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> When Microsoft tries to make Windows more Mac-like

Just a consideration: Aren't nearly all users who love the Apple/Mac experience already in the Apple ecosystem? In other words: Should Microsoft not rather assume that making Windows more Mac-like might be a bad idea considering their core customers?




> Aren't nearly all users who love the Apple/Mac experience already in the Apple ecosystem?

Not sure. Macs are not that available and, in some places, are prohibitively expensive. Others would love the everything-integrated experience while using software that runs only on Windows.

I'm not sure Microsoft even has that "core customer" as neatly defined as Apple (or Linux). Getting a Mac or a Linux box is a deliberate action, whilst, for the end user, getting a Windows box is the default when you get a "generic" computer.

One group I can think of is the corporate administrators, who want to deliver a locked down set of functions to corporate workstations - VPN settings, firewalls, blocked websites, custom update schedules, and so on. That same crowd also orders Macs and Chromebooks with the same goals.

What Microsoft can do is to offer tailored experiences for specific groups - people who want everything to just work (who'll be happy with Skype logging them on on boot, with OneDrive backing stuff up...), gamers who'll definitely not want Skype to interrupt them and who have nothing to back up to OneDrive, but, sometimes, want to record and stream their games, Windows developers who'll spend most of their time within Visual Studio and the MSDN KB (am I dating myself here?), and so on. I'm very sure they have a list of personas already built for that.


> I'm very sure they have a list of personas already built for that.

At least considering the product policy that Microsoft currently applies to Windows, I tend to doubt that. ;-)


It depends on the direction Windows itself wants to go in really. This isn’t the early 2000s where Windows was the used OS everywhere and was some hyperpower among software. Most apps are cross platform and there is a healthy ecosystem of OSs. Microsoft can let itself be the gaming and office PC, it can attempt to remain being the jack of all trades and master of none, or it could plot its own new course. I think either way they’ll have plenty of costumers.




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