Comment by xp84
6 hours ago
Isn't Chrome OS "the Linux Desktop" for most non-developer people?
90% of the people I know don't need any software that isn't either delivered via the Web, or limited for purely business reasons to an 'APP™' for mobile phones only.
The remainder of the possible uses of a "computer" are mainly video editing and non-casual gaming.
So if Windows and macOS continue to drag their reputations through the mud, Chrome OS, the Linux Desktop, is the most likely beneficiary.
> The remainder of the possible uses of a "computer" are mainly video editing and non-casual gaming.
You're overlooking a whole universe of business users. With the proliferation of tablets, smart TVs and phones, I'll bet many of those users ONLY user a computer at work. The vast majority of (mature) small-to-medium sized businesses lack the technical agility, expertise, time, money and/or initiative to switch from their existing legacy system of Windows file shares, outlook calendars, etc. and likely don't see a need to try. I'll bet most of those companies haven't even had a serious technical strategy conversation about the new ai features/changes in windows beyond "Phyllis in accounting discovered if you change setting X, then the stupid copilot thing won't get in the way when you're trying to run the TPS report macro." Even if they can do whatever they need to do in a browser, getting everybody in the company on board with the change and then figuring out what parts of their business break by doing so isn't something they generally feel compelled to investigate.
I don't work in the software business anymore-- it's easy to forget that technical expertise isn't built-in to your workforce in the overwhelming majority of businesses, and most of them are way too ingrained in their procedures to jump ship to the latest SaaS solution that would do it 100x better once they figured it out.
I don't think I disagree with you at all. Older businesses that have a significant investment in Windows-based, non-web-based applications will keep on keeping on, and it would take a lot of degradation of the platform to convince them to "modernize" (scare quotes because I don't actually think shiny web-based everything is automatically better than native Windows apps built for a certain niche purpose).
That said, it's still a threat to Microsoft that no company founded today or in the last 5 years will have such a tight coupling to Windows on the Desktop, not even if the founding IT person is a big fan of Windows and deploys a Windows laptop to every desk. They may use Microsoft platforms, but things like Outlook, SharePoint and the tools a new company would subscribe to are perfectly usable on the Web for a large group of non-software-developer users. If one optimistically predicts that Apple sorts their stuff out, the Mac provides a non-web alternative to worry about too (as long as you don't need Excel to perform worth a damn!)
Note: I deliberately drew a distinction with "on the Desktop" as I feel like things like Outlook, SharePoint, and especially Azure and what used to be called Active Directory, those things are still both popular and very sticky (hard to "just" migrate off of) even with brand new businesses. I suppose this is how Microsoft has hedged, since they could lose the desktop OS market and still do all right if they can keep businesses using those products. A Microsoft without Desktop Windows, looks to me kind of like Oracle.