Microsoft says you won't be able to swerve Windows 11 min specs

[DanceswithUnix]

Its like all the people who were "you never got fired" for buying Intel in enterprise in the last 20 years,because at home they grew up with Intel.

Again, for us old people that's a corruption of "You never got fired for buying IBM". Not played with a big IBM machine for near 10 years now, but at that point they were pretty awesome machines.

MS had everything in place to stop this from happening,but over the last decade,they had no focus

Oh I think they had plenty of focus, they were just plain wrong. One single unified platform across mobile, server and desktop? It was dumb as hell, but they didn't hold back on execution.

Intel went the same way when they declared that absolutely everything should be x86. From 386 style microcontrollers (that can't possibly compete with smaller silicon RISC chips that are easier and cheaper to design) to the infamous Larrabee graphics card.

[Iota]

That is why I eventually want an AMD GPU to replace it. However,AMD is now the company of the highend,so it might be cheaper just to get another Nvidia GPU!

Well I did look at a nice Sapphire 6900XT option, however my current monitor is G-Sync. Which is now being replaced by a nice Samsung Odyssey G9 brand new from Samsung for £800, which is also G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro compatible, which at least leaves my options open in future.

[kalniel]

Well I did look at a nice Sapphire 6900XT option, however my current monitor is G-Sync. Which is now being replaced by a nice Samsung Odyssey G9 brand new from Samsung for £800, which is also G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro compatible, which at least leaves my options open in future.

Ie it's freesync, thanks to AMD. Which Nvidia have started supporting with their cards but decide to label it g-sync

(I'm also running a freesync monitor on an Nvidia card, works great)

[3dcandy]

But the problem is both you and 3dcandy can't see the bigger issue. If MS is hedging on cloud applications,that longterm means it opens up more competition due to the lack of Windows lock-in. Some of you are just looking right now when MS is doing well,but people were pointing out the issues internally at Intel years ago. The same at IBM and all these cases these companies were doing well. Another company I have some experience is Nokia - Nokia was doing very well,but I heard things from people I knew who worked there,and they saw the writing on the wall years before the issues starting to hit home.

The issue is that it takes years for eventually bad tactical decisions to hit,and it is often preceded by some of the best years companies have. Why?? Because it leads to mass hubris,and overconfidence in the decision making. This is what "too big to fail" is about and why people suddenly get very shocked when it hits home. A very famous example is Kodak,who had everything in place but it went to crap,and indeed Apple by the early 1990s.

Some of you have forgotten what happened in the 1980s - Microsoft was the upstart,and IBM and Apple had the market. Plenty of people were argueng like in this thread how IBM and Apple would never lose share to MS,because it was buggier,less secure,did less,etc. Busineses would save them,etc. But MS entered the market with less restrictive licensing conditions which separated the hardware and software requirements. It was the same with servers,where people were argueing Windows would never amount to much. Now you see the same thing MS is doing,its become a bigger,less agile company like Intel became.

The problem here,again what happens in 10 years time. Both Android/iOS/ChromeOS are evolving especially with more capable hardware. If the US military has no problem using Android/iOS for critical stuff in the field,and other militaries are doing the same,are you telling me that companies now like Samsung with the "enterprise supported" Android devices,are not gunning to take share from MS?? The reality is the ground is starting to shift and some of you are so wedded to Windows,its no different than all the same people who thought Apple/IBM PC would persevere longer term.

Then you have the other shift - more countries are developing indigenous CPUs,which won't be running Windows in any form.

So the issue here,is that increasingly you can see MS floundering along and again MS moving to Cloud apps,is not a good longterm strategy. The reason is because most of that Office usage is because of legacy Windows usage. Companies like Apple and Google are not going to tolerate MS taking money from them,on their own platforms. Basically your entire survival on an office suite and pc gaming,is not going to work longterm.

Again,the biggest platform for gaming is Android/iOS in terms of revenue.

You only have to look at Apple,and how its trying to diversify and enter the same area. Google is doing the same,and they make more money than MS. The fact is MS not having its own smartphone OS is its major failure,just like Intel ignoring Apple for mobile smartphone processors.

MS has repeatedly made poor decisions over the last 20 years or so - look at how they dismissed out of hand what Apple was doing. They allowed an upstart like Google to not only make a better smartphone OS than they could,but a whole ad and search infrastructure,software insfrastruture,etc.

They are increasingly the trend follower,not the trend setter.

The issue is again,longer term older people like us are the same who would always use Intel,even if AMD,ARM,etc were better. But as time progresses,there will be generations of people who won't be as loyal to MS as most of us appear to be. You can see that with servers - younger blood basically has pushed companies to look at other alternatives or develop their own.

I find it really weird at the nostalgia some of you have with MS,when its quite clear they have been mostly coasting along on past glories. No different than so many companies including Intel.

Edit!!

Another thing - some of you keep trying to talk about "businesses" will save MS.

Guess what?? MS with an unproven Windows upstaged BOTH Apple and IBM,by the late 80s/early 90s. Even businesses won't just stay wedded to an OS from two tech heavyweights of the 1980s. For decades X86 consumer CPUs had no real alternatives(outside IBM/Motorola for a while). This is why Windows persevered despite its problems - there was not much performance alternatives(especially as IBM/Motorola started flailing around,and couldn't deliver efficient mobile CPUs by the G5).

With ARM based hardware being more than fast enough to do "business work",there is no need now to use X86. But that means Wintel is not a need anymore. So if you are using Cloud apps,why use a MS platform for them?

Then if you are not wedded to Windows,why be wedded to Office over the next 5~10 years?? Think about it for a second - MS is essentially a company relying on a word processor and associated software.

It only takes a massive company like Apple to start really pushing its own alternatives then MS is put in a bind. Apple went from nowhere to making amazing mobile CPUs. Nobody expected this.

Plus if MS relies too much on Office,and keeps raising prices(as they rely on it for revenue growth),it means other cheaper alternatives will gain traction.It only takes huge markets like China,etc to start deciding it does not wants to be spending lots of money on foreign software suites,and has an impetus to make their own. Then these get seeded through their companies to the rest of the world at lowish cost. Then what??

Remember consumer is where it all starts. Nobody thought X86 would be viable for supercomputers,but consumer momentum meant economies of scale. MS longterm might not have this.

I get it totally - you seem to be not getting that they don't care, they care less about you as a consumer than they do about other bits of their business. Maybe they will lose sales, but again 77% currently of desktop pc's run Windows. The business desktop market is more like 95%. This cycle won't hurt MS at all despite what you thoughts are....

If it backfires....they have time to change it, but right now, at this exact moment in time they have no need to, whatever you think or say they really don't. That is what you don't get, seem oblivious to notice and argue passionately about despite them knowing it too. This cycle is fine, the next might not be, but they still managed growth and managed to have decent margins despite everything. That isn't going to change anytime soon, which you fail to recognise (or more likely don't want to recognise)

We all have opinions, we can all debate. But I just simply think you are wrong on this, and you believe I'm wrong. We shall have to beg to differ. Simples really

[cheesemp]

And CAT just to add to 3dcandy's post above.

If you where Microsoft right now what cash would you chase? The virtual zero dollars Google gets per device or the real revenue of managing those devices and providing services? Windows is a dead end as far as revenue is concerned - It exists purely to funnel people to Microsoft's services be they the store, game pass or corporate stuff like office/AD/outlook. The only way Google make money out of the consumer space is advertising. Apple do it by mix of high prices and wall garden.

Also do you really think Microsoft care about a 3 year old device not getting windows 10 updates in 4 years when a typical Android device gets them for less than 2!

I just don't think you're taking into account the stuff Microsoft is pivoting on the background. All I've seen from Microsoft is them investing in Gaming, services and the cloud (they invested in my company to get us using Azure for our new cloud product). I see this with my company - we still chase some of the small deals but not hard because its very difficult to make big profits on $10000 sales, but the $10M+ (a big chunk of which is services) now your talking!

[Saracen999]

....

Also do you really think Microsoft care about a 3 year old device not getting windows 10 updates in 4 years when a typical Android device gets them for less than 2!

I just don't think you're taking into account the stuff Microsoft is pivoting on the background. All I've seen from Microsoft is them investing in Gaming, services and the cloud (they invested in my company to get us using Azure for our new cloud product). I see this with my company - we still chase some of the small deals but not hard because its very difficult to make big profits on $10000 sales, but the $10M+ (a big chunk of which is services) now your talking!

I don't think they care. I do think that's been evident since W8. They outright said "changing how we monetise Windows". That, the implied shift in direction, in priorities, is why I chose to take the time, effort and cost of getting off the MS bandwagon. This is just the next step in their change in direction. It's just not a direction I'm willing to go.

They clearly don't care about taking along users with devices a few years old, even when they're premium MS devices, like Surface Pro. What that tells me is .... don't buy a new MS device now. Do they care? I doubt it.

Are they shifting to services/subscriptions? Obviously. Am I? No. Do they care about users like me? No. Do I care what they do? Not any more. I got that out of my system in W8 days, which is when what they were going to do became pretty clear.

Are they right to do what they're doing? I honestly don't know. Time will tell. Will their size and market muscle be enough to pull off the switch? Again, I honestly don't know and as they're moving to a model I amnot going to adopt, come what may, I don't much care whether they do or not, as I got off the MS train several years ago so whether their train leads to a glorious future or the end of the track in a deserted siding, I won't be on it with them.

[Corky34]

IMO Microsoft have never 'cared'. Ever since I've know them they've courted market segments, offten by improving things, only to turn their backs on the market they previously courted when someone challenges their dominance. From offering 10 years support when everyone was offering 2-5 years, to releasing a new version of DirectX yearly until they got into the console market, from making a good desktop OS until mobile OS', to the move from local infrastructure to the cloud.

I can understand wanting to address new markets or compete with challengers but (imo) Microsoft have always done that at the expense of existing customers.

[3dcandy]

I can understand your frustration - it's not that MS don't care at all, they just don't care about the people who are voicing their dislikes and problems with Windows on this forum.

I am already getting local large businesses saying they plan to upgrade to Win 11 next time they change hardware. 30,000 machines roughly I reckon that I know of. Also figures suggest it's already installed on over 1% of desktop pc's worldwide. This is my point..... the train has already left the station regarding uptake and it's only gone into the beta channel today

To hammer the point home, Win 11 is expected to overtake the OSX market share on desktop pc's in 6 months despite being only available as a beta

[Rubarb]

[QUOTE=3dcandy;694]I can understand your frustration - it's not that MS don't care at all, they just don't care about the people who are voicing their dislikes and problems with Windows on this forum.

To be honest they didn't care about people doing the same from the insiders group either.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Again, for us old people that's a corruption of "You never got fired for buying IBM". Not played with a big IBM machine for near 10 years now, but at that point they were pretty awesome machines.


Oh I think they had plenty of focus, they were just plain wrong. One single unified platform across mobile, server and desktop? It was dumb as hell, but they didn't hold back on execution.

Intel went the same way when they declared that absolutely everything should be x86. From 386 style microcontrollers (that can't possibly compete with smaller silicon RISC chips that are easier and cheaper to design) to the infamous Larrabee graphics card.

Plus looked what happened to IBM??They were relatively "bigger" than MS or Intel could ever hope to be at their height. Xerox,Cray,Kodak,etc. Titans of their industries. Wrong focus - just like MS has done repeatedly over the last 20 years by believing their own hype.

The people making all the loyal "business spin" have entirely forgotten what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Large companies in computing and tech industries,who ended up not listening to customers and looking at short-term fixes to make a quick buck. Then leaving their older customers high and dry,who had some loyalty who went elsewhere. The newer customers seeing this,went never that loyal either. They have entirely forgotten how an upstart MS managed to dethrone IBM/Apple in the late 80s.

The reality is that some here have all this faith in MS which is excessively hopeful. Yet,as I showed over the last 20 years,MS has failed repeatedly in an expanding tech market. They have misjudged everything like Intel has - so now all of a sudden they are to be trusted that they know what they are doing??

People are in utter denial,that the company they love is in longterm decline. They are making all these excuses why MS will succeed.

Its only taken 10 years for MS to fall behind new and previously ailing competitors in a massively expanding tech market. MS has had 10 years to "pivot" but all you see is Intel level incompetence. They never listened to what people were saying.

What do you think is going to happen in 10 years time?? More hope??

WHY do they think businesses are going to be loyal to MS in 10 years time?? None of what they are doing is unique anymore. If you don't have a Windows lock-in again,why bother??

Google makes tons of money from a free OS,and lock-in to Android.Yet,MS who still sells a lot of MS OS licenses,forces you to pay for a word processing application,etc and has a big userbase has failed repeatedly.

If they are willing to screwover customer bases who do have some loyalty to them,then why would all the other customer bases care at all?? Did people care about IBM/Apple in the 1980s?? They didn't and neither did businesses.

IBM/Apple never could predict from their fantastic years,that in under 10 years they wouldn't be the Titans they were.

I don't think they care. I do think that's been evident since W8. They outright said "changing how we monetise Windows". That, the implied shift in direction, in priorities, is why I chose to take the time, effort and cost of getting off the MS bandwagon. This is just the next step in their change in direction. It's just not a direction I'm willing to go.

They clearly don't care about taking along users with devices a few years old, even when they're premium MS devices, like Surface Pro. What that tells me is .... don't buy a new MS device now. Do they care? I doubt it.

Are they shifting to services/subscriptions? Obviously. Am I? No. Do they care about users like me? No. Do I care what they do? Not any more. I got that out of my system in W8 days, which is when what they were going to do became pretty clear.

Are they right to do what they're doing? I honestly don't know. Time will tell. Will their size and market muscle be enough to pull off the switch? Again, I honestly don't know and as they're moving to a model I amnot going to adopt, come what may, I don't much care whether they do or not, as I got off the MS train several years ago so whether their train leads to a glorious future or the end of the track in a deserted siding, I won't be on it with them.

Agreed and I am shifting over too. I also see businesses over the next 10 years start to explore other alternatives. With the increasingly powerful ARM hardware out there,I can see Apple/Google now also expanding the abilities of its own OSes,and functionality so people can go and do more. Many of the current SOCs,are probably too fast for a simple phone,and Apple/Google would want some of those business sales.

You can see that with Qualcomm/Samsung/Google now trying to move to much longer support times,and trying to push more enterprise devices,to match 5 year cycles.

The difference is before there was no real alternatives in many areas. Now,sadly for MS there are.

If you are going to the cloud and giving up on Windows,why care about Windows?? Why care about MS services during the next 10 years??

None of what MS doing is unique anymore. It's older people due to their legacy use of Windows and experience who are just being repeat customers for them.

They don't appreciate,that if generations of people are going to use other OSes,as their main OS,why would they even care about MS??

MS is just one provider amongst many on iOS,Android,etc.

But as time progresses,and that older generation is replaced by younger people,they will look elsewhere.

Remember what is happening to Intel. Only 5 years ago no one would have expected what is happening today.

They made repeated bad calls,ignored customers,but all their supporters pointed to decent profits,etc. Yet now they are starting to lose leadership everywhere to new and old competitors.

AMD should never have been able to do what it did to Intel,but it did. ARM based competitors are everywhere. How did some of these ARM based competitors come around - Intel just believing its own bumpf,and just not caring.

Intel like MS had hubris and never listened to its customers.

As a result when alternatives came along,people decided to use them or make new ones.

The pivot you are seeing,is the same in the late 80s when IBM/Apple finally lost to newer companies in the PC wars. We are seeing that pivot now.

MS failing in its smartphone OS,and then screwing over its other customers has finally come home to haunt them.

It will be very interesting to see how things progressive relative to their other competitors once the Covid bounce ends.

To be honest they didn't care about people doing the same from the insiders group either.

The same excuses were made by MS supporters on forums as MS knows best,when Vista and 8/8.1 came out. The same when MS released its smartphone OSes and people pointed out problems. They know best,stop complaining.

Yet,it all worked out right??




I still remember having similar arguments with people here about the smartphone market and how Chinese companies would shake it up,and ultimately take large parts of the market. I pointed out hubris of the incumbants,and them being complacent would allow newer competitors to enter. I said lack of focus on decent camera tech,which was easily available,would also mean newer competitors could get a leg up easily by pushing this. I was told it wasn't important,they were doing well.People didn't believe me.

Yet it happened. These new companies not only have over half the market,but Apple/Samsung have been forced to push more innovation in recent years,than they had to for many years before. Such a convenient,coincidence,right?

It's not rocket science - its how the tech market has worked for the last 50 years. Loyalty only lasts so long if you ignore your customers,and younger people won't be as loyal as they are less cautious. Older people tend to not want change as much who stick to the same thing. Also as shown in the 1980s/1990s once you start unsticking consumers,even businesses will eventually unstick from you longer term.

IBM/Apple learnt it the hard way. Apple nearly went bankrupt until ironically MS had to help them because of anti-monopoly measures.

[DanceswithUnix]

I can understand wanting to address new markets or compete with challengers but (imo) Microsoft have always done that at the expense of existing customers.

Pfft. I think Microsoft would compete with challengers at the expense of their own grandmothers.

The Wintel alliance has always been about aggressive business practices, not technology. MS were always pants at software, Intel have decades of failed processor architectures behind them with x86 only surviving because IBM propped Intel up. But they knew how to steer and control a captive market.

[cheesemp]

I can't help but feel we're all arguing the same thing. Windows as it was is gone. The only real argument is will Microsoft be able to reinvent themselves. I think they have (Its just not as noticeable now its not on the PC in every house). Do I think Microsoft are the big hitter anymore - no just the same as IBM. However does that make them a failure - no. Microsoft and IBM are still pulling in big profits and will continue to a big part of the tech market (Probably not 1 or 2 anymore, but certainly 3rd or 4th biggest - If they can take more market share with Azure maybe even higher.).

However you want to take it I'd rather use Microsoft products than Apple or Google.

[3dcandy]

Again I'm not going to quote your essay, but my point is I'm not seeing it all. I've said it a few times and you still don't seem to get it. I have had big businesses commit ALREADY to Win 11 and it's only in beta. 3 local councils and the local NHS trust already committed to Win 11 in 2022 or 2023. Does it really matter about other OS's when all of the largest employers in the area have committed to Win 11, Office and MS cloud computing already? They are firm, they have dropped iOS, Android and OSX recently.... they are on the path and they are committed so even if your points are correct it will make zero difference in the long run when that commitment and level of buying WILL happen

[Saracen999]

IMO Microsoft have never 'cared'. Ever since I've know them they've courted market segments, offten by improving things, only to turn their backs on the market they previously courted when someone challenges their dominance. From offering 10 years support when everyone was offering 2-5 years, to releasing a new version of DirectX yearly until they got into the console market, from making a good desktop OS until mobile OS', to the move from local infrastructure to the cloud.

...

Well, maybe it's semantics but they care in the sense that any corporation cares - cheese off enough users of your core product's users and the disenchanted will probably use something else. I doubt many corporations care beyond that.

The difference with MS this time (and since W8) is that as they've changed direction, the nature of the existing core product, and the hell with users not wanting to follow their change, the users they used to regard as core are no longer so, no longer who they were.

And fair enough. They want to go a different way, there's nothing to stop them. But they have to accept (and it seems, do) that they are going to seriously annoy many usrs in the process, and lose more than a few. It's no doubt a price they're prepared to pay, because if they weren't, they'd have abandoned their course change several years back. So be it.

So whether they 'care' depends on what we mean by care. It's clear that not enough are willing to abandon them, and that is all they do care about.

[Corky34]

I can understand your frustration - it's not that MS don't care at all, they just don't care about the people who are voicing their dislikes and problems with Windows on this forum.

I am already getting local large businesses saying they plan to upgrade to Win 11 next time they change hardware. 30,000 machines roughly I reckon that I know of. Also figures suggest it's already installed on over 1% of desktop pc's worldwide. This is my point..... the train has already left the station regarding uptake and it's only gone into the beta channel today

To hammer the point home, Win 11 is expected to overtake the OSX market share on desktop pc's in 6 months despite being only available as a beta

They don't really care much about people voicing their dislikes and problems on their own forums so Hexus forums probably rank much lower.

Yes people and business will eventually upgrade to WII but that's because they have what's essentially a captive market, Win32 is so ubiquitous and peoples knowledge of Windows is so wide spread it would take a a lot to shift that, even Microsoft's own efforts to depreciate Win32 for UAP have largely fallen flat. Yes you can get software for other platforms but most of the time choices and/or features are limited or sufficiently different as to put people off when compared to Win32, and knowledge of things like Linux/OSX/Android are equally limited.

I guess that's sort of what CAT is driving at (apologise if not), when i first got into computers it was just DOS (Doom 1&2) and later Windows. For people just getting into computers nowadays there's a lot more than just Windows, I've heard people say most kids first experience of computers is Chrome Books (Not sure mobile phones count as afaik their pretty locked down and maybe not as tinker friendly). I mean i don't think Microsoft will lose their dominance in the desktop/business space for many years, if ever, but they're certainly taking them for granted, much like they've done in the past with gamers when Xbox became the golden child.

[Saracen999]

....

Yes people and business will eventually upgrade to WII but that's because they have what's essentially a captive market, Win32 is so ubiquitous and peoples knowledge of Windows is so wide spread it would take a a lot to shift that, even Microsoft's own efforts to depreciate Win32 for UAP have largely fallen flat. Yes you can get software for other platforms but most of the time choices and/or features are limited or sufficiently different as to put people off when compared to Win32, and knowledge of things like Linux/OSX/Android are equally limited.

....

I used to think that but these days I'm not so sure. The old days when Linux users needed to understand all sorts of command line er... commands, and switches, are pretty much gone and installing and using Linux entirely via GUI isn't that hard for most users. Most non-power users won't need command line any more than most people will run command line instuctions in admin mode on a Windows machine. There's a pretty good spread of competent (and free) Linux software for most application purposes too. Granted, that might not suit bigger businesses, and perhaps smaller ones too, but quite a lot of home users could switch without anything like as much of a learning curve as they probably think. No more, really, than switching between Win and Apple machines.