MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry
theverge.com
theverge.com
Apple and Google own the entire mobile OS market. They could literally destroy Microsoft if they started to hugely degrade the experience of Microsoft products on iOS and Android with dark patterns a la Microsoft. But they don't. So far they were competing by making their own products better. Microsoft needs to think hard how hostile they want to be to its competitors and users, because two people can play this game. I don't get Microsoft, have they no pride or desire to become a great company? Have they just become content to be an old corporate software house who only manages to keep users through dark patterns and anti-competitive behaviour because they have given up on making products which people enjoy to use?
The equivalent for this on iOS or Android would be allowing opening links in a different browser and web view engine.
The equivalent Microsoft apps on mobile OSs aren't degraded - they aren't even allowed to exist in the first place.
Microsoft is bringing the desktop experience in line with mobile here. Doesn't make it less terrible but contrasting Apple and Google as better actors in this sense is an odd take.
Apple doesn't allow other browser engines but it's on them.
None of these bug tech corps are in the right here, but MS is being more anti-competitive than most.
So the correct iOS parallel is not Apple’s refusal to allow non-WebKit engines. But Apple’s hypothetical refusal to allow links to be opened in WebKit-flavored Firefox. Which, for the record, it does let you do.
To be precise: No, they don't. Their engines are based on the same codebase, but they still are running their own installed engines.
In contrast, Apple doesn't just refuse to allow non-WebKit engines. It requires everyone to use the pre-installed, Apple-provided engine. You can't use your own build of WebKit.
If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have thought that they were forcing me to install Edge too.
I’m not saying that’s what’s happening with GP’s experience with Teams, but just pointing out that when thinking about MS app behavior on any platform, it’s a variable that can be present in the corporate context which many “users” remain blissfully unaware of, or see it manifest as these weird rules and behaviors and not acting like other apps. But there can be an entirely different set of user stories at play beneath the surface.
In Android, all my links open in Firefox. I don't see any issue there. Might serve as an inspiration to Microsoft ;)
I've not seen anything opening in Chrome for years, if ever.
Except for the things that you just said open in the chrome webview, right?
It is also per-app choice. If an app decides doing something in a particular way, it is not the system's fault -- some reddit readers do the same, for some reason. For now, apps do have preferences to open in browser instead, and that option respects the default one.
One aggresive move that Google or Apple could do is to really help companies in the migration to their technology beyond saying RTFM and use our support. For example, augmenting these locked companies with Google staff. You cannot expect a big corporation to move all the gears alone to change their technology.
It is not the technology, it is the business execution.
“ A key factor in the decision was cost. Under the new Google license model, an equivalent amount of Google cloud storage would cost more than seven times what it will cost the university on the Microsoft platform.”
https://vtx.vt.edu/articles/2023/04/google-changes-announcem...
And how is ms degrading googls products? They don't even have a mandatory app store in windows.
When comparing them all, ms has been the most open one
Same for other products. If OneDrive or MS Teams was all of a sudden really annoying to use on iOS and Android, but Slack and Google Meet would work really reliably and smoothly then I think a lot of people would just starting to use the non Microsoft alternative because nobody likes to deal with annoyances on a daily basis. We have seen this already, when Zoom came about it captured a huge part of the market really rapidly because it did something so much better than Teams did before. It didn't even require a dark pattern, now imagine how many more would have left Teams if dark patterns would have helped on top of that.
I suspect many, many more people globally (and in the US) use a smartphone than use a desktop with MS products on it daily.
rampant capitalism, especially in the US of A
the end goal is always to become a monopolist
Microsoft was basically inches away from being broken up in the late '90s due to their anti-competitive practices.
Maybe this time they'll break MS into small pieces. :)
That's my point.
China got their "Antimonopoly law" in 2007.
Were they ever different tho? I know a lot of people believed the 'MS loves open source' and similar stuff but it always felt like bait to me. They still tried to force trough their shitty open document format, still regularly pull layers of small anticompetitive stuff. Small changes that aren't outrageous enough on their own to cause a reaction or throw out the trust they try to create but enough for me to be consistently reminded that generally their incentives and goals run counter to what I'd prefer.
They have to support linux on Azure, so they're all in. Meaning they're joining boards and steering committees, becoming platinum level donors, and buying github that hosts a lot of open projects.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110701051217/http://www.bonker...
According to many people on HN, they changed completely, and they have nothing to do with the old epoch of Ballmer and Gates. Yet, I was never convinced by the "but they embrace open source now" argument:
* their financing of SCO in the "Linux is illegal" ridiculous attempt to discredit their competition that took over a decade
* the contempt for their users in various ways, from gray patterns with local vs MS accounts to ads in the start menu and other spyware with settings that reset after random upgrades to "defaults" convenient only for MS
* if they profess so much love for Linux and spend so much on kernel development (actually, that's mostly for Hyper-V etc.), why they don't do one simple thing and recognize Linux as a Desktop OS that you can install along Windows? Instead, in 2023 you have to still install Windows first to avoid problems. Linux doesn't have this problem and will recognize an existing Windows installation and will even add it to its boot menu.
Plus one million other tricks they played that shows the changes are just superficial.
*
Yeah right. Why is there spam on my windows 10 start menu?
> Instead, in 2023 you have to still install Windows first to avoid problems.
You do? Got a new Linux desktop. I'll eventually put Windows on it. I was planning on installing it on a separate SSD just in case. Will that destroy my Linux install? Should I unscrew and remove the Linux SSD to install Windows?
In UEFI? If I have the OSes on separate physical disks I'm planning to use the bios to select what boots.
But yeah, using the uefi works fine to choose between windows and linux, even if you only have a single /efi partition (I use efistub for linux, not a dedicated bootloader).
If you add custom boot options, they won't be removed after a windows install, it only adds itself to the list and sets itself as the first in line. Afterwards, it doesn't seem to touch that anymore, but YMMV with "big" updates.
Updated to Win10 and it somehow completely broke Linux boot. I could choose on UEFI to boot Linux but it wouldn't work. Eventually I gave up and reinstalled Linux
As long as you're not installing linux bootloader in the same EFI partition, it's not going to cause any issues. If you're using MBR, then you should probably stop doing it.
That might be their problem. They are a great company. Where do they go from there?
Zoom demonstrated really well how quickly companies were to switch their conferencing software if one worked consistently better than another.
This is just the result of normalizing monopolistic practices in the mobile world over 15 years. You can thank Apple and Google for that. If you want something different, call your representatives and ask them to let the hammer fall on all 3.
I never understood why Microsoft thought cloning chrome was a good thing for adoption. Edge is just chrome now but with some annoying bloat like the coupon pop-ups and pay later scams.
Has nothing to do with why people don't use Edge (they still didn't use Edge when it was using a custom engine; same for IE before it).
And it's only the techy minority that even knows Edge is built on top of Chromium.
It’s all about Electron. There may be a Microsoft contingent that thinks it’s the future or maybe they are just hedging, but for now it’s important for stuff like Teams.
Taking an existing engine and building a malicious frontend to harass your customers with popups, ads, and scams has way better returns in comparison.
Of course, that's UI design, they are worse for privacy than Chrome, and the UI advantages begin to slip by the aggressive introduction of all the bloatware in the world. The browser's never quite been free of dark patterns either (new tab page's search field as one of the more glaring examples).
>It's more memory efficient in general
>It supports the Edge Webview2 framework that MSoffice apps use further cutting memory use
>It supports MDAG https://learn.mecrosoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...
To me Edge is so competitive that I was surprised to see Microsoft getting back up to their old playbook when much of what makes edge profitable for them will be disabled on a corporate network anyways.
Google started breaking pages as soon as it detected it was running on Edge and not Chrome. Simply changing the user-agent string magically repaired the pages. So MS gave up and forked Chrome.
Another one is a lot of websites would only test on Chrome. So if Chrome implemented a standard in a slightly different way than the spec, it would break on all other browsers.
That's the correct thing to do and it's what real software engineers will do. But from the horrors I've seen in offshored websites, that's science-fiction to some coders. They will assume whatever version of Chrome they are running is the only one in existence and will use user-agent string once someone tells them their site is broken in Safari.
My Android phone came with Chrome which I can't uninstall, just disable. Chrome is just there on millions of mobile devices, it was already on millions of PCs and has been for years, so people are used to that. The synergies between those devices and the Google services services makes it easy to stay and hard to leave.
Microsoft problem now is that for 15+ years people have been told and essentially trained to install a new browser if they want a good internet experience on Windows. And that is Microsoft's fault for shipping a shitty browser with their OS for multiple decades. That's why they had to drop the "Internet Explorer" branding. It became synonymous with "browser you can't use if you want to use any modern website" during the late 00s/early 2010s.
Obviously, Edge uses Chromium now but that is a relatively recent develop (and a technical detail that the average user isn't even going to know). So it's not enough to undo 20 years of "the browser that comes with Windows is crap" inertia right away.
That's not been true for a while. IT preinstall Chrome in most companies nowadays, and obviously it's already on the phones and tablet you buy for the home.
Yes, MS dropped the ball after killing Netscape and being humbled by antitrust laws. But the current situation is as much a product of Google's "growth hacks" and mobile monopoly.
Most tablets sold are iPads. They don't have Chrome pre-installed. In North America, most phones are iPhones that don't have Chrome pre-installed. Most personal laptops are either Windows machines or Macs which don't have Chrome installed. Its pretty disingenuous to pretend as if Chrome market share comes from devices with Chrome preinstalled. People go out of their way to install Chrome.
Some freeware also contained an (enabled by default!) option to install Chrome and make it the default browser. CCleaner was guilty of it if I recall correctly.
Chrome didn't even really catch on until 1-2 years after release when they finally added extensions and themes around 2010.
People liked Chrome because it really was a quantum leap over Firefox, which itself was a quantum leap over IE at the time. When Chrome was released and Google explained their tech decisions, it was a sea change. Everything they said in their illustrated comic about Chrome[1] made perfect sense and accurately predicted where web apps were moving to.
Google saw where the ball was going and designed Chrome accordingly. Isolated tab processes, seamless auto-updates, and a prioritization on JS performance were great bets that were copied by everyone else.
But to be honest, it's mostly the other way around: people live on phones, and when they have to interact with desktops, they pick the browser that integrates with their phones in the most seamless way. Which means, inevitably, the browser picked by their mobile-OS vendor, since there is little or no choice in that world.
The solution is not to turn into a little enforcer/fanboi for this or that corporation, but to crack open the mobile world (as well as Windows or any future platform) with the force of the State.
New Firefox is too dumb for that – you actually have to open that link in a new tab before you can send it to some other Firefox instance (and then close that useless tab again).
You can also buy an Android phone with Edge pre-installed by default like a Microsoft Surface Duo.
Microsoft has been trying to co-opt Android since Windows Phone failed. And they are able to do so because Android is relatively open (certainly more open than any mainstream consumer operating system has ever been). For instance, Microsoft added support for running Android Apps on Windows 11 and they added the Amazon App store to Windows rather than the Google Play store. Done completely without any involvement from Google. That is unprecedented openness for a mainstream OS. That's not to say that Android is perfect in regards to openness but the iOS/Android walled garden false equivalence that gets pushed around here is baseless.
They won that case on appeal though, and Mozilla wasn't a factor until years after the fact.
The more accurate read of the early-00s browser wars was that MS "won" with IE (95% market share!) and then pretty much lost the stomach (or focus/budget/etc.) to advance the web in any way.
>Monopolistic practices on mobile
Most of my phones have shipped with Samsung Internet.
They could not, because if they did that cartel suits would be opened within hours. I expect both the US and Europe have such suits ready to go just in case, and Microsoft (hypocritically) has amicus briefs on standby.
The last 30 years of MS shows that they are not interested in the non-hostile approach
Few things:
- Microsoft Java Virtual Machine scandal
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Foundation_Classes
I wonder how much money this shameful bottom of the barrel company behaviour makes them.
Are there managers who has their pay tied to some KPI? I have such a hard time believing there is a from above decision to do all these user hostile changes turning their main product into a BS joke.
I mean, it's Edge that they are work so hard to push. What do they actually gain from doing that? It's stupid all the way down.
I feel like you lost the plot here. Microsoft fiddling with browser settings is nothing compared to something like Apple forcing a walled garden App Store, to create a fully captured market they can brutally take advantage of. Even today, Apple has banned all browser competition on iOS, and only Safari is allowed to run. All competitors must just re-skin Safari to obey the monopolistic demands of Apple. Imagine if Microsoft banned all browsers except Edge! It would be an outrage! But we all accept that Apple does that and has for 10+ years.
Perhaps we are all so used to the daily monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior of Apple that we do not care any more.
But Microsoft, to me, barely has a drop of the anti-competitive evil of its competitors. Apple mints hundreds of billions by banning competitors, locking them out and charging 30% rent on their monopoly. Microsoft... just wants their re-skinned Google Browser to not die.
They tried; with different means, but they expected the same result. That's what the antitrust case was about.
> Perhaps we are all so used to the daily monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior of Apple that we do not care any more.
While I have the same opinion as you wrt Apple behaviour, there is a difference: Apple doesn't have the market position like Microsoft did. You can function perfectly fine in society without any Apple product. That was not the case with Microsoft, they did everything they could so you had to use Microsoft system. Communicating with your bank or with government or public offices? Microsoft products were required. Apple has not such grip on the market and that makes the difference.
One is a healthy market, the other is not.
And Android respects browser choice, iOS will soon be forced to in the EU with the new sideloading mandate.
You're talking about this like Microsoft ever did anything differently than what you wrote? Since when have they focused 100% on just building great products and competing fairly?
Microsoft has a loooong history of the behavior they still have, nothing is new here. Forcing people to use Microsoft EdgeXplorer? They been doing this since the very creation of their own browser.
Don't act all surprised when a company who have been acting one way, continues to act that very way still.
They did a wonderful job with C# and .NET Core.
But you need to remember your org charts; the Edge and Windows 11 decision-makers are not the same people with the same incentives.
Ah yes, the ecosystems where features such as hot reloading would only be in paid offers unless the ecosystem didn't start to shout at them when their plans changed from "of course it's free" to "sorry, paid customers only".
> But you need to remember your org charts; the Edge and Windows 11 decision-makers are not the same people with the same incentives.
I couldn't care less about their org charts. That's just a way for employees to feel better about what their colleagues are doing, "but that's not what I do at the company, I'm doing great stuff".
Just like Googlers trying to convince themselves they're doing great stuff for the world because they happen to hack on FOSS stuff while their colleagues spend most of their days optimizing ads and siphoning as much data as they can from their users.
OP is giving a different perspective, a more detailed and granular one.
One interest counterpoint would be that the problematic behavior is encouraged by the CEO, then the different units wouldn't matter much (well, unless they have a tendency to go rogue). Anyway, all idle speculation on my part but I welcome the perspective.
What purpose could buying GitHub serve if they don't want GitHub to be a part of Microsoft? They are obviously trying to do everything, via a centralized organization which is Microsoft, so by all measures, they are or want to become, a monolith.
Regardless of what other people in the organization is doing, the organization as a whole is represented by everyone working their, no matter if they work on ads, cloud, FOSS or office products. You cannot work in one area and somehow ignore the work of your colleagues,
Considering all actions taken as part of some overarching plan is probably assuming too much. Some actions probably are towards some larger strategy, but myriad other ones are likely sub-level decisions. Always looking at large corporations such as Microsoft as one entity with a cohesive goal is easy, but it's also simplistic, which doesn't always yield a useful and productive discussion.
It's more like condemning all of the US because it has implemented a national policy that only one state really wanted.
It doesn't matter that only one state wanted it. It's still national policy and thus fair game to criticize the entire nation for.
Do office apps open links in edge? Does VS code?
If they do, then I agree with you. If they don't, then I don't, for what should be obvious reasons.
Just because your particular outcropping isn't coated in digital blood doesn't mean you're not part of the problem.
If a company sent out two crews of people and one crew gave out flowers to strangers and the other crew punched little old lady's faces in, would you still crow about how you're only handing out flowers?
> Something conducive "leads to" a desirable result. A cozy living room may be conducive to relaxed conversation, just as a boardroom may be conducive to more intense discussions. Particular tax policies are often conducive to savings and investment, whereas others are conducive to consumer spending. Notice that conducive is almost always followed by to.
How did I go at least half my life without knowing this.
Give me something as sane, coherent and friendly as .NET ecosystem for C and C++ and I would be willing to pay for that
Does anyone know where the open xlang implementation of MIDL[3] went, by the way? (Unlike the original 1990s MIDL, you can't reimplement this one from the language grammar in the docs, because there is no language grammar in the docs[4].)
[1] https://dusted.codes/can-we-trust-microsoft-with-open-source and links there
[2] https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/issues/4
[3] https://github.com/microsoft/xlang/pull/529
[4] I vaguely remember a GitHub issue where a Microsoft employee explicitly refused to provide one ("not a priority" or some such synonym for "we don't care, fuck off"), but I can't find it
Is it? This is the same ecosystem that has .Net, .Net Core, .Net Standard, and .Net Framework as all different (and overlapping? who knows) products?
The Core and Standard things was just there the aid the transition from Framework, which is now complete, any remains will soon be phased out entirely.
You mean the products Microsoft created when it became apparent they were losing the lawsuit about their embrace, extend extinguish tactics with J++ and their custom Java implementation. And also had to cough up billions of dollars in a settlement with Sun [1].
[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2667124/update--sun--micro...
More then 50% of the VM's in Azure run Linux and not Windows. On AWS and GCP the percentage VM's running non-Windows OS'es is probably even higher. That's a realistic threat to the continued existence of .NET if .NET only runs on Windows.
I don't think that's bias.
It's really nice not having advertisements in my start menu.
Who doesn't like to talk about it? It's so much easier to integrate components on Linux over windows. Why would anyone willingly use windows for data analysis?
The Remote SSH extension has been a game changer for how I do development.
Ironically compared to Windows, MS has been willing to kill backward compatibility more to improve .NET to make it more cross-platform, something that must come from a very different part of the company, probably the one that got the "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" mandate.
I make no apologies for their history, but I like these tools and I like them much better than Java, which also has its place. (This isn't a throwaway comment, notice I said I use Clojure, it's my favorite, which runs on the JVM.)
C# is nice, but the experience in VS Code is sub-par and I think it's the VS (not code) managers that are responsible for that state of being.
This is a joke, right? We never, ever, needed anything other than the Win32 GUI at the core of windows, and it still works to this day. You can write Windows programs without the new stuff, in Lazarus, for example.
C# and .NET were a huge step backwards. VB6 was something easy enough for domain experts to get working, without having to hire a programmer. Delphi for Windows make it very easy for even beginner programmers to ship a clean professional Windows GUI by just building the UI and hooking events to it, with almost zero boilerplate. C/C++/C# reverse that trend and lost us all a decade or more of productivity.
VScode? A rebuild of Atom, "free" with un-disable-able telemetry with the same intention: owning the devs
Buy out of github, owning the devs
Rebuild of ms office for the web: owning users given gsuite was seriously taking over office use
OpenAI: since bing kept being a failure, they invested elsewhere and may have a chance, here again: own the general users and to a degree professionals.
Anything MS did and continues to do is lateral moves to own markets. The pretence of openness or innovation makes it even worse than the corp from its flamboyant 90s days, at least back then nobody was taken for a fool.
And Google let them win by coasting on GSuite. I use it for my business, my partner uses Office 365 for hers. In 2023 Office 365 is by far the better choice.
If you don't mind me asking: what is better about o365? I know that Excel is the jewel in the Office crown, but if you aren't leaning on that heavily, what's the big difference to you?
https://support.microsoft.com/office/overview-of-visio-for-t...
- Video games: Activision/Blizzard, ZeniMax, Double Fine Productions, Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, Playground Games, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, Mojang
- Developer ecosystems: npm, Dependabot, GitHub, Playfab, Deis, Xamarin, Havok, HockeyApp
And MS practices are not standard business, they certainly understand the rules well, but have have been making illegal moves, it is a fallacy to word it as if illegal moves were part of the capitalism game: Monopolies are to be prevented, that's why anti trust laws were put in place, which MS was already caught breakig.
And VSCode. One thing all three have in common is that they are all FREE to use--they don't make Microsoft any money directly.
And, for the segment of the developer tools market that wrangles C# code, if VSCode gets too good, it becomes a threat to a cash cow: Visual Studio.
Start here: https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/5276#is...
Given much of the key feature set of visual studio is now in VSCode for free for .Net development, I wonder what future holds for Visual Studio. My assumption is that Microsoft will eventually stop making commercial IDEs and just give the tooling away, as it all helps drive Azure/cloud compute sales.
VSCode runs in a browser and can now be launched straight from a github repo page - I don't think you need a crystal ball to see the way things are going. Imagine onboarding someone with zero dependencies to install on their development machine - just pop a browser and get to work.
> https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/08/31/github-...
And typescript!
I guess that's about .. literally.. average.
People who I assume are MS employees keep saying this on HN, and to an end user it's really weird. I don't need to know squat about the internal org structure of some monolith in Redmond, they need to stop screwing around with this anti-consumer behavior and regulators need to slap their hand any time they try and reach for this cookie jar.
"Flight mode" was a lovely curiosity at that time. Example from Encarta 98, but I thought 96 also had it.
Before that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
They simply cannot resist the urge to cheat in this manner.
> "It's an interesting myth, and one I've heard about in general terms, although I've never heard the specific quote before. However, I have no recollection of any instance of its actually happening with 1-2-3 or with any other product I've worked on." And, "My memory of the early days (1984-85) is that we would get early betas of DOS to test with 1-2-3 and any errors that we found were 'bugs' in DOS and fixed by Microsoft."
> Try to imagine a customer with a working copy of 1-2-3 who installed a new version of DOS and 1-2-3 stopped working. Would they blame Lotus or Microsoft? Would their reaction be "1-2-3 sucks" or "DOS sucks"? Would their solution be to get rid of 1-2-3, or stop buying DOS upgrades?
[0] http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done...
Yes. But their definition of those terms are stuck in the 90s
iirc They bought (or rather scammed) Internet Explorer from Spyglass. As they did with many of 'their' products back in the day (Windows NT/SQL server/...). Are MS building products themselves these days?
https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
The context is explained prior, but the part I'm pointing to is:
> And Microsoft grew impatient, and did not wish to wait for webmasters to learn of IE and begin to send it frames, and so Internet Explorer declared that it was “Mozilla compatible” and began to impersonate Netscape, and called itself Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 95), and Internet Explorer received frames, and all of Microsoft was happy, but webmasters were confused.
Ultimately, I think it's still on-topic because, at any point, any of these browser vendors (admittedly, not limited to Microsoft) could have started to work with webmasters for a standard of "feature claims" instead of "user agent claims". So a user agent can say, "I support frames," and a server can serve frames. Instead, Microsoft decided they'd just lie about it.
To the same point, Google is arguably the reason it persists today given the popularity of Chrome. Just as Microsoft is arguably the reason it started. (I suppose I could have been more careful in the phrasing of my initial comment since "is so useless" could imply both but I don't think it's particularly egregious.)
Then why send a UA string at all? Save the bytes on the wire.
Oh and music. I use an alternative to Apple music because I choose to. That doesn’t stop Apple music from being the auto play choice even when I don’t use Apple Music.
If Apple’s products are so much better they should allow choice and bot be threatened by it.
Two examples: In "Find My" their is a "navigate" button for your various things, this will always use Apple Maps instead of giving you the choice. Same with the tapping the "address" field in your contacts list.
And if you don't have Apple Maps installed, does it give you any options? No, instead it'll ask you if you want to install Apple Maps...
Meaning that it wouldn’t be much of an issue to open an audio file with anything that isn’t Apple Music, but FindMy would need to support a myriad of map app formats to work as intended.
Out of curiosity, I opened the Google app in iOS, searched for a place, and tapped on the result to open a map. Even with the default app set to Apple Maps, it goes straight to Google Maps.
I haven’t been able to find the correct MIME type or URL protocol for a generic geo call, either, which makes me suspect that there is more to it than it seems.
Regardless, it seems strange that other applications can show you a list of navigation apps when clicking on an address while Apple cannot. You're saying it's too technically difficult for Apple to achieve what others can?
Somehow, by some magic, Telegram asks you if you want to open the navigation to an address in Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze (for me, possibly different for others). I'm not sure I'm buying it's too difficult for Apple to do the same, if they wanted to.
Microsoft didn’t do the same with theirs. Outlook didn’t get an Android version until late 2015, Edge took a few years to arrive, and Bing Maps never made it.
That's quite a statement, given that Internet Explorer didn't support WebGL, nor rich HTML5 video reproduction, until 2014 [0]. They are needed for the full versions of Google Maps and YouTube, respectively.
Microsoft did create a YouTube app, but it filtered out video ads, which didn't sit quite well with Google [1]
It looks to me that the pain was self inflicted.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/windows-phone-8-1-fe...
[1] http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/24422_Thestate...
No, there weren't. PWAs did not even exist at the time. User experience was severely degraded when browsing Google properties with Windows Phone IE.
Google also barred Microsoft from releasing a native YouTube app for Windows Phone, insisting that it must be done with HTML5 instead, even though Google's own YouTube apps for Android and iOS were native.
> Microsoft didn’t do the same with theirs. Outlook didn’t get an Android version until late 2015, Edge took a few years to arrive, and Bing Maps never made it.
Bing Maps works fine on Android as a PWA. It does not get degraded if I use Chrome. So yeah, Microsoft didn't do the same with theirs.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474516/why-is-google-...
> Windows Phone's Achilles Heel is its app gap -- it has far fewer apps than Android and iOS
This was more of an issue than one specific app, especially one that like YT that can be consumed via web browser
I’m just speaking based on intuition and what I remember happening, I might be wrong
Sorry, but Google really isn't a saint regarding degraded experience. The shenanigans around UX for example using Google services in Firefox have a long, well documented tradition. They just aren't as overt and clumsy with it as MS.
Android not exactly making it easy to change the default browser for average users either tbh
Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1118/
but on desktop legislation shut this down, or at least tried, and it wasn't a problem for years
honestly we need a proper "fair platform" legislation, world wide
and focus more on power abuse and free market damaging power dynamics instead of obsessing over the "mono" in monopoly (because with today markets you can have more power then a classical single market monopoly while not being a monopol or even duopoly in any of the many markets you cover, power you can even more efficiently abuse then a monopoly when adding new market to your portfolio...)
the “Android makes you tap something to change your default browser!” was some FUD that either Brave/DDG stopped spreading because it was generating backlash.
Much like the “you have to confirm you enable sideloading!” alert in Android, it’s not clear what people want otherwise, a confirmation isn’t the same thing as making it difficult.
I wish these things would pass simply because it makes it harder to have the real conversations needed to get things back on track
The problem with sideloading on Android is that it won't accept upgrades for your applications. You will have to get them from the installer app. And then it will confirm before downloading each app. And then it will confirm before installing each app. And then it will confirm again because, well, I have no idea.
One confirmation isn't the same as making it difficult. Piles and piles of them is.
Apple was in deep troubles when IE was all the rage, you needed IE to access your bank's site, your company's intranet, so many site that were strictly IE only. Microsoft gifting them an implementation of IE was a mild grace, but still wasn't enough. Not having a browser compatible with 99% of the web was an issue pushing people away from Macs.
They learned their lesson, and used their advantage in the mobile market to make sure no other browser ever puts them in a similar position.
Google has a slightly different issue, in that for instance a strongly privacy focus/ad blocking browser taking the android world by storm is nothing good for them.
Apple doesn't trust third party developers when it comes to running code that Apple has not vetted in advance.
Works without any issues and it's a much nicer product experience.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search...
Afair there's also one for YouTube.
I just recently started using a modified version of the "h265ify" add-on that just advertises support of a few extra codecs (HEVC and surprisingly MPEG-2) to websites. With both Edge and Chrome, I do that because I know the formats work but the API doesn't indicate they do.
Visiting any Google property would result in nagging to download chrome. Firefox and (classic) Edge would just break for no reasons on Google pages (changing the user-agent fixed the issue).
I disagree here. Despite me using firefox on my android device and it being set to my default browser, many apps will still open in chrome (usually google apps - maps, gmail, etc) despite me explicitly asking it _not_ to do that. It's also not clear that it's using chrome, as it's the "generic" browser modal. The way that google services are bundled together on android and have limited interop (Samsung and Google Pay regularly fight with each other on my device for "who is the default payment method", and google is _not_ happy to not be my default).
Google have been pushing manifest v3 despite massive objections, introducing undocumented "fair usage" limits [0], require third party cookies to use some of their services to download files (gmail, gdrive). Google are drowning in dark patterns.
And they aren't the only ones engaged in exploiting these kind of walled garden incentive mechanism.
I mentioned before, it feels like we're being herded to Mastodon with the Twitter drama. This feels like being herded to a different OS. Perhaps ome new brilliant one. But how we get there, the journey, matters.
Of course, that's crazy talk, Microsoft would never do that. Why would they chase away customers. So I'll just end that silly argument before it inches into a snowball dragging me towards a troll state.
But it doesn't feel good. It turns my love of programming into something else.
And I see that happening with other things I love too.
But it's important recognizing the mechanisms and patterns. And recognizing that managing it differently may lead to different outcomes afterwards.
They did decades ago in the last century. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...
Microsoft does not care if they piss off most of these people because they not the ones signing the contracts and the lock-in is SO BAD that even if they piss off the right people, making any change is way more trouble than they are willing to deal with.
There is an entire side of the tech industry with admins who only want to learn powershell and still think you can’t “lock down” Linux and mac machines.
How? I mean, how does a degraded experience on android cause people to abandon windows desktops?
I just don't see the connection here: if Google, tomorrow, outright rejected any MSFT software on android phones, how does it hurt windows desktop deployment numbers? Maybe if everyone switched to Mac, but that would kill of android too...
This is what a working monopoly looks like. We've seen before this exactly how much crap users would put up with on the desktop, and still they didn't abandon windows.
There is nothing the mobile market can do that they haven't already tried to take windows market share.
In fact, there is nothing that the mobile world can do to Windows users that is worse than what Microsoft did to them, and yet those users are still chugging along happily paying for Windows every year.
I have an iPhone (forced upon me by work) and it's ridiculous how many links still try to open in safari or Apple maps. I've tried to configure it for years and I've literally uninstalled Apple maps, but half the time iPhone keeps wanting me to reinstall it when I click a link or address. And a lot of url links open in safari instead of chrome or Firefox.
Same with many other things - I can install whatever browser I want as long as it's a skin on their browser.
I can install any keyboard I want as long as it's just a skin on their keyboard.
I can install any app I want as long as it comes from Apple store.
Etc etc etc.
Yep, I vehemently disagree with your premise :). I think MS is looking at Apple's walled garden and saying "what if we could get away with some of that?"
(not disagreeing that dark patterns are despicable! My wife knows the scream that comes from my home office when I try to get iPhone or windows to do something I want! I just disagree that mobile os world is some paragon of user centric benevolence :)
A link to what domain?
For clicking addresses, I kind of get it: the author of the text didn't link it at all, so the OS (or whatever) gets to decide how to enhance the presentation which can include promoting a specific app. Not great, but fine.
For clicking links, it should definitely just use the browser unless an installed app's manifest has the domain registered.
And for what it's worth, open a directions link from Google some time - for me, it opens Google Maps, which I do have installed, but don't prefer using. I choose Apple Maps because I'd rather have Watch notifications while I drive, but Google doesn't offer me that choice.
Off topic, but you're not actually looking at your watch while you drive right?
How do I get Siri to navigate using Google Maps? How do I replace Siri with a different voice assistant?
You can't for either of those questions.
Nevermind that changing the browser doesn't actually change jack because Apple doesn't allow competition in the browser engine space.
All in all, it is just hard for me to take seriously an opinion saying that Apple allows for unrestrained competition on its devices and Microsoft is the big bad in this space. Historically, maybe true - but not even close to true now imo.
However, clicking an address in a message and being told to install Apple Maps is super aggravating and I'm not sure if there's a way around that...
Yeah, and its easy to open the link from Outlook and Teams in Chrome - just copy the link & paste into the chrome URL bar.
> You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps".
It reads differently now.
To be fair though, I did find it on my wife's iPhone, though under Chrome (she does not have it under Safari (or General either, where I would've expected it)). Still don't have it anywhere on my iPhone. I'll try to see if that's because she's ahead of me on OS updates or some other reason.
Thx!
As an iOS app dev with a hobby project iOS keyboard, this is false. Third party iOS keyboards have just as much control over the keyboard UI and how each key (if it even has keys — your “keyboard” can be literally anything) interacts with text as a full fledged app does. In fact there is no way to “skin” the standard keyboard, but I wish there were because building a decent touch keyboard is actually quite difficult and that’d reduce the workload quite a lot.
To wit, some of the features that same-named apps/keyboards give me on android but not on iPhone include "hold key for alternative character" or button to "force" numpad. As well all keyboards I've tried have same layout and sizing as the original one.
I assumed it was imposed on them in some way I guess?
For instance the app Fantastical comes with a "keyboard" that inputs dates that are open on your calendar[0] and there exist a few rather nonstandard keyboards like Typewise[1].
Absence of features common on Android boards I would guess comes down to those patterns not being familiar to (and thus, not desired by) iOS users or in some cases software patents (there have been a few cases of keyboard devs receiving cease and desist notices from patent holders for using some UI pattern).
[0]: https://flexibits.com/img/help/fantastical-ios/en/f3-opening... [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/typewise-custom-keyboard/id147...
https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php
Somewhat different from the original keyboard layout.
(The paucity of alternatives is probably down to patents and licensing.)
The idea is that because keyboards can connect to the internet (with user permission), there's potential for data theft. It may also be possible to exfiltrate data from a keyboard extension by saving the data to an app container shared by the host app, which the host app can then send out with its network access.
Devs who don't know how or care to properly accommodate the variable height of third-party keyboards may use the app-wide opt-out to eliminate bugs relating to that, though I haven't personally encountered this.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio... [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitextinputt...
Now it seems that the keyboards randomly hang / crash and don't come up when requested on the first try.
Apple goes out of their way to screw with third party competitors.
Walled garden is marketing speak. You should not use it.
>Closed ecosystem
>Restricted platform
>Proprietary systems
>Walled Prison/Jail(this has negative bias, but may fit depending on the context)
>Curated platform
I'm sure you can get objective phrases from chatgpt too.
MS looks at it and thinks their frat party mansion (3 bedroom duplex) can do the same.
Apple gets away with it because that what their target audience want. MS target audience doesn't want it. If I wanted a walled garden - I would use Apple, they clearly know how to maintain it.
All Smartphones on this planet use the same USB-C charging port except iPhones. And as far as I remember, the European Union requires the manufacturers by law to use USB-C, because before the law every phone came with a different power adapter.
Next example, OS and browsers: Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).
No, I am not a big fan of that Microsoft move, because I think they should respect the users browser choice. But I am even less a fan of Apple doing things nobody else is allowed (for good reason).
The law you're talking about here specified that the charger itself must have a standard USB-C port. Apple gets away with it because 1. they don't even bundle a charger anymore, and 2. they ship a cable that allows the phone to be connected to a USB-C charger (Lightning to USB-C cable).
The new law that takes effect some time in 2024 for smartphones (amongst other devices) stipulates that the port on the smart device must be USB-C. Under this new law, essentially if a device is large enough then the port must be USB-C.
> Next example, OS and browsers: Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).
Another new EU law (the Digital Markets Act) takes aim at this specific issue actually.
I get where you're coming from, and yeah sure one could argue that giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft should do better, but in the end they are corporations who will do what is best for their shareholders, as such I am not in the least surprised over actions they take like the ones discussed in your comment and the article that started this discussion.
I think it's great that governmental regulation is finally coming to set the game rules for things like how general purpose operating systems must allow device owners the ability to install their own software (including real actual browsers with their own engines and everything), how communication apps must support cross-network communication upon request, and to standardise how we charge our smart devices.
For me it shows what kind of a company Apple is. Even companies like Sony (who install rootkits on your devices without your consent), comply with the spirit of the charging adapter law. But Apple tries to find a loophole, just to push their own agenda, at whatever cost for society.
But as you said, the other large corporations probably do it in some way too.
I swing both ways honestly, I love many engineering aspects of the Lightning port, and at the same time I recognise that having only USB-C to care about would obviously simplify my life a bit, even if I think for the purpose of a mobile phone it is an inferior port.
I realistically don't care what port is on my phone, but my wife's phone has USB-C and I have 9000 and 1 usbc cables at home.
> Every Operating System has to offer the user the choice of which browser they want to use. Except for Apple, they offer a choice of which UI you want to use, but on iOS the browser engine is always Safari (which kills competition hard on iOS devices).
This is due to security imposed on App Store apps: can't do JIT, and you can't have a reasonable JavaScript engine today without it. Frankly, I'm not concerned with what engine browser uses as long as everything synced.
I have plenty of annoyances with Apple, but what people usually bring up are from people just looking for reasons to hate on Apple for no reason.
> I'm not concerned with what engine browser uses
Just to give one example from the top of my head: For years (5+), Apple did not implement a proper Push-API for Safari. All other major browsers had it, but because on iOS all browsers are just Safari, there was no way to have it on iOS, which is a pretty big market share. Push-API sound like some marketing stuff, but in reality it is pretty fundamental to a lot of use-cases like multi-user synchronization, chats, etc. So you might think that you don't care about the rendering engine, but in reality Apple can abuse the browser situation to control the whole JS ecosystem.
So I don't hate Apple for no reason. Instead, I hate them for very specific reasons. They also do good stuff (primarily for their users/customers), but for me the bad far outweighs the good, because it affects everybody who has contact with their customers and not just the people who decided they want to have an Apple device.
Apple is the most user-hostile company I have ever seen from a individual freedom centric standpoint, but they are good at hiding it. They think everyone outside of the organization should follow their line of thinking. Apple wants to be the gatekeeper of everything and that doesn't work in a free society. Deep down, I think people want to be free of external influence. Microsoft only cares about maximizing profits and doing whatever it takes to get there. I guess there is no difference between the two except that apple tries to justify there behavior behind a superiority complex.
The bug report ones is especially annoying as those emails are often pre-populated with a bunch of data that isn't so easy to just copy into a new email in a different mail client, like support attachments, etc.
On your phone, the walled garden approach is fine. On a desktop machine in which you control, it is not.
And then there's no need to comment on the Apple portion in your comment, considering the critique is that Microsoft isn't playing nice because they try to default to Edge.
I mean... yes. But that happened in the late 90s. Hasn't changed since then.
What are you talking about? The only browser on iOS is safari, the only app store is the Apple app store. They prevent you from collecting any sort of payment without passing through their 30% fee "because we can". How is that any better?
I think this is already happening. Google pushes non-stop for you to use the Gmail app, then once you do all the links prompt you to open Google Maps, and all the rest. It's annoying and there's no way to change it.
I think Microsoft is just taking a step out of Google's playbook here. Doing exactly what Google does on mobile, but doing that same shitty behavior on desktops. "If you made the choice to use a Microsoft app, you're making the choice to be in the Microsoft ecosystem."
I hate it, it's trash, all the rest... but it feels like -- shocking -- Microsoft is just copying something they saw someone else doing.
I have been investing in MSFT under the assumption that they have completely abandoned these markets. What mobile market does Microsoft require when they have an increasing number of SMBs locked entirely into their death star?
> given up on making products which people enjoy to use
Building new apps in with .NET/Azure/GitHub is a dream. The laser focus of the tech community on principled Windows OS issues and other product concerns is completely missing the overarching universe that is being forged by Microsoft.
Azure in 2023 is like Disneyland for a SMB CTO/CIO. If you go all-in you can actually enjoy your weekends and auditors can't really figure out how to ruin your free time as much as they used to be able to. Sure, there are specific technological or economic things that might be better on-prem (or in a different cloud), but overall I have never seen something this unified, stable, confidence-inspiring, etc.
I believe that the first cloud which can be largely delegated out to non-wizards is going to be the one that wipes the floor with the others. I suspect Microsoft is already hard at work integrating the LLM features they acquired into their Azure administration use cases. Simply having a bot integrated into the portal that can provide suggested configurations in a few hotspots (e.g. make a VM like XYZ but with ABC changes) would be incredible.
I mean, they actually do though. Apple and Google both do similar things, they just get less media coverage because they are seen as normal to the mobile ecosystem, while this seems abnormal because it's in a desktop environment. That's no excuse for Microsoft, I wish they'd stop doing some of this garbage, but to act like Apple and Google have clean hands is laughable.
This sort of thing happens regularly on Android though it's perhaps more subtle. I don't know how many times I've had to set the default browser, photo viewer, pdf viewer, etc only to be prompted to choose how to open a file and Google's App is first in the list.
They also implement features in their Apps to avoid your defaults: https://i.imgur.com/9nzpTPG.png
Certain features like STT for the entire operating system require Google Assistant. And image search or real-time translation require the Google Search App to be installed. So you have to choose between being harassed by Assistant and Search prompts at ever turn, or disabling core OS features.
Microsoft does not care about anything more than the bottom line. As long as they can increase revenues and market penetration, they will do it. They've been playing this game since IE.
I would love to hear other folks opinions as I'm sure I see only a tiny sliver of what's going on :)
They were always that, thru entirety of their history they have used anticompetitive practices on any chance they could.
Microsoft just really abused it bundling in IE and was penalized hard for it.
These other players have learned to push the limits of anti-competitive behavior while maintaining a plausible defense against government action.
Until very recently you couldn't even change the default browser on iOS, I think the idea Apple are playing "fairier" than Microsoft is a lot more nuanced than you make it seem with this statement.
Even after adding ability to change default browser to iOS, there's still the limitation that only the webkit rendering engine provided by Apple can be used - Firefox and Chrome on iOS are wrappers around the OS level Webkit implementation - the rendering engine is still Safari/webkit - they aren't using their own rendering engines as they do on all other OSes.
There's also the agreement between Apple and Google for default search on iOS too, which absolutely costs Bing marketshare.
> https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/01/web-developers-challenge-appl...
What even is Microsoft?
Microsoft's software isn't even trying to be "good". That hasn't been the goal for a while. Instead, Microsoft's goal has been to cement its monopoly, particularly with Windows, Office, and Xbox.
Sure, they tried to break into the mobile sector, but they seem to have generally accepted that failure. Every other move has been to keep everyone using the same old tech it had in 2002.
Dark patterns are all about keeping users in the room. Microsoft has been a "great company" since 1993. As long as it can keep that status, it doesn't need "good".
One nice thing about the last decade or so is that other company has had to rein in its historical behavior, and also care about PR a bit.
We'll see how that plays out, given the increasing power that might come with the intimate relationship with OpenAI, and the frenzy of market interest around what's shipping there.
This thing of forcing Edge for opening links, it's clearly an idea successfully forced by a small group of bullies upon other employees, and they probably get a reward from the increased Edge traffic/usage.
Ultimately, there is only one person responsible for this toxic culture and it's the CEO.
Change that from a question to a statement and it becomes one of the better single sentence summaries of the windows 11 design methodology.
Microsoft needs to get their brand straight and decide, once and for all, what they stand for. There was this incredible move towards open source, and embracing the modern web, and so many positive developments. I think myself, and many other technologists, were going, "Wait, is this is the same company that shoved IE down our throats for years and got sued for anti-competitive practices?" It was glorious, and shocking.
All of that is now at risk so that some product manager can look good by driving enforced but entirely fake adoption of Edge — that should be nipped in the bud and a clear message sent that this era is over — from the top executives.
Or I supposed they could do nothing, and then it truly is sending a clear message as well. But perhaps not the one Microsoft intends to send, or the one that would benefit the company in coming years in terms of staying inside the good graces they have managed to create.
Open source and free software is a philosophy and ideology. Microsoft is incompatible with it no matter what licenses they use.
Microsoft never embraced open source. You can't claim that until and unless Windows is released with source as free software, which will Never Ever Happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
That would wouldn't change a thing even it happens. No one except Microsoft is going to be expert on 50 million lines of windows code and contribute meaningfully to it. Add to that contributor's licensing agreement, community behavior, sheer capacity to make API changes and get it accepted. It will be impossible to create alternate certified Windows distribution even if all source code was available.
You are not the customer here. You are a cog in an industrial machine. It is the executive management that has power, and you will know it every day. MSFT will sell your management the tools you are required to use every day.
* macs, which cost an arm and a leg and aren't necessarily better if you've got an axe to grind against corporations with dark patterns
* chromebooks, where you have even less choice over the matter
* various flavors of Linux, which have never quite gotten to 'grandma uses it and it just works with the apps she likes'
Interestingly SteamOS is quite nice, but will it be something outside of gaming on a Steam Deck?
Considering their website[1] still says it's Debian derived but they switched to Arch some time ago, I doubt it's in their plans to do more than enable their own hardware.
Its impossible to compete when the manufacturers are actively hostile and don't provide the firmware/code/specs in a way that the hardware can be supported independently. Some even use this to spy under an umbrella of plausible deniability, there was an article just recently about Qualcomm chips that did this (checked in) at the firmware level.
Hostile UI, hostile business practices, hostile legal and growth endeavors
At this point i’m not hust distrusting MS i’m actively doing anything I can to support their demise
Presumably it is to prevent people discussing problems at length. I don't know any other reason they would do that.
It seems to go against how most other organizations use GitHub.
I use GitHub all the time but I never expected it to be mandatory if you wanted to publish a package for a popular open source language.
But as the top says, “If you are interested in helping with this work, please feel free to get started!” (Though only if you’re a contributor or open a duplicate issue)
We are just in the cycle on a modern platform. Heading out of phase 2 and into phase 3.
They stand for weary resignation. Same as Google and Amazon.
For most people, they're just there, and you can't not use them, so what can you do?
They can be as dodgy as they like, because when you point out what they're doing, most people will just be confused about why you're complaining, because you may as well be railing against the fact that rain is wet.
Yes, some techies actively chose Chrome knowing full-well what the alternatives were, but I'm pretty sure the advertising produced much greater numbers.
(Also, the techies who enthusiastically recommended Chrome were the same ones who enthusiastically recommended Twitter a few years later, and are now enthusiastically recommending Signal — which illustrates the quality of their judgement when it comes to monopolies.)
Prior to quantum, firefox was a dog, and let's not talk about internet explorer...
Really though?
It was that easy?
On my shit-list it's definitely way above Facebook, Apple, and Google. A company which has on so many occasions made my life harder and caused me to suffer. I would qualify Microsoft as irredeemably horrible, I can't imagine what they would have to do to make me consider changing my opinion of them.
Is it? The cynic in me feels that the actual currency is "engagement" - how many consumers can you keep on your platform. Providing a great and trustworthy service is one strategy to archieve this, but by far not the most effective or reliable.
The big players very much seem to prefer a captive audience (through network effects, vendor-controlled hardware, closed ecosystems, etc) that cannot switch away no matter how much they personally dislike or mistrust the platform.
They had a few good ideas early on, and now that open source isn't patent bound (not gonna get into the rediculousness of UI software patents that have been granted where they never met that bar of novel, useful, and non-obvious [grouping items is somehow non-obvious?]).,
If you take that statement you just made, and take it just one step further, asking a why is that when they haven't really innovated in 20+ years?
The realistic answer to that is exactly what I just said. Alternate revenue streams.
Money. How would it be possible for an absolutely gigantic company to stand for anything else?
Actually, they don't. People will continue to keep buying Microsoft regardless of how shitty their products and policies are.
Nobody was ever fired for picking Microsoft. When Microsoft products have issues, people blame Microsoft, but when anything else has issues, people blame the IT person who chose that product. The result is everyone picking Microsoft to shift blame away from themselves.
2 days ago a place I'm at switched us from Google mail + calendar + meet to Microsoft outlook + calendar + teams.
I almost can't believe at how good Google's suite of tools are compared to Microsoft. I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago.
Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. You have to explicitly click the mark as read button. It also doesn't intuitively support filters with emails that have + in their name (each email ends up being unique instead of Google doing the more expected thing of letting the filter match all + variants). It also doesn't update its title bar with a count of emails in your inbox. That's things I discovered after using it for about 10 minutes.
Microsoft's calendar is designed so poorly, there's so many quality of life things that aren't there vs Google. There's too many to list but the biggest one is not being able to see the calendar details of team mates when inviting them to an event. All you see is a blocked out amount of time, you can't see their exact schedules even if they shared their calendar with you. This removes a huge human element to scheduling meetings because often times I'll avoid scheduling meetings when folks are just getting out of a long meeting, or I'll buffer it by 15-30 minutes depending on who is doing what beforehand.
I'm not not looking forward to the day when we'll need to use all of MS' tools to replace Google docs + spreadsheet and Slack.
Clicking an email definitely marks it as read. The calendar schedule not being revealed is a just a privacy option, each person must opt-in to share the exact meeting details.
Having used both gsuite and office I find that they both get job done fairly well
We've done this as far as I know. We also added each other to our directory. I can see the details of other team mate's calendars in the full view but this does not show up in the mini-view when you add a guest to an event.
With Google, when you create a new event and put in a user's email as a guest it immediately showed you a full list of their exact events with times and whether or not they accepted an optional meeting (an outlined or filled circle). It was great to see at a glance while you're in the process of creating the event.
With MS' calendar all you see is a red block of color around the times they are not available.
> Clicking an email definitely marks it as read.
It doesn't for me when using Chrome. When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease. Keep in mind this is the web app. I didn't install the dedicated app, but I also used the web version of all of Google's tools too.
Only by default, which I believe your org can change. You have complete control over this for your calendar, as does everyone else.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-your-calend...
> When I click into an email the title remains bold and the inbox count doesn't decrease.
Also configurable.
>Also configurable.
Bless you! I had been angsting over this at work for years. I can't believe I didn't think to check the settings.
You just see a big chunk of red with no details. You don't even see things like "busy". It's just a solid red color.
The key is that there are 5 permission levels: (1) None, (2) Can view when I'm busy, (3) Can view titles and locations, (4) Can view all details, and (5) Can edit.
Is that too much control? Maybe, but it's helpful when you want to share more details with teammates than you do with others, grant admins edit permissions, etc.
But nope, it doesn't show any details in the mini view when inviting someone to an event.
Outlook also defaults to not marking messages as unread when the unread filter is on. I presume because profiles were setting the filter and then complaining their messages were disappearing? You can change rose on the same settings page
No need to manually mark it as read.
*EDIT*
Just noticed that there is a setting for this:
Under Options in the webmail you can switch this between:
* Mark as read as soon it has been choosen
* Mark as read after delay in seconds
* Mark as read after selection changes
* Do not mark as read automatically
My day and job are based on Microsoft weirdness.
The default configuration is: * Mark as read after selection changes
Which in my opinion is really weird. I've been using email for 20 years and no other client I've used works this way. It's so inefficient since you need to click into a previously read email to mark a different email as read.
But, I did switch things to mark it as read when chosen which fixes it.
Don't you see how absurd that is in 2023? It's like me saying "Online shops are nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewing goods. In my experience, for any serious shopping you'll want to visit the bricks and mortar shop"
Web tools are always going to be weak vs. locally executing tools. I've never seen one that I prefer to a native equivalent.
Sure, that's a fact which I don't dispute, but that doesn't mean that writing a word document in your browser should be such a bad experience that you really just want to use the web version for viewing documents, which is the absurd thing to which I responded. See, what you say is true, but that doesn't necessarily negate my point if you can agree?
Word is not Photoshop, I expect the web version to be powerful enough to get serious writing done via it.
I understand that POV, but I should temper my "serious work" statement by saying that the Office web apps are pretty great and keep getting better. However, the native desktop apps are just better.
It's hard to make a direct comparison with Google's web-app-only strategy since the Workspace apps are toys in comparison, more akin to Apple's iWork suite.
Being able to write appscript between all the Workplace products was pretty painless.
I haven't tried to push Sheets to do million row fat sheets for crunching but wouldn't be surprised if it does ok
I am using Excel on windows again lately and it is reasonably smooth but boy do I miss Drive + Sheets + collaboration for a 2023 remote workflow
There are billion dollar financial decisions with the most sophisticated financial models being made (rightly or wrongly) using Excel.
I'm sure you have had a bad experience, but saying excel can't handle complex things is not reality.
But once you're in Teams, everything is so much worse, it's like using a hacked version of MS Word to chat. But where Slack actually shines is around the workflows, automation and bots, I don't think Teams has much of that.
@geerlingguy had a way worse experience recently.
It's a garbage product that's slowing even the fastest computers down to a crawl. And don't get me started on all the bugs. Horrible.
You CAN share your calendar details, but most people don't want to. I see this as a feature.
This is configurable, you can make your calendars public and convince your teammates (and potentially the rest of the company) to do so as well.
Nearly everything you’re complaining about can be changed in settings. Either by you or the IT Admin.
and then
> Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read.
Did it occur to you that maybe a few days of use isn't enough for you to understand how to use office? Everything you complained about works fine, even if you don't understand how to do it.
It absolutely does let you do that. I use OWA as my daily driver and that is the behaviour at least on my end. Settings->Mail->Message Handling should have the options you want.
Microsoft will do whats best for them.
Temporary this includes embrace open source to some degree and being reasonable nice to Linux. For example WSL can help with trying out Linux and help cross platform devs on Windows to develop for Linux which can help with a to Linux migration. But it removes the main reasons why a lot of students, scientists and server devs had to use it. So for now it's net-good for them, which can be good for Linux, too.
But what will happen if it again is more profitable for MS to not act nice?
How long will it then take to WSL to have features in a way which make it likely software only works on WSL Linux and maybe Azur servers but won't be available on normal distros.
How long until GitHub will have some small but very usefull features which happen to only be available in some Windows GitHub client pushing companies to require Windows first desktop systems?
How long until they will influence legislation around computer security in a way which have effects like being practical impossible for normal desktop Linux clients or require some proprietary Linux core component due to a combination of legislation and patents, which distributions for Azur or Google cloud surely will have for free, but the competition?
Honestly I hope so long that you could say never.
But I believe open source and free desktops are as much threatened by MS today as many years ago when people aware about it often treated MS as a evil company for good reasons. But today it's in a way more roundabout, very subtle very hard to pin down way. This gives them the chance to succeed where they failed before, but us the chance to both profit from them and while preventing them from succeeding. Optimally leading to some form of stalemate where both are profiting from each other.
Also, MS devs are much more versed in windows.
I think their next push won't be against Foss people, but to get people on the cloud so they get a recurring revenue stream and their customers are hooked deeper still.
Intellij has been doing that since years. Including extensive language specific integrations to e.g. make remote python debugging nicer.
> I think their next push won't be against Foss people, but to get people on the cloud so they get a recurring revenue stream and their customers are hooked deeper still.
I agree, something something GitHub cloud editor. But that's perfect. Perfect for selling Chrome Books instead of Windows machines, as they are cheaper, less maintenance cost and often more secure...
If experience gets degraded it’s because of limited testing, not malicious intent.
It’s like Oracle suddenly deciding that their greatest competitor is sqlite. The two live in different worlds.
it's about making sure it can't become one even if MS starts doing things which harm customer (accidentally and/or due to customers being dependent on them).
For example look at the steam deck, even with it's success it's neglible small compared to Switch, PS and Xbox, but it still implicitly forced Microsoft to start working on better support in their "windows manager/desktop US" for this kind of devices.
Or they would love to force their app store for apps like Apple did on Mobile, they tried getting there before. But now they can't really threaten Valve that well anymore because Valve can always argue: See gaming on Linux works without us strongly doubling down on it because you forced us. And there are people invested in Steam due to having large libraries, if most of their library works on SteamOs but Steam works no longer on Windows where would they go...?
But this means most vscode users can easily switch away, e.g. to sublime.
Sure there is the plugin ecosystem, but at least how plugins work currently you don't want to install many of them for security reasons/trust.
And in my experience some of the best plugins are not only not from MS but they provide features vscode already roughly supports but in a lacking way.
MS might have some luck with remote dev features (which are also not in the open source version). But they will have a hard time on this vector, because I have seen upcomming new IDEs which do handles that better in ways I'm not sure vscode will be able to beat or get on-par with.
This leave their remote in-browser IDE dev setup thingy in colaboration with GitHub, that is a killer feature. But IMHO is one of this things which only will become a main selling point if people _only_ use this environment. But it's a in-browser interface so not OS specific so probably not so useful to lock people in.
Vscode is a text editor/IDE, it has bajillion alternatives, again unless MS doesn't allow code not written in Vscode to GitHub, which is a suicide anyway. There is Bitbucket or Gitlab to fork to.
WSL, is awesome, because Linux is not game friendly, yeah yeah proton blah blah. I own a steam deck I know how it works and for a casual user Linux gaming just isn't there unless you want to tinker a lot. Then there are products like Photoshop replacements for which Linux is sub par, no GIMP is not alternative, it's entirely different. But nothing is stopping other users to switch to Linux unless edge/windows 11 blackholes insert_your_favorite_linux.com. WSL just clicked for a reason.
MS as a company will fight for market share, no company after a certain size is moral, it's "free market" as US defines it. Change laws not companies. Regulate not ask nice. Feels like EU knows this and at least tries to twist the arms of companies where as in US it's seen as infringement of freedom.
Ms gobbling up dev community is fear mongering towards the wrong entity.
A decade ago you'd need to give up high DPI screens and capable laptops for linux. Today it's either the mac ecosystem with the iOS dev tools, or the Windows compatible newer form factors and/or the games/VR ecosystem.
Apple will do what helps Apple, and Microsoft will do what serves Microsoft. Does a pure linux experience effectively serve you in your day to day work ? If yes, lucky you, it's still "no" fo many of us.
Yes, it is included in O365 and it makes it a no-brainer as far as additional costs and things go. But then there's the risk that Microsoft leverage their captive and lazy market to foist other undesirable things on users... like this. And crappy news / adverts in Windows 11's 'start menu' replacement.
Ready to get voted down on this, but my view is pretty robust: no need to self-host EVERYTHING but avoiding vendor lock-in and maintaining independence is valuable. It is a lesson that corporate IT admins seem to forget time and time again.
It works "good enough" and change is really hard for many people.
As someone on the other side of the divide who hates these products, this is accurate. A non-standard product is a non-starter in most fields unless it has a killer advantage.
I hate Teams. I hate Meet. But they work with basically zero training. You have to pick your battles, and successful businesses choose theirs in core competencies.
The whole interop situation around video conferencing is ridiculous, there ought to be a common protocol and a variety of clients around this protocol, instead we have this utterly dysfunctional situation where there are five different walled gardens, each of which has their own set of problems and compatibility issues.
There are many options that have those two.
I must be a fucking idiot then, because no amount of engaging with it ever got me past "what the fuck, where did everything go, why is that there, how do I do X, why did it do Y when I did Z?" One of the most confusing programs I've ever used. Up there with some very-painful-learning-curve video games (think: Paradox games)
(Of course this is sarcasm, just the way you want it)
This is my experience 100%
It was such an awful experience.
>desktop ads
>Edge opens, edge ads
>Bing default browser, ads
>start menu ads
More on their products:
>Sharepoint, 3 different versions, terrible documentation. Impossible to develop for when you have forum posts describing different software with the same name.
>Power Automate, No I don't want drag and drop. Never ever. Further, we did do the drag and drop, only to run into issues and have to trick the software into showing some hidden ID that we could later copypaste. They even tease you with the actual code under the hood. I want to add a new line character, so easy in programming, (seems) impossible in power automate.
I have decided its urgent to make the full transition to Linux. Microsoft constantly seems to be fine with a terrible user experience. They are a giant. They remind me of Apple with their marketing/sales first mentality.
EDIT: (warning rage) Somehow edge opened up again. I lost my mind. I spent 5 minutes trying to uninstall without typing in some obscenely long version number. Nope. Impossible. Serious FU to M$.
It truly felt like being transported to the darkest times of the late 90s/early 2000s, with multiple adware toolbars cluttering the IE user interface.
Then they shot themselves in the foot with ads.
[1] https://www.maketecheasier.com/microsoft-windows-10-signatur...
Exactly what I thought when I saw “Games” under the Edge menu - why can’t a browser just be a browser anymore?
https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#how...
> Found running server...
>
> *
> * Visual Studio Code Server
> *
> * By using the software, you agree to
> * the Visual Studio Code Server License Terms (https://aka.ms/vscode-server-license) and
> * the Microsoft Privacy Statement (https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/privacystatement).
> *
>
Many of the interesting extensions (Microsoft's language plugins, the remote extension pack, the .NET debugger) are licensed only for use with Visual Studio Code. Even if you hook into the VSCode marketplace, they could sue. They probably won't unless you're rehosting VSCode externally or something, but the risk is something most companies probably don't want to take when the software is free as in beer anyway for the "real" builds. (And if you're telemetry sensitive... just block the domains? I know, easier said than done, but you can do it.)
There are so many people out there, who should know better, or even do know better. Yet, for whatever reason install VS Code instead of VS Codium. Even when you inform people about the existence of VS Codium, they still don't move and keep using VS Code. It is like they do not even care at all.
That this is even allowed to happen in organizations is already an oversight. It should not even be allowed to install VS Code on organization machines or use it to ever view or work on the code of an organization.
To me it looks very unprofessional. It is like a shiny toy has been dangled in front of their eyes and they reach for it, never willing to let go of it, even when they are being told that there is telemetry and non-reproducible builds and whatever other mistreatment of them as useds. Like children they stick to their shiny toy, even if they could have the same features, same UI, just without built in telemetry. (And they can still install any extensions they want later, if they trust that extension or marketplace of extensions.) It is very similar to people installing Chrome instead of Ungoogled Chromium. I have personally experienced how uninformed people at a university went wide-eyed, thinking I was talking crazy stuff, when I told them that it should not be installed on university computers, since it is spyware.
I wish I could get people to get off their behinds and improve the situation. But it is of course very difficult to always create awareness and people are so damn ignorant. Often I am not even suggesting, that they should switch to free software tools yet. They could literally have the same experience, but no, most of the time you cannot tell them anything and they continue to take us with them into dystopia of our own making as a society with collective uninformedness and ignorance.
VSCode telemetry can be fully disabled.
> and non-reproducible builds
Who cares? Most users don’t need a reproducible build of software they want to use, they need working software.
> and whatever other mistreatment of them as useds.
Calling people “useds” isn’t going to help your case.
Well, how do you know that? How do you verify, that all telemetry is really turned off, without being able to reproduce the build? How many people truly turn it off after install? How do you know whether there are any other unwanted parts in the software you just installed? What about the next update? Do you want to run a package sniffer after each update, over the course of a month or so, checking all traffic in detail, to be sure that it only ever communicates to the outside world, when there was a justified purpose?
You are giving away sovereignty of your own device/machine.
> Who cares? Most users don’t need a reproducible build of software they want to use, they need working software.
It it this kind of mentality that is the problem. Your "who cares" is not going to fly, because it leads right into the abyss of surveillance and spyware. "who cares" is the basis for not being informed about ones tech choices. The basis for not being aware of issues regarding privacy. At a properly managed software making company it would also result in you being told, that it is part of your job to care. To answer the question, if there was any question: I care. Informed people care. People with ideals care.
The issue with not caring is also, that organizations will draw the wrong conclusions. They might impose rules, which force me to use some tool I do not want to use, simply because "everyone is OK with it", while those people all don't even care. If they don't care, they should not get a say in the matter and should not be a decision basis or a point of reasoning for making a decision. This is how the collective uninformedness and carelessness results in bad decisions. Basically the majority drags down the minority, for the worse of all of us.
> Calling people “useds” isn’t going to help your case.
Well, that is what we are, when we allow ourselves to be spied on. They use us and our data to drive data mining, profiling and ultimately profits. Besides, I wouldn't throw it into faces in 1-on-1 conversations, for the sake of a constructive conversation, even if it is the truth, because it runs the risk of the other person (a) not even understanding what it means, (b) thinking they misheard and replace with "users", and (c) risking them to be offended and turning deaf.
If you build it yourself, how do you verify that there is no spyware and no new spyware is added on every update? Do you have the energy to read every single new commit?
A having a reproducible build means, that the hidden telemetry would need to be hidden in the publicly available code. Whereas telemetry in VS Code can be bundled in and no one would ever see that code, except for MS. If I was using it, I might actually, in a motivated night, look at the code and try to grasp the general picture of where goes what. Or perhaps see the diff between VS Code code and VS Codium code, to see, whether they added anything and from where they removed things.
Still unjustifiable, along with the mess they made of changing default apps/browsers in Win 11.
Are you sure it is the case?
Upon uninstalling, those dependencies, the bar never appeared again.
Previously, they also added a Bing AI button to the keyboard, but they did actually make a setting to disable that.
Edit: Upon mentioning this to a coworker and digging into this a bit more, it may have been that I accidentally clicked the microphone to bring up that screen, and that it didn't target an ad. I'm not quite sure what happened though, so I'm leaving my comment as is :)
If you're stuck on Windows and have access to delete things from %programfiles% (and elsewhere), this is a zero risk thing to try! Every update reinstalls Edge, so the next time you have an update queued, delete Edge. If you don't like it, run the update and you're back to Edge Everywhere.
I cannot fathom the number of support requests coming in as soon as some features stop working, in a fleet of hundreds. Dealing with thousands is a great recipe for disaster.
Removing Edge, like the previous poster suggested, does break certain features. Also, you seem to suggest that standard Windows deployments are permanently and continuously idempotent, but they definitely are not.
The play is clear. Since this is a potential risky move, very few IT admins will try to remove Edge in the first place.
They can be. I've administered large networks personally where they are. If the GP comment would break something that's different, I agree. I'm commenting in the abstract, it is definitely possible to remove files or change the registry at scale. Windows is very good at that.
Remember "Microsoft loves open source" phrase from just few years ago? Guess what, Ike also loved Tina.
Except way more mercenary.
Companies compete like boxers in a ring. You win some, you lose some. MS is the boxer who would hit below the belt if no one is looking and will try to main/kill you if they can.
Show me one of these big technology companies that doesn't act to benefit their shareholders?
Microsoft is Google is Apple is Amazon. They're all the same internally. The only difference is their optics when you're looking at them as an outsider. But really, they all work toward the same goal, increasing their stock price.
I'm saying that no, Microsoft is just like the others. They're all like that. All of them would hit below the belt if the risk/reward calculation is correct for shareholders.
Can you give an example of another company as mercenary as Microsoft?
P.S. The Halloween Documents give a good overview of how Microsoft thinks.
The owners seems to be in a constant power struggle with executives and management. Also, future to be shareholder are ripped off by current.
I companies would focus on (long term) profitability many of their problems would be solved.
Having exclusive features in a product they would prefer you to use because it makes them more money isn't EEE.
Second, them constantly being in the news about peddling the Bing search engine also doesn't help. Most people like and prefer Google (and when I say most, I mean the 95% percentile), so if they read news like, "Microsoft is showing Bing ads on Google pages" - you can rest assured nobody is going to use Edge because at the back of they minds they will be thinking, "Hmm, does this mean my Google experience will be disturbed with this browser?".
I think I lost some gray matter just typing that out and reflecting on how stupid Microsoft is.
I honestly don't think they care. They get the benefit of all the work devs do to support Chrome for free and get the much more lucrative "regular user" market.
It is however a shame that Microsoft keeps insisting to shoot itself in the foot. There's a very developer-friendly and professional and sleek side of Microsoft that is constantly sabotaged by the "used car salesman" side of the company that insists on adding noise like Microsoft Rewards to Edge or Candy Crush to Start.
Corporations are like unhousebroken pets. Unless you rub their faces in the poop they won't know why you're upset they shit on the carpet.
This kind of behavior is why I (and many like me) will never consider Windows to be a legitimate alternate server platform or Visual Studio to be an alternative dev environment (perhaps only for coding a dedicated Win UI client). People walkin' around like the 1990s were ancient history. Well, here we go again.
While I use Fedora, I believe most frustrated people will look to Apple ecosystem.
Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud
* Introducing Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications.
Receive updates to over 25,000 software packages with your
Ubuntu Pro subscription. Free for personal use.
https://ubuntu.com/pro
Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.On more pet peeves level of hostility:
Still haven't found a clean way to get rid of Apple Music. Every single time I accidentally click the play button on my headphones it brings up Apple Music.
2FA verification being bound to Apple devices.
Phasing out kext support under the security reasoning also means decent low level extensions are now a dream of the past. Stuff like Karabiner are notably worse when system perfs degrade, and I'm not holding my breath for linux partition mounting.
I suggest using their default DE, it will give you more streamlined experience.
But, why doesn't Firefox start trying to curry the favor of large enterprises? By this, i mean, that maybe firefox could make a campaign to reach out to enterprise on how good FF could be for the enterprise...In essence try to win the hearts and minds of both IT admins and their senior leaders in the enterprise!?! (Instead of doing all manner of distractive efforts that may not be core to FF's web browser.)
Yes, i know there is the FireFox ESR edition which some enterporises use, and yes, this might mean that FF devs might need to build up some added features to specifically help enterprises better manage profiles for users, etc...but, at least, Mozilla won;t be trying to shove things like Edge down users' throats. At the very least it would help diverse things if more Windows OS installations at large enterprises were a healthy mix of Chrom, Edge, and Firefox...
/end-of-rant
As long as their stock goes up, techies are always last place.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission#... for previous clashes on related matters
I know this because I searched for a variation of a private url generated by our system only to find several live links to things we didn't intend for the public to see.
I was able to correct that problem in about a day and there were no compromises, but I was intensely irritated with everyone involved that day.
I remember how reaction was relatively swift with Apple and book publishers' illegal collusion even though Apple was not a major player yet, or maybe I am just wrong on this which is possible, I didn't follow the news closely.
In any case, I think Microsoft is doing a fine job by itself getting people turned off on edge by adding all sorts of bloatware that I doubt people will use edge as their only web browser.
Apple not allowing other browsers is a bit much…
It can be a no brainer depending on your life style (I mean, some people are trying to get back to dumb phones, so why not), I personally see it as big nope.
Apple is paranoid about being dependent on other companies. If Chrome becomes a "must have" Google will have leverage over them by threatening to pull Chrome from the iPhone.
They have been burned badly before: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=MacBasic.txt
Instead of letting that happen, they use the iPhone's market share to push an alternative they control and pressure developers to support it (with its market share).
Google is already using such tactics against Android phone makers. They keep them in line by threatening to not license them their services.
Not exactly EEE, but I see where the inspiration comes from. I always thought the mistrust of MSFT in the community started mainly because of how it pushed IE and its Windows OEM licensing terms, but it goes far beyond that.
Microsoft on the other hands seems to have no boundaries, going as far as injecting ads on Chrome’s homepage[1] promoting their browser.
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-now-injecting-full-...
Not allowing alternative browsers on their most successful platform: iOS
also:
- EU forced Apple to use USB-C like everybody else
- EU is forcing Apple to allow side loading of apps
Apple is one of the worst offenders ever when it's about vendor lock in
Alternative browser engines are still disallowed.
They are a skin on Apple's Webkit
see: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/mozilla_google_apple_...
GP was talking about how Apple does not force you to open links with Safari except in one case.
The situation with webkit is a different thing.
It's always Safari.
In a different skin, but it's Safari nonetheless.
Do Firefox or Chrome on iOS support web apis that Apple does not support?
No, they don't, because it's Safari.
Sorry if I skipped a few steps and went straight to the conclusion, that's why it probably looked off topic to you.
It is what makes all the difference here.
Many features that are a Web Standard are unsupported on iOS precisely because Apple refuses to allow alternative engines because they don't want those features on their platform (mostly to favor native apps under the pretext of security, like if Google is not capable of making a secure browser, at least as secure as Safari).
Chrome and Firefox on iOS are not the same Chrome and iOS that run on all the other platforms, they are basically Safari.
It does matters.
it matters in the same way a Honda disguised as a Mercedes it's not a Mercedes. It's a Honda.
> Whichever engine the browser happens to use is the least of their concerns.
Not disagreeing with you on this, that's the way it should be.
OTOH, using simple logic, if it doesn't matter Apple would allow other browser engines on their platform, because it doesn't matter. But apparently it does matter. It matters so much that EU is trying to force Apple to permit alternative implementations of the software called "a Web browser".
Anyway, we have a precedent:
"Microsoft distributed its browser software, Internet Explorer, among consumers for free. It led to a concentration of the market share and the eventual downfall of Netscape, the company’s top competitor at the time. The DoJ case alleged that Microsoft was intentionally making it extremely difficult for consumers to install software by other companies on personal computers that ran on Microsoft’s operating system."
The point of my analogy wasn't to prove that Chrome is better than Safari, but that if I want an Honda, I do not want a car that looks like an Honda, I want an Honda (or a Mercedes or a Renault).
Android has the same problem with WebView, it's Chrome by default, but at least on Android GeckoView exists.
There must be a reason why Apple resists so much to making alternative engines available and nobody is buying that it is about security.
Further, it could be argued that dynamic code execution, whether through an app downloading additional modules on the file system with the executable bit set, or in memory, with the mmap(PROT_EXEC) syscall opens up potential avenues for abuse, and alternative browsers are an unfortunate collateral damage in such a policy.
Regardless, no action can be justified because another entity is also doing it; it only serves to cheapen the discourse.
Microsoft has now clearly declared this policy. The basis of the article is the message sent to IT admins clearly declaring it.
The huge difference is that this is the blanket application of a rule which has reasonable justifications. You can certainly criticise Apple for being a control-freak company, but that's not exactly a new trait.
And it's not Apple leveraging one monopoly (they don't have) into trying to take over an other domain as a new entrant. iOS started from the position of being completely locked down.
Quite different from the events of, say, US v. Microsoft Corp, which Microsoft seem to assume is not relevant anymore.
> - EU forced Apple to use USB-C like everybody else
Which was almost certainly on Apple's timeline anyway, though we'll never know for sure.
> - EU is forcing Apple to allow side loading of apps
See (1).
They released USB-C macbooks in 2015, 8 years ago. Clearly they had no intention of moving to USB-C on iPhones, prior to the EU ruling. The extra few years selling cables so that you can plug your brand new Apple laptop in to your brand new Apple phone was probably a fun little profit exercise, if not comically anti-consumer/anti-environment.
Utter nonsense, which completely ignores the historical and third-party background: the replacement of the dock connector by Lightning was a huge shift as it was very common for devices to have built-in dock connectors which became useless pins overnight (there were literally cars with dock connectors). As necessary as the transition was in the long run, it basically made apple swear to keep lightning alive for at least as long as the DC was.
And there is a clear counter-example: they've been slowly inching support in from the devices least likely to use hard-set connectors: first the 3rd gen ipad pro in 2018, then the 10th gen ipad in 2020, 6th gen mini in 2021, 5th gen Air in 2022.
> The extra few years selling cables so that you can plug your brand new Apple laptop in to your brand new Apple phone was probably a fun little profit exercise
More nonsense, apple literally doesn't want you to plug one into the other, they've been stripping wired phone-related features from macos as fast as they could be bothered to, moving them to either wireless (airdrop) or cloud.
> if not comically anti-consumer/anti-environment.
Yes indeed, the anti-consumer and anti-environment move of letting users upgrading from one iphone to the next not have to replace all their cables.
Apple is absolutely trying to leverage their OS in order to drive usage in other markets. One big example of this is Apple Maps, which is being used as a default on iOS no matter if you like it or not. Both "Contacts" and "Find My" uses Apple Maps as the only option for starting navigating to another address, and if the application is not installed, but Google Maps or any other app, they still ask you to install Apple Maps instead of doing what everyone else in the ecosystem is doing, which is to ask which navigation app to use.
> Which was almost certainly on Apple's timeline anyway, though we'll never know for sure.
Yes, absolutely. The manufacturer who almost never use standard connectors were gonna start using standard connectors suddenly, no because regulation forced them to, but because that was in their timeline anyways...
Except for all the times they do?
> were gonna start using standard connectors suddenly, no because regulation forced them to, but because that was in their timeline anyways...
Yes? Or are you saying regulations forced them to use USB-C on macbooks, to the exception of every other port including the beloved but non-standard magsafe?
Or that regulations forced them to add type C to the ipad pro in 2018? The ipad in 2020? The ipad mini in 2021? The ipad air in 2022?
Hell, back in 1998 they released the iMac with essentially only USB support. Was that also regulations forcing them?
As to having Edge WebView2 engine in Outlook and no other - well, that is understandable [1]. Albeit Internet Explorer and Edge Legacy are still used by addins [2]. Actually it was about time to ditch the old IE Trident engine from Outlook and Office apps. On Mac it uses Safari with WKWebView[2]
So is this outrage caused by just introducing a feature where links open within app and it happens to use whatever rendering engine is there for that purpose?
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/webview2-inst...
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concept...
Edit: I re-read the announcment and it is actually something different than an engine - yeah, opens in Edge and presumably shows your email in Edge Sidebar. So nothing to do with outlook rendering engines.
What is single view? Does anyone have a screenshot or a screencast of that UX in action?
As a Firefox user, I'd like to keep Edge as an alternative to check websites with. But this shady nonsense makes me want to burn every last bit off my system.
A common trick we used to use back in the day was to rename the microsoft executables that we didn't want to start automatically, it silently failed and everything was fine until next batch of updates which detected this and fixed it.
Playing rough in the sandbox hurts all their products. See what’s happened to Bing since they won’t let you use it in Safari or Chrome.
The more they act bizzare like this, the more they deserve to lose it all.
Pushing Bing search as a replacement for Google search seems like a much smarter play with a much larger upside.
Honestly, I like Edge more than Firefox & Chrome. The only thing I find missing is better default privacy features that Brave offers. I imagine you can get them with an extension. The Read Aloud & reader modes of Edge are fantastic. A majority of the rest is at par with Firefox & Chrome.
Looking at the bigger M365 vision of embedding snippets of documents/chats/stuff-from-the-graph into every other asset. Having there a free-variable like a third party browser will make this a horrible thing to manage. Same also goes for App Store deploy to desktop: a stable html/css/js SDK is needed there as well.
I would absolutely hate Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, but this thing, IMHO, it is not. There are better example (e.g. what they do with VS Code or the .NET Debugger/HotReload) then this concrete case.
The worst thing about the integration is that their safelink checker thing is slow as hell.
Force-opening another browser despite user-configured defaults is utterly disrespectful to the user. You're trying to frame it as something helpful but it's not helpful in any way whatsoever. It interferes with the user getting their job done using a tool you made.
> Looking at the bigger M365 vision of embedding snippets of documents/chats/stuff-from-the-graph into every other asset. Having there a free-variable like a third party browser will make this a horrible thing to manage.
Once again, MS with the browser balkanization. MS is on all the consortia, they can push for browser standards too.
Maybe, but if I have the Outlook app, a browser, and a windowing desktop environment, it seems a little superfluous.
Bad enough in itself but that's only half of it. Instead of fix this behavior to just work the official path is to install a teams app for Adobe Acrobat that handles the redirection, but only for Acrobat. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/adobe-acrob...
If the email has a button (or a link) - i think it makes sense that the click event shows up "in" the mail client.
I hate html email - but the last 20 years have been all about siloing hypertext apps in email systems - proprietary protocols (exchange, Gmail web - with IMAP/SMTP/pop3 as secondary citizens).
This just a natural continuation.
If you want to escape use a real MUA - and maybe a real mail provider.
Unfortunately if you want groupware - there's no proper open solution (but props to Fastmail for at least trying - but until there are good independent desktop/mobile/console apps with JMAP support - and the equivalent for shared booking and calendar) - it's pretty much either proprietary crapware, or open solutions without feature parity.
Thanks for pointing it out.
I have two Macs running Microsoft Outlook. One is running a version several years behind the current one.
The old machine can send e-mail as plain text. The one running the current Microsoft Outlook doesn't have that option, or a way to enable it that I've been able to find.
Thankfully i write mostly code and documentation - so far i don't have to care that 2023 Outlook is worse than 2003 Pine.
On the other hand there's a shared calendar.
I don't think it's supposed to be.
At a big tech conference about ten years ago, a Microsoft exec said that new Office features are tried out on Macs before getting ported to Windows.
I don't know if that's still the strategy today, but it was around 2011.
The new policy is to ignore your default browser from Outlook and Teams and open Edge. There is an option to turn off this policy to use your default browser.
> Microsoft 365 Enterprise IT admins will be able to alter the policy, but those on Microsoft 365 for business will have to manage this change on individual machines.
They should add a new option to ignore this one that is also turned on by default. Default overrides all the way down.
Guess which ones of the two don't do shit.
Here's a hint: I'm using Teams via browser to get rid of notifications.
First time playing this game? Here's how it works:
1) Change the default behavior, but have the old behavior be an option
2) ~Everybody switches to the new behavior
3) Telemetry says ~nobody uses the old behavior, so remove the option in order to "streamline the experience"
They must have put an entire team on ways to re-enable Edge as default. And I'll bet they have some crazy logic to justify their hijacking. "Oh, you opened Outlook, that must mean you want all your pdfs opened in Edge again!"
This looks like a simple embedded browser feature blown out of proportion. You can probably ctrl-click the link to open in whatever browser you've configured as default in a new window.
They're trying to find the limit for what they can do, so they can be right next to the limit. If they get fined, they try to correct by either finding a different way of doing the same thing, or doing something just enough to not get fined.
This functionality is actually needed in highly regulated industries like banking or government.
Which is, you need a way to secure how your employees are accessing information.
And when everything is moving to becoming a cloud document (or document hosted on the cloud), not being able to have control over the browser in which that information is viewed with is a huge threat vector.
So I totally understand why they have to ability to launch all links with Edge, and then Edge have built in privacy controls.
So if you're an organization that need these higher level security controls, this is actually what you want.
What the article doesn't make clear is, is Microsoft actually defaulting to this to all customers.
This isn't a setting that allows admins to force a browser for security.
This is obviously about MS trying to force the uptake of Edge and nothing more.
Google Workspace functionality is only fully supports Google Chrome.
Google Workspace doesn't support a number of key features on Firefox, Safari & Edge - as denoted below.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/33864?hl=en
So how is what Microsoft is doing, different? They are only fully supporting Microsoft Edge (much like how Google only supports their own browser)
Well, Google Workspace is a dumpster fire. Anything that I can't run offline is a dumpster fire. That's a hill I'm willing to die on.
> Google Workspace functionality is only fully supports Google Chrome.
That's by Google's "choice". It's definitely not a technical decision.
> Google Workspace doesn't support a number of key features on Firefox, Safari & Edge - as denoted below. https://support.google.com/a/answer/33864?hl=en
I can tell you from personal experience that the only reason Google Workspace doesn't "work" on Firefox is because of user-agent sniffing and similar countermeasures deployed by Google. There's absolutely no technical reason that the disabled features cannot work on Firefox.
> So how is what Microsoft is doing, different?
It's in fact not.
> They are only fully supporting Microsoft Edge (much like how Google only supports their own browser)
No, they are only fully permitting Microsoft Edge (much like how Google only fully permits their own browser).
I don't think that explanation makes sense. Let's say I'm an organization that needs these higher level security controls, but I want to push everything to be opened in Chrome instead. (Because I think that Chrome is more secure, or whatever.) Well, is this going to help me, or is it going to fight me? Can I make this work with anything, or is it Edge only?
I'm betting it's Edge only. And that makes the whole argument suspect.
On Linux, the "default web browser" is part of the XDG specification and available under the settings key `default-web-browser`. In the absence of such a standard at the DE level in Windows, it seems reasonable to me that developers would have to maintain a hardcoded candidate list of web browsers and their likely executable paths in the filesystem. And yes, of course MSFT would put Edge on the top of this search list, the same Apple would do Safari, or Google would do Chrome.
If you click a link in any other application, it will open whatever browser you've set up as your default in the system settings. Microsoft just went out of their way to explicitly always open Edge.
> While this won’t affect the default browser setting in Windows, it’s yet another part of Microsoft 365 and Windows that totally ignores your default browser choice for links. Microsoft already does this with the Widgets system in Windows 11 and even the search experience, where you’ll be forced into Edge if you click a link even if you have another browser set as default.
The issue is that O365 is going to launch the link within the app (say Outlook) which is going to be running it on Edge, which lets them completely ignore whatever browser you would rather be using.
It's like every app on iOS that is shipping with a safari wrapper so it doesn't have to actually launch safari and give up its snooping abilities.
I couldn't even copy the links to paste them manually, as my organization disabled this. This is not OK.
But that's completely separate from users' default browser preferences. They're introducing a shiny new Edge feature... and not satisfied with letting Edge win on its own merits, they're overriding users' explicit preferences to shove it in front of more users.
M$FT wants me to install a dev build of Edge if I want to try Bing chat on Linux? Dream on. No Google or Microsoft applications on my Linux machine, thanks.
Knew nothing so thought I'd start with Bing chat. Immediately blocked by the need to run an MS browser on my fedora machine, so Bing chat lost me instantly likely forever.
Between these UX-hostile behaviors, ads embedded in the OS, the awful MSN news integration... it just baffles me that how much MS is sinking despite some rehabilitative moves a few years back.
I'm not even mad, just (constantly) disappointed.
Going from my email into a browser that doesn't have any of my history or autofill stuff is going to result in a butt-ton of context switching. It's almost worse that they don't set it as the default browser.
Like on ios, opening a link from the youtube app asks if I want to open the link in Chrome, despite not having chrome on my phone.
Or that links inside Google Calendar first hit a google url before going to the actual url (Outlook has the same nonsense).
Then again, every other large entity in this field is toxic as well in some form or other...
Those of us who were computer nerds in the '90s know he and Microsoft were more akin to the Borg. Slashdot always used to feature Bill as Locutus on stories about him/Microsoft. This is completely on brand for microsoft.
The "reform" is entirely made up. He's the same oligarch he always was, and so are they.
How does Microsoft think that they can get away with all of this shit?
People keep buying it, so they can get away with almost anything.
that is all.
Are they really? We dumped chrome for edge a year ago at the least...
Especially when deploying it for a small business. It allows for easy integration with azure, profile syncing etc.
Myself, I just want a browser that doesn't close multiple tabs when I want to close just one when tapping on a touch screen. That is one thing with Edge that irritates me to high hell, and a reason for me to switch.
I don’t set up a new Edge profile often but I have to remember to turn off like 5 or 6 things each time to make it somewhat usable.
I don’t know how a company can take good products and turn them into tacky products that no one would want to use if they had the knowledge to download an alternative.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...
I would say no, there is no way to make it more tolerable unless you run something like shutup10 or https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy but then again if you care that much you should simply just run Linux because in reality there is no real good solution since spyware is baked right into the product.
Myself and most of the people I've networked with either have or are transitioning away from other browsers, towards Edge. As a browser, it's fine. It has good PDF viewing/editing features, performant and works well with organisational SSO.
I specifically stated PDF editing, not just viewing PDF files.
SSO works better on Edge in a work environment, mainly as it connects to the Windows profile. This means that I do not need to make changes to additional browsers or have end users struggling to sign in to various applications. Specifically with Edge, I can simply provide each user profile a folder with shortcuts to the likes of email quarantine, support, Outlook etcetera and they will either see their account listed or only need to enter their email address.
Coupled with appropriate training, this has cut down on users signing into Microsoft login pages that have been designed to look like the legitimate organisation using logo's and other branding. When in doubt, the users can visit the shortcut provided to them.
Also, not entirely clear that verge isn't just knee jerk reporting. Any sys admins that have actual first hand experience with this and can confirm?
Then why would MSFT release Edge at all? maybe they should default to Chrome.
Okay. What if I want to use Firefox though?
It's more of an ideology about Microsoft forcing whatever they want on users.