Has anyone seen what MS is up to?

[irv]

What I see coming is total control of the Personal PC World by MS.
MS is working on Windows 10 S Which is like Win10 but does completely with Win32 apps. The only Browser that will work will be Microsoft Edge. Hey, Didn't MS have trouble a few years ago with trying to monopolize the browser market and that failed?
Reading an article on ZDNet, it said that Chrome browser is a casualty. Here is the Quote.

"CHROME BROWSER A CASUALTY
A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store. In theory, Google could build its own compatible UWP browser, but it would bear little resemblance to Chrome on the desktop. The default browser, for now, is Microsoft Edge, period.

As it stands, you also can't change the default search engine to Google from Bing either. All of this is done under the auspices of improved security.

Obviously, not everyone is going to be able to run an OS like Windows 10 S overnight. So Microsoft is using the Surface Laptop and other low-cost systems in the $200 to $300 range made by OEMs as a trial balloon to test the waters of the end-user market.

Who is Microsoft targeting? Education and Home users and those who mostly use the browser to do daily tasks and don't use legacy desktop-based line of business applications. That's the exact same demographic that Google is targeting with Chrome OS."

I can see what they are doing coming out with cheap PC to get People hooked on using Windows and the software in their store, and they will have a monopoly on not only the OS and Browser but on all the Software as well. By doing this, it is going to put Open Source Software in a spot. Right now they can write code for their software that will run on different platforms, but if they are writing for Linux and Windows, it won't work.
Someone need to step in and see that is not free enterprise, this is control.

[QIII]

Isn't this exactly the same complaint/warning/worry everyone has had about Microsoft for years?

Microsoft, remember, has recognized the value of its Azure platform. Most of the OSes running on Azure are Linux. Microsoft added WSL to Win10. Nothing like advertising to your PC customers that you have given in and have been assimilated by the Borg.

[sp40140]

Well, the thing is this surface laptops start at $999 USD. And they are targeting it at schools. And schools have been migrating to 200-300 USD chrombooks with much simpler management tools.
So there is no competition with chrombooks (even though MS claims and media has not disputed it much). There are some places which claim that this is for college going students, well win10 S works even less for that customer base.
And on the $999 USD price range, you get lot more quality and full windows (which runs all apps including win32). So, it will be much harder to compete there.
As it is today, I don't think this is going to be a success. Unless MS has something which they haven't made public yet.
MS makes good hardware. But just hardware. Not the software. In recent times they have made progress, but still historically they have had bad OS and they have to work on it. So, they are in trouble.
They should have just focused a lot more Surface pro and leveraged the high praise it got.
So, to your point, Win 10 S is going to fail.

[irv]

I watched this video, and it said that a user could switch from 10 S to 10 pro on the fly and install software that is not in the store. I think they are doing this to bring users over to 10 S. I am not sure I agree that 10 S will fail.
It might not happen overnight, but they are moving to take over the Personal PC market. With higher security, they are trying to get the IT managers to jump on the Windows 10 bandwagon.
EDIT: another good link on this subject. THE VERGE

[sp40140]

Yes, MS allows you to purchase the ability to run win32 apps for additional fee of $50. That's just standard Win10. And so nothing special. And beats the whole 10 "S" thing.
MS already has Personal PC market. Unix/Linux never had it. In fact Google took some market share from MS from just one market which is education. And MS is selling this win 10 S to Ed sector. And that's why I say this product is not for Ed market.
IT managers are already on MS bandwagon (only the Ed sector is bit different with competition from google). The thing is IT managers mostly deal with internal or very specialized software for that particular market. And the software used there are never going to make it to the MS store. Ex, a developer who uses Eclipse IDE. I don't see Eclipse ever going to MS store. So the IT managers will have to go for full win 10. Which they already do today.
So, I don't see anything special to win 10 S. But just more headache for IT managers if they go to win 10 S.

[mastablasta]

interesting. many pages still don't work propperly in Edge. they work in Chrome, Firefox and IE. but not in edge.

[exhile]

Bill Gates is no longer at the helm of Microsoft so its anti-competitive practices like that of the Windows 95/98/2000 era are gone. Also, the browser wars have a new dominant player which is Google Chrome not IE or Edge. The Windows 10 S edition is aimed at the education market to get youngsters hooked on Windows and Edge. Microsoft's plan may or may not work but only the future can tell if Microsoft's plan to get their Surface Laptop into the education market works. The Personal PC market dominated by Windows is shrinking and the Smart Phone market dominated by Google Android & Apple iOS is growing.

[TheFu]

Do we really care what MSFT does? I haven't cared since their Win10 EULA says they could rifle through all my files and do whatever they wanted, sharing the data as they like, without my prior approval. The first hint something was smelly came with the Win10 keylogger during the alpha releases - which has never been disabled.

BTW, they tried to push that same EULA onto Win8 and Win7 users in a patch. I rejected those patches. Think that is partially why MSFT started grouping all their patches and not specifying security from non-security patches. Was easier to just stop patching my 2 remaining Windows systems than to give up my freedoms. Had to lock down what those boxes could do and everything around them on the network. It has been over a year now without patches. No issues. I don't expect any problems until they break the entire reason I still run Windows (TV recordings) at all.

I never saw Bill Gates as the bad guy. It was always that other guy ... the crazy, loud mouth, who was the megalomaniac - Steve something.

Anyone else see the Pwn2Own failures in MSFT-Edge on Windows? Saw a bunch of new advisories of total ownership.
https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/bl...2017-day-three

The 10th anniversary of Pwn2Own just successfully completed as the Zero Day Initiative spent $833,000 acquiring 51 different 0-day bugs.

[Dragonbite]

Microsoft is not hiding it's desire to take on Chromebooks in the Education market with Windows S. The problem is, for Microsoft, is that I don't think they have realized all of the advantages Google provides such as ease of management and integration of different services plus it integrates with all of the cloud offerings that one can use either with Chromebooks or with your own computer and a browser. My kids' school uses Google Classroom and while the school uses Chromebooks, at home they use their own computers.

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft tries to use the argument for Edge being the only one available of Google's Chrome OS doesn't allow you to install a different browser on it. Not being able to switch the search engine, however, is the sticking point that should come back and haunt them at some time.

Microsoft's hardware offerings are going for the upper-tier market which is why their Surface Laptop starts at $999 and drastically increases in price for any change in configuration up to over $2000! They are, and it seems nobody has come forward yet, "expecting" that other manufacturers will offer Windows S cheaper devices for schools in the $200-300 range (source). This expectation, I think, comes in part because a few big manufacturers are offering Chromebooks in that range and Microsoft seems to think they will retool to sell Windows S devices for the same price. I don't know if the OEMs were consulted on this, though.

One person I talked with in comments did point out that the price range of the Surface Laptop is well within the range for kids tote to college (he said kids take $1,300 laptops with them, I can't confirm that yet). So Microsoft may be pushing theirs for college students to take (and try to counter Macbooks) and leave the K-12 market to those already trying to get in (and don't mind a paper-thin margin).

I tried configuring a System76 Galago Pro with similar stats to the Microsoft Surface Laptop and the System76 was $200-300 LESS to an "equivalent" (or as close as I could get) configured system. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is hoping to make that sort of a margin off of each of their machines.

But Microsoft knows the era of the desktop is dwindling and that is why they are hoping to push everything to subscriptions (Office 365), cloud (Azure) and nice devices (Hololens). As Chromebooks have shown, the OS is less and less relevant and if they want to survive they will have to adapt.

This is my opinion from articles I've read and all. Am I missing anything?

[mastablasta]

mor einteresting is googl edeveloping new smartphone OS witout Linux kernel and with BSD like and other similar worded licences to avoid GPL.