Switching from Microsoft Edge gets more annoying in Windows 11 | Hacker News Reader

Switching from Microsoft Edge gets more annoying in Windows 11

arstechnica.com

65 pointszenbob31 comments

Microsoft need to be sued again so they resume making a good windows version again.

When I was on Win8 I was hoping Win10 would make me want to get rid of it. Instead it made me want to go back to Win7 (or rather, go Win7 for the first time, I skipped straight from XP to Win8)

Now I am "stuck" on Win7 hoping Win11 will fix Win10 issues but... MS seemly is dead set on making them WORSE instead.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu-in-...

According to Microsoft best $731m ever spend.

The designers of the "settings" screens in Windows should be utterly embarrassed. They are pathetically useless, especially when compared to their predecessors apps like the MMC.

They also take disturbingly long to load, and every interaction is noticeably delayed. At least in Win10 you can compare how long they take, since it has both. I don't think I've ever had to wait for Control Panel to load on every version of Windows prior to 10, but Settings needs a loading screen.

The responsible monstrosity is none other than UWP, which also added a loading screen to the Calculator.

At least it's not an Electron app. :D

I believe that animations are partially responsible for the slowdown, and Windows is not the only offender here, iOS and Android are just as much guilty of this. In most cases, animations when opening apps, switching screens, etc. don't add anything to the UX.

I always found it wild that reading an ebook in the UWP Kobo app on my quad core, 16GB RAM laptop with a SSD is a slower worse experience than using a 1GHz single core eInk reader with a microSD card for storage. Legitimately takes it longer to load the same book.

I really love the ones that redirect you from the Control Panel to Settings, but then are somehow still missing the old functionality, so it then bounces you back to the Control Panel.

C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{BB06C0E4-D293-4f75-8A90-CB05B6477EEE} for the old system dialogue.

The new one actually does the same for once, but I often use it to jump to the menues of the left. At least those weren't replaced yet. The new ones are just dreadful.

Palm® Treo™ users all quivered a little.

How do the product managers and engineers who implement these blatantly user-hostile changes justify them?

"Google used shady dark patterns to trick users to install Chrome for years, so we're just returning the favor" - MS product manager, possibly

The trick of it is, this did happen for a long time. Here's Avast's updater and Flash's installer trying to trick users into installing Google Chrome: https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj

We are back to the bouncer economy, just like when bouncers are chasing you with free entrance tickets to the nightclub for a "few" drinks (salty "free lunch" at the saloon in the old days), browser vendors are chasing you with free browsers to hook you up for some good ol' data mining.

The user isn't their boss, a boss at Microsoft is. Who do they need to justify the changes to?

Windows 10 Home, the one most people are on, is free. They need to make back that money.

I don't particularly like it but MS is doing what every other free app is doing. The user needs to be tricked.

AFAICT license doesn't allow you to use it for free, but they won't prevent the use of it, like they did with the previous versions. IMO this is better for them, because otherwise people would just pirate it, and Microsoft certainly don't want even more PCs that are not properly patched.

Additionally, prebuilt systems present the majority of sold PCs, in which case OEMs pay for the license.

Here's a scenario, VP behind edge demands increase in Microsofts browser usage, directors below set it as an objective to their product managers who want to get their bonus or promotion end of the quarter. They come up with ideas on how to achieve it. Some are quite stupid, probably way worse than any that see the light of day (like the ones described here). Then some just make it through and here we are.

Good lobbyists in the FTC.

Windows 7 with Media Center was the best Windows. All went downhill from there.

I just wish that somehow Microsoft messed up so badly that Windows for desktop goes the way of Windows Mobile. What's that, you ask? Exactly.

Windows 2000 was my personal favorite. Modern (for its time), lightweight, stable, and the UI didn't get in your way. It took the good things learned since the Windows 95 and pruned the not-so-good ones. I think that was peak Windows.

If you had the drivers, Windows XP-64 was fantastic. A (ahem) workstation twist to Server 2003, which was better than XP and updated version of Windows 2000. I really miss the ISO tweaking tools that were common in the 2000/Win7 days.

I'm curious if this really helps them retain a measurable number of users.

Basically, Edge is as good as Chrome (each has minor improvements/features that are not present in the other one), so I don't see that the average user would want to change it without a good reason.

The only reason for change would be if they want to take advantage of Chrome sync to their existing profile, or use Chromecast, in which case I doubt they would stick with Edge, regardless of the number of dialogs that they need to confirm/bypass.

For others, that prefer Chrome/Firefox/Brave/etc. for some reason, it's clear that they won't switch in any case.

The only reason I use Edge is because that it's basically the best free PDF reader/annotation tool I found for light study. I'd love to switch to another one if there is a better choice

For a user that doesn't prefer any product, the mere annoyance of Win 10's prompts can be reason enough.

I think MS just has this reputation of being bad in the browser space. IE has been so terrible for years, why would I use MS browser.

You can cast to a Chromecast from Microsoft Edge.

I couldn’t buy the Xbox Game Pass in either Edge or their stand-alone client. I had to switch to Chrome before I could get through the process. I think it was something about billing address not updating country settings correctly but was too annoyed at the time to dig in any deeper.

And the Xbox app has been bugging me about an old credit card expiring when I’m paying for Game Pass with a different card.

I can only imagine the hellscape that is Microsoft’s account/login/billing system.

I am happy on Mac, but MS should just ship WinXP with service pack 4 and 5 and then charge money for it. Backport whatever backend tech is needed and sell it as an ultra performance version of windows.

Apple's guilty of these kind of tactics too, it's extremely galling to get a "Try the New Safari!" notification if you run another browser[1].

1: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153379/how-do-you-...

I've noticed several times that periodically (maybe triggered by updates), the Settings app will have a pop-up asking me to finish configuring Windows 10. In my case, the only "steps" that I have not completed are:

- being subscribed to Office 365,

- having Bing as my default search engine

- having Edge as my default browser.

Needless to say, I find this an abuse of the Settings app.

Remember when Google Chrome used to embed itself in unrelated installers? https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj

Now that Edge is Chromium based, it's just like using Chrome minus all the tracking and data-mining...

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