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Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

1. total abandonment of desktop as a platform, and the massive hurdles to distribute desktop software

2. move to Cloud and use electron wrappers because not even MS can bother making native apps on their shitty platform

3. Make Windows so shit that even hardcore power users can’t debloat it.

The moat of Windows is gone. Games, office work, all the classic arguments, have basically vanished in the last 5-10 years. The only surprise is why more people don’t get in the life rafts, when the ship is listing at 45 degrees. Is it because there’s still an army of workers and institutional inertia trained in Active Directory?

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Most consumers are primarily on mobile devices.

Windows persists in the workplace where the cost to replace it is significantly higher than keeping it, and keeping it doesn't cost much to begin with. Part of that cost would be training, yes.

The other part is finding compliant equivalents for the rest of the software they use. If the MFA, VPN, chat, email, etc. are all already vetted and designed to be compatible, there's no way they'd want to switch. Many policies regarding proprietary information disclosure are also built off this ecosystem and the certifications Microsoft's cloud already has.

4. putting Mac users in charge of the UI who are genuinely incapable of understanding how they are breaking continuity.

That's like staffing a neurosurgery department with dentists. Or a dental clinic with neurosurgeons, it does not matter, you can have decades of experience working with a drill in the head area and still be the wrong person for the job.

Continuity with what exactly? IME Windows has been a mish mash of GUI frameworks to the point you teleport through time whenever you click around in control panel, since.. the XP era? I mean, I don’t disagree with you in principle, but the timing is like saying horse carriages aren’t keeping up with cars because they’re designed by car users. The Satya era can be good or bad depending on who you ask, but that’s for Microsoft as a company – windows as a product has had no coherence for a decade+, and that’s generous.

> Is it because there’s still an army of workers and institutional inertia trained in Active Directory?

Yes, that is a huge driver of inertia. I've had to battle that in so many different companies now, and it is absolutely aggravating. That on top of comments about how Linux sucks from someone who either has never used it, or has only used it on a server and thinks that is all Linux has to offer, are absolutely soul destroying.

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