The Future of Windows? (Premium)

With the fiercest and most high-profile advocate for Windows leaving Microsoft, your fears for the future are understandable. So let’s take a moment to consider what this week’s changes mean for Windows and for the many millions of people who still use, rely on, and prefer this platform.

Two points up front.

My career, such as it is, was built on writing about the future of Windows. As you may recall, the tag-line for Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows, which I created and then ran from 1998 to 2015, was “the future of Windows … today.” I’ve always focused on the future, not on the current or the past. With Windows 10, this has gotten interesting, because the future is never more than 6 months away. I feel that this schedule is untenable, and given this week’s changes, that might finally change.

Second, I’ve been discussing Microsoft’s de-emphasis of Windows and its related heightened emphasis on the cloud for the past few years. And … I’ve gotten a lot of pushback from those readers who believe that Windows is somehow still vital and can somehow grow in any meaningful way. So let me just reiterate my central point about the Windows 10 era (thus far): This is a declining business that is only important to Microsoft because of its big installed base in businesses. The company’s efforts with regards to enthusiasts and consumers are laughable and amount mostly to insular cheerleading and nonsense features that few people want, need, or will use in the real world. It is noise meant to distract the few remaining engaged people in the community from noticing what is really happening.

That last bit is hard for me, personally. What I care about is probably what most of you care about: The client-side technologies and features in Windows that we do rely on every single day. I do not care about the enterprise cloud all that much at all, sorry. I care about Windows, and I care about the people who use Windows.

So let’s be honest here.

Let’s look at what Satya Nadella wrote in his explanation about this week’s changes. And let’s pull out the real meaning of those words. Let’s analyze what’s happening here.

To be clear, the announcement was not about Windows per se. It was about a broader structural reorganization that also impacts other parts of Microsoft’s businesses. But that is, I think, a smokescreen. This was really about removing the highest-placed and most vocal advocate for Windows from the equation so that Mr. Nadella, most famous for being a Wall Street darling and talk show circuit guest, can continue down the path that has brought him—if not Microsoft—his greatest success: Kill of legacy businesses and heavily promote future businesses instead.

Here’s what I see in Satya Nadella’s memo with regards to Windows.

This was premeditated. And Nadella had been plotting Terry’s ouster for some time. “One transition we have been planning for is for Terry Myerson to pursue his next chapter outside Microsoft.” So this was just a matter of getting the timing right. My guess is that “one month before Build” made tons of sense, because it would have been weird for Terry to appear at the show, touting the future, and then get shit-canned. (Fun fact: This happened to Steven Sinofsky in 2012, and I love that he had to appear at the Windows 8 launch knowing that he was already fired.)

Terry did accomplish Nadella’s demand for Windows 10. This bit is interesting: Terry’s biggest accomplishment, according to Nadella, is that he fulfilled Nadella’s requirement that Windows 10 could be maintained like a service, since that is the future of Microsoft. And doing so will help in his ulterior aim to make Windows 10 just another piece of the Microsoft 365 puzzle. “Terry … transformed Windows to create a secure, always up-to-date, modern OS,” Mr. Nadella writes. Success!

Windows is being ripped up and scattered into different parts of the company. I wrote yesterday in Terry (Premium) that Window is no longer under a single organization and that it has been split into three parts. Actually, it’s more complicated than that:

• Core Windows development has fallen under the very credible Jason Zander in the Azure organization. I view as Microsoft returning the most important, foundational part of Windows to the adults in what used to be the Server group. That, at least, is smart.
• Rajesh Jha will lead a new Experiences & Devices team that will deemphasize PC form factors and push new device types that satisfy more “modern needs, habits, and customer expectations.” For those of us who cheered the return of PC-centricity in the first version of Windows 10, this is bad. And it means we’re going to see more nonsense hardware like HoloLens, Windows Mixed Reality, and, of course, Andromeda.
• Windows Experiences. Situated under Experiences & Devices and led by Joe Belfiore, this group is not new. It will continue to “innovate across new scenarios and device form factors, as before. But this bit—“more deeply connect to our Microsoft 365 offerings”—is new, and speaks to my previous comment about Windows 10’s future as a component of an enterprise-focused (mostly) cloud offering.
• New Experiences and Technology. Also under Experiences & Devices, and also not new, this group will continue to be led by Kudo Tsunoda. It focuses on “high value” experiences designed to “engage users,” which is sharply different from the enterprise focus of “Windows experiences.” This group may give some hope that there is some future for Windows with end users. But all you have to do is look at the laundry list of nonsense that Microsoft has put in Windows 10 over the past two years to understand otherwise.
• Devices. This group, also under Experiences & Devices, will be led by Panos Panay. There’s not much more to say here. This will be more of the same: Devices as some expression of the software.
• Enterprise Mobility and Management. This group, led by the excellent and credible Brad Anderson, will focus on “even tighter alignment” across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft’s Cloud + AI platform. Again, the focus is on the cloud here.

And that is literally all that Satya Nadella had to say about Windows. Its future is tied heavily to Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services offering. There will be more end-user features, but that effort will be led by the group that gave us what we have now. And there will be more first-party devices, again led by the same team (in this case the one that is now doing Surface.)

Nadella promises that we’ll learn more about future Windows plans at Build, but that’s a revolving promise. We always learn more about that at Build, and Microsoft routinely under-delivers on its promises. Concurrently to this, Microsoft has been consistently eliminating choice in Windows. And it has been adding advertising, crapware, and other nonsense to the product. In short, the Windows of today is a shadow of its former self. And I think that this situation only worsens as we move forward.

But there is some hope.

I’ve pointed out a few cases in which I feel that the people running individual parts of the split-up Windows pie are credible leaders. And these people could do the right thing.

What’s the right thing?

It’s actually meeting the needs of its customers.

For example, most of Microsoft’s customer base consists of businesses, and they have spoken clearly that they are more comfortable upgrading Windows ever several years, not every 18 months as is the case under the current rules. So so Microsoft could make two changes here that make sense: Stretch that 18-month schedule out to three years for corporations. And release a new version of Windows once a year, not twice a year, a change that would impact individuals as well. Focus on product quality, not nonsense features that no one will ever use.

The company could also remove all of the existing nonsense from professional/business-focused versions of the product. That means no more ads, no more crapware, and no more forced usage of Microsoft products and services.

Finally, Microsoft could actually undertake real work to modernize the Windows 10 user experience. That means the file system and file browser. And it means ignoring childish nonsense like stickers and emojis.

Do I think that any of this will happen?

Honestly, no. The issue for Windows today is even worse than it was previously because Terry Myerson is gone. And the reason he’s gone, I think, is that he wasn’t on board with the missive that was handed down from on high. That missive hasn’t changed. And I suspect the leadership and organizational changes noted here were made to ensure that the complaining would stop. Our best advocate was just ushered out of the building.

So we’ll see what happens. Joe B. will be Joe B. at Build, and I’m sure some of what he announces will be very exciting. This will especially please those who value form over function.

But I need some substance. I need some assurance that the future isn’t as downbeat as I believe it to be. I need to think that the mindless cheerleading that currently dominates the Windows development process will give way to real engineering and real advancements. That stupid ideas will be ignored. That real concerns will be addressed.

I’m hopeful but I’m also realistic. And now comes the worst part. The waiting.