Windows, Diminished (Premium)

Everyone seems to have a theory about what Microsoft could have done to stave off the death of Windows.

These theories are all wrong. Equally wrong are any opinions about what Microsoft might do now to fix things.

I understandable why people are looking for answers. I am too, to be fair. But I think it’s time for a wake-up call. And a gentle reminder that we’ve been preparing for this day for years.

In fact, I’ve been discussing the fall of Windows for so long that it almost feels like a career. My reward for simply explaining what I’ve seen as inevitable has been a tsunami of criticism. But I’m just the messenger.

Two years ago, my message was this: Android and iOS—mobile—is the asteroid hurtling to earth to kill off the Windows dinosaurs. A potential extinction moment for Windows and for the PC.

“If you think PCs are a small part of personal computing today, it’s only going to get worse a few years down the road as an entire generation of Google-services-using, Apple-hardware-wielding youngsters streams into the workforce expecting to use the tools they’re familiar with,” I wrote at the time. “Our children are not growing up on Microsoft technologies. To them, Microsoft is as relevant as Sears, AOL, or IBM.”

That future of mobile devices powered by cloud services is unfolding all around us. And since we can mark the shift from PC-based computing to mobile/cloud-based computing to the release of the first iPhone, we can state with certainty that this new era is right now entering its second decade. This is not new.

And yet, for all my understanding of this transition, I still feel what amounts to a body blow whenever Microsoft takes yet another step back from Windows. I can’t explain the psychology of this. I can just identify it for what it is. And try to reel it in, because this emotional for me in ways that I find confusing. And try to communicate this to you so that you might handle it a bit better than I do.

And on that note, allow me to state plainly that Satya Nadella is openly destroying the one thing at Microsoft that I care about the most. But let me be equally plain in explaining that he there is no fault here. For Microsoft to survive and thrive, it must move decisively to dismantle the past that is not working and make big bets on the areas in which it can lead moving forward. There’s a lot more to it than just “the cloud.” But that’s an easy way to describe Microsoft’s future clearly.

Getting from here to there is always an interesting journey. And a worthwhile debate.

You may recall my discussions about Windows 10 S/S mode, in which I’ve noted that the destination (a streamlined Windows that’s been stripped of insecure legacy code) is the correct one but I disagree with how Microsoft is getting there (the one-way street that is S mode). It’s a classic “getting from here to there” conversation.

But this thinking can and should be applied more broadly to Microsoft under Satya Nadella. He took over the firm as its world was crumbling all around it. Microsoft collectively—Mr. Nadella, his senior leadership team, its board of directors, and probably some majority of employees (assuming they could look past their own job security-related biases)—would almost certainly agree that “the cloud,” for lack of a better term, is the destination. The only question, the thing we must endlessly debate, is how we get from here to there. To “the cloud.”

Transitions of this magnitude are always messy. There’s going to be collateral damage. There are going to be layoffs. Massive layoffs, in fact, and I’ll argue right now that one of the key defining points of Satya Nadella’s tenure as Microsoft CEO will be the share number of people he fires from the company. For all the talk about compassion and empathy, Nadella wields a bloody, discompassionate axe.

Whether you see this as leadership is sort of beside the point. It’s happening. Many would not have the stomach to enable change of this magnitude. Many would have put Microsoft into a death spiral as a result.

It’s weird for me to write these words, because I hate this, but Satya’s strategy … makes sense. He calls it the “intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.” And if you actually look at Microsoft’s website describing this … thing, this initiative, this idea … you’ll see hints at a future in which Microsoft’s presence on the client side (“the edge”) of the equation is representative of how things have changed. Microsoft sees almost no direct role for itself in what we now call personal computing.

That is, in Microsoft’s view, the intelligent edge is really about what I think of as “pervasive computing,” some combination of IoT/embedded technologies everywhere and natural interactions, that include voice, gestures, and more. It’s all powered by AI, because of course it is. And it works more efficiently and is more powerful when the whole thing is powered by Microsoft cloud services.

Microsoft outlined its vision for intelligent cloud and intelligent edge at Build a year ago. And if you read that article, you will notice a few things.

For example, it doesn’t mention the words “phone” or “PC” even once. But it does use the term “device” 22 times. And I think that’s purposeful. In today’s world, we all use multiple devices: Everyone has a phone, and then most of us have some combination of other devices like tablets, PCs, and more. Today, those devices are being augmented by IoT/embedded devices in the form of the first generation of smart home (and smart workplace) appliances and technologies. In the future, they will be supplanted by more seamless devices.

Microsoft’s bet on the future then, what I’ve oversimplified as “the cloud,” is really about the “combination of multi-device, AI everywhere, and serverless computing” (as the company describes it). And no matter what you think of Windows PCs today compared to the broader market for personal computing devices, or of the impossibility of a future Microsoft mobile device actually making a difference, the “intelligent edge” is heterogeneous. It’s not going to be Windows-powered. Microsoft hopes that it will be at least partially “Microsoft-powered.”

Satya Nadella explains this strategy very clearly if you dig enough.

“The choice we must make is to … focus on where we can have impact and amplify that technology at scale,” he (or some army of speech writers, more likely) wrote. “This is the power we have.”

It’s also the lot that Microsoft was given. The world has simply changed. And it is are reacting.

It’s worth noting too, that this strategy is actually working. Assuming, of course, that your goal is that Microsoft is successful. The firm’s stock price has been on a steady upwards trajectory since Mr. Nadella took over. And while enthusiasts like myself have winced and moaned every time he cut something important to me, or every time Windows 10 was compromised by the latest nonsense, this isn’t about me/us or our concerns. This is about Microsoft being successful for decades to come.

As Microsoft charts its way forward, it becomes less and less interesting to me and, I think, to many of you as well. I respect this giant company’s need to focus on those places where it can be successful. And I understand the need to likewise kill or ruin those products and technologies that I still care about very deeply.

But I don’t have to like it. I do not like it.

Ultimately, all I can really do is try and understand it.