Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

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> Microsoft doesn't get a bad rep like facebook or google, because their business model is not based on pushing ads onto their users and selling their users' data, which everybody hates.

You mean they don't put ads in the windows home menu or hundred of spywares in the OS ?

Or that they don't have ads in bings, skype or outlook ?

> Apple's bad rep is probably due to high pricing, tech lock-in, horrible apple store experience, bad behavior regarding right-to-repair, pretty bad software overall.

Or maybe you mean they don't lock in with proprietary formats, avoiding to publish the specs and when they then do don't follow it like with Office ? Hopefully this has been compensated by the fantastic Windows Update experience and good behavior.

I'm not an FB, Apple or Google fan. In fact I don't have an FB account, I voluntarily don't buy Apple products and refused a job interview with Google.

But let's not forget the numerous bad deeds of MS. That's how we never solve the problems we have: we let people misbehave and after a while, they are all forgiven. It's the same with politics, bad bosses, abusive spouses, etc.

Don't let people forget.

First of all, I've never seen an ad in my start menu. You can disable live tiles.

Second, anonymous telemetry is not spyware.

After perhaps the fourth time I disabled Cortana and cleaned up mysteriously re-enabled bloatware on the Start menu, I started getting the same "I don't own this device" feeling I've had for years with smartphones. It's obviously less egregious than e.g. Facebook, but it's also a more fundamental element of the stack where I'm less willing to tolerate bad behavior.

If it was simply a matter of doing a bunch of cleanup one, I'd get over it. But between buggy, user-unfriendly update features and instantly-out-of-date instructions on what I need to turn off, it's uncomfortably reminiscent of Android's issues.

>Second, anonymous telemetry is not spyware.

On this note: if you opt-out of telemetry, don't complain when your power-user features stop being catered to.

where is my jump list from task bar! "omg m$ sucks"

> Second, anonymous telemetry is not spyware.

I think there is plenty of room for legitimate disagreement on this point so long as it's not optional and/or fully disclosed.

I mean every company has problems... Microsoft just seems to be generally headed in a better direction vs worse which seems way more common.

We're not wedded to these big tech companies. I don't know why we need to forgive them at all. Let's talk about smaller companies making interesting products that haven't betrayed our trust, like System76, Lulzbot, or Purism. There's a whole world of hardware and software out there.

We don't need to forgive them, I personally just don't have the energy to remain angry at a company that has CLEARLY changed direction significantly.

All of you are of course free to remain pissed off at anyone or anything you want. Just be mindful of why you're mad, and make sure once in a while that it's still worth being angry about.

Maybe but it's not their main source of revenue like with Google and Facebook. So they don't have to go crazy doing unethical stuff in that area (privacy) which is what people tend to care most about these days.

"They are not as bad as they could be" is not an argument.

Don't worry, in a few years we won't even be able to make that argument: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/nadella-microsoft-wi...

I'm not making any argument in their favor. I'm talking about the ads discussion.

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