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

Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 800 posts

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#61

Post by nickjj »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available.

2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%.

I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#62

Post by bavell »

ddevault wrote: post #33

Use an operating system which respects you as the owner of your computer, not as a commodity to be exploited.

Completely agree. As a Linux power user I get a sort of smug satisfaction reading about problems like these. That said, I do wish others had more choices than a convenient OOTB experience that exploits users and a respectful experience that they must invest large chunks of time and effort into setting up.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#63

Post by mastazi »

This is incredibly bad.

In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate.

In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-1903-microsoft-deta...

Now, MS is trying to force upon customers this cloud login garbage, which is obviously not acceptable if you are privacy conscious.

I build my own PCs and have spent hundreds of dollars in Windows 10 retail licenses, I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product.

I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own.

(Edit: replaced Amp link with real link, sorry I didn’t realise it was Amp)

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#66

Post by behnamoh »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #42

Microsoft is clearly taking moves that enable "PC as a service". I imagine the end game is something like you pay Microsoft so much a month on a subscription, receive hardware that is preconfigured with and tied to your Microsoft account details or your company's Azure AD configuration and locked down with InTune, unhackable with properly implemented Class 3+ UEFI and Secure Boot, etc. You then purchase additional so…

Microsoft would get involved in Trust issues if they were approaching a monopoly in the PC world. However, one can't rely on law to stop a huge corporation like Microsoft dominating the whole PC world.

I wonder how Apple would respond to this move by MS, since Apple is also shifting towards services. Maybe they will let people install macOS on their own machines (which pass certain requirements)? Will they remove apps made by MS from Appstore? And what will Google's reaction be to all this? Are they going to advertise Chrome books as cheaper alternatives to MS Windows? Or will they remove MS apps from Google Play as well?

Interesting, yet dark, times indeed.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#67

Post by tenebrisalietum »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #46
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #42

Microsoft is clearly taking moves that enable "PC as a service". I imagine the end game is something like you pay Microsoft so much a month on a subscription, receive hardware that is preconfigured with and tied to your Microsoft account details or your company's Azure AD configuration and locked down with InTune, unhackable with properly implemented Class 3+ UEFI and Secure Boot, etc. You then purchase additional so…

To the end user, what makes this model preferable to buying the operating system software? For some businesses higher up the stack, it makes sense-- e.g., people spend $X per month on the Adobe Suite, and people tend to enjoy that.

I really think if you explained this properly to most end users they will still want something like what Microsoft is moving toward. Let Microsoft worry about it, is what they'll say. Non-tech people don't want to buy and upgrade operating systems. They see the operating system as part of the device.

I'd like to say selling operating systems to non-technical people doesn't work, but I'm not sure it's ever really been tried. The bulk of Microsoft's OS sales have never been to end users, but to OEMs and companies on Software Assurance.

Now technical people are certainly involved where an IT department builds systems for companies, but I think Microsoft wants to eliminate that too.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#68

Post by derrikcurran »

decafbad wrote: post #43

If I use my live.com account, Windows sets system username automatically with first five letters of my first name. Then I see this stupid choice every time I open Windows console.

Yeah, I've always found that behavior really annoying. And it's basically impossible to fix it after the fact without making a separate account. The trick, if you know it before hand, is to make a local account (I guess you need to be offline for that now) and then link it later.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#69

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

nickjj wrote: post #61
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available. 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. I happen to have a few tech courses on programming a…

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#70

Post by shawnz »

mentos wrote: post #2

“They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet. Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.”

That's the same behaviour which has been the case for some time, right? Not that I'm particularly happy about it or anything.
Post reply on HN