I disagree - Windows itself is excellent software, intuitive and pretty. The problem lies in the fact that Microsoft doesn’t have much control over design choices and software development frameworks when it comes to 3rd party developers. That’s why it’s still a patchwork of styles, with huge performance differences between individual apps etc. Makes it look like Android did a few years back.
Could not disagree more. Microsoft creates the reference that both hardware and software developers follow. They have a lot of control. They're too thoughtless to use it in a meaningful way. I'll give you an example. When Microsoft decided to get into the next-gen smartphone business they started building on top of Windows CE, which was a disaster. They did this to get into the market faster, but they knew full well, and told their customers, that this was temporary. So you market and sell a phone that has no future. Not very intelligent.
Meanwhile why they work on 2.0 of the phone they see Apple selling tablets off the shelf. Rather than making a tablet they take Windows, and they attempt to make a Tablet UI, Metro, for this tablet. After years of development, we see the Surface RT and Surface Pro. The RT is ARM-based, and the pro intel based. Both with the Metro UI. Only one problem... The UI doesn't have the functions needed to do basic computing. The user can't take an attachment, save it, or recall it from the Metro UI. The user can't make a file folder, etc. The user has to abandon Metro for Desktop constantly. Sometimes the onscreen keyboard fails to open when it should. The user is actually required to buy the keyboard and mouse in order to make full use of the tablet. Without it, the user will become stuck. And this is Microsoft's answer to the iPad.
Meanwhile, 2.0 of the phone is selling poorly and Microsoft decides to unify the development of apps between the phone and Windows. Again, signaling developers that development of smartphone 2.0 is also a waste of time, just like the first version based on Windows CE.
With each new major update, almost nothing noticeable to the user has been done. You wait, wait, and continue to wait and the reward for this waiting is virtually nothing but more promise of some future that never comes. Eventually, Microsoft rents the use of Nokia's name and IP. This goes nowhere as well and Microsoft drops it, writing down over $7 billion in losses after killing Nokia which stupidly following Microsoft instead of running to Android. Nokia, once the largest seller of smartphones essentially is a tiny shell of its once former glory.
All these years later if you try to use Metro exclusively even now, you still can't. Microsoft with well over 50,000 developers has made no progress on Metro. What they are now doing is focusing on tablet shaped laptops and passing them off as tablets. But if you need a keyboard and a mouse to do anything, how can this be called a true tablet?
Contrast this with Apple. Apple from day one of the iPhone and iPad had already defined the frameworks of the smartphone and later the tablet UI. You not only don't need a mouse, but you also can't use one even if you wanted one. A keyboard is truly optional. You absolutely can get one without it because Apple made sure of it before it ever went to market.
It turns out that for web development, folks largely wish to work with the Mac and Linux, and specifically avoid Windows. No built-in SSH and shell tools. Since the Mac is based on UNIX it doesn't have this problem. And since Linux is a clone of UNIX it also doesn't suffer from this problem. So classic Microsoft is now adding a Linux sub-layer which is optional to Windows in an attempt to bridge the worthless non-functional to the world platform to be more like UNIX/Linux. If all you ever managed was Windows on the network, perhaps PowerShell would be okay, but that's not the world we live in.
Microsoft sees what Amazon is doing with AWS. Azure is born and to pad the numbers, let's say Office 365 users are part of the same reporting as the Azure business. It's slow going so they add Linux instances to the Azure offering. And now Linux is used in Azure more than Windows is. The switched fabric of Azure is LINUX, not Windows.
Microsoft is essentially a parasite company. The got rich of IBM and DOS and used that to make Windows which got popular with the Windows 95 release. But that is all Microsoft ever had. They don't do anything remarkable on their own. Without competition they are fine. Once good competition shows up, they are in over their head. They are too slow and in fact, never get it done, see Metro. They don't follow through. As soon as the found a small following with the hardware, what happened to finish the Metro UI? They don't finish it for the sake of completing what they started. Once users adapt to using Windows Desktop on the tablet shape, they stop caring about Metro and essentially left it standing still. Do you ever see it mentioned in their annual expos? Do they show their progress on it? No. This is what Microsoft is. If you give them money you condone what they have and they consider it done.
Apple, on the other hand, keeps pushing themselves further. I don't always like it, but they do it. Microsoft is happy to stand still and collect cash forever until there is a revolt on their hands.
