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MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

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Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#261
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an expected normalization of html email I have two Macs running Microsoft Outlook. One is running a version several years behind the current one. The old machine can send e-mail as plain text. The one running the current Microsoft Outlook doesn't have that option, or a way to enable it that I've been able to find.

I recently changed to macOS, and macOS Outlook is a bit of a puzzle. On one hand an admission that the web app isn't good enough, on the other... It's not quite a proper port of the windows version? Thankfully i write mostly code and documentation - so far i don't have to care that 2023 Outlook is worse than 2003 Pine. On the other hand there's a shared calendar.

It's not quite a proper port of the windows version?

I don't think it's supposed to be.

At a big tech conference about ten years ago, a Microsoft exec said that new Office features are tried out on Macs before getting ported to Windows.

I don't know if that's still the strategy today, but it was around 2011.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could literally destroy Microsoft if they started to hugely degrade the experience of Microsoft products on iOS and Android with dark patterns a la Microsoft. But they don't. I disagree here. Despite me using firefox on my android device and it being set to my default browser, many apps will still open in chrome (usually google apps - maps, gmail, etc) despite me explicitly asking it _not_ to do that. It's als…

Not OP and unsure what happened to that link, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35329135

Thanks, I botched pasting it.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#263

I have no skin in the game, but even I am starting to think the obvious thing here: Apple and Google own the entire mobile OS market. They could literally destroy Microsoft if they started to hugely degrade the experience of Microsoft products on iOS and Android with dark patterns a la Microsoft. But they don't. So far they were competing by making their own products better. Microsoft needs to think hard how hostile…

Microsoft make a ton of products that are still great to use. Microsoft Flight Sim? No jokes, it's just good fun from what I hear. Their Visual Whatever IDEs? They built that by creating great things like the LSP. And they aren't the only ones engaged in exploiting these kind of walled garden incentive mechanism. I mentioned before, it feels like we're being herded to Mastodon with the Twitter drama. This feels like…

Sorry, just to add: Those new OSes and new languages and the entire growing ecosystem of computer engineering may be beautiful. And this statement can be viewed as throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

But it's important recognizing the mechanisms and patterns. And recognizing that managing it differently may lead to different outcomes afterwards.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft needs to think hard how hostile they want to be to its competitors and users, because two people can play this game. I don't get Microsoft, have they no pride or desire to become a great company? Have they just become content to be an old corporate software house who only manages to keep users through dark patterns and anti-competitive behaviour because they have given up on making products which people e…

> You're talking about this like Microsoft ever did anything differently than what you wrote? Since when have they focused 100% on just building great products and competing fairly? They did a wonderful job with C# and .NET Core. But you need to remember your org charts; the Edge and Windows 11 decision-makers are not the same people with the same incentives.

> They did a wonderful job with C# and .NET Core.

You mean the products Microsoft created when it became apparent they were losing the lawsuit about their embrace, extend extinguish tactics with J++ and their custom Java implementation. And also had to cough up billions of dollars in a settlement with Sun [1].

[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2667124/update--sun--micro...

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have they just become Were they ever different tho? I know a lot of people believed the 'MS loves open source' and similar stuff but it always felt like bait to me. They still tried to force trough their shitty open document format, still regularly pull layers of small anticompetitive stuff. Small changes that aren't outrageous enough on their own to cause a reaction or throw out the trust they try to create but eno…

> Were they ever different tho? According to many people on HN, they changed completely, and they have nothing to do with the old epoch of Ballmer and Gates. Yet, I was never convinced by the "but they embrace open source now" argument: * their financing of SCO in the "Linux is illegal" ridiculous attempt to discredit their competition that took over a decade * the contempt for their users in various ways, from gray…

> According to many people on HN, they changed completely, and they have nothing to do with the old epoch of Ballmer and Gates.

Yeah right. Why is there spam on my windows 10 start menu?

> Instead, in 2023 you have to still install Windows first to avoid problems.

You do? Got a new Linux desktop. I'll eventually put Windows on it. I was planning on installing it on a separate SSD just in case. Will that destroy my Linux install? Should I unscrew and remove the Linux SSD to install Windows?

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#267
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, my company is just 35 people and I'm head of all things tech (CTO) and even I can't get Microsoft out of the company. It works "good enough" and change is really hard for many people.

Same in a 7 person company. Got voted down in favor of Teams because the "learning curve" of anything else wasn't worth their time. This despite the confusing and ridiculous UX of Teams.

> because the "learning curve" of anything else wasn't worth their time

As someone on the other side of the divide who hates these products, this is accurate. A non-standard product is a non-starter in most fields unless it has a killer advantage.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#268
post #171

Interesting timing. 2 days ago a place I'm at switched us from Google mail + calendar + meet to Microsoft outlook + calendar + teams. I almost can't believe at how good Google's suite of tools are compared to Microsoft. I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago. Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. You have to explicitly click the mark as read button. It also…

The web experience of Word, Power Point and Excel, are appalling. Laggy, resource hogs. Excel & Power Point are damn near unusable on anything complicated.

Re: MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is telemetry VSCode telemetry can be fully disabled. > and non-reproducible builds Who cares? Most users don’t need a reproducible build of software they want to use, they need working software. > and whatever other mistreatment of them as useds. Calling people “useds” isn’t going to help your case.

> VSCode telemetry can be fully disabled. Well, how do you know that? How do you verify, that all telemetry is really turned off, without being able to reproduce the build? How many people truly turn it off after install? How do you know whether there are any other unwanted parts in the software you just installed? What about the next update? Do you want to run a package sniffer after each update, over the course of…

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