Doubling down on failure

Up to now, reactions to Microsoft's gimped OS, Windows 10 S, have been pretty uniformly negative. Its smaller footprint apparently does make it slightly quicker to start, but the app gap has not gone anywhere, turning the experience of actually working with the thing into an exercise in frustration. Worse, the market that Microsoft appeared to be targeting with 10 S, namely students and educational institutions, will not be buying Windows 10 S laptops this year, since the only one on the market, Microsoft's own, is prohibitively expensive, and the low-cost versions from Microsoft's partners won't be available to buy until well after the back-to-school shopping season has ended.

To call this a misfire would, I think, be to grossly underestimate how badly the Windows 10 S rollout has gone. The product is not useful, to anybody, and the market that Microsoft thought might be tempted won't even be considering 10 S for another year... a year in which these institutions will have bought even more deeply into the Chromebook ecosystem. But Windows 10 S, with its Windows Store requirement, i.e. requiring users to buy all their software again, but through Microsoft, this time... that really is Microsoft's vision of Windows' future, apparently, and they're not done trying to put it on users that have shown no interest whatsoever.

From Windows Report:

Microsoft just made it much easier for users to try Windows 10 S on all Windows 10 PCs. The company will release an installer for Windows 10 S that will allow users to install the OS on other versions of Windows 10.

This installer comes as a standard executable file, will download Windows 10 S, and then install it on your machine regardless of what version of Windows 10 you might be running. The only important thing is that you are not a Windows 10 Home user.

Microsoft also launched an official ISO for Windows 10 S the other week that offers users the opportunity to try out the operating system on a virtual machine or an actual hardware. This new installer, on the other hand, makes thing much easier and users can try out the latest version of Windows quicker now.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, asked for this, and nobody is going to care. Seriously, who is this for?

Microsoft's OneDrive app runs like @$$ on Windows OS rivals.

Have I mentioned yet, that I kinda love The Reg's tech writers? Because I do.

From The Reg's Iain Thomson:

Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn't trickled down to its OneDrive team.

Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system – such as on Linux or ChromeOS – the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes.

Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string – a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself – to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs.

In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough.

"Microsoft has been pulling this stuff for the last 30 years and won't stop any time soon," huffed one penguinista on Tuesday. "If you commit to using their products, expect to be jerked around if you try to do anything other than live in their expensive walled garden."

We asked Microsoft for comment, but the software giant didn't want to talk about it. If we're being charitable to Redmond, we'd say this is a case of Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Yeah, once again, I don't think that Hanlon's Razor applies: Microsoft does this shit so often, and so consistently, that it can't simply be incompetence. Don't get me wrong, a company that large almost certainly employs at least a few idiots, but for this idiocy to keep happening in every aspect of their business, it has to intentional, and it has to be systemic. Once is an accident, and twice is a coincidence, but we're well past the point of this being one or two isolated incidents; this is a well-established Microsoft pattern.

It is cool to know what that malice/stupidity saying is called, though: Hanlon's Razor. Thanks, Iain!

Now, full disclosure: I don't use OneDrive, so this issue isn't affecting me. My objection here is not a personal one. This is a matter of principle. Microsoft have been working very hard to give the impression that they're big on Linux, and gaining some decent PR in the process, but it's bullshit. When Forbes opined that "Microsoft has decided that the operating system is no longer an important battleground, and that it’s more important to gain market share in cloud (Azure and Office 365) than it is to put energy into battling Linux for application market share," they were mistaken. Microsoft is all about forcing users onto Windows 10, right now, to establish the walled garden ecosystem on which they're clearly relying heavily for their future.

Microsoft really have bet the farm on this strategy. They really don't have a plan B. And their mounting desperation is becoming increasingly obvious, too. This is systemic; they really are doing this, and they really don't care how much damage they do to their own brand and reputation in the process, but they really haven't left themselves any other options. They need the ad revenue. They need their cut of Windows 10 Store sales. They've given too much away, at this point, and don't have any way to walk that back. At least, not one that Satya Nadella can see, or one that he'll sign off on.

GG, Satya Nadella. GG.