I wonder what's their endgame. I mean, if it keeps getting worse, at some point they will really bleed users.

Even if for now the stats (e.g. steam hardware survey), show only a slight increase in Linux users (and a lot of them could be dual booting)

> a lot of them could be dual booting

I should have a valid license for windows, my Win 8 Pro license (which I paid full price for, like $150) should have worked for Windows 10 (and then transfered to 11) but it's not working anymore for whatever reason, I probably upgraded without disabling the key somewhere or whatever. So when I use Windows I have that "activation required" nag watermark now. When microsoft finally remotely kills my unactivated windows 10 install (a week from now? 6 months?) I'm just not going back. The only reason I dual boot these days is fusion 360 CAD and there's a steam install on there so it's probably showing up as a windows install even though I haven't played games on there in probably years.

Windows will probably continue on forever simply due to inertia but this "you have to have a web login to use your private computer" b.s. is going to turn off a lot of consumers, and this will be the watershed moment where Proton/Wine finally moves from 5, to 10 or 15% of users

I'm not sure anyone at Microsoft has any endgame in mind for Windows. The devs are just working on what they're being told to work on, which aren't the parts conducive to happy consumers, while the execs are working on instinct and telemetry without context, and thus are basically flailing with no actual goal in mind beyond the next quarter. Add in that there's little hope for Windows' market share to increase in any large way, and that there thus isn't much reason to spend loads of money or dev time on improving Windows, and there's no wonder that we've come to this point.

Keep milking the cash cows to pay for the new growth area (AI). Convert maximum % of Windows users into subscription service consumers (e.g. cloud storage, Office 365, future paid AI capabilities.)

Try the internet without an adblocker. The typical user will put up with a lot of pain.

Microsoft's cloud/AI services are high-margin and lock users into a subscription, i.e. a consistent revenue stream. Windows is to be a marketing/cross-selling channel for those businesses first and foremost.

They very likely foresee the demise of PC as a platform altogether and are trying their best to shepherd us into their other products.

Replace personal PCs with thin clients that give you an RDP session to Azure? I'm pretty sure a cloud only / subscription based "agentic" OS is the goal for windows. And, conveniently, hardware prices are through the roof until (hopefully) the AI bubble pops.

you will not own a computer, you will lease them, via a terminal.

and you will like it. so says MS.

They’re using their legacy OS and Office business to subsidize services (LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, vscode, teams, azure, etc).

Consider what our industry will look like once the surveillance as a service/enshittifcation that’s been implemented for windows is ported to those things.

Try switching away from the services I mentioned, and you’ll see why the strategy makes sense.

The endgame is obviously to sell you Office 365, and Xbox Game Pass. Every Windows user who isn't giving them ARR equals one skeptical eyebrow from wall street.

Windows is absolutely insufferable now. Offensive, defective, regressive, clumsy, slow garbage.