Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March
blogs.windows.com

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42 points

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jovial_cavalier

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2 days ago

71 comments

PeterStuer ・ 2 hours ago

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.

What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is.

Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user base.

The incentives are alomost perpendicularly misaligned.

Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. People are looking for the exit, finding there is indeed a door, and stopping them will take far more than just some reassurance from the DJ boot.

  • neya ・ 7 minutes ago

    It's always the MBAs. The organizational structure incentivises them on the wrong metrics. So they adapt and optimize for that. In real life, after a while, you hit a plateau with features and market demand. What these MBA clowns love to do is take what's already perfectly fine and mess it up and create a road map for it to fix something to being it the way it was, so they can justify to their higher ups they are "adding value" to the company. And half way through this, they leave the company. Now some other new employee comes in, has no idea why this had to be reworked and messes it up even more. You have this loop enough times, you end up with how software engineering works in the fortune 500.

    The moment you hear "let's circle back" enough in meetings, that's your tell tale sign to quit the workplace infested with MBAs. A good organization is always run by engineers at the top level and engineers don't incentivise engineers simply for working on roadmaps of perfectly fine existing features. That's the difference.

  • cineticdaffodil ・ 2 hours ago

    Linux would need to be willing to safe the work millions of people put into memorizing excel, word and windows workflows.

advael ・ 3 hours ago

It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day and age, to be clear, but these are the beliefs I encounter. Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components and features, but doing this for a corporation that sets the terms of their transparency efforts and ultimately does this for profit and will still grab the reins and exert control against their users' will when they feel like it?

  • PunchyHamster ・ 7 minutes ago

    Why would they use windows and not macos for "just working" ? Even office moved to web for most companies

  • jofzar ・ 3 hours ago

    Windows insider builds have always been for people who like being on the cutting edge, it's the same as people who run nightlies for Linux.

    Some people just enjoy testing and the pain that comes with it.

    • advael ・ 3 hours ago

      Right, but it's hard not to claim those people would likely get more out of an OS they could customize more, and also that it's considerably more exploitative of those people across the divide of corporate product versus community project

      • herrherrmann ・ 3 hours ago

        Sometimes it’s just about using the path of least resistance. I’ve also contributed to Apple Maps’ and Google Maps’ data, even though I’d prefer to exclusively contribute to OSM and other open platforms instead. But, it was just easier to go through a quick form in the (Apple|Google) Maps app, because that’s where I was at that point in time. Maybe the excuse is laziness and/or force of habit?

        Edit: I also imagine the reach of the mainstream platforms to be much higher (e.g. Windows vs. Linux or Google Maps user reviews vs. <is there even an alternative?>).

  • zx8080 ・ 2 hours ago

    > obvious alternatives

    First of all, in many countries outside of EU/US it's just not possible to buy laptop without preinstalled Windows 11 (except Apple). For example, even if a model supports Linux in the US as many Lenovo Thinkpads do, in Singapore it's just not sold without Windows.

    Second, Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI. Bettery life is shit now, and hibernate is disabled by default in most OS. Also, hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one (windows presaves memory to disk continuously, while in linux you have to wait until the whole ram (+ vram, if gpu) is saved/restored). It takes time. Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it. So linux is really a bad choice for laptop. But Windows 11 is much worse, especially if you don't really like ads.

    • londons_explore ・ 2 hours ago

      I don't really understand the rationale behind disabling S3 sleep...

      Was it simply that getting every device and driver to properly support it was hard, so the easiest option was to remove it and have the machine always powered up?

    • als0 ・ 2 hours ago

      > Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI

      > Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it.

      Would you or someone else here mind explaining this?

      • numpad0 ・ an hour ago

        ACPI defines power state of power-saving capable offbrand fake IBM computers(among other things, and also the "fake IBM" part is almost completely moot at this point).

        ACPI power state S0 is everything running. S1 pauses CPU and CPU I/O bus. S2 puts CPU to reset. S3 cuts power to CPU. S4 cuts off everything(not actual power off). S5 cuts off everything(actual power off).

        S3 and S4 are often referred to as Sleep and Hibernation. In Sleep, RAM contents are kept as-is, and sleep handling code just restore CPU internal states that gets lost. In Hibernation, OS usually dump RAM contents to disk, and write back to RAM upon bootup - S4 and S5 aren't always clearly separated and both Windows and Linux tend to go through standard boot processes, then do the state resume using RAM dump they find on disk.

        For SOME reason, Microsoft forced laptop vendors to quit supporting S3 in favor of their custom "S0iX" state, which is more or less just machine running at full power, which can be extremely wasteful as far as sleep state goes.

        The official explanation for this pressuring is that everybody want notification and this is the only way Windows could possibly handle notifications. A lot are skeptical about that.

        1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/k...

    • londons_explore ・ 2 hours ago

      > hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one

      Part of this is that hibernation can't be cancelled mid way, which is dumb. Ideally a computer is like a light switch - you can turn it on and off instantly whenever. To get closer to that, if you turn it off, but then immediately on again, the hibernation should be cancelled and return you to your desktop.

      Also, the whole idea of a 'hibernation image' which is read from disk in one huge 10+ second read is best for hard drives. Now that everyone uses SSD, it should all be demand-paged in.

  • scotty79 ・ 3 minutes ago

    I used to daily drive Windows 10 for many months before official release. It was great. I wish I could stay on development builds that still had Windows 7 style Start menu.

    Sadly now I use Windows 11 just because manufacturer of my laptop didn't bother to ensure that their sound driver works corrctly on Windows 10.

    My mouse lags for seconds when gpu is busy, even with something as trivial as alt-tabbing from a game.

  • hulitu ・ 12 minutes ago

    > Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components

    Feedback is there on their feedback site. They just wouldn't listen.

seebeen ・ 6 minutes ago

Too little too late. I've already fully migrated to Fedora 43.

prymitive ・ 4 hours ago

> You want to see what we’re doing, understand our decisions, and see progress through shipping. Second, a shared sense of pride.

So basically: - recent changes are all crap - so why did you make them?

  • lpcvoid ・ 3 hours ago

    Shareholder value had to be increased, don't you understand?!

    • jeltz ・ 3 hours ago

      More likely: "People needed to get promotion packages, don't you understand?!"

      I would guess many of the bad changes are caused by perverse incentives which do not even help shareholder value.

      • rincebrain ・ 3 hours ago

        My mental model remains that the Windows team is mostly governed by designers on Macs who want to see a user-visible change to get their promo and never use Windows.

SeriousM ・ 3 hours ago

> Second, a shared sense of pride. We want to be proud of what we build...

Yep, that's marketing. You don't care about your users.

  • xeonmc ・ 2 hours ago

    I guess their intent was to instil a sense of pride and accomplishment for those who’ve sunk intangible investments into their platform.

  • avaer ・ 2 hours ago

    Yes, they do admit that.

    > a broader shift to make AI in Windows more intentional and realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users

    To be fair they are claiming a shift away from their previous policy of not aligning the product to provide value to users...

    • avazhi ・ 2 hours ago

      > realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users

      Aside from the fact that nobody actually takes what Microsoft says seriously (they are professional bullshitters [with full time PR firms perfecting their bullshit] and have been for 30 years), it's funny that even this line can be reasonably interpreted as pushing more blatant nonsense onto consumers as long as it's what C-suite types think they should be paying for.

      Notice that what provides the most value to users is not at all necessarily the same thing as'what our users want'. And it isn't even clear that Microsoft is thinking of consumer users here as opposed to corporate users and corporate IT departments, which are in most cases these days their actually direct customers. Most home user consumers don't pay for Windows directly.

microtonal ・ 3 hours ago

Not a Windows user, have never been (since Windows 3.11). But if I were, I would think this is just PR unless they changed some fundamentals, like bringing back local user support without jumping through five hoops.

qingcharles ・ 3 hours ago

They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles.

Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.

jofzar ・ 3 hours ago

> The theme is simple: fewer disruptions, more clarity, more control. This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates, and gives you more flexibility to time updates around your schedule. We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.

wewewedxfgdf ・ 10 minutes ago

The Windows we want:

The SAME as Windows 2000 in terms of what is installed.

Even better: when installing Windows, there should be a "install minimal" option, and if you select it then it should be so fucking minimal - so little on there, that all you get is control panel and a way to install new software - NOTHING more.

That's your win, Microsoft. I'm 2000% certain nothing even slightly close to that will be delivered.

  • teekert ・ 7 minutes ago

    Yeah it’s funny how at this moment I’d pay more for less Windows.

    But I’ve found my way on Linux long ago. Sure not all software is there and MS365 fully from browser has so many annoyances, but I love the OS minimalism.

    My ideal windows in indeed win2000, but in a transparent VM so I can just do the Windows apps. I need LSW, Linux subsystem for Windows, essentially.

    I live in Linux but still have some need for the Windows Runtime from time to time. If only Windows containers were at the level of the Linux ones, I’d flip the whole world up side down.

    podman run ms365-full —license-key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8

    I’d pay for that.

    • wewewedxfgdf ・ 3 minutes ago

      >> I need LSW, Linux subsystem for Windows, essentially.

      But not installed in minimal mode.

      The minimal install for Windows should include nothing except control panel and a software installer.

      Not even solitaire.

      Not even notepad.

      Not even minesweeper.

      This would be utterly impossible for Microsoft to wrap its head around.

  • wewewedxfgdf ・ 9 minutes ago

    The minimal install should be so minimal that you feel naked, like you need to immediately start installing stuff to get anything useful done.

    I do not care what you give people who don't select "minimal install" - that's their problem.

999900000999 ・ 2 hours ago

>We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Multiple times I've wanted to shutdown my laptop so I can go home and Windows says no, sit here for 5 minutes.

I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait.

Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Music production on Linux isn't really practical. A lot of this stuff barely runs on Windows/OSX.

Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge.

I consider myself an advanced Linux user, and it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse.

faragon ・ 14 minutes ago

Microsoft degrading user experience plus lower price on Mac computers it maybe their downfall. E.g., removing local accounts, unwanted advertising, arbitrary decisions (forced TPM requirement), etc.

TowerTall ・ 2 hours ago

By changing two settings in Windows, you can fix the worst of it.

Using a local group policy, you can change when "Preview builds and Feature updates" and "Quality Updates" become available in Windows Update.

By delaying those with 30 or 60 days, you will never have preview updates applied to your system, and feature and quality updates will have at least 1 or 2 months' worth of fixes before you get them.

start > run > gpedit.msc > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage updates offered from Windows Update >

1) Enable "Select when preview builds and feature updates are received". Set days to 60

2) Enable "Select when quality updates are received". Set days to 30 (max value)

itrunsdoomguy ・ 10 minutes ago

Windows won’t be able to run Doom soon.

bsrhng ・ 3 hours ago

It's fascinating that one of the top features insiders are interested in is making File Explorer more dependable.

  • qingcharles ・ 3 hours ago

    They took a real punch to the gut when File Pilot rolled out and showed them what their own devs should have been doing.

    • UberFly ・ 2 hours ago

      Directory Opus has been doing that for decades.

      • drcongo ・ 5 minutes ago

        Hadn't heard that name since the Amiga days and had no idea it was still around!

    • jiggawatts ・ 2 hours ago

      Took the beta for a quick spin and... wow, the speed is truly astonishing!

      Windows doesn't feel slow because the kernel or the filesystem is inherently "that" slow, it feels like a sloth overdosing on heroin because nobody at Microsoft gives the slightest crap about making it even a tiny bit faster.

      It's staggering how the instant you double-click a file in File Pilot you're... back in the tar pit. (The Windows image preview app just spins... and spins... while it does God-knows-what with my CPUs.)

      The contrast of going from one to the other makes the quality difference glaringly obvious.

jdw64 ・ 2 days ago

I really like Windows. I just wish Copilot could be made fully optional.

Honestly, I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow, and I can deal with File Explorer issues. I can write my own tools to manage some of that, and PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks. Those parts do not bother me that much.

What bothers me is Copilot being pushed into the operating system experience itself. I wish it could simply be treated as an optional feature.

Windows is an operating system. An operating system is the foundational layer that governs the user’s work. Because of that, AI should be an opt-out assistant, not a premise that changes the default behavior of the system.

When I move from Windows 10 to Windows 11, Copilot feels like something that damages the user experience itself.

If Copilot were at the level of GPT or Claude, I probably would not complain as much. But I do not understand why the quality gap feels so large.

mips_avatar ・ 2 hours ago

Microsoft is trying to sell things like extended servicing agreements. They purposefully make Windows worse so they can sell you solutions to fix it. They purposefully keep it insecure so you need their updates. It’s about taking the customers hostage.

ciconia ・ 4 hours ago

Just switch to Linux people!

  • throwa356262 ・ 3 hours ago

    My first hand experience with Windows vs Linux this month:

    A friend of mine recently bought a very expensive laptop to do some gaming. I helped him set it up and god that was a horrible experience. For example, we could not get rid of LinkedIn and other crap Microsoft wanted to force on him. Disabling copilot and removing Office required registry surgery. And the damn fans were always running because of some unknown activity in the background, maybe Microsoft is moving into bitcoin mining business?

    He eventually got fed up, installed Ubuntu 26.04 as an experiment and a week later still seems to enjoy the experience. Games run fine on steam and his laptop finally feels like his own.

    Most surprisingly, Linux worked fine out of the box. Windows 11 on the other hand needed a bunch of PowerShell and registry hacks to be copy pasted from various sources before it was even remotely usable. It's funny how it felt as if Windows was the OS for nerds with too much free time on their hands while Ubuntu was created for ordinary people. And my god, Ubuntu feels so much more fluid on the same hardware. The difference is *huge*.

    • rincebrain ・ 2 hours ago

      Not the main focus but, FYI, a number of pieces of hardware will default to full tilt fans unless you have their tooling running to manage things.

      NVIDIA GPUs were infamous for doing this with nouveau on less ideally supported cards, for example.

      • hiq ・ 2 hours ago

        But it's the kind of things you'd expect Windows to take care of automatically, or in the worst case, to prompt the users to install on first boot, especially if Linux (with overall less driver support from manufacturers).

        And with a preinstalled Windows (tuned to the laptop) this behavior should not be observed at all.

    • mkayokay ・ 3 hours ago

      Gaming on Linux works pretty good now. Setup is easy thanks to Steam and other launchers (e.g. heroiclauncher).

  • pliny ・ 3 hours ago

    I got a new computer a couple weeks ago, with a 5070, and installed ubuntu on it and it was incredibly slow. I looked online and found some claim that 24.04 has some incompatability with nvidia, tried installing a bunch of different driver versions and nothing helped, tried turning everything off in gnome tweaks and still slow, tried installing 26.04 and 22.04 but the installer hangs forever in both, tried linux mint 24.04 still slow, gave up and installed windows with WSL :/

    • barrkel ・ 2 hours ago

      What was slow?

      I'm running Ubuntu on a 9950x3d and 5090 and it is not slow. Games in Steam with Proton are buttery smooth.

      One hiccup was I had to disable variable refresh rate because moving the cursor didn't "count" as a reason to update the screen, so moving the cursor on its own (rather than e.g. moving a window) looked choppy.

      But a choppy mouse cursor isn't "slow".

      Tip: if you have a performance problem, run Claude Code (or an AI agent of your choice) and ask it to investigate.

      • pliny ・ an hour ago

        >What was slow?

        Everything, huge input delay in every interaction, clicking on anything, opening menus, typing, tabbing between windows, everything had 1-2s of delay.

        >disable variable refresh rate

        I think I tried this but dont recall, there were a few things related to monitor refresh I tried that probably included this

    • fsflover ・ 3 hours ago

      If you wanted to run Ubuntu from the beginning, it would be better to search for a computer designed for it, not for Windows.

  • advael ・ 4 hours ago

    Hard to overstate the sunk-costness of it all

  • jofzar ・ 3 hours ago

    Except I can't because of the games I play?

    • Accacin ・ 2 hours ago

      This is a choice for you! I'm a pretty heavy PC gamer and whilst I've run Linux since I was in college (UK college, not US) I've always had a Windows install for gaming.

      A few years ago, I finally decided I'd had it with Windows and their crap and uninstalled it. If I game doesn't run on Linux, I don't play it. Simple as that.

      I'm lucky in that a majority of games I play run fine on Linux, the only real game I'd love to play is Vermintide 2. My friends also run a mix of Linux and Windows and so we're fairly fine skipping games as a group if we can't play on Linux.

    • amlib ・ 2 hours ago

      That is a problem of any operating system switch, you need to figure out what software is compatible or weather there are suitable replacements. It's the same even if you switch between iOS and Android.

      That said, Linux used to be a tough cookie because there were so little support for software people wanted to run and the alternatives didn't do it any favours, plus the barrage of problems you used to get installing it on a random machine was discouraging, at best. Nowadays your chances of running it well on a random machine is pretty damn good and getting the software you need is lot more feasible. But don't go YOLOing a linux install, see if meets your use cases. There is nothing wrong with waiting until it's good enough.

ymolodtsov ・ 2 hours ago

The same people who made Windows that bad are now tasked with making it slightly better.

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on this.

lousken ・ 2 hours ago

> This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates

I just can't, gotta ask - what about c++ updates? What about integral os components that were migrated to the store and if you disable it, you won't get updates? What about defender updates (not definitions but app update) that won't get applied if you have another anti malware?

The thing I hate about windows updates is that microsoft can't even update all their own stuff with a single button.

edit: almost forgot - why is office not in windows update, and what the hell is wrong with teams and why it is seperate from office updates

Just updating windows is a complete and utter mess and every single Linux distro is 100x better

throwuxiytayq ・ 3 hours ago

I have a feeling that my fat ass switching over to Linux is going to outrun their attempt to roll back decades of accumulated tech debt, institutional incompetence and burned bridges.

  • hackrmn ・ an hour ago

    I feel like your sentiment mirrors my thoughts exactly on this.

    Since this isn't the Reddit comment section (I hear people here prefer a bit more elaboration and argumentative nuance with their $BEVERAGE), I feel compelled to add some of my own personal experience.

    I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity. Copilot, for example, is just another gadget Microsoft simply cannot not put in. In '95 is was Clippy, but the deliveries never stop, and frankly I feel like an old man that finally decided to kick a bad habit because I truly see now all the empty talk from Microsoft I've heard countless amount of times before, wrapped in different packaging, and that Windows is like it is _by design_ and that it's bad for my health (in a different way than Linux can ever be, I feel).

    Ever since Windows '95 the addition of slop has been accelerating, admittedly Microsoft _were_ much different then, but it's the _curve_ I am referring to, not that they were always _as bad_. Frankly, the "churn" is insane now, I think it's one or the other adage I can't recall where "available operating system" fills "available resources" and Microsoft are there to prove it.

    The problem is also they are experimenting on their users to no end. I don't mind being part of the "user experiment" for "user experience" but how many decades do they need to arrive at the same fundamental conclusions -- that people prefer less bloat, and fewer interruptions in their face? Occam's Razor tells me it's rather that Microsoft is pretending to care but their agenda is their own alone (surprise).

    Just the other day I had to spend 2 hours trying to "fix" some very-background OneDrive update because I suppose I am sucker enough to use OneDrive -- one of the least liked of Microsoft products I've had the misfortune to use -- with Windows using my laptop as a BitCoin farm, wasting cycles in some infinite loop produced by what evokes comparisons to those monkeys with typewriters. Half a dozen Powershell commands and 3-4 reboots later the `wsappx.exe` process finally was healthy enough to idle. These things happen constantly to people everywhere and there's little Microsoft can or wants to do anything about. It's a cost they're willing their users to pay.

    To stop rambling, one of these days -- summer vacation perhaps -- I will remove the blasted thing finally (after decades of using both Windows and Linux) and grit my teeth through Linux, which I have tried avoiding only because I am on a Thinkpad and there's always another tweak that's needed for the whole thing to work as well as Windows does on a _good_ day. To be clear, I prefer Linux by and large, it's just that I want to avoid spending weekends configuring sleep, power states, Trackpoint, full-disk encryption, the docking station, etc.

    The fact I am going to do it anyway, just to rid myself of the Windows experience that's just been getting worse and worse, says it all really.

torben-friis ・ 2 hours ago

This reads... Weird? As in, I know it's marketing speech but expressions seem misused and ideas don't follow from each other:

>You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Not... the other way around? Updates decide when I happen?

>Last month we said we would reduce where Copilot shows up across Windows, focusing on bringing AI where it’s most valuable. [...] in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilot icon with a clearer “Writing Tools” label that better describes what it does.

We've reduced AI by renaming the button?

polyamid23 ・ 2 hours ago

For 2 months now the „put in admin credentials“ dialog is so fundamentally broken - ui-wise, it is unbelievable (in the sense that I do not believe it actually made it to production even though I see it with my own eyes). There are so many anecdotes about slop by now, the working parts become the anecdotes.

By now Windows, for me is more like a reality TV show than an OS.

Razengan ・ 2 hours ago

Man, Microsoft still struggling with shit macOS solved decades ago.

On the other hand, Apple still refusing to fix shit in macOS people have been asking for decades.

tjpnz ・ 2 hours ago

Will I still have the urge to stab myself in the hand repeatedly?

avazhi ・ 2 hours ago

> We know there’s a lot of excitement for Taskbar customization – and that’s coming soon.

This will never not be funny to me. These clowns really did remove something that existed for decades and then spend more than a decade trying to edge their users to the fact that they were gonna bring it back. In 500 years when somebody looks up enshittification on Wikipedia, this should be the first example.

beanjuiceII ・ 2 days ago

"trust me bro"

  • vachina ・ 3 hours ago

    Yeah exactly. They already have a fixed distro that is Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC.

    • DaiPlusPlus ・ 2 hours ago

      ...and there's clearly huge market-demand for Windows LTSC amongst retail customers, and yet, MS's C-levels already decided for them that no amount of love nor money - excepting a sufficiently large enterprise licensing contract - can legally entitle you to a license - or even official media - for Windows LTSC.

      It reminds me of when Adobe ended perpetual licensing and switched to cloud(TM)-only, subscription licensing for Photoshop, et al: many of us (myself included) assumed that Adobe was surely making a foolish mistake to abandon perpetual-license customers, but it turns out[1] that was the plan all along: those customers are a vocal minority who can demonstrably afford to pay more, the rest of the customer-base doesn't care enough to switch to a competitor. Over 10 years later (2013), we haven't seen any of Photoshop's then-promising upstart competitors come close.

      ...on that basis, I don't think MSFT's recent backpedalling on Windows 11's disrespect for its own users is in any way a response to us power-users complaining online - or even because any number of us did fully migrate off Windows and onto Linux, but instead because of all the recent talk overseas from foreign governments (France, Germany) taking active steps to secure their digital-sovereignty and deploying more Linux desktops; and a good way to get people (and decision-makers in government and large businesses) personally interested in digital-sovereignty is by pointing out how shitty their own corporate desktop UX has gotten.

      I'll gladly eat my hat when/if MS graciously allows regular retail consumers, and not just large organizations - and those of us with a $2000/yr MSDN Subscription - the privilege of paying for an OS without advertising built-in to the shell and having hard dependencies on proprietary online services.

      [1] (This article has some hallmarks of LLM "assistance" but gets the point across; and cites sources at the bottom): https://secondactsbiz.substack.com/p/adobe-the-transformatio...