Microsoft tests Windows account menu error badge when Microsoft Account not used
twitter.com
twitter.com
Facebook was the same. I turned off notifications completely because I couldn't disable specific ones I didn't need so they started emailing me so I blocked them as spam. Sorry FB, your loss. My life is better without your garbage product anyway.
In regards to windows, it feels to me as morphing into a solution for large corporations if disregarding the tabloid news while leaving private users just waiting for a friendly OS to be presented for them.
This shit should be illegal. Make it truly optional so I can turn off or dismiss the badge/“error” permanently, or just don’t do it this way.
Encouraging everyone to use one administrator, do everything account just because it makes it easier for Microsoft to push their services seems pretty pathetic to me. Toss in the per-profile licensing and activation for Office, etc. and it’s obvious Microsoft doesn’t care about security if it gets in the way of sales.
Unfortunately Microsoft/windows does not care what your needs are, it only cares about data collection and ads.
I recently had to install windows in a vm because I could not get adobe reader working through wine. The install process was awful:
* Dark pattern to try and force me to login with a MS account during setup
* Majority of setup steps pertain to data collection and/or ads
After setting it up, I had to open up edge to download and install adobe reader, once again
* Nags me to login to an account
* Most if not all setup steps are about ads and data collection
All for the sake of filling out some pdfs. I am truly grateful that Valve is pushing proton as it makes me (almost never) have to leave linux.
No way! Thankfully I went for windows 10 which did not need me to unplug the internet (just a hidden option down to the side), but that's just awful.
Worth remembering that everyone has complained about grouped windows in the taskbar since way back in Windows XP when Microsoft first released the feature.
And without Internet connection you cannot even reach the step to create an account.
[1]: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/269419/tip-set-u...
The only difference between Edge and Chrome is choosing who you want your data to go to and your ads to come from: Microsoft or Google.
You tell your car to drive to a cafe and it tells you that caffiene is bad for you and you should go to McDonald's instead. I give zero shits about whether it's true or not, it's nobody's goddamn business where I want to drive.
Meanwhile, both Edge and Chrome are Chromium.
Windows is more than ripe for disruption, but unfortunate the monopoly is enforced by drivers, productivity software, habit, gaming etc.
It's depressing to think about how much better our computers could have worked if there had been real competition in the market of PC OSs for the last 25 years.
All of these moves I call “KPI features”, as in: “I have to make this worse to meet my personal bonus criteria, sorry.”
There are so many dark patterns in Windows now because of this.
Nobody at Microsoft cares about the products at all any more.
The reason Windows continues to dominate desktop is because Apple isn't a competitor, more like an off-ramp for those that can afford better. And Linux on Intel/AMD is finicky on most OEM machines except for a couple of machines that are 10 years old.
One day I desperately needed something from the App store, so I made another account to sign in there. Ever since then I've been getting a "sign into you account" badge on my Settings app prompting me to remove it from the dock.
Guess what? If I haven't used those services over the past 6 years, I don't think I need them.
The day they don't is the day I throw my iPhone in the river.
So if the roadmap is that clear, I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
Or alternatively: Why are software companies allowed to just make those decisions, even it could potentially disrupt the work of millions of users.
Because it's often the only option in the corporate world.
They'll pull a 180 right around Windows 13 when linux OS is released that works by default with 95% of games and 95% of hardware takes 20% of the desktop market.
It's only the home-users that get hit by this....
In fact, one of the Group Policies is for specifically blocking Microsoft account logins.
(Yes, I have that policy turned on.)
Windows is a joy to use when you turn off all the half-baked consumerized nonsense.
Because Windows runs Win32.
The reason investors and CEOs love monopolies and oligopolies so much is that they don't have to care about users, they can abuse them as much as they want.
Windows machines are the only affordable option for millions of people so they have to keep using it, no matter how much they hate Microsoft. Governments should be less tolerant of important companies that abuse their power.
And before anyone chimes in saying "Linux is Free Open Source Software!", remember the old saying: Time is money.
Almost noone wants to spend time messing with their computer. A computer might be the end to a means for Linux neckbeards, but for the rest of humanity a computer is simply a means to an end.
Windows, unlike Linux, satisfies that role of being a means to an end, of just being a tool for bigger things. Buying a Windows license is, in fact, more affordable than messing in Linux.
I've been using Windows for almost 30 years now, and while I've given different distros of Linux and MacOS an honest try, I am never as comfortable or as fluent with them as I am with Windows. I know there is an extensive amount of customization that can be done with Linux to get it really close but it just isn't the same.
I'm also at the level where I am comfortable enough with gpedit and regedit that as long as there is a way to turn most of the annoying and onerous "features" off, I can keep on truckin'. For instance, disabling Cortana in the start menu.
A lot of non-open source desktop software available only for Windows and MacOS. While I dislike MacOS less than Windows 10 or especially 11, MacBook is more expensive than Windows notebook or mini-PC.
People also willingly addict themselves to the dumbest things. They can't use linux because some stupid nike sneaker app doesn't work on it, they can't use libreoffice because the menus are different. Even most of the real differences are unneccessary gimmicks that only exist to create exactly that trap. Developers too slurping up the whole vs stack, feeds back to all the shitty apps that people can't live without only existing on windows.
I have to wonder though how much of this stuff are they going to try to shove into Windows 11 LTSC when that comes out or are they going to continue the pattern of a lot of the shady stuff magically being missing from LTSC?
But yeah, and it make sense. I mean Microsoft doesn't want to make it easy to strip out all of the crap they add in (or really never have it in the first place).
Not that I am defending Microsoft since this is their own doing, but I can understand why LTSC is not... easy isn't the right word. Can't think of the word I am looking for.
Edit: The best part is I have not noticed any downsides. I did have to install the Windows Store for the Xbox app but that still leaves a TON of stuff that isn't there.
My exotic mix of apps work. Games work, new ones and 20 year old ones. All peripherals and hardware combinations work, or have a way to make them work. There always seems to be a path towards success.
Years or decades of muscle memory fueling resistance to change, corporate lock-in, game compatibility...that's how Microsoft can get away with almost anything.
Should Apple want to, they could get the ultimate revenge by reversing the lost PC wars. And actually dominate the laptop/desktop market. They have the hardware, software and resources to do so.
But it won't happen, it would require too many non-Apple moves, like wide compatibility, very long term legacy support, low margin products.
Using both macOS and Windows 11 on an almost daily basis, they are really not that different when it comes to nagging users. Both show full-screen displays on startup from time to time where they want to change some settings (activating Siri, using Edge as default browser, ...), try to sell additional services, make you use an online account, and come with a lot of bloatware.
I used Edge (logged in) + Bing for 3+ years and recently switched back to Firefox. When it was new, Edge was great. It was a Google free Chromium browser that integrated with my MS account and got out of my way.
Now Edge is a bloated piece of trash because Microsoft can't stop jamming crap into it.
Anyone who works at Microsoft brave enough to comment...?
Approximately 200,000 people work at Microsoft, and I can assure you that the vast majority do not hold the authority to make decisions like this. In reality, I suspect that many of them view this kind of user interface/user experience as unfriendly and express their concerns to higher-ups, but without any influence, they may never see any improvements.
Given this fact, I would recommend rephrasing your request to call for a Microsoft executive to clarify this decision. However, you probably already know the answer to that question: engagement, which leads to promotions, which leads to more money.
I regularly feel disgust at some of the decisions I see the OS and other consumer product teams roll out. It makes the company look bad, and I believe hurts our long term best interest by cheapening our product and brand, let alone the ethical perspective of dark pattern or depriving users control over their own devices.
I know of no way to turn these off short of using an older version of Windows. I think some of the enterprise releases may have ways to create local accounts, but they may still hit this, I'm not familiar with that side of the world. If there is third party software to mitigate this I encourage it. If this drives you to linux I encourage and am encouraged by it. If you pirate out of protest I encourage it. Consolidation and other related factors in the OS marketplace have rendered consumers with very little real leverage, and this is not a state of affairs I am happy with.
To guess's point, I can also say that I know of no coworkers happy with this or who have any power to impact this state of affairs. I am not in the OS org, but I would be surprised if it were any different there. To put it crudely, incentives are a bitch.
What would they even say? "Yeah, we think our users are stupid and we don't respect them, so we use dark patterns to dupe the suckers into giving us PII and $$."? It's intentional deceit by Microsoft IMO.
It's the same thing with OneDrive. If you don't set up OneDrive you get nagged by the "security" center that your files are at risk because they're not "backed up". However, OneDrive isn't a backup. It's sync and, if you factor in files-on-demand, can end up being the only copy of users' files. I wouldn't consider the only copy of my files a "backup", but most users don't understand, so Microsoft is happy to stretch the truth (aka lie) to get people using OneDrive so they can convert them into subscribers.
It's why Windows 10 will be my last Windows.
I understand goat farming done right can provide a living, but I also understand there's not a restart button on goats.
It's annoying that these companies are all starting to use "error" messages like this.
What's been bugging me is that a recent update (16.2?) means there's no way to dismiss the "Set Up Cellular" prompt in Settings anymore on an iPhone with no SIM.
All of this is, frankly, paternalistic bullshit that treats the user like some kind of idiot or sometimes "mark".
It's been distracting enough that I didn't use my previous company iPhone, and it's distracting enough that I'll fully switch off Windows.
wild.
Though audacious, it completely lacks style and wit and thus is just rude and abrasive.
Of course, my opinion of the media is that they're shit and deserve all the bad treatment they get.
If it's only for games, MS is going to be very disappointed when all of gaming moves to Linux/Wine/Proton.
Unless I don't understand what's going on, I feel MS is on thin ice here (everything looks fine until it's simply not anymore).
I believe when I setup my recent machine I had to be disconnected from the internet to be able to complete setup without a Microsoft account.
The sad (and quite ironic) thing with Microsoft is that while it is a company that is pretty much liked across the world, its managers keep doing their best to generate distrust and disdain amongst whoever actually owns a legitimate license of Windows.
I would accept it if providers other than Microsoft could offer the service.
When the day I am able to play the majority of my steam games on a Linux device, that's the day I say goodbye to Windows.
A later session did the same thing.
I don’t like how companies are interrupting flow and trying to force logins.