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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems

'Windows Isn't a Service, It's an Operating System' (howtogeek.com) 445

Posted by EditorDavid from the OS-as-a-Service dept.
A reader shares an article by former PC World columnist Chris Hoffman.

"No PC users asked Microsoft for Windows as a service," Hoffman complains. "It was all Microsoft's idea." "Software as a service" is trendy. But these types of services are generally hosted on a remote platform, like Amazon Web Services or even Microsoft Azure. Web applications like Gmail and Facebook are services. That all makes sense -- the company maintains the software, and you access it remotely. An operating system that runs on millions of different hardware configurations is not a service. It can't be updated as easily, and you'll run into issues with hardware, drivers, and software when you change things. The upgrade process isn't instant and transparent -- it's a big download and can take a while to install... [M]illions of applications (or computers!) could break if Microsoft makes a mistake with Windows.

What has Windows as a service even gotten us? How much has Windows 10 improved since its release? Sure, Microsoft keeps adding new features like the Timeline and Paint 3D, but how many Windows users care about those? Many of these new features, like Paint 3D and updates to Microsoft Edge, could be delivered without major operating system upgrades. Just take a look at the many features in Windows 10's October 2018 Update and ask whether they were worth all the deleted files and drama. Texting from your PC is great, but Microsoft could release an app that does that -- in fact, this was once supposed to be a Skype feature. Clipboard history is cool, and a dark theme for File Explorer is cute. But couldn't we have waited another six months for Microsoft to properly polish and test this stuff?

"Windows as a Service" does get us a few things. It gets us applications like Candy Crush installed on our PCs. It gets us an ever-increasing number of built-in advertisements. And it gets us activation problems when Windows phones home once a day and discovers that Microsoft has a server problem.
"Please Microsoft, slow down," the article concludes. "How about releasing a new version of Windows once per year instead? That's what Apple does, and Apple doesn't need 'macOS as a Service' to do it. Just create a new version of Windows every year, give it a new name, and spend a lot of time polishing it and fixing bugs.

"Wait until it's stable to release it, even if you have to delay it."
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'Windows Isn't a Service, It's an Operating System' More

'Windows Isn't a Service, It's an Operating System'

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  • microsoft doesn't care.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18, 2018 @09:51PM (#57665536)

    they're after eyeballs and dollars. and not necessarily in that order.

    frequent updates, forced upon users, is a platform for them to shove shit up your ass and down your throat at the same time. ads. paid placement. paid installs. more ads. user data. user tracking. more ads. more placements.

    fuck windows 10. most people with windows computers don't need windows to do what they do on them. switch to linux. switch to macs or fuck, even chromebooks (even with google's own addiction to paid placements and ads). but just fucking go cold turkey on microsoft.

    your windows 7 gonna kick the bucket in 14 months? here's your next operating system: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    • Why would they care? The money is in cloud services, not operating systems.

    • Re:microsoft doesn't care.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by amiga3D ( 567632 ) on Monday November 19, 2018 @08:32AM (#57666950)

      My Daughter's windows 10 computer became unusable a month ago after an update. She finally brought it to me because she needed to do some work on it. I asked her why she didn't bring it a month ago and she said she just used her phone for everything. Most people are moving from Windows to Android. Windows has made PeeCees such a fucking pain that more and more people just use their phones. The exception of course is Gamers. I spent about 3 hours fixing her piece of shit peecee and the whole time I was cursing Microsoft. I retired almost 2 years ago and haven't had to deal with it in all that time. I sure as fuck don't miss it.

  • Seems like OSX is SAS as well to me... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @09:51PM (#57665538)

    If you think about it OSX has very much moved to Software as Service - it costs nothing anymore, it's just that Apple offers as a service, that it will keep your device current for a while. Or maybe it is the updating that is the service, since OSX does not have activation codes or anything and you can stay on one version forever if you prefer.

    To the extent that is not working out for Windows, they need to figure out why Apple seems to do SAS in a way that most people like, whereas Windows does not (I always hated Windows Update).

  • Microsoft doesn't care (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:02PM (#57665578)
    "No PC users asked Microsoft for Windows as a service," Hoffman complains. "It was all Microsoft's idea."

    It is amazing to still hear after all these years that people think that Microsoft takes telling. They don't. Microsoft will decide what you are going to accept.

    I'll probably get marked as troll for this, perhaps only because the truth triggers some folks.

    There is a conversation going on CNet right now that brings out all of the reasons why the faithful will accept whatever Microsoft tells them they will accept.

    The locked in factor. Some people look at the lock-in to Microsoft almost like it is some advantage.

    The Macs are too expensive. Will they be too expensive when they pay a monthly fee for Windows?

    Linux is something something

    The fact is that Many Windows users will simply accept whatever Microsoft decides that they will accept. Microsoft knows this, and has no reason to change tactics.

    • Re:Microsoft doesn't care (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:09PM (#57665598)
      Swap “Microsoft” and “Apple” and the statements still hold true.

      • Re:Microsoft doesn't care (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:23PM (#57665752) Homepage

        <troll>Shouldn't we say the same about Linux users and systemd?</troll>

        On a more serious note though, if you look at the migration off XP and Win7 it's clear that most users don't want OS updates twice a year but more like twice a decade. Linux distributions are different because there you upgrade all your applications too, I don't think I've ever upgraded because of OS-level services.

        • No we shouldn't, because there's a clear philosophical difference.

          Operating Systems are not a democracy. They are a Dictatorship. Like all dictators it's at least in the partial interest for the dictator to keep some of their subjects (users) placid and occasionally even outright happy, but the reality is you can't please everyone, and dictators have their own priorities too.

          What separates the dictatorship of Apple and Microsoft, from the Dictatorship of Linux is that all subjects under the rule of Linux ar

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        " That's what Apple does, and Apple doesn't need 'macOS as a Service' to do it."

        Has the author ever used a Mac? Where does he think Microsoft got the whole OS as a service thing?

    • Microsoft will decide what you are going to accept.

      Which is why I'm on Ubuntu Linux even as we speak.

  • Microsoft has always been insufficiently and badly managed. But now Microsoft is carrying foolish, self-destructive and other-destructive management much farther than before.

    One of the many, many articles:

    Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)

    A previous comment of mine:

    Microsoft is damaging customers and itself. [slashdot.org] (Oct. 22, 2018)

  • Not understanding what windows 10... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:11PM (#57665604)

    ... is really about.

    It's about the final move to take control of the customers PC out of the users hand and move all apps into authenticated spaces controlled my corporations. Big companies like Apple and Google pioneered app walled gardens behind their smart phones over the last 10 years, and the the videogame gaming industry, being tech companies, have always wanted to take control of software out of the end users hands for profit.

    The internet allowed all this to happen because the average citizen is a tech illiterate moron. The last 20 years for anyone who was involved in tech in the 90's has been surreal, everything we were worried about in the 90's like trusted computing is slowly coming fruition due to ignorant people getting smart phones and the internet removing any and all ability to hold software companies accountable.

    What are you going to do when Microsoft, Valve, or Activivison develop some new locked down piece of software? You are hundreds of miles away from these companies, you have ZERO market power in this relationship. In ye old days, they were forced to give you the complete software, otherwise they would be comitting fraud. "software as a service" is really just another name for fraud where companies undermine your ability to own, control, and operate your PC and software free from company influence.

    All companies want to turn every piece of tech into a dumb terminal and they are largely getting their way because 90% of the population is tech clueless, those of us who know how technology works, were pretty horrified when say RPG's like ultima were rebadged and labelled mmo's in the 90's and a gullible and lay public lapped it up. Things like Ultima online, EQ, world of warcraft were paving the way towards an era where companies can steal whatever isn't nailed down outright because the average person is a moron.

    You have no freedom and rights under big business because many aspects of how we are socially organized would need to be rethought in an internet enabled society, there's no accountability, it's just a one way fuck you free for all and companies are making mad bank.

    • That is why it's a good idea also (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:42PM (#57665792)

      The internet allowed all this to happen because the average citizen is a tech illiterate moron.

      No-one "allowed" anything. What happened was Apple built more locked down systems by default, and people responded by buying systems for personal use they did not have to administer or rely on an entire industry of charlatans to fix things like viruses (read: Best Buy PC repair).

      The thing is, it really *is* a good idea for "tech illiterate morons" to have locked down systems. They really need that because they simply cannot manage handling computer security as you and I know it today.

      It's not like there are no ways around this. On OSX you can still run apps from untrusted developers - if you tell the machine to allow that. And that seems like a pretty good compromise to me, ship a locked down system by default and let people open it up more if they can handle the extra responsibility.

      Do not forget the consequences of security failure are worse now than they have ever been. Even ten years ago, if a phone or computer got hacked to most people it wouldn't be a huge deal losing a whole system. Now so many people have entire lives stored on computers and phones, keeping at least the ability to restore a system and/or prevent access is a lot more important than it has been.

  • Tbe real question should be (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:15PM (#57665616)

    Is microsoft a bacteria or a virus? /s

    When their "services" become so network centric that you can't use your computing device for anything when your network connection is unavailable, then you can ask the users the original question.

  • Embarassing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vanyle ( 5553318 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:27PM (#57665646)
    There is nothing more embarrassing than loading up your laptop for a important conference presentation than to say "Sorry, My computer decided to update, Everyone, please wait while Microsoft eat's our time."

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @10:40PM (#57665672)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Indeed windows 7 to 8 proved 3 years is too soon to work out bugs and stupidity of UI developers. 2009 to 2016 for win 7 to win 10 makes me think every 7 years is fine for new OS that is for general business use. Of course win 10 is a bloated pig that slows does systems but maybe that's another issue.

      • Indeed windows 7 to 8 proved 3 years is too soon to work out bugs and stupidity of UI developers.

        Yet recent changes have proved that smaller incremental changes are far better than dumping a new UI on users every 3 years. You've fallen into the trap of applying a worst case scenario to a situation that isn't occuring. If anything the old big update with long gaps process is something we should be getting away from.

    • Re:Every year? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by click2005 ( 921437 ) * on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:24PM (#57665754)

      You are right that a lot don't want it but it will never happen. Some people think MS users are here for the Kool-Aid but most aren't. Apple still has this whole cult thing going on so they tend to get away with planned obsolescence and their customers don't object to buying overpriced hardware because its shinier than the current model.

      Most windows users get a PC then stick with it until they feel the need to upgrade. Look at how many are still using Windows 7 & XP.
      Sure there are some who are die hard Microsoft fans but for most, they use it because its convenient, it came with the PC or because
      of some software that requires it (usually games or business/industrial software). Things are changing and as time go on less and less
      people will be in this situation which is why they're making the change from the Microsoft Tax to the Microsoft Rent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      We don't, but I'm sure Microsoft wants to sell us a copy every year. Or quarter.

    • Given that they seem to be releasing new versions more often than once a year now, you don't want them to slow down?

    • go shoot the person who said we want a new version of Windows every year. We do not.

      What do you mean by version?
      Do we want a new version of Windows with new APIs, dramatically different underlying stacks, completely changed interfaces? No.
      Do we want to wait 5 years for minor incremental changes and improvments? Also no.

      "New Version" of Windows is not the same thing that it has always been.

  • Wait... did MS really force Candy Crush on people's PCs? I mean, I'm not surprised or anything, what with shoving down ads down your start menu etc. I'm more appalled that they're getting away with this shit at all. God, I'm never letting go of that Win7 disc.

    • Re:Candy Crush? (Score:4, Informative)

      by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Monday November 19, 2018 @07:56AM (#57666776)
      3-D Builder, Zune Music, Solitaire Collection, Bing Finance, Duo Lingo, Candy Crush, Farmville, Pandora, Twitter...these are just a few of the "AppX" items one has to use powershell to remove from Windows 10 Enterprise. You know, their OS for large corporations; because large corps really want games installed by default. You also have to make a special "tile template" for an image so your Start menu tileset doesn't have a bunch of "missing links" or holes in it afterwards.

      We are, at my work, going to be moving to a newer Windows version soon...so I will once again have to strip out a bunch of shit and re-do the image.I personally wanted to go with LTSB, but several of our vendors are moving to Store Apps (I'm looking at you, Boeing Toolbox) so I'm being forced to implement AppLocker, Corporate Store...and am still fighting with management over getting Admin rights to the Store in our tenancy to do my "new" job managing the Store for Business which I would rather not have to do...it's only a matter of time before the MS store is compromised with malware just like all the others.

    • That's what I thought too. Installing Candy Crush on a new install is one thing, but riding it along with other updates on existing systems is awful.

      Then again, MS has always done this - updates come with new shit you didn't ask for. I'd always have preferred they just update the stuff I've got and at most, tell me about the stuff they wish I would look at. So in that sense, I suppose this is nothing new really. I wonder what they got paid for doing it?

      Windows 10 was supposed to be the last Windows ever - i

  • Bryan Lunduke (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chris Katko ( 2923353 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:12PM (#57665732)

    Bryan Lunduke, who worked for Microsoft, and talks a lot about Linux subjects, made a good point in one of his Linux lectures that really opened my mind.

    The "Who asked for this?" question. systemd having a full network stack and various other huge features instead of just being a better init script. With Wayland, and Mir, was anyone really going "OMG, X Windows sucks so bad. I really hate being able to stream a graphics shell over ssh on a system that was fast enough to use on a 486." I can't really do his arguments justice with my old man's memory, but the point is sound.

    With Windows 8 Metro, or the Ribbon interface, or any of the other Microsoft failures... was anyone explicitly ASKING for this? Or, was it just some middle or upper manager type trying to justify his existence by pushing something his intuition told him would be "the future" with no science and user studies to back it up? Did the decision get made BECAUSE users complained, or, was the decision made, and any evidence contrary (such as research or users) simply thrown under the rug?

    Are people DEMANDING lootboxes? Are people demanding DRM?

    Are people demanding phones with shit battery life that are thinner and thinner and easier to bend? Or "notches" in their screens instead of full screens?

    Where do these anti-features come from? I don't know. But I've at least started to ask the question "Who asked for this?" to help me identify those features and the examples are boundless.

    • Re: Bryan Lunduke (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:34PM (#57665768)

      Linux has the same problem. People who write software can't ever stop updating things. At some point you reach the design pinnacle and from there on its downhill. A hammer from today still looks like a hammer from centuries ago.

      • A problem with Linux is that after a while free software developers tend to get bored with the design of their programs and dedicate themselves to a new project that is cool to them, leaving the old one to bit-rot.
        Take X for example, it has been "deprecated" in the public opinion for years now, but the innovative replacements for it are not fully ready yet.
        I'm not saying this to be ungrateful, it's just that after many years I've grown skeptical of revolutions and more fond of incremental changes, and Linu

        • Re: Bryan Lunduke (Score:5, Interesting)

          by rl117 ( 110595 ) <rleigh.codelibre@net> on Monday November 19, 2018 @07:59AM (#57666790) Homepage
          When you look at what made Linux successful, little of it was originally to do with being revolutionary. The vast majority of it was re-implementing existing software under a free licence. The Linux kernel is a copy of Unix kernels. The GNU utilities are copies of Unix utilities. Likewise the compiler, desktop environments, and most of everything else. Being open and free made it more useful and compelling than the proprietary equivalents. Being a direct copy and following the existing standards made it easy to migrate to and use with little disruption. Having a good number of enhancements and improvements on top was the icing on the cake, but the core stuff was what made it indispensable. It's the "revolutionary" parts which have caused the most disruption, inconvenience and upset. They are also the parts which are the most poorly designed and implemented, and it's not a coincidence. A good number of these people are now arguing that POSIX and other standards are no longer relevant, but they are completely ignoring the main historical reasons why we have popular open source systems. Projects like Gnome, systemd have made some terrible design choices, and have also repeatedly broken compatibility with themselves over the years. Were they designed and implemented by competent professionals who could design and engineer systems to the standard of what came before them, that friction would not exist.

    • Who Asked For This? The guy whose job it is to devise changes to Windoze so that they can claim that it is "new and improved". When in reality, it is merely different.

      In other words; NOBODY asked for most of these changes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rastos1 ( 601318 )

      Are people DEMANDING lootboxes/DRM/notches/ribbon/systemd/...

      End users: no. MAFIAA/PHBs: yes.

    • The answer is the designers who create such things need to constantly create. Even if there's nothing wrong with the product and the users love it. Where are they going to get their next job from? They need to point to a design they just finished. Who is asking for it? A better question is why do the cruel users wish to oppress the designers with their lack of taste? Why aren't they demanding new and exciting products? Designers need to drag people kicking and screaming to "better" products, otherwise the d

    • With Wayland, and Mir, was anyone really going "OMG, X Windows sucks so bad.

      Yes they were.

      The "Who asked for this?" question. systemd having a full network stack and various other huge features instead of just being a better init script.

      People have asked for this. You may not have, but that doesn't change this. Actually specific the network stack no people didn't but implementing one turned out to be the most straight forward to to give people what they were asking for.

      I really hate being able to stream a graphics shell over ssh on a system that was fast enough to use on a 486."

      Go your hardest. This is something that 99.9% of desktop users find a strange requirement. So let me turn your question on itself: "Who asked for this?" I don't do it so it seems like a silly requirement to include for the system that just renders a GUI.

      With Windows 8 Metro, or the Ribbon interface, or any of the other Microsoft failures...

      Metro?

  • The "service" they have on MS Answers doesn't help (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jody Bruchon ( 3404363 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:17PM (#57665746)
    I'm going to copy and paste the most salient points of the stock BS answer that is given to almost EVERYONE that has an issue with Windows 10 these days and says something about it on the Microsoft Answers forum:

    This issue may occur either due to software conflicts or if unused files are present in Windows. I would suggest you to run system maintenance troubleshooter and check if it helps. ... If it does not help, then perform clean boot and check. Refer this article: How to perform a clean boot in Windows ... After you have finished troubleshooting, follow these steps from section “How to reset the computer to start as usual after clean boot troubleshooting” to reset the computer to start as usual.

    And then in the following comments there are floods of users saying THIS DID NOT HELP, PLEASE GIVE US SOME F***ING REAL HELP. It's like this regardless of the actual problem. It's always someone with an Indian name posting the "solution" and it's always the same basic boilerplate garbage suggestions that don't solve the problem. There is never any follow-up. There is an intervention by an actual Microsoft product team employee that can legitimately help on an extremely rare basis. On a related note, I'm fairly convinced that Feedback Hub is a fancy way of referring to /dev/null because Microsoft seems to ignore all user feedback that doesn't align with what they wanted to do anyway.

    I swear, dealing with the Windows 8+ era Microsoft is like dealing with a petulant three-year-old on a constant basis, one that will deactivate or crash your shit at random and pull a South Park BP executive style "we're sorry!" when it becomes big tech news.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You forgot the BEST part: "If this answer solves your issue, please mark this as Answered"...that MS pesters you with if you post a technet forum question.
      • Oh yeah, that's right, but you forgot the bestest part: 9/10 times, they just go ahead and mark their boilerplate as the "solution" and then the comments get flooded with extremely angry techies who can see that the suggestions will do nothing to help. If someone said that their printer was printing PCL errors, the idiots would suggest a "clean boot state" and mark that as answered when it's plain to anyone that "clean boot" will do nothing to help at all.

        Then guess what the follow-up advice is? "Reinsta

  • Hadn't you figured it out yet? (Score:3)

    by aklinux ( 1318095 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:39PM (#57665778) Homepage
    Windows has been in beta since 1.0. I know, I've attempted them all. I didn't figure it out until 3.1 though...

  • One Purpose (Score:3)

    by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Sunday November 18, 2018 @11:46PM (#57665808)

    Cigarette is to "nicotine delivery device" as Windows OS is to cash delivery machine!

  • Spyware as an Operating System (Score:3)

    by Nocturrne ( 912399 ) on Monday November 19, 2018 @12:16AM (#57665872)

    This is their real business model. Microsoft dreams of being Google.

  • "As A Service" means that you're not buying something you can keep, but agreeing to pay a monthly fee to use the service. When Micro$oft tries to do that, don't do that upgrade. And start making plans to escape.

    In fact, when Blizzard games become available on Linux, I'm going!

  • While I greatly dislike the way Windows is going, I do understand why they are doing it. First of all money, of course, but that's not all there is to it. The problem is, how to get more computing power to your fingertips? No matter how you look at it, it comes down to necessity of offloading your computing to the cloud. We can continue to make computing power cheaper, but we are hitting a ceiling on how power efficient we can make it. And thus there is only so much computing power you can stuff in a PC bef

  • One thing everyone always misses with Microsoft's twice-a-year updates (same frequency as Ubuntu Linux mind you) is that they recompile every single binary in the OS now, rather than just replacing the few that have been touched in each update here n there. What does this mean? There have been new advances in compiler optimizations, plus new advances in memory allocators to help protect against certain types of exploits. There are also the mitigations for things like Specter and Meltdown, which are also bak

  • Until an update made it unbootable again a few weeks ago, my Linux partition updated almost every day. Reboots were required in these updates once every couple of weeks or so. Several times a year, I'd have to spend significant time fixing a problem caused by an update. I imagine updates cost me around a week a year on average. This time, I decided to go back to my Windows partition. It just works better with my hardware - a laptop with the NVidia Optimus graphics configuration that Linux has never supporte

  • choice (Score:2)

    by sad_ ( 7868 )

    you have choice, even more so today then 10 years ago.
    you don't have to use windows at all.
    if you don't like it, use something else!

  • Does most - or even much - of it run on a server? No? Then how is it a service?

  • Instead of unpredictable (e.g. sales of Windows 8, Windows ME) bursts of income at the release of a new Windows version in addition to relying on sales of new devices, selling Windows as a service generates a steady flow of income, which is really great for the cash flow and predictability of it. From a development point of view it might even be a motivation to put out a steady stream of improvements instead of bundling them up as a sales argument for Windows n+1. That'd be closer to open-source development

  • I wonder if it will really come to pass (Score:3)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Monday November 19, 2018 @10:30AM (#57667724)

    If / when Microsoft decides to go with the subscription plan, I would think it would seriously impact a lot of software that relies upon it as the backbone OS to work. I wonder if they would get sued for effectively denying access to the OS without ongoing subscription payments.

    Much of the software I have is license locked to my system via a permanent key. Any one of them costs far more than what the operating system does, yet if I fail to pay what will effectively be ransomware to MS, I will be unable to use said software in any form. Some of them have Linux or OSx variants I can switch to, but not all of them.

    I am curious just how many folks are going to be willing to go with a monthly / annual subscription for an OS that has already taken too much control from the folks who use it. For the first time in my life, I think I would actually consider a " Yar Matey " version of the OS that has been stripped of all the controversial bullshit because re-licensing all the software I use on Windows would be quite a financial undertaking.

    I know we've been saying this for years but, I think the year of the Linux Desktop is, in a hilarious ironic twist, going to be brought about by none other than Microsoft itself.

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