Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
As much as I want to joke that it is the year of the Linux desktop, I think it is mostly because the younger you are the less likely you are to have a pc (so Windows, Mac, Linux and BSD for the dozens of you).
As far as I can see most of the time people use their phone for everything and only touch a pc for work or if they have a hobby that requires the use of a pc (gaming, digital art, music, programming, etc…).
I’ve neutered my win 10 updates so they don’t work and I’ve got Linux on two laptops out of 3 now. Going to move my server over soon, then eventually my desktop and the final laptop. Peacing out of the ms ecosystem
switched to Linux and don’t regret it. fuck copilot, laggy ass UI, terabyte of ram usage, forced updates and any other bullshit they can come up with.
Would say that the businesses are still propping up Windows hard whilst the personal space is pretty much dying. I mean, most of the younger generation are using tablets or phones more than a PC these days. I would argue that unless you’re in need of that power, those tablets or phones could do everything they need like drawing, gaming or streaming.
If businesses gave Microsoft the flick, it would devastate their bottom line a lot.
Just pure greed and giving users less and less control of an OS will push people away. It did for me outside of work. I don’t have any reason to touch Windows that often.
It’s because most people use their phones as their main computing device these days. The idea that the average person would give up the convenience, stability, and familiarity of something like windows because of “pure greed” and “loss of OS control” is a fantasy. The average person would buy a screwdriver with banner ads if it saved them $10.
This.
Longtime computer “nerd” here. 8 years ago I would have balked about spending more on a cellphone than my gaming PC, but I end up using my phone more hours per day than my desktop so I bit the bullet and bought a nice phone. Now my PC is basically a dedicated entertainment device, and my phone is my go-to for email, chat, music, videos, reading, documents, and even some work.
If I wasn’t an avid gamer, I probably wouldn’t have a desktop or laptop at all right now.
And I will be switching to Linux this year, mainly because of Windows 11 and the general direction the Microsoft is going. I’ve got a laptop to test with and when I have the hang of it, the big battle station is getting switched too.
To me the phone is such a perfect device but it fails to reach its potential. When i think about a computer in my pocket, I want a computer that I can hack around with and use. My two main issues with phones are their software is awful, its locked down and its to simplified and the other issue is input devices for mobile leave a lot to be desired. I dream of AR glasses and a dataglove on each hand.
Yeah. You can unlock the phone, but it takes some work.
I the thing that upset me the most was that my phone was packed with an amazing array of sensors, and most of them are blocked from the user accessing. I got an app that gives me sensor data output. It really turns your phone from a device into a tool.
Everyone talking about how it’s because of Windows 11 or their greed driving people away, etc. But they’re ignoring the big one:
People don’t need as many computers these days. You don’t have a lot of households with a laptop for every member of the family because smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC for many people for media consumption and basic tasks.
I think you’re right on this. People aren’t moving away from MS because of their obnoxious behaviour. They’re moving to alternate form factors and dealing with Apple’s and Google’s obnoxious behaviour instead. People are willing to put up with a metric ton of bullshit so they don’t have to actually do anything for themselves.
I don’t think their obnoxious behavior is completely unrelated. After all, people aren’t choosing windows phones or tablets either.
That’s just because Microsoft waited until Android and iOS were well-established before trying to make a smartphone OS. It could have been the best OS ever made, and it still would have been a failure because there wasn’t a market for a third OS. It was hard enough at the time to get apps developed for both iOS and Android - there wasn’t room for a third player.
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Not to mention google has fought to replace real PCs in grade school computer courses with chromebooks, which are glorified tablets. Recent gens simply aren’t as familiar with proper computers as phones and tablets.
And this is the absolute truth. I showed my brother today in haveibeenpawned how his main email (you guessed it, Gmail) is out there in over 150 leaks and hacks. Not 2 hours later he was buying 2 new nest thermostats to replace the ones he has at home because Google is phasing them out (yes, they still work, Google just chose to kill them).
I’m done trying to make people see the light. We’ll see what happens when it all blows up (see I didn’t say “if”).
Correct. Whenever you see a large chunk of the population making a change, first assume it is for mundane reasons like finances or convenience.
I keep having to remind people around me that phones are the primary computing device for an ever increasing percentage of the population.
Lemmy wants to rail on Windows 11 AND they talk shit about your average person not understanding filesystems.
Lemmy wants to rail on Windows 11 AND they talk shit about your average person not understanding filesystems.
At some point, it just becomes exhausting to hear people explain-o-brag about their ability to navigate the command-line, like typing “dir” into a cursor field makes them the hottest thing since Alan Turing.
Millennials will tell you they are tech geniuses, then throw up their hands when their dishwasher breaks or their check-oil light comes on. The need to be cluelessly smug rivals any 90s-era Boomer.
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Exactly. My wife hasn’t used an actual computer more than a handful of times in the last several years. She does EVERYTHING on her smartphone.
I have never owned a laptop, because my desktop unit is where I do most of my business stuff, and when I’m away from that, my smartphone is good enough.
Of course, the most important thing isn’t that we account for two less computers than a few years ago, but the smartphones that we have replaced laptops with, run Android. So that’s actually a net loss of 4 MS products.
And after all these years, Windows products still make me frustrated and infuriated. You’d think they would have honed it to a perfect product by now, but every few years they completely reconfigure the UI, and make us have to navigate a whole new, buggy system.
Looks around my living room, 3 laptops, stationary, 1 nas and a server. 2 laptops are still running windows.
You are an outlier.
Same here. I was just thinking that I have way more running computers now than I did in years past. But none of mine are running Windows now.
Yeah this happened in Japan way earlier. Japan got mobile internet much sooner than the rest of the world it was called i-mode. Which was launched in 1999. The home computer boom never happened there like it did in the West. Since everyone just uses their mobile phone to go in the internet and Japanese PCs were expensive. And doing work after hours at home wasn’t a thing since you do that at the office where your boss can see you putting in the work. The only PCs that sold reasonably well were VAIOs since those were relatively compact.
It’s also why computer literacy is very low in Japan, ask anyone who taught in Japan and they will tell you most Japanese high school students don’t know how to use a computer. Like the problems we are seeing now in the West with computer literacy among students they had for decades already.
If this calculation proves true, one would think losing close to 1/3 of its customers would cause M$ to rethink some of its business policies/plans…
Such as forcing folks to retire perfectly good hardware and buy new if they wish to run Windoze11.
But then again, it’s M$… 🤷♂️ 🤦♂️
1/3 of its Windows customers, not of all of its customers. I bet they still make plenty of money with Azure and Office 365.
Precisely. Windows is a side project for Microsoft now.
Especially since the majority of computer users worldwide now no longer use a PC to do their computing. The average consumer now uses Windows only at work. Their personal device, whatever it is, runs Android or is some manner of iDevice, two platforms which have thoroughly eaten Microsoft’s lunch.
It’s too bad for Microsoft that their mobile platform – Windows Mobile, er, I mean Windows 8 RT, er, actually it was Pocket PC, um, no wait, it was Windows CE, et. cetera – all bombed so spectacularly, and the most recent one mere moments before Google took over the world.
I imagine Microsoft is no longer eyeing private users as a cash cow except purely as advertising targets.
It’s only a matter of time before some brilliant dipshit over there manages to envision Windows as a subscription service aimed solely at businesses, and the days of Windows as a standalone OS will be over.
Been saying exactly that for years but it hasn’t happened yet… It will when the last people (like my age) want to use Windows at home, but by then Macs will have gone as well because the pc as we know it will be finished. I can see pcs as such being gone in say 10 years and it will all be mobile devices as such, and I include laptops in that. Wifey has just lost the last installed program needed for her work from home. All web/connected apps to work from now, and when they go down the whole company stops work(ing). Lost 3 whole days this year so far as the whole company couldn’t function for various reasons
It’s only a matter of time before some brilliant dipshit over there manages to envision Windows as a subscription service aimed solely at businesses
I think at least one M365 plan includes a windows license now.
Yes, I don’t like Windows one bit anymore but back then, Windows Mobile was very solid! I loved my Lumia phones.
If Windows becomes a sub service for business only, three things three things can happen:
1 Mac’s become the most sold consumer product
2 Linux takes off like never before
3 Some consumer version where ads accompany every mouse click
I hope it’s gonna be number two
Unless there’s a miracle, it would be:
4 consumer are relegated to DRM’d-to-Hell-and-back smartphones
I could imagine a future where Windows is just a proprietary DE over a Linux system. I don’t think it’s coming anytime soon because of the development cost it would impose, but I don’t see why they would go to such efforts maintaining a system they could get for free if the desktop user base keeps shrinking. They’re just too greedy not to do that. Even the backwards compatibility with Windows software is becoming a solved problem.
Aside from my above rant, the PC is definitely fast becoming an enthusiast/business platform. I opened a retirement account the other day through my smart phone!
MS did a shift like that already. The shift from MS-DOS to NT was transparent to the vast majority of people to the point that most people didn’t realize they were two different OSes.
I don’t see why they couldn’t do it again. NTVDM was similar in concept to what wine does. Imagine if MS actively contributed to wine, or a wine like project.
Do you mean a Linux Subsystem for Windows (LSW)?
Well a bunch of them are using WSL to do their work, which isn’t the same, but shows how many people are just stuck with a Windows box.
In StackOverflow 2024 survey ~17% of both professional and personal use users were using WSL.
Source: StackOverflow 2024 Survey
Edit - A word went missing due to my battle with autocorrect. 😩
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This often sucks when the server and terminal are onsite. Put the server elsewhere and only those with best connections will like it. Latency is a bitch.
i was a MS employee once. Windows hasn’t been their focus since Windows XP. Once they discovered the profit margins of Office 98… Windows was just a way to keep you using Office
This makes sense. I have a friend from way back in HS who interned there while he was working on his degree who said that cloud services was the priority at the time, and Windows was more just a vehicle that they continued to maintain. That continues to be the approximate temperature of the product and is in line with my expectations.
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they do OK but services side including AI make way more…
They pay for that AI from Open AI though. It’s not pure profit for them.
And adding advertising to various parts of the OS.
Hey, Microsoft: de-shitify your OS if you want it to be more popular.
they already have an their AI division earns way more than the Windows division. Matters little to them about Windows numbers dropping because in reality PCs as we know it are declining far more rapidly that anyone wants to say
For some reason modern business degree holders don’t even consider the possibility of increasing head coubts but instead maximising gains from remaining heads.
Same with employees, they see things like dirty stores and long lines and they try to force employees to work as sanitation crews and implement time limits to make lines faster long before they ever hire somebody new.
You would hope, but this is the same thing we see across almost all industries these days. It’s almost like there’s a root cause for it, some sort of, Iunno, economic system we could blame …
But especially cable companies, for example. Has a dwindling customer base caused them to rethink their business strategies? Or has it caused them to try and bleed that dwindling base dryer even faster?
There’s no “learning” anymore, there’s riding the bus to the absolute pits of hell and just hoping you’re not the CEO to be the one that has to go down with it.
It’s Microsoft’s current CEO. All he is interested in is subscription revenue. Xbox hardware is next to go.
Breaking up Microsoft would be the best thing they could do right now. But it won’t happen.
And that CEO completely turned the company around. Microsoft was circling the drain before they changed strategies.
You say turned around, I say ruined. He’s just remaking it into another IBM by selling services and killing anything innovative or creative.
You’re allowed to be wrong. The fact is if they continued doing what they were doing they would be almost entirely irrelevant today.
This will rely on having an executive team that can predict trends beyond the next quarter.
Doubling down on advertising, telemetry, and AI in an overly bloated OS looks really good if you only care about the profits that brings for the next 3 months, rather than how much your userbase resents it. MS is fully capable of turning this around immediately by just making LTSC available to the public without needing to buy a MAK through an enterprise channel, but that means throwing away some recurring revenue in favor of claiming a lost userbase
I’m thinking they’re doing it on purpose. Think you’re a multibazillion company, want to quit your least profitable line of work (OS business) but it’s also your most famous front. Diluting a business is how you quit without scaring investors.
They don’t care they have Azure now.
Best gif ever. Download!
No source for the blog post. Here it is: windows blog
Note that the number has been updated, and at the bottom they state that that figure has been updated.
The original text said ‘over a billion’. 1.4 billion is over a billion.
Yeah, this is just terrible journalism.
I love how they went into so much detail about why the old numbers would be accurate, then proceed to say they can ‘safely’ say that windows has lost 400 million users over a sentence on a blog stating windows has ‘over a billion users’.
Also quite disappointing that no one is questioning, “where did they go”. If Chromebooks or Apple picked up a fraction of the “lost” users, they’d be shouting from the rooftops. And a fraction of those users would crush most Linux distros infrastructure, so we’d have heard something.
What Linux infrastructure? The wikis and torrent links?
Fwiw, I’ve switched 2 computers in my house to Linux. Still researching to find out if I can switch my z13 tablet and keep all the functionality.
What Linux infrastructure? The wikis and torrent links?
Package database mirrors (i.e. the things you’re downloading from when you install new software).
Speaking from a university perspective - we’ve been scaling back our computer labs a fair bit, as there’s a lot of people with personal laptops and tablets now. Almost half our former workstations are now eliminated or BYOD.
So a lot of Windows machines are just gone.
I happy to believe that its probably trending down, overall PC shipments have been trending down for a while, but 400m drop over 3 years is a huge amount that just doesnt smell right.
A lab computer is used by up to N students typically, so by removing it, there is potentially N more devices being purchased by the N students. So that could mean more iPads or Chromebooks, or even more PCs overall.
And converting a university device to a byod device doesn’t necessarily remove a PC either, given the user may purchase a new device for work.
With any statistics to back it up (which none of us have, especially not the original article) all we have is speculation.
Yeah I don’t buy 400m either.
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I just wish Linux remote desktop support wasn’t absolute dogshit.
There are plenty of options for both software and OS, so not every combination is going to have the same level of support as Windows, where every user gets the same experience.
That said, I’ve heard lots of good things about NoMachine.
I used NoMachine for the better part of a year, and I’d agree it’s the best of the options. It still sucks.
RustDesk, it’s by far the best remote desktop software I’ve used on any platform.
Tons of great features, open source, self-hostable, easy to install and configure, works on all major platforms including mobile. Cross platform works like a charm.
Thanks. I’ll give it a try.
It really isn’t. You don’t even need to port forward, you can use AnyDesk or TeamViewer or any other option entirely for free. There are also open-source options too.
I’ve used them all. They all suck.
How so? They work fine on me between laptop and desktop, phone and desktop, etc.
They work well enough to get by, but definitely lack the responsiveness and modern feel of Windows rdp. Which makes sense, given the Linux solutions are essentially sending screen caps vs rdp’s protocols.
It feels like using a raspberry pi as your workstation. Technically it can do it, but it’s not a great experience. It feels like when you’re in a video chat app, and someone using screen share gives you keyboard/mouse control.
I had luck with VNC, although it’s still worse than RDP. There’s also some RDP implementations on Linux that are apparently better, but VNC works well enough for me.
But there’s no sound, I don’t know if RDP has that. I’ve used VLC for sound forwarding. I also tried PulseAudio TCP module, but that didn’t quite work. With VLC I can do lossy compression.What I wish would work better is X11 forwarding. That could be so awesome, just having the remote windows local-like. But from what I can find, in the past, programs used X11’s drawing features which would save a lot of bandwidth, while now they just draw pixel by pixel.
To give you some idea, I’ve tried it on LAN with gigabit ethernet, ping below 1ms. It would saturate the port and still be kinda slow.
I know everybody’s here to rag on Microsoft, but I honestly am quite pleased with Windows 11. I comfortably do software development in an Ubuntu shell using the Widows Subsystem for Linux and it honestly works like a charm. Then I can unplug and play video games in Steam and everything works great, there, too.
Of course this is all possible on Linux, but my point here is that Windows really isn’t as awful as everybody makes it out to be.
Meanwhile, MacOS enters into a second decade of no innovation. It still relies on Homebrew for developer tools, still lacks any substantial improvements to Xcode and only ever receives iterative cosmetic changes like video lock screens and the new bundle of desktop backgrounds for its latest “update.”
You’re trying to paint windows in a positive light when Microsoft is desperately trying to spy on us and force more advertising on us even though we really don’t want it, and the only reason they can do that is because they have a monopoly. So yeah, it really is that awful.
And if we want to do side by side comparisons of the available software packages, most things that you would need for your average office setup are free and come by default on your major Linux distros. On Windows, you have to install them manually, and the default options are mainly commercial. So you’re paying more and possibly getting something worse, depending on your personal preferences about each software package and its alternative. That’s pretty bad, my friend. Windows is competing with free and losing, but they have inertia and a monopoly.
My personal experience with Windows has been different.
I’ve not seen advertising in Windows; where have you seen that?* I’m a bit shocked about Microsoft spying on me, too. Do you have any sources on that? It feels like that should be illegal in Europe and would make headlines.I don’t use desktop office software and haven’t purchased any desktop software in probably a decade. My business makes heavy use of Google Workspace and uses online services that are agnostic to the operating system. The only things I’m really installing on my machine are developer tools through
apt-getand games through Steam.*) Edit: Windows periodically prompts to use Edge or subscribe to Office 365; I had forgotten about that because it’s perhaps less frequent here in Europe.
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I didn’t mean to have upset you as I wasn’t aware that European users weren’t allowed to comment here. I only ever meant to speak to my own experiences and not on behalf of anybody else.
I reviewed the community rules and didn’t see anything about Europe, so I’m left confused about what I’ve done wrong.
Check the part about misinformation.
Kindly reference the sections where I’ve provided misinformation and I will add a correction.
I see my comment about advertising and will clarify it.
That guy is a jackass. Probably an American upset that he’s a minority on Lemmy. Don’t mind him.
I log into a windows 10 server and see system notifications ads pop up. Here is an example of one i’ve seen several times across multiple windows 10/11 boxes.
Open up your start menu and start typing, what comes up? Is it just apps or in other words program within your local hardware? Are there suggestions from the Internet or in other words an advertisement.
The results are honestly pretty spot on, at least for my use cases, and this isn’t different from how Chromebooks or MacOS does it (although for the latter, Spotlight results are hilariously terrible). Even Linux distros often combine on-device and online search results—are those also advertisements? I’m puzzled why Windows is called out in particular on this.
If my Linux distro searched the internet, when I opened my launcher, I’d be finding a new Linux distro.
I distinctly recall a version of Ubuntu that not only showed search results, but Amazon shopping links.
And i no longer use Ubuntu. I remember that too. I also remember such large push back that it was removed
When you install windows from fresh, you have a bunch of “suggested” apps on your task bar which are ads. Spotify for example.
Then you also have Notifications that tell you the news, which are sponsored news. Then you have other notifications telling you to use this or that Microsoft service (eg. oneDrive), another form of ads.
If you have the know-how to install windows 11/without logging into a Microsoft account, the notifications pester you endlessly to log in to a Windows account, which uses an outlook email, of course.
If you use a browser that isn’t Edge, you’ll be routinely “reminded” how amazing edge is. Also, even if you uninstall Edge, it reinstalls itself after every update. Same happens with Copilot. Even if you don’t want to see those programs, because they are ever-present, you’re more likely to use them.
All of these are forms of ads and outright user abuse, probably worthy of having Microsoft being fined again. Maybe you don’t care, but this is definitely happening.
I’m also in the EU, my laptop was bought in the EU.
You’re right that Edge routinely attempts to make its return—that’s annoying alright. Microsoft is skirting a fine line here since they were found guilty of antitrust practices for this very thing. (Tangentially, I wonder if iPhone users have the same complaints about Safari.) In Europe, at least, those updates prompt you whether to make the switch, and the user remains in control. It’s been many years since Microsoft changed my defaults.
You’re also absolutely right about the attempted upsells for Office 365 or OneDrive or whatever. I agree they’re ads and that they’re annoying, but not more so than how my MacBook constantly nags me about iCloud or how iPhone consumes it with app data, or how Google leverages its surfaces for Photos, Drive, Workspace and Gemini upsells.
In the end all these companies arrive at the same challenge: converting a one-time purchase into regular payments through subscription models. I had honestly forgotten about these prompts until you reminded me of them, and so long as they’re irregular and easy to ignore, I feel like Microsoft isn’t doing anything outright awful.
I often think communities like Lemmy choose to disproportionately hate on things. In this case it’s Windows, which I really don’t think is warranted.
I often think communities like Lemmy choose to disproportionately hate on things. In this case it’s Windows, which I really don’t think is warranted.
But it is, though. You just choose to not see it that way. Laptops aren’t cheap and Windows comes priced into the purchase. They already made money from you, that was always their business model.
For me, if I already paid for the product, that’s it. The company loses the right to advertise to me and milk me for further revenue, and just because its industry standard it doesn’t make it okay: the law should be tighter around this. Full stop.
I wonder if consumers would choose to pay more to opt out of this. Surely corporations have done their research, because none of them have chosen to offer a buy-out option. To be perfectly frank, I wouldn’t pay more for a laptop for a guarantee that I’m not prompted for any up-sells, and it’d only make the consumer offerings more confusing if such an option existed.
All these companies are forcing themselves into the corner of offering the one-time fee to be as low as possible, preferably free, and find other revue channels after the purchase. I hold them all equally guilty of this: why pay $100 for Windows when there’s no such fee for a Chromebook or MacBook? Microsoft is forced by competition to reduce the fee and recoup it elsewhere, and they’re in my opinion not even the worst among those examples.
It’s odd that Lemmy directs its anger at an individual company, while they’re all guilty of the same practices, instead of towards their government representatives who are actually able to take action against it.
It’s odd that Lemmy directs its anger at an individual company, while they’re all guilty of the same practices, instead of towards their government representatives who are actually able to take action against it.
What? Lemmy fucken hates the government dude. People here absolutely rail against the government to take action against these practices and companies.
I don’t think the biggest concerns about Windows are about functionality. It works perfectly well and even has some neat features. I’m using Linux and I miss the sys + v for clipboard history. The biggest gripe themes I see are the loss of privacy coupled with increasing sales pressure for everything Microsoft.
Edit: I looked it up, of course there’s a Linux equivalent to clipboard history. Added!
Yes, I probably use this hundreds of times a day! This is a perfect example of something missing from Mac that requires an App Store purchase to fix—same for better window management. I suppose Apple prefers this situation because it allows them to both monetize on a lackluster OS and avoid making investments to fix anything.
I think you nailed it. There are definite upsides to macOS, especially for less tech savvy users, but they gouge the hell out of the denizens of their walled garden.
sys + v can be bound to bring up clipboard history if you are using KDE!
They just had to copy the walled garden approach of the competitors, and badly at that. They could have not pursued forcing users to a Microsoft account. They could’ve avoided the telemetry and ads business(/bloat). Google has them beat there anyway. They had the more open alternative to Google and Apple but they’re trying terribly to be second fiddle to them. And now Linux has become a good enough alternative to what Windows should’ve been. They are still the choice for business machines, but they’ve been terrible with consumer devices.
Microsoft for the past 17 years: We have a monopoly, so we can just copy people and become more popular than them. Aaaany day now. Anyway day now. Any day nowwwwww…
