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

111–120 of 389 posts

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#111

Post by shp0ngle »

jorvi wrote: post #95
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.

> Enterprise Microsoft products are mostly really great.

I see you haven’t actually used Azure Devops. (Their “enterprise github”, sort of.)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#112

Post by hombre_fatal »

skneko wrote: post #90
mikub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have the non-Pro edition (Home?) and I have the setting. I think this is a US-vs-Europe thing?

There are various unexpected limitations a given Windows experience can have.

Recently someone’s laptop broke while visiting the Mexican beach I was living so they bought a laptop from the local shop. The Windows install was in Spanish and the language options offered no other language to choose from. All of the tutorials online showed menu options that weren’t there. I tried helping them change it to English.

Apparently, for some reason, Microsoft really does offer single language Windows—I found after some digging.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#113

Post by shp0ngle »

pluc wrote: post #31

The only reason to use Edge is because your corporate policy forces you to. There is no other reason whatsoever. If you must, use Chrome if you'd rather send all that data to an advertising company in exchange for a familiar UI. Otherwise, use Firefox.

Vertical tabs

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#114

Post by godsfshrmn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #97
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 elect…

Yeahhhh this crap is on every computer in the hospital I'm at (minus the ones on XP of course)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#115

Post by 300bps »

tored wrote: post #39
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 recently switched from Edge to Firefox. Edge used to be great, but all "features" it has added the past year is not features I need, like sending my text input to Microsoft, showing online shopping suggestions, discover features, sidebar apps and what not. Edge also has a annoying bug in combination with AMD graphics card where the bottom of the screen flickers when watching certain video content in Edge, like Netf…

I recently switched from Edge to Firefox

Right there with you. Somewhere in my comment history here six years ago was my suggestion for Microsoft to give up on Internet Explorer and create their own fork of Chromium.

They could’ve gotten massive adoption if they did it right. Instead I had to turn off their useless auto-coupon feature, be ever vigilant to keep them from switching my search provider to Bing, frequently turn off the distracting new tab content, etc.

Switched to Firefox and planning to dual-boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu soon.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

everdrive wrote: post #77
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…

This is the new pattern for almost any successful free software provided by a corporation. Make it nice enough to start building a user base, and then slowly make it more terrible to find a way to extract value from it.

Cory Doctorow named it enshittification.[1]

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#118

Post by marginalia_nu »

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.

If that is how sketchy the data they are using to make decisions is, that would explain a lot about their decisions.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#119

Post by JohnFen »

mrweasel wrote: post #53
bell-cot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any company of Microsoft's age & size, "doesn't need" is completely orthogonal to "corporate executive greed". You probably should "rightsize" your level of respect for MS.

> You probably should "rightsize" your level of respect for MS Maybe it would be better if Microsoft tried to live up to the standard and ideal that people like me expects from a company in their position. Realistically you're right, it would be easier for me to adjust my expectations, but I won't because I see no evidence that I'm not morally right.

That would be better, yes, but the reality is that's not something you can control, and it's very unlikely to happen.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#120

Post by recfab »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #97
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 elect…

GP specified "internal revolt", i.e. Microsoft employees. The composition of the customer base is a non-sequitur here.
Post reply on HN