How likely is a future where Microsoft

(a) gives us back 2000/XP/7/11 options for UI,

(b) gives us a desktop-first experience when we have keyboard/mouse plugged in,

(c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again,

(d) and focuses 100% on making a stable OS and high quality dev/office apps?

It would be so nice if they just forked a commit from ~2005 and started from there.

(Maybe Copilot will mess up & erase commits so they have to? One can only dream.)

> (c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again

Microsoft and OpenAI have the same problem in that they have a massive userbase that costs them money but doesn’t generate any revenue. The only known ways of sustaining such a structure is ads or becoming a marketplace and they failed at the second so I doubt your wish will ever come true.

I'd be super happy if they left Windows alone and did just this for years to come. Use the other products to make money, and just maintain this Win 2000/7/10 type OS without new features, and stop trying to hide everything behind fancy UI. I still revert back to old control panels to do the necessary tweaks.

0%

I think the most likely thing that will happen is MS will have a hard split between the corporate and consumer OSes. Much like they tried to do with windows 2000 vs windows 9x.

And much like what happened with that split, I think you'll see consumers getting copies of corporate windows to get around/away from consumer windows.

Give me back the proper search which last worked Windows 7-ish (or XP?). And traditional Office interface (not stupid "context-specific" tiles).