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%
VS Code, GitHub, LinkedIn, and their pervasive telemetry are definitely part of a broader strategy.[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?
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.