All it took was a single email to media, analysts, and enthusiasts, and Microsoft suddenly has the attention of the world. That’s kind of interesting when you consider how much time the software giant has wasted trying to court consumers and the excitement that companies like Apple seem to generate with such ease.

I assume this will be instructive to the decision-makers at Microsoft, who watched last year as a pandemic swept the earth, driving home a reality that should have always been obvious: To the billion-plus people who use and rely on Windows every single day, Microsoft’s desktop platform isn’t legacy or old-fashioned, it’s a modern-day workhorse that keeps solving problems no matter how much its critics—or, sadly, its detractors inside of Microsoft—try to put it down.