Everyone here will probably say people are moving to Linux, but I imagine the biggest beneficiaries of Windows’ long-term decline in market share are ChromeOS and MacOS. I would probably recommend a MacBook to my mother if she asked for my opinion on a new laptop.
There is also the argument that Windows’ market dominance was an aberration and unsustainable, and now we are seeing a reversion to the mean. While Windows is in an enshittification phase right now I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft eases off in a few years if their market share continues to decline.
This is good news, hopefully more competition in the OS space.
Last month, Statcounter reported a notable decrease in Windows 11’s market share, and the trend continued in April 2024. After reaching its all-time high of 28.16% in February 2024, Windows 11 plummeted below the 26% mark.
According to Statcounter, in April 2024, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, going down from 26.68% to 25.65%. All those users seemingly went for Windows 10 since the OS, which will soon turn nine, crossed the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023, gaining 0.96 points.
It’s not just that Windows 11 is shrinking, Windows 10 actually increased. The implication being that users have the choice between the two, and they picked 10.
That being said, when we’re talking about percentages this low, I’m not sure there’s anything of statistical relevance here.
I think there’s an argument to be made for a decrease in computer ownership. In my line of work, over the past ~10 years, there has been an increasing number of people who only interact with our services through just their smartphone and just don’t own a laptop or PC.
I know my folks have switched to Chromebooks primarily. Both my older brother and younger brother in law do not own laptops or PCs. One of my younger sisters has a laptop, and the other a gaming PC. I personally own a pc and laptop. Computers are in a weird place right now.
Honestly? Good. Maybe that’ll stop them trying to chase that mythical “average user” who doesn’t know how to uninstall Candy Crush, and instead have their come to Jesus moment with the audience of professionals and enthusiasts they have been spitting on.
I agree. They’re facing a shrinking hold on a shrinking market. Hopefully this leads to better competition, especially given how much progress is being made on Linux gaming.
While Windows is in an enshittification phase right now
Right now? It’s been there for a decade at least. We all made due with Windows 10 because we learned to clean it up and make it our own, but let’s not pretend it didn’t have a foot in the enshitification direction already. The forced updates alone were more than enough evidence of that. Ads in the start menu started there. Forced “assistants”, telemetry, junk getting reinstalled automatically, etc. They have been spitting on us for a long time.
Windows 11 is just a breaking point for many. At least Windows 10 was easy to clean out and I didn’t absolutely hate the design.
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I liked 7
- Win 98: Good
- Win ME: Shit
- Win XP: Good
- Win Vista: Shit
- Win 7: Good
- Win 8: Shit
- Win 10: Good-ish
- Win 11: Shit
When they are sitting on a decent OS, Microsoft can’t help themselves but get cocky and let the Corporate “good idea fairies” and comittees shove their inept fingers in the pie and enshitify the crap out of their next OS. They will only back off and let their people produce something actually good immediately after being reminded that they shouldn’t take their customers for granted and that businesspeople shouldn’t be allowed to dictate OS design.
10 was not great after 7, but compared to 11 it is good.
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Windows 98 was incredibly unstable and crashed all the time. Windows 98 SE (second edition) was pretty great in comparison but still a little unstable.
Windows 2000 (not on your list) used the NT kernel and was incredibly stable. Windows NT is also not on your list.
Windows 8.1 was great
2000 was a security mess. Worked well though.
Compared to the security mess that was 9x windows though, it was an improvement
2000: best
Nah xp was the best
That’s what I thought until windows 7
DaddleDew: Correct: Good
You forgot 8.1, which was good. It was pretty much 10, but with better menus.
I heard it’s bad and nobody likes it because Microsoft tried to put ads in it when it’s supposed to be your operating system.
That’s gilding the lily. It’s bad because they got greedy, period.
And lots of spyware. They’ve made it perfectly clear that they consider your computer theirs to do with whatever they want.
Doesn’t this usually happen right about now for new-ish windows releases?
IIRC, it happend when Vista came out and people jumped back to XP, then it happened again when 8 came out and everyone jumped back to 7, and then finally again when 10 came out and people jumped back to 7 again.
thin happen everytime that new windows is shit, windows 7 was fine, windows 10 was more or less, windows xp was also good
I continue to be genuinely shocked about so many little things they did wrong with 11 compared to 10. I can’t click on the time on my other desktops to pull up the calendar/notification center, only my main display. I can’t see the seconds when clicking on the time anymore despite how convenient that was for quickly timing things.
The power menu is to the right of the start menu rather than right above where your mouse lands, forcing extra unneeded movement to shut down the pc. The Volume Mixer menu doesn’t show up in settings search, you have to go to Sound Settings and then click Volume Mixer from there.
It’s little things that all add up to be maddening.
I find the most infuriating thing to be the printer/scanner settings in 11. It’s really fucking hard (for no reason) to manage printers in 11. The worst part is, the devices and printers page that has worked great for the last 20 years is still buried in there. Windows 11, all the features of Windows 10, just with a thick layer of gilded bullshit covering it.
I wish there was a modern supported version similar to XP. 7 wasn’t bad but it was the first version where they started introducing features designed for touchscreens and trying to use the same OS for desktops and tablets. They should have designed separate software for “full feature” computers (desktops and laptops) and mobile devices. I don’t think any of the subsequent releases have improved on 7 as far as the user experience. I’m a little surprised they haven’t released a subscription based OS yet.
I don’t think anyone jumped back to 7 from 10, except for the people whose install upgrade failed and was impossible to complete. Vista, and 8 were both worse than their predecessor, which is why people went back. 8.1 was good though, and that’s when people finally started upgrading from 7. But Microsoft is getting far more aggressive. Now they won’t let you revert the upgrade after 10 days. If you realize on day 11 that 11 sucks, too bad. You’re stuck, unless you do a full reinstall, which most people don’t know how to do.
The other possibility here is that Statcounter is trash.
People are taking its findings as if they’re gospel yet it is a very crude way of measuring how many users there are for an OS. It basically just measures how many users of each OS it sees each month - it is very difficult to consistently correct that data month to month, or match the same data to the same user each month. Lots of people use ad blockers and other privacy tools in their browsers which could easily break the sort of tracking Statcounter relies on.
Essentially, flucations in their data may just reflect the poor accuracy of their data rather than actual swings of 1%.
