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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

> As Microsoft puts it: “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).”

What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So those people deliberately chose that -- they didn't avoid the MSA because they were unaware of the benefits, they did it because they were aware of the drawbacks and want to avoid them.

Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.

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Companies should really accept a "No" from their users. No I don't want to use a microsoft account just to use my computer. (Without jumping through hoops) Don't ask me again the moment I say "No".

You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".

> Companies should really accept a "No" from their users.

At some point, it gets into “creepy pervert” territory.

I got this from BBC Sounds app.

https://imgur.com/a/CSMwv96

A full screen dialogue box with no other way of dismissing it but “maybe later”.

“Switch on notifications and we'll find new releases that you might like, so you don't have to.

Sounds good

Maybe later”

No shred of concern for consent.

I get if you’re a scrappy startup growth hacking taking ethical shortcuts. But a public service broadcaster should have better standards.

(edit - to be clear, scummy behaviour is scummy behaviour whoever's doing it)

> I get if you’re a scrappy startup growth hacking taking ethical shortcuts.

Nope.

Scrappy startup or established corporation, it doesn't matter. Taking ethical shortcuts makes you a Bad Guy.

One of the reasons I refuse to install the thing. Another being it no doubt it requires me to setup an account (making up personal details as I do so) like other BBC properties do. There are some things I've stopped listening to as they are not available elsewhere (or are available 28 days later but have time sensitive content). At some point, if this keep moving this way, I'll use BBC content so little that I can just disable it on all my devices and stop paying the license fee (unless by then the licensing arrangement has changed so I'm still liable to pay in that circumstance).

Interestingly the image host you link to with that screenshot refuses to remember that I don't want to install their app on my device.

Look this stuff might be stupid but they really don't need your consent to do offer certain features on their website/app which you are voluntarily using.

It seems you are the one who does not understand consent.

How about fucking Signal. You know, the privacy oriented app that's written by one of the supposed good guys. On iOS at least the prompt to gain access to your contacts provides two choies: Yes" "Remind me later".

No. Fucking. Thanks.

I keep saying that if someone understood consent like tech companies, you would keep an eye on your drink whenever they’re around.

And notice how "Yes" is permanent. Once you "agree," you can never go back without starting all over again, if even then.

This is why there are no more "No" selections. The developers--from marketing to the people who ask ChatGPT to spit out the required Python code and then paste it into a GitHub repository--all have financial motivations for you to say "Yes".

This is why I think that the GDPR is such an important law not just for the things it covers but because it formalizes the notion of iformed consent for computer interactions - specifically requiring that saying no has to be as easy as saying yes.

website you've never seen before:

"Sign up for our newsletter?"

"Yes! I want $10 off my first purchase of $200 or more!" "No, I hate saving money."

“Your answer ‘I hate savings’ contains the letter ‘S’, just like the word ‘yes’. You have been signed up for newsletters anyway.”

My pet peeve is ones that make you say "Please". I don't know what they are thinking.

> "No, I hate saving money."

Funny thing -- in my head, that sounds exactly like "No, I hate manipulative assholes."

I don't see how we get them to accept a "No" when they know they can make more money by relentlessly badgering the users until they say "Yes".

And by the time they get a push back, if there is any, they will have made enough money to spend a 10th of it in PR to buy back their karma points.

Few vote with their wallets anyway, so it's a winning strategy.

access to private computer system vs harrassment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment

Not paying them, perhaps? : /

Not buying their products.

That doesn't work in this situation. What percentage of windows users "bought the product"? Someone else bought it and put it on the computer without any user input. It's like buying a house and finding out that it has a coin-operated lock on the front door when you try to move in.

Without client conciousness clients will be fcked!

Sooner or later will be, as their agressive provider shoves more and more crap down their throat without resistance it will only make that provider more and more determined feeding even more crap for fortunes. Not being satisfied and stop. It will continue into the eternity if can. When something is forced on you that you do not want or even harmful for you then not the submitting is the answer but to push back. Be lazy or be fcked! Those are the choices. We seen it before in the history.

Don't come with client consciousness.

MS's deal with computer manufacturers makes them pay more if they want to not install Windows on all of the computers they sell. And when some decided to just sell computers, you know, unbundled, the way that maximizes consumer choice, they were framed as criminally enriching from piracy and lots of governments felt into them with all their rage.

It's not the client's fault that corrupt powerful people use violence to take down their rights.

Not the client is the responsible for others agression of course but they are for supplying those doing violents on them with their money. Of course thay are! Those doing shady business to the damage of the customer while the customer aware of this but still pay those doing violence is more than responsible: being accomplice. Don't come to me with the 'nothing can be done' kind of lazy nonsense please! That is just an excuse to remain lazy.

> corrupt powerful people use violence to take down their rights.

Sir this is a Wendy's.

Or at least, a thread about start menu ads. Touch grass and gain perspective.

Sir, this is HN, where dismissive comments of this sort are generally viewed as unhelpful and unwelcome.

I'm sorry, I don't see the problem here. If you don't like Windows, don't use it; it's really that simple. If you're forced to pay more to get a computer without Windows because of bundling deals, then just buy the one that comes with Windows (because obviously, the cost of the OS is being subsidized, and then some, by all the extra bloatware added on), and then delete it and install the OS of your choice.

There's nothing forcing you to use the OS that was installed on your PC; these aren't phones where the OS is largely baked-in and can't be easily replaced or reflashed. It's quite trivial to install a different OS on a PC. People have been doing it for decades now.

If Dell/HP is able to sell you a computer for less money by bundling Windows, then obviously MS isn't making a lot of money from OS sales, but rather from other stuff, which is why all the ads are included. People want cheap, so they're getting an OS which is cheap, and paid for partly from ads. If anything, people should be happy: they can get a computer cheaper by just accepting the adware/bloatware-laden MS OS, which they can then delete and replace with Linux.

> There's nothing forcing you to use the OS that was installed on your PC; these aren't phones where the OS is largely baked-in and can't be easily replaced or reflashed. It's quite trivial to install a different OS on a PC.

So far.

> People have been doing it for decades now.

Feels like that may be coming to an end.

No one is powerful on their own. Power is derived from other people going along. Always.

Powerful people use threats of violence (the law, the police, the army) to centralize wealth and power while externalizing costs. Most of these costs are minor (such as annoyances with Windows advertising) on an individual basis but result in large profits for the powerful.

It’s a sad fact of reality but that’s how it is. You want to change things? Then you need to organize people to back your cause. But then if you succeed you become one of the powerful. And as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I highly doubt people buying a Windows 11 license with their own money is even 0.1% of the installed base.

If they had hundreds of millions of people, or OEMs, sending them $150 USD per license, it would be unlikely for them to put in ads. As in windows 7.

But when it's almost freely given away...

> But when it's almost freely given away...

If that's a problem it's one created by Microsoft themselves. They're the one that sets their license fees. Their execs set stock guidance.

What if they don't consider it a problem? Do you think there'll be any reasonable chance of change?

Perhaps they figured they could rake in much more cash by giving the license away for free and charging someone else for showing ads.

Microsoft does not give their license away for free. OEMs pay for every PC they ship. The OEM licensing price is lower than the retail price but the PC buyer most assuredly paid for their copy of Windows. Microsoft just decided they needed to double dip. They make money on the front with licenses and subscriptions and on the back with advertising.

This was in response to another comment up the thread saying that the license is basically free since you can use it without activation with very few limitations (can't change the desktop background and such).

That has no bearing on the fact customers buying PCs paid for their Windows license.

OEMs aren't paying license fees for preinstalled Windows (if they are doing that at all) because they want to support Microsoft but because their customers expect Windows to be installed. That means you still decide.

> That means you still decide.

Not really. I recently bought two used tower computers, and they came with Windows preinstalled. I have no use for Windows and formatted the hard drives immediately. But nonetheless, Microsoft still got some money from me in this exchange.

I didn't get to decide.

Doesn't work. The market is not perfect, nor can it ever be.

You do it by making sure that in your case it means they make less money, ideally none or even less, and convincing others to do the same.

It's what the phrase "the customer is always right" originally meant. It means you can do all the market research, development, testing, polling, and seeding to sell a product. But the ultimate decider of whether the product is "good" is whether or not the people buy it. If your sales plan flops don't say "it's not the product's fault, I just need to do a better job marketing it." No, the product is wrong, the customer is right. Don't try to change peoples' behavior, instead change your marketing to target what people are actually buying. That could mean scrapping the project because it's unpopular, but could also mean narrowing the focus to the smaller population that really does want what you're selling.

Well, that's what it originally meant. Nowadays it's been twisted to mean reacting to every minor complaint and demand in order to retain existing customers, no matter how unreasonable or costly the effort. Rather than helping increase productivity it's become a weapon to punish subordinate sales staffs.

I think the original saying was longer, and something along the lines of, "the customer is always right when it comes to taste".

No, that's a more recent thing.

Please define "Customer" in this context?

There are several parties at this party. One is the person who bought a computer with an operating system on it; possibly they even paid for the operating system itself, though more likely they are using the operating system that came on the computer they're using. Another party is the one who bought a license from microsoft; occasionally they're the same party but more typically it is some sort of vendor who did this. And there's also the party that's giving microsoft money to put advertising in front of the "consumer."

So -- it isn't clear to me who in this context is "always right"

If you buy a car from a dealership does that make you less of a customer of the manufacturer?

If you buy a car from a dealership, then yes indeed you are "less" of a customer of the manufacturer.

Consider this relationship:

Toyota makes a car to the specifications of general motors, who brands the car as a "Pontiac Vibe" and sells the car to a Pontiac dealership. The Pontiac dealership then sells you the car at mostly a wash because you're also financing the purchase and they want to sell "your" loan to a loan bundler and reseller.

So -- everyone gets a cut, and almost nobody's actually got a direct interest in how the schlub who buys a car feels about the car.

I don't believe you've proven the point you're attempting to make.

Tesla is a rather famous example of a car manufacturer that doesn't have a dealership model. Do you imagine that GM or Toyota is somehow less interested in how their cars are either liked or disliked by their target audiences than Tesla is? That seems pretty hard to imagine.

I'll try to be clear here:

Microsoft is selling your eyeballs to advertisers: You are the product not the customer.

Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows. If you need support you talk to the vendor, not microsoft. The vendor is the customer to Microsoft, not you.

And regarding cars -- car companies make lots of crappy cars and sell them to dealerships who have to buy them regardless of if they want them or not. The dealerships are the customers of the car companies. You are a customer of the dealership. 99% of the time if you've got a problem with the car, the manufacturer is going to be of limited use to you.

> Microsoft is selling your eyeballs to advertisers: You are the product not the customer.

> Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows.

Sometimes people are buying Windows[1].

It is possible to be the customer for the OS and the product for the ads at the same time.

---

1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-home/dg7gmgf0kr...

Microsoft clearly has zero interest in the idiots who buy retail licenses, especially home licenses. They'll cash your check, but they're not going to pay any attention to your opinions. You're trapped in their ecosystem and they have no reason to pay attention to your desires. They're going to sell your eyeballs to as many advertisers as possible and there's nothing you can do about it.

> ... and there's nothing you can do about it.

Except - like with the car examples above - eventually customers get pissed off or frustrated enough to switch to a different OS (or car manufacturer).

Thus Apple and Linux distro's picking up a lot of ex-windows users. KDE plays well to this audience. :)

The executive in charge of that strategy, by then, will have moved on to Google.

Also, likely microsoft has realized there's zero long term revenue in operating systems -- you'll have been forced to move all your data to their Office 365 environment and will be paying them rent regardless of if you use a windows or a mac or a linux or an oracle desktop.

I think valve did there part to remove one large reason to stay on windows.

I think if steam decks gets a good linux desktop, similar to windows in look and feel, that can be run on a desktop, parallel to windows. Its over, very suddenly, very brutal.

And here it is: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/download?ver=steamdec...

A challenger appears. He is unburdened by the need to advertise. Its super effective.

This seems like something we’ll get to see play out over the next few years. Given that GM has decided that they don’t care if customers want CarPlay, we’ll see if customers say “No thanks” to buying cars from GM because of that.

I'm pretty sure they're doing this because they know a good chunk of their customers don't want this.

In the newspaper industry, the 'Customer' refers to the advertisers who pay for the ads, advertorials, sponsored content, etc that actually make the publication a viable business model.

The individual who buys and reads the newspapaper is referred to as the 'Consumer'.

>>That could mean scrapping the project because it's unpopular, but could also mean narrowing the focus to the smaller population that really does want what you're selling.

... or, keep improving the product to the point where most people actually find it useful, which is obviously an option for Microsoft, with cash reserves to fund centuries of development. Find out what the downsides are, and fix them, or offer actually compelling benefits.

Heck, I'm very hard-set against it, but I just heard about Apple starting to offer savings accts with 4.5% interest. If MS started paying that much, with trustworthy security and no upper limit, I might sign up (i.e., if you pay me enough, I might also accept your other parts of the offer).

It must be damn valuable for MS to have us have accounts, and if so, they could actually afford to provide better returns than banks, because the return to MS would be [banking profit] + [network profit].

> or, keep improving the product to the point where most people actually find it useful

Some product ideas can't be made desirable and useful no matter how much improvement they get.

True, but you start paying enough, and you'll get bigger and bigger populations who find it an acceptable bargain.

You'll also always have some who see through it.

Desirable to who ? Windows 11 users are the product not the _customer_

You, a windows 11 licensee, are a captive market for microsoft to sell your eyeballs to advertisers.

"I am going to sell clicks to advertisers and the cost of customer acquisition is negative $10 per customer -- they pay us to get advertised to!"

It doesn't matter how much you paid: You aren't the customer, you're the product.

There's a saying in Japanese that precisely describes this situation: 鴨が葱を背負ってくる. The literal translation is "a duck approaches you with a leek on its back." It refers to good luck brought by someone waiting to be exploited. Paying money for a product that works against you is exactly this.

That description sounds very similar to the Farfetch'd Pokemon [0]. Was that the original influence?

[0]: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Farfetch%27d_(Pok%C3...

It probably is, and the English name for that Pokemon is a reflection of that. How likely would duck come along carrying ingredients for stew? That’d be “far-fetched.”

Someone’s essay on that theory: https://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Spec...

One thing is clear: MS doesn't really care about customer satisfaction at all. There is no single innovative thing in Windows 11 that would make me switch over. I use Windows 11 on company machines only; I don't understand why anyone would voluntarily put up with this crap.

Because Microsoft almost have a monopoly on the OS market. Pretty much the only alternative for users who aren't tech savvy enough to comfortably use Linux is to buy a Mac, which will price out a lot of people. Even if you are able to use Linux (or can afford a Mac), the popularity of Windows means that you will eventually run into a piece of software you need that isn't available for your OS and won't run in Wine, forcing you to use Windows by some other means.

The next time I build a gaming computer, I'm gonna hold my nose and do it. I know Proton is good, but it is still a compromise for a lot of games.

Users should learn to say "no" to companies. The surveillance advertising economy is not some hapless mistake that companies will suddenly wake up to one day and realize the error of their ways. Whatever Microsoft "should" do is just wishful thinking. Change will come from users or regulation, and regulation seems unlikely.

In my comments here over the years, I have occasionally mentioned how I don't do business with certain companies or use certain sorts of products because I find the companies objectionable.

What I find interesting/hilarious is how often someone will reply to me saying that my life would be so much easier if I just gave in and used them anyway, or (worse) how I'm being wrong in some way by being selective about who I support with my money.

That borg-like "you will be assimilated" sort of commentary is fascinating, disturbing, and goes far to illustrate how there are ordinary people who absolutely don't want you to exert your economic authority.

> That borg-like "you will be assimilated" sort of commentary is fascinating, disturbing, and goes far to illustrate how there are ordinary people who absolutely don't want you to exert your economic authority.

I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily.

>I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily.

I couldn't agree more. As someone with decades of infosec experience, I stopped trying to get my family members (especially those who don't have any technical background) not to use abusive products/services, especially on their smartphones years ago, because I got sick of having to hear about how wrong I was from folks who wouldn't know good security hygiene if it came up and bit them.

It just wasn't worth the argument.

As in most situations (not just tech/infosec), some lessons can't be learned from others, the mistakes must be experienced personally to actually get it. Those lessons are different for everyone, but are pretty ubiquitous. I've certainly been there myself.

Edit: Corrected prose to actually make sense.

It's fair enough if you don't want to make evangelism your life mission but if you don't point bad things out to people at all then you are limiting your impact as much as those that have given up and submit to those things. Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.

>It's fair enough if you don't want to make evangelism your life mission but if you don't point bad things out to people at all then you are limiting your impact

What makes you think I don't? Check my comment history, that should disabuse you of that notion.

>Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.

That's often true. But I've banged my head against that particular wall too many times already. You did catch the part where I said "family" right?

> Users should learn to say "no" to companies.

This assumes that consumers have a choice to say no. I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could. I want a phone that doesn't come with Google's software and won't severely limit what I can do with it like apple would. Could most people find and afford one? Some surveillance companies like facebook and Experian don't give you any choice at all. They collect (and leak) your data even if you never sign up for anything with them. If I only have one option for broadband in my city it's unreasonable to expect me to go without functional internet access, even if I hate the one company available and know they'll sell my browsing history.

At a certain point people are basically forced to use companies or are at their mercy even if they'd rather not be.

> I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could.

Honestly, most people could if they really wanted to. People come up with all kinds of reasons why they can't but ultimately it just boils down to not wanting to be inconvenienced.

Your other examples are a lot harder to do something about but that doesn't mean you can't do anything. Do you really need a smartphone at all? Third party data harvesting is bad and should be regulated out of existence but you can limit how much those companies affect you. Broadband does work a bit better in some parts of the world where the last mile cables are considered common infrastructure so go campaign or heck you could start your own ISP or support someone else that does. Can any single person fix all of this on their own? No. But you can resists wherver possible. You can choose better companies where they are available even if that means paying slightly more. You can get involved politically, especially locally. You can say no to services that are not really essential.

You CAN say no even if that has a cost.

Yes. I need a smartphone. What is it with so many antiprogress people on HN? Do you really need cooked food? Like reaaaaly need it? Yes ffs... Windows with ads is a much smaller inconvenience than completely changing my work style to fit with linux lack of support of a million useful things.

No, you don't really need a smartphone. You want one. Slightly different thing. Nuance, you know.

Sure, you can have it, nobody is going to tell you that you can't. But be honest to yourself; nobody ever died of hunger for not having one.

I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that many many people have died who wouldn't have if they'd only had a working cell phone on them at the time. A cell phone could very well save a person's life. It's a pretty useful thing. Increasingly, the expectation is that everyone will have one and a growing number of products and services require the use of an app. In fairness, I've personally managed to avoid those so far, but it's already at times required companies to go out of their way to provide me with alternatives and it's not hard to imagine that they will only grow more reluctant to provide those costly accommodations in the future.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to limit their employment options, risk their safety, and increasingly cut themselves off from normal society just to avoid the harms of owning a cell phone, when those harms are impacting everyone at little or no benefit to the public at large, and when the worst offenses could be mitigated through regulations.

vetinari: > > No, you don't really need a smartphone. You want one. Slightly different thing. Nuance, you know.

autoexec: > I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that many many people have died who wouldn't have if they'd only had a working cell phone on them at the time. A cell phone could very well save a person's life.

Emphases added.

You may need a smartphone. That's fair. But the majority of people really don't. The want one. That's a different thing.

> What is it with so many antiprogress people on HN?

There aren't a great deal of antiprogress people on HN. There are a bunch of people who may disagree about what counts as "progress", though.

Most people need a smartphone at least for google maps. Do you really believe people will go back to using paper maps for orientation? Or fixed phones?

Paper maps aren't that hard to get. Whether people will use them has no bearing on whether people can, and therefore they want the convenience of smartphones but only need verbal/paper directions when trying to get somewhere.

It's hard to say something is a "need" if it has existed for only 18 years and still has viable alternatives. That doesn't mean it should automatically be discarded, but it's disingenuous to act like it's actually necessary.

Just say no to Nestle. Cook your own food! Same goes for piracy, if they feel violated by me not being customer, dont go to the government and its laws as company. Just try to exist without the could-be-customers. Boycott the pirates, by doing nothing.

Companies should be regulated to offer No as an option, and to make that option for all intents are purposes equally represented. No other way will work. Abuse makes a lot of money.

Sounds good, but what does it mean in practice?

- Does every program need to support offline account? (what about MMO games?)

- Does every program need to support online account? (tongue in cheek, for people who prefer online services)

- What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.

I think it's very hard (or borderline impossible) to do what you ask for. Even in Open Source, where choice is almost a religion, not all options are equally easy for users.

I don't think it's hard. If the software uses an online account, it should clearly say so before buying. Not just Windows, games often do this too, for example I just bought Bloons TD 6, and discovered that it didn't sync my progress over Steam cloud. Turns out I have to register, in order to be able to sync progress. Would have been nice to know beforehand.

Regarding the options I'm sure you have seen many cookie prompts. Often the Accept all is inviting, and the Reject all is smaller text, or outright hidden or unavailable. But there are cookie prompts that just have uniform buttons for Accept all, Reject all. Simple.

Now, I realize that no matter how I phrase this, it can (and would) be abused. I'm not clever enough to avoid that. But as I look at history, humans don't play nice just because. Many of the nice things that we have now all stand on regulation, which previous, bad behavior prompted. For a little example, the common charger for phones. If phone companies can be regulated into one charger standard, I'm sure we could also make software options look and behave equal.

Just FYI but on the store page Steam lists features a game has. If it does not list Steam Cloud, then it does not use Steam Cloud for save games. Bloons TD 6 does not list Steam Cloud.

That's a very good tip, thanks, I'll look out for it the next time.

> Does every program need to support offline account? (what about MMO games?)

MMOs are all about connecting to other other people, hard to do that offline. Reductio ad absurdum is not a valid argument for social issues.

I do however think that all multiplayer games should publicise their server components, at least when the operator shuts them down.

> What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.

Security updates and bug fixes should not mean forced functionality changes, yes.

But they don't respect the consumer any more.

Your selections are never final. Your settings can always be reset on the next update. Your choices can be withered down, like a stone by water.

You are the least important part of these monopolies dukeing it out for the crown. You lost your ability to choose years ago.

What happens now, is just formalities and preparing future generations for the new normality.

The capitalism that worked for the common men, was dead the moment the wall dropped.

This is what autonomy and consent is all about.

Companies don't actually care at all when you say no. Developers who can leverage a 2% kpi bump into a promotion care, and are driving this. (And to be clear, they don't get the promotion because "the company" cares, but because their management chain can transitively benefit.

cough Reddit Mobile Web cough

It's terrifying how many people in business clearly have a complete lack of understanding of what consent means.

I've heard comments like "behind every no is a yes" made with a straight face, as if it wasn't insanely horrible and gross.

It's terrifying how many people absolutely refuse to leave their abusers, and even defend them. "Maybe he'll change."

probably a hot take but microsoft's product and pm culture is garbage leftover from the microsoft's anti customer era and is most entrenched in windows and other old orgs

They're still acting like a monopoly when that positioning is long gone.

Not in large orgs. They missed the Internet, but they did one smart thing: they put Novell out of business by offering a free alternative. Everybody got hooked up and now it's too late. Practically all large organizations that have desktop users are using AD.

> leftover from the microsoft's anti customer era

Are you saying they're in some different era now?

I'm assuming Azure has less of the culture but I haven't personally experienced it. Mostly my thought is the old culture is much stronger in the older orgs. They seem to be trying to change it but the change is really just superficial with the same people using new words but doing the same things.

Companies realize that they're in monopolistic situations where users don't really have a choice, so they know that they're not in any real danger of a significant percentage of users dropping them just because they're doing something awful / annoying. See also: Comcast. The other place this works is if all of the companies in the market hold the line with a particular brand of BS, like gyms. If any of them just offered access for $60/mo with no subscriptions or sign-up / cancellation fees, they'd destroy the industry for everyone else. I'd guess that if anyone tried to do it, they'd get bought out in short order by one of the other large health club companies. Yay capitalism + weak consumer protections.

Not just the account. The telemetry should have a complete off switch too.

They'll never let you disable all of their data collection. They need that data to sell to the government, help them decide which ads to push at you, and to leverage against you in any other way which might benefit them.

It also seems like the MS approach would be very much against the "consent" concept of the GDPR.

Maybe they'll have a different model for windows-in-EU vs elsewhere?

I went ahead and installed Linux the moment I realized I had to go through a ton of hoops in order to install Windows 11 offline. I'm only ever going to use Windows for work machines that someone else is paying me to use, and even then, I might just start asking for a Mac instead. I'm over this awful OS nonsense they're doing to Windows. Whoever is in charge of the OS clearly does not care.

If I were manning the ship at Microsoft for Windows, I'd make the OS slimmer and far more lightweight.

I recently installed Windows 10 in a VM to port a program to Windows (Was a horror story). On the left side in the start menu I have ads and other crap: "Trending searches", "Trending videos from the web", "Games for you", "Trending news" and some other stuff like a reminder for the International day for Monuments and Sites.

On the right side I have a weather/news widget from some really shady or local newspapers about "celebrities", a lot of clickbait, stock data etc.

And obviously the first time I opened Edge I was greeted with some annoying banner, that I should login etc.

A default installation of an OS should only come with the bare amount of software necessary. If they had asked: "Do you want to have news/recommendations? - Yes/No,never ask again" it would be really okay as there was no forced consent, but installing it by default is simply a bad decision. (From a users' perspective, it probably makes sense from a corporate perspective as otherwise they wouldn't do it)

All of these gross advertising decisions baked into the operating system disgust me. Not to mention all the tracking they probably do to you on top of it.

The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. It feels like an alternate timeline where Microsoft didn't dive headfirst into manipulative advertising practices. None of those pointless bloatware apps, no blatant advertising loitered across the OS.

I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.

> The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise

What is the difference between this one and LTSC?

According to MS, the IoT edition is "missing" many "features" --- which in other words "doesn't have the crap you probably don't want if you only want an OS."

It is missing absolutely nothing useful. It also will receive security patches through 2031, unlike the normal LTSC distribution which gets 5 years of support. You have complete control over which updates, if any, are installed.

It is a big pain in the neck to get an LTSC or LTSC IoT license.

It is worth it.

> I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.

No, they're paid handsomely by others who are trying to manipulate the way people think.

It seems there is enough pushback from Microsoft's enterprise clients because the W10 LTSC versions lack all the adware and most of the spyware that is pushed on the regular versions. Of course, they are not advertised anywhere and buying licenses through regular channels is impossible for a home user or a small company.

I haven't compared resource usage between my previous W10 Pro VM and my current W10 LTSC VM but it seems to start up much faster, and of course the aggravation from using it is way lower.

Ironically, my employer just replaces all of Microsoft's crap with its own crap, pushed out to every client through GPOs and SCCM and other tools. So we get full screen banners, sometimes by launching PowerPoint and showing a slide, about things like cybersecurity awareness or [minority group] History Month. And it takes many minutes to boot up and login and get a functional desktop with all that, plus the scanning by McAfee and Nessus and Tanium.

Well, with your employer that's work time you get paid for. I don't know why anyone would subject themselves to this for free though.

I was a systems engineer supporting Windows and software running on Windows at a large corporation for a decade. My only complaint at the time was that the CLI was so inferior to Unix/Linux.

MS' increasingly poor UI/UX decisions starting with Windows 8/Server 2012 have caused me to relegate Windows to a "legacy support" role in a VM on any new hardware I buy. They really had to work to overcome all of that good will, but they've been relentless.

I've been using linux as my primary desktop for the past 20 years. Is it perfect? No, but it's damned powerful for development, fast, and fully customizable.

Ironically, my love of linux on the desktop has also kept me gaming on console. I've strongly considered building a pc and the thought of having to use windows (proton has come a long way, but a lot of games I'd like to play aren't supported) is enough to give me pause. I get the feeling that I'd mainly use WSL except for gaming.

Yeah, dual booting for gaming is a pain. That's why I do most of my gaming in a Windows 10 VM these days. I pass through a GPU and use looking glass for I/O and it's great! I just have Windows living on one of my virtual desktops and can instantly switch between games and host applications.

The only thing holding me back from doing that is that anti-cheat and (iirc) also nvidia not playing nicely when used in VMs..

I suppose I am fortunate that I don't have any desire to play things like online shooters. I can report that it runs FFXIV perfectly through.

I haven’t been able to find good guides on doing GPU pass through sanely. Suggestions?

I'm not sure I'd describe the process as "sane", but I basically did as described in this guide[0], followed by following the setup guide for Looking Glass[1].

[0](https://github.com/vanities/GPU-Passthrough-Arch-Linux-to-Wi...) [1](https://looking-glass.io/docs/B6/install/)

I've used Linux on and off for a few years, but at my former employer, Ubuntu was all we used, so I got used to just using it for longer than I ever did. I used to install it on dying laptops to give them new life. I considered the laptop end of life as soon as all the modern distros stopped working properly or driver support died though. I don't want to fight to make basic things work, that's my OS' job, not mine.

just curious which games those are that are not supported? I recently switch to linux from windows and havn't found a single one I couldn't play. My steam list is 167/171 supported and have been thoroughly impressed with how far linux gaming as come.

You think a Mac is better, but it really isn't. In fact, MacOS and iOS are further ahead in terms of dark patterns like this. FOSS OSes don't have these patterns, but they have other issues of course.

OS X is better though. Been using it exclusively for quite a while now and my experience has been very smooth. I’m extremely thankful I don’t have to use windows anymore.

So far, you can remove all of these on Windows 10 and I recommend doing so. I do agree with the sentiment that I might finally learn Linux just to avoid all the ads.

Apple has a similar problem. On setup it wants me to set up siri, payment, etc. My options are to setup now or do it later. There needs to be a third option that I will never setup these things and never ask me again.

I don't think Apple recurringly hounds you to sign in when you hit "Do it later" though. I read "Do it later" here as a subtle reminder that "the option is not gone. You can do it later on your own in your system settings if you want", as opposed to "ok we'll ask you again later unprompted :)"

my nearly 10 year old imac asks me daily to either install updates now, enable auto updates, or "remind me later" for software updates. apple doesn't even update anything for this OS anymore.

This is stupid, but if I recall correctly, if you click the close box “x” in the upper left corner of the notification, it will stop asking, but if you say “remind me later” it continues to ask you. It is utterly infuriating that they use this dark pattern.

Apple and unintuitive UI patterns, be they dark or otherwise.

How many people have discovered macOS or iOS behaviors with accidental keypresses, swipes or gestures, or long holds on a button or ... bleh.

> How many people have discovered macOS or iOS behaviors with accidental keypresses, swipes or gestures, or long holds on a button or ... bleh.

A similar number to those who have discovered them on Windows, I'd wager.

Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

Own and iPhone and you are reminded quite often of the benefits of an iCloud subscription.

Try setting up an iPhone w/o an apple account for that matter, or using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account.

Not to mention, users expect their files to be with them everywhere. IMHO Microsoft should make OneDrive free with some obscene high file limit and default My Documents to it, and they should have done this back in the Windows XP days.

> using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account.

This is still very doable (or, it was when I got a new phone a couple of years ago). It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.

> It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.

And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.

The photo app will also try to sell you a premium subscription to store your photos online.

The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.

Microsoft noticed that people liked having their photos automatically backed up and being able to share them with friends and family. Same goes for documents, being able to push a "share" button on a family finance planning Excel sheet is a lot easier than emailing it around.

There is a lot of crap in the start menu that needs to be removed, and the constant attempts to change the default browser to Edge needs to stop, but "please backup your documents so you don't get all angry at us when your HD dies" is not what I'd call an intrusive ad.

> And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.

Yes, if you're going to use those apps, you may as well sign in with a Google account. I don't use them, though. There are plenty of better alternatives to all of them.

> The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.

No, it's really not limited. It does take a little more setup to install the apps you want, though.

There are alternatives to all of those apps from F-Droid. I have stock Android, and it works just fine without logging into a Google account.

> Every time my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

Sounds like your headphones are issuing a play command during the connection process. My car does this. It’s very annoying.

The MG3 will turn on the radio turn the volume up to at least 50% and auto play via Bluetooth whenever the ignition starts.

So you might not want music. You turn down the radio and turn it off. Next ignition you find your paired phone starts up Spotify on command from the car and starts playing.

It means you have to never pair your phone. Worse than annoying. Who wants that? At the very least keep volume at 0% if that's what I set it last ignition.

> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

> noTunes is a macOS application that will prevent iTunes or Apple Music from launching.

Simply launch the noTunes app and iTunes/Music will no longer be able to launch. For example, when bluetooth headphones reconnect.

You can toggle the apps functionality via the menu bar icon with a simple left click.

I'm quite sure there was a way of preventing this without having a random app running. I actually did use itunes, and later music, but also used that key for other purposes, like Spotify. iTunes / Music never came up on its own when I used my BT headphones (Sony and Shure).

I don't use a mac anymore, so don't quite remember the specifics, but a quick search brings this up (old, so may not work anymore): https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-...

That's a way to turn off the keyboard's function key assigned to the play media command, so you won't accidentally activate it.

The issue being discussed here is that certain bluetooth headsets send the play command when they connect. Hence the open source software to prevent that errant play command from launching a media app, if you happen to own a bluetooth headset that has the issue.

> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

You make it sound like there's code to show you ads when you connect a BT headphone. I can't confirm this despite using it daily.

This doesn't happen with AirPods. Nor does it happen with a Sony headphone. So it's not behavior baked into the OS.

I'm also sure you meant Music.app, not Apple Music. When I open Music.app on a Mac, it shows me the local songs. It's also possible to hide Apple Music in Music.app.

I wouldn't be surprised if some shitty Bluetooth headphones send a "play" command on connection, which then opens the default music player if no others are running, and by default the Music app has some Apple Music stuff (though as you say it can be disabled).

While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul

> I wouldn't be surprised if some shitty Bluetooth headphones send a "play" command on connection,

Bose's highest end headphones.

> While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul

Windows does the "proper" thing here and starts playing whatever media was last being played, which while annoying, at least is an attempt to follow the standard. (And Windows really goes the extra mile to remember what was last playing, sometimes resuming sound in a browser tab I haven't looked at in several days!)

> at least is an attempt to follow the standard

There's a standard that blesses automatically running a media application when headphones are connected?

Unless it can be disabled, that behavior is beyond obnoxious.

Auto play is disgusting, especially with videos on websites. I cannot imagine why anyone would think auto playing media is the “correct thing” to do.

Odd. Because my Bose NC700s don't do that under Ventura.

> And Windows really goes the extra mile to remember what was last playing, sometimes resuming sound in a browser tab I haven't looked at in several days!

And sometimes calling up some random contact on Teams because it sticks around in the "media" panel. Good times.

Everytime you open settings on a new apple device you get a artfully phrased reminder 'x number of days remaining to add applecare' and 'try your new trials'.

> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

This does not happen to me w/ my bose bt earbuds ... curious.

> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

I had to use a jailbreak tweak to fix this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.itortrix.stopplayin12/

> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.

I've owned a good dozen BT headphones, non-Apple and Apple branded, and every iPhone since the 3GS.

I've had this happen zero times.

I did have a VW car that insisted on starting to play music every time BT connected. My current Hyundai doesn't do this.

It's your headphones sending the "play" signal, just like with cars. The car connects to the phone and says "let's play music" -> everyone complains about Apple.

Its not as bad as windows, but it will constantly give you a badge on the settings app to notify you that you didn't finish setting up siri.

Nope just click on the notification to start the setup then decline by opting for "do it latter" poof notification badge is gone. It might popup again after major update if there are "new features" but the same step will dismiss the badge/notif.

Not to mention that it's also easy to skip. I had Windows 10 on my spare machines, and never have I seen an OS that showed so much level of contempt towards its users.

Every OS update forces me to go through pages and pages of privacy invading settings before letting me use my own computer again. Each time the UI for those settings change with fresh new additions of dark patterns. Each of those settings must be carefully disabled or I'll end up with a key logger on my system.

It's not done even after it shows me the desktop either, proceeding to add Edge to the desktop, taskbar, and the default browser settings, all without even asking.

No other OS comes even close in terms of hostility.

I definitely get hit with a "sign in to siri" on a regular basis. The iPhone I use is a dev phone, I don't need all of the iCloud, etc services. So I suspect that anybody who says "Do it later" will be hounded just like I am.

It constantly asks you to sign up to icloud, and makes it difficult to refuse. Fuck apple too.

The big red circle on the System Settings app because I've not configured iCloud or similar begs to disagree.

It's not a model dialog, but it is a call to action that doesn't go away.

I have an iPad I use for reading books (1 app). Every time I wake it up on I have to click through 4 login promts (that interrupt each other, so I have to watch the animation of them appearing and disappearing twice).

Maybe the desktop doesn't do this _yet_?

That has not been my experience. I got my first Mac last year because it was an irresistible used price, and I expected to hate MacOS. To my surprise, it's actually been very pleasant, inviting me to set up an Apple ID when I first set it up but otherwise staying out of my way.

I'm not sure it ever does ask you to set up those things again. I never set up fingerprint scanning and I don't recall it asking later to set those things up. (maybe it has after a patch though I don't recall it.. also maybe if you go to the place in settings where you might set one of those things up, like if you went into the siri control panel it might prompt you to set it up there... but that seems very reasonable.)

Are you using 'payment' where it asks you to sign-in w/ iCloud? Cause those aren't the same, and I've never seen a macOS install ask for payment information. I just re-installed on a M1 three days ago, nevermind a macOS user of the last 6 years.

"You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account."

You are not kidding. I bought my parents two computers and set them up from scratch, taking pains to create local user accounts (because they don't have Microsoft accounts). On one of them, I have no idea how, the sole user ID still managed to be a POS "Microsoft account" created with an arbitrary number of characters from my dad's E-mail ID or something.

The endless badgering to log in with a "Microsoft account" that nobody wants or needs is enough to make me not use Windows. It is beyond offensive at this point.

Dear Microsoft: NOBODY NEEDS ANOTHER "ACCOUNT." This offensive hounding, in combination with the fact that Windows is a disgraceful mess from form to function now, makes it an afterthought in my household. I'm a software developer, and I don't have a single installation of Windows running in my home (and office).

I have a Microsoft account (an ancient one even, anyone remember Hotmail?) I use everyday, but I refuse to use it with Windows 10/11.

Why? Because I don't want sync.

I treat each of my computers as separate, individual, unique machines. Synchronizing the data on them is fucking insane to me because I can't rely on a given machine to be the computer I expect it to be.

And yes, I have separate Google accounts for my phone, tablet, etc., because I do not fucking want sync.

Yeah man. I have a Hotmail account I use as a spam-bucket, and that's it.

For the sync I want, I tolerate iCloud. For everything else, I roll my own.

Me and most people want sync though. That is why it's the default. And I hope it stays that way.

I've never used linux. After a hundred frustrations with my new laptop that runs Win11, I'm now looking to install ubuntu. Windows pushed me there.

Debian-based distribs are very beginner-friendly and Ubuntu's forum is full of helpful users.

Ubuntu was my pick, main reasom being that it is the distro Lenovo is offering and thus guaranteed to work with my Lenovo laptop. Agree on the usefull forums and information.

No idea how it compares to other distros, I never tried any. It is a breath of fresh air compared to Windows 10 so!

If you have a ThinkPad, RHEL is supported on nearly every machine Ubuntu is.

https://www.lenovo.com/linux

Fedora works flawlessly in my experience.

Have a look at Pop!_OS too.

I was at this point a few years back, and I am so happy having made the switch. Kubuntu is my strong recommendation for any switcher's first distro, but there's a lot of great options out there.

Arch Linux.

Great community and excellent documentation wiki that'll hold your hand every step of the way.

hold your hand... if you have a hand to begin with. Most beginner users won't be able to follow most things in the Arch wiki.

I installed Gentoo when it was new with far less handholding. I was a child.

If you're literate enough to be able to read the wiki, you can manage to install, use every day, and get good at, Arch Linux.

Yup, I installed Gentoo more than a decade ago, I was about 13, and my native language is not English.

"Most" beginners just lack the patience and energy or motivation and cannot or do not want to follow instructions or read documentation at all.

If you do not have enough dedication, just go with a beginner-friendly distribution or whatever.

Install Arch, get everything working, and DO NOT install updates. I've never had another distro that would randomly render itself unbootable or break core functionality with such frequency with the simple weekly application of updates. Really distressing.

Wow.

I have used Arch as my main system for 6 years now (was Gentoo before) and never had anything of the sort.

How does this even happen?

It happened to me on Arch during the switch from init to systemd.

Update was documented, but I didn’t look. Did my `pacman -syua` as I normally did on a daily, and rebooted to a totally borked system. This is when I was a grad student and really needed that laptop that week.

I still love Arch, but I can’t trust it anymore as a daily driver.

lolwut. My current Arch install has been going strong for over 12 years, and it has very rarely broken, and when it has, very often it's because I went a long time without updating, and/or the issue and fix are mentioned right on the front page of archlinux.org. Gentoo, on the other hand, is (or was when I used it) as you describe, where every other update would randomly break the system and they would tell you on IRC "don't use it if you don't like it, it's free," which was solid advice that I adopted.

>Gentoo, on the other hand, is (or was when I used it) as you describe, where every other update would randomly break the system and they would tell you on IRC "don't use it if you don't like it, it's free," which was solid advice that I adopted.

Gentoo would break a lot when I used it, and I also learned a lot by getting it to work when it broke.

But I do not blame Gentoo for it. It was mostly my fault, for using ~x86 ("testing" keyword) instead of x86.

Arch Linux is a great choice for someone who wants to know Linux. I am writing this comment from Arch Linux.

Arch Linux is not a great choice for someone who just wants to use Linux. There's a lot of learning just to install it, while less expert-oriented distributions can have a system up and running in 20 minutes with very little expertise on the part of the user.

Serious question here: Why would someone NOT want to know Linux?

When ignoring the short term, what's the advantage, if any, of using a system without mastering it?

Because they have other things they need to do, and mastering it may not provide benefits that repay the investment.

I say this as someone who has run Linux on the Desktop for over 20 years. I do not give a crap about knowing the ins and outs of everything on my system. I have zero interest in learning how bluetooth & Wifi & and all of the hundred other subsystems on my computers work. 99% of the time I want to install the OS, and get on with work.

Sometimes that work means getting down and dirty with a subsystem when I want it to do things that isn't on the normal happy path, but the rest of the time, I want Wifi to autoconnect with a saved password and my bluetooth headphones to autoconnect like a normal person and not futz around learning the intricacies of every daemon and config file in the OS.

It's same reason I pay someone else to service my car. I have fully capable of learning to do it, but I don't care. I have better things to do with my time and money, and there's only so many hours in the day.

(Several edits because I misplaced lots of words pre-coffee)

I've also run Linux on the desktop for over 20 years. Knowing everything in the system is probably nearly impossible unless you're a professional sysadm, like people who specialize in what's called devops now. I agree; I don't want to memorize systemd commands or configure WiFi from the command line; there's convenient GUI tools for things now and it's easy to just work on other things. Even as a developer in a Linux-only environment, I let the devops/infrastructure people deal with most problems if I have them, though of course the corporate computing environment is a lot more complex than my home setup.

I disagree about cars though. Back when I had a car, I did my own work, because it took less time and would be done properly. Unless you have a chauffeur or something (or take Uber I guess, but that costs more money), it takes a lot of time to have someone else service your car: you have to drive it to the shop, then sit there for a while until they can get to it, then sit there while they do the work, then sit around a while longer until they can finally check you out (while also trying to upsell you a bunch of crap), then drive home. Then you find out later they messed something up, got grease on your carpet, etc. Even if they fix that, that's even more time you have to spend. It was a lot easier for me to just do it myself. Someone will probably say something about "loaners" here, but that's usually for larger jobs, not just oil changes.

For the record I don't use Arch, I use Fedora, but I know Linux reasonably well. That being said, I would greatly enjoy the chance to learn it better.

I also want to learn Rust, Zig, Nim, D, Go, GLSL, Lobster looks interesting, some game frameworks (Bevy, Monogame, Raylib and Pyglet come to mind), Supercollider, Flutter, LLM's, Ruby on Rails, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.

Learning linux simply has to wait its line in the queue, and unless I happen to master it naturally using Fedora, with that queue ever growing, I'm not sure its time will ever come. Maybe, but then I want to say that for all the above too.

Do you own and drive a car? Do you know how to rebuild the engine? Why not? Can you drive it as well as a professional race car driver? Why not? Why aren't you taking all your free time to master these skills?

>Do you own and drive a car?

No and no.

there are a number of linux flavours to choose from. its also pretty easy to convert from one to another.

e.g. [https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Infos/News/Which-Linux-op...]

You'll be trading one set of known frustrations with another set of unknown frustrations.

A few years ago, I ran Fedora w/ KDE Plasma. What _seemed_ to be random is the GTK fonts throughout the UI changed to a mono-spaced font regardless of what the control panel showed.

It "resolved itself" within a few weeks.

I don't know if it was an update that caused and subsequently resolved the issue, or something else I did.

This was just one of many hair-pulling examples I ran into across KDE Plasma and Gnome on Fedora.

I have different frustrations with both Windows and macOS.

I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I don't think those frustrations are comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser. I also find it funny that you mention problems with fonts as this is an area where I believe both Linux and macOS are ahead of Windows.

> fonts as this is an area where I believe both Linux and macOS are ahead of Windows.

Windows caught up quite some time ago to macOS. I don't see Linux as superior with font handling. Certainly lacks on the rendering side of things (DPI etc).

> comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser

Wouldn't know. I use Win 11 Pro so those updates don't seem to have come down to it (yet?) and use Win 10 Ent at work where those will never arrive.

> Windows caught up quite some time ago to macOS

How so? I use Windows 10/11 at work and macOS at home, and Mac's font rendering is light-years ahead of Windows IMO. The font rendering subsystem is why macOS is the go-to choice for graphic designers IIRC.

> The font rendering subsystem is why macOS is the go-to choice for graphic designers IIRC.

Nah, it was for the color accuracy of _classic_ Mac OS. Windows caught up in the Vista timeframe.

> I have different frustrations with both Windows and macOS.

Agreed.

However, I can continue to feed the Microsoft maw, or I can make a different choice. I choose to tell Microsoft to pound sand.

I get so frustrated when I have to do _anything_ with my Microsoft account that never needed it before.

Installing and running docker on windows was a nightmare lol

Beware of snaps. Ubuntu would have been my recommendation too until recently. Also avoid gnome, I'd advise xfce personally.

I'd really not like spamming this again but I should strongly emphasize, stay away from snap and gnome, you would be completely put off computing if you are escaping modern Windows and come to Ubuntu and then experience this nonsense the first thing. They are the same tarpit of user hostile software requiring you fighting your computer 24x7. Some people might disagree about gnome perhaps, but they have a long and well documented history of nastiness, removing features, rewriting everything, deliberately not solving certain bug/feature requests for several years. And since they are de facto in control of gtk now, its also bleeding there too. There are talks of killing theming in gtk 4/5 for example.

And snaps are basically an all in one packaging solution, the main evil relevant to you are forced updates and officially speaking there is no way around it last I checked, at best you can set a grace period. Also they put files in weird locations so good luck trying to edit their settings, etc.

You could set machines up for family that don't know better and they will see the popup and create the account themselves... same as with badgering for upgrades, had family that eventually upgraded by mistake then panick if/when things didnt work

It made my day when my mother told me she was disposing of her desktop computer because she had transitioned all of her computing needs to her iPad. One less headache to deal with.

It's obvious what are they thinking:

"This gives us conversions, this gives us money, what are you gonna do, pay 3000$ for a Mac?"

I don't think they'll get many conversions out of it. They're fishing in a pool that already actively signaled that they don't like the bait.

and it's a pool not paying them for services so they probably don't care about losing them.

So then why bother targeting them in the first place?

If the numbers go up, somebody looks good. Maybe even gets a promotion.

The thinking is that MS' needs come first, and yours are way, way down the list, unless you're a volume license holder. Whereby, you get an off switch.

So the magnitude or logic of the gain doesn't factor much unless a policy hits the news with a stickiness of several months.

They don't need a lot of conversions. If 2% of users take them up on the ad, that's an increase in revenue and profit. If it pisses off 40% of users, that's not a problem, because only 0.001% of users are going to get so angry that they'll stop using Windows (and those users probably paid for a license anyway as part of the computer purchase, so it won't affect MS's revenues).

I'll install Linux or indeed buy a Mac instead moving forward.

Gonna move to Proton, thank you.

I'm loving Proton on Ubuntu.

$999 macbook air is perfectly usable?

With a 256GB SSD? Please.

Some of us use computers for creative work and don't want to pay absurd markups for soldered on SSDs and RAM.

Well frankly it all depend on your job. I got a win10 256GB HP laptop at work and never felt fooled.

Most of the files I need are never permanently stored on my laptop so I'm pretty glad IT prioritized a good Graphic Card that support my 4k monitor + 1 ext 1080p display of my home config on top of the internal 1080p.

While yeah on my 7 years old personal mac laptop though, the 256Gb now seems limited because of my personal Photo Library. (Which is by the way the standard MacOS/iOS Photo library which is both available offline/synced/backed up using actually useful and configureable OS provided basic tools as opposed to adversial adware)

Yes, for most people it's fine. Cloud storage is a thing, and so is cheap external storage.

Well, they didn't qualify it that way. So no, it's not "perfectly usable." It's perfectly usable for people who don't do much with it. If I need a modern mainframe terminal, it barely matters what laptop or OS I use.

If I need to hold 2TB of samples and have room for 2TB of video I'm working on and prefer it onboard, I can't get that at any price on a MacBook Air, and a soldered on 2TB is hundreds more than plopping a 2TB in my laptop's spare slot. In fact, I can max it out with 8TB storage and 64GB RAM for the markup to get a 2TB SSD/16GB RAM Air.

You see the problem. I'm not saying everyone needs it, but the broad claim that a $999 Air is perfectly usable has some large and varied edge cases. If a $999 Air were enough for me, then I would have put a new battery in my old laptop and put Linux on it instead of upgrading. Apple's lineup was considered and dismissed for the absurd markups on storage and RAM.

Most people who have need for that much laptop really need a desktop instead.

Do what I did. Buy a xps 13 (dell has 'developer edition variants of these, so it fully supports linux). I actually bought the windows version because it was cheaper, instantly wiped it on boot and installed linux. I've upgraded to a 1tb ssd and might upgrade to a 2tb ssd given how cheap they are right now. Great experience though!

I need Serif (Affinity Suite), Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments to port everything to Linux or at least make it equally functional in Wine first. I could understand going to the trouble if I had anything remotely like the issues people say they have with Windows, but it's been an absolute breeze for me. Always has been. The few ad-ish things I see were trivial to remove. Staying on a local account was effortless. Updates need a reboot about as often as they did the last time I used Linux.

There just...aren't any issues. I don't doubt that all these horror stories I hear are true for the individuals, but I just don't experience it.

I know its probably not what you're looking for, but Bitwig has a similar workflow to Ableton, and has first class Linux support.

A few years ago I was in a similar situation, but decided in the end to not allow myself to be tethered to an operating system, and did away with all the software I couldn't use elsewhere.

If the commenter can't open their existing Ableton files in Bitwig, and/or use the existing VSTs they've likely spent years with and collected or designed presets for, it makes somehow converting to an entirely new DAW far too daunting and complex a process for any serious producer.

I myself use Logic Pro, and have files from Logic and GarageBand from over - (holy crap I'm getting old) - 17 years ago, that still open and play in Logic - (minus the occasional missing plug-in) - and I've used Logic for so long at this point that there is literally almost no barrier between my imagination in terms of composition, engineering and production and the actual software and hardware.

To switch to a solution such as Bitwig not only removes access to the 17+ years of files I've got (who knows how many years of files the original commenter has) - it makes it so I can no longer, e.g. just send a Logic or Ableton file to a fellow producer - which I often do, and is often done; for collaborations - it removes access to the incredible library of software instruments included with Logic that I've slowly became a veritable genius with over more than a decade...

Ultimately, unless you pretty much started with Bitwig, or Ardour, etc - I couldn't ever see a seasoned producer who has settled into their closed-source DAW of choice ever seriously considering this.

BitWig can at least open Live sets now: https://www.bitwig.com/support/technical_support/importing-a...

It's nice to know I have an escape hatch if I ever start having any of the negative experiences people report with Windows. I just...don't. I've used it since it came on a stack of floppies and it's just been a breeze. Even doing weird destabilizing stuff at worst left it in a state I could fix easily. Usually by just rebooting or unrolling a driver. Things are even better now with Reliability Monitor since it helpfully correlates errors with what caused it most of the time. And those once-useless troubleshooters are actually useful now.

edit: Out of curiosity, I checked. 978 Live sets since I started using it in 2018. It just barely edges out my Reaper set collection from before I moved to Live.

Believe me I know, I had to go through the exact same situation. However, I also considered what terrifying repercussions that'd have for how much control any single company can have over my life.

I understand why people don't want to, it took me a good few years between wanting to move onto Linux and actually doing so, but in the end I'm glad for it. If your priorities are different thats fair enough, but I'm never going back.

While I have my complaints with the Apple ecosystem, I similarly have to agree that in my case as an audio producer - MacOS 'just works' - I rarely have to do updates, there's no intrusive advertising; I'm an Apple Music user and I love how it syncs between my Mac, Phone, and Watch so seamlessly...

Logic is a phenomenal piece of software with an incredible value for it's price and feature set, and I've still got an Ableton instance as well, the VSTs or AU's work perfectly in both.

I've honestly never had issues with my Mac/Logic setup so I've been using it for more than 15 years. I will probably continue using some variation of this setup for as long as I continue to produce music.

yup.

I'll pay $0 and install Linux instead. I'll recommend it to others too.

Hell I'll do literally anything in my power to run Linux, including reverse engineering Windows software. I refuse to accept ads in my OS.

Running Active Directory would be easier than that

Well, that's what I did.

It's not harassment. It's just there is some set of managers of various levels tasked with increasing the % of people using the online account in Windows. They have a metric, and they work towards it. There is no one in the company who can decide to not do this nagging - either a person doesn't have the authority, or it requires negotiating with too many owners, or this metric is very high-level, or it's the CEO who doesn't care about such low-level things because he uses the online account and doesn't see it. It's always like that in all modern corporations.

Exactly! It’s the personal responsibility / fault of a handful of specific people who cowardly hide behind the corporation. I wonder if they would dare explain how they decide to add these adds to people’s OS in some new social setting.

> “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).”

Wow. Even the sentence itself is incredibly indirect and obfuscated. They aren't able to own it and say "We are exploring new ways to promote the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account by adding badges to the Start menu for users logging in with local user accounts." or "We are adding badges to the Start menu to bug users with local user accounts to switch to a Microsoft account."

It's not "more likely" to make us angry. It's a goddamn certitude.

Getting local user accounts working under Win 10 was already bad enough, just figuring that out took loner than getting my first Linux installed and running. And yes, I went through all of that to avoid yet another MS Account.

Not sure what MS wants to achieve with all of that.

I think there'd be significant overlap with the folks that setup Windows 11 without a Microsoft Account and those that use tools like Open-Shell to rid themselves of some of these start menu "enhancements".

So you're saying Windows has become nagware?

Absolutely, well beyond nagware at this point (with default settings).

I vaguely remember a time when browsers would install all kind of crappy add-ons, or any other software installer for that matter. Now we reached a point were the OS does it...

Did the browser do that install, or did the user install something on their own that came with additional software? the infamous purple gorilla or whatever it was that you thought you were installing one thing, but a whole other thing was installed at the same time. sourceforge's dark UI of downloading software, but also downloading/installing a whole other program hidden behind a vaguely worded auto-selected checkbox. i just don't remember being able to blame the browser for this.

Opera browser did bundle some Mcafee stuffs.

Yes. It has already been spyware for some time.

Can you imagine being in the Windows product design meeting and someone says:

“No means NO! The user did not activate their account and we should respect that not harass them!”

Would never happen.

It would if anyone with self-respect works there. I've done similar things at Apple, and I would damn well do it at Microsoft.

At some point in your career you decide you don't have to suck up anymore. Could be day one; could be year 10. But it should happen.

I mean, maybe 0.01% of us will switch to Linux and WINE, and that will show them.

I like how "badging" could easily be read "badgering", as I was naturally primed to "autocorrect" it upon reading the title and the article leading up to that.

I have a windows 10 laptop I haven't upgraded to 11. Every once in a while I turn it on and its not at my desktop but at a "lets upgrade to windows 11!" screen and it requires several "no, lets not" buttons before you can tell it not go away but "go away for now". Quite irritating.

> Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.

I think the sad reality is that more often than not this is how large corporations win, users do cave on average. Only the most passionate, the most engaged ones, the ones posting here for example will refuse to give in...

Case in point, I only use windows for one game and one other program, and my long term plan is to eliminate it from my life altogether. Sorry microsoft, you really messed up here.

I wonder the same thing about the regular prompts to change my default search back to Bing, all disguised in language about optimizing Edge with recommended settings.

They saw that Apple was doing it and nobody complained.

It works for Apple.

You get a nice little upsell/upset every time you go into certain Apps. They call them "suggestions".

They view their users as a captive audience. Where else are you going to go?

This is probably their answer to piracy and market saturation long term.

most users enjoy interacting with helpful advertisements if you want to call them that

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