Today we’re excited to announce Windows 365, a cloud service that introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when it’s generally available later this calendar year) for workers from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers. Windows 365 takes the operating system to the Microsoft Cloud, securely streaming the full Windows experience—including all your apps, data, and settings—to your personal or corporate devices. This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC.
As silly as this sounds, I’m actually somewhat interested in this. I have a Windows 10 VM for some Windows-only translation software I sometimes need to use, but managing and updating Windows is a pain, so the idea of just paying a few euros every month to have a Windows instance on some faraway server actually seems like a much better alternative.
Thom Holwerda,
This may finally be the strategy that lets MS remove win32 support from windows.
Think about it, microsoft’s attempts to create a locked down app store have been consistently foiled by open win32s, and despite microsoft’s attempts to deprecate win32, it remains crucial for windows users such that microsoft can’t afford to drop it.
Well, windows365 may have solved the win32 problem for microsoft. If win32 applications can be run transparently on microsoft controlled servers (optional at first, but becoming more coercive over time), it would finally give microsoft a path for closing the door on win32s, starting with windows home edition “you need a service to run these win32 apps”.
Of course, this is just speculation 🙂
Microsoft can kill the relatively open nature of win32 once they convince developers to put their apps into the Microsoft Store. Any attempt to sell Windows without full win32 compatibility before this happens will have the fate of Windows RT.
And yes, Microsoft are gunning for closing win32 behind a Store. They have already made a major capitulation by allowing Adobe to not give them a 30% cut, so while that dream is dead (the dream of collecting a 30% cut from every Photoshop sale), the dream of closing win32 behind a Store isn’t.
Stop dreaming about the death of win32. The Adobes and Mathwords and AutoDesks won’t rewrite their win32 software (literally decades of code they may not fully understand anymore) no matter what that Sinofsky hipster thought and no matter how much it makes Linux people sad because Wine still doesn’t support win32 in full.
PS: Can’t see how Windows 365 relates to this. Windows 365 could be used as a form of always-online DRM for Windows itself though (see my comment below).
Alfman,
I remember Microsoft trying a virtual solution for back compat with a free XP VM (was it Windows 7 or 8?). Even though it had very good integration with host UI (for its time), it did not catch up.
I agree that, if Microsoft had the means, they would drop Win32 like a rock… yesterday. But their success also is their handicap at the moment.
And, this could also be a way to bring Windows to even more machines. There used to be a service called OnLive that offered remove Office streaming on iPads (now I think they have a native app). There are tons of Mac machines, that will no longer run Bootcamp (with M1 at least for now). And of course Linux is gaining steam. If I were using a Linux machine, and Microsoft offered running Adobe Lightroom at a reasonable price, I might have considered it. (Or maybe they can even bundle it with Adobe subscription).
kurkosdr,
Yes, I’m aware of microsoft’s desire to do that, but my point was that this “windows 365” could give microsoft an alternate path to ultimately charge users for win32 applications even if their respective developers have not put them in the store.
That’s microsoft’s dream, not mine.
Well, when Thom said he’d pay a few bucks every month to run his existing windows apps, the idea clicked that microsoft could finally start to monetize legacy win32 programs despite the fact that developers have little interest in the windows store. Windows 11 is expected to require an internet connection anyways, so making win32 apps depend on online services could be a devious way to give microsoft more control or revenue opportunities over win32 apps, something that has long eluded microsoft.
Thom is not representative of the general home computing population, he runs Desktop Linux. Most people run Windows on the home (or Macs, which have ports for most of the big Windows apps, games on Windows 365 are out of the question). Microsoft could fling Windows 365 to iPad owners, but would you run mouse-driven win32 apps with your finger? Nope.
kurkosdr,
I think you’re missing the point though. If they did what I’m talking about, Microsoft wouldn’t be doing it to satisfy Thom, they’d be doing it to create a new revenue producing business model for themselves.
It’s not as “out of the question” as you make it seem. Remote games via “stadia” was a real service after all. The results were midrange, but passable for many. Those who want better performance could be told to upgrade to windows pro. Keep in mind that Stadia’s commercial weaknesses had a lot to do with the lack of titles rather than the technology itself. If microsoft did this with win32, they could support an immense backlog of titles that already exist, more than any other platform.
Again, I’m not saying this is being planned, only that it could potentially work.
kurkosdr,
Don’t count Linux out. After all, Chromebooks are running Linux underneath (albeit with a very non-standard UI):
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-worldwide-2020-cutting-windows-market-share/
And iPads can and do support mouse and keyboard inputs. Apple even sells a keyboard + trackpad cover:
https://www.apple.com/ipad-keyboards/
So, even though Windows is still the dominant OS, things are changing.
Yes, if that was the only way I had to run an app I really wanted.
Username: SYSTEM
Password:
Welcome to VAX/VMS V5.0 on node MICROSFT
Last interactive login on Tuesday, 7-NOV-2020 10:20
Last non-interactive login on Monday, 6-NOV-2020 14:20
$
What? I thought it was 1985 again and we were all using VT100s and networked into the host. Sure sounds familiar…
We can’t have people owning their own computing, it must all be a “service”. Remember when you owned your maps as a perpetual license (Encarta World Altas comes to mind) instead of having them “streamed” via an app?
But anyway, I can’t see any of those “streamed” OSes actually succeeding on the desktop. GeForce Now is already a loud failure. In an era when “responsiveness” is key (and for good reason, there is no excuse for things to be slow on modern hardware) I don’t see how a streamed desktop environment can be truly “responsive”. This also has to be examined in the context of networks already being strained under the weight of COVID-19 teleworking, which will continue to a degree after COVID-19. The only people who will use this Windows 365 service are people who have no other choice because their boss told them to, aka businesses. Basically, a compatibility thingie for people with professionals Linux laptops.
What I am worried about is this becoming a form of always-online DRM. Aka Microsoft bringing more of Windows 365 down to the client but still pretending it’s “streamed” for DRM reasons, and gradually dropping the “local” Windows versions.
PS: Also, “Windows 365”? That’s a name a tad on the unimaginative side even by the standards of the Blandness Preservation Committee (which doesn’t even exist).
for people with professionals Linux laptops = for professionals with Linux laptops (derp)
@kurkosdr
I have an atlas sitting in my bookshelf. I know maps are out of date before you buy them and some countries have shifted borders or been renamed but it is “instant boot” and “always on” even in the event of a service outage. I also have a dictionary.
This is basically just a repackaging of Windows/Azure Virtual Desktop, but the Windows 11 focus explains a lot about the Windows 11 requirements – the “upgrade path” MS will be pushing for many will be virtual PCs apparently. Windows 10 relegated to essentially a thin client, and Microsoft finally gets their real windows-as-a-service with monthly billing for Windows, as with Office.
So Windows 11 is all about pushing Microsoft’s business model and DRM to protect their own online services? That places their claim that from telemetry they discovered 60% of Surface Pro users had malware on their system. 60%? That’s a bit on the high side. What do they mean by “malware”? Warez? I cannot imagine 60% of Surface Pro users are utter nobs with internet safety so it sounds like Microsoft are telling scare stories to sell the idea only a new system which meets their TPM and secure boot and recent CPU standard is safe from complete meltdown.
Journalists should be hauling Microsoft over the coals for either lying or selling duff products or maybe just maybe gouging users with their monopoly to the point where they run warez.
Yep, it is the Microsoft Trojan horse, pulling a bait-and-switch by luring businesses in by promising lower costs. Windows 365 will be sold on lowering maintenance staff and improving security including deeper surveillance tools as an added bonus. After Windows 365 is implemented, user autonomy has been given the go directy to “Microsoft lock-in Jail”. Microsoft’s gatekeeper – or rather jailkeeper – functionality is now entrenched. Local and central government administrative services will eat this up without suspicion of the many negative repercussions. Saying no, to “an upgrade” with “added security” is simply illogical. That is the problem with half-truths. By the way, just try to imagine the extent of the telemetry logging after Windows 11/365 has been rolled out. Microsoft is sadly, too big to fail.
From the article written by Thurrott on the matter:
“Windows 365 is built on Azure Virtual Desktop, another cloud-based remote desktop solution, and it differs from that service in one key way: Where Azure Virtual Desktop uses a consumption-based pricing model, Windows 365 has a set per-user/per-month fee … “
No I’m simply not going to use this. American big business when push comes to shove will do anything to maintain its bulk and organisational structures and increase its profits even when the need disappeared years ago. Windows 365 like Windows 11 is driven by Microsoft management’s ambitions and ego than anything else. The PR may have changed and memories may have dimmed but it is still the same evil Microsoft.
Adobe has a similar monopoly. After ditching perpetual licences for cloud subscriptions Adobe’s profits tripled for creating no extra added value.
The argument none of them want to get traction is Windows or Photoshop being turned into a standard and their code open sourced as a reference implementation. Both are rent seeking monopolies. It’s time to regulate.
good for you…how’s that computer based on your own hardware designs and construction?
I’m sure she’ll be buying a RISCV rig and running a Linux-From-Scratch install on it.
On the plus side at least they are doing multi platform support. That is you can access it through Linux client. On the down side cloud is just other people computer and i prefer to have my own computer and to have full control over it. That is why i guess it is called personal computer.
I will never pay for an OS as a service running on hardware I own. Gift-wrapping a turd doesn’t make it not a turd.
I get what you mean and I’m being a bit pedantic here, but this Windows 365 thing is actually paying for an OS as a service on hardware Microsoft owns (their “cloud” servers). You’re just streaming the OS to the device you *actually* own, similar to game streaming services.
Honestly I can see the appeal from a certain point of view. With this service I would be able to put OpenBSD or Slackware or Void, hell even Haiku, on all of my computers and still have access to a full Windows PC if I needed it, without the worry of Microsoft software actually having control of my physical hardware. There’s still the question of whether you truly “own” your hardware given backdoors like AMD PSP and Intel AMT, but at least this gets an extremely bad actor off the physical hardware and quarantined on their servers.
On the other hand, it’s going to be guaranteed that Microsoft will require a Microsoft account, and they will definitely be data-mining the hell out of every little thing you do with this service. Since they truly own the server hardware, you likely can’t turn off telemetry and personal data collection, and you can be damned sure they will tie everything they collect to your real life identity.
@Morgan
Microsoft could sell a perpetual licence to an OS which provides this service and bake it into consumer versions of Windows or Windows server if they wanted to. What Microsoft have done is deliberately cripple their OS so providing cloud OS services only runs on their backend. If this was provided locally you could in theory also run it the other way with Windows being a glorified terminal to Linux or Haiku etetera. I’m pretty sure a lot of businesses would be very interested in a centrally managed low maintenance environment and keep all their data in house or pre-encrypted data backed up to a thirdy party remote archive whether a big name supplier (like Microsoft for agruments sake) or a collective of local businesses backing up each others data. Microsoft just sniff money and a lot of other fringe benefits for them and whoever they have shared interests with so this subject isn’t even discussed. Why are journalists not challenging this?
I get your point about this allowing you to use Windows with a long spoon but your data still has to go through their remotely hosted OS and as you say almost certainly will be tied to a Microsoft account. I personally think anyone being dependant on cloud services especially a single source supplier for anything critical isn’t a good idea but this is just my opinion.
Morgan,
That’s a valid point, but to make another pedantic point they’re not actually mutually exclusive. Microsoft could end up controling both the local hardware you pay for as well as windows 365 and creating new inter-dependencies between the two.
Microsoft could use it’s notorious embrance, extend, extinguish strategy with win32 itself to disrupt projects like wine, ironic as that would be.
Sure they *could*, but I don’t think that’s the game plan here. They are doing this to get Windows (and by extension other Microsoft services) onto as many screens as possible, especially Macs, iDevices, and Android devices. Why bother going to the trouble of making sure Windows on ARM will run natively on the M1 Macs and their successors, when they can just expand on their existing Azure VM infrastructure, slap a ribbon on it, beam it to your eyeballs over the ‘Net, and call it Windows 365? It’s basically a way to make sure that no matter what device you’re physically using, you will be using a Microsoft product on it, and by extension giving them all of your sweet, sweet private data they can then resell. Think about it: Want to run that must-have business software that is Windows-only and doesn’t jive with ARM64 (I’m looking squarely at you Quickbooks Enterprise Desktop, bane of my existence!) but your entire fleet is M1 iMacs and MacBooks? Problem solved! Most PHBs would go for this solution in a heartbeat.
If they were to go the route you’re suggesting they would lose out on the very “last segment” customers they’re trying to reach with this service. This isn’t about taking over your hardware, it’s about making Windows truly unavoidable.
But yes, the possibility that they can somehow entangle your Windows-as-a-Service subscription to your physical Windows installation and render one useless without the other, is yet another reason to avoid this like the plague.
Morgan,
I actually believe microsoft would be in favor of windows running natively on ARM macs, and it’s probably apple who said ‘no’.
As for turning as many devices as possible into thin clients, sure I can agree with that, but but I still think microsoft is actively pursuing local desktop control as well. It’s not just one or the other.
To be honest it would seem a bit foolish to deploy an entire fleet of M1 imacs if there were still a dependency on windows. Nevertheless you’re right that it can be done using one of the various remote desktop solutions. But does it make sense to rent additional hardware when you already payed for perfectly good hardware to be on your desk? It feels redundant to do that.
Most consumers are sheep and will do what microsoft says because they don’t know any better.
@Alfman
You haven’t met the owners and managers of the company I work for, they despise Microsoft and they worship at the altars of Apple and Disney. If it wasn’t for Quickbooks we would have an iMac on every desk and a Mac Pro server in the server room. They all use Macs at home, carry iPhones, wear Apple Watches, and even our company issued phones are iPhones.
They are aware of Intuit’s cloud offerings but apparently according to Intuit our company files are “too large and complex” for their cloud service to handle right now. We’re not even a large business, we’re two different sales channels, each with online and physical storefronts, and our combined yearly revenue is only in the low 8 digit range.
Honestly I wouldn’t mind if we went all-in on Apple at work; I already use a Linux workstation as my main machine with the blessing of the company president, and I’ve always despised Windows on servers and workstations. All of our operations besides payroll, CRM, inventory, and invoicing are already platform-agnostic and I’m in the process of moving inventory management to an open source solution. I’m ready, the bosses are ready, we’re just waiting on Intuit to be ready.
Morgan,
Haha, ok. I’ve come across some mac shops, although none of them opted for mac based servers. Those seem to be very rare in my experience but I’m sure they’re out there.
I’ve got one client that’s currently dealing with the same thing. Intuit’s online service is lacking but at the same time their windows software is terrible. Virtually everyone I know using it hates it. I’m astounded that so many are using it in the accounting world. I think they survived market consolidation via shrewd business decisions rather than making good products.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Well, not really. This doesn’t seem anymore than a new marketing package for an existing product.
Everybody thought Office 365 would mean the end of stand-alone Office licenses, but that has proven to be false, even though some people believe that Office is available ONLY as a subscription.
Everybody thought Windows 10 was going to end up as subscription only, but that has proven to be completely false, too.
Again, this is just a new marketing package for an existing product, to sell to people that might not know about existing Azure Windows VMs that are available, or might not know how they can be used.
If you pay for cloud storage (non enterprise) then it would be silly not to use Office 365 since it is basically 1 TB (times 5 additional accounts) for the same price as storage alone from other vendors….plus full office.
A lot of the 365 stuff is a pretty web frontend for servers running on Azure. That’s kind of MS’s value proposition. Dumb point and click interfaces for complicated tech.
It also helps their competition has largely been really bad at providing easy tools for untrained techs to use.
Heh, they finally ripped off the original idea of OnLive.
Citrix
Let’s talk about this.
This is about Citrix and Amazon Workspaces more then anyone’s local Windows install. MS’s 365 stuff is about businesses. It bundles lots of technology together that ten years ago would have been run on prem. Active Directory, Exchange are the crown jewels, and now Windows Terminal Services has been added.
There are business who are running Windows Terminal Services, and they can now offload that as well. They’ve offloaded Exchange and Active Directory already. Terminal Services was frequently used to centralize the administration of desktops, and the press release says the same thing.
This is about rounding out MS’s intranet suite which has been their IT stronghold for 30 years.
Almost all of Windows is win32, they can’t deprecate it, they can’t hide it, This is not their plan. Win32 is baked into Windows, and you can write code to it using just the compiler and notepad. At the end of the day they will sell their own grandmother to keep Windows relevant.
BluenoseJake,
…but what if they don’t deprecate win32 at all and they make it rely on their own servers as I mentioned above? Win32 applications would continue to work, but a dependency would be created as Microsoft reinvests win32 as a remote service.
BTW I don’t like this idea at all, but from a technical perspective I think it would be doable. By running win32 themselves, microsoft would gain leverage over win32 apps that haven’t been submitted to the windows app store.
Shadow.tech ?