How dare you insult the forty gazillion company! Stand back ma'am I'll protect you from this handsome hacker ruffian!
Jokes aside, I have started to see Microslop as the lesser of two evils (two evils being MSFT and AAPL, Google being its own parallel universe abomination). Their commitment to backward compatibility really paved the way to cheap PCs for the masses. That said, every day Macroslop is working diligently to prove me wrong.
Microsoft doesn't give 2 cents now on desktops and desktop software. They care about selling cloud and cloud products.
Since they can't charge a subscription for Windows (like Adobe does for its products), they don't care about it anymore.
Do they no longer charge annual licenses for Windows Server?
On that topic, it’s always surprised me just how little Apple invest into their enterprise / business backend services. Everything about the way they integrate Macs into businesses is awkward. Apple could make so much money there if they wanted to. It’s a real missed opportunity.
The issue is that nobody (relatively speaking) uses Windows Server.
I don’t even think Microsoft is all that adamant that their customers use it.
It’s just not competitive with Linux and that ship has sailed. Linux is better and costs $0. Microsoft lets you run .NET applications on Linux and they’re better there.
I think the same thing happened with SQL Server. Nobody’s choosing it for new projects, its niche is basically legacy software.
I agree that Apple is missing an opportunity with business and enterprise but I think the issue is that they’re so far behind that catching up would be a massive investment that might never pay off.
This is similar to saying that Microsoft missed an opportunity with smartphone ecosystems. They could spend billions on getting a smartphone back on the market and it would arrive and everyone would ask the question “why am I buying this when my iPhone has X million apps on its store and is a nearly perfect device?”
If Apple Enterprise Cloud was available today who is switching and why? Apple would have to undercut established players to convince businesses to switch via a massive migration effort.
I work with fortune 500 clients, and all of them use Windows server for something. Usually a lot of somethings. For example: Active Directory.
If we look at Microsoft's revenue I think it's pretty clear that they do in fact care an awful lot about Windows Server - or at least should.
In fiscal year 2025, Microsoft Corporation's revenue by segment:
> Linked In Corporation: $17.81 B
Hwat? How does LinkedIn generate revenue (as much as "Windows")?
I don’t think this is clear at all because the segments are lumped together and highly unclear.
What’s the difference between “server products and cloud services” and “server products and tools?”
I assume the former is Azure and the latter is on-premise.
In that case if we lump 365 in with server products and cloud tools then it shows that 2/3 of the enterprise revenue is going to cloud and 1/3 is on-premise (and I assume that 1/3 is declining over time)
Why can't they charge a subscription for windows? It could be only a small yearly fee.
It's primary benefit is that it comes free with the laptop they bought on Amazon.
Once there's friction there, it'll make other friction seem less bad.
Because Windows is a garbage product and they would quickly wipe out its userbase by doing that.
I get the impression they care very much about windows because they can sell ads on it.
Apple basically spearheaded the war on general computation. Before them, phones used to be more or less open, Apple cracked down on that very quickly.
Well, before Apple, most phones were appliances with fixed software; there was no openness to speak of. That said, I wish they hadn't continued this trend and instead took inspiration from Windows Mobile.
Before iphone mobile phones were running Java applets, which were sometimes even compatible across different phone manufacturers and users even could exchange them over infrared. In contrast first iPhone initially had no support for third party software, only web apps.
Before them, phones used to be more or less open
Wow. Just… wow.
Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellular, Cincinnati Bell, PrimeCo, and the fifty different regional carriers calling themselves "Cellular One" to offer my app on their networks.
I'm not claiming that iPhones are open to the extent that HN griefers want it to be, but you must have been freshly hatched in the years before the iPhone to think the ecosystem was open.
I say this as someone who developed some of the first mobile phone weather apps. (Before "app" was even a word.)
Or, you know, there's more than one country in the world.
I could flash my Nokia 6210 with whatever firmware I wanted, but I guess that doesn't count, because Nokia and Ericsson aren't American companies.
I may be guilty of the same thing you're mentioning (I'm in the USA), but my Nokia 6210 came with a carrier lock and I wasn't even able to visit websites via the WAP browser unless my carrier approved of them because WAP acted like a sort of mandatory vendor operated proxy that allowed them to see and filter everything the phone did. They would, for example, filter out websites about ringtones to try and force you to buy theirs for $0.99/piece.
My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.
That's very much a product of the American oligarchy - with Apple, MSFT and Google at the forefront. Yes, these particular restrictions were the gifts from the US Telco industry. But the corporations in the US behave practically all the same - abuse the customers as much as possible, in every conceivable manner. This is partly due to the fact that these incumbents don't allow smaller ethical competitors to survive.
Granted that there are variations of these abusers in every country. But the US companies are on a whole different level. They practically own the ostensibly democratic government. I'm sorry to break the top commenter's bubble of bliss. But these companies have depleted any goodwill and benefits of doubt a long time ago to deserve any kind mention.
PS: I get downvoted every time I express this sentiment here. That's not surprising, given the strong representation that these rogue players have on HN. Fair enough! But the downvoters would do well to realize that no amount of such anonymous disapprovals are going to reverse the course of the global tech community's steadily souring opinions and hostility towards such companies. It won't take very long for this to hit their markets too, if the boycott hasn't already started in several parts of the world. So they might as well take the message and take the steps to repair their damaged reputation and trust, though it's going to be a long road ahead to recovery.
4 kings.
Wipe if you think you can do better :) It can and has been done.
4 horseman, you're welcome.