Windows: Microsoft broke the only thing that mattered

     > It's almost like some tiny extremist faction has gained control of Windows 

      This has been the case for a while. I worked on the Windows Desktop Experience Team from Win7-Win10. Starting around Win8, the designers had full control, and most crucially essentially none of the designers use Windows.

      I spent far too many years of my career sitting in conference rooms explaining to the newest designer (because they seem to rotate every 6-18 months) with a shiny Macbook why various ideas had been tried and failed in usability studies because our users want X, Y, and Z.

     Sometimes, the "well, if you really want this it will take N dev-years" approach got avoided things for a while, but just as often we were explicitly overruled. I fought passionately against things like the all-white title bars that made it impossible to tell active and inactive windows apart (was that Win10 or Win8? Either way user feedback was so strong that that got reverted in the very next update), the Edge title bar having no empty space on top so if your window hung off the right side and you opened too many tabs you could not move it, and so on. Others on my team fought battles against removing the Start button in Win8, trying to get section labels added to the Win8 Start Screen so it was obvious that you could scroll between them, and so on. In the end, the designers get what they want, the engineers who say "yes we can do that" get promoted, and those of us who argued most strongly for the users burnt out, retired, or left the team.

Consumer buy laptops and smartphones, not operating systems. As long as there is no competing consumer product, Microsoft is not losing any meaningful share anytime soon. imo smartglasses might be more of a real threat to windows than copilot.

Here in the Netherlands, Macbook Neo is €700. That is by no measure a cheap laptop. Also at this price range there is plenty of competition from companies like Asus.

Recently I built a gaming PC, and I ended up installing Windows. Disabling windows AI features is significantly easier than dealing with small but frequent annoyance of linux distros.

One way I phrased it to a friend was: "if you try to make a radical improvement to a spoon, chances are you'll make it worse".

I think there's plenty to do in both products, but they are not sexy things that drive upgrade conversations.

- MacOS is too expensive

- Linux requires configuration and expertise

I'm not doubting those too, but like the article points out I would question if they're guaranteed to be true even in the short term. Chromebooks, Steamdecks and Android have all shown making a commercial requirement out of Linux is do-able, and the $600 Macbook Neo is due out any day.

I'm not predicting the death of Windows or anything, but I do think Microsoft's thrown is a lot less stable than they seem to realise.

As they say, you can't see the light in the darkness and the difference between two is like between night and day.

Stable performance, consistent Remote Play to Steam Deck, quick bootup and no "hey want to play, that's a shame cause I got 20 minutes of patches to install".

Sure it's still a Linux with all consequences (had to switch from Wayland to Xorg for remote play and being returning user after couple years it wasn't straightforward) but it works much better.

I won't ever install Windows on my family computers. If I can afford to equip them with Macs I'll do so. If not - they'll get Linux instead.

Pardon?

I am not paying for Apple margin's, their lack of options in customising hardware, nor I want to spend evenings reconfiguring BSD/Linux installions.

If there is a good PC (laptop) at a consumer store pre-installed with GNU/Linux, 100% supported hardware, I will consider it, buying online isn't my thing.

Thus my house is full of Android and WebOS powered devices and none GNU/Linux one.

Now, most of the time they log in there's a new update to install; or a fresh and distracting dark pattern popup; or a service they need to re-enter credentials for; or, occasionally, a game I've previously installed for them either missing or no longer working properly. It's maddening and confusing even for experienced users.

Perhaps I do need to drop Windows. I'm not a huge fan of the obfuscaon and walled gardens on Macs, and Chromebooks and iPads are more geared towards consumption than creation.

My work keeps me on Windows (programs that have no good Linux equivalent, and a corporate environment that won't accept it for desktop users), but I'm seriously considering dual booting for my children's sake. It's a testament to how far Windows has fallen.

“Adobe and Office run better on Mac, change my mind”

It has been months I am stuck at "Update and shut-down" but it never updates. Nothing works :((((((((((((

Now my setup is MacBook for work, and special game laptop Razer Blade especially for games with win11 removed defender/firewall and tons on useless stuff. Personally for me win7 will be enough but I just cannot install it on my laptop due to lack to drivers.

My son is getting to the age where is taking an interest in computers(not just games) so I think I will be starting him off on a linux box.

I will recommend that $599 MacBook every time now and power users invest in a MacBook Pro.

I was a loyal Windows user and now my own Surface Laptop 5 sits dark while I work on a Mac-Mini that was meant to be a side app dev machine.

https://www.yankodesign.com/2026/03/09/a-cluster-of-volcanic...

Different byline, but somehow essentially the same as this story that appeared several days ago elsewhere on the internet:

https://newatlas.com/architecture/volcano-in-hotel-of-arriva...

And the Microsoft management layer has no clue at all.

So that’s the end of it.

It's because they are Windows users and being shoved piss poor Copilot implementations down their throats by Microsoft.

I have no doubt that Microsoft is using the cheapest(worst) cloud model possible for free Copilot users or they're running a tiny local model on the NPU when available.

These people aren't running Opus 4.6 or GPT 5.4. No wonder they're so anti-AI and can't see the why there is AI hype.