Windows, quo vadis?
In 2013 I wrote a short statement about Windows 8, leaving the endless debates about Start Menu vs Start Screen aside and instead focusing on the fundamental changes in application management, that release brought about.
Roughly three years have passed since that article and the world has seen two additional releases. With both, and in particular Windows 10, Microsoft tried to listen to its critics and worked on workflows, UI elements, as well as basic concepts. They also reverted some of the most heavily criticised decisions in Windows 8.
Even though I believe Windows 10 was released prematurely (there were, and still are, too many glitches, issues, and inconsistencies, in the UI mostly) I would nonetheless say Microsoft is on the right track and finally found a viable way to combine two very different worlds of computing, the “active” desktop world and the “semi-passive” touch world.
Chances are slim anybody at Microsoft actually ever took a glance at the essay above, but the underlying message got across. Maybe we can consider that a success.
However, something is still rotten in the state of Washington
Quo vadis?
When Satya Nadella succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft, you could almost hear the sighs of relief rushing through parts of the IT community. According to some opinions Ballmer was not doing a great job anymore and was running Microsoft into the ground.
While this is certainly debatable, the differences between Ballmer’s and Nadella’s style in management are not.
One key difference between Ballmer and Nadella appears to be their - *buzzword alarm* - vision for Microsoft and their business approach. Under Ballmer Microsoft continued its set course. Even though he partially did venture into new markets - such as gaming consoles - Microsoft mostly kept to its known business model, selling software — and a few mice.
This model worked pretty well until the mid/late 2000s when companies, first and foremost Google, discovered The Service and managed to convince people that this is the new thing.
Suddenly Microsoft was considered old-fashioned.
Hence the relief when Microsoft announced Nadella would succeed Ballmer. For some reason people thought Microsoft would suddenly Google Up and become one of the cool kids. And they were not totally wrong.
Shortly after Nadella assumed the position as CEO a lot of things quickly changed. Among other things, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would become the eternal version, the attitude towards open source appears to have changed + a lot of Microsoft code was open sourced, the concept of services was more embraced, they introduced their own hardware line and their conference talks and product ads became virtually indistinguishable from their competitor in Cupertino.
Nadella received a lot of praise for making Microsoft more open and in many cases justified so.
Of course there’s a “but”
Where there is light, there must be shadow
With Windows 10 Microsoft launched Windows Insider, basically an Early Access program to pre-release builds. Despite some criticism about overzealous collection of user data (which is normal and understandable for a development build though) Windows 10 managed to get very positive reviews during the pre-release period— for the first time since its highly successful predecessor Windows 7.
These positive responses changed however upon its release, when it turned out that most of the overzealous collection of user data actually stayed in the system beyond its development phase.
At that point many people and some media went into a sort of frenzy and Windows 10 lost a lot of its “media’s darling” aura and was somewhat pushed into a more sinister corner. The responses ranged from calling Windows 10 straight out malware to more objective attempts to analyse the situation and on to instructions to disable privacy-invasive services.
Concerns about privacy violating, data snooping software are nothing new. We are used to them on the web and - to some extent - on new platforms, such as Android. For Windows they are rather a first though.
Together with Microsoft’s new update policy of mandatory updates and an additional cloud of deliberate secrecy over the changes within updates this left the unpleasant feeling of having no real control anymore what information my system divulges, respectively what bits of code suddenly appear on my machine.
…. somehow getting reminiscent of a 90s movie
This is not where Microsoft’s newly gained confidence stopped however. They set as goal to push Windows 10 to as many devices as possible, to be precise
Roughly 28 million devices a month. In October 2015 (~ two months after its release) Microsoft announced that about 110 million were already running Windows 10. Not a bad monthly average, but hard to sustain once the first update rush is over.
Most likely because of this, to encourage people to upgrade, Microsoft became more and more pushy with the upgrade.
Starting with displaying the Free Upgrade balloon more frequently ….
…. to giving the user the option to upgrade now or later (not is not an option) ….
…. and eventually upgrade NOW
Such actions leave the taste of a certain desperation. Ignoring the issues above Windows 10 is a great system, but if the manufacturer of a product seems to use every possibly available trick to make you use their product, you might want to think twice before going for it.
Hang on, there’s more!
Only a few days ago Microsoft announced a new support policy, effective as of July 2017, guaranteeing compatibility with new hardware (in particular processors, e.g. Intel’s Skylake and higher) only on Windows 10.
Now, one could argue that Windows 7 is already in its extended support window and Windows 8.1 will be shortly after the announced date as well and that Microsoft has to draw the line somewhere (after all, Windows XP does not support USB 3 either), but coupled with Microsoft’s demonstrated overall assertiveness on that topic this just looks like yet another move to push Windows 10 onto everybody.
The conclusion?
As a longtime user of Windows (starting with 3.0) I have always found it to be an excellent choice for a desktop system. Beginning with 8 I got my first doubts. 8 seemed like a half-baked solution, trying to quickly jump on the mobile bandwagon, leaving the established desktop behind.
After the criticism Microsoft was faced with for Windows 8 and their reactions I was hoping the next version would be somewhat a return to its old qualities. While it did return to a good extent to its original UI roots, Microsoft opened another door to a very different set of problems.
Windows 10 has been out for a bit less than half a year, so maybe it is still a tad too early to tell and things will turn out fine. I am just not too happy with the direction in which Microsoft is heading with Windows 10. The introduction of widescale collection of diagnostic and telemetry data, the policy of mandatory and “secretive” updates and the servicified approach is not something I could say I am very fond of.
I honestly can’t tell yet, but for the first time there is a good chance that 2016 or 2017 might possibly really mark the famous year of the Linux desktop for me.
