This. Microsoft has said similar things before, and always tripled down on bad behavior afterward. Their priority is business outcomes, not user experiences or support, and that’s why even this non-apology makes it clear the stuff customers, engineers, and support staff hate - invasive telemetry, outright surveillance/spyware, online-only requirements, AI-everywhere, constant arbitrary deprecation of APIs and endpoints for external tools to drive internal product adoption, refusal to support consumer technologies long-term (MCE, WMR) or do things contrary to everyone else (print drivers) - isn’t actually getting addressed.
replyDon’t listen to the smooth talk. Plan an exit strategy now, before you need it later.
> Plan an exit strategy now, before you need it later.
replyThe idea that we'll all be forced off of Windows one day sounds like a dream, but so far we continue to be in a state where myself and many other are long past the point of wanting to leave, but we can't for some reason or another.
Microsoft knows that, which is why they've been able to do whatever they want and not worry about the consequences.
Microsoft won't force you off, but everyone - and every business - has a line in the sand somewhere. In my experience, most folks don't realize where it is until it's too late, and by then the costs are far higher (opportunity, financial, time) than they would've been with a defined strategy.
replyEven if you're not leaving the ecosystem anytime soon, you should always know where those lines are and what the landscape looks like on the other side of things.
I keep a VM with windows on it. Unfortunately you have to purchase a license. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade it like they've allowed since ~Vista. But now anyone tracking user agents knows I'm not using Microsoft. I didn't even put a browser on the VM. I have used the VM under 10 times over the past year and that's usually just to use Quick Assist to help others with their Microslop OS. Sometimes to deal with a particularly obnoxious excel file.
replyOf course the proof in the pudding is in the eating, but just saying that they want to do this stuff is at least a slight improvement over before, where we mostly just saw apathy and enshittification. It's also a promise that people can hold them to if they fail.
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