Windows 10 S Failed, and It’s OK (Premium)

Like an unwelcome house guest, Windows 10 S arrived last year shrouded in mystery and suspicious intent. But now that we know Microsoft has quickly killed off this pointless experiment, we can confidently face a better future, sure that Windows 10 S will bother us no more.

Right?

Um. Not exactly.

As I noted in Exclusive: Microsoft Plots a Transition Year for Windows 10 (Premium), Microsoft is killing Windows 10 S, which had been marketed as a new standalone Windows product edition for individuals, alongside Windows 10 Home and Pro.

That did not go well.

In the three quarters since this product was first announced, it was adopted up by exactly zero PC makers. In my discussions with those PC makers, both private and public, I’ve been told the same thing repeatedly: There just isn’t any demand for Windows 10 S. So Terry Myerson’s May 2017 promise that we’d soon see more premium PCs running the system amounted to naught.

Yes, most major PC makers are, in fact, selling Windows 10 S-based PCs, albeit only on low-end junker PCs aimed at the education market. But that’s not really what’s happening: All of those low-end education PCs are offered with a choice of either Windows 10 S or Windows 10 Pro. And I challenge you to find any high-profile examples of a school district or other major educational institution actually rolling out on Windows 10 S. It’s the type of thing Microsoft would publicize heavily if it were happening. But it never has.

And yes, some really do argue that Windows 10 is somehow “better” than the more powerful and capable mainstream Windows 10 versions. This is laughably untrue. But rather than beat this to death, I’ll just quote from a recent email which neatly highlights the real issue here. To be clear, the goal is not to embarrass or belittle its author, but rather to point out that our perception biases, as Microsoft fans in this case, often prevent us from making the best decisions for ourselves. And that “it works fine” is the opposite of “it is better.”

“My usage experience has been far better on Windows 10 S than it ever was on Windows 10 Pro,” he writes. “I have most of the apps I need thanks to the Windows Store, my laptop starts up and shuts down more quickly than it did with Windows 10 Pro, and I genuinely like the overall experience that Windows 10 S offers me.”

His PC, by the way, is a decent rig, with a Core i5 processor and 16 GB of RAM. And I will point out the following rebuttal. He would have access to all apps, not just most of the apps he thinks he needs, on Windows 10 Pro. Not to mention drivers, utilities, and other capabilities that are simply not available on Windows 10 S. That the notion that the Microsoft Store is somehow complete enough to satisfying anyone’s needs is highly questionable. That startup and shutdown times are immaterial in this age of always-on PCs, and that standby/resume times are more important by far. And that the “overall experience” of both systems is almost completely identical. Until you bump into the many things that Windows 10 S cannot do. Which makes the overall experience on S worse.

He’s not alone, by the way. I still occasionally hear from well-meaning Microsoft fans who think Windows 10 S is just fine, thank you very much. I feel that these people are doing the wrong thing for what they believe is the right reasons.

But here’s where they are right. Windows 10 S as a destination, a goal, is laudable and correct. Win32 and the desktop platform that we rely on in Windows today is buggy and insecure legacy code that needs to be slowly deprecated and obsoleted. And the thing we arrive at on the other end of this process will look very much like Windows 10 S.

Put simply, Windows 10 S failed simply because Microsoft delivered it in 2017. It’s the type of thing it should have transitioned us to over time instead. In fact, you could make a pretty terrific argument for tying the timeline to the support lifecycle for Windows 8.1, which expires in 2023. Maybe the desktop could die with that platform, and at that time. Five years from now.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter what one thinks of Windows 10 S today, because it’s dead. And in a rare move, Microsoft has done the impossible: In killing off a product, it is replacing it with something that its fans will like even more.

Yes, I am referring to S mode.

S mode will be expanded past Windows 10 Pro and made available on Windows 10 Home as well. (No, I don’t care about Enterprise, which will also get an S mode; you can expect corporate adoption of this thing to be near zero too.) That transition is happening right now. If you are one of the 17 people stubbornly running Windows 10 S right now, you crazy dog you, your PC will be upgraded to something called Windows 10 Pro in S mode when you install the Redstone 4 feature update this spring.

Yes, Windows 10 Pro in S mode is Windows 10 S. So many will take exception to my statement that Microsoft is “killing” Windows 10 S. But this isn’t just semantics. Microsoft is killing Windows 10 S, because that product was originally envisioned as a standalone Windows 10 product edition. That strategy failed, so Microsoft is resetting. And now, it will add this S mode across the product family. It will continue to push its vision of the future, but it will do so in such a way that will essentially hide its failures.

Remember, we now know that zero PC makers have chosen to sell Windows 10 S-based PCs to individuals. Going forward, these will just be Windows 10 PCs sold to individuals, and Microsoft will be able to crow about “growth” in S mode usage while providing no hard numbers. (They do this now with Surface and Xbox.) This change gives S mode, the more streamlined but restrictive operating mode, time to evolve. This change gives what used to be Windows 10 S a new lease on life.

And just as a beautiful flower can rise from a pile of dung, maybe this time they can make it work. Hey, you never know.