"X as a service" type of deals guarantee nothing of the sort. Quite the contrary, the maintainers of the service can make all sort of modifications you may or may not like at their whim, because "anyone can unsubscribe if they do not like the changes". IMHO this type of deal is better for one party alone - Microsoft.

At the beginning of this month, Ubisoft just dropped the server support from their single-player game Might and Magic X, neatly rendering it, despite it being a single-player game, almost unplayable. As the game requires server access in order to proceed beyond chapter 1, most players will never be able to continue playing it. They also effectively blocked the players from accessing any DLC they have bought with real money or with Ubi points.

This kind of situation would be very possible for Windows as well if MS would decide to go the "OS as a service" route. Personally, I don't mind if MS has stopped official support of an old Windows version, there's still nothing preventing me from installing that said OS on real or virtual hardware. The service model on the other hand would effectively prevent anything like that from happening, as it would be impossible to activate any old version of Windows if there was a need for it.

Basically, "software as a service" is a model that benefits only the software manufacturer, not the customer.

It's more like it has the opposite effect - if you're paying for an ongoing subscription the service providers will believe you want to see a constant string of changes to justify what you're paying for. It certainly doesn't give you any more say in how the product is developed. It also allows them to lock out anyone installing x version beyond a certain "service expiration date" in a way that's a lot more user hostile than you now still being able to install W7 or even XP offline.

The real issue isn't subscription or not, but rather the long-term observation that closed source software is often better during early development cycles where development is sometimes more tightly focussed than open source (which can fragment too much too early). But "late stage" the roles tend to get reversed, open source gives people the stability they want (ability to fork, UI changes are often optional rather than compulsory, "if it ain't broke don't fix it as we're under no compulsion by shareholders to release new versions for the sake of it", usually DRM-Free, etc) whilst late-stage closed source basically runs out of ideas for features and just ends up "shuffling the UI deck chairs around" (endless unwanted UI changes purely for the sake of "being seen to be doing something"), upgrades enforced by DRM, etc, and software then ends up designed more for shareholders than long term users (which is most post 2010 versions of Windows & Office in a nutshell).

hmm, cant you use a bypasser? As support for the product ended, it should be legal to modify it to let you use it.

Yes, it is very probable they change it to this lame online monthly subs thing like they did with office 365.
But that surely would scare away many users from win.

Software as service would be fine if it was priced well.
Office 365/year 70$ for personal and 100$ for family ?:O way too expensive
It seems you can get Office 2019 for 125$ for 1 pc. that is less than 2 years subs.

Office 365 is not worth anything. It’s rubbish, a cut down skeleton of a product compared with all the bad bits of the latest version retained and nothing to add. I have an old version of office on disc, and use that, otherwise I would move to libre/open office if needed. For work we have it, but it just doesn’t work very well, like a lot of the M$ products they have been severely crippled over the last 10 years or so.

The thing is, you should not have to jump through hoops in order to be able to play a game you've paid for. It's definitely something Ubisoft should handle themselves. What is making the thing more bizarre is, that Ubi is still selling MMX and the DLC in Steam despite they should know, that the product they are selling doesn't work anymore.

yep, I've tried it once, and it was just dumbed down, felt like another barebone google product and those are bad
The only one I like is onenote

Well, if it is as effortless(?) as normal feature updates within Windows 10, then I guess it doesn't matter much... We will see if that is the case. Earlier, I've always opted to clean install a new Windows release from a clean table, just to get a fresh start without any old stuff cluttering the system.

One of the motives for MS to release Windows 11 might be that it is a slightly heavier update than a normal Windows 10 feature update, so they wanted to make it "optional", at least for the time being. Normal feature-updates will be forced to Windows 10 Home users, but with this update they give the choice back to the users, ie. they have time until 2025 to decide whether they want this bigger feature update, also known as Windows 11.

With corporate desktop, and server, Windows, I presume that is the case already now. Well, not fully sure about the desktop Windows nowadays to be frank, I don't think my employer is paying every year something for me using Windows 10 Pro on my work laptop... but I presume they are paying something to Dell for pro-level support for the laptop, which might include elevated Windows support as well... not sure.

Anyway, for Windows home users, I still believe Microsoft is heading to the opposite direction, ie. they will offer it (more and more) as a free OS without any license fee, for home users specifically. And they expect to make their money from those home users using Windows Store, Azure and other Microsoft online services.

The fact that MS has so openly let both Windows 7 and 8 users to keep updating to Windows 10 for free (and apparently will do the same with Windows 11), and they nowadays have very lax restrictions in case a home user chooses to install and use Windows 10 without activating it with a valid license (mainly just having that watermark telling that Windows is not activated, and not letting the user to change the wallpaper (because it would get rid of that watermark, obviously), and apparently no other nuisances to the user? So for most home users, it apparently doesn't even matter if they validate their Windows 10, or not? Even if it wasn't still really an allowed practice...

I presume the competition from other desktop OSes, which to end-users at least appear to be free, also pushes MS to this. Linux is free or course, but I don't think ChromeOS costs anything extra to the device maker and buyer either? And a MacOS user sees their OS as "free" because it was included in the price of their Mac.

It's cute how y'uns think we're actually going to have a choice.

I feel for ya on the consumer end. On the business end as a contract IT worker every Windows upgrade season is great for business. From agencies looking to migrate to other OS and/or asking for help in downgrading back to what worked before the update broke their work flow.

During the botched Windows 10 upgrade period, my office had OT for 27 weeks in a row. Towards the tail end we were making $175 an hour. It was sweet. I hoping for more of the same. Back then my rate was $40 an hour.

If you're expecting a major shift in the data collection process, you'll probably be disappointed.
Vulkan is a very nice alternative. It's a shame that so few games are using it. I had hopes that it'll get more popular. Competition is always a good thing.

I can't be bothered with 10 anymore, let alone 11. Not something I'm looking forward to.

This is unacceptable. I can understand that some company wants to drop support for a multiplayer game because it's no longer popular, but when someone buys a single player title, he shouldn't worry that the game will stop working. I suspect that there's some kind of workaround. It most certainly violates the license but it's justified IMHO. This example shows the advantages of a DRM-free platform.

Plus those product/dev teams have to justify their existence/are enthralled (under duress) to whatever falls out of the mouth of marketing teams. Pretty sure it's like the occasional SysAdmin who has set up a script to "break everything" when the reorg fog rolls in, so they can create reinforced job security.