Or maybe they will launch Win 12 with optional TPM support.
Imho making the OS(es) TPM only cannot be good for their business, many people are still on Win 10 with no intention to switch, since their motheboard does not support TPM and do not want to upgrade PC / waste PCI-E slot on TPM extension.
The switch from Win 10 to Win 11 costs nothing, so Microsoft doesn’t care at all whether you keep using 10 until your PC dies.
The next one you buy will come with 11 preinstalled.
Microsoft doesn’t care if you install Linux either.
You’ve already paid for the Windows license when you bought the PC.
So don’t pay for windows, get it unactivated and use MAS to activate it.
But they can’t track you as much on windows 10, and almost not at all on linux
Telemetry data doesn’t make the CEO rich.
Microsoft makes their money from cloud services for businesses, the desktop OS is a loss leader that’s designed to get people to use the cloud services.
deleted by creator
I don’t know if it’s still this way, but a decade and more ago (when I last had any professional contact with Microsoft’s development) the company was effectively divided into two competing factions- the Office people and the Windows people. They had wildly different priorities for the shared tech stack, and mutually exclusive demands on the others’ products, and there was a constant bun fight on who got their way. The surprising thing is, even by that era, the Office faction were the dominant one; that’s where the real money was.
Then I gather the Azure faction was born and has completely dominated both, becoming a massive majority of the company’s profitable business.
The gaming people (Xbox and whatnot) were always poor relations, if you’re wondering, and MS R&D was its own eccentric little world which seemed to exist entirely outside of the universe inhabited by any of the others.
Office is one of the cloud services.
What cloud services, office? I find it hard to believe windows OS isn’t possible
M365 including Intune, Entra, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Office.
I don’t understand what you mean by “Windows OS isn’t possible”.
Sorry, Profitable, brain fart.
Is there a source on the OS not being profitable?
No, the source is my ass, but I work in IT sales and am specialized on MS licensing, and IMO there’s just no way Microsoft can finance the constant development and cloud infrastructure needed for Windows updates on a one-time-payment of a few bucks for an OEM license.
Meanwhile, businesses are happy to pay several hundred dollars per user and year for M365 licenses if they’re in the ecosystem. And for the licensing costs of large enterprises, Microsoft basically just sends in an analyst who looks at the environment and quotes a number with a lot of zeros. Which you either pay or go out of business.
It’s not that Windows isn’t profitable, it’s that Office is insanely profitable. There’s a running joke inside MS that Office pays the bills, everything else is icing on the cake.
It’s not that Windows isn’t profitable, it’s that Office is insanely profitable. There’s a running joke inside MS that Office pays the bills, everything else is icing on the cake.
It’s not that Windows isn’t profitable, it’s that Office is insanely profitable. There’s a running joke inside MS that Office pays the bills, everything else is icing on the cake.
Almost?? Do go on
I guess most people still access the internet. Websites track you no matter what OS you use.
And also MS Edge
Who in the name of God is running Linux with edge as their browser of choice.
Unfortunately it’s the only way to use Gamepass on Linux, so even if it’s not the browser of choice, some people do have it installed on their machines.
Me scratching off the labels of old Win7 office computers at work
This assumes you bought a pre-made machine. Building your own won’t have any OS you didn’t install yourself.
That’s such a tiny market that it’s completely irrelevant to a company like Microsoft.