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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

Why do people do this in Surface threads? No one goes into an iPad thread and says "love the hardware but it needs to run Windows" or into an conversation about video cards and says "the only way I'd buy the 1080GTX is if it was made by AMD instead". So why do people go into a thread about a Microsoft-made and branded tablet and complain that it runs Microsoft's OS? Of course it does. It's a Microsoft product. You might as well complain that it can't be powered by plugging the cable into a jelly doughnut.

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I guess it is related to the overall success of desktop Linux.

So instead of giving money to OEMs producing Linux tablets like the now missing Vivaldi tablet, they complain about Microsoft.

Of course it’s “a Microsoft product” and that’s also the problem. This endless “surface as a possibly/maybe iPad killer” is pure click bait.

Regardless, anyone who likes windows as a product, for what it’s worth, will never like macOS/iOS, and the other way around.

What’s valid though is the untrustworthy-ness Microsoft earned. We can see it with windows 10 on a PC which, is sort of easier to control, why would you trust Microsoft with a tablet?

The problem in Microsoft product X, is typically the fact that IT IS made by Microsoft.

Because iOS and Mac OSX don’t enroll you in 99 types of on-by-default “telemetry”, tracking, and ads built into the OS. Because I can trust iOS and Mac OSX almost as much as Linux to respect my privacy, whereas Windows 10 seems to be aspiring to model its “privacy” (or lack thereof) after Facebook (the opposite direction of what most people want from an OS).

I turn all the telemetry and tracking features off when I install Windows 10, and it takes a good 30 minutes to an hour to turn them ALL off. And that’s just the OS — any apps within by Microsoft will all report back what you’re doing constantly, and some won’t let you turn this off at all.

If you think just selecting “no thanks” to Cortana on install disables all of Windows 10’s telemetry and tracking features, you’re sadly mistaken thanks to the UI dark patterns.

Windows 10 was a huge step backwards for privacy. Fortunately, Microsoft is moving to be fully GDPR compliant companywide, so I think things will get much better soon. But even there, I’m not sure if GDPR covers telemetry the company claims is “anonymous” (it’s not anonymous if it comes from my IP address, as far as I’m concerned).

What Windows 10 really needs is a “don’t EVER automatically phone home in the background, unless I am explicitly prompted and approve this in each instance”.

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