Warning: I can't write short messages
What's at the end of the tunnel when the one year mark is met?I can't imagine the the purchase of apps is what's going to bring home the bacon, but I could be wrong.
They're pushing the one-year time frame, I think, because that is the free "upgrade" period for 7 and 8, and they know that if they can't get us to do it for free, they surely won't be able to get us to pay $100 plus for the same privilege. If there is still a good bunch of 7 users around then, MS is really in a bind-- do they extend their free "upgrade" period, basically begging people to PLEASE take their free upgrade that they have rejected for an entire year... thus tipping Microsoft's hand and showing that their entire upgrade push was more about their desperate desire to get people on 10 than anything else?
It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.
Windows 8 was a failure in the marketplace because its dual platform design ended up serving neither as well as respective dedicated operating systems would have. 10 was supposed to be the OS that 8 "should have been," but the one feature that doomed 8 (being neither a dedicated desktop OS nor a dedicated mobile OS) is still very much in evidence. Of course, Microsoft being what it is now, has found myriad new ways to alienate its users that have nothing to do with the already-rejected "one OS to rule them all" idea, like the adware, spying, forced updates, among others.
Microsoft has no robust app market that compares to that of Apple or Google, and people expect that when buying a smart phone or tablet. As long as the market share of Windows mobile devices is tiny, devs won't be all that motivated to write for that platform, which means that most people looking for a new mobile device will (as has been the custom for years) completely overlook MS and think of it in terms of either iOS or Android. Microsoft is way behind in building a decent app library, and they think they have only one shot at it... to use their near monopoly on the declining PC market while it still matters to pole-vault them into the same league as their competitors.
If MS can convince app developers that they have a built-in market of customers even without Windows mobile devices amounting to anything significant in market share, then those devs may begin writing apps, which makes the Windows mobile devices more attractive because of the bigger app market and because PC users who buy into the "app" melee can more easily be persuaded to keep using those apps on the go on their brand new mobile device.
That's the pitch MS is making to devs... get two for the price of one! Make a universal Windows app and access the desktop market and the mobile market at the same time? How could you lose?
That only works, though, if the Windows mobile market exceeds the size of the Windows market that can't use the Windows apps. In that case, the best bet for "two for the price of one" is to make any app a Win32 program and cover the entire market, perhaps extending as far down as Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10.
As long as the "prior versions" Windows market is bigger than the Windows mobile market, it will be smarter for software developers to write in native Win32 and ignore Windows "apps."
Microsoft threw us (the traditional mouse & keyboard PC users) under the bus pretty hard to try to force their way into the mobile app market, and as many prognosticators have told us that in the face of the failure of Windows 8, Windows 10 is a "make or break" product whose success (or lack thereof) will decide whether MS continues on as it has been or becomes the next former juggernaut that is now little more than a punch line, like AOL or Microsoft's own IE. They've decided the goodwill and trust of their users (many of whom have been loyal Windows users for 25+ years) is expendable; the mission of getting people into the market for "apps" is the
only thing that matters. Unhappy users who begrudgingly adopt 10 is a win; happy users that stick with 7 is a loss. Customer satisfaction is not an end unto itself, but is instead only useful as far as it can be leveraged to get people into the "app" market. That's the
sole metric by which anything is judged in terms of Windows, and MS has bet the farm on it. They are all in on that strategy.
I'm ready to stick with 7 for four more years. Why not? It's as close to an ideal OS as MS has ever produced, by my standards. 10 has a ton I don't want and nothing I do (DirectX12 would be nice, but right now, it is of no benefit). Four years is a very long time-- Microsoft's gambit of sacrificing all of their goodwill (such that it was) in the name of building an app market will almost certainly have succeeded or failed by then. It seems destined to fail, IMO... at the present time, Windows 10, despite being a free upgrade for non-enterprise users of 7 and 8 that has been available for six months, has only just exceeded the OS market share of Windows XP, while still lagging behind Windows 8 (!) and not even coming close to Windows 7.
Microsoft won't get me to upgrade before I am ready. I've been screening updates before accepting them (one by one) since there were Windows Updates (it surprises me that so many computer-savvy people don't do this-- even before MS gave me a reason to believe they would stoop to abusing the update process as they have recently, it just struck me as a no-brainer to pick and choose what is installed on MY computer rather than letting Microsoft do it), so I never saw the GWX adware or any of the other things we've been reading about. The telemetry updates never made it onto my puters either, and neither did any of the "this update makes it easier to upgrade to the latest version of Windows" things. It's just business as usual here... smooth Windows 7 sailing, same as always. Even if they did slip in a bit of "update" malware that I did not catch (like a trojan within a legitimate security update that I would accept), I keep meticulous backups, and I would not hesitate to roll it back.
Funny thing about human nature-- people hate being told what to do. The more they try to force 10, the more I want to resist it. Windows 10, you shall not pass!
