Usd 10/year is entirely reasonable. But I fear an higher fee.

$1/year is entirely unreasonable. They build a product, they sell it to you, transaction ends there. They should sell you a product that works. Bug fixes are part of making the thing you bought closer to what was advertised, so it's part of the initial purchase. An OS is not a SaaS, and nobody considered doing it until it became popular, because it's a fad.

Of course a subscription would imply no upfront fee.

They're (presumably) double-dipping, the PC OEMs are already paying for the license.

In that case even $1/year would be unreasonable.

>Bug fixes are part of making the thing you bought closer to what was advertised, so it's part of the initial purchase

Says who, exactly?

Why should bug fixes be included?

If they should, for how long should they?

If your average user buys a new version every 5 years and the Pro version costs $250, they could charge $50/yr. $10/yr would be quite generous, unless they think they can get lots of people to stop pirating the OS. $10/month seems like an unlikely price point.

I honestly don't understand why anyone would pirate windows. Its full featured if you don't activate apart from a watermark. If you choose to activate you can get an oem key for like 10 usd.

> The will put ads in different parts of the O/S.

They have already been doing this.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1790329/i-paid-for-microsoft... https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/microsoft_windows_sta...

Perhaps you mean third party ads from their ad network? https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us

Wait, they already do: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/ad-products/...

> Kiss goodbye to any privacy you thought you had.

If you haven't already, it's too late.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3684413/how-to-protect...

https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/

> Either way, I think this should help Apple and open source operating systems.

Doubtful. They've not cared so far, I don't know what's going to really have to change.

Most folks I know don't really care about the OS, but many or all they apps they've learned are only on Windows. So they see themselves as trapped.