this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Maybe they had CoPilot code them a time machine to go back to 2004.
I'd love them to all get in there first and let me know how it works out.
Absolutely wild that there was a time when Microsoft had three generally well regarded consumer products in Windows 7, the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 all at the same time, compared to where they are now in all of those product spaces.
Windows was Windows, but 7 was largely consistent and didn’t need to be fought with like its successors.
The 360 was the go-to console for developers and gamers, despite the RROD issues, which I’d even give them credit for for handling (eventually) after lots of us got 2 free games and a free controller from them following the debacle.
Windows Phone 7 had a superb interface, great hardware and genuinely stood out.
Now they have nothing and are hated more than ever.
It really was their golden era. Being on MacOS at the time was for artists, wannabe artists, and hippies because Apple was still doing brightly colored iMacs and the iPod hadn't gotten over the adoption hump yet.
Win7 let you do anything, and worked so well. MS Office was snappy and fast on a processor we probably use in disposable vapes now. Hotmail was THE free email for years. IE was only marginally less good than Opera or Navigator.
I think I spent exactly 5 minutes on Ubuntu or some Linux variant at the time and it was rough.
Times change. They lived long enough to become the thing they tried not to be.
I had a similar Ubuntu experience in the Windows XP years too (2006ish?).
Everything had a barrier. WiFi drivers always seemed to be a problem, but if I wanted to do anything non-standard it was an exercise in frustration. At one point I owned a Sony digital camcorder that I wanted to get video files from. Eventually, following hours of forum research I learned I had to recompile the kernel to do it, which did actually get me there. To this day I have no idea what a kernel is, and I have no desire to. I remember thinking how wildly complex it was to do something that worked so easily in Windows.
Entirely off topic and potentially triggering anecdote when accounting for Linux’s general prevalence here, but that wasn’t what turned me back to Windows from Ubuntu 20 years ago, it was actually something that most would could consider a positive for Linux. It was the fact that it was so customisable. I had weird multiple desktops that were mapped to a rotatable cube, I spent ages configuring translucent live performance stats on the desktop, hours updating icons and themes etc, whatever I saw on forums that looked cool and wanted to replicate.
Then one day I acknowledged I just wasn’t ever actually using the computer. I literally spent more time modifying and customising stuff than I did actually doing anything. I realised I was never satisfied with the current config and just kept tweaking.
It’s probably not surprising to hear I’ve since been fully into the almost entirely un-customisable Apple ecosystem for a while now. While it’s taken my money, it’s given me back my time!
This is a great story, and really what most people emotionally tied to every ecosystem seem to forget.
I started off as a kid on a single Apple || and then PowerMac my school had. Then Windows from 3.1 to 7, back to MacOS for 2 machines, and then Windows 10 and I watched it slide further and further down. But fucking Win 11 broke me. Fortunately, Linux has come a very long way.
FWIW, I saw somewhere a funny thing about how there's some people that spend loads on time setting something up, then put it in a drawer once it's done, and never use it again. I feel like that's a feature of human ingenuity. Book binders don't write the words in the books, you know?
Ha yeah, very good point. Reminds me of Lego. The entertainment is mostly in the building. Once complete, it’s mostly untouched.
I dare say it, too. I really liked that era. Win7 was cool, the gaming division's aesthetic and marketing were cool. Original X-Box? Man that was a JAM.
I mean, part of it was just being young and naive too I guess, because I have plenty of memes from the '95 era about how evil Gates was/is. (Internet Explorer was a hot button topic back then!)
But also I think the landscape was competing for favor of the users (however underhandedly as usual) rather than how the landscape is now: Where end users are more of an afterthought and now it's all just about farming users while billionaires pass money back and forth.