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Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

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Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how we get them to accept a "No" when they know they can make more money by relentlessly badgering the users until they say "Yes".

Not paying them, perhaps? : / Not buying their products.

I highly doubt people buying a Windows 11 license with their own money is even 0.1% of the installed base.

If they had hundreds of millions of people, or OEMs, sending them $150 USD per license, it would be unlikely for them to put in ads. As in windows 7.

But when it's almost freely given away...

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, well beyond nagware at this point (with default settings).

I vaguely remember a time when browsers would install all kind of crappy add-ons, or any other software installer for that matter. Now we reached a point were the OS does it...

Did the browser do that install, or did the user install something on their own that came with additional software? the infamous purple gorilla or whatever it was that you thought you were installing one thing, but a whole other thing was installed at the same time. sourceforge's dark UI of downloading software, but also downloading/installing a whole other program hidden behind a vaguely worded auto-selected checkbox. i just don't remember being able to blame the browser for this.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree that ethics are ultimately irrelevant. Regardless, though, I think you're confusing being "manipulative" with being "opinionated". I'm 100% being opinionated. I'm not being manipulative, though, because I am not trying to make anyone do anything -- let alone trying to do it through unwarranted emotional appeals.

[flagged]

Again, in order to be manipulative, I would have had to been intending to alter what someone else does. I had no such intent.

What I did was express my opinion. You seem to be arguing that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.

I'm not sure what I've said that made you so angry. The opinion I expressed was "unethical behavior is unethical regardless of who does it", which I would not have expected to be controversial.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#235

First it was Apple who fucked up the butterfly keyboard and out of spite I just said "no thanks" and bought a HP laptop with a beefy GPU instead. Never looked back, until now. I'm using Windows on the said laptop and just in the last couple of months they have started adding more and more "interactive" horseshit that is simply meant to peddle their Edge browser and Bing search engine. I mean, did you know that Micros…

I just bought a nice Asus Zenbook and first I did as soon as I received it was installing pop os. I keep my old windows notebook near by in case I need something I can't do in the Linux machine, but its use is more and more infrequent.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree that ethics are ultimately irrelevant. Regardless, though, I think you're confusing being "manipulative" with being "opinionated". I'm 100% being opinionated. I'm not being manipulative, though, because I am not trying to make anyone do anything -- let alone trying to do it through unwarranted emotional appeals.

[flagged]

This is getting very meta.

I profoundly resent this behaviour from the BBC app and from the people who built it. I would resent it from any party. It’s no problem to clarify that.

But to the “bad guy”. IMHO behaviour is different from identity (i.e. a focus on what people do and the effect it has, not who they are).

If the premise of your organisation is existentially predicated on scummy behaviour then that does implicate identity and maybe you are the cartoon villain “bad guy”. The developers aren’t bad guys, nor are the BBC. But they are both doing (marginally) harmful things.

But “bad guy” is also common shorthand for “guy who exhibits bad behaviour”. For some that distinction might even be splitting hairs.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So depressing because Explorer from the 2k/XP era was best in class and about as complete and discoverable as a shell ever got.

XP was the best OS and I miss it. You had to switch it to use the classic 95/97/2000 skin, of course :) I haven't used Windows since.

What made you dislike Windows 7?

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up. Own and iPhone and you are reminded quite often of the benefits of an iCloud subscription. Try setting up an iPhone w/o an apple account for that matter, or using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account. Not to mention, users expect their files to be with them everywhere. IMHO Microsoft should make OneDrive free with some obscen…

> using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account. This is still very doable (or, it was when I got a new phone a couple of years ago). It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.

> It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.

And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.

The photo app will also try to sell you a premium subscription to store your photos online.

The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.

Microsoft noticed that people liked having their photos automatically backed up and being able to share them with friends and family. Same goes for documents, being able to push a "share" button on a family finance planning Excel sheet is a lot easier than emailing it around.

There is a lot of crap in the start menu that needs to be removed, and the constant attempts to change the default browser to Edge needs to stop, but "please backup your documents so you don't get all angry at us when your HD dies" is not what I'd call an intrusive ad.

Re: Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what the phrase "the customer is always right" originally meant. It means you can do all the market research, development, testing, polling, and seeding to sell a product. But the ultimate decider of whether the product is "good" is whether or not the people buy it. If your sales plan flops don't say "it's not the product's fault, I just need to do a better job marketing it." No, the product is wrong, the custom…

I think the original saying was longer, and something along the lines of, "the customer is always right when it comes to taste".

No, that's a more recent thing.
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