| And, MS wouldn't be doing anything illegal *or* immoral (you pay for
| minutes on your phone; aren't you paying or a service? isn't your
| OS providing a service to you??)
|
|
| Then why don't they do it? Why don't they charge by the hour?

They are doing it. Office 365 is subscription by the
month. Adobe has gone the same way with Creative
Suite. They pretend the programs are online "cloud apps"
to justify subscription, but they install locally just like
anything else. Subscription is what this whole thing
is about. It's the reason for free Win10 updates from 7/8.

Why Office 365 and CS? Because those are monopoly
products that are critical to business. They can afford
to get a bit pushy. Your Windows PC itself may end up
being subscription at some point. Like an addicted
Facebookie complaining about ads and spying, it will
probably be too late for you to pull yourself away at
that point. That's because they won't do it until it *is*
at that point.

Microsoft started with ads in the OS and attempts at
online services way back in Win98. They've been very
gradually pulling the rug out ever since: locking down
options, creating online services, trying to lead people
into those services by pushing them to do things like
get a "Microsoft ID". (And remember Passport before that?
MS was hoping to have a lock on online wallets. The only
problems were that nobody wanted an online wallet and
no one trusted Microsoft.) Vista was originally supposed
to be a locked down system based on .Net. (Look up
"Longhorn".) If it had worked that would have closed
the door to 3rd-party programmers who wanted to have
system access. Only sandboxed software would have
been possible, and MS probably could have started their
online "store" to take a cut of software sales, like they're
now doing with tablet apps.

So Microsoft hasn't taken all this time for lack of
trying. They're constantly cooking up new gimmicks.
But there have been various reasons why it hasn't
worked out for them. One is that they're terrible at
doing services. Another reason is because it's only
recently that Internet speeds are fast enough for
services. And even now, something like MS Word *really*
online is a pipedream. It would be too slow. Another
reason is because Microsoft has lost money on
almost everything they've ever done except their
two monopoly products, Windows and Office. So they
see Apple raking in bucks from suckers with iPhones
and they want a piece of that action. But it's a big
risk for them. Services is not their forte. Only greed
is leading them to forego common sense and push into
a market they don't do well. The trick is to get enough
frogs in pans, like you, who don't realize the heat's
being turned up until they're already cooked.