• Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 hours ago

    I thought this was dumb as fuck, but I think I understand what Microsoft is trying to do here.

    What might not be obvious is that this “Windows” app is for iOS, Android and Linux - yes, it’s a replacement for remote desktop but it’s specifically a remote desktop app to connect to Windows machines.

    So while I still this this rebranding is entirely unnecessary, I can see that they are trying to clearly distinguish “I’m not on windows and I need to do something on windows so I’ll use the windows app for that” .

    It also means less confusion when “remote desktop” doesn’t let you connect to your Mac or whatever.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 hours ago

      One year from now: web search “Windows App broken” and then starting cutting myself.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    7 hours ago

    so by now even Microsoft acknowledges that it has lost the battle of making computing synonymous with Windows?

    FOSS release of Windows when?

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      0·
      3 hours ago

      FOSS release of Windows when?

      Can you imagine if that entire code got released tomorrow, without Microsoft selectively cleaning it up first?

      I remember WinXP getting decompiled a while back and people thought it was pretty wild. Can you imagine Win8+?

      Bet we’d find a few comments like #Yes it's a massive security hole but don't ask questions. LOL

      I think we’d still be shocked at how much data collection it does. And probably how “I don’t know why it works but don’t touch it.” The code is. (It was written by people, after all)

      I’ve always felt a lot of Windows’ “dependability” is really just slick presentation and the mystique of a black box that sounds solid when you knock on it.

      But what bothers me so much, as a non-career-coder and DIY-computing learner, is whenever a corporate product breaks, everything is obfuscated with nonsense that is only meant for a company engineer.

      At least good FOSS tries to tell you exactly where the issue is.

      If Windows went FOSS I bet it would get a lot of human-friendly fixes…and MS would get a lot of new scandals lol.

      • HStone32@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 hours ago

        i read a blog post by a former MS employee who shed some light on the situation. apparently the windows dev team is entirely made up of junior developers. As soon as anybody gets any experience, either MS tries to promote them to management, or they leave to find a better job.

        what that means is there is nobody at MS who has deep knowledge of the Windows kernel. So instead of re-writting, re-factoring or making additions, all they know how to do is add things on top of the existing OS.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
          0·
          1 hour ago

          I don’t think this is strictly true. They do tweak parts of the kernel such as the CPU scheduler to deal with new CPU designs that come out which have special scheduling requirements. That’s actually happened quite a bit recently with AMD and Intel both offering CPUs with asymmetric processors with big and little cores, different clock speeds, different cache, sometimes even different instructions on different cores. They also added ReFS not long ago, which may have required some kernel work.

          I can understand though if they have few experienced people and way more junior devs. It would probably explain a lot to be honest. A lot of Microsoft stuff is bloated and/or unreliable.

  • istdaslol@feddit.org
    0·
    10 hours ago

    I hope its so they can finally end the legacy support for all the win98 software and end all “settings is actually a folder” non-sense.

  • Rooki@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 hours ago

    Let me guess? CLOUD VMS? “Emulation” tries the most generic app: Doesnt work. Office apps will be the only functioning apps.

    • lengau@midwest.social
      0·
      7 hours ago

      To be fair MS Office fully working on Linux is about the only thing we really need to make it completely viable for businesses.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
        0·
        7 hours ago

        The Desktop apps will be replaced with web apps ASAP anyway. Well, I think, as soon they think they have ported enough of the features to the web version.

        Are there native arm versions, or are those already webViews?

        • lengau@midwest.social
          0·
          3 hours ago

          The main problem is Excel, TBH. Far too much stuff depends on Windows-only features of Excel (e.g. macros using COM objects).

    • infeeeee@lemm.ee
      0·
      13 hours ago

      It’s a remote desktop client, so it won’t. OP read only the title of the article

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    15 hours ago

    It’s really more like Remote Desktop+. It has some additional “features” (slight retch) on top of traditional Remote Desktop features.

    Let’s wait and see if it’s actually more secure than traditional Remote Desktop.

    (and I’d still rather use Wine)