Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 Recall AI is not optional
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
It has to be cheaper to let the .03% of people who want to do their own thing just do their own thing than it does spend engineering work to try to constantly capture them. The average user already doesn’t know what “an ai” is and doesn’t care, and therefore will never change your defaults. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-disable copilot because MS has invalidated my registry and/or group policy changes to get rid of it
If I don’t want the feature even installed on my system, then let me make that choice. Gaming is the only thing holding a windows install in my house anymore and the second DRM in proton is figured out I’m gone.
This headline implies users won’t be able to prevent recall from taking screenshots of what they are doing. I don’t believe that’s true.
Indeed, from the article:
>Once shipped, Recall will also be something Windows users can disable but not entirely remove.
Sure. That's why I put the relevant part in my comment for the people that skip the article.
This is the one thing they're quite consistent about.
If MS wanted people to trust them to honor settings, they shouldn't have ignored settings for decades.
everyone knows if you want to stop something from happening you use group policy
> The latest preview update for Windows 11 version 24H2 contains a little surprise for those who don’t trust the software giant. It allows you to remove Recall, the coming AI-based timeline feature that will help Copilot+ PC users find things they did in the past.
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/copilot-pc/307817/microsoft-...
I guess/hope the EU is already on it though.
Edit: Included sarcasm indicator because apparently people think this is a legitimate opinion serious people have in 2024.
Windows is good for one thing these days: Playing games via Steam. That's about it, and Linux is getting pretty good at that too - but not yet perfect. That's why I have to stick to Windows for my gaming PC for the time being.
> If you don't want Copilot, why can't you just buy another computer and let Microsoft customers enjoy their vertical integration?
Why doesn't Microsoft simply let me uninstall it? That would be the consumer friendly thing to do.
Regular screen captures are a completely unacceptable intrusion.
Biggest issue is printer drivers, I'd say.
If you mean just replacing Windows with Linux in general: it's great, unless you need to run, say, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, or Fortnite.
There's no way to use Wine for Microsoft Excel?
There were attempts to auto configure apps, like bottles program. This did work quite well when I used it for simple programs.
As with Linux. It takes some time to get familiar. Once you set up everything correctly, it will just work.
Their laptop offerings look amazing. I hope they have some ARM options available in the future!
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41430757
Not by a long shot. Windows-only enterprise software (QuickBooks, SolidWorks, etc.) is the last bastion, and that bastion is going to hold for a long time.
Unless they all band together, their capital is not enough to sway Microsoft at all.
But yeah, SolidWorks is notoriously flaky. It doesn't even work OK in a Windows VM. Or on any modern Laptop with discrete GPU.
QuickBooks Online is missing so many features of QuickBooks Enterprise that they probably shouldn't even share the same name. Many places I've consulted for are locked-in to Enterprise.
They also conveniently void your support if you use a VM, despite VMs working fine.
Windows of course doesn't go anywhere and will have a significant market share for decades to come. But Linux has come a long way. I'm not even interested in it, and use it because it's the simplest "just works" OS without having to actively defend against various dark patterns and anti-features.
The experience was so good that a few months ago I tried Bazzite (a "flavor" of Fedora Universal Blue aimed at running Steam games easily) at home as a test and despite my nVidia card (which it really didn't support well until recently) it's been smooth sailing. If it matures a bit more, I may ditch Windows completely... and that was already the last Windows machine at home.
Use Mint or Fedora for distribution. Use Cinnamon or KDE for GUI. Everything pretty much just works, man.
Games work -- Steam, Battle.net, Lutris, and others I am sure. Sleep works -- just as well as it does on Windows anyway. Network works -- better and easier than Windows IMO. Updates work and waaaaay better than Windows. Backups work. LibreOffice works. Browsers work. Tools work. USB thumb drives work. External USB enclosures work. CD/DVD drives work. I haven't tried blu-ray but I imagine that works too.
The only things that don't work are the things that lock you in to Microsoft. Those are vanishingly small numbers of things outside of business, and in business it's mostly because of inertia.
This is not a boolean. Games work, just with way less framerates.
My family is Ubuntu-only since 10 years ago, and I have 2 daughters that only know Unity as the graphical UI for a desktop PC (well, the big one is unfortunately starting to see Windows at school).
But in 2024 you clearly are still the true expert and arbiter of what constitutes a working desktop OS. I mean I only use Linux on a desktop and a laptop every single day, so I probably don't really get it.
But truly, Linux gives me significantly less "broken in weird ways" issues, as you say, in daily use than Windows 10 does on the same hardware. Both sometimes do stupid things, and both sometimes require stupid incantations when things go wrong (please don't pretend windows doesn't, because it absolutely does).
Linux has been following it very well.
When enabled, yes, but it makes you wonder why Microsoft is making it so you can only disable it, but not uninstall it. If you wanted to be sure it was disabled, you'd uninstall it... but you can't. I'm sure Microsoft would never enable it by default after an update.
They are plumbing the depths so well it is legitimately hard to imagine what new madness they could come up with next.
Are things not all sunshine and roses and a million flowers blooming in them?
It seems to be a common business tactic for corps at over over a certain size.
It remains true that this is not objectively distinguishable from price gouging. Gouging is just a word for "finding prices that I think aren't fair".
It's usually very difficult and risky.
This not only harms consumers but also holds back economic growth. Strengthening antitrust policies could curb monopolistic behavior, promote fair pricing, and restore market competition.
Notice how the level of inflation kind of matches the balance sheet curve if you assume the peak was that 9% (~June 2022)...now we're back down to ~3%.
But the Fed is talking about lowering rates, not increasing them further (because we're just magically on some 'glide path' back down to 2% I guess). I suppose you'll call that price gouging as well when inflation flares up again? Some of what's being "disguised" here are the definitions of words.
Just saying there are other factors at play. It's not all about the big bad corporations.
I would not be surprised that per the standard instillation route, default choices are designed to be as easily skipped as possible.
My decision to switch to a Fedora Desktop earlier this year after 25 years of Windows gets reinforced with every new "Windows Feature".
It's been a refreshing change, native versions of JetBrains IDEs, Docker and most Daily Apps (e.g. VS Code, Discord, GitHub Desktop, Obsidian, etc) were available on Day 1, surprisingly all my flagship Windows Steam Games I tried also just worked, there's also a lot more developer tools and command line enhancements available for Linux without the weird uncanny valley context switching I used to live with when using WSL.
Linux Desktop is in great shape if you're thinking of switching away from Windows.
Where are you getting Linux desktop share data?
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...