Microsoft accidentally reveals that it is testing ads in Windows Explorer
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers."
Creatives build companies, and if you are not careful, sales will destroy them.
I think Apple's problem was that one designer that was a fan of excessive minimalism wasn't matched enough by a counterforce. Now that Ive is gone, Apple takes a more functional approach to product design. E.g. the MacBook Pro has useful ports again.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call him “more of a sales guy”
My mental model of TC is based on a not-very-recent reading of Steve Jobs' bio but it did not leave me with the impression that he was a dealmaker, more of a behind-the-scenes director coming up with innovative ways for Apple to optimise time/costs. I may be wrong though.
In any case, I think the actual rub is that sales vs creative is a false dichotomy; operations/logistics may not be a creative role but it also doesn't fit the sales profile in that dichotomy (imho).
His wisdom here rings of experience. It was probably meant to be as much a warning as it is informative.
They basically invented the GUI and because they were a monopoly in other areas, they didn't have people in place to recognize what an amazing thing they had.
Who am I kidding, why would they even give us the option. Microsoft said they were looking to put ads in their software and I guess they are following through on it.
Instead of the blue screen of death, we'll get the blue screen of ads.
Wouldn't you like to have some autoplaying video ads in there?
Dark arts/dark patterns. I think microsoft just emailed me a job offer. Decisions, decisions.
> Watch now
Maybe later“It looks like you’re having trouble cooperating as a willing participant in enforced consumerism. Would you like some help?”
> Yes.
> Yes, please.
This. Just had a call with MS today on a different matter, and the guy basically had no idea how licensing worked. All he could say was something like "we don't actively enforce those, so if you don't do anything ridiculous, we won't come banging on your door. But you should schedule a call with our licensing specialist who'll be able to help you out, just to be sure".
You will probably not like them, but that doesn't make them vaporware.
VBA is kind of a wart in Office, hasn't been updated since 1998. They made an attempt of integrating a mini visual studio in Office with C#/VB.net (VSTA), then killed it.
I see many no code alternative poping up (Microsoft power suite, alteryx, etc). But all have a pretty steep learning curve, and frankly the people who are willing to invest the time to learn them migh as well pick up SQL or even python for the same effort.
Microsoft is not an ally Linux needs.
Also the entire line of Adobe and Autodesk products. Photo editing, vector graphics and CAD in any form seems to be badly under served in Linux.
Are their certifications just too easy to pass? Should they not have certifications and just have internal support teams?
Are Amazon AWS consultants turning into the same thing or does Amazon somehow do this process differently?
And as I think about it, I think I did get to the same spot as you, with the device 'paired' but not really. My theory now is that bluetooth works on a controller/client relationship, and that both your laptop and phone are trying to be controller and are thus incompatible with each other, while things like headphones would be clients. Would love to know if someone more familiar with bluetooth could correct me.
> A broad assumption like "you're in your documents folder; let me suggest other > things related to documents" is annoying, but it doesn't feel particularly > invasive.
It's truly amazing what people will put up with. Reminds me of the lobsters sitting in increasingly hot water, never noticing until they're boiled alive.
I feel as if this journey has given me a deeper understanding of computers (a valuable skill), it has definitely provided me with more enjoyable user experiences and a more productive computational environment. My response to being exposed to non-Microsoft software was to migrate towards it. I do not understand why this response isn’t more universal.
Any recommendations on the best folks to pay on the libreoffice side to squash some formatting bugs etc for complex word docs. I filed the bugs (or found them). But it's hard to move over until we can get of office. If we could port some vba code over even better.
Alternatively was looking at google docs which seems a bit re-invigorated - historically as high complexity word users it didn't have the features we needed (sections, styles, styles in tables with alignment details for numbers etc) We have some VBA we can work around I think (or in Libreoffice perhaps replicate or even surpass).
If you log into a number of machines, you see these same alerts everywhere.
Google seems less obtrusive with this stuff.
That said, yes, if I could get to open source I would.
Or if you looked at Google Docs, how about Microsoft's online editors? Unfortunately, again, no macro support.
Interop is so good I almost don't notice until I run into something like an embedded doc or something I can't open in GDocs (which I then have to download as the office doc to extract).
These guys contribute a lot to LibreOffice, and also have their own offerings: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/
I haven't looked, but I think their work ends up upstream eventually.
We are < 100 so they have relevant pricing.
I'll download and see how it handles some of our documents if they have a trial. And they do seem to have a consultancy.
like stuaxo commented, the shortcuts are not the same in macOS.
And I noticed that macOS version tends to be delayed UI response. If I click to apply the color fill, it takes Excel about 5 seconds to process my input and apply the color fill in the cell whereas in Windows is instant. I noticed the same UI behavior in Word as well. They just seemingly take time to take my input and apply it. I believe it is largely due to x86 code, O365 current stable version only have x86 which it relies on Rosetta2 to do the work. They have ARM version in the work, I think it is in beta stage.
I’ve not tested Microsoft apps personally (I use LibreOffice).
But also, this is not the first time this has been tried. 5 years ago(!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903519
Microsoft says Win11 Explorer ads were ‘not intended to be published externally’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30701289 - March 2022 (21 comments)
Latest build of Windows 11 has ads inside File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30689526 - March 2022 (12 comments)
Microsoft is testing ads in the Windows 11 File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30675908 - March 2022 (498 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 ("Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed") (2012)
I think this is just the price we are going to pay for "evergreen" operating systems.
As a consumer, you now only buy Windows once. Microsoft has to make up for these lost
sales so it makes sense.
Time makes fools of us all I suppose.
So many things get killed before they're launched, and I'm so sure this would test absolutely abysmally if it were introduced into any paid for version of their OS, it's almost silly to think they'd just slip this into Windows 11 Home or whatever.
Maybe it's part of a potential new "free OS" offering, where you get Windows 11 for free, but with ads. I don't think that's terrible. I think it's at least seeing if it would work, writing up some code to get a feel for how it looks, both technically and from a marketing perspective.
Just seems like a great way to get a specific crowd riled up about something that will never see the light of day in any meaningful sense that would affect that crowd.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
and:
- ads on the lockscreen
- ads as notifications
- ads in the start menu
- ads in the "change file association" dialog
- ads in the apps (e.g. solitaire)
It starts small. Want Windows free? Watch ads, then when enough people get used to it, it gets rolled out in the rest. The exception would likely be Enterprise versions, because companies would lose their minds over this, but for all the "plebes"? Enjoy your ads.
That’s in production today, so I would consider ideas like this one more than a doomed brainfart.
Who are you kidding? The paid versions of Windows 10 already have built-in ads. The installer even asks about "personalized" ad preferences.
The ship's already sailed - Windows is ad-ware. The only question now is how blatant they want to be, and it looks like they're figuring that out now.
Super bummer.
Obviously if you need other Windows applications like Photoshop or Office this mentality doesn't work, but I've convinced people who want Linux and games to go this route. They just treat the Windows partition like an Xbox or Playstation.
And it's just entertainment.
I’m confused by the word “nowadays”. I had a friend with a dual-booting setup between Windows and Linux in the 90s.
30 years ago, the mantra in the tech world was "Businesses use Microsoft. People only use Apple for games."
Partly through school these days but it used to be mostly due to gaming when I was growing up.
Making it harder to introduce Linux in a corporate setting. We're in it for the long con ;)
No, back then we associated Macs with artists, little children via school funding, and the elderly. People that didn’t want to get their hands dirty, think about careful memory configurations, or bolting in new power supplies. They weren’t associated with technical people much less programmers, and certainly nobody into games cared about them at the time. Myst was the only game I remember on mac, and that was in 1993, and it was lame. Would you rather be running and gunning down 3D hallways shooting nazis or watching still photos thinking about a puzzle? I mean, it had its place but no comparison.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-file-manager/9p7vb...
Another option is to use the server editions of Windows which come with a lot less of this kind of crap.
There's also Ameliorated Windows, tho questionable in legality and comes with poor documentation and some quirks due to the amount of features cut out.
No, it's just an attempt at finding new revenue streams for something that is in the process of being commoditized. Linux/Android/ChromeOS (yes yes, spare me the pedantry) are free and increasingly good enough to fully replace the traditional OS for most tasks, which puts pressure on everyone else to squash prices to zero. Apple could commoditize the OS because they sell hardware; MS cannot do it without a significant revenue hit. Their pivot to online services is working, but still, when they finally pull the plug on desktop licenses they're going to feel it. So they're in a perennial quest to find new income sources for that division.
Perhaps this is the fallback if your credit card on file in Windows expires so that you can still access your stuff when your monthly Microsoft tax comes due.
What's the buyer intent in that moment?
The goal would have to be brand recognition, but the risk/reward ratio must be absurd, in terms of damaging one's brand.
It's basically advertising like this: http://i.imgur.com/Ubip3Gq.gif
If someone's searching for code-files, has VisualStudio installed, and normally opens it in VS-Code, then Rider would love to advertise in that space. It means the user want's professional tools, but doesn't use VS for some reason.
If someone's searching for architecture programs, has various pro tools installed, but is likely to open a sketch in essentially paint then you've once again got a huge advertising opportunity, especially if mixed into some "Would you like to, buy|try -> install -> open" this file in this advertised app in one-click?
If this is an ad, then pop up notifications are ads. (they aren't).
I once saw a one drive notification in explorer. This is OK because they are sister services. Editor however should not be in explorer because it needs to run on office.
And it's not just Windows11, it is everything else:
https://www.neowin.net/news/leaked-memo-reveals-microsoft-is...
it's another fine example of MS software being mediocre at best
whilst modern Windows is malware
Gnome sucks but it's still better than this, and with a very minor amount of effort you can use Linux without Gnome.