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.
I think it’s more comparable to say the same kind of mistake that Microsoft made with the Xbox One. Sold at a $100 premium over the playstation 4 because Microsoft assumed that everyone would love to get a bundled Kinect when actually nobody did.
Also when they announced the stupid DRM that they wanted to use on the Xbox One (console must be always online to work, games on disk to become single use gift cards that get redeemed to a Microsoft account and can’t be used on a different console) Probably Sony won the console war with this single 20 second video even if Microsoft backtracked immediately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
With windows 11 Microsoft is doing similar mistakes:
- With x86 processors, assuming that everyone has the money to buy a new computer even if their old one could work perfectly for what they need. Last week I went to visit an elementary school in my country and at the wall in the computer room they still had a poster comparing Netscape and Internet Explorer. They definitely don’t have the funds to throw and buy again 30 computers. Time for Linux to shine?
- With arm processors, making it an exclusive for the expensive snapdragon x. Result: those laptops cost even more than comparable x86 ones, while could be cheaper. Look at the recently launched Minisforum R1. A full desktop computer with 32gb RAM and an ARM CPU that is comparable to a core i5-10400F while costing only $500. But because Microsoft chose to support only the most expensive snapdragon processors, this brand new computers can exclusively run Linux. Time for Linux to shine?
I’m sorry, is this thread under the misconception that the X360 outsold the PS3? Because that’s wrong.
https://www.vgchartz.com/charts/platform_totals/Hardware.php/
X360 did win in North America, but PS3 had a small lead globally. The PS3 was completely dominant in Japan, and had a sizable lead in Europe.
If it wasn’t for the Red Ring of Death, the X360 probably would have won. In many ways, Microsoft’s gaming division never recovered from that.
Ps3 barely squeaked out a win in the last year or two, the 360 was the leading console for most of that generation.
Looking back now, I have a modded 360, and any titles that came out for both systems, the Xbox usually was the better version. The modding process for Xbox was a huge pain in the ass though, while the ps3 is super easy to run a software exploit and unsigned code (aka ethically sources ISOs)
7th gen was such a great generation of consoles. they hold up because hd and they are still super fun because no micro transaction bullshit
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.
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.
I’m pretty sure this is a repost of a comment I read in 2004.
Well, I didn’t lift it from anywhere. So, I guess there’s dozens of us?
I was half-joking how similar this is to things people have been saying for decades
Fair enough. Have a good day friend.
It is a little weird to use the word civilian here
I don’t see Linux catching on with most people.
It will happen when you see Linux PCs and laptops at Best Buy right beside the windows and macos ones.
I think the biggest decider of how quickly the world transitions away from Microsoft or Apple, is dependent on how the USA looks within a decade. If fascism in the USA stays strong, it would have knock-on effects with foreign relations. Should the USA pull out of NATO and sides with Russia, that by extension implies that US software could be hostile to European powers. The excel spreadsheet with fiscal data for Polish military expenditures? It might be sent straight to a three-letter agency and shared with Russia. Internal French memos that oppose the US? Leaked. And so on.
That would cause a major shift towards FOSS from governments across the world.
You’re already seeing multiple European governments moving to FOSS office suites.
The US has already been caught merging intentionally bad code into Linux. Remember what they did to sudo a few years back? Everyone who asks for root without giving a password and does so in a specific way just get root.
lol no. As much as I would love for Microsoft to go die in a hole, nobody is moving away from Windows. Sensationalist headlines heralding the downfall of Microsoft due to Windows $CURRENT being the worst ever version of Windows have been around since the epoch of Windows itself. People are always moving in droves to Linux. People are always refusing to update to Windows $CURRENT. I’ve heard it. You’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it. And we’ll all keep hearing it until the end of times. In the meantime, corporations still depend on that one piece of software they paid for 10 years ago that only runs on Windows, and people are still buying new machines that an OEM already put the latest version of Windows on.
Yes and no
Windows market share is falling to other platforms. It won’t go away overnight but the current trajectory of Microsoft isn’t good.
Honesty a large portion of the market share is now Android. People are choosing mobile devices over desktops.
Sure, Windows has been steadily losing marketshare to mobile for years now but that has nothing to do with Windows 11 being so bad that it will destroy Microsoft. I’m not saying Windows isn’t gonna die eventually, I’m saying nobody is there’s no sudden “statistically significant” shift away from it that will impact Microsoft the wat the PS3 impacted Sony. Things are as they’ve always been and by the look of things, they’ll continue to be that way until desktops are mostly phased out by phones.
Nah, price killed PS3 and with Windows, OEM’s eat the cost anyway. If its cheap, people will buy it. MS isn’t making things harder for developers, they aren’t increasing the price of windows, they offer support to orgs, they offer a whole suite of software for them too, they aren’t going anywhere. They’ll lose out some of the consumer market, but thats not where they get their money from anyway.
Windows 11 itself isn’t an issue
The problem is all the junk and AI crap they shovel into it. It also doesn’t help that they keep trying to sell you things.
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.
Steps to slowly escape are this:
- Install Debian + samba 4 on a server, configure to run it as an active directory server
- Join that server to the work domain as a backup domain controller
- Install onlyoffice on all computers and set it to use onedrive
- Meanwhile install nextcloud and get used to that with a small part, with onlyoffice.
- Migrate the users that don’t use too much Microsoft 365 to nextcloud instead of onedrive, onlyoffice+nextcloud instead of office, nextcloud talk instead of teams
- Start to decommission one windows domain controller and let the Debian domain controller do its work.
- The escape door is open, start to escape
In the short term, even if it’s free, having someone do this work will definitely cost more than paying the license for windows server + all the user CALs + the office 365 subscriptions but I think ROI in 5-7 years
None of that is really feasible though
Average office worker won’t even notice the difference between using a spreadsheet in onlyoffice shared with colleagues in nextcloud vs using a Microsoft® Excel document over onedrive.
Nextcloud talk with the php backend sucks but compared to Microsoft teams isn’t that awful anymore
And using smb4 as active directory server is completely undistinguishable from a windows AD server. It uses the exact same Windows-based tools and GUI for adding new users, groups and policies. It’s just slightly more complex to install. A new windows server license costs $1200 + $55 for each employee in the company. Put that money towards a Linux consultant paid $200/hour to install and configure it and it’s the same. 2/3 hours to setup and 1 hour per year for maintenance. And anyway the consultant that is paid to install and configure the windows based active directory server isn’t much cheaper, just easier to find.
Have you worked in a sysadmin position? Nextcloud and Samba aren’t really stable enough to use In a business as they both are a massive pain. You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to support them.
I agree that managing nextcloud for hundreds of users is a mess but in my example it just needs the shared space, not any specific plugin, that means it can be replaced by any other cloud solution like paying onlyoffice to do the managed hosting for you at $8/user and doing work chats with anything that’s not Microsoft teams
Btw I find Debian+smb4 as a “set and forget” solution that needs to just be checked once a year as it requires less troubleshooting than Windows server. Only exception when Microsoft a couple years ago forced a different encryption on Windows 11 and clients couldn’t login anymore. It was patched two years earlier but Debian is “stable” and didn’t get the patch. Otherwise can pay ucs2 for commercial support
Microsoft just has so many users unwilling to change, that I do not foresee that happening. Just 10% of people switching to Linux would be absolute win for me.
Microsoft is correct.
The PS3 lost out to the 360 because of more than just Sony. The 360 was shilled hard by influencers.
Most Windows users are too stupid to care about the issues with Windows or switch to something better.
People will get fed up and move on. It probably won’t be desktop Linux though. (At least in its current state)
Microsoft is bleeding power users and PC enthusiasts at an unprecedented rate. This is a great thing for Linux, but they are still absolutely locked into the corporate world and that’s where the money is.
The reality is that Microsoft solved management of corporate policy and identity like 25 years ago and nothing else has come close. It has its problems, but Active Directory is an incredible piece of software. The combination of LDAP, with obfuscation of Kerberos to the point where you don’t even need to know it exists, combined with policy deployment to endpoints is nothing short of a miracle.
Linux has tools for all those things, but none are easy to deploy or configure. If you have to manage thousands of desktops, Windows is still the clear choice
If you are a large corporation or government, you’d have the resources to do exactly that. I keep hearing about European governments moving to Linux. And why wouldn’t you? Screw perpetual licensing.
What those EU governments are doing is out of interest for national security rather than hate for licensing. The US has changed drastically in the last decade and getting your sensitive data out of their infrastructure is a top priority.
The cost of change from Windows to Linux is pretty small for an individual. Most people have one or two machines and a handful of programs, none of which are critical to your continued existence.
In the corporate world, you need to be absolutely sure that everything will work flawlessly, which often means weeks or months of testing on top of all your regular IT duties, constant support tickets to obscure software vendors who may not have ever worked with Linux, and if some mission-critical piece of software breaks, then the company cannot operate until it is fixed…or you can continue to use Windows, even though it sucks more now.
I want Linux to have wider adoption in the desktop space, but it’s a catch 22. People aren’t going to move unless the software is guaranteed to work, and Linux-based software isn’t going to be made unless people are using it. This is why Proton was such a big deal. It offered a real option for gaming to move to the platform and now it’s viable and devs are starting to take linux into account.
Its not a guarantee of flawless operation thats required, its a source of liability if something goes wrong. Someone has to be responsible if the latest update blows everything up.
I’m sure large organizations moving to Linux are also choosing a distro that has paid support. It’s probably still cheaper than Microsoft licensing, though.
Now where did I place that consultant…
You keep hearing about the same 3 german states moving to LibreOffice. That’s not quite the same thing.
generally, yes, but it’s a couple more now;
- Austria’s military is moving to open source
- couple of french cities (was is lyon?)
- i think denmark?
- pretty sure there’s a couple others
point being: it’s a clear trend!
it’s slow, yes, but it seems to be picking up steam!
the idea is being seriously discussed at basically all state institutions.
and more importantly: the reason for this trend is clearly data security. which states actually care about. so there’s a very clear and easy to understand incentive, which makes it politically palatable.
we’ll have to see, but the trend seems to be heading in the right direction!
Novell solved directory services 25 years ago. It took MS 10 to catch up.
You mean Novell royally fucked up Netware and people went to AD at first because of that. But yes, AD was quite new then, mostly an add-on for NT domains (and still sort of is :) try going full kerberos…).
How did Novell mess up netware? If anything Novell should have teamed up with IBM or Apple to take on end user productivity.
Netware 4 was utter garbage. It was horribly buggy if you got it to install. Admins hated it, and then win2k peeped around the corner.
Also, IBM was still big on mainframes and PCs, and OS/2 of course, and hadn’t really that much interest in Netware or Windows then (outsourcing deals aside). Apple was even way farther away from that, completely on their own OS and Appletalk, directories were not really useful for their users then.
I was going to reply essentially the same thing! I’m glad someone remembers their IT history. :)
“IT history” :(
Oh, well, time to go back to my crypt.
Haha, recent IT history. :)
Well remember netware had a 250 user limit per server before 4.0. Thats not alot in corp space. I remember running many servers just to handle user auth and logon back with netware 3.12
Wasn’t 4 still a flat directory? I’m talking about 5 when it got serious.
I present to you a wild notion:
Adobe OS.
They have the market value and revenue to do what steam is doing.
They could make switching a cost save if the OS integrates vertically with the creative cloud.
To be clear, I don’t want this and would t use it. But any business with licenses would say “wait… Ditch Microsoft and… Poof?”
All that Microsoft provides any business at this point is AD/Azure.
I feel like Microsoft is taking massive Ls between now and 2030. I don’t think Adobe is gonna do this, I’m just saying if they did, it could work. Microsoft is a weak giant right now.
Adobe has been their own worst enemy for decades and their one true skill is fucking things up. The best thing about Adobe trying to make their own OS would be that it could wipe them out.
-signed, a long time bitter former Adobe user that still has to support their shit
AD and LDAP is notoriously insecure as hell by default. It took until 24H2 for MSFT to enable SMB signing, which was a solid 50% chance for an authenticated attacker to reach domain admin on any enterprise network.
There are a lot of solutions that eclipse AD in both quality and scope. It’s just like VMWare, a once solid product that orgs got vendor locked into, and are stuck for life.
It’s a backwards compatibility issue. MS has been telling people for years that defaults are not secure. I have enterprise grade equipment in production that doesn’t support smb signing by default.
Shit is crazy.
Linux is a bad choice for multiple reasons. I wish Linux had better support for games, DAWS (my job) and other software.
Linux has close to the best support for games possible without support from the game developers.
Other windows software usually isn’t quite as good in my experience, but still better than non-native software on any other operating system.
Never used a DAW, so I can’t say anything about that.
I wish Linux had better support for games, DAWS (my job) and other software.
Do you have any examples or details so we can understand your point better?
It runs FL studio and Ableton like complete ass we well as any plugin I need. Has terrible Nvidia support and even worse Intel support.
FL studio and Ableton through WINE, I presume? That’s really the responsibility of the FL studio and Ableton developers, not Linux. I got Bitwig specifically because it supports Linux natively, and I hear it does it well (I haven’t tried it on Linux yet). From what I understand, the situation with Nvidia is also largely on Nvidia’s camp, although some distributions have gone above and beyond to get their GPUs to work well from the get go, like Pop OS, which I also just installed recently. No idea about Intel, but I thought I had heard that their support (and AMD’s) for Linux was much better than Nvidia’s.
I’m not complaining about Linux. But the lack of support that companies have for it. Seems to be a lack of interpretation somewhere. I have no real problem with Linux other than it mostly require major googling of how terminal works. Windows and even Mac are just simple to use and everything works.
I have used bitwig before too, but I’ve been using FL for almost 20+ years now. I’m not going to change my entire system and knowledge just because a community hates it when someone says windows is easier to use lmao.
That’s all fine and I understand your points and wishes. I think your first reply was downvoted because it was offtopic to the post your were replying to and because it did sound like you were complaining about Linux.
REAPER is great and has a linux version which is great
Realer is great. Unfortunately I don’t feel like redoing dozens of projects and learning a new daw 😭
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.
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 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.
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 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.
But macOS is even more locked down than windows?
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
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.
Sure, but for say the average laptop buyer nowadays not really.
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.
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)
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Can you install linux on a mac?
*At the moment, only M1 and M2 Macs are supported
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 :(
Yes. And Windows too, on the x86 ones. Those are no different than a traditional laptop.
Yup
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.
Lets not forget too that Sony ever only started making video games at all because Nintendo thought they had such strong market share that they could bully Phillips AND Sony. Phillips ended up being a little bitch, and didn’t do anything noteworthy. But Sony? Sony bent Nintendo over a barrel, and took their lunch money.
And then waited 10 years to make the same exact mistake.
The CD-I was at least like footnoteworthy.
Every once in a while, Microsoft makes fundamental mistakes which they only survive because of their size. Think Microsoft Bob or Windows 8. Looks like Windows 11 is heading in the same direction.
Nobody sees it that way, nobody notices what we notice. They don’t know any alternatives, it has new features so it’s innovating, it does what they want/need. I hear no complaints, only from tech people who are invested in privacy and digital sovereignty. That’s the reality.
Maybe in the case of windows 11 that will be true, but in the past that has not been the case. When Windows 8 came out regular users were “upgrading” new machines to windows 7.
You’re massively overestimating the amount of people who even know what an operating system is, let alone change it.
Those people were still among the minority of PC users.
This is my impression also. Most people are just “Meh” about it since it’s not that noticeable. A bit more ads, bit more bandwidth use, bit more ram use and a bit slower CPU when performance of websites sucks ass is not that noticeable.
At least we can all agree that Tay was an AI revolutionary way ahead of “her” time. /s
That’s where it’s heading. Because why would I use software I don’t trust at home? New entrepreneurs will be using Linux because it doesn’t sell their data.
I still have the “Intel Celeron Inside” and “Ready for Windows Vista” stickers on my physical trash can at work.
