Having gone on at length about the problems with Epic's storefront, and with their profoundly consumer-dismissive approach to... well... everything, it's only fair to spend some time and words on the issues that Steam actually does have, which GabeN should probably attend to. Because after 16 years in service, it's fair to say that Steam's pipes have some rust and corrosion on them, and really could use a good cleaning.
Gabe! Buddy! My nearest and most excellent friend (that I've never met in person, and who doesn't know me from Adam, but whatevs don't@me)! I have some advice for you; a five-step process that will clear a up a whole bunch of that embarrassing clutter that's causing so much agita, lately. Take these ideas, and use them in all good health.
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
August 23, 2019
June 18, 2017
UWP is a failure, and Microsoft knows it.
The Universal Windows Platform was always one of the central components, if not the central component, of Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy. Intended, among other things, to leverage their desktop OS dominance into a mobile app presence, it was also going to provide a lucrative revenue stream for Redmond, with Microsoft taking a hefty cut of the proceeds from every piece of software sold, on every Windows PC and phone, from here on out.
It seemed foolproof; all that Microsoft needed to do was convince their customers to switch to Windows 10. With 50% of the desktop market on the new platform, developing natively for UWP becomes a no-brainer, and a flood of new UWP software would not only help close the mobile "app gap," it would fill Microsoft's pockets with cold, hard, cash, all while slowly pushing their competitors' store fronts out of business. Bye-bye, Steam, Origin, Uplay, and GOG! Nice knowing you...
Hell, it might not even have needed to be 50%. If Microsoft could only manage to have more users on Windows 10 than were still on any other version of the OS, that might have been enough for a tipping point, fuelling a nigh-unstoppable paradigm shift, away from the historical openness of Windows, and towards a UWP destiny. And so, with this end firmly in sight, Microsoft proceeded to give Windows 10 away for free, and waited for their monopoly to materialize.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, their customers had other ideas about all of this.
The problem, you see, is that Microsoft has a long history of terrible OS releases. Windows 95 was a bug-ridden mess, crashing completely with such frequency that we all still know what a Blue Screen of Death looks like, and when it occurs, even though none of us have likely seen a BSOD for years. Windows 98 was slightly more stable, but Windows wasn't actually fixed (which is to say, finished) until Windows XP.
Microsoft immediately followed XP with Vista, which came with brutal hardware requirements, suffered from poor performance even if those requirements were met, and was married to the "Vista Ready" OEM program, a Microsoft-endorsed bait-and-switch tactic which resulted large numbers of "Vista Ready" PCs that really weren't, and multiple huge class action lawsuits. Windows 7 fixed a lots of Vista's performance problems, and also fixed Vista's terrible "cancel or allow" UAC regime, making it only the 2nd complete, fully-functioning version of Windows out of five releases to this point. Most Windows users skipped Vista entirely, whether or not their PCs were "Visa Ready."
Windows 8 saw Microsoft's first attempt to turn Windows into a walled garden, with Microsoft serving as primary provider of software to Windows' users (and taking a tidy cut of every sale). This was so unpopular that OEMs demanded, and were granted, the freedom to simply install Windows 7 on the new PCs and laptops of all their new Windows 8 licence-holders, which most of them did; there's a reason why Microsoft numbered the next iteration of Windows 10 and not 9, and regardless of what they might say on the subject, it sure looks like they did it to put more distance between them and their horrible Windows 8 miscalculations.
To say that Windows 7 users were somewhat wary of Windows 10, by this point, just on general principles, would be something of an understatement. Savvy Windows users simply don't buy or install any new Windows OS in its first year, period, and they normally wait until at least one service pack is available. Hell, that's what I was doing, in the early days of the GWX campaign: waiting out the bug-filled first year, so that all the problems could be found (and hopefully fixed) before making a decision as to whether I would switch horses.
That didn't work for Microsoft, though, who needed users to switch. And, thus, the bullshit started, with Microsoft turning users' existing Windows installations into something that behaved like malware: downloading Windows 10 in the background without their knowledge or prior consent, incessantly nagging them to switch, no matter how many times users refused the upgrade, and ultimately just switching them anyway. Savvy users turned to 3rd party solutions to avoid the upgrade, while less-savvy users simply turned off Windows Update entirely to avoid Microsoft's "optional" offer that literally couldn't be refused. In the same way that Vista's many problems inspired Windows XP users to dig in (a significant percentage of PCs are still running Windows XP), Windows 8's problems made Windows 7 user reluctant to switch their operating systems, and the abuses of the GWX campaign now have them digging in deeper as time goes on.
The available evidence all points at one, and only one, conclusion: Windows 7 is the new XP. And for Microsoft, who need Windows 10, and its UWP payload, to reach that tipping point where is makes more sense to develop for UWP than for Win32, this really is disastrous. Nobody develops natively for UWP; with only 26% of PC owners having access to UWP and the Windows store, it simply doesn't make sense to do so.
And when I say nobody, I mean nobody... including Microsoft themselves.
From WindowsReport:
That's right: Windows 10 and UWP have flopped so hard that Microsoft themselves can't be bothered to develop natively for the platform.
If Microsoft can't be bothered to develop natively for UWP, then nobody else is going to, either, ever, and that means that UWP is effectively dead on arrival. The only programs that Microsoft will see on its storefront from here on out will be PCDAB ports, none of which will perform as well as Win32 executable versions of those same programs, and even that assumes that developers bother to do that much; with the Windows 10 store being such a shit-show, and the added costs involved in maintaining a 2nd version of their software, all in service of lining Microsoft's pockets, I suspect that most developers simply won't bother to port their programs over in the first place.
Worse yet, a dearth of quality UWP apps means that Windows 10 users are spending this crucial time in the platform's life-cycle locking software-buying habits that exclude the Windows store almost entirely. That's not reversible; if even Windows 10 users are thoroughly trained to buy their software elsewhere, then developers have even less reason to develop for UWP, and that is self-reinforcing. It's a vicious cycle, with the lack of adopters resulting in a lack of apps, which ensures not only a slower rate of adoption, but also ensures that new adopters of Windows 10 don't adopt the storefront along with the OS, resulting in ever fewer apps...
At this point, Microsoft would probably love to be faced with a simple chicken-and-egg problem, rather than this rapidly increasing inertia.They seem to be hoping that the upcoming Windows 10 S will turn this trend around, but they're already undermining that, too, by giving free Windows 10 Pro upgrades to every Windows 10 S customer. 10 S's total reliance on UWP and the Windows Store have already proved so massively unpopular that Microsoft has been forced to back off, meaning that any momentum that 10 S might have imparted to UWP will now not happen.
It seems to be that only one question remains: is this vicious cycle now so well-established that Microsoft is simply unable turn it around?
Leave aside for the moment that turning this tide would require Microsoft to do multiple things that they've, thus far, shown no appetite for. What if they were willing to apologize for the abuses of the GWX campaign, even if that meant settling multiple class-action lawsuits rather than fighting them? What if they were willing to relinquish their unjustifiable death-grip on their users' metadata, ending a their data collection scheme entirely, allowing users to turn Cortana off completely, and maybe even allowing users of Cortana to use something other than Bing as a its default search engine? What if they dropped the pretense, and simply announced that Windows 10 would remain a free upgrade forever, rather than relying on this "assistive technologies" nonsense (seriously, how do kotkeys qualify as as assistive technology)?
What if they did all of that? Would even that, at this point, after all the bullshit that's already happened, be enough to turn these trends around? We live in a very big universe, and a great many things are possible, so I suppose it's still possible that Microsoft could find some way to win enough dug-in Windows 7 customers hearts and minds, and do it quickly enough, to still save their UWP gambit, but I've gotta say... I'm starting to have serious doubts about that. Which sucks; my hope was that the need to salvage the rest of their Windows 10/UWP strategy could be the lever that shifted Microsoft on some that strategy's more egregiously anti-consumer elements, but it's looking more and more like there simply isn't enough time anymore for that to work.
There's little doubt that Microsoft have damaged their relationship with 49% of PC users. They've so thoroughly undermined the trust and goodwill of their customers, and so thoroughly undermined their own cause in the process, that it will take them years to repair the damage... crucial early development years which their UWP initiative simply cannot afford to lose. And Microsoft keeps letting time slip away, doubling and tripling down on the very policies and practices that got them into this fine mess in the first place, repeating the same actions while hoping that the result will change. Well, I don't think that the result is going to change... at least, not in time for Microsoft to reap the benefits that they're clearly hoping for. And the longer this continues, the less incentive there is for Microsoft to change course, as Windows 7 users dig even deeper in, become even less receptive to any changes in either tone or substance by Redmond.
Microsoft are a huge company, and both they, and Windows, will be around for a long time to come. Windows still owns over 90% of the OS market on PCs and laptops, and gradual adoption by Enterprise customers, who need expensive support plans along with the OS itself, can probably keep Microsoft afloat more-or-less indefinitely. But their ambition to make Windows 10 the centrepiece of everything their customers do, their big dream of being everything to everybody, on every device and appliance, at all times... I think that's done, killed by Microsoft's own hubris before it even had a chance to be properly born. Stick a fork in it, already.
#UWPisdeadandMSknowit
#xisdeadandtheyknowit
It seemed foolproof; all that Microsoft needed to do was convince their customers to switch to Windows 10. With 50% of the desktop market on the new platform, developing natively for UWP becomes a no-brainer, and a flood of new UWP software would not only help close the mobile "app gap," it would fill Microsoft's pockets with cold, hard, cash, all while slowly pushing their competitors' store fronts out of business. Bye-bye, Steam, Origin, Uplay, and GOG! Nice knowing you...
Hell, it might not even have needed to be 50%. If Microsoft could only manage to have more users on Windows 10 than were still on any other version of the OS, that might have been enough for a tipping point, fuelling a nigh-unstoppable paradigm shift, away from the historical openness of Windows, and towards a UWP destiny. And so, with this end firmly in sight, Microsoft proceeded to give Windows 10 away for free, and waited for their monopoly to materialize.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, their customers had other ideas about all of this.
The problem, you see, is that Microsoft has a long history of terrible OS releases. Windows 95 was a bug-ridden mess, crashing completely with such frequency that we all still know what a Blue Screen of Death looks like, and when it occurs, even though none of us have likely seen a BSOD for years. Windows 98 was slightly more stable, but Windows wasn't actually fixed (which is to say, finished) until Windows XP.
Microsoft immediately followed XP with Vista, which came with brutal hardware requirements, suffered from poor performance even if those requirements were met, and was married to the "Vista Ready" OEM program, a Microsoft-endorsed bait-and-switch tactic which resulted large numbers of "Vista Ready" PCs that really weren't, and multiple huge class action lawsuits. Windows 7 fixed a lots of Vista's performance problems, and also fixed Vista's terrible "cancel or allow" UAC regime, making it only the 2nd complete, fully-functioning version of Windows out of five releases to this point. Most Windows users skipped Vista entirely, whether or not their PCs were "Visa Ready."
Windows 8 saw Microsoft's first attempt to turn Windows into a walled garden, with Microsoft serving as primary provider of software to Windows' users (and taking a tidy cut of every sale). This was so unpopular that OEMs demanded, and were granted, the freedom to simply install Windows 7 on the new PCs and laptops of all their new Windows 8 licence-holders, which most of them did; there's a reason why Microsoft numbered the next iteration of Windows 10 and not 9, and regardless of what they might say on the subject, it sure looks like they did it to put more distance between them and their horrible Windows 8 miscalculations.
To say that Windows 7 users were somewhat wary of Windows 10, by this point, just on general principles, would be something of an understatement. Savvy Windows users simply don't buy or install any new Windows OS in its first year, period, and they normally wait until at least one service pack is available. Hell, that's what I was doing, in the early days of the GWX campaign: waiting out the bug-filled first year, so that all the problems could be found (and hopefully fixed) before making a decision as to whether I would switch horses.
That didn't work for Microsoft, though, who needed users to switch. And, thus, the bullshit started, with Microsoft turning users' existing Windows installations into something that behaved like malware: downloading Windows 10 in the background without their knowledge or prior consent, incessantly nagging them to switch, no matter how many times users refused the upgrade, and ultimately just switching them anyway. Savvy users turned to 3rd party solutions to avoid the upgrade, while less-savvy users simply turned off Windows Update entirely to avoid Microsoft's "optional" offer that literally couldn't be refused. In the same way that Vista's many problems inspired Windows XP users to dig in (a significant percentage of PCs are still running Windows XP), Windows 8's problems made Windows 7 user reluctant to switch their operating systems, and the abuses of the GWX campaign now have them digging in deeper as time goes on.
The available evidence all points at one, and only one, conclusion: Windows 7 is the new XP. And for Microsoft, who need Windows 10, and its UWP payload, to reach that tipping point where is makes more sense to develop for UWP than for Win32, this really is disastrous. Nobody develops natively for UWP; with only 26% of PC owners having access to UWP and the Windows store, it simply doesn't make sense to do so.
And when I say nobody, I mean nobody... including Microsoft themselves.
From WindowsReport:
Microsoft’s Office desktops apps just reached the Windows Store, coinciding with the launch of the brand new Surface Laptop running Windows 10 S.
The Office suite was brought to the Windows Store by Microsoft’s Project Centennial desktop app bridge, and is available to all the Surface Laptop users who are part of a preview install and update process.Nearly two years after releasing Windows 10 and UWP into the world with dreams of marketplace dominance dancing in their heads, Microsoft themselves are only now bringing their 2nd-biggest software product to their own store. And it isn't a native UWP version of the program, either; it's a port, brought over via the Project Centennial Desktop App Bridge (henceforth referred to as PCDAB).
That's right: Windows 10 and UWP have flopped so hard that Microsoft themselves can't be bothered to develop natively for the platform.
If Microsoft can't be bothered to develop natively for UWP, then nobody else is going to, either, ever, and that means that UWP is effectively dead on arrival. The only programs that Microsoft will see on its storefront from here on out will be PCDAB ports, none of which will perform as well as Win32 executable versions of those same programs, and even that assumes that developers bother to do that much; with the Windows 10 store being such a shit-show, and the added costs involved in maintaining a 2nd version of their software, all in service of lining Microsoft's pockets, I suspect that most developers simply won't bother to port their programs over in the first place.
Worse yet, a dearth of quality UWP apps means that Windows 10 users are spending this crucial time in the platform's life-cycle locking software-buying habits that exclude the Windows store almost entirely. That's not reversible; if even Windows 10 users are thoroughly trained to buy their software elsewhere, then developers have even less reason to develop for UWP, and that is self-reinforcing. It's a vicious cycle, with the lack of adopters resulting in a lack of apps, which ensures not only a slower rate of adoption, but also ensures that new adopters of Windows 10 don't adopt the storefront along with the OS, resulting in ever fewer apps...
At this point, Microsoft would probably love to be faced with a simple chicken-and-egg problem, rather than this rapidly increasing inertia.They seem to be hoping that the upcoming Windows 10 S will turn this trend around, but they're already undermining that, too, by giving free Windows 10 Pro upgrades to every Windows 10 S customer. 10 S's total reliance on UWP and the Windows Store have already proved so massively unpopular that Microsoft has been forced to back off, meaning that any momentum that 10 S might have imparted to UWP will now not happen.
It seems to be that only one question remains: is this vicious cycle now so well-established that Microsoft is simply unable turn it around?
Leave aside for the moment that turning this tide would require Microsoft to do multiple things that they've, thus far, shown no appetite for. What if they were willing to apologize for the abuses of the GWX campaign, even if that meant settling multiple class-action lawsuits rather than fighting them? What if they were willing to relinquish their unjustifiable death-grip on their users' metadata, ending a their data collection scheme entirely, allowing users to turn Cortana off completely, and maybe even allowing users of Cortana to use something other than Bing as a its default search engine? What if they dropped the pretense, and simply announced that Windows 10 would remain a free upgrade forever, rather than relying on this "assistive technologies" nonsense (seriously, how do kotkeys qualify as as assistive technology)?
What if they did all of that? Would even that, at this point, after all the bullshit that's already happened, be enough to turn these trends around? We live in a very big universe, and a great many things are possible, so I suppose it's still possible that Microsoft could find some way to win enough dug-in Windows 7 customers hearts and minds, and do it quickly enough, to still save their UWP gambit, but I've gotta say... I'm starting to have serious doubts about that. Which sucks; my hope was that the need to salvage the rest of their Windows 10/UWP strategy could be the lever that shifted Microsoft on some that strategy's more egregiously anti-consumer elements, but it's looking more and more like there simply isn't enough time anymore for that to work.
There's little doubt that Microsoft have damaged their relationship with 49% of PC users. They've so thoroughly undermined the trust and goodwill of their customers, and so thoroughly undermined their own cause in the process, that it will take them years to repair the damage... crucial early development years which their UWP initiative simply cannot afford to lose. And Microsoft keeps letting time slip away, doubling and tripling down on the very policies and practices that got them into this fine mess in the first place, repeating the same actions while hoping that the result will change. Well, I don't think that the result is going to change... at least, not in time for Microsoft to reap the benefits that they're clearly hoping for. And the longer this continues, the less incentive there is for Microsoft to change course, as Windows 7 users dig even deeper in, become even less receptive to any changes in either tone or substance by Redmond.
Microsoft are a huge company, and both they, and Windows, will be around for a long time to come. Windows still owns over 90% of the OS market on PCs and laptops, and gradual adoption by Enterprise customers, who need expensive support plans along with the OS itself, can probably keep Microsoft afloat more-or-less indefinitely. But their ambition to make Windows 10 the centrepiece of everything their customers do, their big dream of being everything to everybody, on every device and appliance, at all times... I think that's done, killed by Microsoft's own hubris before it even had a chance to be properly born. Stick a fork in it, already.
#UWPisdeadandMSknowit
#xisdeadandtheyknowit
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