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Microsoft Is 'Demoting' Windows for the Cloud, Says CNN (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Microsoft is giving Windows a demotion, and leaning into the cloud. CEO Satya Nadella told employees on Thursday that Terry Myerson, leader of the Windows and Devices Group, is leaving the company. "Microsoft has been my work, my team, and my purpose for 21 years," Myerson wrote in a LinkedIn blog post. "It is an emotional day"... The shakeup includes the formation of two new engineering teams that will prioritize Microsoft's cloud and artificial intelligence products -- a move that should make investors happy, said Brad Reback, a software analyst at Stifel. Morgan Stanley said recently that Microsoft could hit $1 trillion in market value within a year, thanks in large part to the strengths of Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service, and the cloud-based Office 365 software suite... Amy Hood, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in January that the company's commercial cloud revenue grew 56% year-over-year. In that quarter, Windows commercial products and cloud services sales fell 4%.
Seriously, how freaking stupid can companies be to think that the "cloud" is the answer? I genuinely don't get it.
Do all of these companies think that everyone has fiber to the house with 1gb/s upload speed?
Do they not understand that most home connections have between 5 and 10mb upload speed and that they data caps? How the fuck should a cloud based system work under such conditions? I assume this would be a comcast wetdream. Think of the overage charges!
Now that NN is dead, they can say.... oh... we see you are using a cloud system.. yeah, you need to pay extra if you want more than 1.5mb/s.
Even here in Europe, where the internet has massively cheaper than what you pay in the states, I still have only a 400mb DL and 20mb UL. Faster isnt even available where I live.
It feels like am waiting forever to put a large file on my onedrive. I usually never use because it is so slow. If the file is like 7 or 8 GB, I would use my works wesendit account and just email myself the DL link to DL from my offsite machine. That is WAY faster than onedrive.
No, 2019 is the year of the the end of the desktop.
Linux will never be the big desktop OS we have been waiting for. We can hope it will be the Workstation OS of the future. Because we no longer need Desktop PC's. We need Workstations where we can do real work. For the fun stuff we have consoles, and tablets, and mobile devices. Which for most people would be more then enough for their use. A tablet with Office, and a blue tooth keyboard is more then enough for most people.
This is a different condition 10 or 20 years ago, where a PC was needed for nearly any computing event. At that point Linux for the Desktop may had have some real benefit, saving us from countless windows crashes, because pre-xp windows were based off of the MS DOS OS, while XP and up where based off the workstation base NT system. (Windows 2000, wasn't a PC OS but a workstation OS to replace NT 4)
However today we need more serious Linux systems, designed for productivity and taking advantage of the Workstations hardware and graphics, and less trying to appeal to work for grandma, who at this point probably has more computing skills then you do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I would imagine that they will be "enticing" or migrating all desktop users to their cloud with the goal of eventually eliminating air-gapped desktop functionality and executable / product delivery. Then, once again they'll have free reign to rape and pillage. Service fees for everything, storage, CPU access time, and various "value added services" (like anything more than notebook).
One would think that their user base would wake up after all the bloated, invasive, insecure and underperforming product they've been using or "upgraded" to, but possibly they're just used to it.
Truly Evil Corp
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Unlikely. If MS offers Office for Linux then I think you would see mass migration.
But, as it is, that is not going to happen.. likely ever.
If anything, now that Apple is finally starting to support upgrading graphics cards increasing gaming performance, we may see folks switching platforms. Even a lot more hackintosh machines for the DIY man/woman.
This is great news.
Windows has been a thorn in mine and many other IT professionals and users for decades. It was the glue that tied everything in.
While Windows has certainly improved and should have been this stable back in the late 1990s when Unix already was the lack of innovation was killing the technology market.
With mobile, web, open standards, and free software both Gnu, Apache, MIT, and others (I am not just referring to gcc and Linux) we see a different Microsoft and market. Visual Studio is no longer the crappy blob that everyone has to use and is years behind. The C compiler has caught up thanks to Clang and GCC and Visual Studio now supports clang. Free editors based on node.js such as ATOM.io, Microsoft Code, Adobe's Brackets and ide's that are low cost like XCode and JetBrains have further eroded dependence on unupdated Visual Studio. Ironically MS joined the bandwaggon too with MS Code which like Atom.io is also electron based.
We see Office online and also much better Mac support with versions now for Android and IOS. Visual Studio also has a mac port. It still is a stranglehold but it is at least moving due to competition from Google Docs. .NET core is open sourced and runs well on Linux (not Mono but the real deal) and will be in the next version of Redhat.
IE is now dead for all but legacy apps. MS is moving forward with trying to embrace standards with Edge which surprisingly has an Android version.
Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, and Kali are available on Windows 10 and soon Windows Server if you need to run some apps which is shocking.
Last, Amazon with it's cloud OS scared MS and the office 365 and MS 365 have some bones and extra things like Dynamics, Planner, SharePoint, Teams and other things which improved MS office and gave access to smaller businesses some of the tools the big boys have with dedicated I.T. departments.
This is not the same Microsoft of 2008 10 years ago.
I am not saying they are an angel, but like IBM and Digital before it once they no longer dictate the market and rather play by it or get beat by it things change rapidly. Apple and Oracle to me all far more evil even though they are not monopolies. It makes me glad the ugly inferior IBM PC and not the Mac won the PC wars. Too bad we had crappy operating systems for several decades though.
WindowsXP showed MS that people HATE change and consumers won't pay for Windows. The world is moving on and even business users will simply not upgrade and keep old versions of products otherwise. So Windows will be here like IBM's zOS but will have less and less of a focus and more of something that comes on a PC. MS will make money for services and consumers will simply not care about the OS and run what they want.
http://saveie6.com/
Have gnu, will travel.
You seem to miss that at least two tablet OSes are basically highly-tailored Linux distributions, locked-down to prevent the end-user from getting to the guts, as a tradeoff trying to maintain a disciplined approach to how applications are to run and interact with the user on the platforms. I'm speaking of Android and ChromeOS.
The vast majority of end users never really needed the down-in-the-trenches approach that early personal computing offered and even arguably required. I suppose that helped contribute to Apple's penetration into the educational market with early Macintoshes, the lack of transparency and ability to tinker with the OS was a downside for computer enthusiasts, but was an advantage to those who didn't care how the underlying device worked, they just wanted to open a program and have it work right. Granted, eventually pre-OSX MacOS got pretty messed up by the end, but for a long time the approach seemed to work well enough.
When I see a tablet, I see the natural evolution of that model for how personal computing works. Hell, tablets even have screens similar in-size to many of those early Macintoshes. There's no digging into the OS, but most people don't want to do that anyway.
I've used Linux for my desktop operating system for the better part of twenty years but I can see why it would be the less desirable option for most people. Even for me it's a headache sometimes as the community fights over things or where development in some major projects stalls or goes off the rails. I put up with it mostly because it was not really any harder than Microsoft's approach back in the day, and because I don't like paying for basic software. For awhile I played with an old Chromebook and Crouton to run a Linux/X11 chroot environment, and it worked pretty well actually. I just wanted more/better than the Chromebook's hardware had to offer, so back to Debian I went.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Grudgingly accepted is good enough for their bottom line to be happy, sadly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Home users don't need Office. They need Wordpad.
At work the only time I have to use Office is for a particular spreadsheet template for mileage reimbursement that's so strangely implemented that it doesn't want to work right in Libreoffice. Even pivot tables work properly in Libre, I've done a lot of complex spreadsheets in that program that are entirely interoperable with Excel.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It really just means they recognize that no matter how well they do or how poorly they do, the role of the Windows OS in the marketplace is pretty well set. They tried massive investment and dramatic changes, they didn't break into new markets like they hoped. They inadvertently pissed off the userbase several times, never made a dent.
So the business call is to just start coasting. don't waste money trying to grow, and don't think that continued innovation is really required to hold on to their market. For their future evaluation of potential products, the question is easy: can this product be rented instead of purchased? If they can't figure out a way to rent the product or use the product to drive people to rent something, they would rather direct their efforts elsewhere.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
There's no digging into the OS, but most people don't want to do that anyway.
This is one of the biggest concerns I have about current trends in tech. Making systems simpler, easier to use and more secure is all good, but we're also losing the ability for average users to explore and automate and make their computers into tools and not merely platforms to run software that someone else wrote.
I've seen the look on the face of someone who isn't a "programmer" but has just learned some basic scripting that let them turn a regular all-morning job into a regular ten-minute job. It's a delight. But it only works if they have the ability to write those scripts and a basic understanding of how computers work so they can see what to do.
How is the next generation going to learn what computers can really do and how to take advantage of it to achieve benefits we haven't even thought of yet, if their computer has more power than anything any of us learned with and fits in their pocket, yet has no readily available programming tools so they can experiment and learn?
Computers can do far more to help us than just accessing social networks and watching Netflix, but we're in danger of dumbing them down and locking them down so much that this is all a whole generation will see.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Adobe is how NOT to move to a cloud.
I lost count how many websites were written with broken --webkit CSS extensions instead of W3C. Why?? Easy the cost to upgrade to a post 2011 version of Adobe Dreamweaver is like $75 a month!! That adds up fast.
Office 365 is like $9.99 a month per user in comparison. MS at least throws you a bone with their cloud subscription. 1 TB of cloud OneDrive storage, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, free upgrades, etc that you do not get if you buy the boxed version of Office. They offer more if you throw more money to them but it is a choice on which is more important.
I am in the minority here of favoring the cloud for business users and ditching Windows and it's horrible monopoly. If MS wants to give an OS that just works for free and you and I are free to pay more for services we don't need than what is the problem? It seems to be a consensus here that cloud == a ransomware syle lock screen asking for a credit card to use Windows.
It is not like that at all as MS would be sued and prosecuted into an oblivion and commit suicide if they were that dumb.
http://saveie6.com/
LOL. It has been going back to this since 1997 with the start of the early web and Novel Netware and ethernet.
Yes the Mainframe is the computer. The difference is Amazon and MS are the new mainframe gods you use to connect to your systems. People baulked at the cost of the IBM mainframe and switched to VAX or even mainframe-less environments to cut costs for simple things like spreadsheets, email, and word processing.
Funny is the needs of a large centralized system never went away. These simple tools and files became essential and managers needed a way to manage them viola a netware and later NT file mapped drive. Active directory, and last now this to manage.
What goes around comes around. What is interesting is the cloud was a way to manage websites originally. Not PC programs or operating systems. It grown into that.
http://saveie6.com/
We need Workstations where we can do real work. For the fun stuff we have consoles, and tablets, and mobile devices.
The statistics don't really support that, if you look at the platform comparison at StatCounter it's 52% mobile, 44% desktop and 4% console/tablet web browsing. And the last one is down from about 5% last year. At work we don't need workstations, but laptops sure. My parents need their 24"+ monitors because their vision is getting poor. I need my gaming box for gaming. There's lots of people that won't be properly served by smartphones and a tablet. The problem is that there's nobody really making a push for it, either they want you to stay on proprietary platforms or move to the cloud. Which would make Linux just an open source client/shell while all the data/processing moves out of your control, it's like out of the frying pan and into the fire. It's the independent, local computer that's dying, everything else is moving to become tentacles of centralized services.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Cloud in most cases is all a huge bet against basic ideas of CS, like caches. The correct model keeps power close to the user, it's edge tech with cloud augmentation. The autistic control freak model requires approval from Microsoft for every thing you do, it's the cloud. I think there's huge money at this point in going the opposite way, and giving companies control over their data and actions instead of trying to remote control.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Grudgingly accepted is good enough for their bottom line to be happy, sadly.
True, but the sustainability of a strategy based on grudging acceptance is always uncertain.
Of course when Adobe went to CC that was commercially good for them in the short term. They replaced intermittent revenue from customers, many of which were no longer buying every new CS update, with a more predictable subscription revenue stream. In most cases, that revenue stream was also going to work out at more money per customer even for those customers who really were updating regularly before.
However, credible alternatives for simple uses or specialist niche markets were starting to appear and steal small amounts of market share within a few years, and they are growing in number, scope and awareness. Go read any online forum visited by creative people today, and you'll find a mix of sentiment between people who view Adobe as still the industry standard/800lb gorilla and people who have made the switch to alternatives and been happy with the results. You'll find plenty of comments from those who are upset by the CC subscription pricing, and plenty of comments from people who still use CS 5/5.5/6 and refuse to upgrade. You'll find plenty of comments from people asking what has really been added in all the time since CS6 to justify the upgrade and lock-in and all the extra cost, too, but few good answers.
Adobe are very cagey about breaking down their subscriber figures, even in their official reporting. For example, consider any recent call or regulatory filing or investor literature and try to work out whether subscriber numbers in North America or Europe or Asia are trending up or down. Try to work out whether the money is coming from new customers or long-standing ones. Try to work out whether it's big institutional customers paying the bills or small agencies and freelancers. In fact, try to identify where the money and growth are coming from in the subscription revenues in any sort of detail at all. Usually the best you get is a few carefully chosen highlights.
My suspicion -- though that's all it can be, given the above-mentioned lack of hard data -- is that Adobe will continue to do OK with subscriptions for a while, but they opened the door to much more serious competition and over time that will hurt them. It's possible that this is already happening but it's being masked for now by growth outside of their traditional markets. In any case, if they don't seriously up their game and produce real extra value in CC to justify the ongoing subscriptions, sentiment could start to shift, and if the momentum in the market starts going in the wrong direction, that nice-looking stock chart could become very ugly.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Because we no longer need Desktop PC's. We need Workstations where we can do real work.
They're the same thing. A workstation is a desktop in a corporate environment. There are hundreds of millions of people using desktop computers in small businesses or at home. I use one to write up contracts and estimates and bills, to produce diagrams for work, to edit photos and pages for my website...
Anyone who merely does as much as working occasionally with office software needs a desktop because nothing else is ergonomically suitable. You *can* edit photos and write docs on a phone. That doesn't make it a replacement for a fullscale computer.
Thanks for your comment.
Perhaps this is what's going on in the computing paradigm for K -12 education in the US. Google's efforts in this area with the Chrome OS and very inexpensive laptops and now Apple's iPad initiative. At least Chrome machines have a keyboard attached. Both efforts have or will have the support back end with Web based servers, software tools for content generation and other management requirements. Some folks with minimal computing and communication needs have also adopted the Chrome OS paradigm. It's not a short leap to imagine this jumping to much more powerful systems for heavy duty sophisticated business and home computing. Computing as a service is on its way.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
..."We've found a way to make you pay again for Windows every month!"