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Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#641

Post by bayindirh »

Talking about wonderful backwards compatibility, and then talking inconsistent UI design is kinda ironic though. Because all these older themed windows are using the exact feature you told you love in the opening paragraphs of the piece: "Backwards compatibility".

So, why Microsoft shouldn't use the exact feature they have built so painstakingly? Also, forcing these older UI toolkits to render the same as the latest iteration would break many many things.

We're talking about an OS which includes almost complete copies of its older versions and some patched installations of InstallShield to begin with.

I have no words for ads though. This is really very bad.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#642

Post by dagw »

fsflover wrote: post #522
dimgl wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have the experience as OP. Every single game I play on Linux has random hitches for seconds at a time.

Sounds like a typical problem with an Nvidia GPU.

I've found that AMD APUs are by far the worst supported GPUs on Linux. Nvidia gives me far less problems.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#644

Post by Nextgrid »

Silhouette wrote: post #626
hulitu wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) do not care about one payment of a couple of milions dollars.

Do you understand that the potential fines for violations under some of the recent laws (notably the GDPR) have a few extra zeroes on that? The limiting factor at the moment seems to be a lack of resources for the regulators that are responsible for enforcing privacy rules. Obviously a big tech firm facing a fine that could run to hundreds of millions is like to exhaust their legal avenues for challenging it before h…

> Do you understand that the potential fines for violations under some of the recent laws (notably the GDPR) have a few extra zeroes on that?

That's been the case for 4 years now, none of these fines have occurred. The total amount of fines across all companies over those 4 years is barely above 1Bn.

> The limiting factor at the moment seems to be a lack of resources for the regulators that are responsible for enforcing privacy rules

Not just resources but also willingness. I have the feeling that nobody actually wants to enforce this and campaigning for doing so is a politically-risky move, as not only does your campaign rely on the same companies that would be fined, but those companies now control the majority of humanity's social fabric and can trivially restrict even organic sharing of information/links about your campaign.

Worse: in the UK, there's been news about actually weakening the GDPR, based on the Culture Secretary being stupid (or having financial incentives for doing so) and actually believing the tech industry's vilification of the GDPR. Hint: if an industry making a huge chunk of its profit based on non-consensual data collection complains about data protection laws, it means the laws are actually working as designed. Most likely, this insanity will also go ahead, if it didn't already.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#645

Post by makeitdouble »

Gigachad wrote: post #354
ryandrake wrote: post #297

There's been a big shift in the whole software industry from "enable what the user wants to do" over to "we want the user to do this". Back in the '90s, we would go out, talk to customers, find out their needs, gather requirements, and write software that enables them to do what they want to do. Now, in a lot of software companies, it's the opposite. Product leadership starts with "What do we want users to do?" and t…

The skype thing kinda makes sense. People want software which just works without configuration. When you sign in to an iphone or macbook, it immediately sets up facetime which is always active waiting for a call in the background. No one complains because this is expected and it has always happened. But then Microsoft wants to give their users the same conveniance as Apple users get with their "just works" setup and…

> When you sign in to an iphone or macbook, it immediately sets up facetime which is always active waiting for a call in the background. No one complains because this is expected and it has always happened.

People actually complain. We’re past the point where everyone only has one set of devices, a single apple ID, and everything is simple.

You might not want your iPad to receive the “family” account Facetime. You might not want your second phone to register for iMessage. You might want these services from an ID different from the device’s main account.

There’s optout ways out for all these services, but following the 80/20 rule, I think there is a “20” part with circumstances that make the blanket “turn it all on” grating and tedious to get rid of.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#647

Post by hackerfromthefu »

raxxorrax wrote: post #561
apetresc wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not when you're working on proprietary/confidential/classified information. Why not? The WASM approach the OP is suggesting works entirely locally, the web is simply pushing client code to your browser.

You lose most of the advantages of running a software in your browser though.

Can you explain what you're thinking?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#648

Post by Loughla »

astrea wrote: post #318
fmakunbound wrote: post #197

What you’re seeing there in Windows is a two-dimensional, stylized representation of the bloody turf battles between business units within Microsoft. Most recently adtech has entered the battle and seem to be really killing it.

This is the only comment that needs to be on this post. Microsoft has been designing-by-committee Windows much to the chagrin of their users for years. I don't know the last time I was truly excited for a release.

>I don't know the last time I was truly excited for a release.

Honestly, and I know it's a joke because of the very nerd-tastic dancing, but it was for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAkuJXGldrM

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#649

Post by tokamak-teapot »

hef19898 wrote: post #635
dustinmoris wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is CREEPY AF and very very scary. This is an instant reason to never use Windows because I'd be so scared that I'd leak personal/private data to other people's computers. The really fucking scary thing is that even we both as power users who understand computers, the internet and how things work are even extremely vulnerable to those hostile dark patterns in Windows that less tech savvy family members would…

If you take info sec seriously that should be immediate reason to ban one note, IMHO. Because if you are not trying to, MS will just spill company data to your private accounts for you!

It’s not just OneNote. They are absolutely confused, as an organisation, about accounts, data privacy and data security.

I can’t, in theory, access my work’s OneDrive from my personal machines, due to a required SSO on top of Microsoft’s, and a VPN requirement. But somehow there are some of my personal files in my work’s OneDrive.

I don’t know how this happened. I can’t log into our VPN as it’s machine-locked (it checks before allowing you on) and therefore OneDrive is supposed to stop me accessing it.

I keep getting emails from Microsoft about an Azure Enterprise agreement that they have decided I have power over, along with a group of people from a random company that I’m not related to in any way. Someone did a typo and included me by accident? Not likely as I have an email address that’s difficult to accidentally use via typo.

Microsoft are taking people’s responses to the group as authorised instructions as to what to do with their enterprise agreement. I’ve responded several times and said I am not related but they keep emailing about it. I know a lot about that company’s people, structure and agreements with Microsoft now!

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#650

Post by hutzlibu »

cyxxon wrote: post #538
DrBazza wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually cares. I don't know if it started with Ballmer, but they do care, but it is just about sales, and making money. It's not as if selling and making money is antithetical to making good software either. It's always the same in the IT industry. The "non technical" managers are invariably higher in the org chart than developers and they have no concept of wh…

Or they do have an idea what the users want, but it is still bad... at my job, the non-technical managers bought the SAP marketing koolaid, promised our internal users the cool new stuff they were going to get with the new software, and we in the IT just want to scream and say, no, you can't get that, that's not supported, or will take a year to build because we would have to revamp almost everything ourselves... and…

Hah, you cannot adopt SAP to your needs, it's the other way around, you have to adopt to them. If that matches your use case, allright, but otherwise forget about it.
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