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The freeze is for sales and Cloud, meaning they maxed out their market for Mr. Cloud. They will still hire for engineering, coding etc. They have to. 24 percent drop in market cap is HUGE. Even for MS. That is why the alarms are going off at MS and we have all of this, we are fixing what we borked with Ai.

The first thing that needs fixing is the leadership. Time for Mr Cloud to go sit on one. Hire a person who's focus is on the experience not the cloud.
 
No clue as the amount of users.

Yet that doesn't take away the fact that Microsoft cannot get out of its own way with updates to windows.
As I mentioned. All of these claims about Microsoft and updates, are all sensationalism. Nothing more. I have been using windows since windows started windowing and I have never had a borked update on any of my systems. I had one issue with payment but that's not windows, that's something else with microsoft.

All of these claims regarding windows in the past while, besides them forcing Ai into everything is all for clicks. Nothing more.
 
As I mentioned. All of these claims about Microsoft and updates, are all sensationalism.
I disagree

The fact that they needed to issue an out of band update, shows its not happening to two people or incredibly rare.
January - 3 OOB updates were released
February 1 OOB updates were released
March - 1 OOB update

Doing a bit of googling it appears that MS has released about 4 out of band updates in 2024, its generally considered a rarity of Microsoft to release an update outside of its normal monthly cadence, and the 4 updates back that up.

In 2025 there were 7 OOB, nearly a doubling of 2024
in 2026 we have 5 and we're only one quarter the way into the year

This information shows a troubling trend where the Patch Tuesday updates is causing more problems and breaking functionality.
 
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I disagree

The fact that they needed to issue an out of band update, shows its not happening to two people or incredibly rare.
January - 3 OOB updates were released
February 1 OOB updates were released
March - 1 OOB update

Doing a bit of googling it appears that MS has released about 4 out of band updates in 2024, its generally considered a rarity of Microsoft to release an update outside of its normal monthly cadence, and the 4 updates back that up.

In 2025 there were 7 OOB, nearly a doubling of 2024
in 2026 we have 5 and we're only one quarter the way into the year

This information shows a troubling trend where the Patch Tuesday updates is causing more problems and breaking functionality.
What is interesting to me is if you skip the OOB update, usually it's code is integrated into the next months release. So do they really need to release OOB updates?
 
For January, absolutely.
RDP wasn't working (KB5077744)
CloudPC/Windows 365 failures(KB5077793)
Broken apps like Outlook not working (KB5078127)
What is wild? Our work systems didn't have an issue with any of those things. I'm fairly sure we didn't install any of that months OOB updates.
 
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Quite the opposite: The ever-worsening macOS prompted me to switch to Windows. On my appreciated Mac hardware
… I simply regret not having switched sooner.
I posted statscounter info from Jan to mar 2026. MacOS is flatlined at about 2 percent, windows dropped, and Other (linux), Android and iOS gained. So, the move to linux is real and verifiable. This mass exodus, everyone is talking about from windows to mac is not happening. Even since the Neo.
 
Windows looks to be in freefall. MacOS/OS X appears to be gaining market share. I wonder what comprises "unknown."

Screenshot 2026-04-17 at 6.02.25 AM.png
 
Windows looks to be in freefall. MacOS/OS X appears to be gaining market share. I wonder what comprises "unknown."

View attachment 2622929
MacOS is flatlined, not gaining. it's older OSX rising. People are getting sick of MacOS'es garbage too. and using older OSX systems.

The Other also includes Linux. And yes. This reporting is from January to March. The exact same time that Microsoft's stocks jumped off a cliff. I expect a reversal of this freefall by mid year if they stick to their "promises".

Linux is the right choice IMO. I can't do it yet because I have not found software on the linux side that does what I need to do....YET.
 
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MacOS is flatlined, not gaining. it's older OSX rising. People are getting sick of MacOS'es garbage too. and using older OSX systems.
The issue with stat counter regarding macos, is that its process (or apple's safari browser) is that buggy, returning incorrect information so you really cannot rely on how an older version of macos is rising while the current is sinking. As a whole the number is likely to be accurate, but delving into the details, is when things get messy for stat counter.
 
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The current wasn't sinking it's flatlined, meaning it's not gaining or losing. So, as many people that are coming in to the MacOS system, there are as many leaving. Makes sense with the mess of both windows and MacOS OS's. The drop in windows is going to Linux mainly. Because of the windows 10 thing and Ai everywhere. I am still on the fence but Linux is a breath of fresh air.
 
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My point wasn't whether macos was growing/shrinking, I think the aggregate number is fine, its just when you look at the versions, those are rather wonky

I'm on Windows 11 as I require support and I have worked out the issues with Windows 11 and they haven't been breaking my systems. But they are breaking systems and nobody has really quantified how many users have been affected.

I've heard from others that Tahoe causes problems with two of the programs I use. If I want to stay on macOS, I will eventually have to use Tahoe, either because Sequoia loses support or I buy a new Mac.

I actually like Windows 11 - I just have to remove the stuff that gets in my way.

The issue with Windows 10 is real. A lot of traders are upset that their trading software no longer runs on Windows 10. It is often quite difficult to run it on Linux though and there can be performance issues.
 
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Another month, another problematic Patch Tuesday.
“This update broke BitLocker for me” — Windows 11’s April patch is locking out PCs, but here’s the fix that works

Its not a wide spread problem, yet it continues to highlight how Microsoft cannot get out of its own way when rolling out patches, and how every patch tuesday is now a gamble - will your system get borked. I've not seen a stretch of bad updates from one company for so long as this.

Here's another report, not sure if its the same or another issue
Windows 11 April update triggers "death loops" and bizarre pixelated crashes
 
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Another month, another problematic Patch Tuesday.
“This update broke BitLocker for me” — Windows 11’s April patch is locking out PCs, but here’s the fix that works

Its not a wide spread problem, yet it continues to highlight how Microsoft cannot get out of its own way when rolling out patches, and how every patch tuesday is now a gamble - will your system get borked. I've not seen a stretch of bad updates from one company for so long as this.

Here's another report, not sure if its the same or another issue
Windows 11 April update triggers "death loops" and bizarre pixelated crashes

I worked on an important database product back in the 1980s and 1990s and one of the big jobs was installation testing. We came up with a large matrix of operating system and current version environments and had a lot of hardware to work on and then got a team of people to do 20-30 installations each on different configurations. Our customers spent thousands to tens of thousands on maintenance contracts and we were expected to provide products that were reliable, particularly on something as basic as installation and use.

I've no doubt that there were lots of companies that did installation and verification testing on their own alternate hardware but we did our job before the product shipped. If there was a problem, then we fixed it and started testing over again.

Microsoft offers bug bounties of from $500 to $100,000 for beta and preview and perhaps they should advertise that more strongly so that they get more testers. You still want a strong QA team and process for testing but bug bounties do work in finding problems.
 
Some good news.
Microsoft just confirmed major Windows Update improvements for Windows 11 – here's what's changing

I've no doubt that there were lots of companies that did installation and verification testing on their own alternate hardware but we did our job before the product shipped. If there was a problem, then we fixed it and started testing over again.
Our company embraces HA availability and so having testing environments is all but required, and for patches, they are tested in a non-production environment. I manage about 30 servers for one application, and half of those servers are for non-production and Disaster Recovery.

I get that smaller organizations don't have the flexibility or funds, but many medium and larger businesses should
 
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