Microsoft is reorganising the Windows teams. Again.
For those unaware, the Windows organization has essentially been split in two since 2018. Teams that work on the core of Windows were moved under Azure, and the rest of the Windows team (those that focused on top level features and user experiences) remained under the Windows org.
That is finally changing, with Davuluri saying that the Windows client and server teams are now going to operate under the same roof once again. “This change unifies Windows engineering work under a single organization … Moving the teams working on Windows client and server together into one organization brings focus to delivering against our priorities.”
↫ Zac Bowden at Windows Central
I mean, it’s obviously far too simplistic to attribute Windows’ many user-facing problems and failures on something as simple as this particular organisational split, but it sure does feel like it could be a contributing factor. It seems like the core of Windows is mostly fine and working pretty well, while the user experience is the ares that has suffered greatly in recent years, pressured as the Windows team seems to have been to add advertising, monetisation, tons of sometimes dangerous dark patterns, and more.
I hope that bringing these two teams back together will eventually lead to an overall improvement of the Windows user experience, and not a deterioration of the core of the platform. In other words, that the core team lifts up the user experience team, instead of the user experience team dragging the core team down. A Windows that takes its users seriously and respects them could be a fine operating system to use, but it reorganisations like this take a long time to have any measurable effect.
Of course, it could also just have no effect at all, or perhaps the rot has simply spread too far and wide. In a few years, depressing as it may seem, Windows 11 might be regarded as a highlight.
All software developers (not just Windows) should be forced to write their code on standard HDD’s with a maximum transfer rate of 100MB/s, 2GB of RAM, on a dual core CPU capped at 2GHz. They should be required to ensure that the written software provides a good user experience with those limitations. The software should be functional and perform well under those constraints. Only after that’s confirmed, they can do testing on more powerful hardware.
There is too much bloat everywhere. It’s not just Windows. Linux, MacOS, even the web. Hardware from 40 years ago did amazing things because of well written software. Imagine what modern hardware could do today if given the same treatment?