… hard to believe that Apple is rolling over the market. When you compare the number of devices purchased that run Windows, as opposed to macOS or i
[See the full post at: As Windows fades slowly into the sunset…]
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As Windows fades slowly into the sunset…
- This topic has 62 replies, 22 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago.
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Why is this news now when the stats are five years old?
Did the “expected parity” occur three or four years ago?
Considering the near future, it’s safe to expect a “parity” of iOS+OS X vs. Windows within one or two years.
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I guess it wasn’t “safe” as your second (recent) chart shows that Windows is still almost double iOS+OS X years later.
The first one was annual sales, while the second was about market share. With iOS and Android devices having significantly shorter useful service life than a Windows PC, they need to sell more just to remain flat with Windows in market share.
I am not exactly sure what constitutes a “Windows unit.” To me, that’s an air conditioner (or is that ‘window unit?’) I have seven PCs, with six running Windows (and several also running Linux). The most up-to-date three of the seven are PCs that I built, meaning that in no way were they sold as “Windows units” in the sense of a “unit” being a computer. It’s doubtful that the purchases of Windows I’ve made count into “Windows units” either (each would be a “unit of Windows”). The Windows units I use that were never counted as Windows unit sales still count in market share, though, as those stats are based on web visits. Well, I should say at least one of them at a time counts, as I am the only user of all seven of those computers, and while I sometimes use two at a time, sort of, it’s really quickly switching between two computers. I’m a single core unit myself.
The last “Windows unit” I purchased was back in 2008… like all of the “Windows units” I’ve purchased, it’s a laptop. It’s still in running condition now and in active use, and I’m using it to write this post.
My three newest PCs are one Ivy (just a Celeron) and two Sandy Bridge (i5) setups, the latter being a platform that first became available some six years ago. Think there are many iOS devices from 6-9 years ago that are represented in the iOS market share graph? I’d say probably not, but I see systems as old as mine or older in taglines across the web… it’s pretty common. They still work well enough; why replace them?
My brother is a PC user/owner too. He has two PCs, with the newer one just upgraded TO a Core 2 Quad. Still does what he wants it to, so it’s not obsolete for his use.
In other words, market share in terms of ongoing platform use (thus creating the market for software for that platform, independently of the hardware) isn’t the same as annual hardware sales.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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Which highlights the difference between Windows/PC/PC users and Apple/Apple users: try to do what you’ve been doing within the Apple ecosystem.
Which is why MS damaging Windows is such a big deal.
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Now imagine how Windows would have a much better chance of making money with their store if the said store was just an add-on to a great stable Windows. You buy the PC, you have peace of mind to work for years with great stability, but you have that store to buy software and little games and other things if you want, giving Microsoft an additional layer of revenue stream on top of what they always did in the past.
Instead of angering users and making normal users even more confused than before with constant changes, they would stop giving people reasons to jump to a smoother ship and maybe they would have time to stop by their store instead of always fixing issues or settings changes. Microsoft could also have the time to work on polishing the whole store ecosystem because there wouldn’t be a rush to bs people into staying on Windows no more.
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This is a big call Woody! 🙂
I’ll keep the cheques (checks) coming in from the Enterprise side while everyone else is trying to sort out 🙂 I might even buy some Microsoft shares (stock) while Apple’s shares are overpriced.
BTW, I own an iPhone and an iPad and my wife owns and uses the same, but we run Windows 10 too.
For me Windows 7 is only an outdated hobby, while Windows 8.1 and 2012 R2 are the current Microsoft OS standard for quality.
Androids are too unprofessional and we stopped using them few years ago as it is not only the price which matters. Steve Jobs was right all the way and there are references all over the web in this matter.
While I still believe Apple products are the real thing, Microsoft’s products still have a good reason to exist. Only that they have become too complex for regular non-power users who would be better off served either by iOS or Cloud offerings.5 users thanked author for this post.
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Well, nearly three years after Windows 10 became available and was (and still is) being given away for free, it is still nowhere close to Windows 7 which still dominates the market by a very wide margin. Just shows how out of touch some people still are with regards to the reality of this whole situation. Windows 7 still dominates the market because it is still seen by the majority of Windows users as the superior OS and it is unlikely to be going anywhere any time soon.
There’s a lot of subjectivity on what OS is “better” based on what you do with your PC and your preferences which is great, but the fact that Windows 7 remains at nearly 50% while Windows 10 stagnates around 25% speaks volumes. If it was so much better, it would have cut into Windows 7’s dominance a lot more than it has three years later and being given away for free. I think that when those Windows 7 users do decide to use another OS, it’s not going to be one made by Microsoft.
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Please don’t find fault with a comment just for being critical. My comment is perfectly kosher.
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Windows 8.1 and 2012 R2 are the current Microsoft OS standard for quality.
Very true.
Windows 8.1 is (has become?) hands-down the best OS for desktop computing. It required some work to tweak it into being that, but now it is, and it can be maintained as such. It’s incrementally better, when so tweaked, than Windows 7 was. Not light-years advanced, but just better.
Windows 10 didn’t achieve that, and seemingly WON’T until they decide to refine it for a while – just like all its predecessors.
It just goes to show that an operating system isn’t a “6 months between major releases” kind of product.
Of course, Microsoft wants to get out from under the pressure of being the world’s serious computing leader. Apparently it’s hard work. You’ve got to feel sorry for the kids in Redmond with the weight of the high tech world all on their shoulders, while those at Google and Apple just get to play so freely, with seemingly endless cash coming in from their antics…
With no one manning the helm of serious computing, and Microsoft apparently having no future plans to steer the ship back on course (sorry, WaaS ain’t it), what do they think is going to happen? All the alternatives are scary!
-Noel
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Windows 8.1 is (has become?) hands-down the best OS for desktop computing. It required some work to tweak it into being that, but now it is, and it can be maintained as such. It’s incrementally better, when so tweaked, than Windows 7 was. Not light-years advanced, but just better.
I don’t use Windows 8.1 much, but I do use its server counterpart Windows 2012 R2 a lot and I used Windows 2008 R2 (and Windows 7) a lot at very intimate levels of tuning and tweaking. Both Windows 7 and 2008 R2 are on the way out fast regardless of what frequent readers and posters here believe today. It is not about quality, but about market. Windows 7 will die fast when the newer applications will stop running on it on purpose of for legitimate reasons, but this will not happen in mass until the official end of support date, which I think is January 2020. Microsoft and hardware manufacturers help accelerating this transition by blocking installations on new hardware for Windows 7.
Windows 8.1 has the disadvantage of timing and of bad media for Windows 8, in the same way in which Vista had at its time of mainstream use. People preferred Windows XP and most skipped Vista.
Vista ended by being a good operating system after Service Pack 2, at the same level of quality with early Windows 7, which was not perfect initially either. This supports your assertion that an OS needs time to mature, sometimes years, due largely to its complexity and the nature of the industry which require sometimes early releases to stay competitive in the market. Apple now provides betas for iOS free for everyone interested to try (like the Windows 10 Insider program). I had frequent crashes with Windows 7 in the early days, possible due to me not mastering its use and tuning. It does not happen today at all when I am anywhere near Windows 7.Windows 10 which I see as Windows 8.3 has the advantage of market timing, but they still have to decide about the Universal Apps for a Desktop OS. They may win eventually due to their market dominance, but it is still something to be sorted out, unless there will be completely separate the versions of the OS, like Apple has MacOS and iOS with a very loose degree of integration.
Windows 8.1 as is today is good due to the big enhancement produced by KB2919355, a true Service Pack 1, or Windows 8.2. This update has dramatically changed anything that we knew about Windows 8 and Windows 2012 R2 making the OS what it is today.2 users thanked author for this post.
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If you’re not a new computer user but has been with Windows for decades like me, you have acquired a set of apps that serve your purposes and configured them in a stable system. It’s extremely rare to encounter new apps that are significantly better, or do something you need that the old ones don’t. They are more often than not a matter of marketing, not satisfying a need. Those old apps will continue to do their job and won’t stop working.
Had my 2 old computers not croaked, I would still be running my Win7 setup. It was just too much hassle to return the 2 new ones to Win7 and recustomize everything, so I opted for Win10Pro 1511 .679, which is close enough to Win7 and not yet messed up. I still run all my old apps and only a few new ones that are primarily to mitigate the MS c..p. And I will stick to this setup.
I don’t need MS’s standard of quality, thanks.
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AdBloc Plus, NoScript, Disconnect on all FF54 – not much counting (I hope).
That doesn’t discount MS telemetry.1 user thanked author for this post.
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I do not in any way see iPad and iPhone as comparable “units” to a full-fledged Windows PC. Apples and oranges, so to speak. This entire comparison is Liars Figuring — someone playing numbers games with non-comparable statistics. We see this all the time in politics. I am dismayed to see such flim-flam masquerading as serious Tech reporting.
Windows is going away… NEVER. Apple is winning as a business and enterprise platform… EVEN LATER THAN NEVER.
Remember, I am posting this using Desktop Linux on an Intel-based NUC PC. I have a “unit” of Windows 10 Pro on the other side of this dual-boot. So I would not count my PC as a “Windows Unit”. And in Web Visit studies, I would not show up as a “Windows Unit”.
But Microsoft made a full Pro license of sales off my kit-built “unit”. So where does all of this place these sorts of circus shell-games? Absolutely nowhere.
The article with its graphs and numbers is as phony as a three-dollar bill.
I am no fan of Windows or Microsoft, but the Company is nowhere near “fading into the sunset” — rapidly, slowly or ever at all.
As for Android being “not professional” — try telling that to the millions (billions?) of executives and Company Officers who use Android every day in their work. And to the Network Administrators who must integrate many Android versions safely into Corporate Networks.
-- rc primak
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Growing up, we first had a PC (Win 3.11, 486SX2/66), then I got into Commercial Art and we sold it and bought a Macintosh LC475 (4MB RAM, 160MB HDD…was “enough” back then LOL). I went through a few Power Macintoshes from eBay and eventually got a PC again during the Pentium 3 days and haven’t looked back.
Just recently we switched from Android to iPhone, which is something I swore I’d never do. Was a devout Note 2 & 4 lover, but Samsung’s QC is in the toilet and I refuse to buy any more of their phones. People at work swear by iPhones, so….I’m now happily using a 7+ and wish I’d switched sooner.
OS X is a fantastic OS; it’s a shame the “Apple tax” of paying 2x for equivalent Intel innards is still “a thing”. I know they want to have control of the ecosystem so they support only a handful of configurations, but if they ever released it to the world, Microsoft would be in a lot of trouble (especially now with all the outcry over Win10 and “Windows as a Service”).
I’m not sure where the chips will fall over the next 3 years, and I’m hoping by that time, I’m in a high enough professional position where I don’t need to worry about it anyway. Yet again I’m pondering a Win10 upgrade at home (to 1607), for 2 reasons: 1) to be done with it and 2) because I’m starting to give in and not really care about it anymore. If I can lock down Win10 and control updates (like I know I can now), the stretch from 7 isn’t as great as it once was. I never really cared much about the telemetry collecting anyway, at least on the Basic level.
Despite me sometimes wishing otherwise, Windows isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Enterprise users will always want to stick with what they know, which means it’ll stay Windows. Home users generally also want to stick with what they know, other than the chosen few who will experiment and try to deal with the quirks of another OS. I’ve tried to do that myself, but despite its best efforts, Ubuntu is not a viable full-timer for me (as a part-time gamer).
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Windows is an inferior product that does not respond to customer needs or concerns. I will never use windows software again! Updates that cause errors and the persistent privacy concerns are not for me.
Android is becoming worse as well….it is all about money.. Too bad companies don’t realize that this will result in loss of customers. Just like Sears is gone!
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I have a problem with comparing “devices”.
They don’t do the same things.
Even desktop Macs vs. desktop PCs don’t do all the same things. For example, do you program in C/C++? The Mac/macOS flavor is so different from the PC/Windows flavor that developers aren’t going to be jumping ship in droves. That could be changing in the future with Microsoft’s .NET for macOS, and clang, but right now, today, there’s simply no easy “port your code base to the Mac and don’t look back” course. That matters.
Include mobile tech and it’s not at all a battle of equals. It’s like saying, “trade in your car for a motorcycle”, and comparing sales figures for both as though one could take over sales of the other. Sure, there are a lot of great motorcycles, but sometimes you actually need a car. And you might just want to own both.
“Even rode my motorcycle in the rain… You may be right, I may be crazy.” -Billy Joel
-Noel
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I think those who work on multiple platforms–who tend to be technically more savvy– underestimate the pain that a long-term Windows user has to endure in switching platforms. After decades of Windows there is no incentive to justify that pain, even if Apple were superior across the board and were not so d**n proprietary and expensive. But it isn’t.
So if Apple advances it is due to new users who are increasingly unsophisticated and can only press buttons. Such users are easily manipulated, exploited and controlled.
Edited for content
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because I’m starting to give in and not really care about it anymore. If I can lock down Win10 and control updates (like I know I can now), the stretch from 7 isn’t as great as it once was. I never really cared much about the telemetry collecting anyway, at least on the Basic level.
This is precisely what MS is counting on with its strategy and I think it’s working.
I very much doubt you’ll be able to control updates for long. In fact, I have just installed Win10Pro 1511 10586.679 on 2 machines–which I intend to stick to forever without any updates and frequent backups–and some of the update control settings I had in the .464 version I had before have already disappeared. If I upgrade further, more control will be gone.
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Fp is right about sensing the direction… I have found it increasingly difficult to tweak Win10… With v1703 build 15063 I found it nearly impossible to shun apps and cloud integration yet continue to succeed at Windows Updates. I had to leave the Apps installed this time around, though I was able to saw the legs off their support structure so they cannot run. Even that very likely won’t work next time. I imagine they’ll make retaining UAC necessary soon too. For me those things will mark the end of my trying to find the good in Windows 10.
What’s next? Trying to use a Server version to do serious general purpose computing without this stupid cloud and telemetry and Microsoft account stuff? I don’t think I can bear to try to find good in Unix or its derivatives, any more than I could back in the mid 1970s. At that time DEC was the alternative and we know their architecture ultimately became the NT core of Windows, which took over the serious computing world. I wasn’t wrong to choose the force vs. the farce back then and I don’t think I’m wrong now.
It’s pretty clear to me Apps and cloud-integration are Microsoft’s vision for the future for Windows clients – which means they will no longer be worth any more than the alternatives. It seems there will come an inevitable time when Microsoft will have driven the good from Windows fully, and we’re powerless to stop it. All we can do is hang on to yesteryear’s tech for a few more years, until someone e.g., from China or Russia comes along with the OS that will take over the world.
-Noel
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So far,
REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU /v NoAutoUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
has kept every Win10 box, from 1511 to 1704, from doing any automatic updating. I can check for updates and install them when Woody’s DEFCON recommends doing so. Sure, I still have to rely on wushowhide to outright yank out specific updates (since that’s the limitation MS has imposed). I can tweak Win10 Home or Pro to be almost identical to LTSB, with the benefit of no automatic updating. Otherwise, I really don’t have many complaints about Win10 now.I’ve already made it a habit to re-run my batch file any time I do a version upgrade on the machines that aren’t joined to a domain and managed by GPO.
And so far, no surprises.
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I have been working with Windows PC’s for nearly twenty years. Recently, given all the negative developments following the introduction of Windows 10, I had been giving serious consideration to changing back to a Unix-like system once support for Windows 7 ends in 2020, as Unix is what I use in my wok at NASA, which involves a fair amount of bespoke data-analysis software development (Windows was the system favored by other groups I worked with previously, so I choose to start using it to keep things compatible.) Also, in the NASA group I work with, the preferred computers are Macs, again, because of their Unix-like OS, and being more user-friendly than Linux.
What follows is a description of my own experience, so far, using a Mac I recently acquired.
A few months ago, some Spanish colleagues decided to make me a nice gift: they would like to pay the cost of a fully-loaded machine (hardware and software) that I would buy for myself, so I chose to get a 2015 Mac Book Pro with 1 Tb of SSC disk and 16 GB of DRAM and a 2.5 GHz, Intel-7 quad core CPU. As a piece of engineering, it is very light and nicely shaped, it never gets more than slightly warm, although you never even hear the fan running. The Retina screen is fine for watching videos; not that this is all-important to me, but a nice touch, anyways. The GUI is not instantly intuitive, but there is plenty of information both in books and online to learn the details. The OS has proven to be quite free from bugs and glitches, something that has always made my switching from one Windows OS to the next a hard-going undertaking. As I have mentioned above, I do develop software out of necessity (I am into data analysis, not software engineering), and for that, it is very easy to download and install GNU compilers from MacPort or Sourceforge (a matter of pushing a few buttons), and since I write in C and Fortran, the languages most used for scientific number-crunching, having installed myself the compilers in the gcc collection means that what I write can also run in Linux machines, and in Windows machines running Linux emulations such as Cygwin.
The one drawback is that the Mac OS has an upgrade cadence of one year, and Apple stops supporting the current version after the third one, so after three years one must switch to the next version. On the plus side (so far) is that, being Unix-based has guaranteed a level of continuity unlike that for Windows OS upgrades. Of course, Apple being a huge commercial organization, and also of our times, there are no assurances that it might not make a left turn, one of these days, and go the way of MS.
All that said, the HP Pavilion Windows 7 machine remains my working horse, but only until 2020. Then I might have to decide whether to turn it into a Linux one, as it is aging very slowly and could easily be good for several years more, after Microsoft pulls the plug on Win 7.
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When people fade into the sunset they are given a time piece. It is an odd choice for those who no longer need to be aware of what time it is. Windows fading into the sunset is more like lemmings falling off a cliff. The fanboys are convinced the direction is strategic.
Then there are the isheep. You get well fleeced for years before your final trip to the slaughter house. The fanboys here will line up overnight for whatever journey is on offer.
The march of the penguins – the sun sets for 6 months at a time. Way too confusing.
Change is inevitable. Is it Microsoft who have decided that Windows is on the way out? MS would not be throwing the golden goose into the oven if they were not convinced that they had solid footing elsewhere. We may all be seamlessly transported into the cloud one day -probably against our will. Hopefully there will be lots of competition so we can jump ship if our specific computing needs are not being met.
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This is a great article, but I tend to look on the statistical comparisons with a jaundiced eye for the reasons many have pointed out – device sales apples and market share oranges. The real takeaway for me is the AskWoody discussion.
As zero2dash said in Post #123374, “OS X is a fantastic OS; it’s a shame the “Apple tax” of paying 2x for equivalent Intel innards is still “a thing”. I know they want to have control of the ecosystem so they support only a handful of configurations, but if they ever released it to the world, Microsoft would be in a lot of trouble (especially now with all the outcry over Win10 and “Windows as a Service”).”
This I can relate to. I would be willing to pay for a MacOS license to build a computer using Apple approved parts IF the universe of parts included a decent selection of CPUs (for instance i7 K series for both the 1151 and the 2011v3 sockets) and motherboards with M.2 slots or PCIe drive capabilities, that are ‘certified’ to work. Also a crop of robust video cards that include some enthusiast cards that are not top ($$$) tier. MacOS desktops intrigue me, especially the monitors, however shopping on the Apple website for a desktop is a circular task, and always sends you to the laptops when you want to compare machines. Then try to actually compare prices – not a single step task. I finally had to chat online with a sales advisor who sent me links to the prices of the various desktops. And yes over $2K USD for an i5 27” machine is ridiculous, even with the incredible 27” monitor image.
I live with a desktop. That is my preferred device. I do have 2 main laptops, one a Win7Pro-64 and another with Ubuntu 16.04LTS, (plus a Linux netbook). They both have their advantages and disadvantages, but for maintaining the system the Ubuntu is far easier. However, I NEED the Windows one for my photographic hobby for my uses. What I am finding though is for routine travel, I am now gravitating to getting an iPad.
That is because since I started using an iPhone (SE) I have found my laptop use dropped. I rarely use the laptop for email on travel and am actually using it for more complex tasks and web browsing. I rarely use the iPhone to browse as I do not particularly like the Safari browser. An iPad mitigates the size limits of the iPhone, while retaining a lot of the functionality.
I am actively preparing to largely migrate off of Microsoft with a Linux build. I will retain my current Win7Pro-64 desktop for things Linux is not yet good at (gaming, and some proprietary interfaces). The Win10 interface to me is at least useable (unlike Win8) and it has certain advantages with newer hardware support. However, the privacy issues are still a real turn off and I am not prepared to be “assimilated.” They are not however the real core issues. The real issue is control and lack of QUALITY control as they offer their ‘service’. Win10 and WaaS is not truly free as the users are still paying Microsoft as ‘unpaid’ beta testers, or more accurately – guinea pigs.
Ch100 in post #123355 closed with the statement, “While I still believe Apple products are the real thing, Microsoft’s products still have a good reason to exist. Only that they have become too complex for regular non-power users who would be better off served either by iOS or Cloud offerings.”
I have believed for years that consumer expectations were moving to treating the Windows PC like a refrigerator, and there would be problems. You also hear the mantra of Macs are easy, etc. Unfortunately for MS, when I open the refrigerator, I expect it to be cold. These new patching routines and low quality of patches leave me cold. A number of colleagues have moved to iPads with keyboards for personal work. When I ask why they say the PC stopped working on X application or got slow, or made me lose data when it rebooted.
I agree MS products are still valued products. I would GLADLY pay for a Windows 10 “Privacy Edition” or a Windows 10 LTSB Edition OS. I DO want the refrigerator that is cold (and private, and stable). The sad part is on Monday Forbes had a small article online about how MS was executing another round of layoffs.
http://fortune.com/2017/07/03/microsoft-layoff-thousands-sales-marketing-2017/
I doubt they will be replaced by QC folks.
My take: MS is already largely ceding the individual/home market due to the decline of PC sales to focus on business/government with a large base of MS reliance. The WaaS glitches and the Cloud and device sales at a high price point do not have the utility or cachet of Apple for individuals or education.
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The latest MS marketing reorganization reinforces the direction Nadella has prescribed; Marketing will now be primarily directed to selling and promoting cloud services. Nadella has not been a friend of Windows and subscribed to letting the totally screwed up Mobile Division destroy the desktop UI of Windows. If Wall Street loses its fascination with “all things cloud” life could get more interesting for Nadella as the “I am not Ballmer” halo tarnishes.
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At 14mil/year Nadella could not care less what happens to MS, let alone Windows. Ask Marissa Mayer.
It does not get through the head of the powers that be that dumping this kind of money on mgmt disincentivizes them from caring.
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Woody, et al, this is not the least bit surprising. I agree with at least some of you here that Windows 10 is not any kind of Windows I ever knew or want to know. Like many of you, I have spent decades honing my Windows skills. That skill is a dying thing now, not that different from a lot of things that fell by the wayside because of corporate management foolishness. Does anyone recognize this in Sears Robuck?
Microsoft’s strategy is to dump the end-user and focus on big institutions. That is clear. That means all of us who have grown to depend on Windows as a tool are being put on low priority. Certainly Microsoft is not interested in what we have to say. That is clear to me.
It is guys & gals like us who have given Microsoft its platform. They have decided they do not want or need us any longer. They are focusing on selling subscriptions and rent payments. I don’t know for sure about most of you, but that is of no appeal at all to me.
I for one, will no longer recommend ANY Microsoft product. None. I tell my clients and colleagues that there is no new Windows.
I begrudgingly recommend Apple. I do that with the logic that although Apple is just as invasive to my privacy as Microsoft, at least they know how to spell and do Customer Service. Microsoft has no idea what that is. When you do buy a Microsoft product you are on your own. If you buy an Apple product, the Apple people who answer the phones (and they are Apple employees) make it clear they are there to help.
I have said it here before, you are seeing the beginning of the end of another tech giant. Just like DEC, HP, IBM and many others. This week they announced yet another round of layoffs. Does anyone think the people who leave are not the best of breed?
CT
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The problem for MS in the consumer space is many users find a phone and/of tablet more than adequate for their daily needs. The desktop/laptop gets little use and as long as it works is not getting replaced. MS will dominate the enterprise market for some time but they are losing the consumer market altogether.
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That is true; a lot of people no longer use PCs on a daily basis, and they’ve moved to smartphones or tablets. A lot of them, though, still have (as you mentioned) a PC somewhere in case they do need it, and there are some things it can do better than a phone. Others have moved on from the PC completely.
None of that implies that the PC is dying, though. Yes, the sales figures are down year after year, but look at my example as I mentioned above, where the last ready-to-use PC I bought was purchased in 2008 or 2009. I’m still a hardcore PC user, using them hours a day every day. I have no smartphone, and my tablet seldom gets any use outside of being an alarm clock… yet I haven’t contributed to the PC sales statistics since the Vista era. I’ve bought standalone Windows several times since I bought my last prebuilt (laptop) PC, though, so it would not be true in my case to equate “didn’t buy a new PC recently” with “has not been a Microsoft customer recently,” as they seem to do.
For all the talk about how Satya Nadella is such a visionary and has brought innovation back to MS, it sure looks like they’re blind to me. They’re willing to throw desktop Windows users under the bus to try to gain a leg up in mobile, which is a Hail Mary at best. That only makes sense if there is certainty that their dominance on the desktop is an asset whose value will diminish to zero quickly, so they’d better use it up while it’s still worth something. I have more faith in the PC platform than they do; I don’t think it’s going away. It’s too useful, and has too many advantages over phones to ever be completely replaced by them.
There’s a fad aspect to phones that has to end eventually. It appears it’s already started, with people becoming increasingly willing to stick to the phone they have instead of upgrading each time a new edition is offered. Most of them never needed the new versions in the past either, but they simply had to have them anyway; it was a status symbol. Now they’re becoming more utilitarian, and people are beginning to evaluate them as tools to perform tasks, not as a form of electronic jewelry.
I think that at some point, there will be a rediscovery of the “old fashioned” goodness of the PC again. It won’t make up for the losses in sales, but people who have been raised on phones will one day see the PC in a new light. Since the beginning of the PC, customers have clamored for more powerful machines with more storage, more memory, larger displays… and we’re supposed to believe that all ceased to matter when Apple introduced the iPhone?
It’s still nicer to use a large screen. It’s nice to be able to store your data locally on a hard drive where it’s instantly available rather than having to rely on “the cloud,” which is much slower, costs more, and isn’t available in areas where there is no cellular coverage. The ergonomic superiority of a mouse and its simple advantage of having two stage pointing and clicking (that enables hover effects and near single-pixel precision)… while it may seem antiquated to the touch generation, it allows such a superior computing experience that I don’t want to do without it.
As I am typing this into my browser, I have a lot of UI elements on the screen, far more than I would see on a touch device. The various icons and buttons are too small to reliably be touched even on my 24 inch display, but I can hit them with the mouse easily. The hover effect of the mouse makes the UI element react when it’s hot, so I know that’s the element that will receive the click.
Having all of those elements on the screen reduces the reaction time between thinking of what I want to do and beginning the action of doing it. Research has shown that disappearing UI elements (almost a necessity on a small screen, especially one that uses touch and this has to have huge buttons) tends to cause an “out of sight, out of mind” effect even in individuals who know what options lie behind the hamburger.
The simple existence of the traditional File, Edit, View… menubar, now seen as something to hide by default (even you, Windows 7, do this!), takes up very little space on a regular PC monitor, but it gives a great “whiff” of what options lie behind it. The analogy of scent in tracking down the option a person wishes to find is quite common in UI discussion, and the old-style UI had that in spades.
People take for granted how much stuff like that matters, how much it speeds workflow. Throwing that away because it’s seen as “old” and “old” means “bad” and “new” means “exciting” is just nuts. In this case, throwing away the entire PC in favor of the new, exciting phone is the ultimate expression of this.
PCs, by virtue of their reduced portability, don’t lend themselves to the kinds of neuroses that phones do. People report feeling anxious if their phones are not near and they can’t see if their friends tweeted something or liked a picture on Facebook or what have you. It’s often cited in the media that the person’s phone is first thing they see when they wake up and the last thing they look at before going to bed… and even then, they’re thinking of it to the point that it often disturbs their sleep.
Then there’s the people who spend so much time looking down that it actually damages their neck… there have been news reports of neck surgeons reporting big increases in the numbers of people needing such surgery, and it’s nearly all young people, not the typical group expected for neck problems. A desktop PC, by virtue of being stationary, can be (and should be) set up for maximum ergonomics and comfort, while that’s not really possible with mobile devices. They have to be held down below eye level, because holding the thing at eye level would quickly tire the arm muscles, both in the arm holding the device and the one being used to operate the touchscreen (if it’s not being used one handed). That necessitates looking down, which places undue strain on the muscles and vertebrae of the neck, which are adapted to supporting the weight of the head while it is held level. Young people may be surprised at how comfortable it can be to use a PC for extended periods of time compared to a phone.
Because of all of this, I think that PCs (not just Windows ones here) are not going anywhere. Microsoft could be a great ally to those of us who are still fans of the full-computer paradigm, making PCs as appealing as possible so that people who have never really used one might try it and find it to be a great companion to their phone, but instead they’re doing the opposite. It’s clear that they’ve given up on the consumer PC market (except for gaming, for now), which I would certainly call misguided. There is still a place for PCs for a lot of consumers… not all of them, but enough to make it a market that shouldn’t be tossed away like yesterday’s food wrappers. The Windows consumer market should be bigger than the entire Mac market, and it’s big enough to make them some money.
I haven’t been asked for any recommendations since Windows 10 arrived, but if I did, I would have to grit my teeth and suggest Apple too. I’ve loathed Apple and its haughty, cultlike fanatics (not all Apple fans, but enough) from the Apple II days forward, and I still am not a fan… but it’s better than the alternatives.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)6 users thanked author for this post.
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Cloud won’t be rent free or unhackable either..all this, from a corporation who forced malware on your computer and gave up on the windows phone. Pah!
Windows - commercial by definition and now function...1 user thanked author for this post.
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According to latest microSoft exec reorg plan both cloud and mobile is kinda out… both are only mentioned once, while new buzzword “digital transformation” is mentioned 13 times…
Read more here http://www.zdnet.com/article/drilling-down-on-microsofts-new-plan-to-sell-to-consumers/
Loved the mentioning of new plans for “working on mixed reality”…
1 user thanked author for this post.
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There is still a good market for PCs and it would have ultimately grown from tablet/phone users realization that those are limited devices. But MS is killing it while abysmally failing in the mobile market. Hence their focus on the cloud — they are desperate.
But given so huge an incompetence…
1 user thanked author for this post.
http://www.vertoanalytics.com/chart-week-likely-switch-windows-mac/
A bad omen for M$’s Win 10?
Many Win 7/8.1 users are ready to jump ship. Problem is, the other ships are not very sturdy, affordable or sail-worthy, eg MacOS, Linux and ChromeOS.
If only M$ had not changed course with Win 10, ie Win 10 should have been just an improved version of Win 7/8.1 (eg DX12 support) without the forced auto-updates/upgrades, Telemetry & Data collection, display of ads, M$ account/Windows Store, twice-yearly feature updates or Version upgrades, etc.
… Like they say, “do not fix what ain’t broken”. Was Win 7/8.1 broken for M$ to want to make drastic changes or change course with Win 10? Likely, the course change in Win 10 was mainly because of super-greed, eg to milk more $$$$ out of the corporate cash cows, and consumers got affected by it as well as collateral damage.2 users thanked author for this post.
I don’t believe that Microsoft knows how to compete with Google in the tablet / phone market. However, they know how to dominate on the desktop. Or used to.
The two key factors in Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop were that there was a certain amount of goodwill / trust that the customer had for Microsoft, and that they stayed focused on the desktop. If Microsoft had stayed focused on the desktop, they would continue to dominate the desktop for a long time to come. But by moving away from the desktop, and by violating the goodwill / trust that they had developed over time with the customer.
It is amusing to recall the way that Microsoft knocked off one competitor after another in their climb to the top, by keeping their eye on the ball, and by getting the competitor to take their eyes off the ball; and now it is Microsoft who is taking their eye off the ball while others run past them.
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server-
That is the fate of all dominant powers–whether corporate or societal. They peak and collapse.
The sheer fact of domination spells doom — you lose interest and competence in competition because you don’t need to. Arrogant ignorance sets in.
Not much difference between MS and the US at this point.
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