As the world outside increasingly turns into a social and ecological hellscape, people will want to look at it less and less, and the time spent peering through windows will diminish. Eventually, the existence of a portal to a realm outside their bleak cave will be forgotten to time and memory, leaving behind only pale indoor light and stale indoor air.
That’s what the room sprays are for.
Microsoft pushes cloud and AI with increasingly negative side-effects. Eventually, EU regulation steps in to require offline-capable OS with fair and obvious choice. Microsoft tries to argue security, but ultimately fails.
Microsoft continues to push and connect their services as one, with synergy effects. Eventually EU regulation and prosecution steps in, requiring a neutral OS that must not pre-install software or point to other products in OS settings and apps, etc. Integrations must be openly standardized first, before implementing their own.
Despite all this, and despite a move from EU and EU-national institutions to sovereignty through shared open source solutions, Microsoft retains their strong/prevalent market position because the market as a whole is not as strategic and concerned, and Microsoft products like office, onedrive, Teams, and their other business software and services remain a predominant and grab-first choice, and the security promise of big enterprise software, battle-tested, with strong established auth etc remains a big selling point for them.
People in large will keep using it because they’ve no clue what a computer is. They just recognise symbols and which order to click them.
The product keeps on getting worse.
People will get angry and look for political “solutions” to their own unwillingness to learn.
As a result all of networking and computing will be made worse, with lots of red tape, solidifying an oligarchy, penalizing the alternatives.
Just like how there were 1000s of car makers in the 20th century, but now only a handfull. Legislating cars to be shitty DRM-ed smartphones on wheels.
In the defense of end users, they got stuff to do and can’t be bothered to take the time which will make no obvious difference to what they need to do.
The average person can’t even describe how a toaster works, let alone anything even slightly more complicated.
And these users have
skilletsskill sets in other areas - I don’t expect an accountant to know how a computer works, any more than they expect me to understand accountancy or finance.Also in defense of end users, they are forced to use whatever OS their IT department provides.
The few users that would prefer Linux for instance, aren’t allowed to use it because it deviates from the company standard and makes things harder to maintain (security, backup, and so on).
they are forced to use whatever OS their IT department provides.
It’s also the other way around: we have linux machines at work, controllers for specific devices. A lot of people don’t want to open a manual it seems. They just submit support tickets, angrily, as they can’t figure out that the menu is in a different place.
I blame management that doesn’t listen to or hire qualified IT people. The average office worker has no say in what platforms or tools are used at a business.
Drink an activation soda to continue booting.
Forget the cloud. What if the ad is the operating system? Windows 12 will be using a distributed architecture, running on top of global ad networks. Every advertisement medium (TV, radio, web, video) will include an x86 interpreter that runs Windows services (ARM support will come later).
The same tracking tech used to target you with that ad will be used to log you in to your Azure Copilot 365 OneDrive account, so you can access your files and applications seamlessly without having to remember a password or pin. When your smart toilet is showing you an ad for Draft Kings to earn your flush credit, you’ll be able to check your emails, connect with the fam, or ask Copilot for assistance.
Cloud. Windows is going to be sold as remotely accessible virtual machine hosted on Azure. The change will first take place in government offices, then in companies, and finally (after people get used to it at work) among consumers.
Why would gov and enterprise like it? Because of:
- safety - all enterprise data will be stored on Azure servers and won’t ever leave it. It makes preventing data leakage so much easier
- maintenance - software updates can be applied even outside of working hours, Microsoft could launch VMs and update at any time
- ease of upgrade - need better specs? you don’t need to buy better hardware anymore, you just buy better subscription. Hardware won’t become obsolete anymore that quickly
Consumers will also like it. No need to pay hundreds of dollars for new GPU when you just want to play newly released game. Also, all your data accessible from anywhere in the world.
And why Microsoft would like it? Kinda obvious, it would be even harder for users to quit a subscription, they will be tied to ecosystem even more
We are basically already there with Windows 365. It’s the comeback of the thin-client and the main frame. Everything old is new again.
Subscriptions. More cloud-based services. Office moving to an entirely web-based product. Continuing decline of whatever quality is left. Nadella is only interested in enterprise money like HP and IBM. Expect to see more abandonment of consumer-focused products, like Xbox.
If he had any balls, he’d split the company up, rather than letting so many products die on the vine.
Corps will keep using it, but I feel like a sizeable group will find alternatives like Linux, MacOS and even Chrome OS as Chromebook kids age out of school.
There have been multiple rumours of Windows 12 being basically EdgeOS and just a gateway to the web with all apps and compute in the cloud. Some articles I’ve read and videocasts I’ve watched say “Microsoft have realised it’s not about the hardware, but the software and selling subscriptions and services”. So, from my very limited and uneducated view, windows 12 would be the perfect vessel for doing just that. But they can only do it if there is good internet in the majority of the world, so my prediction is windows 12 will come in ~2032 or so.
More forced AI, more integrated cloud services, more failed patches causing data loss.
Oh, you meant the future and not this year so far? My bad.
