Gotta hand it to Microsoft and Nutella. I was pretty bullish on them from, say, 3 years after Balmer left to about 18 months ago, but it seems like every single thing they've done since they started working on Windows 11 has been a cringey shitshow. Even the way they express themselves, and their advertisements, have - rather incredibly - gotten worse. For just one example, I was watching the trailer for the MSFS cloud service a few days ago, and the entire ad is just bullshit - nobody plays games like that, nobody sits like that, nobody holds their controller/device like that. It's like Meta and Microsoft both have completely lost their minds and don't habitate the same universe as me - I'm no Luddite, and it isn't even dystopian or Orwellian to me, it's just cringeworthy. And the problem for MS is, it isn't 2007 or even 2013 when it was properly difficult to completely get rid of all things Microsoft. The only 'must have' really is just Office, and I can still buy that standalone on my Mac and be done with it.
Anyway, the fact is that many people won't care and will use their products. That's just how it goes. But it truly is fascinating to watch as a moderately tech savvy person - not sure I can remember anything like this where a tech company in a position where it has a lot of industry/programmer goodwill has inexplicably fucked over its developer-base so often in an 18-24 month period. I mean, does anybody remember how 2 years ago Edge was the shit, seriously - it was like the best iteration of a Chromium browser, and then it was like Microsoft purposely torpedoed it. Same thing with Windows, and the TPM requirement is just the start. All of it is just bizarre.
Anyway, the fact is that many people won't care and will use their products. That's just how it goes. But it truly is fascinating to watch as a moderately tech savvy person - not sure I can remember anything like this where a tech company in a position where it has a lot of industry/programmer goodwill has inexplicably fucked over its developer-base so often in an 18-24 month period. I mean, does anybody remember how 2 years ago Edge was the shit, seriously - it was like the best iteration of a Chromium browser, and then it was like Microsoft purposely torpedoed it. Same thing with Windows, and the TPM requirement is just the start. All of it is just bizarre.