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Comment by philliphaydon | Hacker News Reader

If the telemetry says that many people use these features, are Microsoft out of touch? These are features we don’t use. But other people might.

My dad rang me once said that when playing solitaire it kept playing ads. I said he can buy it so the ads go away or find another app that doesn’t have ads. He’s like “ah what ever I’ll watch the ads”. He’s happy and content. Just wants solitaire.

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> He’s happy and content. Just wants solitaire.

Would he not be happier without the ads, then?

Sure, but he doesn't want to pay and doesn't want some other app. So just accepts it.

I had no idea this was the case. This is awful. Microsoft got so much good will out of those free games and now they choose to nickel and dime people.

I'd love to know how much money they make out of this stuff, my guess is not very much at all.

I guess the ads in Solitaire may be less about making money off those ads themselves but more about reinforcing the idea that "ads are everywhere and that's OK" to get the masses used to ads (so they accept the other ads everywhere else).

I wouldn't call it being content, I'd call it being stuck in a situation that sucks.

I mean, if I gave you a script that would patch up Solitaire executable to remove any and all ads and telemetry with a single click, wouldn't your dad want it if you offered?

> I wouldn't call it being content, I'd call it being stuck in a situation that sucks.

It is as content as they'll get unless they spend $$ to remove the ads. Clearly it isn't worth the upgrade so they must be okay with their decision.

There's almost certainly a free app for Windows that's even better than the Microsoft version. He said his dad doesn't want "some other app," for whatever reason, but he's not stuck if they are available.

Hell if push came to shove you could probably get GNOME's solitaire running which at least has the advantage of supporting something like 100 different solitaire games.

Lastly I was curious how much the Microsoft solitaire costs and OMG. They want you to pay an ongoing subscription for it. Wow.

I'm talking about the obviously stupid features like the people hub or Bing search in start menu interfering with local results the user actually wants. Telemetry should obviously show that nobody uses these features successfully right?

Does he have a pack of playing cards?

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