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Comment by unnah | Hacker News Reader

It was becoming common knowledge that you could disconnect your machine from networks during installation to use Windows with a local account (i.e. the normal kind of user account that people have used for decades). Microsoft wants people to register online during installation and to use the online account on all their computers, in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft online services such as OneDrive and Office 365. So it's not malicious, Microsoft is just implementing their strategy to create more monetization opportunities.

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I mean, sorry, but I consider that malicious. The OS can create a local account but doesn't give you that option specifically to make you create a windows Live account. That is almost textbook definition of malicious for me.

What's may be more surprising than their malice is your surprise at their malice. These 'dark patterns' are so numerous now it's exhausting to remain duly outraged. I hope there's a future (or alternate universe) where dark patterns, such as this, result in economic loss rather than economic gain.

They might be a Linux desktop user or a free software person in general. If you stick to F/OSS you might still live in a world where that stuff is pretty much entirely absent, experientally.

Then the outrage comes in full force, as a kind of culture shock, whenever some external situation requires you to do something like set up a proprietary desktop operating system.

> I hope there's a future (or alternate universe) where dark patterns, such as this, result in economic loss rather than economic gain.

I agree. I wonder whether that can actually be achieved through end-user savviness alone.

Ten years ago you needed iTunes to enable your iPhone/iPad.

Sure there are probably was a way to skip most of the requirements (except iTunes itself) but around that time I helped a friend to activate an iPad.

I was forced to register an Apple account AND give it a credit card to activate that iPad.

You can blame MS all you want, but MS IS LATE FOR THE PARTY WITH ALL THAT SHIT.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

I bought my first Apple device (an iPad) two weeks ago out of necessity and even created an Apple account in advance, assuming Apple will force me to use it. I was very surprised to find a very obvious "Skip" button that let me complete the process with no account.

And just because other manufacturers do it, isn't a reason not to blame MS for what MS did. Nobody forced them to do this and it's not even common practice. The OS wasn't "built with online accounts in mind". It's something nobody asked for and everyone lived happily without before.

Are you able to e.g. install apps without an apple account? I seem to recall simple things like that wasn't possible unless you had signed into an apple account.

Not being able to use the app store is pretty different from not being able to setup the computer.

Considering that on these Apple devices the Apple store is literally the only entry point for running actual programs on these devices, I would say it is indeed pretty equivalent to "not being able to setup the computer".

I don't know, almost everyone who has an iPad in my family probably never used an app store. They just use it for browsing, facetime and calendar management - and all these apps are preinstalled. I'm trying to think what I have installed on mine that isn't standard, and it's pretty much.....YouTube? I could browse that through the browser if I wanted to.

Like, my point is that these devices are fully functional out of the box even without an account(but yes, it sucks that you need one to unlock it fully)

Can you no longer install free apps from the App Store on a Mac without creating an account or signing in? I thought that used to work.

This hasn't been a thing for a long time. App store requires an iCloud account.

You might have bad information. Very little of the software I run on my Mac comes from the App store. Even if your assertion were accurate... You'd still be able to use Safari, and web browsing accounts for the lion's share of most people's computing needs. So the score is:

Windows 11: lay-users can do literally nothing of value with their computer without signing in to an account they probably don't want

MacOS: lay-users can use the internet and download software provided outside of the app store without signing into an account that they probably don't want

Calling these equivalent would be quite an exaggeration.

franga2000 was saying they bought an iPad, not a Mac

That is true. I guess I missed that we were comparing the operating systems completely across device categories. However, half of what I said still applies since I explicitly mentioned Safari.

Since iOS doesn't let you sideload apps, it's actually not very different at all.

It has Safari. But I'm curious why we are comparing Windows to iOS instead of it's desktop counterpart.

From a Windows perspective, Apple might seem somehow generous, but if you're not interested in Apple's cloud services or you're actually concerned about privacy, the Mac setup wizard is still a minefield of shit to opt out of. :-\

> I mean, sorry, but I consider that malicious.

Welcome to microsoft ecosystem

> Microsoft wants people to register online [...] in order to increase the market share of the Windows app store and other Microsoft online services

> So it's not malicious

I would have to firmly disagree there. Microsoft are pushing the notion that an online account with some identity provider is a necessity for home computing by hiding the (perfectly functional) option to create a local account.

The only reason why that functionality is still there at all is to avoid a lawsuit. "See, it's still implemented!"

This is just frog in a boiling pot. Windows (and iOS) is becoming an OS as a service.

Pretty soon you won't be able to use it without paying for something.

    - This is My procedure (with Lan) to obtain a local Account on W10
     
    Install Windows 10 and go through the OOBE
  - Select Region
  - Select Keyboard Layout
  - SKIP Secondary keyboard layout
  - Network connection
  - ENABLE Allow PC to be discoverable
  - Setup = For personal use
  - Account = Offline account
    - like old times - a completely standalone PC
  - Sign in = Limited experience
    - ignore the nudging to make an online account
  - User account = <my initials>
    - as this gets used for the name of the home folder and I don't want my full name for that
  - No password
    - to avoid the nonsense socalled "security questions". Password will be set later *after* completing the installation
  - Location usage = No
  - Find my device = No
  - Diagnostic data = Required only
  - Improve inking = No
  - Tailored experience = No
  - Advertising ID = No
  - Customise experience = Skip
  - Set a password for the account

you can just skip enabling internet. weirdly, on some machines this results in a reboot, but it's fine

> So it's not malicious

Ahem. You literally just described a very clear-cut, textbook example of malicious. Yes it is absolutely malicious.

Yeah, I love how much hate people gave to Microsoft about browser monopoly but this is somehow fine :)

People are so quick to assume malice whenever a multinational conglomerate practices deception in pursuit of profit. Whatever happened to engaging in good faith?

The pursuit of profit, purely for the sake of profit and no other goal, is malicious.

What? No it isn't, and profit has nothing to do with why this particular decision by Microsoft was.

If one's sole driving concern is making money, a whole lot of evil becomes possible. The other side of profit is power - those with more capital become more powerful. That's the reason Microsoft made this decision. They don't want the average person being able to easily make a local account, they'd much rather force everyone to register an account with them in order to even use their computer. It's just one further notch down the slippery slope of the end of private ownership and personal rights. A small notch, certainly. But it's a small notch in their overall endgame of putting general-purpose computing "back in the bottle" so to speak.

Certain powers in this world want there to be less regulation for the moneymakers in this world. Centralized wealth has been a cancer on humanity for millennia, and we're nowhere near putting the proper amount of shackles on capitalism.

I think most people don't realize this given how normalized it is. Wealth is a mechanism of distributing limited resources, and thus profit seeking without concern for externalities or creating value makes everyone else worse off.

It is absolutely malicious tho ugh, because Windows works perfectly fine with only a local account, and tbh it would still be malicious, and actually even more malicious, if they managed to change windows to make it not work anymore with just a local account. I suspect they won't and that nrobypass or something equivalent will remain for the forrseable future. Maybe a regulation authority will even force them to provide back the offline option out of the box.

> So it's not malicious, Microsoft is just implementing their strategy to create more monetization opportunities.

So it's not malicious -it's just malicious.

Gotcha!

That explanation is exactly what I meant by malice. Microsoft is trying to force people to do something to their own computers that they don't want to do and that isn't actually necessary to do.

that's tying, an anti competitive feature. Illegal too

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