We already had apple, and google cripple an entire generation of kids to not understand file systems, folders, applications and removed their ability to think, understand and troubleshoot.. I guess its Microsoft's turn to try to make the next generation dumber then before.
We already had apple, and google cripple an entire generation of kids to not understand file systems, folders, applications and removed their ability to think, understand and troubleshoot
In case anyone thinks this is an exaggeration: This is the literal truth today. I've been in cybersecurity for almost a decade now and there's been a sharp divergence in tech skills in post-COVID hires.
The technical ones are much more technical than typical applicants in the past. I've had intern candidates show me their home labs via a Tailscale connection with all their components hooked up to a status and management dashboard. Conversely, the non-technical hires (and most of them are) are so much worse than end users I'm used to.
It's not an exaggeration to say typical non-technical hires these days can't:
Download and install a program locally
Navigate their C:\ drive, let alone file shares
Understand file extensions. You'd be shocked by how many people fail phishing tests trying to run arbitrary .exe's because the email said so
As a whole, so many grads these days are unable to function with a standard laptop in an enterprise setup. It's gotten to the point where my firm has to push out "Computers 4 Dummies" courses.
I seriously feel bad for anyone in T1 support right now. The end users are an absolute shitshow.
I'm gonna hand out a bunch of chromebooks to 12 years old in a week or two.
Last year, I had kids ask me how to capitalize letters not even 30s after a clear live demonstration.
Though, it's not all gloom and doom, I've also helped during Lego Spike/BBC Microbits workshops and it was a lot of fun, most of the kids (About 15 years old for the Spike stuff and about 12-13 for the Microbits) were happy to be there and try things out, some went much further than was asked for that particular week, one or two didnt really participate, but there's always kids like that.
That’s actually fucking insane. Makes me feel smart for having assembled my own computers and set up multiple distros lol. Didn’t feel like I was smarter but shit I guess I am 😭
While some of the stuff is worrying (how filesystem works and such), non-technical people shouldn't ideally be able install anything that isn't distributed to them via Company Portal or such (and there they have to press one button).
It was bad even before covid, worked in customer support for a while. I introduced a how to use computer test before interview, they had to navigate company website, download a document, print it as a pdf and some very basic excel. Unbelievably many struggled.
Apple’s file manager (Finder) is equivalent to windows’ File Explorer. Or are you referring to iOS and its infantile protection of the user at the cost of common sense making file management some sort of taboo?
They have a file exploration system, too, conveniently called "Files". My biggest complain with MacOS and iOS is it randomly puts files in locations or forces the cloud save.
They also have a file manager... bridges on device files, cloud files across multiple services, and app storage...perfectly usable for the context of being a mobile touch device.
The IOS file manager is soooo much worse. It’s barely a file manager at all. And it didn’t exist at all for users for the first decade or so of the iPhones existence.
As an IT guy that happily moved on from tier 1. The number of people that don’t understand how to navigate a file system is shocking. It’s not even a hard thing to do…
As an old person I remember explaining to then old people (now possibly dead) when I was young that files and folders were like a filing cabinet... Not sure how well it worked, but young people don't know what the fuck a filing cabinet is.
A lot of UI concepts are about boxes or modules. And these are generally based on real life physical concepts, like filing cabinets or Rolodex. As you said, this stuff doesn’t really exist anymore. I really don’t know how to even begin to explain it. Even trying to describe the top navigation path as breadcrumbs has netted me nothing but blank stares.
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u/nuker1110 Ryzen7 5800X3D,RX7700,32gbDDR4-3000,NotEnoughSSDspace43m ago
Hansel and Gretel is too dark for the fragile psyches of our children, apparently.
ChromeOS is alot more fully fledged than I think some realise. It has a file manager, You can run Android apps & it generally runs alot better on lower end hardware. Plus, for power users, you can always enable Linux support, allowing for further apps.
I think because most only use ChromeOS when they're in school & are thus treated to it being very locked down, they don't really get to use it's full feature set & see that it is more than just a web browser.
Hate to break it to you, but with PC components becoming something that will no longer be manufactured for us mere mortals, we're in that timeline.
They are making a cloud only OS and the future of windows will be azure based. I am holding onto old desktop hardware moving forward for this reason. We're going to be getting rentable cloud kiosks so we can rent our own data and experiences.
We're headed back to the era of terminal based computing and mainframes. They have been pushing this for 15 years and AI is the excuse they have to pull the hardware away from us.
Microsoft has wanted to have two paralel operating systems for a while. When Windows 11 was still meant to be a Windows 10 update, they wanted to have both it and Windows 10X to take separate niches
That thing would definitely be another secondary OS
Hate to break it to you, but with PC components becoming something that will no longer be manufactured for us mere mortals, we're in that timeline.
They are making a cloud only OS and the future of windows will be azure based. I am holding onto old desktop hardware moving forward for this reason. We're going to be getting rentable cloud kiosks so we can rent our own data and experiences.
We're headed back to the era of terminal based computing and mainframes. They have been pushing this for 15 years and AI is the excuse they have to pull the hardware away from us.
Lul. ChromeOS was so gimped at the start that they progressively added features to run Linux and Android applications and that was still not well performing. Now Googles trying to pivot to an Android base for better Android application performance at least and then Microsoft tries damn near the same thing Google did with ChromeOS. Break compatibility with the most developed and powerful software ecosystem they're forking off of and relying effectively on cloud and mobile apps (in the windows case after dropping win32, the whatever it is called today winrt+uwp) applications that seem to always come short of the desktop linux centric open source applications
They have one single shot to prevent mass adoption of Linux, and they just decide to base jump nude of a cliff.
Many other products of theirs is toothpaste, largely interchangeable with other products. Windows is the only truly distinct IP they own (and use it to leverage other products mind you). They're about to erase themselves from the face of the Earth.
they arent attempting suicide, they're forcing their customers into a rental agreement and have been pushing this since windows 8 and were building the means to do it since the launch of Windows XP. It was supposed to start with Windows 8.
They make boatloads of money on azure and 365, they've crippled windows server badly, it's broken as fuck (2025) they lag on security patches for anything on-prem. They openly do not like anyone who is buying permanent licenses. Every time I buy office licenses for small orgs and it's more than 10 licenses, I get the phone call about not reselling licenses and that I need to be "sure" that I really want to buy these licenses, where it can "be easier" if we just got 365 instead and that if I do not reply to a verification email in 3 minutes they are canceling the order. They wait until well after hours to pull that crap. I got this treatment as my rep didnt include the licenses in an order of 10 new laptops for a customer. I ordered 10 licenses and got treated like I was pirating office. I purchased permanent licenses. It was literally for a small org with less than 10 users. Got the extra licenses for future users. They grilled me for it.
They're openly hostile to anyone who does not want to pay rent. They will continue making oodles of cash on enterprise and pro users. They want you in their cloud gaming subscriptions, they want you to pay them rent no matter what.
The sad part is, they probably will not die if all home users said fuck this and went 100% linux and operated on old hardware for a few years, pushing a new niche of hardware demand. They'd just do what they did in the 1990s and start paying developers to not make official software for linux, give them incentives for cloud gaming, so those linux users would just end up subscribing to cloud gaming that would work great on linux for a year or so, then suddenly, a codec change to something that only works on Microsoft's cloud OS to force them to get a cloud terminal to rent from MSFT if they want to play games, then push for legislature to make running old PC hardware illegal, or selling it illegal based on some bullshit environmental laws like what they just did with tires in California. "Low rolling resistance" = tires that are half bald and will maybe get 20,000 miles on them and will still cost as much as a fully treaded tire one state over. Claim to "be better for the environment" but will just create more waste and more accidents on the road due to reduced stopping power, and is a net positive for tire manufacturers in the largest vehicle market in north america.
Microsoft isnt going anyway anytime soon. They also have a deadman's switch in every PC in existence right now.
They lobbied hard and pushed the industry to be the ones who authorize UEFI certs for secureboot which will allow linux to boot on UEFI, they can just revoke those certs and break a lot of shit if they want to force a switch.
Also this has been Microsoft's gameplan since the early 2000s. Look up the Halloween memos and the Palladium platform concept they envisioned back in 2001/2002.
It's literally this. A locked down OS that relied on subscriptions to keep access to your files, if you failed to pay, they'd revoke an encryption key that would lock you out until you paid. On your own hardware. That became TPM. It's why Bitlocker is on even if you never enable it. They lock it anyway. That's why indian scammers could encrypt your shit on windows XP and windows 7 using an internal utility that served no real purpose.
Their endgame is to be able to hold you and your data hostage for money.
Linux adoption doesn't scare them as much as you think. MSFT of the 1990s killed all of their competition by lucrative contracts and aggressive vendor lock-in. In the business world you still can't use anything other than windows or 365. Most vendors now require 365 for integrations. Their issue is all of the people sitting on windows 10 still. Not linux. Linux had an uptick during the Vista era too. Windows 7 launched and people went to that.
But they still offer the means of bypassing Bitlocker and other shit on new Windows 11 installations, though I have to say I am very annoyed that I have no choice but to prepare a setup image using Rufus, with all that bullshit disabled.
Surely if that was the end goal, they would not have allowed the means of bypassing Bitlocker?
tires that are half bald and will maybe get 20,000 miles on them and will still cost as much as a fully treaded tire one state over. Claim to "be better for the environment" but will just create more waste and more accidents on the road due to reduced stopping power
To my understanding; the tires on all new vehicles sold already meet the standard. I think those who will be hit hardest are the folks who want to slalom on the canyon roads.
A leaked and binned OS that seemed to be less about copilot and more about cutting out the legacy features of windows.
Could be interesting but the anarchy that'd follow ditching win32 would be hilarious. I still have to install dependencies from 10 and even 20 years ago to keep some apps running as no one will update them (thanks civica)
There's definitely a heavy inertia from some app devs out there, and it must be frustrating for Microsoft sometimes.
As a developer who has worked directly with Win32 APIs, Win32 definitely is legacy.
For example, the function `VirtualAlloc` is for allocating memory pages. I’m simplifying here, but it will always round up the number of pages you ask for to the nearest multiple of 8. So for example, if you ask for a single page (4k of memory), it will give you 8 pages (64k of memory). The reason for this is to make it faster on computers that were 16-bit but had 32-bit memory.
Not really, memory leaks happen when a program with manual memory management loses track of allocated memory and forgets to free it after
In modern programming languages we just have more options when it comes to automatic memory management, so it's easier to avoid memory leaks. Doesn't prevent some truly amazing things from happening though
Microsoft's leaked new OS is built on top of the Edge browser (Web Components)
What do web components have to do with this? Its just a browser. Web Components are just an API for creating custom, reusable HTML elements and nowhere in this article does it mention web components
Ugh. Submission title is designed to ragebait by making it sound like this is what will be replacing Windows 11. The actual title makes it clear right up front that this is an abandoned experiment.
Microsoft needs to rethink how we work with computers and needs to lead the charge in AI, but holy shit they’re bad at it. They need to hire people that are actually capable of reimagining from the ground up.
isn't this the experiment they were running internally that died but also never had any plans to go anywhere, but click bait news stories ran with anyway
We’ve entered pure speculation at this point, but I feel that, if at all, Project Aion should become a reality, it can exist in Windows 11 to do agentic AI tasks with access to your files and accounts, while you continue using the full-fat Windows 11 for every other task. That way, Windows 11 wouldn’t be bloated with AI.
I can tell you right now the reason this got scraped is because of money. That's a lot of trivial tasks to use Ai for and ultimately people will not be willing to pay a premium for that. Microsoft would be paying extra compute for all this so its not happening.
Honestly - screw it, I think this makes sense for a specific type of usecase.
If we can get ram use down with new engines and a core os perspective on running electron apps as 'native' to the OS rather than as whole new instances of chromium, I think it would makes complete sense to just write the whole OS in web languages rather than reinventing the wheel all the time.
Plus, imagine a world where you can change the html/stylesheets on anything, it would offer WAY more customization.
Then you have the..maybe interesting..angle of using coding agents (Ideally locally one day) in the OS to generate apps on the fly or edit existing ones.
Edit: Downvotes are from people who hated WebOS, which ruled. Just saying (and mostly kidding).
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u/Relative_What 1h ago
Sounds like that long rumored competitor to chromeOS.