What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?
In Windows’s case the “worse” competitor is ChromeOS and Chromebook, and Microsoft’s basically thrown in the towel when it comes to native apps, so with time everyone who doesn’t need pro Photoshop or AutoCAD could just use a Chromebook.
Note that you can run Word for Android on Chromebooks full-screen already.
I haven’t used android games on chrome os but things like candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?
Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare metal.
All of the above is moot though if you are not within a few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for most of the world is absolutely the case.
Instead they were focusing on Xbox and let their PC ecosystem rot. Now Nvidia, Valve, Epic and other middleware vendors consumed this market. They tried with GFWL, but it was a dumpster fire.
They now try again with Game Pass for PC, but again they just want to push Xbox ecosystem instead of Windows gaming as whole.
And one day Google will release desktop Fuchsia.
I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware.
The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.
I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates.
I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me.
For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one.
Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.
That’s one case of “it came with the computer”.
But Microsoft was really clever at giving all the functionality companies want for their corporate issue computers. In the mid-2000’s very few companies offered Macs as desktops because of that. I only have a work MacBook because it can authenticate against AD and has all the management automation required by my employer. That’s also why a Linux laptop wasn’t an option.
No, that's the reason why it comes with the computer in the first place. You don't think that PC manufacturers just decided for everybody do you?
Microsoft won for a one reason - they have products that solve problems better than anything else.
That Microsoft created new APIs, runtimes, and frameworks not for technical reasons but in order to lock customers in or disadvantage competitors. That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs--they were short-term tactics, not well considered approaches.
No, you.
> they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity.
In order to lock people in to something you have to have something of value to offer... so, your argument defeats itself.
> That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs...blah blah blah
Pfffft. Yeah it's so unmanageable that every single IT department on earth is running Windows all day every day. Even my personal PCs are running perfectly without so much as a hiccup. What a mess!
UI consistency just isn't that important to most people.
See: electron applications.