Comment by spankibalt
5 days ago
As much as I like many Windows versions, the corporate idiocy of the company behind the OS is indeed something else.
5 days ago
As much as I like many Windows versions, the corporate idiocy of the company behind the OS is indeed something else.
Never ascribe to stupidity, that which has been proven to be malice.
Yeah, they delivered whatever they delivered on purpose. Sometimes I imagine MS is playingn Lemmings with their users to reach their corporate goals.
I doubt the various shitty parts of Windows (not the forced AI/whatever) is due to malice, unless you mean employees maliciously trying to destroy the company.
I would say the malice is from management, investors, and product leads. Developers just do what they are told. Microsoft is choosing enshitification versus quality. CEO needs to pump that stock and having enterprise locked into without alternatives helps them.
I grew up with Microsoft and now you have to pay me to use their products. I would never choose their OS for product hosting. Even their embedded / IoT is trying to force a Microsoft account and push against local user.
2 replies →
Hanlon’s razor applies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Hanlon's Inverted Anticapitalist Razor says to never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by greed.
This
Minimum 50% of cases (in anything). Probably higher
I get the impression that a lot of the old guard are long gone from the Windows team or have no influence. Raymond Chen is still around but not sure how much he actually works on Windows day to day.
Microsoft was founded in 1975. 1981 was the first DOS release. 1985 was the first release of Windows. 40 years working on windows is a long time, I would be surprised if anyone for the original team is left at this point. Even someone joining out of college in 2000 is now 25 years in, is 57, and could feasibly be retiring....
I don’t think that math is quite right. Graduating from college in 2000 would be 47, not 57 unless they were 32 when they graduated college.
2 replies →
True. I meant to say that it feels like the people who know what's going on have long departed and it's junior web developers left to pick up the pieces.
You mean 1990. Someone graduating college in 1990 would have been about 21. That was 35 years ago, so they would be about 56 in 2025.
Math is hard.
5 replies →
which brings the points about demographic, experience and wisdom.. the artefact we see and manipulate is the results of a certain group of people... when it changes, don't expect anything
The toxic culture from Gates will never go away
With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal. Azure, Office and Copilot will sustain them.
Nvidia is doing something similar where they're just extracting as much as possible out of AI companies and not caring one bit about consumers.
Consumers need to remember how to wield a pitchfork
The challenge is that consumers in the case of Windows don’t generally choose Windows. Someone else chooses it for them.
1 reply →
That’s a funny way of spelling “guillotine”.
>With the way the economy is going (some call it K-shaped) it's more profitable to squeeze as hard as you can and extract as much as possible out of whales versus trying to have mass market appeal
How does whatever microsoft is doing to windows line up with that?
Hmm, it does line up with that from my perspective too.
It's just a different way to say "you're the product, not the customer" if you look at the statement from a neutral perspective - the whale being the actual customer, who changes all the time depending on what Microsoft MBAs think might have the highest potential value they can extract.
2 replies →
Enterprises are the whales. Microsoft sells user management, Office, Copilot, Outlook, etc... all bundled together for more per seat per year than a consumer will spend or generate in the whole lifecycle of their device. Nevermind Azure.
So consumers are mostly ignored, except as a testbed to shove AI and ads.
2 replies →
This is true with a lot of companies. If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!) maybe they'd think twice before doing boneheaded things
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
If you made people actually use their own product (do they?!)
Yes, they do. Unfortunately even MS employees are powerless to do anything about the crap that gets shoved into Windows by other employees working at the company, and the ones who complain about it are quietly shown the door or have already left of their own will, leaving only those who are completely apathetic or...
Then again, I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem
Exactly. That and the desire to remain in the country --- part of the reason why companies like H-1Bs so much is because they are going to be far more docile and less willing to resist doing things they feel are wrong.
I remember I was at a Python conference some years ago and every Microsoft dev I saw had a MacBook. So no, I don’t think they use their own product internally.
The only thing worse than work-from-office is mandatory work-on-windows.
1 reply →
As an aside, I used to know a number of MS heads who ran Windows on Mac Intel machines because they preferred the hardware (~2014 MBP) and/or because they ostensibly worked at Mac shops and were handed one upon entry.
3 replies →
Using Windows as a python dev is a complete pain.
"I get the biological desire to put food on the table for one's family and therein lies the problem"
They don't make money (put bread on the table) by selling Windows any more. That is soooo 2000s.
Income is from data mining and from subscriptions to cloudy offerings that are mostly MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Oh, and hyping their perceived value to the point that the term "meme stock" is no longer just a joke.