Their empire crumbles anyway, that's why they're doing this to Windows, because they know the future is (sadly) on the web, and the OS is less relevant than the browser now, and more replaceable than it was 20 years ago.
Now, I know Microsoft is a near-2-trillion-dollar company, but they would not be the first company to have realized the folly of resting on their laurels.
Microsoft's future over the 20 year term doesn't look as rosy as it could. They'll remain a huge company, but perhaps they'll slip back into the hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars segment instead of the trillion-dollar-titan segment if the investments they're making don't pay off.
They'll have huge income for decades because it's costly and time-consuming to move away from existing systems, but for new companies, Microsoft is no longer a given.
The Windows 98-7 era made me like the system and aspire to be a developer for it. I remember wanting to make my own window!
Now it is simply a hostile wasteland that I regard with suspicion and resentment. There is no love for it left. I now use Linux and bear with OSX when I need to. Windows 8, but especially 10, made a hardcore Unix freak out of me.
Microsoft can't put a quarterly cost on it, but over time losing people who care will cost them everything.
back when balmer jumped up and down in a presentation yelling "developers, developers, developers", they were still good (despite balmer's terrible leadership).
I think they're just losing the battle for mindshare now. Users would more easily move to macs, if they're a casual consumer of tech, and linux if they're more hardcore. Windows has no raison d'etre except for the gaming space imho, and i would hope that the steam deck propels WINE and linux onto gaming and remove the final hold from windows.
(In millions, except percentages) 2021 2020 Percentage Change
Processes $ 24,351 $ 18,724 30%
Intelligent Cloud 26,126 18,324 43%
More Personal Computing 19,439 15,911 22%
Total $ 69,916 $ 52,959 32%
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html
Enterprise.
Either cloud with Office 365 + Azure AD + Intune to get Office/Teams/Sharepoint/Onedrive echosystem and manage clients PC settings and updates over Intune.
Or do it on-prem with Windows server, AD domain, Group policy, Fileshare server and all that. Some enterprise software that is not a SaaS may still require this.
I don't care what spyware/crapware microsoft chooses to add to the enterprise setting.
My memory is probably faulty so corrections welcome, but wasn't "developers, developers, developers" a while before he became CEO?
They care.