Showing posts with label VLC Media Player. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VLC Media Player. Show all posts

January 27, 2019

Microsoft gets petty with Windows 7 users

As of the end of December, 36.90% of all desktop and laptop users (not just Windows users, mind, but PC users in general) had spent three and a half years actively rejecting Windows 10. This isn't like OS version transitions of years past, where people on the old version might just be procrastinating; thanks to the egregious excesses of the GWX campaign, all of the people who didn't care enough to actively do something were switched to Windows 10 already. No, current-day Windows 7 users are the ones who did care, and who took steps to remain on their OS of choice.

Not only have Windows 7 users actively rejected Windows 10, but many of them appear to be actively rejecting Windows entirely, with MacOS and Ubuntu Linux gaining market share at Windows' expense for most of the last year: Windows gained user market share only in March and July of last year, losing market share in every other month of 2018 for a total loss of 2.31%,with MacOS gaining 1.63% and Linux gaining 0.66% over the same time period. Microsoft set out to change the paradigm of personal computing with Windows 10, and clearly succeeded, but not in the way they wanted; rather than making Windows 10 into the new paradigm, they seem to be ushering in an era in which Windows no longer dominates on the desktop.

And so Microsoft, being Microsoft, have responded to this slow-motion exodus by giving Windows 7 users yet another reason to dump Windows, without giving them any clear new reason to adopt Windows 10 in place. Because of course they have.