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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the ads infiltrating Windows, for example. Linux and Mac seem to be holding the line for now.

Windows offered me 3 separate subscriptions during setup. After managing to decline all 3 and complete setup, it then re-ran the Windows setup process a week later to help me "finish setting up", where it re-offered all 3 subscriptions.

I don't see the problem here. Badgering you to subscribe to some crap helps make more profit for MS, and this is good for MS shareholders. It might make the user experience worse, but who cares about that? It's not like Windows users are ever going to abandon the platform, so what's wrong with making them miserable in order to increase profits?

In the past 15 years I have gone from 100% Microsoft to 0% Microsoft. This is a direct consequence of Microsoft’s spitefully anti-user behavior.

They lost me for productivity 10 years ago and gaming 3 years ago.

I was a customer but I never will be again.

That's great, really, but people like you are a tiny minority. MS can afford to lose a very small number of customers, since they'll much more than make up for the loss by doing anti-user stuff like baking ads into the OS. In the last 40 years, I just haven't seen very many people get fed up enough with MS to leave, and instead I've watched MS's stock price and valuation continue to rise.

Well Microsoft already lost the consumer market. Apple and Android dwarf Windows market share. Microsoft is an also-ran for consumers. Where they still have some presence is corporate productivity and gaming, both of which are eroding. The future is not bright for Microsoft.

>Well Microsoft already lost the consumer market. Apple and Android dwarf Windows market share.

For phones, sure, but we're talking about PCs here. MS hasn't tried anything in the smartphone market for ages now. Android isn't a PC OS at all, and Apple's laptop and desktop computers are a tiny fraction of MS's.

>Where they still have some presence is corporate productivity and gaming, both of which are eroding.

"Some presence" is a huge understatement. The corporate world is still mostly running on Windows, unfortunately. Macs are not a serious contender here at all except maybe for some design stuff. Their domination for gaming might be eroding, but they're still highly dominant here too.

>The future is not bright for Microsoft.

Their financials look excellent right now. Of course, they're actually pretty smart, pushing into cloud services and such instead of just clinging to OS sales, so that'll probably continue.

I'd love to see everyone suddenly switch to various Linux distros and for MS to dry up overnight, but I just don't see it happening in the real world.

People have changed habits: most people do not use a PC for their everyday computing. They use a smartphone, and at a stretch, a tablet. There are a sizable number of people, not weirdos who don’t use tech but the average person who does banking and gaming and books flights and checks instagram, who has never used a desktop or laptop outside of an office. It’s all mobile devices. It’s Apple and Android.

This is apparent if you frequent social media that isn't tech focused like HN.

Spend a bunch of time on reddit and it becomes incredibly clear: The extreme majority of people on the Internet (In the USA, at least) are doing it from a phone or tablet.

> people like you are a tiny minority

According to some rumors, Valve is currently developing a Linux-based computer with software stack ported from Steam Deck. If the rumor is true and the device will be good, Microsoft will be very surprised with how many people will switch from Windows 11 into that new platform.

I have "free offers" for Apple Fitness, Apple Music, Apple News+ sitting in the Settings app on my iPhone 16 Pro, not sure how that's any different from the Windows offers (and until you ignore them at least once, they even show up with a badge on the App icon to draw you in).

Except for Ubuntu, which puts ads in the terminal:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hfs4v9/ubuntu_is_put...

https://x.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443

MacOS will gladly serve Taboola ads in first-party apps and beg you to use Safari in push notifications. If that's not infiltration by advertisement, I'm not sure what is.

Really? What apps have ads? Never seen that. My personal MacBook is too old for the last few MacOS updates but I haven’t seen what you describe on my up-to-date work laptop.

TV.app is just non-stop ads for various movies and TV shows, some of which are paid extras.

Ah yeah I have never used that app. Are they Taboola ads though? That seems egregious.

That’s effectively what you wanted, though? That’s what TV is?

If you open up Books.app, you’d be surprised that it’s going to sell you books.

Final Cut Pro CONTINUES to beg the user to buy the iPad version on any possible opportunity. That's a $300 app, btw.

> MacOS will gladly serve Taboola ads in first-party apps and beg you to use Safari in push notifications

You may think you are ‘sticking it to Apple’ by making-up this sort of thing, but what you’re actually doing is ruining the debate, and disempowering the customers who are trying to improve the situation.

I’ve been using MacOS for over 25 years, and never seen a “Taboola ad” in an Apple application, or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway).

I think they're talking about Apple News

> I’ve been using MacOS for over 25 years, and never seen a “Taboola ad” in an Apple application

Try booting up Apple News. It's a recent change, but a real one and not "made up" in the slightest: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/taboola-apple-news-deal

> or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway).

Well that's probably why. Imagine how enthused I am to use MacOS knowing that my browser of choice isn't good enough to satiate Apple?

It is a real problem, too. Been one for ten long years, as a matter of fact: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253602135

> or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway)

"Do you want to use Chrome or Safari?" - _after_ I have both installed Chrome AND set it as my default browser.

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