Microsoft Moves Decisively to End the Nonsense Era (Premium)

While many are understandably worried about the demotion of Windows within Microsoft, there's a silver lining: All of the nonsense is being demoted as well, leaving Microsoft to focus on what really matters to this product and its users.

And that, folks, is good news.

Don't get me wrong, I was never rooting for Windows to fail. And I don't mean to suggest that this demotion is the best thing that's ever happened to the platform. But I rely on Windows very much and have no interest in its competition despite decades of experimentation. I care about Windows. And ... there is evidence now that the demotion will, in fact, have positive side effects.

As you must know, the onslaught of nonsense features in Windows 10 over the past years has been so troubling to me. As is this weird insistence that each new Windows 10 version, now shipping two times per year, had to be a big deal, had to contain many major new features.

I write and talk about this issue a lot, but I'll just call out one article that sums it up nicely: In last year's Here are the Most Over-Hyped Changes in the Windows 10 Creators Update, I listed out the nonsense new features that shipped in that release. Each shares a single and obvious commonality: They would each be used by so few people that it was unclear why Microsoft went to the engineering effort to add them to its flagship client platform.

And we just sort of went through that with each release, with Microsoft briefly pretending that nonsense features like Mixed Reality, 3D, emojis, or whatever would ever matter to some broad base of users. When none of it was at all successful, no problem, Microsoft just moved on to the next release. There's always something new and exciting to promote!

The thing is, PCs are productivity tools. And Windows, like it or not, just isn't used for engaging consumer activities like social media, watching videos, exploring new apps, or reading. Not by the masses, at least, all of whom have long since turned to more personal, mobile, and always-connected devices, in particular smartphones. The PC is boring. It's where work happens.

But I've always liked that. And as things evolved and I stopped needing to load up my laptop with podcasts, music, videos, and other content before each trip, the PC settled into its more traditional role. Like virtually everyone else, I just use it for work. It's actually quite freeing.

So the return to desktop-centricity in the initial version of Windows 10 was thus a big deal to me. But that push was squandered in the years since as Microsoft unsuccessfully fought to make Windows exciting to users again, and to find new ways to monetize a product that most people don't even really pay for. Windows 10 has since succumbed to advertising, crapware bundling, and those nonsense features that rile me up so much. It's a mess.

Anyway, Windows, as you know, has been demoted. Terry Myerson was sent packing, there is no one on Microsoft's senior lea...