Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS

[hishnash]

55 minutes ago, StDragon said:

It's inline with what Apple and Google does in that regard; it's all about their cloud ecosystem as a whole and its cultivation.

MacOS makes it optional, you are not required to have an iCloud account, but you cant use any cloud features if you do not of cource. 

[williamcll]

It will probably be cracked as fast as office.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, hishnash said:

Your not trying windows Pro through are you?   These are additional features ontop of the base windows, laptop vendors like to include it in spec sheets and having a 1 year trail might not even cost them anything as MS will want to use it to push users to subscribe.  (a good number at the end of the year would subscribe just as many do for Norton etc) 

There isn't anything in Windows Pro that a home user would ever notice or use. Microsoft wouldn't do this arrangement because actual uptake after a 1 year trial would be 0.00000001% of users.

 

And to address your Cloud point, none of the Pro feature can be moved to Cloud because that's simply not how any of them work or could work. You can't push the 'Ability to join Active Directory" out to Azure for hardware acceleration because it's a capability of Windows to do something at all or not. That's a lot of how Windows works and what is in the editions greater than 'Home'.

 

The only extra things that are already Cloud/Azure integrated are for example Microsoft Defender for Endpoint which itself can only be used under a subscription.

 

Microsoft has already heavily got most things under subscriptions, the only things that are not are for example Windows Home and Windows Professional (not under a volume license but retail).

 

As someone who manages our Microsoft licenses, not the contract, and have been doing that for a long time for many organizations Windows already is widely subscription based and that was the case before the year 2000.

 

The majority of home Windows users buy prebuilds and since the Windows license is included with that Microsoft already gets ongoing revenue from the same customer, every time they upgrade. The difference is ~5 year cycles vs Monthly. If at the end of the day the cost is the same then it makes no difference at all whether you upfront it for 5 years or get it monthly.

 

Sure having Windows Professional or other future things as a subscription unlock could make sense but the reality is what Microsoft is most likely doing here is integrating Windows licensing and activation in to Microsoft 365 platform so business customers no longer need to run a Volume License Server themselves anymore. This is overwhelmingly more likely to be the situation here.

[Mihle]

7 hours ago, hishnash said:

I would not be surprised at all (based on how MS charge more for security features in azure) for MS to move some of windows security things like defender to the paid subscription. 

I highly doubt Microsoft will have Microsoft Defender behind a subscription.

Microsoft Defender is probably one of the reasons why much less people think Windows --> viruses now compared to what it did before. I don't think they want that go come back.

 

Also, for windows I think it would be a stupid idea for them to have a subscription for the consumer in general. No matter if you like it or not, Mac marketshare have been increasing, and requiring windows subscription would only have increased it even more.

[Mark Kaine]

11 hours ago, Avus said:

Summary

While this has been a hunch for a while among the Windows enthusiast community, a new leak seems to be further providing somewhat solidifying evidence that it could indeed be the case, that Microsoft's next-gen OS, casually referred to as Windows 12, could be a subscription-based OS

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

If Windows subscription is only meaning Windows activation, then i am ok using Windows WITHOUT activation. If I can't use Windows AT ALL without paying M$ for the rest of my life then I will leave Windows.

I am already grown out of MS Office (10+ years ago) for my personal use and for my own business. LibreOffice and Google Doc basically can cover all my documents need.

GAMING is the only reason why I still stay with Windows. But with Valve (Steam) keep supporting and developing in Linux, I have no problem to give up a few games to just gaming on Linux.

All my NAS and servers are Debian based.
All my computers older than 7 years old are using Linux (Ubuntu/Debian), they just run better and will always get OS updates.

 

Sources

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-might-want-to-be-making-windows-12-a-subscription-os-suggests-leak/

 

you're kinda misunderstanding the purpose of this. Milking you "for the rest of your life" is merely a byproduct of this.

 

what this is really about is *forced updates* and *full control* over your machine,  Microsoft's wet dream.... 

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

what Microsoft is most likely doing here is integrating Windows licensing and activation in to Microsoft 365 platform so business customers no longer need to run a Volume License Server themselves anymore. This is overwhelmingly more likely to be the situation here.

Also additional information to this, Microsoft has already discontinued the usage of the dedicated Volume License Service Center website for managing licenses, acquiring product downloads etc and moved that to Microsoft 365 Admin Center

 

https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/Servicecenter/default.aspx (the old site as above)

 

https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?#/subscriptions/vlnew/downloadsandkeys (new site above)

 

 

[Stahlmann]

You can bet they want to make anything subscription based if at all possible. The only reason why W11 isn't subscription based is because they don't want to lose most of their users. Using or not using their service is the only leverage we have as consumers.

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

There isn't anything in Windows Pro that a home user would ever notice or use

yes there is.... "bitlocker" ... i pressed that a few times by accident... absolute nightmare feature,  taking *all* my files hostage and i probably need a "Microsoft account" or worse... to access it?? Nuh-huh.... only viable option in that case is to insta jank the power plug! OwO

 

Spoiler

i honestly panic whenever i see this freaking button "bitlocker" - hell no!

 

 

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

Sure having Windows Professional or other future things as a subscription unlock could make sense

i think it'll be the other way around,  you're gonna need "pro" to avoid any of this.... (just going from previous precedents how ms does things...)

 

 

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Also additional information to this, Microsoft has already discontinued the usage of the dedicated Volume License Service Center website for managing licenses, acquiring product downloads etc and move that Microsoft 365 Admin Center

 

https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/Servicecenter/default.aspx (the old site as above)

 

https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?#/subscriptions/vlnew/downloadsandkeys (new site above)

 

 

So you think this is rather a misleading headline/ news then and not Microsoft hardening their iron grip on the innocent, average user who just wants to mod their anime shooters?   

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yes there is.... "bitlocker" ... i pressed that a few times by accident... absolute nightmare feature,  taking *all* my files hostage and i probably need a "Microsoft account" or worse... to access it?? Nuh-huh.... only viable option in that case is to insta jank the power plug! OwO

That's not how bitlocker works and very very very few would ever turn it on, even by mistake.

 

29 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i think it'll be the other way around,  you're gonna need "pro" to avoid any of this.... (just going from previous precedents how ms does things...)

You can't get Windows editions above Professional any other way than through a subscription, that's literally what Volume Licensing is. And you have to own a base Windows license as you are subscribing to the right to upgrade the Windows edition to Enterprise for example, you cannot and do not buy "Windows Enterprise" full license, that isn't an option offered. Outright full Windows purchases under VLSC was removed after XP.

 

29 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

So you think this is rather a misleading headline/ news then and not Microsoft hardening their iron grip on the innocent, average user who just wants to mod their anime shooters?   

Misleading maybe, but that stems from misunderstanding what is going on and just jump to rather big assumptions. People like myself in the know as to what Microsoft does in regards to licenses would and are assuming very different things. Microsoft has already been communicating to Volume License customers that the way Windows is licensed and how this is managed is changing so our natural assumption would be this is it. Integrating Windows licensing and activation in to Microsoft 365 where the licenses are already managed from cutting out the need for self hosted Volume License servers which is an inbuilt Windows Server role btw.

 

The biggest mistake people can make is assuming everything is "about them". Microsoft's biggest customers are corporate, home users "don't matter". By don't matter I mean strategically for Microsoft as a business. You'll all keep using Windows regardless of anything anyway and there is very little revenue opportunity within Windows itself, Office is worth far more to Microsoft in the home user market and that is already widely subscription based as it is.

 

Windows yearly revenue is 21.51 billion and Office is 44.73 billion.

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That's not how bitlocker works and very very very few would ever turn it on, even by mistake.

my impression of that may also be skewed due to being on here, there's tons of topics where people turned on bitlocker and "secure boot" and every other "security" feature under the sun and then cant, "for reasons" access any of that (i know there  are safe guards, like passwords and indeed a Microsoft account,  but to me this is just an Orwell'ian nightmare lol)

 

 

[captain_to_fire]

12 hours ago, manikyath said:

explain like i'm 87 why i need windows pro, you have 10 words of space on a marketing banner.

You don't have to use Windows 11 Pro since for most people Windows 11 Home is good enough. 11 Pro bundles enterprise features such as Hyper-V, Defender Application Guard, GPO, Bitlocker full disk encryption, and Windows Autopilot for remote deployment of company devices to remote users. The last feature was very useful when a lot of people have to do WFH during the peak of the pandemic.

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

my impression of that may also be skewed due to being on here, there's tons of topics where people turned on bitlocker and "secure boot" and every other "security" feature under the sun and then cant, "for reasons" access any of that (i know there  are safe guards, like passwords and indeed a Microsoft account,  but to me this is just an Orwell'ian nightmare lol)

Bitlocker is mostly just a giant invitation to lose access to your data lol. A Microsoft account can only be used to store the recovery key, otherwise everything is local only, even the usage of the recovery key is local, obtaining it is just via your Microsoft account online.

 

But the ultimate thing here is, if you you have Bitlocker enabled and you for whatever reason become unable to unlock the drive that is 100% your own fault. Bitlocker is entirely disconnected from any network services unless you are using enterprise version of it and even then it's only sorta.

 

Pro tip, if you're using a hammer and you hit your finger the hammer is not to blame, nor the brand of hammer. Just use the hammer better 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Mihle said:

I highly doubt Microsoft will have Microsoft Defender behind a subscription.

Well they could do this. But the amount of people who would use Defender would decrease. There are still free AV's available. I know people who use AVAST for example. 

[Mark Kaine]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Bitlocker is mostly just a giant invitation to lose access to your data lol

that was my point! ^^

 

however, personally i just don't want to change how i use windows,  my system is, like others would say, "heavily modified", there are no windows updates nagging in the background,  defender and other useful services are still available and working,  i can turn on and off ms store access by will (i just don't think i can actually buy anything that costs actually money,  but thats a win/win to me lol) my windows sounds are all replaced with the "original" Japanese Microsoft windows 7 maskot, aero is working (without any kind of third party app) ... and so on!

 

its my "dream os" basically and i guess im just wondering how long i can ride this out....

 

win11 aint it, win12 likely aint it either... oof. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

[mr moose]

I did the math on how much I pay MS every 8 years (my average upgrade cycle) to have the latest OS and updates.  Turns out to be about A$170 or $1.77 a month.  They are currently offering me 100GB cloud storage with web office for A$3 a month.  I would be happy to pay $5 a month to always have the latest OS on rolling updates/upgrades if it included office and some handy cloud space. 

 

 

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Bitlocker is entirely disconnected from any network services unless you are using enterprise version of it and even then it's only sorta.

Is this the one with Intune? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/protect/encrypt-devices#create-and-deploy-policy

[wseaton]

Need to say this again ladies, but people don't run operating systems, they run applications. I know this is blasphemy to the hard core Linux crowd, but its the truth. Also, desktop OSs no longer run the universe. What OS does your smartphone use? 

 

MS will almost certainly move to a subscription model for pro versions of Windows as an alternative to enterprise licensing, and MS doesnt care about a handful of outcasts running Linux. Enterprise space that could have moved to Linux has already done so. 

 

Buying professional software and expecting it to be free forever and supported forever is old economy. Office Live sucks. Even the 'Nix distro you are running has to be supported by somebody, and why should they do that for free forever? Most people dumped XP because the machine they were running it on got too old to run newer software, or the hardware died, not because it was no longer under support Neither of those factors Microsoft had involvement with. 

 

 

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

yes there is.... "bitlocker" ... i pressed that a few times by accident... absolute nightmare feature,  taking *all* my files hostage and i probably need a "Microsoft account" or worse... to access it?? Nuh-huh.... only viable option in that case is to insta jank the power plug! OwO

There's many ways to backup and store the recovery key. It doesn't have to be online to Microsoft or Active Directory. You can print the key or store it on another drive.

Tip: You can print the key to PDF. How you store that is up to you.
 

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Bitlocker is mostly just a giant invitation to lose access to your data lol.

It's not any different in risk than with MacOS (OSX) FileVault, which is now enabled by default for the OS drive.

Also, for anyone using a laptop, you would be stupid not to enable BitLocker. Why in the hell M$ puts BitLocker as a Pro/Enterprise feature is beyond me. It should have been a consumer feature in Home edition starting with 11. Some would argue it should have been in Win10 Home too. Maybe they will with 12?

[Tan3l6]

I think if the subscription would be 3-5€ then it's bearable and then it's ok. 10+€ is out of the question...

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, Tan3l6 said:

I think if the subscription would be 3-5€ then it's bearable then it's ok. 10+€is out of the question...dd

At 10€/m it's already at Windows OEM price after just 1 year which, while it's locked to hardware, it lasts forever on that hardware. Yeah, this would be expensive. 3-5€, maybe. What I fear is they'll lock us in and then bully us with price increases later on and that will ultra suck. You won't be able to go to old version anymore after 2 years and you'll just have to suck it. I don't think Linux will catch up enough for gaming in this little time before Microsoft does this.

 

I hope Windows 12 will have the worst adoption rate of any Windows in literal decades. Maybe that will change the way MS is thinking, but I kinda suspect it won't go through well for consumers as all corporate suits want to push everything to stupid subscriptions.

[Mark Kaine]

23 minutes ago, wseaton said:

Need to say this again ladies, but people don't run operating systems, they run applications. I know this is blasphemy to the hard core Linux crowd, but its the truth. Also, desktop OSs no longer run the universe. What OS does your smartphone use? 

 

MS will almost certainly move to a subscription model for pro versions of Windows as an alternative to enterprise licensing, and MS doesnt care about a handful of outcasts running Linux. Enterprise space that could have moved to Linux has already done so. 

 

Buying professional software and expecting it to be free forever and supported forever is old economy. Office Live sucks. Even the 'Nix distro you are running has to be supported by somebody, and why should they do that for free forever? Most people dumped XP because the machine they were running it on got too old to run newer software, or the hardware died, not because it was no longer under support Neither of those factors Microsoft had involvement with. 

 

 

actually xp is still widely used today because it works best for the purpose (robots, other expensive machinery, military, etc)

 

this is why subscription model, new os's every other year, fearmongering about "security"... all Microsoft trying to survive and stay "relevant"... the truth is no one really needs them anymore outside of a core maintenance crew maybe...

 

windows peaked with xp/vista, heck even 95 is still viable for many use cases (banks, hospitals, military, etc.......) 

[Mark Kaine]

19 minutes ago, StDragon said:

There's many ways to backup and store the recovery key. It doesn't have to be online to Microsoft or Active Directory. You can print the key or store it on another drive.

Tip: You can print the key to PDF. How you store that is up to you.

yeah, yeah... look , the thing is "in theory" this all works, in practice its more difficult,  people use the wrong partition system,  incompatible hardware, secure boot and tpm and are in the end locked out because their nice key simply doesn't work. "System error" bye bye data, better luck next time ~ 

[Doobeedoo]

No way this would be only option for consumers though, would fail so badly. Probably option so cool I guess. Really maybe they could have it sub based as fully featured OS with Office and other good software as a package in the future and a free basic barebones OS option.

[StDragon]

23 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, yeah... look , the thing is "in theory" this all works, in practice its more difficult,  people use the wrong partition system,  incompatible hardware, secure boot and tpm and are in the end locked out because their nice key simply doesn't work. "System error" bye bye data, better luck next time ~ 

I've only seen BitLocker get screwed up with wonky partitioning of reused old drives (previously had Linux installed or whatnot) or because the OEM imaged the OS in a non-standard way. The latter is extremely rare however nowadays. 

The rest of what you said does not apply. There's no such thing as incompatible hardware, secureboot, or TPM issues. Either it can do it, or not.

Of all the BitLocker failures I've seen, they were all due to SED (eDrive). Using BitLocker in the standard way is more reliable. You can take the drive from one computer and place it in another. When it asks for the recovery key, you just type it in and the drive is unlocked and available to be used or booted from again.

You really should spin up a VM of Windows Pro and familiarize yourself with BitLocker as it's not as scary as you seem to think it is. 

[darknessblade]

If they are gonna do this they will be 100% put under the biggest magnifying glass ever by every single  DSA regulator and they will be fined for even the smallest thing they do wrong without a shred of mercy

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package