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Comment by j_walter | Hacker News Reader

Is it annoying...yes. Does it take more than 2 minutes to remove the pinned Edge and change the different default file types...no.

C'mon...Microsoft is trying to get you to use what they view as a superior product. It could certainly be A LOT worse.

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It's "annoying" when Microsoft continually cons your dementia-suffering family members into switching their browser back to Edge, which has none of their logins or bookmarks. Confusing them, worrying them, and doing real human harm.

Here's to dark patterns built into the OS! UI decisions matter.

Yes because so many dementia suffering people are intentionally downloading chrome or Firefox, instead of using whatever is already given to them.

Op didn't say anything about such people downloading the browsers. Their children or associates can do that. The point is, that an automatic unskippable system update will change the settings the child has done for their ill parent. The parent won't understand what happened or at least won't know how to change the desired setting back.

This is a bit of tangent, but hear me out, if the user was blind, for example, and was using some specific accessible tools, it would be really bad if the OS decided to change the tools by itself. The end-user would have no way to use their computer anymore. At least until a healthy person could revert the system settings back to their old state.

I've previously posted my experience with that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25121668

Computer-savvy people dismiss dark patterns like this as mostly-harmless prodding, but it really disorients the less able.

For all industry pats itself on the back for accessibility, they still have absolutely no shame about this open and obvious UX manipulativeness.

I hope your grandfather comes to understand he's not at fault for this absolute bullshit. My father is almost afraid to ask me to fix his systems because he's too proud to keep coming to me with issues - he used to be the technical one!

It's even more annoying (and takes more than 2 minutes) to do so in Windows 11. I got a hand on it some time ago (though reverted, not due to this behavior) and spend some time to change the default browser to what I'm using (Vivaldi)

Apparently, there's no option to set default app for common file types (Audio, Video, Browser etc...) in Windows 11. Instead, to change default apps, you have to track down all file types using that app and change it. Considering web browser can handle more than HTML, it's time consuming to change them all. Granted, it may be one-time change, but I find my default browser got reset quite often in Windows 10. If this happens in Windows 11, it will be a nightmare to fix.

It already is a lot worse. Consider how much worse windows privacy is, or how many more dark patterns Microsoft uses today than when they originally tried this shit.

So, c'mon, Microsoft is as anti competitive as ever.

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