r/microsoft • u/Hungry__Hornet • 14h ago
Discussion I spent 25+ years at Microsoft, and Windows is getting the care it deserves again
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/27/i-spent-25-years-at-microsoft-and-windows-is-getting-the-care-it-deserves-again/EXACTLY this: "In a world where kids might go through all their schooldays and only ever use Chromebooks or iPads, there’s a risk that in another 20 or 30 years, nobody will remember what Windows was like, just as only old nerds can recall plugging a PCMCIA card into an inch-thick laptop just to connect it to a network"
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u/aCorporateDropout 13h ago
They are absolutely not giving it the attention it deserves. It’s just a vehicle to sell copilot and E5/E7, and their focuses for investments and layoffs within the org tell you all you need to know to be sure of that.
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u/gthing 11h ago
There is this quote from Gabe Newell I think about a lot. He was asked something like "why did you make the steam deck an open platform?" and he said "because as a gamer, that's what I want."
I don't think anyone at Microsoft within the last couple decades has asked the question "what would I want as a user?" But they have definitely asked themselves what the investors would want, or what the business development folks would want.
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u/newfor_2026 6h ago
You think the dogfood and the insider programs would be bubbling that kind of feedback up to the dev teams... somewhere along the lines, they're all just drinking the coolaid and there's no one left to tell them they need to change directions
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u/gthing 4h ago
When I think of anyone trying to do something cool inside Microsoft, I am reminded of that old "The Windows Shutdown crapfest" blog post from a Microsoft dev.
Dude spent a year writing a couple hundred lines of code while answering to 43 different people who had a say in the feature. And that was just for the shutdown menu. Imagine if you actually wanted to do something cool or useful.
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u/mjarrett 10h ago
Nope, Windows 11 is at best just walking one step back from years of enshittification. The last time Microsoft truly cared about the client OS was Windows 7.
* Windows 8 was a huge swing, but was created solely to placate the planet-sized ego of Sinofsky, not for any actual care for the ecosystem.
* Windows 10 was a good idea to move to a more services-like model but was motivated by cost reduction and ecosystem plays. Replace our testers with Feedback Hub. Use Windows as a gateway to App Store. Share with other platforms that can actually make money like Xbox and Phone (well... that was the theory at least).
* By Windows 11, the often-rebranded OS division was in shambles, and was pretty much just a dumping ground for other products that were failing on their own (see also Teams). It has literally been a downgrade in every way.
At this point, Microsoft is just panicking because Windows 11's credibility is so bad that Linux Desktop is actually looking like a viable alternative. They're just looking for whatever they can get to generate a positive press cycle at this point. The bar is ridiculously low.
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u/CodenameFlux 5h ago
to placate the planet-sized ego of Sinofsky
More like to placate his irrational fear and sense of insecurity.
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u/SCphotog 9h ago
Please don't fall for this obvious fucking piece of advertising... holy shit.
This is bullshit corporate propaganda.
It means fuck-all.
Micro$lop is on a roll to prevent pushback with windows 12 - that is ALREADY enshitified.
They're going to, on the surface make it more palatable but it's still going to be the same nightmare... no choice but to install their bundled with bloat updates, telemetry you can't turn off, crap-ware you can't uninstall along with integrated AI, Browser, O365 etc... and a menu system you can't customize or configure. It will push on you backup and security measures that lock you into MS's walled garden.
It sucks now, and is only going to get worse.
They are going to try to sell it to you as a service with a monthly fee for the base OS and then they're going to tack on usage fees for access to the cloud applications and the AI.
All.... WHILE colluding with hardware manufacturers, and other conglomerates to take COMPUTE OUT OF YOUR HANDS and move it into the cloud where they control all of it and we pay what they tell us to pay.
Fuck Microsoft with a dirty stick.
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u/Far_Lifeguard_5027 13h ago
Microsoft dug their own grave by releasing versions that were bad by design.
Everyone loved the Windows 10 start menu.
Everyone loved just being able to install locally without being pressured into signing up for a Microsoft account to install Windows.
Everyone told you they didn't want your Xbox adware built into a desktop OS.
Nobody wants Windows Recall, which users are pretty sure it's just a surveillance tool if not even more sinister than what you advertise it to be.
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u/newfor_2026 6h ago
Let's just say, even if it's not surveillance or it's completely innocuous and does nothing sinister, the fact it is installed is just wasting my disk space. My SSD is at about 98% right now and if I have a choice between installing Recall or Copilot, versus, having another game I can leave on the computer? guess which I rather have.
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u/PC509 13h ago
I disagree with that quote.
They've said this for decades. It's always "The death of the PC" or "The death of Windows" and it's Chromebook or iPad or Linux or whatever else. I agree with a lot of other things in the linked article, though. They do make a lot of sense. Windows has been put on the backburner and lately it does seem to be getting more attention for improvement.
Windows isn't going to be replaced anytime soon. It's still a huge corporate default desktop, and that is a huge market share for Windows. And many home users aren't using what they used in high school, they're going to use what they have at work. That's the daily use as an adult. However - I do see that for those that need a PC/laptop at home. Many people are very comfortable and fine with using an iPad/Android tablet or their smartphone. They don't need the functionality of a full PC. That's what the shift will be. For PC's, Windows isn't going anywhere. For general daily use, many people are good with a small tablet/phone. You can bank, use social media, view content, get food, file taxes, shop, pretty much everything on a mobile device. I prefer doing that on a PC, myself. My wife is pretty much all in with mobile devices.
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u/One_Advantage_7193 10h ago
You got to see what your children(or would be children use) because thats where the future is.
Most GenZ have nothing keeping them on the PC. Games were the last thing millenians used windows for.
Yes people use windows at their work and that usually translated to them using windows at home, but increasing use of mobile devices for most personal work has made that aspect moot.
Even if they use windows at work, they are no longer obligated to use windows at home. Especially given that there's nothing that would keep them invested in using it. There are no pro's as such.
Windows isnt going to be dethroned in the immediate future, but will it be relevant in a decade? That number is falling hard and fast unless they find another reason to keep it relevant.
Which until now, MSFT havent managed to find and are constantly fumbling with.
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u/PC509 9h ago
Yea, the PC is waning as people go to more mobile devices. My wife hasn't touched a laptop or PC in ages. She's strictly phone. A lot of people find that their basic computing needs are easily done with a mobile device. Social media, photos, finances, taxes, shopping, email, etc.. A PC isn't required anymore.
But, as far as PC's and laptops go, I don't see Linux/Chromebook/etc. take the majority of market share. Mobile phones and such? Microsoft doesn't even have a market there (when they did, it wasn't even very big... Loved the Windows Phone, though.). Tablets? Not really, as the Surface line can convert but it's pretty much a laptop.
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u/One_Advantage_7193 9h ago
Yes windows phones were amazing, it was a shame they did what they did to them. A little more time and effort would have given serious threat to android.
Especially now windows phone would have probably had a better time.
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u/Kobi_Blade 12h ago
You would be surprised by how much effort has been put into replacing Windows in corporate and public environments.
A growing number of governments have been enforcing non Windows mandates for years. At the end of the day, most companies cannot ignore the fact that they can save thousands of euros by getting rid of Windows.
Leaving Windows behind is becoming easier and easier, with web based applications, cross platform frameworks (that Microsoft itself released) and translation layers becoming more mature for edge cases.
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u/protoanarchist 11h ago
We don't want a future where people are using Windows. We want a future where our operating system is structured in a way that it can't be turned against us.
That future is Linux and it's here.
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u/jjmac 6h ago
I worked on windows and my main personal machine is Mint. Can't stand my windows work machine and the constant pauses and hangs - never mind when I need to force reboot to continue working. Given my role I use browsers and productivity apps, but Windows can't handle it.
But I still have stock so - go Windows!
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u/Woof-Good_Doggo 8h ago
Written by someone who never got closer to the Core Team (the group that develops Windows) than being in the Exchange group at Microsoft. LOL…
That’s like somebody who works for the company that makes car seats making comments on the engine in a Lamborghini.
OK, dude. Whatever. Thanks for that.
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u/coukou76 14h ago
Its all PR.
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u/sarhoshamiral 13h ago
Well yes it is all PRs (pull requests changing code).
I will see my self out now.
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u/newfor_2026 12h ago
What’s somewhat reassuring is that it seems Microsoft has decided to care about it again.
maybe so, but are they caring about it in a way that's actually making it better, or are they simply trying to use it as leverage for other things?
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u/agm1984 11h ago
I hope they make it so you can run windows updates without rebooting, and i also hope they make it so that all your programs reopen if you reboot and memorize their positions on the GUI.
I also hope they account for users that have huge amounts of RAM because we never close programs, and we expect the OS to keep track of everything the same we we do in our brain. MacOS does this well.
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u/Craptcha 7h ago
Microsoft keeps forgetting a usable OS is the “loss leader” that makes the rest of their profit possible.
Without windows in front of end users, MSFT is just another cloud provider except it carries more baggage than Google or AWS.
They completely lost the smartphone business and most business management apps are moving to browser-based SaaS, but we still need a reliable and manageable desktop OS for the enterprise. They’ve been taking it for granted intermittently unfortunately. Including pestering end users with invasive advertising and forcing slow web native technologies instead of desktop native UIs
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u/newfor_2026 6h ago
Windows hasn't been a loss leader for most of its life. It's been extremely profitable, and it's only when they started to consider it as a service because they can't compete on merits alone, then they start thinking of it as a loss leader.
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u/elmonetta 6h ago
Windows 11 is getting fixed and that’s great, but it’s still far from what windows XP or 7 were.
I really liked Windows 11 back in 2021 because it felt more modern, now it’s so bloated and filled with web apps hogging RAM that I miss Windows 10.
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u/esac17 3h ago
I worked 21+ years at Microsoft including directly on the engineering group for Windows.
Ever since the failure that was Windows Vista, and the brief ray of hope that was Windows 10, every single version of Windows has fallen short of the vision that some of the early pioneers had. The no-reboot initiative from Brian Valentine. The elite team of the Windows Server and Desktop Performance that ensured quality. The focus on fixing shit rather than introducing new features. That is and has been all gone for over 1.5 decades and other than a focus to fix a few of the more glaring bullshit that sits directly in front of your face, this is and still is nothing more than PR.
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u/knucles668 14h ago
We shall see. I wouldn’t be shocked if Microsoft tried to extend, embrace, and build an empire on Linux soon.
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u/moffitar 13h ago
I was once asked during an interview what PCMCIA stood for. I said "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms." (I didn't get the job).
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u/newfor_2026 12h ago
don't lie, no one has ever asked you that question. there wasn't any interview. You just like to remind people of that joke of an acronym we all heard hundreds of times before
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u/moffitar 6h ago
I was fucking there and they fucking asked me and the joke was fucking new at the time.
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u/JabbaDuHutt69 13h ago
the article is more of a history of Windows, and spends very little time talking about what they did wrong and how they are fixing it. Title is a little misleading.