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

The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

thomask.sdf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 389 posts

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#91

Post by _fat_santa »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

> Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature.

IMO this is one of the great tragedies with MS Edge. The UX is so much better than standard chromium but because of all the other crap that MS puts into it, I just can't use it. If MS open sourced Edge and someone created an "UnMicrosofted Edge", I would use that in a heartbeat.

Currently the only place I use it is on my work laptop where I don't have any personal info and just generally don't give a crap about privacy since I'm inside my company intranet, bitbucket or jira all day. It's honestly really great for that sort of thing because the vertical tabs let you have 50+ tabs open and still read what they are, but there's just no way I would use it for anything personal or outside of work.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#93

Post by Nextgrid »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #36
justinclift wrote: post #21

Did you know that out-of-the-box, Edge will transmit the content of your text boxes on web pages to the Microsoft Editor service for the purpose of grammatical suggestions? I have no idea how this concept got past legal but hey, it’s on by default now. Holy shit. :( At what point are some of the major government legal departments actually going to step up and sort this shit out? It is so , so, so, so, so far past ove…

Chrome does the same thing for textboxes if you use enhanced spell checking. >Enhanced spell check Uses the same spell checker that’s used in Google search. Text you type in the browser is sent to Google.

Is there an actual example of what these "enhanced" spell-checkers provide over basic ones that run locally? To me it seems like spell checking is a problem that Word from over a decade ago solved well enough (and ran fine on that era's hardware).

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#94

Post by Nextgrid »

mihaic wrote: post #82

As a Windows user since version 3.1, ever since Windows 11 I've been thinking of migrating to KDE+Ubuntu. It's sad that Microsoft clearly has talented developers, but their product people seem to be like an Apple that is openly hostile.

The difference is that Apple, at least until Catalina/Big Sur/Ventura, had good taste.

They force you into their workflows or design conventions, but they were generally good or at least bearable.

Whatever good taste Microsoft had, it evaporated shortly after the release of Windows 7.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#95

Post by jorvi »

elboru wrote: post #54

Microsoft feels like two totally different companies. One company can produce amazing concepts and products. But then, the other company comes and adds nasty “features” on top to ruin everything.

That’s because it is. There’s Consumer Microsoft and Enterprise Microsoft. Enterprise Microsoft products are mostly really great. Anything that’s tied to the consumer side can’t make its returns on fat B2B contracts, so they are forced to extract value otherwise.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#96

Post by doubled112 »

fhd2 wrote: post #88
everdrive wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you raise a very important point. What if it's economically better for you to let men have sex with your wife for money? If you _don't_ do this, you're just sitting on untapped value.

Not a fan of the analogy, I like to think that would be her own decision, not her partner's. Anyway, companies are capitalist entities, so all that ultimately matters for them is to make more money. The majority of decisions happen along the axis of short term revenue vs long term revenue (e.g. not ruining your brand, not getting fined etc). In an environment of insecurity and fear, I've seen companies focus more on…

She has the choice to get a divorce just like I have the choice to not use Windows.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#97

Post by pavel_lishin »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

> I don’t understand why MS doesn’t get some sort of internal revolt.

From whom? They've got two customer bases:

- corporate clients, who get this stuff removed, either as part of the purchase or by their various sysadmins who get paid to secure the purchased laptops

- personal clients, who purchase desktops and laptops pre-loaded with Windows, and could no more opt out of using it than I could opt out of using electricity in my house.

edit: I don't read good, nevermind.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#98

Post by favaq »

justinclift wrote: post #21

Did you know that out-of-the-box, Edge will transmit the content of your text boxes on web pages to the Microsoft Editor service for the purpose of grammatical suggestions? I have no idea how this concept got past legal but hey, it’s on by default now. Holy shit. :( At what point are some of the major government legal departments actually going to step up and sort this shit out? It is so , so, so, so, so far past ove…

It helps to read TOS/EULA/etc. If you agree to something then you shouldn't be complaining about it.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#99

Post by NikolaNovak »

skrebbel wrote: post #22
mikub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Win11 Pro and it really is just those three clicks.

I’m not going to pay MS even more just to get a version that has a “please disable this one specific bit of crap” toggle. This has got to be the worst upsell ever. It’s like you book a hotel room and the TV is on Fox News and you can’t turn the TV off. You ask around but everybody says that they can turn it off just fine, must be you. Turns out that they’re all in the executive suite and they also have Fox News on th…

Your analogy is good but I disagree with your principle.

Companies need to make money (if you don't accept this premise, fair rough but we probably have no further meaningful discussion).

I'm OK if they offer me options. Here's a free / cheap option that's ad supported, here's a premium option that has no ads.

This is a good choice! It's a good choice for all! It's when we don't have that choice that things suck! And if we want free things with no ads, that option exists too! :-)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#100

Post by alpaca128 »

imajoredinecon wrote: post #87
marginalia_nu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they're speaking about switching to a chromebook or a mac. How is your device ID going to help with that?

You estimate how many people use computers and how many people use computers you make. When you subtract the two, you get how many people use computers that your competitors make. Not every “internal metric” is something you can measure directly.

Most active Linux PCs were made by Windows PC manufacturers.
Post reply on HN