Their flagship may or may not have sunk as far as it's going to get.
Google is not standing idly by either during this unique opportunity, there's never been anything like it before.
The real hope for Microsoft was when they said "if a PC will run Windows 7, it will run Windows 10."
And then it was well understood worldwide with great encouragement (whether there were any explicit guarantees or not), that Windows 10 would be the final Windows. Yup. With only worthwhile updates going forward. This is what gave consumers and enterprise the confidence that has now been lost through the extreme anti-reuse/anti-recycling effort that is Windows 11.
Some major lifelong Microsoft customers invested heavily in Windows before they had any idea that any kind of Windows 11 was going to be foisted on anybody in any form. And were badly let down when Microsoft itself failed completely to do its part. If Microsoft won't invest what was necessary to bring those customers along better than ever, how can the customer justify continuing expenditures in the direction of Redmond?
It's still not too late to reinstate Windows 10 and retain hundreds of millions of remaining older PC's which are not electronically defective at all. The only deficiency is that Windows 11 is not good enough, when Windows 7 actually was fine and Windows 10 perfectly OK too.
It's been plain to see for a while even if it's only consumers and enterprise that notice more than Microsoft itself.
So Apple steps up to the plate with their first affordable device ever, tailor made for the occasion.
And Google has an answer for the hundreds of millions of abandoned PC owners and even more of their hardware that Microsoft the company is no longer qualified for.
Used to be just fine, the hardware didn't change for the worse, it must have been something else that made such a precipitous decline for so much functional hardware to exhibit complete Windows failure.
Even people that do not repair their own PC are acquainted with Troubleshooting 101.
If the hardware is in perfect working condition but Windows 11 won't install and run just as good as Windows 10 did, there's something wrong with Windows 11, not the hardware.
Duh.