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One Year Later: Windows 10 Now Runs On Over 21% of All Desktops (winbeta.org)
An anonymous reader writes: On June 29, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was running on 350 million devices -- 50 million more devices than the previous milestone announced by Microsoft on May 5. While the company is expected to update the number of devices running the latest OS when it releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2nd, NetMarketShare has decided to conduct some research on its own. According to its report, Windows 10 currently runs on a 21.13% desktop OS share. Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to dominate the market with a 47.01% share, with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 representing less than 10% of the PC market, and Windows XP representing 10.34%. While the market share of Windows 10 is all but certain to rise, it likely won't rise as fast as it did between May and June or June and July for example, as Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft has even backtracked on its original statement that Windows 10 will hit one billion devices by mid-2018, saying last month that Windows 10 likely won't in fact make that deadline.
run it unwillingly.
"...Windows 10 is no longer offered as a free upgrade for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8."
I think what the author meant to say was, "Windows 10 is no longer rammed down the throat any user too naive to treat anything coming from Microsoft as a malware attack."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
"4/5ths of people refused a free upgrade to what was traditionally a very expensive piece of software, despite us trying to forcibly install it on their machines for months on end and making it difficult for anyone other than a techy to refuse it".
Amazing how you can change how something reads by just flipping it.
Windows 10 probably will be the last version of Windows, but not the way Microsoft imagines it.
By continuing to nag, snoop, spam and lock-down its users, Microsoft is transforming its core offering - its OS - into the opposite of what it should be: an agent of the owner that compels the computer to obey the owner's intent.
Its the age-old agency problem. An agent with a large amount of power (network effects in Microsoft's case) tends to abuse it to the detriment of the principal (Microsoft users). Its same problem when powerful executives persuade their company to reward them richly without commensurate effort. Left uncorrected, the situation worsens (customers quit in disgust, company implodes, etc).
Another company may eventually do to the Microsoft desktop what Apple and Android did to them in mobile. Or Microsoft may wisen up and curb their worst excesses (as they did in the XBox One phone-home fiasco). But it'd be a hard sell to the MS board and would take a lot of imagination on their part to act more directly in favor of consumers, versus short-term shareholder rewards.
If you think that's not a speed demon, you have more money than common sense. My first-gen i5 with 8GB is "fairly modern". Hell, even a Core 2 Duo with 4GB is a solid general use machine (except for new games).
Circumcision is child abuse.