I'll have to recall this quote the next time someone says Linux is on the rise (j/k)

The worst thing is that it's usually not necessary. Granted in the modern age with GPUs, that may not be completely possible, but the degree to which things are restricted is a huge part of the problem.

MS just pulled the plug on the Zune store after many years. I feel sorry for anybody foolish enough to have bought music there. And unlike apps for iPhone or Android that are likely to be less useful or not useful at all years later, you can listen to the same music for decades without a particular reduction in value.

It's kind of a shame that punchcards require so much space for the information because the longevity of those has got to be rather good. Assuming that they don't get put out of order or destroyed.

First not many actually outright buy a license... all my licenses for instance came with my PC's when I upgraded. Which is typical for most people. It's still was about a 4x faster adoption rate. Second, Windows 10 has to clean up the stigma that was left by Windows 8, which is far worse then the stigma left by Vista when 7 released. It's not actually black and white as you seem to be trying to make it.

So what Steam going to be left with Indies then? It doesn't matter how many games they have, what matters is if they are big blockbusters that people want to play and all the big publishers are starting to go down this trend. People might hate Origin but there more than willing to put up with it to play just EA games even if they would rather they be on Steam. This is clear.

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You seem to have some kind of hate or whatever for Windows 10. That fine, and is your right. But this has to do with the potential threat of Windows 10, specifically the store, not you personal feelings for it. It's clear that this could be a threat down the road to how things are currently done, and for people that don't bring personal feelings into the equation it's pretty easy to see. For some people it won't matter much, we will adapt to it and as long as we get our games the vast majority won't care... but to companies like Steam you better believe there watching what happens closely.

Gabe is worried, it was behind his entire reasoning for Steam Machines.

When put that way, that is also very true. Where is Linux then... free vs paid doesn't mean shit in the OS world evidently.

MS has already said it will be free, no monthly fee. They will make their money from advertising and store sales, and the cloud. This is windows as service now, like Google, Facebook, or any other billion dollar company, not windows the software company...

They are far from a monopoly these days, this isn't the MS of 20 years ago, cells phones are making desktop OS's irrelevant and MS has little to no footprint in the cell phone area. Sure they want to change that, if only because they see the writing on the wall as far as the future of their company goes.

It doesn't matter, that licence was still paid to ms by the system integrator. and you bought it in the end with the machine, as a whole ... sure it was prolly not at 100 bucks but still close enough.

haha, correct :)

Yep, punchcards are still probably the best. I mean there are paper records well over 2000 years old, so longevity isn't a problem, and they are not tied to any particular hardware, just so long as you know what the code means your good to go. Have to start a bring back the punch cards (obviously by posting them out to everyone - mmm, think I have found a limitation here :o)

Sorry, what do you mean with "they also clearly want to compete with the traditional desktop applications"?

Both in OS and in productivity they still dominate that space, despite declining market share... if by compete you mean they want to protect their position then I agree, and the convergence of mobile with traditional is the biggest threat they face, hence their strategy.

I am curious what you base the statement that "MS has a greater interest in the windows gaming scene this time around". As you yourself say, gaming is popular in app stores, hence IMO any apparent gaming focus is a consequence of their need for a store, not the other way around. As well you actually take it one step further by considering an interest to compete in game retailing with Steam / GOG (albeit digital retailing) not on gaming per se.

Let's put it this way, until MS reverses direction on closure of dedicated gaming studios (even AMZ now has gaming studios) I see no indication of a specific priority towards gaming on their part. The creation of the XBox (associated with GFWL) was the only time MS actually focused on gaming as a priority - IMO they moved there because they felt consoles (Sony, Nintendo, etc...) were threatening to fragment their market and they reacted to that.

It was a strategy with mixed results, since their actual main threats emerged from different OSs so to speak, from Apple and Google (Google is moving in the direction of a virtualized OS, where the desktop is cloud based). One can look at the fact MS still has the upper hand over Linux and iOS in gaming as a sign the strategy paid off to some extent, but on the other hand the whole gaming involvement was a distraction and I think responsible for the loss of focus that permitted Apple and Linux to gain ground against MS in the past 15 years.

If anything MS is actually likely divesting of specific focus on gaming and replacing it with specific focus on hardware. So a better integrated store front isn't enough evidence of a renewed MS focus on gaming, and neither the fact their most recent Surface is powerful enough that it could be a nice gaming machine, and neither a renewed push to engage app developers to consider Win rather than just iOS and Android.

I think all of those facts are more easily explained by their need to protect their traditional market spaces by getting some position - any position - in mobility. They are retrenching and doubling down on convergence basically - I don't see gaming coming into that decision at all - it's just impacted by it. Whether this strategy will be good for them or not, who knows...

Here, have some analysis from when Win10 launched,
maybe you'll find it interesting.

Everything I hear about W10 is that it's a very good OS. Here on GOG foks have a bias towards Linux, towards anti DRM, which is not representative of the vast majority of users - be them consumer or enterprise.

The security / privacy features that folks here dislike with a passion on W10 are exactly the features that will make it be hugely successful in the enterprise and faciliaate development on the platform. And what folks use at work, they will tend to want to use at home.

IMO MS is no longer complacent, and has identified the threats facing it very well. The name of the game is execution though, and so far I like what I see. W10 has probably on its own managed to stop the bleeding of users towards Google and Linux and might help bring back some developers that got burned - repeatedly - in the past decade.

Apple is a tougher nut to crack, because of its position on their phones and tablets - but Steve Jobs is gone, and so the window of opportunity is there.

Love it or hate it, I think MS is back in the game so to speak... they always were around, just it seemed they had fallen asleep or something. That hurt them relatively speaking, but they were strong enough it might not have done any lasting damage.

All I've personally seen Win10 doing so far is driving more people towards Linux and Mac
and driving the other people mad.

I just hope, that M$'s struggle for more and more control will be their end in the long term.
Multiplatform has become a thing and they can only get their control for very few titles, so I don't see a threat at all, actually I'm quite glad about what they are doing since it's so utterly wrong that more people have begun so see it for what it is.

This year, the moment has arrived, at which I had a more user friendly experience in handling a notebook for office work, web-stuff, gaming and compiling with Linux than I had with the same system with Windows (7). Those are odd times indeed and if I look at how much worse things are with Windows 10, well... :D

That's exactly the response they hoped for with this announcement.
Making people do premature decisions by appealing to a money-saving instinct and so getting people on board that may not even have switched over otherwise.

Is the "free upgrade" only free in the first year and transformed into a subscription later on?

No.

The free upgrade does have limits. Your retail Win10 license expires when your previous Windows license expires. So if you had Win7, I think that's around 2020 or so. If you have an OEM PC, then it expires if you significantly modify your hardware or your hardware breaks.

Source? I know that the upgrade is bound to hardware ID, so significant changes will require some hoops, but where did you find the 2020 expiration date when upgrading from Win7?

Win10 OEM is bound to hardware ID. The Win10 retail is bound to your retail serial key/license.

License Transfer: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-win_upgrade/windows-7-retail-license-upgrade-to-windows-10/a6a1cc4b-720d-41cc-87c2-7eb7dd5166fc

Of course, where in the actual agreement all of this is? I don't know. Before I upgraded, I found something from a MS Support Engineer who said your Win10 would expire in 2020 if upgraded from 7 and 2023 if upgraded from 8. But I'm not finding it now.

Here's MS OS Lifecycles: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

That would be illegal. If they tried that they'd wind up back in court and get their asses handed to them for anti-trust violations. As it stands, the license for DirectX doesn't require Windows for use, neither does any of their other software.

That being said, if you're not using it on their OS, you wind up having to hope that it will work and receive no support from anybody. But you are allowed to do it.

Using it explicitly to force people to use their store is definitely an anti-trust violation.