Windows

I think there's an argument to be made for a decrease in computer ownership. In my line of work, over the past ~10 years, there has been an increasing number of people who only interact with our services through just their smartphone and just don't own a laptop or PC.

I know my folks have switched to Chromebooks primarily. Both my older brother and younger brother in law do not own laptops or PCs. One of my younger sisters has a laptop, and the other a gaming PC. I personally own a pc and laptop. Computers are in a weird place right now.

Last month, Statcounter reported a notable decrease in Windows 11's market share, and the trend continued in April 2024. After reaching its all-time high of 28.16% in February 2024, Windows 11 plummeted below the 26% mark.

According to Statcounter, in April 2024, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, going down from 26.68% to 25.65%. All those users seemingly went for Windows 10 since the OS, which will soon turn nine, crossed the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023, gaining 0.96 points.

It's not just that Windows 11 is shrinking, Windows 10 actually increased. The implication being that users have the choice between the two, and they picked 10.

That being said, when we're talking about percentages this low, I'm not sure there's anything of statistical relevance here.

While Windows is in an enshittification phase right now

Right now? It's been there for a decade at least. We all made due with Windows 10 because we learned to clean it up and make it our own, but let's not pretend it didn't have a foot in the enshitification direction already. The forced updates alone were more than enough evidence of that. Ads in the start menu started there. Forced "assistants", telemetry, junk getting reinstalled automatically, etc. They have been spitting on us for a long time.

Windows 11 is just a breaking point for many. At least Windows 10 was easy to clean out and I didn't absolutely hate the design.

10 was not great after 7, but compared to 11 it is good.

Windows 98 was incredibly unstable and crashed all the time. Windows 98 SE (second edition) was pretty great in comparison but still a little unstable.

Windows 2000 (not on your list) used the NT kernel and was incredibly stable. Windows NT is also not on your list.

Windows 8.1 was great

2000: best

DaddleDew: Correct: Good

You forgot 8.1, which was good. It was pretty much 10, but with better menus.

There is a looong list of why it's bad.

One of the biggest is Microsofts habit of fucking with perfectly serviceable UIs. They seem to just change things around without a clear goal or direction, just changing things so they can say they changed something. This is not only true for Windows, but a lot of Microsoft products like Outlook, Teams and Visual Studio among others.

They also have a habit of half assing the changes they made, with crucial features missing at time of release. There's also infuriating bugs which thousands complain about on their feedback platforms (which they also change constantly for no reason), but often don't get fixed for years. Often they don't even complete the changes before running on to the next thing. For example they still haven't fully replaced the old Control Panel with the new Settings system and it's been over a decade.

Microsoft also seems to have forgotten their place in the world. They make primarily business software. People using their systems for productivity. A lot of it is people at work or working from home. But also people needing to be productive at home, for hobby or for example their personal administration. A large screen (or multiple), powerful computer, big keyboard and mouse is exactly what's needed for this. And since forever Microsoft was the software to have to make it happen. However since they lost their dominant position on mobile, a bug has crawled up their asses. They seem to be desperate to not be the business software, but also the thing people use for everything. So they created Windows Phone, which was a huge flop. Then they tried to turn Windows into a mobile/tablet OS with Windows 8 which was a huge flop.

And now with Windows 11 they seem to just randomly copy design choices from Apple. Because Apple is successful with their phones, tablets and notebooks, Microsoft seems to think just randomly shoving in designs from Apple will make them successful as well. But there is no rhyme or reason to the changes, just poorly thought out even worse executed failures. All the while this is destroying what they were good at to start with, productivity. Using multiple screens has gotten much worse since Windows 7. Running a lot of apps at the same time, same deal. They are continually hiding shit away, leaving the user with more and more steps to actually do something. Once useful features get gutted or are simply left to rot, not being maintained and not integrating into the new changes.

I really hope someone at Microsoft wakes up and they stop with all this nonsense. Go back to what they were good at to start with. I can go into hours explaining how Microsoft got to where they are right now, but this wall of text is long enough already.

That's gilding the lily. It's bad because they got greedy, period.

And lots of spyware. They've made it perfectly clear that they consider your computer theirs to do with whatever they want.

thin happen everytime that new windows is shit, windows 7 was fine, windows 10 was more or less, windows xp was also good

I don't think anyone jumped back to 7 from 10, except for the people whose install upgrade failed and was impossible to complete. Vista, and 8 were both worse than their predecessor, which is why people went back. 8.1 was good though, and that's when people finally started upgrading from 7. But Microsoft is getting far more aggressive. Now they won't let you revert the upgrade after 10 days. If you realize on day 11 that 11 sucks, too bad. You're stuck, unless you do a full reinstall, which most people don't know how to do.