal and business computer
| users, between those two--the remaining sliver is mostly Linux
| and the BSDs. But there's not a ton of market overlap between
| them, I don't think.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I think you're missing the fact that Windows does offer a lot
| on the home front. Games and stuff like HTPC are just better
| on Windows.
|
| Anyways they are competitors because people do switch between
| them. Currently I have a MacBook Pro, my next laptop
| absolutely will not be a MacBook Pro. It's the worst laptop
| I've ever owned.
| handrous wrote:
| > I think you're missing the fact that Windows does offer a
| lot on the home front. Games and stuff like HTPC are just
| better on Windows.
|
| Well, yes, if you have _any_ software that is must-have and
| it 's only available for (or best on) one OS, that'll be
| what you choose.
|
| Incidentally, I'd not put Windows at the top of my list for
| HTPC. Probably 3rd or 4th under Linux and Android (if I
| didn't want to pay anything for the OS and wanted more of
| an appliance, or if I were using anything short of a
| _quite_ beefy computer--Win10 is high overhead and uses
| tons of disk) and macOS (if I wanted a desktop experience
| on the TV and for most advanced media stuff to _probably_
| Just Work without having to mess with config files--old Mac
| Minis are great for this), _unless_ I was also trying to
| PC-game on a TV.
| EricE wrote:
| "Games and stuff like HTPC are just better on Windows." But
| for how much longer? My first foray into M1 Mac ownership
| has shown me that for all but the twitchy first person
| shooters, Apples entry level chip could easily end my
| reliance on a separate Windows desktop for gaming. If I
| wasn't overly addicted to assets and mods in
| Cities:Skylines and thus need at least 32GB of RAM to
| support my oversubscription habit I'd still be rocking an
| M1 Mac today.
|
| And Apple is just getting started. I was amazed at how many
| Windows only games I could get to work with either
| CodeWeavers commercialized and drop dead simple to use WINE
| implementation or the Windows ARM beta running on the
| Parallels beta.
|
| If Apples new SOC is able to woo more and more people like
| I think it will to run on Macs at some point developers
| will notice and the quantity and quality of Mac ports will
| improve and I may even not need Windows running on my Mac
| to run all the games I'm interested in. Most of the games I
| run today have Mac versions already (although that didn't
| factor into my buying decisions since as I mentioned I also
| have a Windows box).
|
| I look at this similar to the Blackberry before the iPhone.
| The year before the iPhone if you would have told me that
| it Apple was coming out with a phone that would utterly
| displace Blackberry within the next five years I would have
| laughed you out of the room - but that's exactly what
| happened. Nothing is guaranteed, but I wouldn't be shocked
| to see a significant shift away from Windows for quite a
| few segments of gaming.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Apple can't excel at games because powerful gaming
| hardware goes against their "thinness at all costs"
| philosophy.
|
| Your post reminds me of the person who said Microsoft
| Office was going to go out of business when Iwork web
| launched in 2015. I think any argument that goes "this
| reminds me of Iphone" is a poor argument.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| The GPU in the M1 is about as powerful as a nVidia 1650ti
| in laptop form. Unless they heavily prioritize GPU
| development or work with AMD/nVidia they'll never be a
| player in the game market due to serious lack of GPU
| power.
|
| Absolutely for many CPU bound loads the M1 is a great
| processor. It just lacks any GPU power which is what you
| need for games.
| spideymans wrote:
| >It's a very weird perspective to think that Mac's 5% market
| share actually matters and is a threat to Windows.
|
| Yes it matters, and yes it is a threat. At least in certain
| market.
|
| Mac usage share has increased from near-zero to 30% in the
| United States over the past fifteen years, while Windows has
| dropped from 90%+ to 60% in the same time period [0]. The trend
| is very similar in other wealthy markets. Windows isn't going
| anywhere, but the era of Windows hegemony in wealthy markets is
| now over.
|
| [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-
| st...
| tristor wrote:
| He should be thanking the lone Australian developer who wrote
| Trumpet WinSOCK for Windows ever being used to access the
| Internet prior to Win98.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I remember over a decade ago such as in 2006 ppl thought that
| Google would overtake msft business by offering free ad-supported
| alternatives to many msft products. Hardly. Both have grown to
| dominate their respective industries
| avrionov wrote:
| It is very interesting what happened. Google did overtake
| Microsoft in may areas: - The most popular operating system -
| More popular document suit - Higher profits
|
| Microsoft survived successfully and thrives today even if they
| don't have the leadership in may areas.
| aloer wrote:
| Imagine if google would've released one good messenger (or
| wave?) and stuck with it
| avrionov wrote:
| Agree. They could've owned the Slack / Microsoft Teams
| market.
| dageshi wrote:
| They'd be in even more anti-trust trouble?
| prepend wrote:
| It's interesting too that Google kind of stopped working on
| features in docs/sheets so they never hit parity with office.
| Close enough doesn't work for excel.
|
| Had they actually tried to replace office, I think they could.
| amerine wrote:
| Was that Windows team/division being split and put partly under
| Azure and partly under office 365 discussed in here? I'm curious
| about commentary from Microsoft folks.
| Hypergraphe wrote:
| Yeah that might be harsh for them. I imagine that senior
| developpers of the Windows core don't think that windows is
| history.
| venkat223 wrote:
| Microsoft fleeced the IT users with restrictive practices and
| overpricing.The windows OS is still a rickety machine of
| labyrinthine codes.The explorer is still pathetic.Nadella is
| talking like Indian politicians
| tyingq wrote:
| _" PCs became "good enough", elongating the upgrade cycle"_
|
| This is really visible for me. I had historically owned
| relatively recent hardware. No longer. My various PC's are all
| 4th, 5th, and 6th gen Intel. I do not a lot, but a non-trivial
| amount of software development, use a fair amount of native apps,
| etc. In other words, not just "surfing the web". And the
| performance is fine/acceptable. I care much more about 16GB of
| memory and an SSD than I do about the CPU or even the GPU.
|
| I don't know, however, how common that is. I'm sure there are a
| lot of people for whom recent hardware still matters a lot.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Calling the presentation "playful and light" is not how I, or
| most of the internet, would describe it. The presenters felt like
| they were on the verge of tears, it was strangely off-putting,
| and the corporate emotion in the presentation was cringeworthy.
| And that's if you could even watch it without the stream
| crashing.
| andix wrote:
| They tried way too hard to copy Apple events. And they failed
| really bad.
| krferriter wrote:
| Apple events can be pretty cringe too
| mjfl wrote:
| yeah I was going to say Tim Cook puts on an excited hopeful
| demeanor that can also be interpreted as being terrified,
| which is probably true.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| But they are cringe in the way a Pixar movie is, its kinda
| meant to be hokey at times to humanize the presenters
| without trying to be too smart. They understand the image
| they are presenting really well whereas Microsoft has no
| idea what they are fumbling into.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Few things are more cringe than that mission impossible
| sequence from the one last year. Worrying the amount of
| yes people that must have got through to be made.
| intellirogue wrote:
| It really was off-putting the way the main guy was saying words
| like "this is so exciting" while having zero facial emotion and
| a dead look in his eyes. Felt like somebody was holding a gun
| to his head and making him read off a prompter.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm actually wondering if Stratechery watched the same
| presentation. I don't think anyone could watch the same
| presentation and call it "playful" or "light."
| smcl wrote:
| All the Microsoft presentations have that now - every second
| sentence describes something as "awesome". It's really off-
| putting, I don't mind if someone is feigning enthusiasm but
| they lay it on so thick
| prepend wrote:
| It reminds me of the new customer support script where they
| make them use empathetic words. " Awesome, let me help" and "
| Thats frustrating" sound worse coming from humans that don't
| care.
| vxNsr wrote:
| If you don't know, that's just how his face always looks,
| he's not a super emotive guy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I've seen this pattern often in the last decade. This era is
| reciting not living
| tupac_speedrap wrote:
| Definitely, the whole presentation had a weird culty vibe to
| it. I couldn't take it seriously when the presenter was gushing
| over Windows so much.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Reddit thinks of a lot of things, but now they are mocking
| _Panos_ by calling him _Thanos_ , and Microsoft didn't help
| considering over 50% of PCs don't meet the system
| requirements.
| [deleted]
| sgerenser wrote:
| Stream crashing was pretty bad. I work at Microsoft (not in
| anything related to Windows) and had to watch it on YouTube.
| dcastonguay wrote:
| I enjoy watching Apple's keynotes with the presenters
| delivering extremely polished and scripted rundowns of each new
| product and feature; they come across as having tailored their
| emotions to fit the desired tone of the presentation. It's very
| different to me from the way that Panos comes across when he
| presents things.
|
| I must be in the minority here, but I actually find it very
| refreshing to watch him speak in these sorts of events. I'm
| guessing that you are mostly talking about Panos when you
| mention that "presenters felt like they were on the verge of
| tears" since the other presenters seemed to me much more
| relaxed and "normal", for lack of a better term. From my own
| perspective he comes across as genuinely being excited about
| the work they're doing and doesn't seem to have a problem
| falling into his own rhythm while presenting.
|
| Intellirogue's comment mentioning his facial expressions also
| made me realize that his presentation style might just be
| closer to what I see in myself; I find myself in situations
| quite frequently where I am genuinely excited about something
| and those around me think that I'm feigning excitement. Whether
| or not his delivery style is universally more palatable to
| people, I personally feel more connected to it and there is
| something about it that ends up coming across to me as more
| relatable and sincere.
|
| I also think it might be a positive thing for us to leave open
| the possibility that some of these execs are as passionate
| about these things as anyone on HN would want them to be. I
| would love to have people at Microsoft and Apple and Google
| creating things that they feel are so incredible that they're
| on the verge of tears.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I would wish that people would be that excited and felt that
| it was that level of incredible too. However, the
| presentation felt, to be honest, forced. Like the entire
| emotion was an act.
|
| Nothing in the presentation was something to cry over. Nobody
| in the audience is ecstatic, nearly crying, about how Teams
| is built in to the OS, or that the Start Menu button is now
| in the center and how that now puts _you_ in the center (his
| words). We all know this isn 't a big deal and yet he's so
| emotional about it, and that's off-putting and makes it feel
| fake and forced.
|
| It's an extreme reaction to details that, frankly, most of us
| are looking on in horror over. Upsetting 26 years of muscle
| memory is a good idea? Building Teams into Windows, which
| almost no family uses and is a resource hog, is a good idea?
| A good idea so good it's worth trying not to cry over?
| jollybean wrote:
| " they come across as having tailored their emotions to fit
| the desired tone of the presentation."
|
| They are coached and it's scripted.
|
| Watching an Apple Presentation is like watching really bad
| actors try to read a dramatic script, which is fine, because
| they're not actors and there shouldn't be a script, but it's
| still funny.
|
| It's sometimes a little bit comical - when Tim Cook raises
| his voice to say something more poignant - you can just see
| the 'forced' nature of it. I can imagine the poor coach, like
| a high school choir director flailing her hands, trying to
| get 'a little more emote'.
|
| Watch their hand movements - sometimes it's really overly
| expressive and unnatural.
|
| In particular, listen to the pacing. For a long time now
| they've really slowed down the cadence, it's almost odd.
|
| In the end I don't think we should ready any of this into
| anything. It's basically irrelevant.
| quanticle wrote:
| This quote is a bit rich:
|
| _Nadella: In our case at Microsoft, I've always felt that, at
| least the definition of a platform is: if something bigger than
| the platform can't be born, then it's not a platform. The web, it
| grew up on Windows. Think about it. If we said, "All of commerce
| is only mediated through us," Amazon couldn't exist, if we had
| somehow said, "We're going to have our own commerce model."_
|
| Yes, it was born on Windows, and you did _everything in your
| power_ to strangle the web in its crib. And now, when it 's
| convenient, you try to take credit for birthing it?
| Clubber wrote:
| He didn't say it was born on Windows, he said it grew up on
| windows. Per your quote:
|
| >In our case at Microsoft, I've always felt that, at least the
| definition of a platform is: if something bigger than the
| platform can't be born, then it's not a platform. _The web, it
| grew up on Windows._ Think about it. If we said, "All of
| commerce is only mediated through us," Amazon couldn't exist,
| if we had somehow said, "We're going to have our own commerce
| model."
|
| That's hard to argue. AOL made it where Prodigy and Compuserve
| withered because it embraced the WWW on .... Windows. I would
| also agree that Microsoft didn't do much to have the web grow
| up on Windows; in fact they actively thwarted it in many ways
| including their embrace, extend extinguish strategy. They
| mistakenly believed that controlling the browser was the key to
| controlling the internet.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, it was _not_ born on Windows. It was born to be platform-
| agnostic. But if it was born on any particular OS platform,
| that would probably be Unix.
|
| It was _popularized_ on Windows, but that 's not the same
| thing.
|
| But yes, Microsoft did everything in their power to, if not
| strangle the web, at least to turn it into a Microsoft walled
| garden.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Windows was already dominant at the time. No other OS was as
| wide deployed, popular and known at the time. Most people I
| knew in the 90's had their first contact with the internet
| through a windows box.
|
| Microsoft may have been late to the party but, considering how
| they basically owned the client-side, they had time to recover.
| In just a few years IE ate 90%+ of the browser world.
| quanticle wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't alter the fact that Bill Gates saw the
| web as an existential risk for Microsoft, and did everything
| in his power to ensure that the web evolved in a way that
| would benefit Microsoft in general and Windows in particular.
| I find the second part of Nadella's quote to be especially
| ironic:
|
| _Think about it. If we said, "All of commerce is only
| mediated through us," Amazon couldn't exist, if we had
| somehow said, "We're going to have our own commerce model."_
|
| That is, in fact, _exactly_ what Microsoft tried to do. They
| tried to force their own proprietary standards on the web. It
| was only after they were slapped down by the Justice
| Department that they stopped engaging in anti-competitive
| behavior and created the space for alternative web browsers
| to grow. Even then, it was almost too late. How many
| _decades_ did we wait for IE6 to finally die so that we could
| write web sites that would even pretend to conform to modern
| web standards?
| gowld wrote:
| That's not the same thing. Bad as it was, MS/IE never
| _prevented_ websites from existing, or even partially-gated
| them by requiring them to get MS approval like console
| video games and iOS App Store.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Yes, but when IE also became dominant, then came
| exclusive extensions that, once widely used, broke the
| internet to everyone using other browsers.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Last time I checked the history books, Tim Berners-Lee used a
| NeXTCube to create the web. The Web was born on NeXT (later
| Mac), not Windows.
| tootie wrote:
| Benefit of the doubt, he's not talking about literally
| invention, but rather adoption. Most early internet users
| were definitely on Windows and Internet Explorer was the
| dominant browser for many years. Even that take glosses over
| them cheating Netscape out of their spot, but really IE was a
| cutting edge browser when it was at it's peak.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| And then Microsoft gave us the gift of Internet Explorer 6.
| laurentb wrote:
| IE6 was released in 2001, 3 years before Firefox 1.0.
|
| At the time, it was indeed a gift and Netscape was
| already on its dying legs with Netscape 6, bloated beyond
| recognition
| Paianni wrote:
| IE6 was actually a perfectly fine browser at launch, the
| trouble was that it stayed current for so long that
| getting IT infrastructure to abandon it took far longer
| than it should have. XP and Server 2003 had a similar
| predicament.
| mcny wrote:
| > IE6 was actually a perfectly fine browser at launch,
| the trouble was that it stayed current for so long that
| getting IT infrastructure to abandon it took far longer
| than it should have. XP and Server 2003 had a similar
| predicament.
|
| My worst experience with Internet Explorer didn't even
| have to exist. Why did Windows 98 do Windows Update with
| Internet Explorer? Was there a technical reason why
| Windows Update had to be coupled with an open web browser
| session? My memory isn't that good but from what I recall
| it was really painful over dial up (technically up to
| 48kbps but in practice, you'd be lucky to get half of
| that).
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Was there a technical reason why Windows Update had to
| be coupled with an open web browser session
|
| Yes, it was so that Microsoft can claim that IE4 was an
| integral part of the OS and couldn't be removed.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| For all the mistakes made with IE6, the modern web would
| not be possible without Microsoft's introduction of
| "XMLHTTPRequest".
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I mean, AOL was a pretty big player for adoption of the
| internet and they had their own version of a walled garden.
| Before that, there were a lot of people using lynx on a
| text terminal in libraries/gopher clients/dialup to a local
| university. By the time Netscape/Internet Explorer were
| making it to the scene, they were competing for something
| already established and growing.
| e12e wrote:
| Ah, but MS came up with Ajax, moving the web from REST to
| movable code...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Not only that but they were trying to get people on their own
| proprietary network (MSN, not to be confused with msn.com).
| pavlov wrote:
| Isn't that proving Nadella's point?
|
| Windows in 1994 was not the kind of walled garden where
| Microsoft could have forced users exclusively onto MSN.
| When the web turned out to be the winner, Microsoft had to
| adapt and build their own browser; they couldn't just
| tighten the App Store screws like Apple would do in a
| similar situation on iOS.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I dont think you can compare what Apple and Microsoft are
| doing at 2 completely different points in the evolution
| of the internet. When microsoft embraced the internet we
| didn't have ubiquitous TCP/IP yet. It was essential.
| Today we have the bottom layers so what businesses choose
| to do on top is their, well, business.
| splatcollision wrote:
| He very carefully does not say "born on windows" but "grew up
| on windows". Be sure that phrasing of a CEO's words on a
| press interview are very carefully chosen and checked.
| malkia wrote:
| Hah, QuakeEd, quake's editor was born on NeXT (written in
| Objective C), but then ported to Windows (MFC) as this was
| (and still is) the typical developer's machine (or DOS back
| in the days).
| spijdar wrote:
| There's some wiggle room here, depending on how you "count".
| The first HTTP client and server were certainly created as
| NeXT apps, and I love NeXTSTEP so I love mentioning this
| trivia, but the reality IMO is the web that people actually
| used in the 90s and the web that evolved into what we have
| now doesn't really resemble Tim Berners-Lee's vision for what
| he called "the web" or his client/server.
|
| So as far as popularizing the web for the masses and
| developing the _de facto_ WWW so many people experienced, I
| think the earlier DOS and other Unix browsers like Mosaic
| were more instrumental, with Internet explorer and Netscape
| really "birthing" the web we know.
| ragebol wrote:
| Would it be fair to say that the web we know today, with a
| few big players that gather all our data was born on
| Windows but the web we know and love, with an abundance of
| personal websites was born on Unix?
|
| Probably not, but there is some correlation I guess
| Lorkki wrote:
| Probably not. Most people in the 90s had their personal
| websites in some shared hosting service, while clients
| across the board were and still are predominantly
| Windows.
| hulitu wrote:
| > So as far as popularizing the web for the masses and
| developing the de facto WWW so many people experienced, I
| think the earlier DOS and other Unix browsers like Mosaic
| were more instrumental, with Internet explorer and Netscape
| really "birthing" the web we know.
|
| In 1995 windows was at his birth. The majority of people
| used other protocols than http to explore the internet. I
| was searching for a DOS browser to run it on the university
| computer (DOS diskless) to see the new web. Then MS bought
| Spyglass (or something) and they destroyed Netscape by
| bundling IE with windows. Windows did not bring anymore the
| web to the masses than netscape, chimera and others did.
| They just happened (as today) to hold a monopolistic
| position on the market and exploited this position.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > Then MS bought Spyglass (or something)
|
| This is actually kind of an amazing story when you dig
| into it. Microsoft _licensed_ Spyglass -- which was the
| commercialized version of the original Mosaic -- on a
| royalty basis. Microsoft 's version of Spyglass was
| Internet Explorer 1.0, part of the commercial "Microsoft
| Plus!" package. But then Microsoft released IE separately
| for free, and when it was bundled with Windows, a bit of
| accounting sleight-of-hand treated it as $0 direct
| revenue (after all, it's just freeware they're not making
| you download separately, right?). So, the royalty payment
| to Spyglass became: $0. They still paid a fairly small
| flat minimum, but that was it.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Amazing? You mean despicable. Like pretty much everything
| Microsoft has ever done.
| lucasverra wrote:
| We might even see MS making popular Progressive Web Apps!
|
| >Quote : That is going to be the fundamental challenge in
| such a world, but we feel that there are ways. One of the
| ways I look at this is you can light an Android app or a
| PWA app or a UWP app on Windows in the future, or even
| today, for some of the new AI APIs.
| bin_bash wrote:
| I'm sure most of you have seen this, but for the younger
| crowd, this is the actual machine: https://collection.science
| museumgroup.org.uk/objects/co82323...
| tpush wrote:
| Nadella's talking about how the web "grew up" on Windows; it's
| just rhetoric about how the dominant (client-side) portion of
| the web was facilitated through Windows.
| goalieca wrote:
| >portion of the web was facilitated through Windows
|
| I'm old enough to have lived through ie6. They did everything
| they could to hold the web back a generation because they saw
| the future and it was web services and the open web doesn't
| exclusively run on windows.
| raydev wrote:
| It really does not matter what MS tried to do back the, as
| the average consumer was using Windows to access the
| internet.
|
| Sure, MS was bad. Doesn't change the fact that most people
| first experienced the internet through Windows. And it was
| that audience that brought business and more money.
| tootie wrote:
| I remember this time as well and it's not really true. They
| pushed a lot of proprietary features like ActiveX, but IE
| overall was far more sophisticated than Netscape. It really
| pushed DOM (albeit a hacky, proprietary DOM) as a way to
| dynamically manipulate pages. They also birthed XMLHTTP
| which was the original format for AJAX. Netscape was pretty
| Stone Age by comparison.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Some new technologies that are now crucial to web
| standards were developed as a part of IE. But to say
| Netscape was "Stone Age" in comparison is disingenuous
| and/or a misremembering of the past. Especially the
| following 5 years after Netscape died; when the web
| stagnated on IE6 while Firefox and Safari slowly gained
| market share.
|
| IE had _many_ issues supporting other crucial (and
| standard) technologies like CSS, images + alpha blending,
| basic ease of use features (tabs, accessibility,
| extensions), security (a good chunk of the ciphersuite
| was missing), etc.
| nbevans wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)
|
| "In 1996, the iframe tag was introduced by Internet
| Explorer; like the object element, it can load or fetch
| content asynchronously. In 1998, the Microsoft Outlook Web
| Access team developed the concept behind the XMLHttpRequest
| scripting object.[4] It appeared as XMLHTTP in the second
| version of the MSXML library,[4][5] which shipped with
| Internet Explorer 5.0 in March 1999.[6]"
|
| This was Microsoft's single biggest contribution to the
| early web. Everyone likes to hate on IE but actually it did
| include a lot of innovation.
| admax88q wrote:
| They did _almost_ everything in their power.
|
| They did not however, prevent you from downloading and
| installing netscape like Apple is currently doing with iOS.
|
| I believe that was Nadella's main point, which I don't
| disagree with.
|
| While they did attempt to embrace, extend, extinguish, the
| platform was fundamentally not locked down which still
| allowed the web to take over.
| notriddle wrote:
| > embrace, extend, extinguish
|
| The funny thing about that phrase is that it was invented
| to describe Active Directory's relationship with LDAP and
| Kerberos. Active Directory is definitely one of Windows's
| killer applications, and rather than attempting to kill
| it, Microsoft instead makes a killing off of it.
| quanticle wrote:
| _They did not however, prevent you from downloading and
| installing netscape like Apple is currently doing with
| iOS._
|
| They absolutely tried to, and were only stopped because
| the Justice Department told them that bundling IE with
| Windows was an illegal use of monopoly power. It's
| interesting that Nadella gives _Microsoft_ credit for
| that and not Attorney General Janet Reno, under whose
| authority the Justice Department pursued the anti-trust
| case against Microsoft that led to browser bundling being
| declared anticompetitive.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Your memory might be faulty. They got in trouble for
| bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, but at no point
| did they ever make any attempt to make it so you could
| not install an alternative browser.
| tootie wrote:
| Bundling isn't the same thing. They proactively pushed IE
| on Windows users which was deemed anticompetitive, but
| they never prevented you from using Netscape or Firefox.
| And the only reason that decision was made then and is
| not applicable to iOS now is that Windows overall was so
| dominant as a desktop OS that it effectively owned the
| market. Apple can say that users who don't like Safari
| can just go buy an Android.
| jakeva wrote:
| > prevent you from downloading and installing netscape
| like Apple is currently doing with iOS.
|
| I don't know about netscape, but I currently use a
| browser other than Safari as my default browser. Unless
| you mean the underlying framework is WebKit?
| zargon wrote:
| A distinction without a difference.
| 8note wrote:
| Safari reskinned to look like Firefox is still safari in
| my opinion.
|
| Apple gets complete control over what a webpage can do,
| and chooses the features it supports to ensure the web
| cannot compete with the app store
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It's not Safari. It's worse than Safari, because it
| misses some API to match a proper Safari.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| I think it's not just rethoric. E-commerce was the thing that
| brought money to the Web, that let it grow up and grow big.
| And the vast majority of these transactions were made by
| people sitting before monitors with a browser on Windows.
| agumonkey wrote:
| That's a specific side of the web. To many web == linked
| documents, not business.
| nix23 wrote:
| No they grew up on Netscape flash and java (the sun
| one)...windows was and is, just a application runtime.
| [deleted]
| bluedino wrote:
| In the "old days", I remember more _webmasters_ using Macs,
| especially with all the Adobe /Macromedia tools. Even going
| into "Web 2.0" with Intel Macs.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I'm sorry, but your memory is either for a very specific
| community or just naive. Just the sheer number of
| applications around web development for Windows vs Mac at
| the time would disprove that belief. For every Cyberduck;
| you have a WinSCP, FileZilla, CuteFTP, SmartFTP, CoreFTP,
| CrossFTP, etc. Especially since the Macromedia suite was
| also available on Windows.
|
| Having been in the community pretty deeply in those days, I
| can assure you that Apple didn't gain any sizeable market
| share _until_ Web 2.0. The prototype.js + Rails developers
| definitely preferred OS X for their tool suite. The growth
| of backend developers, in general, led to Apple's growth;
| via developer's needing terminal access and easy
| installation /management of backend tools with ease of use.
| bluedino wrote:
| I think I'm going back farther than you think. Webstar,
| BBEdit, and of course the Macromedia stuff which was in
| it's infancy. Macs seemed like a bargain compared to say
| a WebForce Indy
| hughrr wrote:
| Nadella's true colours showing through. A few years back on
| here people were virtually giving the guy a metaphorical hand
| job about the new improved Microsoft.
|
| So reality is as I described : hubris and marketing resulting
| in nothing but stagnated excrement for everyone unfortunate
| enough to have to deal with them. Again. Same as the last
| executive positions there.
|
| If Microsoft hadn't had their hands in our technology future
| we'd be further along and better off. All they have done is set
| our expectations low.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| You seem to be bringing a lot of personal baggage with you in
| your comment. Maybe you should just not comment on Microsoft
| related posts.
| hughrr wrote:
| I've been a Microsoft developer, admin and architect for 30
| years as well as a director of a gold partner and probably
| directly put tens of millions of dollars of revenue in
| their direction.
|
| Hell I even have met Bill back in the early 90s on a couple
| of occasions and got some books signed.
|
| I've also been on the end of having products pulled from
| under me causing massive rewrites of stable LOB
| applications, on the end of audits and bugs that are so
| abhorrent that their own internal division heads got
| involved at the time.
|
| What's worst is I burned possibly tens of years of human
| lives on things which were directly their fault through
| absolute incompetence and negligence towards their
| customers or burning their entire roadmap for something new
| and shiny.
|
| So quite frankly I think I'm fairly qualified to tear them
| a new one when I see fit.
|
| Edit: as always I notice that the moment the US wakes up
| any critical posts about MSFT magically start plummeting.
| Reputation that important? Earn it!
| vondur wrote:
| Ha. Mainstream Windows at the time didn't even have TCP/IP
| software to connect to the internet. I think it came in a later
| revision of Windows 95. Windows 98 did have it installed
| though.
| satysin wrote:
| Indeed. In fact it was J Allard's[0] 1994 memo "Windows: The
| Next Killer Application on the Internet" that caught the
| attention of Bill Gates. Before then it was clear many (most?
| everyone else?) at Microsoft didn't see the potential of the
| internet.
|
| It was his memo that lead to reshaping Microsoft's direction
| with Windows and the internet with the inclusion of TCP/IP in
| Windows 95.
|
| Allard went on to be a key member of the original Xbox launch
| team and Xbox Live. Unfortunately a lot of what he worked on
| post-Xbox was not as successful and he left Microsoft around
| a decade ago.
|
| Since then he hasn't been involved in much of note, or at
| least nothing to the same scale and impact as his earlier
| work. Although topping his internet memo and the launch of
| Xbox and Xbox Live is pretty hard to do to be fair :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Allard
| agumonkey wrote:
| Damn I wish I could be in offices at the time.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Steven Sinofsky (former President of Microsoft's Windows
| Division) shares some behind the scenes stories about
| Microsoft and the internet on his blog:
|
| https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/026-blu
| e-s...
|
| https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/029-tel
| lin...
| agumonkey wrote:
| Extremely interesting articles. Thanks
| joejacket wrote:
| Trumpet Winsock was required for Windows 3.11, the only
| supported networking was IPX if I remember it.
| flomo wrote:
| Windows For Workgroups 3.11 had TCP/IP, but no PPP dialer
| for home users.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Yes, this is how I explain my early days on computers to
| kids now. "The internet was an app you had to install"
| rhodozelia wrote:
| My first 'job' was going around to professors houses and
| setting up their modems and trumpet windsock so they
| could connect to the internet through the university's
| modem pool. I was 12 and my dad came with me, the
| professors would reach out to him to get me to set up
| their internet. Hilarious!
| agumonkey wrote:
| Using the old floppynet
| joejacket wrote:
| My ISP provided shell access via dialup to download a
| starter pack, Winsock, Mosaic, etc. All via lsz/zmodem.
|
| I rarely used floppies, we did most trading via BBSs or
| even direct dial. Telix was in my autoexec I used it so
| much.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 95 shipped with a TCP/IP stack at launch but it wasn't
| checked for install by default. The big thing missing was IE
| 1.0 didn't ship with the OS initially, you had to get it via
| the Plus! pack until the later versions of 95. Came with
| pinball too though.
| cbsmith wrote:
| At best it was "born on Trumpet Winsock", and it definitely
| wasn't born on Trumpet Winsock.
| mdip wrote:
| I didn't catch that quote -- that's an _amazingly_ dumb thing
| to say. It 's _so dumb_ that I 'm inclined to believe it was a
| mistake, rather than something Nadella believes. Maybe the PR
| folks had a little too much say in that statement because more
| than a few BS meters exploded.
|
| Ignoring the statement for a moment, Nadella _killed_ "Windows
| First" thinking. It took me a long time to believe they were
| _actually_ doing it, but SQL server, and then Teams -- a
| component of office -- along with the fact that SQL works
| _better_ in Linux than on Windows (embarrassingly so in
| frequent cases), Outlook 365 in Firefox works _better_ on any
| OS than Outlook on Windows, .NET Foundation /open source .NET
| core going from "a sort-of .NET for those of you who insist on
| using non-Windows stuff, to working better for nearly
| everything than the "Full Framework"[0].
|
| Had that same sentence been altered by one, easy to slip on,
| word it would have been far more accurate ("ignoring" facts
| rather than outright lying about them): "The web, it grew up
| _with_ Windows " or _along side_ Windows. Accurate would be
| "dragged Windows with it kicking and screaming at times" and
| "Windows as actively hostile toward the web" but I don't expect
| the best CEOs of the least important companies to be that
| honest. I'd love it, but it might not fly on Wall Street.
|
| Had Microsoft continued in its monopolistic behavior, it's
| arguable that MS tried to and possibly could have delayed the
| success of the Internet via its refusal to support internet
| protocols natively in the OS (Windows 95's earliest version
| lacked Internet Explorer, but also didn't include tooling --
| IIRC -- to speak SLIP/PPP or anything outside of NetBIOS,
| including TCP/IP/UDP by default). The browser would could have
| done without the "kill Netscape at all costs" behavior, but
| even that produced tangible benefits at the end of the day.
|
| I can't pretend to read his mind, but I doubt he doesn't
| recognize the stupidity in that statement -- it's possible, but
| it would be contrary to what I've experienced.
|
| I'd love to know what Microsoft would have done with Nadella at
| the helm during that important time. I don't think what I know
| about Microsoft, today, would mean that they'd have embraced
| the open web back then. I'd take it as a strong positive if
| Nadella, today, _believed_ he would have led Microsoft here all
| the way back then, but there 's so much hindsight in that
| conclusion. _Most_ major players at that time were looking to
| "lock in users, using the internet, somehow" at the time, that
| it wasn't an obvious, correct, choice that one could sell to
| shareholders at that time. None of those major players (save
| Oracle) made a hard turn at some point and look nothing like
| they do today, culture-wise (Oracle was negatively affected by
| it all but Larry Ellison's reality distortion field appears to
| be alive and well over there). In a lot of ways, the "locked in
| users" is the internet we _have_ , today, but the companies
| from back then largely didn't become the winners in today's
| locked-in world (save Amazon).
|
| [0] See my other comment for the variety of things that
| Microsoft at least owes to Nadella's willingness to reshape
| internal culture in a way I wouldn't have expected would be
| possible.
| morganvachon wrote:
| He said "grew up" as you quoted, then _you_ said "it was born
| on Windows" which is untrue, and renders your entire point
| invalid.
|
| While I agree that Microsoft worked hard to hold back
| innovation on the Web in its early days, you are changing the
| words of a quote so you can then attack the quote, and that's
| not a good look.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's even richer than you think. This is not true:
|
| > it was born on Windows
|
| It was born on the NeXT operating system. That was the Steve
| Jobs creation that Apple bought and used as the foundati0on for
| OS X. Here's the actual history:
|
| https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
| babypuncher wrote:
| He said "grew up" not "born". He's talking about the client
| side of the early web existing almost entirely on Windows.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm not sure what he you're referring to. But quanticle
| clearly said what I quoted. And Nadella said the same
| thing: "The web itself was born and grew up on Windows."
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22549007/microsoft-
| window...
| gentleman11 wrote:
| People keep fetishizing Nadella but he's the reason there is so
| much tracking and online interference in windows now
| abraxas wrote:
| In the nineties we came within an inch of having MS Internet.
| If IE with ActiveX had succeeded at displacing Javascript we
| would be condemned to having one corporation controlling all
| end user internet experience. We should count our lucky starts
| that they screwed up Windows Mobile so badly.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I agree and bill gates got it wrong in his information
| superhighway book "The Road Ahead"... They underestimated the
| internet entirely.
| crazypython wrote:
| He said the web grew up on Windows. Internet Explorer invented
| XMLHttpRequest, paving the way for interactive web pages that
| can dynamically fetch data.
| nybble41 wrote:
| You can have web pages that dynamically fetch data without
| XMLHttpRequest. For example, one technique is to dynamically
| inject a <script> tag referencing the URL of a server-side
| CGI script which collects the data and sends it back encoded
| as a call to a JavaScript callback function to be executed on
| the client. It's not as clean, and it can only manage GET
| requests--so the URLs need to be unique to prevent caching--
| but it works.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| MS wanted the web tied to IE and Windows, but I don't recall
| them trying to kill the web or positioning themselves to take a
| percentage of all web commerce.
| hughrr wrote:
| There were a few attempts to kick out ActiveX based crap
| early on. This lead to crashing browsers and poor user
| experience so didn't go far.
|
| Ultimately I think they saw it as a delivery mechanism for
| their technology which is a reasonable bet.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| Right, but I'd argue that ActiveX was a hedge against the
| threat of cross-platform Java, not the web.
| coldacid wrote:
| ActiveX was more a counterpart to Java applets in
| particular, rather than "cross-platform Java" in general.
| babypuncher wrote:
| In the end, both technologies were awful and the web is a
| better place without them today.
| coldacid wrote:
| Agreed!
| dfox wrote:
| In fact MS not only invented XHR (and the reason why is called
| that is because it originnaly was semi-documented internal
| Windows API), but they also invented bunch of HTML-native
| features that are currently being reintroduced into HTML5. And
| then there is the "JS frameworks" front-end crowd that will
| actively push back against doing anything non-trivial in native
| HTML5.
| [deleted]
| routerl wrote:
| Not to mention that MS were actually pretty late to the party.
| They didn't put any chips down on the growth of the web until
| win98, which could already be marketed as "web focused"
| because... the web was already huge.
|
| Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about the above, since
| I'm going off childhood memories here.
| quanticle wrote:
| Internet Explorer was first released on August 16, 1995 [1]
| for as part of the Microsoft Plus! pack for Windows 95. That
| said, IE 1 and 2 were pretty paltry efforts and Microsoft's
| attack against Netscape didn't really get going until IE 3,
| which came out in '96 [2]. As I understand it, this was also
| the first release of Internet Explorer that was packaged with
| the operating system, as it was shipped with the Windows 95
| OSR2 service pack.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_3
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Around that time Gates made a speech that they were turning
| the company around to focus on the Internet. Unsaid was that
| they were quite late to the party.
|
| Before that you had to install TCP/IP separately on any non-
| Unix boxes. Personally I had been using the net for years at
| that point.
| [deleted]
| agloeregrets wrote:
| You are correct. Their initial attempts were messy then too.
| By time the iMac G3 came around in late '98 the web was the
| #1 reason people were buying computers and Apple was
| marketing on how much easier their product was to setup for
| the web. Microsoft was truly remarkably bad at winning the
| race so they went off trying to shoehorn IE on Mac, which was
| a winning bet when the iMac became the #1 selling machine.
| marcodiego wrote:
| With azure's success, windows is no longer microsoft's most
| profitable product/service and it hasn't been for a long time.
| Chromebooks got a small but stable fraction of the education and
| laptop market. Many activities that required a desktop can now be
| more easily done using a smartphone, tablet or smart tv. Web
| services are, by definition, multi-platform; making an OS-
| specific features unneeded. The set of reasons to use a desktop
| won't disappear but it is still getting smaller and will continue
| to do so for some time.
|
| It is a matter of market demand... windows is no longer as
| valuable as it was and will eventually become a second class
| legacy product. When that will happen is hard to predict.
| adolph wrote:
| Yes, what is an OS but an accretion of utilities around a
| kernel intermediating access to compute and various backing
| services?
| retskrad wrote:
| It's impossible to for Microsoft and Google to compete with Apple
| in the US. Every YouTube, TikTok, Hollywood, Instagram celebrity
| use AirPods/iPhones/Macbooks which means Windows and Android will
| forever be associated with being a poor man's version of whatever
| Apple is offering.
|
| You might say Apple's only dominant market share is in the US
| (50%) but the reality is that the US dictates what's cool and
| what's not.
| tored wrote:
| > the reality is that the US dictates what's cool and what's
| not.
|
| I wonder for how long that will stay true, give it a decade and
| I think that era will be over.
| cosmojg wrote:
| I'm worried that it will take a war to make this happen.
| techrat wrote:
| Galaxy Fold.
|
| $2000 to 3000 phone.
|
| Runs Android.
|
| And you know Apple is going to do what they always do. Copy it.
|
| Funny how Apple keeps copying the 'poor man's ideas.
|
| Now, if you're only focused on what's cool and what isn't, of
| course Apple is going to be the only thing you see... because
| you're looking for it.
| jakeva wrote:
| Apple is never going to release a folding phone, it's way too
| gimmicky.
| galkk wrote:
| Some were saying the same about pencil.
| detaro wrote:
| wtf is gimmicky about a pen for a tablet?
| techrat wrote:
| Jobs was completely against them. He considered them to
| be a gimmick. Now the Apple Pencil is considered an
| important accessory to the iPad.
|
| https://qz.com/1575481/would-steve-jobs-like-the-ipad-
| today/
|
| >The first is that Steve Jobs unabashedly hated styluses.
| When introducing the first iPhone in 2007, the Apple
| founder said, "Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em,
| put 'em away, you lose 'em. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus.
| So let's not use a stylus."
|
| https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/10/technology/apple-pencil-
| ste...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Apple's philosophy is that being first is not being best. You
| can be 5th place, but if you do it "best," it won't matter.
| That doesn't mean they are necessarily copying either. We've
| had leaks that they've tried foldables for years.
| esclerofilo wrote:
| Facebook could start fighting back against Apple by giving
| influencers with Android more visibility, or worsening React
| Native on iOS. I wonder how much of an effect it would have.
|
| Apple is already screwing over Facebook (look at the features
| in iOS 15), which is why they could consider doing this.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Among silly comments on HN, this is sillyness of a 14 year old.
| Ya can't be serious.
|
| Hospitals, wall street banks and hedgefunds, almost all the big
| F500 corporations and people who actually do meaningful work
| for laboratories, engineering plants and refineries, and
| factories making microchips to cars to Aeroplanes are more than
| likely to be on Windows.
|
| You've been mislead which makes sense since Apple has the
| effect more on impressionable people. The world literally runs
| on Windows. The internet runs on Linux. Apple makes premium
| consumer devices.
| tpush wrote:
| There are more devices running iOS than Windows in the US
| according to [0].
|
| Add macOS' market share and Apple's the single manufacturer
| of the most popular OSs in the US, with quite a lead even.
|
| [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-
| states...
| yoz-y wrote:
| Everybody has a mobile phone, not everybody has a computer.
| Comparing iOS and windows market share is interesting, but
| only for the consumer market.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| You just commented on someone saying ...
|
| > Hospitals, wall street banks and hedgefunds, almost all
| the big F500 corporations and people who actually do
| meaningful work for laboratories, engineering plants and
| refineries, and factories making microchips to cars to
| Aeroplanes are more than likely to be on Windows.
|
| By saying something about iOS. Engineering plants don't run
| iOS.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| I wonder if those figures include the 200M+ Xbox consoles
| that all run a Windows-based OS.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The problem Microsoft has with Windows is their moat (win32) is
| turning into an anchor. All that pandering to enterprise
| customers has created a hostile attitude towards end users.
| antidaily wrote:
| Yeah, the fact that you can still peel the onion back to
| Windows NT looking icons is just crazy to me.
| gruez wrote:
| win32 is "pandering" to enterprise customers? What would
| pandering to non-enterprise customers look like? Their non-
| win32 APIs (XAML/UWP/winrt) have all failed to gain market
| share.
| Andrex wrote:
| That can hardly be blamed on non-enterprise customers. MS
| strangled those efforts in their cribs.
| [deleted]
| hota_mazi wrote:
| > Today is the opposite: Apple reigns supreme over the computing
| landscape.
|
| Really wonder where this comes from.
|
| Rough estimates of worldwide users:
|
| - Windows: 1.5 billion
|
| - macOS: 100 million
|
| - Android: 2.8 billion
|
| - iOS: 700 million
|
| That's hardly "Apple reigning supreme".
| gffrd wrote:
| I think "reigning supreme" is about more than units ... I think
| of "mindshare" and per-unit value.
|
| 20 years ago, if you asked people "what does a computer look
| like?" they thought of Windows, and they were excited about it.
| Today, it's Apple.
|
| It's the classic "what devices 16 year olds are asking their
| parents for?" survey, which hovers around like 90% pro-Apple.
| That's a future dollar, and one that will very likely go to
| Apple (unless they trip over themselves / get too high on their
| supply).
|
| Also! Apple undoubtedly gets the most value-per-unit ... App
| store sales ($138/user/year! [1]), iCloud subs, branded
| accessories, line-extension stuff (homePod, Apple TV, etc.). So
| while they may not dominate in unit percentage, they probably
| get like 80% of the total revenue* in the space.
|
| * kneejerk based on prior revenue breakdowns + gut feeling
| alone [1] https://sensortower.com/blog/revenue-per-iphone-2020
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > It's the classic "what devices 16 year olds are asking
| their parents for?" survey, which hovers around like 90% pro-
| Apple.
|
| Are you sure about that?
|
| Windows dominates the high-end computer gaming market, which
| a lot of this demographic is into. That's a $40+ billion
| market, representing a large number of Windows users.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > 20 years ago, if you asked people "what does a computer
| look like?" they thought of Windows, and they were excited
| about it. Today, it's Apple.
|
| Where?
|
| > App store sales ($138/user/year! [1]), iCloud subs, branded
| accessories, line-extension stuff
|
| Yeah...because everything there is expensive and therefore
| aims for the upper class (or people who want to look like
| it).
|
| But I'm quite sure they feel very much supreme.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| It doesn't really FEEL like Windows has this kind of market
| share, does it? I think if you could factor out corporate sales
| data from market share figures, this would be much more
| instructive, and would explain why Windows is no longer driving
| the computing world. From my circle of family, friends, and
| acquaintances, I think the desktop market share is more like
| 50/50 (vs Mac) when people are voting with their own dollars.
| blatchcorn wrote:
| No way are there 1.5bn windows users. More like 1bn legacy
| machines that are padding the numbers
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| How could it not be 1.5bn? Every business desktop and laptop
| computer runs MS Windows and Office (yes we all know there
| are exceptions but they're negligable relatively speaking).
| If anything, I'm surprised it's that few.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| computer usage is very different outside the US
| hota_mazi wrote:
| Look it up yourself, I averaged numbers from various sources,
| which all agree that this is the ball park.
| andi999 wrote:
| Probably 500 Million in China alone running windows.
| burlesona wrote:
| I mostly agree with this point. The only way it's true is that
| iPhone is so popular and is both a higher-spending consumer and
| less fragmented platform compared to android, so most mobile
| software goes iPhone first.
|
| But IMO there really isn't a single dominant platform right
| now, with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux all being
| highly relevant in different niches.
| defaultname wrote:
| Apple has 1.65 billion _active_ devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac). 1
| billion active iPhones alone.
|
| That's neither here nor there, though, and I would hardly say
| that means that Apple "reigns supreme", or remotely close. It
| seems like they're an important player among important players.
|
| Microsoft, Apple, Google (with a subscript of Samsung), and to
| a much lesser degree Sony dictate our digital life now.
| e12e wrote:
| so.. Assuming some overlap, some 5-7bn people lack access to a
| pc or smartphone?
| hota_mazi wrote:
| I was startled as well once I added these numbers.
|
| I hope this number is much smaller and the gap we are looking
| at is more due to unreported usages.
| andi999 wrote:
| Maybe they do not have a dedicated device. It seem 65% or 4.7
| billion people have access to the internet.
| minikites wrote:
| >Microsoft, like Apple, is responding by doing what they do best,
| but, because it's Microsoft, it's the exact opposite of Apple:
| instead of more deeply integrating and doing everything
| themselves in an attempt to appeal to consumers, they are opening
| up and removing limitations in an attempt to appeal to
| developers, and by extension consumers who don't want to be bound
| into Apple's ecosystem.
|
| This attitude is why I think Microsoft will continue to be
| successful and why Nadella is a much better CEO than Ballmer.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| "Apple reigns supreme over the computing landscape" Yeah, no. Not
| really. Maybe in Silicon Valley developer circles.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I don't think he intended it to mean "general purpose
| computing" but "consumer computing," he mentioned iOS in the
| next line. If you include mobile devices, in the US at least, I
| can see the argument, although it still isn't a great one
| considering Android.
| kyriakos wrote:
| ios is not general purpose computing
| dartharva wrote:
| It doesn't "reign supreme" in consumer computing outside the
| US either. Rather, it's hilariously down - Apple has a mere
| ~2% market share in India (the largest smartphone market in
| the world after China).
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| He may be thinking from a profit perspective, but it's
| certainly not true if you're measuring active users.
| klelatti wrote:
| I think "reigns supreme" is a judgment based on $ value rather
| than number.
|
| If I said ARM Cortex M cores dominate the microprocessor market
| you would rightly dispute that.
| lwn wrote:
| From what I observe in NL (EU) is: Mass market is moving away
| from home PC's to handheld devices, either iOS or Android
| (about 50/50) (for example my dad uses an iPhone and iPad, mom
| uses an Android phone and iPad) Lot's of students, devs/ start-
| ups are using or switching to a macbook.
| collaborative wrote:
| I wonder if consumer desktops will be replaced by "phones"
| connected to a keyboard/mouse/screen at some point. It kind
| of would make sense. If you could run Windows11+Android apps
| on a new type of good phone this would be great imo. It would
| save lots of desk space too
| aodin wrote:
| Globally, about 270 million personal computers (including
| laptops) [1] and 1.5 billion smartphones [2] are sold per year.
| Apple makes up about 17% of global smartphone market share [3]
| and 55% of US market share [4].
|
| [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-
| releases/2021-01-1...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-
| smartphone...
|
| [3] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-
| share...
|
| [4] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-
| sh...
| alerighi wrote:
| In the consumer market, maybe. In reality you are only taking
| into account your country, in all other countries macs are
| rare, and are typically only used by creators (photographers,
| musicians, video makers, etc) or by someone that develops iOS
| applications (because you don't have an alternative, or
| legally you don't, a lot of people just have hackintosh VM to
| compile).
|
| Nowadays a lot of people that used a mac went back to
| Windows, because let's face it, it's more stable, it's
| faster, and consumes less resources. I once was a macOS user,
| and the latest release was so slow on my 2015 macbook pro
| (that still is a pretty good hardware) that made me format
| everything and install Linux on it. Now it seems to me that I
| have a brand new computer...
|
| In the professional market there is only Windows. In every
| big company everything is Microsoft, Windows, Office, Active
| Directory, Exchange, Windows server, Azure. Probably the
| reason is the IT department likes Windows more since it's
| easier to maintain than macs.
|
| Regarding iPhone, they are not so diffuse as they are in the
| US. In my country you have a 19% iPhone, and it's one of the
| European countries where they are more prevalent, and still
| it's a minority. Most of the people uses Android phones, and
| doesn't want to spend more than 200 euros for a phone.
|
| Probably in the US iPhone are so diffuse because you usually
| get them with your mobile plan, while in my country no one
| buys a phone that way, since you will end up paying it like
| double the price and you loose the freedom to change the
| provider as you wish.
| spideymans wrote:
| How can Apple "reign supreme" over the industry, to the point
| where they're facing significant anti-trust pressure, while
| also having negligible marketshare? Clearly there is more to
| this supremacy than raw marketshare.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| US marketshare and mindshare among the (US) people who
| decide such things. If all the relevant politicians and
| judges and their friends and families (presumably all
| wealthy) have iPhones...
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _while also having negligible marketshare?_
|
| As well as having 55% US marketshare as other posters have
| mentioned, they account for 42% of global smartphone
| profits despite only having 17% marketshare.
|
| https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-
| apple/2021/04/apples-...
| reader_mode wrote:
| 55% market share in the US, and the app store has like 70%
| mobile revenue is enough for US antitrust action.
| hughrr wrote:
| Apple reigns supreme with people who have higher purchasing
| power than others. That's the niche they want to maintain, not
| total market share.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Even that seems to be limited to, as another comment said,
| the English speaking first world. The reason why I don't have
| an Apple device is not that I can't afford one. I can easily
| afford their stuff, but I want a Linux computer and a phone
| that is cheap enough not to worry about. Plus, their smug,
| hyperbolic marketing is really off-putting.
| hughrr wrote:
| I value my time which is where Apple seems to win ie it
| eats the least of it. That trumps the absolute cost in my
| mind.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| If we're talking about phones, Android is very low
| maintenance as well.
|
| If we're talking about Real Computers, Linux is more
| rough around the edges, sure. But it has Freedom. And
| it's a fantastic system for software development.
| hughrr wrote:
| I can't speak for android now but when I used it 4 years
| ago I actually suffered irrecoverable data loss due to
| buggy SD card handling and was constantly bugged by it
| every two minutes (Motorola handset) for various updates
| and issues. It did not respect my attention however hard
| I tried to configure it to.
|
| So it went. I can't trust it. Not only that with Google's
| business model I can't rationally invest in it. Oh and
| the handset was abandoned after 12 months. My backup
| iPhone 5s got an update on 14th June at 7 years old.
|
| As for real computers, yes. The Mac I have is a nice
| terminal for Linux on a server but Linux on the desktop
| is not rough round the edges: it's a nightmare for daily
| use.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Linux on desktop is very far from a nightmare. Sure, if
| you don't know what you're doing and you mess around with
| things, things will break.
|
| If you use it as you would use Windows or Mac OS, then
| there are no more issues with Ubuntu from my experience.
|
| I actually prefer Ubuntu over the other two as the web
| developer experience is much better than Windows and Mac
| OS. It's nice to use native tools. It's nice to be able
| to trust profiling. The same is also true for the other
| two where you would have to use replacement software on
| Linux.
| hughrr wrote:
| I've been through this discussion a thousand times
| before. I bought an officially tested with Ubuntu T495
| laptop and a kernel update broke it entirely due to bugs.
| X just craps itself and the whole thing hangs. I don't
| have the time or inclination to deal with stuff I expect
| to work.
|
| I do most of my dev work in linux but using the Mac as a
| terminal.
| spideymans wrote:
| Like so many other things in economics, the top 20% of the
| market could very well be more lucrative than the bottom 80%.
| Hence Apple's perceived "supremacy".
| yellowfish wrote:
| lol
| contracertainty wrote:
| This is an incredibly silicon valley centered viewpoint. I'm
| sure the guy makes some good observations, but how can you take
| anyone seriously that starts with a comment like this? Apple is
| insignificant outside of the English speaking first world:
| North America, UK, Aus/NZ. I wish some of these people from
| those markets would get outside their bubble from time to time.
| There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted
| an iPhone or any other Apple product.
|
| Not that they are bad, they just aren't all that special.
| trimbo wrote:
| > Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking
| first world
|
| Japan has a higher share of iOS than the US or UK. Also China
| is ~20% iOS. Sounds small until you realize that percentage
| equates to more iOS devices than the US.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| iOS is different from Mac right? There are a lot more
| phones than Macs in China I believe.
| trimbo wrote:
| Grandparent post was speaking about Apple generally:
| "There's a huge market out there that has never used nor
| wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product."
| andix wrote:
| Also Switzerland or Sweden have a lot of Apple users. All
| those countries have one thing in common: everything is
| very expensive there. So people have a lot of money and
| they can easily afford Apple products.
|
| In Argentina for example an iPhone is around 2500 USD (100%
| import tax), an average citizen needs to save for a year to
| afford an iPhone.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| A year?
|
| A couple of years maybe, and you won't be getting the
| latest gen one.
| jurip wrote:
| Thompson lives in Taiwan, I believe.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Yup. The starting price of an apple computer in India is
| almost 10 times the median salary of a young worker /
| executive.
|
| You will not fine Macs in India, except in the 1%, or in
| movies.
|
| I am sure that is true for most of South Asia.
|
| It's Windows all the way down. There is a huge black market
| for pirated windows copies here and a decade back, the
| standard PC setup was a basic Intel based system, loaded with
| pirated windows os on a cd that costs about 2 USD.
| pie420 wrote:
| You realize the 1% of India is 15 million people, right?
| titanomachy wrote:
| I don't think you're using the word "executive" in the way
| that I usually understand it.
| rob74 wrote:
| Apple only reigns supreme over the niche it's carved out for
| itself, which has maybe grown a bit over the last years, but
| will still always be a minority (globally) if you compare it to
| Windows/Linux on desktop machines or Android on mobile. And
| that's ok for them, because they don't want to reduce their
| profit margins.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I find this baffling. I'm in Sweden and I do see a Mac every
| now and then, especially among artists and designers. But most
| people I know use nothing but Windows and every place I've ever
| worked used Windows. The only place I've seen a lot of non-
| Windows machines is the university. They had a fairly even
| split between Windows and Linux.
| spideymans wrote:
| It's definitely a US-centric view, where 30% of internet-
| connected personal computers are running macOS.
| cgh wrote:
| As the parent mentioned, Macs are extremely popular in the SV
| development scene. Even large, stodgy 70,000 person companies
| like Cisco consider them the standard.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| IBM, in a historic twist of fate, rolled out Macs to their
| entire fleet unless you opted out. They also said that
| using Mac, contrary to what you'd expect from the purchase
| price, saved them buckets of money.
| dijit wrote:
| I don't know why you wouldn't expect that.
|
| People (consumers) see the Mac prices and balk because
| they're comparing to the Acer Aspire they can buy at
| BestBuy on discount for $300.
|
| Businesses see the Mac prices (and, barring upgrades):
| they see that they're cost competitive with the
| contemporaries.
|
| Dell XPS, HP Elitebook, Lenovo Thinkpad Txx (or Carbon
| X1) are all in spitting distance and in some cases even
| more expensive than Macbooks.
|
| That's before you even talk support contracts or yearly
| licenses (the OEM license on the unit is rarely the one
| you'll use, usually you have a volume license and a KMS
| server which also costs a lot of money).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Exactly. From a business' perspective (and according to
| IBM's own study so this isn't conjecture), Macs are
| significantly cheaper in the long term, and only slightly
| more expensive in the short term if even.
|
| Also, when it comes to management for a small or even
| medium sized business, look at Apple's approach to
| management: https://www.fleetsmith.com . Dead simple
| pricing, dead simple UI, and they provision your devices
| out of the box without any manual setup. You can just buy
| 50 MacBooks, Apple will automatically ship them set up to
| your employees for no charge, and you'll pay a several
| bucks a month per device for management.
|
| Now compare that to how you manage a Windows deployment.
| By comparison, it's unintelligible. You need to upgrade
| every device to Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise as part of a
| contract to join a domain, set up a domain server with
| Active Directory to have a user store, add connects to
| connect the Directory to the Domain which may or may not
| require a Windows Server, which may or may not require
| the arbitrary Windows Server CALs, and then you have to
| manually set up and wipe each device out of the box
| unless you managed to get a special deal with the OEM...
| crooked-v wrote:
| > and only slightly more expensive in the short term if
| even
|
| As I found with Lenovo and their bizarre continued use of
| 1080p as a baseline everywhere in CURRENT_YEAR, if you
| specifically go looking for laptops with even just 1440p
| displays the prices quickly inflate towards Apple levels.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| maybe large enterprises see Macs are cheaper but all i
| see is Windows pc in small to mid size companies.
| dijit wrote:
| You'll see it in large companies too; there is heavy
| inertia and quite a bit of lock-in on the windows
| ecosystem.
| alerighi wrote:
| I don't see how having to replace an entire computer for
| an hardware fault like a broken SSD can make you save a
| lot of money. Maybe in the old days where macs were still
| professional machines.
|
| Nowadays macs are the nightmare of every IT department,
| the smallest that on a PC takes a couple of minutes, like
| changing an hard drive or a RAM module, it's a major
| surgery on a mac, where it's still possible and where you
| don't get all the things soldered on the main board.
|
| You have an OS problem on a mac? Good luck wasting hours
| reinstalling the operating system manually and then
| installing all the software. On Windows? You have your
| custom install ISO with all the drivers and software you
| need and you install it automatically. Or just have a
| stack of cloned disks, and in case of a problem just swap
| the hard drive, in most enterprise computers that have
| everything tool less is basically the fastest way.
|
| Also Windows machines are usually favorites by the IT
| departments because they work well with all the Active
| Directory stuff, meaning that you can manage everything
| centralized. Yes, you can even on a mac join an Active
| Directory domain, but you can do less things than with a
| Windows machine.
|
| And surely you have to develop a lot of custom tooling to
| administer network made by macs, while on Windows you can
| do that with standard tooling.
| criddell wrote:
| If you consider iPhone to be part of the computing landscape,
| does that change anything?
| cbsmith wrote:
| iPhone has 54.56% marketshare in Sweden:
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/sweden
| slugiscool99 wrote:
| I don't think I'll give up the macbook trackpad for anything.
| It's probably more important to my quality of life than the blue
| imessage bubbles.
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