Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 178 posts

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#51

Post by oldnan »

soared wrote: post #31
oldnan wrote: post #21

Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS…

Do you honestly expect them to open source software that earns them significant revenue? They are a business trying to make money.

I don't, and neither does anyone else. The point is that they remain a proprietary software company at their core and will likely remain that way.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#52

Post by frik »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #43
deanclatworthy wrote: post #5

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup. Doesn't a default Android phone also do a lot of calling home? And Apple phones? Why is it so special when it's Windows?

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all.

Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentioning how they force end users to upgrade to Windows 10 by displaying Windows 10 ads as popup dialogs and renaming Windows update buttons to click on the Upgrade button by accident, etc. It will hurt Microsoft's reputation a lot.

With Android and iOS an end user with a little bit of knowledge (power user) can deactivate the analytics, cloud sync and error reporting "features" by changing a handful of settings. Windows 10 resets the privacy settings every major update (Threshold 2), they go even as far as change the name of exe files and registry keys. It's not too late to fix Win10 and MS reputation though, do something in 2016.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#53

Post by nailer »

oldnan wrote: post #21

Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS…

Yes they're both companies, but Sun open sourced stuff to get you to buy it on Solaris, their traditional cash cow.

Microsoft promotes stuff like Visual Studio Code and Chakra not to sell Windows - their stand at Node Interactive earlier this month had a 50 inch TV running Ubuntu. Instead, they realise you don't necessarily want Windows, and are happy to sell you Azure (which runs Linux VMs and is a pretty good product).

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#54

Post by berntb »

martythemaniak wrote: post #4
1123581321 wrote: post #2

I agree with all the examples mentioned in this article, but I think the beginning of 2014 was the year public opinion started to change. Nadella came out of the gate strong in early 2014. Just before that, Mike Krahulik's post about the Surface Pro 2 at the end of 2013 was a turning point for the perception of the product by people who prefer iOS/Android/Linux. ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/10/28/surf…

Public opinion changes when mainstream entities (people/organizations) validate something new. Microsoft has been coming out with good stuff for several years now, but that opinion has been restricted to a subset of technophiles. If in 2014 you told someone about tablets and styluses, you'd either get a dumb look or the standard Jobs like ("you're doing in wrong") So what happened in 2015? Well, Apple validated (copi…

There has been lots of pencils for iPads for years -- and keyboards in the cover (3rd party). And then we have Newton.

The thing is -- when Apple adds a feature, you know it will work well. If Apple can't make it work well, it won't be added.

So by now everyone knows that if Apple do something, it is good. The copies might be good -- but mostly a few years later, when they had time to do a carbon copy...

(That said, I'll probably go Android for my next phone/pad, so I can get music on them without iTunes. I only have Linux at home these days. But I'm still hoping for Jolla/Ubuntu.)

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#55

Post by vsampath »

georgeecollins wrote: post #15

One thing that struck me about this article is that they said that if the Surface Book had been introduced by Samsung no one would have paid attention. Intuitively this seems correct, but I wonder what exactly Samsung has done to be thought of so little. I used to have the first Galaxy Note. In the era of the iPhone 4s, it was a cool phone. Samsung has the ability to create amazing hardware. What could Samsung do to…

The Surface Book had an interesting narrative not only because of the hardware, but also the ironic underdog story of Microsoft vs Apple. Nevertheless Samsung gets plenty of coverage and discussion over new Galaxy S and Galaxy Note products and I bet they too would cause a stir if they launched a product like the Surface Book. Too bad they left the PC industry...

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#56

Post by lstamour »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
deanclatworthy wrote: post #5

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

[deleted]

You can avoid it by using AES-XTS now, same as on Linux and TrueCrypt: http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-version-1511-gets-new...

See also: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/04/30/you-dont-want-xts/

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#57

Post by Zikes »

soared wrote: post #29
Zikes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some things I love about Windows 10, like virtual desktops (welcome to the 90s Microsoft!) but there are some things that irk me: * Pretty login screen photos, with a link at the top-right saying "Like what you see?". I click the link expecting to get the source for the image, instead I get "Cool, we'll show you more like that." So much for that nice new desktop background I was hoping for. * Automatic upda…

I've had many of these same problems, with the addition of automatic driver updates breaking my display and forcing me to spend an hour fixing their (M$, lenovo, I don't care. read: Not My) mistake. I've searched, but have you found a list of those login screen pictures? I want them.

My display breaks often as well, but I can't tell if it's my AMD drivers or Windows. Either way, it's more steps than should be necessary to just "put things back the way they were" when it happens.

I haven't dug into the login screen pictures at all. After my first attempt to get the source, I just gave up on it. The funny thing is, if they hadn't put that "Like what you see?" link in at all, it wouldn't be as big a deal. It would still be a bit disappointing that I couldn't easily get to the source, but the fact that they got my hopes up and then disappointed me makes it that much worse.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#58

Post by vox_mollis »

lstamour wrote: post #56
[deleted] wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

You can avoid it by using AES-XTS now, same as on Linux and TrueCrypt: http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-version-1511-gets-new... See also: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/04/30/you-dont-want-xts/

Oh wow, I wasn't aware of this inclusion. Thanks.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#59

Post by Grishnakh »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #43
deanclatworthy wrote: post #5

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup. Doesn't a default Android phone also do a lot of calling home? And Apple phones? Why is it so special when it's Windows?

Windows PCs are not used for the same thing as smartphones. Most people don't have all their critical financial or business information on their phones; that's what PCs are for ("real work"). Most people probably don't care too much if Google knows that you're using Tinder.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#60

Post by forgotAgain »

Seems to me they got the benefit of the hype not the doubt.

I personally don't know anyone who has committed their future to the Windows Universal App platform. If developers aren't all in on a platform then that platform will never see the applications that propel it to a leadership position.

Post reply on HN