It’s Easier to Add than Subtract (Premium)

Watching Chromebooks evolve into truly capable PC replacements is a fascinating reminder that it's easier to add than subtract.

This is a topic I've raised from time-to-time, and it has important implications for Microsoft and Windows, in particular.

When we look at the evolving state of personal computing, we can see very clearly that mobile devices---mostly smartphones, but also tablets---have long outstripped traditional PCs and Macs. This is true of both unit sales, or marketshare, and usage. The PC once dominated personal computing but it is now a bit player.

To adapt to this seismic shift, Microsoft has tried to simplify its aging, legacy Windows platform. In doing so, it is, in effect, trying to subtract from Windows. It is trying to make Windows simpler or, using its own terminology, more streamlined.

But you can't subtract from a complex, well-understood platform like Windows without losing functionality. And in many cases, this makes the platform less usable and familiar. And less useful, especially to the billions of people who rely on things working a certain way.

The best-known example of this subtraction, S mode, is artificial. While running in S mode, Windows 10 still includes all of the functionality needed to run desktop applications and other software. It's just hidden from the user. And it hasn't gone well at all, as is well-understood.

This approach makes sense, at least conceptually. As it turns out, Windows actually requires all of that legacy desktop code to run. Windows isn't just not the same without it. It's nothing. Hiding its legacy past is just about as sophisticated as this will ever get. Microsoft would pretty much need to start over otherwise, and its previous attempt at doing so---Windows Mobile nee Windows Phone nee Windows Mobile again---failed about as hard as anything can fail.

And that's too bad. Because it's much easier to add than to subtract.

As I wrote two years ago in Can Google and Apple Pull the Plug on the PC Market?---and have discussed many other times, both in writing and on podcasts---the makers of simpler mobile platforms face an easier task than Microsoft does with Windows. They can simply add capabilities to their platforms over time, as they have, and make the products more sophisticated.

That said, Android and iOS have both moved awkwardly into this future. In the two years since I wrote that article, Android has continued to fail on tablets and has never emerged as a serious contender on PC-type devices. And the multitasking features Apple has added to iOS on iPad Pro are almost laughably bad: They are impossible to discover organically, do not work logically, and are further hampered by Apple's tunnel-vision on the separation of desktop PC and device.

These failures would give Microsoft and Windows some breathing room if it weren't for one little problem: Chromebook. Google's browser-based OS provides the right mix of "good enough" and "it just works" to...