Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well.
Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like. The fact that Windows could be pirated easily is the main factor that led to its ubiquity and allowed it to become a household name. Its rapid popularity in the '00s and early ‘10s cemented its status as the PC operating system. It is probably the same for Microsoft Office as well (it is still a part of many schools’ standard curricula).
The fact that Windows still remains pirateable to this day is perhaps intentional on Microsoft’s part.
Absolutely, and Microsoft knows this. You could even upgrade a pirated version of Windows to a legit copy when they did the upgrade drive for 7 I believe it was. Did it myself. And they completely turn a blind eye to OEM key reselling, which is why you can get legit windows keys for less than $10 these days.
They’ve also never done anything substantial against pirates, all they do is pester about buying a key and warn about the risks. The “worst” they do is stop you from using windows update which some see as a feature. When they could just completely lock you out and/or report you to the police.
The money is in server for Microsoft, but they’re losing that battle slowly but surely since they can’t make windows actually work properly in a container setting. I have customers that love Microsoft but despite their best efforts at making containerized windows workloads work it just sucks major ass. And virtually everybody is coming around to realize just how insane of a paradigm shift containers are.
And losing that battle is why 12 will likely move to subscription. And I’m willing to bet money that, in 10 years time, will be considered the starting point for Microsofts dramatic loss of market share in the home PC market. From 90% or so now down to like 50 ish %. But maybe some smart guys at Microsoft will nip that in the bud.
Although I mostly agree with you, this is not true:
The “worst” they do is stop you from using windows update
The worst they do is practically force you to buy a windows license with most laptops and even some pre-built tower PCs.
Yes there are some vendors/manufacturers who don’t force you or ask, if you want an Ubuntu/Mint/Pop_!OS or smth. but most just don’t give a shit.
in my country vendors are forced to offer a free OS/no OS option.
most new laptops here come with linux preinstalled lol
I would argue there’s nothing to snip in the bud, since the home PC is a dying breed anyway. It is increasingly only used by hobbyists and professionals. Some people will use a laptop issued from work but the choice of OS in those cases is seldom theirs. Other than that it’s all phones, tablets, consoles, TVs etc.
The PC market itself is shrinking.
PCs are expensive and unpractical.
I wanted a PC, bought a tablet. Ideally, I’d want a SFFPC plus screens that I could easily move. I’d settle for a SFFPC with a dedicated graphics card if I couldn’t move it. I’d also settle for a notebook that would allow me to easily swap HDDs/SSDs. However, none of those things are possible and/or have a good cost-benefit, so I got a tablet.
Notebooks are too clunky compared to tablets because they are attached to a keyboard and to a screen. If those parts were removable, they would be more successful. Tablets would also be more popular if you could use them as PC screens (some from Lenovo already come with this featur).
Manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction, soldering memory, and making as hard as possible to change parts.
13 or so years ago, whenever the first iPads were coming out, that was my first thought. Why don’t they take their laptops, and have the screen removable that it instantly turns into an iPad? Or a windows computer that does the same thing. Microsoft did it with the surface, and it worked pretty well. Still wasn’t quite what I had imagined, but pretty much was. Apple could have made a killing doing something like that, I’m still convinced (if it was PC based when docked though, not their cell phone/iPad OS).
Wait fr?
Yes. It’s even extreme in some places. For example, more than half of Australian households reported in a 2022 survey that they never accessed the internet from a desktop PC that year (source; also, paywall warning). In Hungary, desktop ownership dropped from 47.5% in 2014 to 39.2% 2019. It’s safe to assume the downwards trend has continued into 2023.
Japan dropped from 81.7% in 2013 to 69% in 2022 (this is for PC ownership in general and doesn’t differentiate between desktops and laptops) and Germany dropped from 64.5% (desktops) in 2006 to 42.9% in 2022.
Even African countries, which had depressingly low computer ownership to begin with, have seen a stagnation at around 7.5% (yes, it’s that low) between 2015 and 2019.
These are just a few examples, but you’ll see a similar trend everywhere you look. Looking at these statistics reminds me of this Apple ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE
Edit: WTH, Spain?
Wow that’s just crazy. I thought it was going the other way
Your data shows desktops, but it doesn’t show laptops. It’s not news that laptops are more common than desktops.
I thought we were talking exclusively about desktops. My bad.
But not all of the data shows desktops only. The ones I linked for Japan and Africa are for computer ownership in general.
Dude you are talking about “Desktop PC”.
A lot of people have switched to Laptops because they can stay in bed.
Usually TV content is pretty bad and with the “old Netflix” people got a coffe table to put the laptop on the table and watch movies, youtube, etc.
Also a lot of people sees Desktop a non necessity because of phones and tablets. In today standards laptops have become really powerful to even code software or even doing photoshoping reliable.
In the end desktops have become only powerhouses of performances towards gaming, streaming or servers.
Desktop = gaming(usually in 2023).
Desktop are not a dieing breed, people changed and bought devices that serves their purposes. Whi should i buy a desktop anymore if a phones does just as good as a desktop in terms of browsing the internet, whatch videos even netflix. In this case desktops have no purpose again(just buy a phone or a tablet).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t disagree with PCs being on a strong downward trend. But the point of Windows on PCs has always been familiarity such that it’s what’s prefered and feel easiest for servers. Without their domination of home PC no company would be running Windows Server these days. And the last people to stop using PCs at home are bound to be tech people that have some say in what type of servers to run.
That said Microsoft has been divesting from their reliance on Windows Server so it’s not like they’ll die from this. But it’s going to mean we’ll hopefully be rid of Windows Server soon!
I’m not sure I buy that 12 is going to be subscription based. I think that would be the straw that broke the camels back. I think we are peak subscription at this point, it’s getting hard to justify this ever growing faucet of money outflows to these friggin subscriptions. Cell phones are quickly becoming PC replacements too. Maybe not in our lives, but for a lot of the common folks that just want to browse and email, absolutely they are. This is why you are seeing Apple’s OS and Android increasingly becoming more PC-like. The next battlefield, I think, is going to be Android vs Windows. Android is currently free, which isn’t going to bode well for a 12 subscription model.
They won’t go subscription for most users. They know with 100% certainty that their home market share will crumble if they did, and that would lead into business share.
Linux has become too easy to use and thanks to an awesome hard push from Valve with the Steam Deck, gamers don’t even need windows anymore, with the exception of some online games with brutal anti cheat software baked in.
When most people bought their PCs, Windows was already bought and paid for and installed by the vendor, so piracy might not have hit as hard as you think.
If you’re Microsoft, that last thing you want is people having a choice of operating system - either in the store, or when they get home - so you make sure it’s a done deal before the PC is unboxed.
That’s SOP for Microsoft, and what got them into trouble when they were bundling Internet Explorer.
It’s also worth noting, that Linux hasn’t always been a competitive desktop product for the home market.
Mate, the most advanced and popular MS product activator is open source, hosted on GitHub owned by Microsoft and Microsoft is fully aware of it. And, just like in the 90-s when one serial key was known to every human on earth and was never blocked, they give exactly zero fucks. I won’t even be surprised if I see some commits with bug fixes from Microsoft themselves.
just like in the 90-s when one serial key was known to every human on earth and was never blocked
How would they have blocked it? Windows activation didn’t exist in the 90s.
They could block it in new releases and service packs if they wanted to. But they never did. When XP came out with online updates, the keys were once again well known and were never blocked.
If no one knew about Windows, why would they want to use it in the first place? You don’t see your average Joe or Jane installing Linux on their brand new PC. For most of them, Windows is the only OS that they know of. I’ve mentioned Linux to these types of people before and the usual response is “if it’s so good, how come over never heard about it?” or “if they give it away for free, how do they make money?”
In 2000s at least in SEA most likely the installed windows when buying a new PC or Laptop is pirated copy. Even now you can request that if the laptop is not bundled with Genuine Windows
Same with South Asia. That’s how the independent resellers do it. The authorised resellers either mark up the price for the Windows license or sell without an OS for a reduced price.
Yeah, solid take. Even today, the vast vast majority of people don’t even realize Windows isn’t free because every single PC sold, comes with it, preinstalled.
Microsoft’s real dominance is having schools (pre and post secondary), businesses, governments and just about anyone they can force a license on to run their software. Windows, Office (a third of my first year computer course was learning MS Office ffs), etc.
That’s why they got slammed with a multi million dollar class action: https://www.thatsuitemoney.ca/ for manipulating their licensing and subsequent fees associated.
Sadly, a pittance when compared to how much they got from all those shady deals. Piracy doesn’t even touch them.
This is far from true in 3rd world. People buy pc without os, the shop helped customers install pirated version because its way more cheaper than buying preinstalled windows pc. There’s people who still remember the windows cd key by heart more than they remember their spouse’s birth date.
Microsoft has openly encouraged piracy as far back as the 90s. I remember an interview with Gates where he said as much.
This has been part of Microsoft’s business model, especially for Windows and Office for 30 years. They actively encouraged pirating the software to ensure it cemented itself as the defacto standard in homes and offices with a view that one day users would have no choice but pay for it. For over 20 years now this has been part of the bigger desktop-as-a-service goal.
Soon businesses and home users will have no choice but to remotely log into a Windows system that is hosted in a datacentre and provided by Microsoft or one of their partners. Local installs will be a thing of the past. Think Citrix Presentation Server and thin clients which is where this whole idea started a long time ago.
Nah that’s just for high security government systems, if you run a small business or something you might not want to fuck around with thin clients unless you’re working directly with big databases and stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
Ignoring unauthorized copying
… Bill Gates said “And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
The practice allowed Microsoft to gain some dominance over the Chinese market and only then taking measures against unauthorized copies. In 2008, by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called “Windows Genuine Advantage” (WGA) was downloaded and installed. When WGA detects that the copy of Windows is not genuine, it periodically turns the user’s screen black. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that “Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
… the documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft’s domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.
Windows is largely successful because there was nothing else good enough for Intel to use back in the late 80s. They struck a partnership and it took off, indoctrinating people into the Windows way of life for decades to come. Most people hate new tech, it means that they have to learn something new that they’d rather not (akin to telling someone to write with the opposite hand than the one they’ve been using their entire lives), even if that thing is simple. Piracy just strengthened that already strong foothold that they had.
In most countries other than those in Western Europe, North America, Japan and China, computers arrived roughly a decade late. In fact PCs never ended up being used in the mainstream till the late 90’s/early '00s in India, a lot of options had matured by then.
Specifically talking about India, people started buying PCs when they first used it in offices or cyber cafes back in early 00s. And windows was the obvious best choice. Apart from that, the GUI was always very convenient for home use cases too.
Look man, I think most people would agree that if you want a good gaming experience and you can’t afford a good PC or gaming laptop then you’re either going to the internet cafe or getting a console.
“a lot of options” like what? You have OS X and Linux. OS X only runs on Apple hardware (not including Hackintoshes) and Linux is still seen as less desirable than Windows, because everyone and their grandmother has used Windows at some point in their lives. They’ve probably never even heard of Linux. If they’ve never heard of Linux, they’ve definitely never heard of BSD or Solaris.
By the 2000s Microsoft was the dominant force in computing, Apple was suffering and only regained its foothold in the market after Steve Jobs came back in 97,and it still took years to become popular. Apple was always seen as a premium product so of course it wouldn’t be popular in countries like India. The only way you can usually get Linux on a PC is to build it yourself and install it, or buy it from the very few manufacturers that actually sell a computer with it pre-installed. So what does that leave? Windows.
Windows being easy to pirate wasnt the reason for it’s popularity. It had market share because they allowed for it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing. They allowed it to be preinstalled on machines for virtually nothing because the OS wasn’t the flagship product.
MS Office has always been the major flagship product for the company. This was true in 1994 and still is today. Office is so important to their revenue streams that it’s fairly common knowledge and has been mentioned by former employees that OS development would focus on compatibility with Office programs, not the other way around.
Specifically if you look at the years around Office XP and 2003, that suite is used very much as a CVS. They deprecate their operating systems using Office.
Not true at all. You’re thinking the past 20 years instead of the past 35 years. Windows was already “the” OS around the world well before you could just pirate a copy online. They cut deals and made sure if you bought a pc it has windows on it. They made sure the countries you speak of had dirt cheap cd keys without piracy. Microsoft in the late 80s/90s had a lot of moving parts that went into making sure the only OS you’d be using was windows. Even after they got in trouble in 1992-94 and in 2000-2001.
Piracy or not. Windows was almost anyone’s only choice.
Even though Linux is still somewhat popular in tech circles, consider that windows would have a significant market share for providing high value entertainment and a wide variety of tools to office workers. Microsoft Office is the dominant documentation and accounting suite for office workers around the world.
Now, combine that with the way that Microsoft has bundled their OS into many laptops and retail computers worldwide and you see why they’re big.
Essentially anybody looking to do any paperwork related work will have to interact with Microsoft’s system of software in one way or another. If Bill Gates was a deity, he’d probably fit right in with the god of tax collectors, taxing people for paperwork and bureaucracy.
The past 20 years is what’s relevant for all countries apart from Japan, China and those in North America and Eastern Europe when it comes to PCs.
I don’t think any cost above ₹200 (~ $2.5) would have been justifiable for an OS in third world countries in the '00s, and the “dirt cheap CD keys” were certainly more expensive than that anywhere.
I’m afraid you’re simply making things up. Microsoft donated computers with windows to all the third world countries. Literally the only way any schools had PC’s in third world countries was because Microsoft delivered them there, and any business’ that got computers used windows because they had office use applications and it was the only OS that anyone had previous practice with using, because of the donated computers.
It’s hilarious that you think Microsoft’s charity is what brought computers to the third world. Do you even hear yourself?
Of course it has. Maybe try pulling your head out of your ass.
Unbelievable. You genuinely think the rest of the world wouldn’t have had computers had your god Microsoft not been so benevolent as to donate a few machines to a few schools for PR
Stay happy in your pathetic white saviours’ world, I guess. There’s no point discussing anything with you
Oh shit. You’re dumb AND racist. Lol. You poor fuck.
I don’t think they think it. I think they got computers slightly faster, because a large corporation drew on the resources its home country had stolen from those places to leverage a monopoly.
That’s the genius of proprietary software business models, also adobe is guilty of this, let people pirate your software so they dominate using your software. Once their skills are built on it once they get to the workforce they won’t even question using a libre alternative. In the end they manage to dominate the market
I think Windows is successful because it was defacto preinstalled on all computers. Even people in third world countries are buying computers whole, not a basket of parts to assemble.
Also software. You’re not going to assemble a computer, install Linux, and then not be able to run anything on it. You want to run all the software that was built to run on Windows, which was built to run on Windows because it came installed on every computer, etc. (Remember Linux back then really couldn’t run all that much. No office? No games? You’re toast.)
Not true. People wouldn’t buy a pre-installed windows because its much way expensive. They just buy a preinstalled pirated windows instead.
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So servers? Yes we all know that.
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Linux users can’t stop talking about Linux.
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Can’t wait for Linux to be mainstream in 2085!
The year 7.776769 E+6016(2085! is about 7.776769 E+6016 years after the death of the universe
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It wasn’t harder than Windows
Windows was preinstalled
Now Windows also has the benefit of user base
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None of that matters if a Linux distro was preinstalled
It’s not about difficulty
Also that article isn’t very good
For instance; installing software on windows involves going to the command line and telling it to install a package
But they frame it as going online and downloading from a website; you can do that on either OS even though it’s not something you should ever do. It’s just user error
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And on Linux they would do the same
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Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. … Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like.
While i somewhat agree with your overall statement, this part is just wrong. Linux in the late 1990s and 2000s was very different from today, where you just plug in a CD/USB and select your region. Linux back then was very nerdy, you had to choose your hardware first to make sure there was a linux driver and the installation process was very difficult, especially before plug&play where you had to know which IRQs and slots you had to use for network, sound and videocard to avoid conflicts. I remember trying to install Linux from a CD, only to work my war from one error message to the next because it did not like my videocard, soundcard or both.
Also, what would you do with a linux pc at home or at work if it could not run word, excel, duke nukem 3D, TTD, programs you knew from work/school or software you could pirate from your friends?
PTSD…
I once destroyed a CRT monitor by misconfiguring X11.
Nowadays Linux just works to the point where my 72 year old mother is able to deal with Pop_OS without issue.
But man, those early days of unstable drivers, slow dial-up internet, and navigating through Usenet and IRC for decent support was a nightmarish labor of love.
The silky smoothness that we have now was built on caffeine and the backs of millions of greybeards.
(For the record: “Greybeard” is a nerdy term of endearment that I’ve seen adopted by people identifying all across the rainbow. Kinda like dwarfs on Discworld).
Greybeard is also the name for an experienced DRG player
I remember trying to get wireless working and having ndiswrapper wrap the windows drivers and having it fail epically
Linux’s development would have accelerated a lot had there been more demand. There wasn’t enough demand because pirated Windows was getting the work done.
In the 90s there where a lot more OS available to compete agains windows, who already had existing software (sometimes better and more capable) to compete with windows: MacOS (Popular in print, layout), BeOS, OS2/warp (tried to replace windows), Amiga OS (best for video editing work at the time), Atari, Novell Netware.
It’s not exactly like people where desperate for another OS at this point in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I don’t think that necessarily holds true for OSS. The average user with no development experience wanting to use an open source project doesn’t mean it will always develop faster.
…and they knew it from the beginning.
Even the MPAA and RIAA know piracy fuels culture and makes golden hits into platinum hits and boost sequel album sales and auxiliary items (toys and lunchboxes).
They can’t help themselves because to the execs and shareholders, it feels like lost sales and theft. And the DRM market capitalizes on those feelings.
windows is largely successful because of oems.
the major OEMs basically get paid to put windows on the systems they sell. they get the licenses at a deep discount, then top that off with the money coming in for the preinstalled garbage.
yup ADOBE is exactly the same.
they do it on purpose for the exact same reason you are mentioning.
Eh. Adobe puts more effort into making it harder or tedious.
With the introduction of Creative Cloud, the notorious “amtlib.dll” that houses Adobe licensing, was bundled into the respective applications binary (exe). It didn’t stop pirates. In 24 hours they found the licensing mechanism and patched it.
You could create a CC account, install the desktop manager, install any app(s) you wanted, then crack them. When an update arrived, you could simply update the app(s) and apply the crack again.
Occasionally the licensing mechanism would update and an updated crack would be needed. As usual, pirates had this worked out the day of or a day later.
Adobe would later patch the desktop manager and break functionality to update software if it wasn’t genuine. People could still get the latest versions by uninstalling and reinstalling through the desktop manager. Since it would retain user settings by default.
Later, a mechanism was built into each application that would throw a warning message that the application isn’t genuine. For example, Photoshop would soft lock and the genuine check would display with the only option to close. This too was eventually patched out by pirates.
The latest attempt from Adobe now forces users to input and have a credit or debit card saved before activating a trial. This removed the ability for users to easily install software anonymously.
They already have the monopoly so it’s fine for them to cash in now
They should be careful. Plenty of alternatives cropping up. No, they’re not as technically impressive, but anyone with some basic Photoshop knowledge can do the same things on GIMP, paint.net, photopea, etc. Might just take a few extra steps.
All going to be less relevant soon with AI art though. If we are in the rotary phone stage of AI, wait until we get to the iPhone stage.
The same goes for a lot of big-name software.
They know you’re pirating their software. Almost everything phones home, whether you pirate it or not. Unless the ping comes from a MAC address of a machine bought by a company, they don’t care.
It’s even becoming an over the table tactic. For example you can use software like Fusion360 or unreal engine completely free until your business is over a certain revenue threshold.
which is why my machine has a strict firewall installed
You are right, but it’s not just poor developed countries and not just windows either.
Back in the 1990s, copy protection in general was weak and companies wishing to expand market share did not prioritize combating piracy.
They always just focused on making the big companies pay through licensing audits and kept prices high to ensure revenue.
The whole industry just accepted that students, researchers and tinkerers would pirate their software.
Photoshop, Office, Visual Studio and even enterprise software like Oracle had this dual strategy: let piracy help spread market share among those who can’t or won’t pay, while maintaining high prices and security audits to drive revenue from companies.
Many companies still follow this strategy.
Same with Photoshop, Maya etc. These corps know that letting consumers pirate their software will create more legit end users. Since people will get used to their software and won’t easily switch when they enter the professional workforce where these corps don’t condone piracy and actually audit businesses. At least in Western nations they even audit small businesses. Like my friend used to work at a small engineering firm in the Netherlands and Autodesk came by to audit the CAD licenses.
How do those companies audit businesses that they don’t know are using their software? Do they have a special force built just to track creative releases from indie makers?
at work we once bought licenses from Autodesk and one day, when we realized that we didn’t need it anymore and we could use a better alternative, they sent us a letter where they assumed that we stopped paying because we started to pirate. They basically threatened us to allow to run some malware on our computers to check compliance, or someone could tip us off to local authorities. They even tried to bribe the person who read the letter by ending the letter with something like “in case of piracy, the whistleblower could be rewarded financially”. It was a regular mail, so we just ignored it.
That’s very common with Microsoft products too. Their vendors get to use @microsoft.com emails (distinguishable by an extra “v”) so they frequently pose as “auditors” to pressure businesses into buying licenses.
It’s a grey area because a business with all licenses in order would not care either way, but software being what it is it’s hard to stay compliant all the time even if you try, and that’s when the vultures descend.
For example say you appoint a new CTO and they realize your company of 200 PCs uses pirate Office copies, so they buy 200 genuine licenses, but they’re cut short of actually installing the matching Office version because Office is a piece of malware-acting crap and is actually very hard to completely purge from a domain install. So they end up holding correct licenses but using technically pirated versions. This is where a genuine audit would not care (you paid for the newer version and are using the older, crappier version; due to their fault, I might add? you do you Microsoft got paid) — but an unscrupulous vendor would try to scare you into paying more to “fix it”.
