Windows 10 Reaches 70% Market Share as Windows 11 Keeps Declining (neowin.net) 157
Windows 11's market share dropped in April 2024, falling below 26% after reaching an all-time high of 28.16% in February. According to Statcounter, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, while Windows 10 gained 0.96 points, crossing the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023. Neowin adds: Some argue that Windows 11 still offers little to no benefits for upgrading, especially in light of Microsoft killing some of the system's unique features, such as Windows Subsystem for Android. Add to that the ever-increasing number of ads, some of which are quite shameless, and you get an operating system that has a hard time winning hearts and minds, and retaining its customers.
LOL (Score:3)
Re:LOL (Score:4)
Whatever happened to Windows 10 being the last one (Score:3)
Whatever happened to the goal of Windows 10 being the last version of Windows, just to be updated via subscription for eternity?
Why does MSFT keep changing the future of Windows, anyway?
Re:Whatever happened to Windows 10 being the last (Score:5, Funny)
They've altered the deal. Pray they don't alter it any further.
Re:Whatever happened to Windows 10 being the last (Score:5, Informative)
They already have altered it further.
Yes, MS is now officially worse than The Empire.
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Re:Whatever happened to Windows 10 being the last (Score:4, Insightful)
They already have altered it further.
Yes, MS is now officially worse than The Empire.
I might have skewed the demographic. I installed W10 Pro on my Mac via Bootcamp last week. Now after Microsoft stops sending updates, W10 will finally be stable
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Companies change leaders.
Heck, leaders change their mind.
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I think that they kinda felt like they had to up the Windows version number when Apple started bumping up the version numbers of Mac OS past 10.
I mean, we couldn't still have Microsoft Windows at version 10.x when Mac OS was up to version 12 (now 14), can we? There are probably more than a handful of tech illiterate people who actually think that those higher version numbers actually mean something useful.
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They should just dump the version number from the branding. Just call it Windows. Keep the version number in small text.
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That would be some paranoia as while Apple still numbers their OS releases, they market them with names. At first it was cat themed and now they are named after places because they were running out of cat names.
They could have used Mac Pussy
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No one should trust or believe anything Microsoft says, most people knew all along Microsoft wouldn't keep it at Windows 10 . I use Linux for daily computing, I use Windoze only for programs/apps Linux can't run, good luck to all clinging to Windoze, enjoy the ads in 11 too. Maybe Microsoft will have a pay monthly version to get rid of ads? That's the Micro$oft way right?
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That was never their official plan, one employee misspoke and got widely quoted.
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Whatever happened to the goal of Windows 10 being the last version of Windows
The same thing as the “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” idea.
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It was a deal they entered with Beelzebub. MS gets to torture its users during life and Beelzebub does that after life. It is a win-win.
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Windows 10 was never a subscription. The plan was to have every PC have windows 10, like macs have macos. You have a computer, you have windows. Their market for Office 365 would be infinite, and marketed heavily on platform. Someone realized that changing version numbers and deprecating the old versions caused a massive wave of revenue as people upgraded. Whoever had the "windows 10 forever" idea lost the war, and now it's buy the platform, and pay them to market the services as well. Soon it will be windo
W11 is the enshiitification of W10 (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 11 is an eshitified version of Windows 10. The OS is not better in any way that matters to the average user, while at the same time being actively worse (ads and other marketing annoyances to drive traffic to bing).
Re:W11 is the enshiitification of W10 (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't have much of a choice but to upgrade soon. Windows 10 is EOL late next year, so you're going to lose software support and security patches if you don't let Microsoft force upgrade you eventually.
Sure, some people might use this as an opportunity to migrate to Linux, but they said the same thing during the Windows 8 debacle and it never really happened for most people.
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True, true.
It's time to dig out the Linux distribution from back when Win7 had to be replaced and check whether now, finally, it is ready for business. I think that VMs are now far more capable than they used to be, so the few applications that can't run in Wine would probably by now work sensibly in that VM.
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I think that VMs are now far more capable than they used to be, so the few applications that can't run in Wine would probably by now work sensibly in that VM.
While Bootcamp technically isn't a VM, it is certainly more capable than a bog standard Microsoft box.
My group uses a lot of audio, and updates bork the audio pretty often, even before it is actually installed. My Bootcamp install has not suffered from that so far.
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You won't have much of a choice but to upgrade soon. Windows 10 is EOL late next year, so you're going to lose software support and security patches if you don't let Microsoft force upgrade you eventually.
Sure, some people might use this as an opportunity to migrate to Linux, but they said the same thing during the Windows 8 debacle and it never really happened for most people.
What you said is true, but it does not change the fact that W11 is shit. In fact, I can't really see the point of your reply as it relates to what I said.
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Oh, I'm not arguing. Windows 11 certainly is shitty. You can turn off a lot of the "personalized' advertising for Edge/CoPilot/Microsoft 365/OneDrive/XBox Game Pass in it, but at least some of it comes back every time a new Windows update gets installed.
Re:W11 is the enshiitification of W10 (Score:5, Interesting)
If, as looks virtually certain, a huge percentage of devices are still on Win10 at "EOL", MS will have zero choice but to extend free support for - at the very minimum - critical security issues. Otherwise they will be blamed for the advent of the biggest, baddest botnet ever seen. They know this already.
The "EOL" is just to scare people into upgrading or paying for extended support. It's a lie, which will be maintained until it's revealed as such just before it's due.
This is not like previous cases where most people eventually upgraded (e.g. to Win10). This time, the hardware requirements guarantee a huge percentage of "left behind" devices.
Re:W11 is the enshiitification of W10 (Score:4)
I doubt Microsoft will care about an old unsupported version of Windows getting hacked. It's not as if they didn't warn people. When companies get hit with ransomware, does the news blame Microsoft Windows for being insecure?
There is very little incentive for them to continue supporting Windows 10 for free. They completed their contractual obligation, and there is money to be made selling new OEM licences when people buy new computers.
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MS does sell fixes after EOL though.
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Software support is not going to end. That would be crazy. Microsoft is not that crazy. They'll feel compelled to extend it, as they did with many releases before.
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With these numbers? Yes. MS is arrogant, stupid, incompetent and worse, but they are not suicidal.
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You won't have much of a choice but to upgrade soon. Windows 10 is EOL late next year, so you're going to lose software support and security patches if you don't let Microsoft force upgrade you eventually.
Sure, some people might use this as an opportunity to migrate to Linux, but they said the same thing during the Windows 8 debacle and it never really happened for most people.
How many of us use Windows software support. Useless as the tits on a boar.
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It's the lack of security patches that will probably get most people to upgrade. Sure, Microsoft has been known to offer an "out of band" support patches for vulnerabilities in older OS's (like Windows 7) that are no longer supported, but only for severe issues that are actively being exploited.
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The Enshitification Era. (Score:5, Interesting)
That operating system doesn’t exist for you the customer anymore. It exists for them. The shareholders. Instead of curbing the practice of putting profits above all, Greed invited the commoner to invest in that practice instead.
The end result is the Enshitification Era of products, and the entire reason old product has become quite desirable again. We used to care about delivering a quality product that lasted. Today you will pay a large premium for that, IF you can find the skilled artisan.
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MS up to the normal planned obsolescence tactics. Every alternate version is worse than the previous. If it wasn't there'd be no reason to upgrade once your HW drivers are out of maintenance. W10 will fall out of maintenance, leaving people with W11 as a stepping stone to whatever W12 will be that fixes the faults of W11.
They did this with MS Office, they deliberately didn't fix things with Powerpoint so users would have a reason to upgrade.
Win 11 Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
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We upgraded our corporate VDIs to Windows 11. It seems rather little different than Windows 10. It is what it is. I've heard lots of corporations are moving to it in the next say 12 months. My Gaming system is running it, but honestly, I just use Steam Full Screen Mode ...
That said, I cannot actually see anything "negative" about it. (The ads are kinda "meh" as far as "ads" are concerned.)
For different use cases, it will be different. For my use case, 10 is a problem, and 11 doesn't cure that problem. But the people want Windows, because it is the so called standard. It messes up sound drivers, and it gets unstable after downloading but not yet installing updates, and Windows does BOHICA updates. My Enterprise 10 version once restarted involuntarily during the worst possible time, in the middle of an event.
The irony is they saw the same thing running on My Mac and asked about it, it looke
Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
For most persons, the operating system does not need to do much other than what it already does in Windows 10.
Pushing the next great thing, AI in the desktop UI, and rearranging basic desktop tools has not helped improve productivity.
The question should really be: Can you list the things which you do on a desktop computer today and which things you did 10 years ago?
Can you list the differences in needed functionality today compared to 10 years ago?
The amount of new things which are not already encapsulated in a web site is very few.
AI on the desktop such as "change the desktop background to a picture of sunflowers" is at best a toy and at worse a blocker preventing persons from using their desktop productively.
Resume driven development at work to help the operating system development and design team get good annual performance review ratings.
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows has really been "good enough" at least since WinXP. There are very, very few actual reasons why you would want to upgrade from there other than the OS losing manufacturer support.
Quite frankly, if XP still had patches going, I'd really have a hard time justifying upgrading from it.
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Windows XP was a security disaster. The oldest OS that could reasonably be secured without massive breaking changes is probably Windows 8, as that's when the driver model was changed to move the last critical bits out of the kernel IIRC. Maybe Windows 7.
XP ran too much stuff in kernel space, including most drivers. One security flaw in a 3rd party driver and your machine was 0wned. It didn't support Secure Boot either, so the favourite trick of malware authors was to patch the NTFS driver to hide their file
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They did a ton of ergonomics research in the 1990s, and built their UI design based on that. At some point around Vista, they abandoned that, and started chasing whatever new fad had come along. The strange idea that people would want to use Windows on a Tablet gave us the atrocity that is the Windows 8 Start Screen.
I do think that AI integrations are worth exploring in a desktop UI, but I also think they need to dust off that ergonomics research, and focus on making the best possible desktop operating syst
TPM and Secure Boot are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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And it even fails at this. Miserably. I can still install Linux on those systems. So what's the goal here?
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And it even fails at this. Miserably. I can still install Linux on those systems. So what's the goal here?
Yup, in starting the transition to Linux on My Windows machine that "isn't eligible", Linux installed easily,
So soon, very soon, my personal use of computers will be free of Windows, I'll only have my BootCamp W10, for the increasingly rare uses.
Re:TPM and Secure Boot are the problem (Score:4)
This. We have a laptop and an HP business desktop at home that have more than adequate resources, but the TPM chip is not compatible with Windows 11. All Linux distros have no issue with the hardware. Windows 10 still runs great, but I was all ready to upgrade to Windows 11 (and pay for the license) until the readiness checker told me I couldn't.
If Microsoft wants to treat their OSs like a chromebook, I'm not buying more than one for the household.
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Why so many? What is there that only runs in Windows 11 and not under Wine that you need so badly that you're willing to buy an extra computer just for that?
Re: TPM and Secure Boot are the problem (Score:2)
And CPU generation. If most people running a few years old PC that lacks one of these, but is perfectly capable of running Windows 11, where just offered the update through Windows update, they'd probably click yes. But so many people just aren't given that option, so aren't going to Win11 till they buy a new PC.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Unless you're willing to migrate to Linux - which does have some administrative headaches in the standard office - eventually you will be forced onto Win11 as MS cuts updates and support and creates incompatibilities with newer software.
MS doesn't care if you like it or not, they care if you fork out your subscription fee.
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Curious what real administration headaches remain for a sub-500 person company. As you get bigger I understand there are more things the Windows tools do better, but in the small/medium space that doesn't seem to be a real issue limiting Linux adoption.
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I haven't done anything yet in the network admin arena with Linux... But my understanding is there is still no practical equivalent of domain security management like AD.
Please tell me I'm wrong and point me in the correct direction, I would very much like to be wrong about this.
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Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
Diskless systems with network mounted file system and services. Why do you need AD with Linux? Most services can even be provided using saas.
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Unified, centralized security has utility. LDAPS isn't quite at the same level as AD yet.
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That's exactly what I described.
I didn't mention LDAPS.
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That isn't a 1:1 replacement option beyond "standard" software. Anything domain specific that isn't browser based gets in the way.
But, I thought there were good policy management tools to cover the non-standard software desktops, assuming it is 20% of your install base. If you have 50% of your users needing windows-only apps then AD is the only practical solution for efficient management. If you prioritize secure managment though I think a lot of the benefits start to go away. (separation of responsibili
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Sorry, but I can't really feel bad for people who don't want to run Windows 11, but feel like they can't use anything else, especially if we're talking about a commercial entity. They had more than 20 years to get Linux working they way they wanted, and did nothing. Sure, it would have cost them money, but how much money have they wasted since then, dealing with Windows?
What market share would that be? (Score:2)
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You can totally buy a computer with Linux on it. https://www.dell.com/en-us/sho... [dell.com]
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A quick google and I see Best Buy sells Linux computers.
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So you haven't searched for pre-installed Linux systems in about 10 years then. Or do you do all your PC shopping at Best Buy?
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I wish I'd seen the other reply before I used Best Buy as the example. Office Max or Staples maybe?
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So you haven't searched for pre-installed Linux systems in about 10 years then. Or do you do all your PC shopping at Best Buy?
I think he goes to Circuit City to get his computers.
But to me, other than having to pay the Microsoft tax, Installing Linux is about as simple as you can get. Go to Linux Mint https://linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com] Or others, download it, burn the iso to a thumbdrive with say Rufus, boot then install. Have an internet connection, and it will sense your hardware and install the drivers, easy peasy.
If you prefer something other than Mint, you can go to distrowatch.com, and have fun.
There are a lot prebuilt options
One can only wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
It couldn't be the ads that they keep adding. [neowin.net] Or the ads that they have for other programs on the horizon [theverge.com].
Couldn't be the telemetry [ycombinator.com] that they collect that's only gotten worse as we keep going on?
Couldn't be all the fucking hoops you have to jump through to just install an OS without having to sign up for a goddamn Microsoft account [tomshardware.com].
Couldn't be the copilot AI bullshit and the forcing it down people who didn't want it's throat. [windowscentral.com]
Couldn't be that despite all this shit that is crammed down your throat Windows 11 offers next to nothing in improved performance compared to Windows 10. [neowin.net]
Couldn't be all the dumb shit that happened with TPM 2.0 and all the dumb things you have to do to get it working without TPM 2 [techradar.com].
Couldn't be the whole wonderful things you need to do to "actually say no" to do I want to use Edge Browser [microsoft.com].
Windows 11 is Microsoft's hubris manifest. They literally are just going to add this shit and honestly think, "No no, we know better. It's better this way." All the while, every day, various Linux distros are becoming viable alternatives to Windows AND the people who love and use Windows 10 is quite strong and it has less of the annoying things listed above. Even in corporations, I know, no company wants that copilot shit randomly popping off in the office. Literally day one when it became an option in Active Directory, the higher ups turned that shit off [microsoft.com]. Because the literal ramifications of someone whispering shit into copilot while at work is not a non-concern to a ton of C-level staff.
There's just this constant stream of things nobody wanted, no one wants to use, and nobody wants to keep, that just keeps hitting Windows 11. And the upper levels of Microsoft just won't hear otherwise. So no shit Windows 11 uptake has been massively depressed. There are few people on this planet outside of Microsoft that speak highly of this new OS. This version is a paragon of engineering self-indulgence. Every single feature that they have patted themselves on the back for, is something that has quickly become something despised by those who actually have to use this crap. The people creating this operating system, the people promoting this operating system, the people who support this operating system, and the people who steer the direction of this operating system at Microsoft are completely divorced from the actualization of that operating system in real life. They have molded the rubber only to ignore completely where it meets the road.
It's not as bad as say Windows ME. It's not BAD OS overall. But it's an OS where they are actively NOT LISTENING to anyone using it. They are ignoring what people do actually want. Say what you will about Vista or 8, at least Microsoft listened to the hate and came around to fixing things. Windows 11, they just stopped giving a fuck. That's the biggest single difference with THIS version of Windows. Nobody is listening to consumers and the OS shows that off in spades.
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They literally are just going to add this shit and honestly think, "No no, we know better. It's better this way."
I will point out that philosophy has worked out pretty well for Apple. Who Microsoft have been copying for years.
Re:One can only wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
They literally are just going to add this shit and honestly think, "No no, we know better. It's better this way."
I will point out that philosophy has worked out pretty well for Apple. Who Microsoft have been copying for years.
Not sure what you mean. MacOS is Unix, and I spend as much time in Terminal as I do programs.
I can install the software I want, and seriously, the meme that Macs are completely locked down is right up there with Macs only using one button mice.
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You are not the typical Appletard.
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Couldn't be all the fucking hoops you have to jump through to just install an OS without having to sign up for a goddamn Microsoft account [tomshardware.com].
The Microsoft account is the entire point, which is also where TPM 2.0 comes in. Locking internet services behind Microsoft authentication schemes was always the plan, dating all the way back to the original .Net vision with Passport.Net (what was that, 2001ish?).
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Could be you can't install it on anything earlier than an Intel 8000 series. I'm glad they can't force Windows 11 on my i7 7700
There's a lower arbitrary limit on AMD CPU's as well.
Every other version of windows is crap (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 10 - ok
Window 8 - crap
Windows 7 - ok
Windows Vista - crap
Windows XP - ok
Windows ME - crap
Wait for Windows 12
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Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC still rocks (Score:5, Interesting)
From a bean counter perspective, it's obvious that Windows 11 is full of dream opportunities to spam users and treat them to unkillable advertising. Hopefully there'll be a de-shittified 'Lite', privacy-oriented version of 11 at some stage?
Not yet sure that these 'AI PC' machines are gonna be all that, but given that this is the path they've chosen to take I have my doubts it'll get better from a UX standpoint.
Maybe this will finally be Linux's golden moment to gain a large amount of market share? [chuckle]
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Maybe this will finally be Linux's golden moment to gain a large amount of market share? [chuckle]
Most Linux people simply don't care about Market share.
Because if Market share = the best, VHS was the best videotape system ever invented.
Things I hate about Windows 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the *very* short list.
1. Garbage 'sea of icons' Start Menu where you don't have useful widgets, like the awesome built in Weather app. You can't arrange the icons how you want (other than just changing their order). And by putting the icons you click the most on the top, you ignore every fucking UX rule in the book.
2. Centering the Start Menu by default to look like Apple. WHY??? Anyone remotely familiar with UI ergonomics know Mac's window handling is garbage and nothing that OS does makes sense, particularly putting the Start Menu where it's hardest to click.
3. Garbage redesign of the Settings app. Again, WHY the redesign??? They also ignore High Contrast color selection when drawing the buttons as you hover over them, making them nearly impossible to read for vision impaired folks like me!
4. It just looks extremely Fisher Price, like they asked a bunch of art school students to design an OS, and they chose to use pastels. Probably the same imbeciles who designed Windows 8 without the slightest experience with UX design.
5. In another "fuck you" to us low vision losers, the new Explorer context menus don't have text for Cut/Copy/Paste/Rename, instead they have tiny icons. And all the old menu items added by applications are in a submenu that is annoying to get to. Because they care more about aesthetics than UX design, just like the Windows 8 guys.
6. Of course, the ads. Pure "enshittification." I've just added that word to my dictionary, I use it so much now.
At least they dropped that super heavy Android subsystem. Windows does NOT need Android apps. But then they also introduced that in Windows 11, so no props there.
Re:Things I hate about Windows 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
The Mac has the best UI out there, bar none. It doesn't have a fucking "start menu", not in the center of the screen, not anywhere. It puts the menu bar, with actual fucking consistent menus since 1984, at the top of the fucking screen where it fucking belongs.
Mac window handling is FAR better than Windoze, even better than Xfce. Nothing else comes close.
Apple makes the only usable trackpads in the industry. It's a massive pain to use any other laptop without carrying a mouse around.
Dropping Android apps was fucking stupid. macOS has iPad/iPhone apps, Micro$hit needs to get their act together.
Windoze can't be enshittified. It's been utter shit since 1.0, and it will never be not utter shit.
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This... The Apple touchpads are the only ones even remotely usable, you'd have thought other manufacturers would have caught up by now but even modern laptops seem to have much worse touchpads than 10 year old macbooks.
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All trackpads are equally inferior to the Logitech trackball mouse.
Also, we're talking about the OS.
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So how do you start a program on Mac?
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2. Centering the Start Menu by default to look like Apple. WHY??? Anyone remotely familiar with UI ergonomics know Mac's window handling is garbage and nothing that OS does makes sense, particularly putting the Start Menu where it's hardest to click.
Most everything you said except this. As someone who switches between Windows and MacOS 20 times a day, I assure you MacOS is superior in almost all UI elements.
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I bet you, without even looking at the screen, I can click the Windows Start Menu, with my mouse, in a quarter of a second. Every Windows user can.
As for window management, Mac truly sucks, and always has, though with Windows 11, they're really starting to go stupid. I saw a video of a power user on YouTube who documented a lot of this stuff a few months ago. I'll try to find it for you.
And for "UI elements" I am not sure what you refer to, specifically.
Worse than the Vistake (Score:2)
And frankly, Vista wasn't that bad by comparison.
Every new feature in Windows 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me, or is this kinda useless data? (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually went to the source of this data because I was intrigued that Win8 grew in market share, which made me wonder if maybe this was just percent of Windows installations. I really don't think a significant number of people are installing Win8, so maybe the total market share of Windows as a whole fell? But I can't find actual numbers.
You can download the "data" for the various charts they publish, but the data was just more percentages, no actual raw numbers anywhere.
So based on that chart, Win8 is trending better than Win11. That makes no sense at all, but when the "data" they let you download is just the numbers in the chart, not the actual survey numbers from which they derived the numbers in the chart it really becomes just noise.
Wasn't this site supposed to be "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? This was just eye candy, with all the weight and significance of a hollow chocolate bunny.
Linux is a viable alternative (Score:3)
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General purpose computers are going back to being niche tools for geeks.
Having a complex general purpose computer is a terrible idea for most people, they have no idea how to manage it, keep it secure, safely install software etc. The average user is much better with an appliance that provides specific functionality. People who want to play games can buy a console, watch movies on a smart tv, browse websites on a tablet etc.
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With Microsoft continuing to play target practice with its own two feet, I expect Linux to become an even more viable alternative. LibreOffice is quite usable and games are quite playable using Lutris and Steam. I've been free from Windows for a year and a half now. Everything I do on both my laptop and desktop is now on Arch Linux using the Cinnamon Desktop Environment. There's no need for me to go back. I can even edit photos with GIMP. GIMP will do roughly 90% of what Photoshop will do.
If I searched my posting history, I'm sure I could find a /. post saying exactly the same thing... except mine would have been from around 2005, and would have mentioned native games instead of Lutris/Steam, and specified Debian Linux and KDE. And GIMP. I was really into photography back then and used the hell out of GIMP. I still use it regularly, though not as much because my camera doesn't get so much use.
My point? I don't really have one, except that these sorts of predictions have a long history of p
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Yep, before you know it, Linux will reach 4.1% of desktops, any month now.
Here's the thing. Linux has been "viable" for a long time. Its problem is that there are too many options. It's like going into a grocery store aisle where the entire aisle contains hundreds of different brands of toothpaste. How is one to decide? The winner is going to be the brand that sets up a big colorful display at the end of the aisle, explaining why you should use THAT toothpaste. It might or might not be any better, but it st
Human lives lost (Score:2)
Let's say half a billion people worldwide use windows regularly... With all the changes MS keeps pushing, let's say each one of them loses an hour a month in productivity on average to relearn the new and "better" UI or the shifted settings screens. Or reactivating or redeactivating something Microsoft toggled in the latest update.
500 millio nhours every month. If my math isn't completely off its rocker, that's 800+ human lives (average lifespan of 70 years) wasted every month.
Now this is not quite murder,
I never âoeupgradedâ (Score:2)
Bring back MS DOS (Score:2)
That was the best operating system. I used to type stuff in WordPerfect, which peaked in version 5.1.WYSIWYG word processors started the decline of computing.
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Microsoft started the decline of computing. FTFY
Observation (Score:2)
If MS straps just one more JATO to that pig, they'll have to hold a BBQ in the parking lot.
If I can run my games and Chrome I'm good (Score:3)
I'm no longer a professional keyboard twiddler after I switched to my unionized janitor job.
I still refurb and fix systems I find on the curb for fun (like building model trains for me) and give them away.
I've moved to making all the systems I build dual boot Win10 and Linux Mint, or Linux Mint on old Macs.
For my personal use all I really do is play games and surf the web on a Win 10 box, so the next time I need to do a refresh of my system I'm likely just going to install Steam OS on my gaming box, with a dial boot to Mint for converting audiobooks or using GIMP.
For the average home user for non-professional uses Steam OS and Mint will likely be sufficent.
Windows 11 (Score:3)
Windows 11 is a giant privacy raping, ad pushing, malware laden mess. Windows 10 a little less I suppose. Lesser of two evils?
The OS means nothing to me... (Score:2)
Old Computers (Score:2)
I installed a SSD and Windows 10 on an old Core i3-2100 computer with 4 GB of RAM and it actually runs well. No hardware compatibility issues, no performance slowdown, and obviously the SSD made it much snappier. So why should MSFT be allowed to forcibly sunset huge amounts of older computer hardware, much of which is way more powerful than this old office computer? And why should anyone be forced to go along with it? It really seems like they're abusing their monopoly position and resulting in massive
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My mom's been dead for a few years now. You should really be scared if she's calling you.
Distro choice is subjective, try a few in VMs. (Score:3)
Distro choice is so personal I don't advocate one but suggest trying a variety in VMs then choosing what suits your use case. Free prebuilt VM free abound online. VMs are a fine way to sample distros and keep a Windows install where useful. Of course you can run Windows VM on your Windows host for testing versions like LTSC.
I mostly have Linux hosts (I use Xubuntu LTS) with Windows guests which is a very convenient way to install Windows as one may revert to the clean install snapshot I take after install