Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs.
Which is to say Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.
The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.
(Then there's scientific software -- Stata and Matlab and that stuff. But ten years ago Matlab, like gagh, was best served in higher-end minicomputers and now everything is Python and can be ran on a cheap VPS or on AWS.)
Besides the sheer gobsmacking convenience, there's also the fact that it's way more fun for bean-counters to have higher OPEX in exchange of lower CAPEX. It really kicks the llama's ass.
Can you list some? That sort of software is my favorite genre and I'm always interested to hear about different ones.
That is surely overstating it, at least for definitions of "long" meaning <= 20 years. If you assume that Windows is more or less "done" their engineering expenses could be low, and revenue significant, merely serving the corporate and various niche (gaming, etc) markets which are still heavily bound to Windows. Their market share is declining in some niches (such as CAD) and maybe even overall (to OS X), but negative revenue and market share growth does not necessarily mean quick extinction. Some dinosaurs take decades to bleed out.
I'd even buy the Windows 12 Pro 2021 version when the time came for fundamental internals shifting like wider WSL access.
I would. An update to Windows 7 that worked well with modern hardware and had modern security updates but otherwise ignored almost everything Microsoft have done in more recent versions would be a significant improvement on anything currently available for those of us who value stability and security over bells and whistles.
Windows is a perfect example of no focus at all. Maybe this makes sense for a true mainstream OS.
To be honest, I wonder if Azure, Exchange online or Office 365 can really be their future. Why not use AWS, Scaleway or a local service. It's cheaper and better.
One of the points the article makes is that Ballmer's MS would do things like not release Office for iOS because that would potentially eat into Windows marketshare. That no longer will happen. MS sees its more important to get o365 everywhere they can.
From my perspective, switching small businesses over to Exchange Online and other o365 services - The future is bright for MS in that space. These SMBs we've switched over have gone from using a version of Office they purchased forever ago and an old Exchange license to paying 50-100 a month for Office 365.