This is the same company that thinks putting ads in the fucking file explorer is appropriate on an OS they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.
I'm worried that this is going to be the compromise we're all forced to make in the future.
There are obvious alternatives to ChromeOS that are just as secure and just as inexpensive (especially if you have some old hardware just laying around, or else you can just buy refurbished hardware - just about anything made in the last 10 years will do, if not more than that) - and not any less useful than a Chromebook. And they can be updated for as long as the hardware keeps going - they won't suddenly become "unsupported" after a mere five years.
You can easily imagine that in the future hardware manufacturers will remove the ability to install a 3rd party operating system. It's already essentially impossible on a locked-down Apple iOS appliance.
In terms of usability I have to tip my hat to Google. ChromeOS is very easy to use so far. Probably until chromebook vendors start adding all sorts of their own shitty tools and accounts like Huawei has done with their phones.
That's just the start, people store private stuff on their computers you know. Photos, letters, bank transactions, emails, contact lists.
Microsoft choice to make this not only non-default but even a premium feature is inexcusable. I already switched to Ubuntu for this reason alone. Now my life is much easier for many other reasons as well, like Docker.
None of this is good, for anybody involved. IT security is like vaccines, it only works if everybody's got them. This one of my biggest issues with the current "ads let us have free software" defense of the advertising craze. Ads let us segregate users based on what features they can afford not to have, and unfortunately for most laypeople it's security and privacy that's on the chopping block.
What a mess. Typed from my iPad Pro.
Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)
IOS 12 can be installed on the 5S, which is the oldest 64 bit phone. It was launched in 2013.
My kid has it on a 6, and it's legitimately good performance there.
Good luck getting the latest Android onto a 5 year old handset without jumping through some non-trivial hoops.
[1]: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2018/09/ios-12-performance-improv...
I also have an iPhone 8, this is an Ok phone but is a worse experience than the 4 year old Android phone. Despite the cost being much higher, the screen is worse quality, for instance.
My partner has a 6 and it is remarkably slower than both. To the point where you sometimes just want to give up on whatever you were trying to do while waiting for a map or Spotify to load.
Maybe your experience is different to ours, but I'm only reporting what I see from using all 3.
iPhone 8 vs Nexus 6 from 2014, back when Google marketed that series as reasonable Dev devices, not necessarily flagships.
326 ppi vs 493 ppi
750 x 1334 pixels vs 1440 x 2560 pixels
IPS LCD vs AMOLED
Somewhere there is a tongue in cheek meme comparing a sister phone, the Nexus 4, from 2012 against a 2016(?) iPhone and it's quite interesting how many features the Android phones had and were mildly credited for that when copied to iPhone were /world changers!!1/
Granted, Android phone manufacturers have wised up and besides things like the Nokia 6.1 you can't really get a good mid-range Android phone any more... it's mostly clustered around either the humble Moto E or the Note 9 price points.
You're lying. Installing a custom third-party Android ROM is way more than a 10 minute process, your OnePlus X is barely more than 3 years old, and there's a huge difference between a random OS image you downloaded from a forum online and manufacturer-supported OS updates for a 5 year old phone.
Spoken like someone who's never actually used a 5 or 6 running iOS 12.
Also have an 8, which admittedly is an ok phone if horrendously overpriced but work paid for it so I can't complain.
I think this is why we need legislation: The free market obviously can't sort this out to peoples' benefit.
I have a couple Android devices I can't figure out how to update, so I'm afraid to use them for anything serious. If the author isn't responsible for writing crappy code, and I can't fix it, then where's my lemon law?
Am I the only one who doesn't see where the roughly $1000 price gap between the Honor Play and the newest(?) iPhone XS Max?. Their brand is really not worth that much to me anyhow.
"iPhone: About 1250 EUR, Honor Play: About 320 EUR" [1]
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?&idPhone2=9230&idPhone...
So, yes, it is reasonable to be angry when they put advertisement on the hardware that you paid on the OS that you paid together with the hardware. It is creepy, and belittling too.
Luckily IT professionals have yet the choice to install something else. Let's see how long it takes until we have no choice what software is allowed to run on devices that we buy.
Sorry for the rant.
By way of comparison, I willingly and happily pay more to use Apple hardware and software specifically because that money buys me a hell of a lot more privacy, security, and functionality than the equivalent amount of money would buy me in the Microsoft / PC ecosystem.
> most expensive version of their OS.
> they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.
To be clear here, I'm not defending Windows. I agree with you that what they do is not constructive for their users. I'm merely pointing out it's ironic for Mac users sit on their throne and decry Windows' practices while paying significantly more for non-upgradeable Mac hardware when if you really gave a shit about security and privacy, you'd buy reasonably priced PC hardware and install a linux distro.
Last I checked, App Store is absolutely filled with advertisements that I didn't request. Why is it so significantly worse that Microsoft happens to place theirs within Explorer? I think both are rather frustrating when you already paid for the software and/or hardware.
And do you have any reasonable complaints about the security and privacy of a modern Mac with the T2 chip, or are you saying that anyone who cares at all about security should run Linux and spend 30% of their time wrangling with SELinux policies?
And both 13" and 15" Dells have a fingerprint sensor which is as snappy as Touch ID without being bundled with a thin strip of touchscreen and a $200 price hike.
That's because these laptops are designed to be serviced on-site by repairmen who are not always so bright. So I imagine, similar HP offerings are as robust.
Dell's and HP's phone support and warranty support are super awful, though, so this may be a factor for you. For me, the difference between a drink spill costing $600 (and I do it myself) on a $2500 Dell versus $1500 (and I have to lose my files/get a new system) on a $1600 MBP (both true stories) is significant and I'm not rich enough to go for latter.
From a pure brand perspective, the smart move for Microsoft would be to stop selling windows home.
I think MS-software to be less attractive than any time before. Be that windows, their office suite or their cloud landscape, which mainly excels at being slow. And stronger competitors are not the reason for decisions that are mostly not consumer oriented.
Last time I bought one of these 15€ keys for a friend, I had to write to the customer support over 10 times and shuffle through at least 6 different keys until one actually worked.
Nonetheless, if you can go from Home to Pro with 13€ it feels quite ridiculous that there is a Home/Pro distinction at all from the very start.
Actually, I think it would be hard to find an enterprise software vendor who wouldn’t want to include extra functionality in their premium SKUs as a way to further differentiate them and encourage up-sell.
- "One of the key enhancements we have made for Windows Sandbox is the ability to use a copy of the Windows 10 installed on your computer, instead of downloading a new VHD image as you would have to do with an ordinary virtual machine." - "we also allow Windows sandbox to use the same physical memory pages as the host for operating system binaries via a technology we refer to as “direct map”" - "More recently, Microsoft has worked with our graphics ecosystem partners to integrate modern graphics virtualization capabilities directly into DirectX and WDDM, the driver model used by display drivers on Windows." (Note: it also works with OpenGL nowadays too)
Maybe you can achieve your workflow needs from Home + free 3rd party virtualization software but if you don't see anything special I'd recommend reading the article more carefully.
All other virtualization software runs fine on Windows Home.
"My spreadsheet won't open" 'don't use sandbox for that' "But you said every file I downloaded" 'no, only exe'
"I opened the PDF exe, edited it, now it's gone" 'self-extracting zips from our payroll system are fine'
It's not helping against the notion that Windows is insecure to use...
While they sell this as something that protects against downloaded malware, I think this is going to be used a lot in software testing. We have lots of manual tests of desktop software that neads clean environments which is painful when e.g. comparing several versions side by side etc. This is great compared to running multiple full VM's side by side.
What's your point? How is that not a reasonable business model?
The case in point is it’s putting lipstick on a pig at this point. Every change that is made comes with another security or friction factor. Every problem solved creates two more.
They need to stop adding shit to it and fix what is already there.