Source: Zinc scale
It's a pity to discard the tasteless food
Windows has always been synonymous with desktop operating system.
June 24, 2022, coincides with the first anniversary of the official release of Windows 11, but it is quite embarrassing that although Microsoft spared no effort to promote it, the user acceptance seems not high.
According to AdDuplex data, Windows 11 will run on 19.7% of PCs in April 2022, with a relatively slow growth. There is no sign of shaking the dominance of Windows 10 for the time being.
So, why is Windows 11, which Microsoft has high hopes for, unpopular? Or why do users refuse to upgrade for free? Beyond the desktop operating system, what are the weaknesses of Microsoft's ecosystem?
Not interested in "Windows 10 Plus"
"Windows 11 has come out? I don't know. Anyway, I completely prohibited automatic updates." Fan Dongchang said.
Fan Dongchang, a white-collar worker who coordinates Guangzhou, usually uses a laptop with a genuine Windows 10 system. He once loved and hated it for its simplicity and ease of use. He hated that it would be updated automatically every three days. He also prompted to restart the computer to take effect.
In its mind, an excellent system should be invisible.
"It's too rogue to shut it down. What does Microsoft think?" Fan Dongchang told the zinc scale. He moved the registry, turned off the upgrade service, and changed the planned tasks. The above operations can only delay the automatic update, and cannot completely prohibit the automatic update.
In a fit of pique, Fan Dongchang offered the killing move of "charging by traffic".
Used to disable automatic updates In this way, Fan Dongchang basically got rid of the harassment of automatic system updates, but also missed important system notifications, and was not even clear that the system had iterated to Windows 11.
Unlike Fan Dongchang, Gu Yajie knows the existence of Windows 11.
As a post-90s programmer, Gu Yajie pays close attention to every move of the Internet and is naturally interested in Windows 11.
But after careful consideration, I chose to give up.
"Windows has no subversive design. It's more like Windows 10 Plus than a new system," Gu Yajie said regretfully.
In this regard, Zhihu Gaozan also agreed: "First, Windows 11 is not a normal iteration. Windows 11 itself is a modified version of Windows 10 X that was originally exposed. The original Sun Valley update is the code name of the new version of Windows 10, but because Windows 10X died, Windows 11 came out."
Gu Yajie told Zinc Scale that Windows 11 supports the running of Android applications. "What do you mean by making computers more and more like mobile phones? Why don't I just use mobile phones?"
In fact, Microsoft has always aspired to occupy the mobile terminal.
As early as 2010, Apple's market value surpassed that of Microsoft at one stroke. The New York Times commented, "This is the beginning of a new era and the end of the old era." After that, Microsoft was obsessed with mobile terminals, and cross platform and unified development became the underlying logic of Windows.
This means that the innovation of Windows system focuses on improving the experience of mobile terminal, while the change of desktop terminal is not significant, which makes its basic disk more conservative.
According to the data of Steam, a well-known game platform, more than 30% of Steam users chose to upgrade Windows 10 within 7 months of its official release, while only 17.44% of users chose to upgrade Windows 11 during the same period of time, which can be seen from the attitude of game players.
In other words, Windows 11 is not popular.
Hardware requirements are too high. Old users are inferior to dogs?
In fact, even if you want to embrace Windows 11, it is not easy. Fang Cong has a deep understanding of this.
Fang Cong, an aboriginal sophomore at a university in Wuhan, was interested in new things when he was young. The dormitory computer was upgraded to Windows 11 early, but the computer at home was uncertain.
The reason is that Windows 11 has a high threshold.
Among them, the most stringent one is that the TPM standard must be version 2.0. The so-called TPM is a special security chip. Debt storage of power on password, hard disk password, login password, etc. is an important guarantee for the safe operation of computers.
"Most old computers are TPM1.0 or 1.2, and older computers do not have TPMs." A trojan expert told Zincare, "TPM 2.0 supports a wider variety of encryption algorithms, including ECC P256 and ECC BN256."
In a word, Windows 11 is more secure.
Windows 11 puts more emphasis on security "I understand all the reasons, but I can't buy a new computer for a system! Old users are not as good as dogs!" Fang Cong reluctantly chose to give up.
In fact, not a few people have been rejected.
According to Lansweeper's data, only 44.4% of the 60000 enterprises surveyed about 30 million Windows devices can fully meet the upgrade requirements of Windows 11, and the actual installation rate is only 1.44%, while the installation rates of Windows 10, Windows 7, and Windows XP are 80.34%, 4.70%, and 1.71%, respectively.
In addition, there are many people who regret the upgrade, Lu Yining is one of them.
Lu Yining is an employee of an IT company. He is engaged in hardware research and development. He usually uses some simulation software. "If there are many bugs, he will not talk about them. However, many simulation software cannot be used, so he will be speechless.".
Lu Yining told Zinc Scale that it would upgrade to Windows 11 in November 2021. The first time it ran, it felt that there was a slight card. "It would take a minute or two to open Word, and there was a display delay when double clicking the folder." Later, it found that the battery life of the laptop was greatly reduced.
Although the subsequent bugs were constantly repaired, the incompatibility of some simulation software was still not completely solved. Finally, Lu Yining had to downgrade the system, "if your system is still in good use, don't upgrade it".
The zinc scale found that every time Windows 11 was upgraded, a large number of bugs had to be fixed.
For example, the Windows 11 KB5010386 update fixes problems such as slow hard disk read/write speed, muted volume icon in the taskbar, and LDAP operation crash.
For another example, the Windows 11 KB5012643 update fixes major errors such as blue screen crashes, partially truncated video captions, and users unable to click the minimize, maximize, and close buttons.
Old business left, new business right
In addition to the bad start of Windows 11, Microsoft still faces two thorny problems.
One is that the search falls behind.
Microsoft's original intention of launching Bing is to change Google's dominance in the global search field. However, it has invested countless human and financial resources for many years, but it is still tepid.
The reason is that Google's first mover advantage is too great, which preempts the minds of users in advance. Bing faces the embarrassing situation that existing users settle down in Google and incremental users tend to Google.
Vesting, a venture capitalist, said: "This is the network effect. The more people use a product or service, the greater its value and the faster its iteration speed will be, which will attract more people to use it and form a positive feedback. However, it is not easy to bridge this gap, even for Google. Since Google entered China that year, its market share has always lagged behind that of Baidu. In 2009, Google China's market share in China was 32.3%, while Baidu's market share was 63.9%, almost double. "
Of course, the first mover advantage is not unshakable, and there are many cases of overtaking at curves in history.
Microsoft has tried social search, ecological search and other methods, and is eager to find another way to find a differentiated competitive path, but the actual effect is not great, and there is no hope of turnover.
The other is browser marginalization.
On the curve overtaking, Google gave Microsoft a good lesson: In those days, IE browser accounted for 95% of the global browser market share, which can be said to be the largest browser, but Google Chrome did not want to become the most popular browser by virtue of more simple, faster, more secure and other subversive designs.
According to Statcounter data, in May 2022, the top three global browsers will be Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari, with market share of 66.1%, 10.11% and 9.16% respectively. The gap between the two is visible to the naked eye.
Chrome's market share is far ahead It can be seen from the above that Microsoft's basic disk is still not improving. Fortunately, it has caught up with the tide of cloud computing and avoided becoming the dust of Internet history.
After all, cloud computing is Microsoft's No. 1 business.
According to the latest financial report, the operating revenue in the first quarter of 2022 is 49.36 billion US dollars, up 18.35% year on year; Net profit was US $16.728 billion, up 8.22%; Among them, the operating revenue of Microsoft Azure was $19.1 billion, while that of Amazon AWS was $18.4 billion in the same period.
This means that Microsoft's cloud computing business has surpassed Amazon, the industry leader.
In a word, the progress of Microsoft's new business coexists with the decline of its old business. On the one hand, it has to compete with Google in multiple dimensions, and on the other hand, it has to seize the highland of cloud computing with Amazon.
Unfortunately, in this complex game, Windows 11 seems to be difficult to contribute.
(The interviewee asked that Fan Dongchang, Gu Yajie, Fang Cong and Lu Yining be pseudonyms)
