Author Topic: Bill Gates leaves MS board  (Read 7953 times)

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Offline BudTopic starter

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Bill Gates leaves MS board
« on: March 17, 2020, 08:12:46 pm »
Shadowed by the coronavirus news, Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft's board. He still owns 1% of company's shares. Looking at what piece of shit Windows has become under the new management, to me life was better back in Gate's time.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bill-gates-microsoft-board-1.5497762
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Online Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2020, 10:41:05 am »
Microsoft no longer needs Windows any more. They've moved on to other things. Google and Apple beat them to the smartphone market, so it was inevitable.

I suppose he's made more than enough money and no longer needs to work.
 

Offline Stray Electron

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2020, 02:22:21 pm »
Microsoft no longer needs Windows any more. They've moved on to other things. Google and Apple beat them to the smartphone market, so it was inevitable.

I suppose he's made more than enough money and no longer needs to work.



    that's been true for a long time.

    Microsoft is rapidly becoming an irrelevant company.  They missed the smartphone market and Windows is a rapidly dying piece of crap. I don't see any future for MS other than stealing their users' data and reselling it. Being a MS insider I'm sure that Bill saw that and that's why he's been selling off his stock for a long time.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2020, 03:50:00 pm »
Microsoft no longer needs Windows any more. They've moved on to other things. Google and Apple beat them to the smartphone market, so it was inevitable.

I suppose he's made more than enough money and no longer needs to work.



    that's been true for a long time.

    Microsoft is rapidly becoming an irrelevant company.  They missed the smartphone market and Windows is a rapidly dying piece of crap. I don't see any future for MS other than stealing their users' data and reselling it. Being a MS insider I'm sure that Bill saw that and that's why he's been selling off his stock for a long time.

I'm beginning to think the same, even that MS is bound to failure now over time. Looks weird - like it was once the company that just couldn't fail.

I also think that things were handled "better" when Bill Gates was still holding an operational role at MS (which now dates a long while back.)
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2020, 04:13:14 pm »
I don't think Microsoft will suddenly fail any time soon. I think it's more likely they'll just carry on as they are, without growing or shrinking much. There's no reason why the desktop is going to switch away from Windows and companies will always need desktop computers.
 

Offline MadTux

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2020, 04:45:52 pm »
Last good Windows was Win2k and XP, nearly 20 years ago, became more and more bloated crapware with every release since then.

Linux IMO has a bit of a bloating problem as well, but since it's modular and open source, you can at least choose less bloated Desktop enviroments, ie LXDE, XFCE or Mate, instead of KDE4/Cinnamon/Gnome3  bloatware. And you can compile an optimized kernel were you remove everything that you don't need.

Windows as a kernel with minimal or open source desktop enviroment wouldn't be that bad, but the desktop enviroment, especially Win8, is such a piece of crap, that I ditched Windows a long time ago, for that reason. And since it isn't modular, you can either eat their garbage or ditch it entirely.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2020, 04:51:36 pm by MadTux »
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2020, 05:50:22 pm »
There's no reason why the desktop is going to switch away from Windows and companies will always need desktop computers.

This. People have been predicting the demise of Windows for decades and it hasn't happened. They've also been predicting that next year is the year of Linux on the desktop for decades now too, and that hasn't happened either.
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2020, 05:50:50 pm »
I don't think Microsoft will suddenly fail any time soon. I think it's more likely they'll just carry on as they are, without growing or shrinking much. There's no reason why the desktop is going to switch away from Windows and companies will always need desktop computers.

Note that I didn't say "soon", just "over time"...

Sure Windows is still widely used everywhere and it would take a long time before both users and software companies can switch to something else, so Windows itself will linger for quite a while.
But MS is putting all effort on their additional "cloud" services, and whereas it has worked for them for a while, there's a LOT of competition for this, and I don't think it will save them forever.

So I just don't really see a future for MS. I'm not saying it will shut down tomorrow. But if they don't come up with a different strategy, I think it will happen eventually.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2020, 06:24:21 pm »
Many Linux advocates have been predicting Linux will widely replacing Windows on the desktop for over 20 years now and so far its market share has hardly increased at all. I can't see it happening any time soon, even with Windows being as bad as it currently is, it's not as bad as Windows 95 was.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2020, 06:27:26 pm »
Many Linux advocates have been predicting Linux will widely replacing Windows on the desktop for over 20 years now and so far its market share has hardly increased at all. I can't see it happening any time soon
It is happening. Just not in offices where a Windows PC is nothing more than a glorified typewriter. Take these away and you'll see very high percentages. Linux is big enough in engineering that a lot of companies already have Linux support or are working on it.
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Offline Karel

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2020, 06:59:35 pm »
Linux Desktop is gaining some inertia, but mostly from geek community and NUC/whatever Intel/AMD reference design community.

I see. So, that's why there are Linux versions of Cadence, Zuken, ADS (Keysight), Eagle, Microchip, Altera, Xilinx, etc. etc. ... mostly for geek community...
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2020, 07:00:09 pm »
Microsoft no longer needs Windows any more. They've moved on to other things. Google and Apple beat them to the smartphone market, so it was inevitable.

I suppose he's made more than enough money and no longer needs to work.

There are several billion Windows PCs in service still though, so I think their virtual abandonment of Windows may be an error. Yes PC sales have fallen drastically but as I've been saying for years that isn't because the PC is dead, it's because the market is saturated and the product is mature, and many users never really needed a fullblown PC in the first place and now get by with mobile devices. The PC is still alive and well though and many, many millions of them will continue being used for the foreseeable future. They last a lot longer than they used to due to being a mature product but they do still require occasional replacement.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2020, 07:15:26 pm »
There's no reason why the desktop is going to switch away from Windows and companies will always need desktop computers.

This. People have been predicting the demise of Windows for decades and it hasn't happened. They've also been predicting that next year is the year of Linux on the desktop for decades now too, and that hasn't happened either.


That's because there is a HUGE library of "legacy" Windows software. Strangely Microsoft themselves seem to be doing everything they can to kill off the legacy stuff which is the vast bulk of the reason people run Windows.

The trend of making everything web based is making the OS irrelevant though, people like my mom have been using Linux on the desktop for several years now and barely notice the difference. More and more of these casual users are using mobile devices now which are not Windows either. I don't think Windows will just go away but I do wonder if it will remain dominant, especially given the way MS has all but abandoned focus on it.
 

Offline DimitriP

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2020, 07:41:02 pm »
Quote
So I just don't really see a future for MS. I'm not saying it will shut down tomorrow. But if they don't come up with a different strategy, I think it will happen eventually.

Eventually can be a really really long time.

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Online Marco

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2020, 07:59:33 pm »
The smartphone market is irrelevant, it's nice to have all that extra money ... but needing to download an extra app to integrate well with a desktop environment isn't a big competitive hurdle.

What hurts Microsoft the most is that they have no real identity except legacy and windows being the primary platform for their business applications. For nomal users windows can't offer the low cost and ease of use of Chromebooks, they can't offer the ease of use and privacy of Macbooks ... they can just offer endless configuration problems.

I think their biggest mistake was the xbox, it made them lose focus on ease of use and become too comfortable with the messy legacy way of doing things which PCs slowly evolved into ... something which is now killing them. The Chromebook hardware platform model is what "Made For Windows" always should have been and if they hadn't been distracted by the xbox they might have seen that.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2020, 08:01:10 pm by Marco »
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #15 on: March 19, 2020, 08:03:38 pm »
Many Linux advocates have been predicting Linux will widely replacing Windows on the desktop for over 20 years now and so far its market share has hardly increased at all. I can't see it happening any time soon
It is happening. Just not in offices where a Windows PC is nothing more than a glorified typewriter. Take these away and you'll see very high percentages. Linux is big enough in engineering that a lot of companies already have Linux support or are working on it.
Where's the evidence to support this? Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows. I believe OS X has gained more than Linux, due to the crappyness of Windows 10.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
 

Offline Caliaxy

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #16 on: March 19, 2020, 08:19:35 pm »
I don't see any future for MS other than stealing their users' data and reselling it.

You mean like any other big tech company these days?
 
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Online Marco

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #17 on: March 19, 2020, 08:26:12 pm »
You mean like any other big tech company these days?

Except Apple, who is slowly gobbling up most margin on the consumer market. Data is worth a lot, but not that much.

If they manage to use their money to start beating Intel on desktop/servers with their own processor architecture and move more seriously into that market, the whole PC market would be in deadly danger.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2020, 08:30:26 pm by Marco »
 

Offline FreezeSSC

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #18 on: March 19, 2020, 11:43:28 pm »
Microsoft no longer needs Windows any more. They've moved on to other things. Google and Apple beat them to the smartphone market, so it was inevitable.

I suppose he's made more than enough money and no longer needs to work.



    that's been true for a long time.

    Microsoft is rapidly becoming an irrelevant company.  They missed the smartphone market and Windows is a rapidly dying piece of crap. I don't see any future for MS other than stealing their users' data and reselling it. Being a MS insider I'm sure that Bill saw that and that's why he's been selling off his stock for a long time.

They bet big on cloud and its paid off big time, they've made a huge turn around from the late 2000's early 2010's, dont see them going anywhere. 
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #19 on: March 20, 2020, 12:59:07 am »
I think their biggest mistake was the xbox, it made them lose focus on ease of use and become too comfortable with the messy legacy way of doing things which PCs slowly evolved into ... something which is now killing them. The Chromebook hardware platform model is what "Made For Windows" always should have been and if they hadn't been distracted by the xbox they might have seen that.

I was on the team that made the original xbox, it was incredibly successful at the time and supported a whole branch of the company publishing games. I'm not really sure where it has gone since then, I never had a 360 and from what I gather they pretty well bungled the XBone. I'm not a gamer anymore so I haven't followed that closely though. I don't think it was a mistake, it was very profitable, at least at the time. It was a whole separate division, not the same guys making Windows and desktop software. Microsoft is huge, internally it's more like a conglomeration of numerous separate companies, one group can have a completely different culture than another.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2020, 01:01:28 am »
Where's the evidence to support this? Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows. I believe OS X has gained more than Linux, due to the crappyness of Windows 10.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

1.9% of >1 Billion is a pretty large number of machines, and that's just desktops/laptops. Personally I'm still using Win7 on my daily driver but Linux on everything else and that's my path forward once Win7 becomes non-viable. I don't really care if it gains widespread adoption, heck it could even be an advantage if it stays somewhat of a niche for power users. Less likely to be a target of malware and viruses.
 

Offline mc172

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #21 on: March 20, 2020, 01:08:38 am »
Last good Windows was Win2k and XP, nearly 20 years ago, became more and more bloated crapware with every release since then.

Pff, really? W7 is very nice and W10 is probably even better!
I've got W7 at home and like it because it doesn't assume anything that I don't want it to, but for work use where everything is set by group policy anyway W10 is very good.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #22 on: March 20, 2020, 01:13:43 am »
I like Win7 a lot, very few complaints.

Win10 is a steaming turd, at least it was for the 2 years I had to use it at work. I have never encountered an operating system that felt so hostile toward the user, I felt like it was constantly fighting against me when all I wanted it to do was stay out of my way and let me get my work done.
 

Offline mc172

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #23 on: March 20, 2020, 01:22:55 am »
That's the problem you get with either people that don't understand what they're doing (and the consequences of what they're deciding) setting policies, and/or people not giving people local admin rights because it supposedly sounds scary.
I was very reluctant to get "upgraded" to W10 at work (as I considered it a downgrade) but once I put my internal bias aside, and had local admin rights etc, it was better than W7. Until I hard deleted Cortana because it drove me nuts and as a consequence broke the search function...
 

Online tautech

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #24 on: March 20, 2020, 01:29:27 am »
Nutthing wrong with W10 at all, just the performance and stability benefits are well worth it.
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