Sony believed that they had so much market share that they could make a console that was leaps and bounds more complicated to code for, which would lock devs in and prevent them from going elsewhere, and they’d just have to suck it up because of said market share. Sony was wrong, and they lost out big time that generation (although they did manage to win the Blu-ray vs hd-dvd format wars).
Microsoft seems to believe they have so much market share that they can force people to upgrade to a privacy invading, ai infested piece of crap, and that everyone needs to suck it up because market share.
I’ve already started hearing wind that people, in statistically significant numbers, are finding alternatives… so is this the same situation as the ps3?
Just a passing musing without much to back up the gut feelings.
And Microsoft might be right this time. My mid size organization for example is locked in to microsoft, we use the Office suite, AD, Teams, their ERP system, Windows servers, Windows desktops, outlook, etc.
I would love to go the Foss route but let’s be real, the costs that would save would quickly be overshadowed with learning to set it all up.
Let me know if I’m wrong here, I really am open to moving over but it’s a massive undertaking.
I work in IT. IMO, the civilian population moving to Linux is inevitable. As Linux finds itself and good ways to do things that don’t require people to know bash, or customize options by manually editing config files, things will push that way.
IMO, it will happen, but not quite yet. We’re seeing the initial push of the privacy conscious and those that want to avoid becoming a product. It’s good, but we’re not there yet. We’re also seeing some pretty major players, most notably valve, pushing for consumer goods that are unashamedly Linux under the hood. This is, slowly but surely, pushing forward compatibility for apps running on Linux.
We probably won’t see any line of business apps adopting a Linux build any time soon, and business in general actually wants the majority of what Microsoft is pushing for… Along with government institutions (for their own needs), and more. I don’t see business moving towards Linux anytime soon… Not beyond it’s current role in server operations.
As stuff like steamOS get better and better, and find ways to solve problems in consumer friendly ways, that knowledge will feed back into existing Linux tools. We’ll get to a point where Linux will be as plug and play as Windows, and that’s when we actually have a good chance of migrating a lot of personal PCs to Linux.
The Battle for the workplace is still a long way out. Well after the Linux home PC is commonplace. People at the office will simply have more experience with Linux, and push for being able to use Linux at work and eventually that’s going to start to happen… Probably not in our lifetimes.
To me, it’s only a matter of time. Unless Linux undergoes a hostile takeover and unforeseen bullshit happens, it will happen.
It will happen when you see Linux PCs and laptops at Best Buy right beside the windows and macos ones.
I’m pretty sure this is a repost of a comment I read in 2004.
And honestly you’re not hearing that people in broad swath of numbers are replacing Windows you’re hearing in a very echo chamber like here or Reddit or possibly dig that people are replacing windows it’s still a small number statistically and while it’s slightly growing it’s still not enough that’s going to matter to Microsoft even in the least bit. The average person is not going to know what to do and the average person is not going to understand or even know that there’s an alternative besides macintosh. Nor are they going to attempt to install an alternative version of an operating system. I mean hell I couldn’t even convince my dad to buy a $200 laptop over the $900 gaming PC for the 40 minutes of work he does on computers a week. Some people just are going to do what they do out of habit and not even care.
And then Microsoft made the same mistake with Xbox One+Kinect.
But then quickly stopped making Kinect mandatory. Plus the Kinect was a wonderful piece of hardware.
Seriously they provided a kinect less bundle 6 months after launch
Seriously they provided a kinect less bundle 6 months after launch
I wonder why 🙄.
I would add Xbox One+Kinect+Always online+the used games policy.
That must of been a long shower thinking about this
I’ve come to the conclusion that Lemmy has the same thoughts in or out of the shower.
For many of us, our brains are rolling things around all day but not necessarily completing thoughts or doing anything useful with it. Then, stop focusing on screens or whatever and get into an environment that has little to no mental stimulation, and all that stuff comes crashing out of “the ether” (back of the mind) and assembling at wild speeds. It’s called ADHD*.
*Obviously, there’s more to ADHD than this kind of thing, and people with ADHD aren’t the only ones who find time to think in the shower.
ADHD - Thought about it before, during, after shower with breaking lines of thoughts that may or may not relate to the orginal. Naturally showers on auto-pilot; washing results my vary.
ADD - Got into shower and accidently activate a trap card in thought process. Prolonged thought with no clear indication of a conclusion. Have yet to wash their body and water running cold.
No, more people need to go to Linux or something else that’s not win or mac
Nah it was Wii controller and Wii Sports that Sony lost to. Wii Sports sold over 83M copies, other Wii games like Wii Sports Resort 33M, Wii Play 28M, Wii Fit 22M. Wii controller was what crashed other consoles. That was what put Nintendo back on the top after Nintendo 64 flop. Compare it to PS2 - best Sony console, best sold game is GTA San Andreas and it sold only 17M copies.
What keeps Windows afloat is Office 365 for corporations and companies.
No kid will have Linux at home if their parents work for corpo and are no tech nerds.
They had everything going for it.
The Wii Controller. The Wii Fit. Wii Bowling. That Wii U Streaming device so you could play Wii Sports on the go. They were truly leaps and bounds ahead.
Wii didn’t have a streaming device. Wii U was a sequel console, and the controller was that stupid tablet thing. It connected to the console via Bluetooth, you could only have one connected at a time, and they didn’t sell replacements separately, so if you broke the stupid thing, you had to mail it to Nintendo and wait a month for them to fix it.
Maybe for home computing which isn’t their priority. They’ve always had their bread buttered by corporate business
And all the corporations are looking to put all the AI in all the places… because: magic free labor fairy dust, and all that.
The idea that any job done using a computer could be done by the computer is worth 1.5 trillion dollars to them
I hope those that are iffy about the jump away from microsoft look at valves steam machine and realize they can also use it for more than games. Make a smooth transition from oh this thing only does games to oh I can use it as my PC.
Most people don’t even need a PC these days. They use the phone for everything. There is an entire market of people who have windows pc purely to play games, and nothing else. That’s ripe for the taking.
No way, unlike Windows 11, the PS3 was actually quite a good product.
They don’t know nothin bout that PS Triple
Every other version of windows flops or sucks. 98 SE, good. 2k/ME, No. XP, great. Vista,no. 7, great. 8, No.
10…probably the last good Windows unless M$oft unfucks itself and makes 12 good. But I doubt it.
Definitely wouldn’t equate 2k with ME.
Under the hood, 2K is much different from and more stable than ME.
That seems like a very different situation.
they did manage to win the Blu-ray vs hd-dvd format wars
They didn’t win them: they bought them. Blu-ray won via payola more than popularity or technical superiority. HDDVD has way better error correction and thus longevity, but you can see why corpos wouldn’t want that at the peak of the planned obsolescence / e-waste years.
The PS3 including a BD drive certainly played a part though.
MS tried to push HD-DVD but required a separate device to use it on 360.
It feels like that was the generation of poor console decisions.
Blu-ray appears to have presided over the premium segment of the video-disc market just as it went down the tubes entirely. These days you can buy used DVDs 2 for $0.99, and Blu-Ray for $1.99 each - super 4x premium market they’ve cornered there.
Them being cheap means nothing in reference to the quality… and is also a function of winning the war.
If consumers went with HDDVD you would be saying the same thing about them. Price is a function of production and corps aren’t going to produce a tech en masse consumers don’t want or aren’t purchasing.
Them being cheap means consumers no longer value them - which is what the wars are all about: value translated to sales and profits. Price is a function of what consumers will pay, which has little or nothing to do with what a thing costs to make.
If consumers went with HDDVD you would be saying the same thing about them.
Absolutely. BluRay was Captain of the Titanic, and is going down with the whole physical media ship. Vinyl LPs are the lifeboats.
Are we past said peak, then?
It wouldn’t be the first time a Microsoft OS was a total disaster.
It does more or less follow the age-old Microsoft pattern: One disaster OS, followed by one improved OS people mostly enjoy.
Only problem for them is that this time there’s actually way more viable OS options for average people to turn to, and they’ve simultaneously leaned heavily into surveillance capitalism, monitoring, and AI when all of those things are broadly unwelcome. Its a recipe for a big loss in market share, and I can’t say I don’t love that for them.
we’v e had improved ms oses since 7?
It’s hard to argue that Windows 10 isn’t way better than Windows 7 in terms of user interface, workflow patterns, security, and feature support. Despite the fact that Windows 10 comes with a lot of useless junk. Hell, even the junk it came with (Microsoft Edge, Cortana, OneDrive) is more useful than the junk Windows 7 also came with.
And similarly, while people have a lot of nostalgia for Windows XP, from an absolute standpoint, Windows XP is complete ass as an operating system. It was only good in comparison to Windows 2000, ME, and 98/95.
I run a CNC machine at work that runs from a Windows XP PC. Can confirm the OS is still dogshit.
Win 10 was fine.
I really like Linux Mint though.
Linux Mint is great for my 80-year-old grandfather. No Microsoft account BS, and the interface is simple enough for him to learn. He only uses the computer to look at his investments online using Microsoft Edge and play Minesweeper (GNOME Mines seems to be an acceptable replacement for him), and look at old family photos. It runs great on his 6-year-old computer.
Why running debloat programs are necessary.
gestures at fucking linux
linux is ms?
My bad. I read that as IN OSes not ms OSes. Carry on.
no worries!
gestures at fucking linux
Usually Microsoft releases new versions quickly enough to leap-frog each other, though. Windows 98 was still supported when Windows XP was released, so nobody really needed to use WinME. The same thing happened with Windows Vista and 8. People could always just skip over the especially-shitty versions and wait for the next, not-quite-as-shitty version to come out before upgrading. They can’t do that with Windows 11, though.
When recently onboarding for a new job I heard something I never thought I would hear in my life.
Everyone was given a Mac. Eng, design, finance, HR. Everyone. In my onboarding cohort, someone in finance asked if they could have a Windows PC, which has been the backbone of finance orgs for decades. IT said no. They just didn’t want to deal with Microsoft’s enterprise ecosystem.
Not finance but I always bring this up when ppl argue about android vs iPhone.
Tons and tons of businesses prefer the Apple ecosystem because it just fucking works.
Although, in the v26 operating systems, cracks are showing. A lot of IT orgs are holding off on Tahoe for as long as possible.
As someone who went through this, I would honestly take Window 11’s bs over pos unusable mac.
First time ever I think I felt pain in my wrist from using a trackpad. Absolute clownshow of a UX
I’ll agree that Apple is the big red nose on a much larger clownshow, but… between Microsoft and Mac, I’ll just say that I’ve got a request in with IT for a MacBookPro when funding becomes available. Some of that is because our IT has crippled Windows beyond its usual hobbled state, which is bad enough, and they haven’t hit the OS-X image as hard. But, even so, bone stock Windows 11 on a modern desktop i7 still has HORRIBLE performance issues that OS-X generally doesn’t suffer from. Intrusive virus scanning, intrusive file indexing, intrusive cloud backup… Apple does these things, but generally does them a bit better (though the clowns do mess up plenty along the way.)
I’ve used Ubuntu as my desktop for the past 15 years, it’s a different kind of clownshow - one that I prefer to the other two choices, but it has definite flaws of its own.
Interesting. I’ve got of gripes with Apple hardware (price, upgradability, silly things like notches and Touch Bars,) but trackpads has never been one of them. I’ve always thought the’ve had some of the best trackpads.
What trackpad do you prefer and why?
Oh no the trackpad itself is actually pretty okay. Its the fact that I have to drag a ridiculous length for the subsequent input to match on screen, even with the highest sensitivity setting.
Apple’s ingenious design was to make the trackpad feel like a 1:1 representation of your display, which is why its so huge.
And since way too much stuff in MacOS is functional around mouse clicks, I was constantly swiping all over the place for basic functions.
I think apple users kind of got used to using only their arm, but thats hard for me to do since I’m used to regular old trackpads and mice.
EDIT: Comparatively, I’m fine one something like a thinkpad or even a very cheap HP notebook, so long as the OS or Application UX is cool enough to keep things sensible.
Weird. I never noticed that. I bump mine up a bit from the default, but I don’t max it out. That’s way too fast for me to handle.
I do know there are ton of apps that will override the defaults. I think the OG better touch tool will let you max that thing to warp speed.
When I started at my current job, every new hire was given the choice of a MacBook or Linux laptop. I only encountered one person who chose the former and he only chose that because he thought it’d be funny to use Windows on a MacBook in his professional environment. (We were allowed to do pretty much whatever with our laptops so long as we could fulfill our work duties. My then manager replaced Ubuntu, with which we were provided, with Arch on his laptop.)
Two or so years later, the IT department said that they didn’t really know how to maintain security compliance on Linux, but they did know JAMF. Thus, they took away our customizable Linux laptops and foisted MacBooks on all of us. I’m pretty sure even the Windows guy lost that, but he was an exec so it probably took longer.
I still remember when they announced that this would happen. They said it without a timeline in the company-wide group chat and someone I respected previously and respected more afterwards said “so when are you taking away our good laptops?”
My guess that they’re trying to standardize around a platform that has a) no Microsoft, b) won’t cause product / UX / marketing to totally revolt, c) is well supported as an engineering platform (in Silicon Valley)
I got the same treatment recently. All tech departments were issued M4 Mac Book Pros because that was more cost effective than than dealing with the non-compliant fuckery of W11. Unfortunately non-tech departments got the old inventory and are suffering the abhorrent instability of W11. It somehow refuses to play nice with just about everything in our corporate ecosystem.
That’s nice to see actually. Regular consumers like us don’t have any pull, but businesses do. So I hope more start seeing Microsoft problematic enough to start shifting away to MacOS to get Microsoft to reassess their decisions.
I fear Microsoft will simply not reassess their decisions and we’ll be stuck with Apple, who has historically been much worse about user freedom.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide it is because they don’t have even more AI stuff for every single task that their OS isn’t liked more and start shoving in AI into even mouse clicks with “helpful” copilot trying to predict if you are clicking to click or copy and paste.
I don’t know if Apple’s shenanigans are much better with how they’re trying to lock it down
Trying? Have you used a recent version of MacOS?
Shit is locked down as tight as they can get without preventing the ability to be used for development.
But macOS is even more locked down than windows?
IMHO, it depends on the company, their data retention and security policy, and what you mean by “locked down.”
I’ve had IT departments that are comfortable giving everyone admin accounts and full sharing access, and IT departments that control every little thing that goes in and out of your machine.
They specifically mentioned the enterprise ecosystem.
I would not be surprised at all if Apple’s MDM system is less painful to use for smaller businesses than Microsoft’s AD and everything attached to it. Hell it might even be nicer for big orgs, but I’ve never heard of one (apart from the likes of Google) not using AD
Also if you’re already dealing with one of those systems, an IT department is probably motivated to not run both and set up interop if they can avoid it
Used to work for Apple in B2B sales.
Granted, this was five years ago, but back then it was sort of the other way round. The deployment at SMB scale worked really well and was also free of charge.
AT enterprise you would need a third-party solution typically, something like JAMF.
Locked down would probably be a plus for enterprise.
But honestly I’ve never got that argument. In what way is macOS more locked down than Windows? In the hardware that it will run on yes. But for the average user it seems fairly similar on the being “locked down” front.
I mean the hardware thing is huge imo
Sure, but for say the average laptop buyer nowadays not really.
True, but enterprise hardware has never been something that IT departments really wanted to upgrade. Even back when everyone had upgradable towers under their desk, IT departments just wanted to kit you out with something that lasted 3 years, then was replaced.
Hell, in the before times, when I’ve even wanted more storage, all of my IT departments were more inclined to give me an external HD than open a computer case. They’re busy and they generally want to do whatever is fast.
This is definitely becoming more common. I’ve seen Macs steadily gain market share in my organization because the Windows machines are locked down in such draconian ways that they become unusable, but somehow they allow much better user experiences on Macs as an option, so most people go that direction.
Can you install linux on a mac?
Older Intel Macs are some of the best Linux machines. The newer ones with Apple CPUs are a compatibility nightmare.
There is a distro specifically made for Apple CPUs.
Yes, Asahi. It’s still a compatibility nightmare :(
If you can get an old final-intel-gen MBP in decent nick, they can make pretty decent Linux machines if you’re okay with not being able to do any internal hardware upgrades.
tiny-dfr is your friend if you happen to get one with that touchbar F-row, which is probably the only big downside compared to a conventional laptop.
Yes. And Windows too, on the x86 ones. Those are no different than a traditional laptop.
*At the moment, only M1 and M2 Macs are supported
Yup
