Edge install undermines Microsoft’s argument that automatic updates are critical
theverge.com
theverge.com
There's a Simpson's episode where Homer has a business that Bill Gates wants to buy, and he refuses. So Bill tells his bodyguards to 'buy him out' and walks away. They proceed to smash all of his equipment to bits. You don't get done by Matt Groening like that by simply bundling software.
I'll be honest, I think most popups with user information are useless and annoying. The majority of people think "I didn't ask for a pop-up" and click the x without reading, not even knowing what cancel does.
Despite normally thinking "info" popups do more people bad than good, completely stopping all os interaction for a full screen "the blue e is changing to a wave" is absolutely necessary. How many people only know the internet as "the blue e" or "google"? After 25 years of a blue e, it's a staple of computer interaction, one you can't just quietly yank away.
With old edge going away, they obviously have to ship a replacement.
The fight between these companies to be set to default is ridiculous, and they are both abusing their positions because people can't be depended on to know how to undo a defaul protocol handler change. Microsoft's "are you sure" pop-up when trying to change your default PDF viewer, should be illegal. If you're in the menu changing it, is not the time for a weird passive aggressive manipulative popup. But. But, it's also not good for Microsoft to just cede full control to Google.
It's also a bit ridiculous for people to be conflating pinning an icon to a taskbar with violating people's privacy. If you know what it is, un pin it. If you don't know what edge or new edge are, the pin is probably useful.
EDIT: I can see now that I wrote carelessly. By "This is worse" I meant "This is more blatantly illegal." Not "This is more detrimental to the world." The '90s browser bundling was probably much more detrimental, but not unexpected behavior. But the recent behavior was very unexpected to me. I had to use Task Manager to kill it. I can't believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere.
People with 10% market share are allowed to do a whole hell of a lot of things that become illegal when you have 90% market share. I suspect this is part of why monopolies are so uniformly recalcitrant. From their perspective, we didn't have problems with them doing this 10 years ago, why are we upset about it now when they have assets worth taking away as a punishment? It's just a money grab. They're just winning and we're just jealous.
If I own a grocery store, I'm selling formula for below cost to get people into my store. It's called a Loss Leader. If I'm the biggest formula maker in the world, and I sell formula below cost, that's called Dumping and I will be fined and punished if anyone can prove that I am 'too big' and that this is driving competition out of business.
That's the crucial difference. You can easily get native firefox on mobile if you want (even if it means giving up iOS). It was much more difficult for desktop users to give up Windows in 1998.
WP also doing slowly well, the whole technical stack was rebooted multiple times, and thus it lost the developer love that got fed up with so many reboots.
Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
If you are halfway competent ISV, you don't have a problem. Sure, there is no polished SDK that contains the entire world, but everything needed is available in respective repos.
You also do not need to support every release of Kali and Slackware. If you focus on the most used distribution(s), you won't have a problem with support. Even Microsoft can do it today.
> Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
Causing collective yawn. But don't worry, other desktops have exactly the same problem, because again, it is not a tech problem.
I will never ever forget the time they considered closing a nag popup (that they installed through security updates) by hitting the X in the top right as consent for an operating system upgrade. That was depraved.
To this day, I don't know how people could forgive them for that. Like... look at this incident in comparison. They installed a browser. That's nothing.
Do you also want Apple and Google to be sued for "bundling" their browsers on iphone/osx/android/chomebook etc?
A browser is a basic necessary OS component (heck, you need one just to download another one).
What is objectionable is the in-your-face nature of this update.
Ever heard of wget?
I also thing think that saying that something is annoying is dismissing what is actually a pretty dark pattern. What comes to mind is how modern day censorship works the internet. If you outright block someone's ability to visit a example.com, they will spot the censorship and try to find workarounds. If on the other hand, you simply introduce a 5% packet loss to example.com, people will blame the _website_ and not potential censorship.
What's to stop Microsoft for adding another 5 minutes of hassle to install chrome or firefox? You couldn't sue them for it, but it would be enough to destroy every other browser on the market.
It sounds like you're talking about something specific, are there examples of this happening that you can point to?
I'm not even giving it a shot.
It'd be one thing if word of mouth built up enough positive vibes for me to consider trying it for awhile. It's entirely another for my first experience with the latest Edge to be additional tech support requests from concerned and confused relatives in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. My mother has been a bit paranoid of Edge ever since scammers tried to get her to use it when Chrome blocked the malware she was being tricked into running - so Edge suddenly trying to take over her computer with no obvious way to close out of it made her understandably concerned! Fortunately we were able to muddle through it despite me not being able to see her screen over the phone, but this is another reminder that I should be strongly considering trying to switch her to a different platform, and poisons my perception of Edge to it's very core.
Isn't that besides the point that you love Edge ? I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.
I'm sad to see any Chromium based browser installed on my PC, but it's hardly harmful that they're upgrading a system component to the latest version.
They did this just after making it impossible to manually skip updates ("to prevent confusion"), and also shipped it to Windows 7, which is supposed to be EOL'd.
It’s the same kind of scummy behavior that dodgy websites use to set themselves as your homepage, or change your default search engine.
Does it? I don't even have Chrome on my phone. Even the webview component is now customizable, I think (or maybe it's the "embedded browser" component, but apps are definitely opening things in a popup Firefox window for me).
Preinstalled Google's proprietary apps on GMS Certified Android Hardware are Google Search, Google Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play Store, and more. If your devices are not certified, you will not have access to any of Google’s proprietary apps.
It's all or nothing. So if the OEM has certification from google, Chrome is compulsory. Also, the manufacturer MUST release ALL their phone models with it. They cannot release some models with the open sourced android.
AFAIK, Google and Microsoft are using the same playbook. Google simply learned from MS's mistakes early and created illusion of choice with open source.
Microsoft in turn, has learned from Google and is gluing "must have" services to open source VScode.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-oem-licensing-345806... https://socialmobile.com/gms-certified-devices/
that's only true in recent Windows history, and it's obviously just another way to follow suit and go for the 'walled-garden' approach that the other platforms seem to be reaping the benefits of.
"You can't remove the browser, it's a part of the system architecture." should be followed up with : "Is that a legacy feature, and if not -- what can be done to remediate it?"
If someone told me that file locking was a concept you're stuck with in Windows -- yeah, sure. I agree. That's something that requires nearly a bottom-up re-write; these browser dependencies are new in the case of M$.
That depends. The post doesn't clarify whether Edge was already installed in its legacy incarnation. If so, and they received an update, that's not ""installing without user consent".
I recently installed the Chromium version of Edge manually and didn't encounter any of this behaviour. It's a shame that Microsoft are doing something Windows Update-specific, although maybe people who are the most averse to this behaviour are the more technical crowd who will have already grabbed an installer for themselves anyway?
You are now that Microsoft has done this.
Seriously, forcing user preferences is terrible and completely unrelated to the virtues of Edge.
Do you earnestly believe it will stay that way if an actual sizable chunk of the market starts using it?
Or do you think Microsoft will do exactly what it did as described in this very article, which is use it's monopoly position to enforce its own interests to the detriment of society at large?
Possibly the best fit I’ve ever encountered for the adage “out of the frying pan into the fire”.
(Disclaimer: long-time IE user --- as well as Firefox and (pre-webkit) Opera.)
That's not even necessarily a bad thing (given there are ways around it) ... But that isn't what Microsoft did here.
Consider for example, this Chrome setting: Settings > Sync and Google Services > Allow Chrome sign-in. The description says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome".
Turn this feature off and sign into Gmail. Chrome will sign you into the browser as well -- regardless of your setting -- so now the browser knows who you are.
This is pretty abusive. For this reason I have made Edge my default browser.
Putting my web-developer hat on, I _am_ happy that I'm not going to have to worry about Trident-in-Edge ever again.
Firefox is also fantastic! It's good to have some options besides Google Chrome these days!
Edge is the ONLY browser that doesnt consistently freeze my entire computer (and require a hard reset) when I watch Netflix. I have no idea why but its a common issue if you Google it.
For that alone I am glad Edge exists.
There's also some integration with MS365 if you log in the an Azure AD domain.
Meanwhile from a user perspective some browsers differ in extensions and configuration etc. So if you get a monoculture which causes sites to start relying on non-standard features of only specific browsers, it makes it harder for people to use or create other browsers that aren't bug-compatible with the only one anybody is targeting.
The "fast iteration" browser makers like is also damage, because it causes cruft to accumulate. Once you add a feature, sites start using it and you're stuck with it basically forever. See how long it took to get rid of Flash. But now they add features at such a pace that Chrome is now like 35 million lines of code, all of which is attack surface which causes all browsers to have disproportionately many security vulnerabilities.
Having multiple independent browsers requires new features to go through a standardization process that requires buy in from multiple implementations before sites can rely on them, which causes the changes to be fewer and more carefully considered -- a good thing for something you'll be stuck with ~forever.
Select any text, and speak it. Jump anywhere in the page. Works on both, regular web pages, and PDFs too.
It works even better than what’s on the iPad Safari. And Chrome doesn’t have any working feature like this.
I would guess it is not a customer-product integrity driven priority.
It's a no-brainer to install. It works exactly like all the other desktops. And it's faster, more secure, more stable and doesn't try to sell you stuff. It's also free.
Last time I checked Ubuntu was becoming a bit of a pig and it had suffered some kind of desktop disaster.
I have not encountered the problems with Debian that you describe but maybe my needs (browsing, coding and light video editing) are just that small.
It's not about security.
Now the full-screen splash page is obnoxious. There has to be a more tasteful way to inform the user of a large Edge update.
1. I didn't install it. You (Microsoft) installed (actually updated) it. And because you chose to update it, you think that gives you the right to nag me again about making Edge the default browser? Edge was already on my machine; I already answered that question. Stop nagging me about it.
2. If I just want it to shut up and get out of my face, it won't let me close it by right-clicking on the taskbar.
3. It's slow to load, so I have to wait for it before I can get rid of it (or else use the task manager, which also takes time).
Yeah, I'd call the combination of those things "objectionable". I might call it stronger terms, too.
Tried that, left an arrow pointing at the place on the taskbar where the Edge window used to be. Wouldn't go away without a reboot.
Right click a file (a PDF in ur case), click properties. Click "change". Choose the default file handler for that file type.
I migrated away from Chrome -to Firefox- over a year ago and haven't looked back. I don't want a re-skinned Chrome browser. I don't want Chrome. I don't want Edge.
Please Microsoft, listen to your users and stop trying to shove your products in our faces. If we want to try your products we will. If we don't want to use your products, then your own guerrilla-style tactics are only hurting your marketing efforts.
When people feel they have a choice, they're more likely to be satisfied with the outcome. When people feel they're cornered, the experience is less than satisfying and is almost guaranteed to backfire on the one doing the cornering.
I hope you're listening Microsoft...
Is this really the case? or is it more so that people want the illusion of choice? Let's not forget that the other major OS in the world has you locked into using one browser engine regardless of whatever browser you install i.e. you have the illusion of choice but not really. Would people be okay if Microsoft forced all browsers to use Chromium on Windows?
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This isn't guerilla style. This is army style, carpet bombing.
The whole point of an operating system is to work and get out of peoples way. Every needless distraction is a design flaw. Microsoft has, time and again, proven that they either don't understand or care about that and as such are not qualified to be OS vendors.
But I have a local account, and I've disabled all of Win10 crap using WPD. Maybe that's why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
By switching users to Edge, they are switching them to Bing. The vast majority of users won't notice the switch since Edge and Bing both look a lot like Chrome and Google.
This will give MS billions of dollars of additional advertisement revenue.
In 2020, can you tell me of an OS that doesn't nag you for updates or do so 'during down times'? Ahhh yes... an 'eol' android device from obscure (or not so obscure) android vendor...
I'm imagining good ole bill smiling away, "that's a good boy satya."
Anyway, you can write the exactly same article about a random DLL/service you never asked for somewhere in C:\windows\* running in the background or hooking into apps doing whatever.
This is what you get running a proprietary OS.
Great discussion!
This is no different from the Netscape/Internet Explorer shenanigans of the 1990s. Trouble is, the new generation of computer users don't know MSFT's previous history so they are "shocked!".
For the rest of us, it's just Microsoft being a dick as usual.
And then they do things like this. The Windows core team feels to me like a clandestine shadow organization in Microsoft whose location is unknown even to Nadella. Of course, that's not what's happening, and its startling to me that no one has cracked down on them for this shitty behavior.
Its not representative of how Microsoft, by and large, operates today. It is representative of how they used to operate.
Wait til they become dominant again and they'll be back to their old ways.
The similar screens that get shown when installing updates are just as creepy, to the point that I've heard of others mistaking them for a ransomware infection:
http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a9PQep0_700b.jpg
I seriously do not understand the group of people at MS who think doing such things were an excellent idea.
You probably weren't old enough to see this blatant behaviour in the 1990s.
nothing they do surprises me these days
It wouldn't bother me if they overpriced their stuff like Apple does or bought every competitor like Facebook does, etc. It only bothers me when they make their product unusable like they've done with Windows.
They aren’t separate issues. Monopoly is the absence of effective competition (a place people go when you make things worse, whether in cost or UX or otherwise). That's what makes them free to do it “so tastelessly”.
They have probably calculated the backlash and decided it was worth it because most people actually just don't care.
It's going to get so much worse without proper regulation, the trend has been clear for years.