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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

#351

Post by scrollaway »

kps wrote: post #292
dathinab wrote: post #178

So anyone still thinking MS is now all good and it's not an issue that it own github + vscode + a endless list of other things relevant for especially smaller development companies? Microsoft will do whats best for them. Temporary this includes embrace open source to some degree and being reasonable nice to Linux. For example WSL can help with trying out Linux and help cross platform devs on Windows to develop for Li…

I suspect VSCode is a baited hook. Get enough developers dependent on it, then degrade it on Linux, and offer WSL as close enough to have people switch their OS rather than their editor. With developers on Windows, cloud follows.

Linux desktop is such small fish to Microsoft it would be ridiculous for them to focus on it as competitor right now.

If experience gets degraded it’s because of limited testing, not malicious intent.

It’s like Oracle suddenly deciding that their greatest competitor is sqlite. The two live in different worlds.

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

#352

Post by VBprogrammer »

Anyone tried installing Chrome on Windows recently? I got at least 3 "warnings" about how I didn't need chrome when I could just use Edge. Honestly, I imagine a lot of people who are less competent with computers just assume they are doing something wrong and give up.

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

#353

Post by Spivak »

skilled wrote: post #101

The problem Microsoft is creating for itself is that with these kind of antics, they will _never_ land any developers using their browser. That's hundreds of millions of users they're spitting in the face directly. Second, them constantly being in the news about peddling the Bing search engine also doesn't help. Most people like and prefer Google (and when I say most, I mean the 95% percentile), so if they read news…

> they will _never_ land any developers using their browser

I honestly don't think they care. They get the benefit of all the work devs do to support Chrome for free and get the much more lucrative "regular user" market.

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

#355

Post by vladvasiliu »

nottorp wrote: post #299
vladvasiliu wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience the worst it does is setting itself to boot automatically. It won't mess with secureboot keys or anything. In my case, I removed the pc's default ones and installed my own and signed ms's key with mine. It works fine.

> In my experience the worst it does is setting itself to boot automatically. In UEFI? If I have the OSes on separate physical disks I'm planning to use the bios to select what boots.

There's still a "default", at least on my PC.

But yeah, using the uefi works fine to choose between windows and linux, even if you only have a single /efi partition (I use efistub for linux, not a dedicated bootloader).

If you add custom boot options, they won't be removed after a windows install, it only adds itself to the list and sets itself as the first in line. Afterwards, it doesn't seem to touch that anymore, but YMMV with "big" updates.

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

#356

Post by CharlesW »

dustedcodes wrote: post #315
CharlesW wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewers. In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps.

> In my experience, for any serious work you'll want to use the native apps. Don't you see how absurd that is in 2023? It's like me saying "Online shops are nice in a pinch, but I advise folks to think of them primarily as viewing goods. In my experience, for any serious shopping you'll want to visit the bricks and mortar shop"

> Don't you see how absurd that is in 2023?

I understand that POV, but I should temper my "serious work" statement by saying that the Office web apps are pretty great and keep getting better. However, the native desktop apps are just better.

It's hard to make a direct comparison with Google's web-app-only strategy since the Workspace apps are toys in comparison, more akin to Apple's iWork suite.

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

#357

Post by Eavolution »

toyg wrote: post #287
AraceliHarker wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put, people don't love Edge as much as they love Chrome. The browser bundled with Windows 11 is naturally Edge, but users who use Chrome install Chrome of their own volition, so forcing them to open links in Edge is extremely annoying.

As annoying as for Edge-loving people who then buy a mobile phone and are then forced to "open their links" in Safari or Chrome. But to be honest, it's mostly the other way around: people live on phones, and when they have to interact with desktops, they pick the browser that integrates with their phones in the most seamless way. Which means, inevitably, the browser picked by their mobile-OS vendor, since there is li…

Granted I haven't used Chrome in years, but I find that firefox integrates remarkably well from phone to pc. The menu of open tabs on other devices is invaluable to me (although idk if Chrome has this too)

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

#358

Post by alberth »

I think this is being wrongly frame.

This functionality is actually needed in highly regulated industries like banking or government.

Which is, you need a way to secure how your employees are accessing information.

And when everything is moving to becoming a cloud document (or document hosted on the cloud), not being able to have control over the browser in which that information is viewed with is a huge threat vector.

So I totally understand why they have to ability to launch all links with Edge, and then Edge have built in privacy controls.

So if you're an organization that need these higher level security controls, this is actually what you want.

What the article doesn't make clear is, is Microsoft actually defaulting to this to all customers.

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

#359

Post by kps »

scrollaway wrote: post #351
kps wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect VSCode is a baited hook. Get enough developers dependent on it, then degrade it on Linux, and offer WSL as close enough to have people switch their OS rather than their editor. With developers on Windows, cloud follows.

Linux desktop is such small fish to Microsoft it would be ridiculous for them to focus on it as competitor right now. If experience gets degraded it’s because of limited testing, not malicious intent. It’s like Oracle suddenly deciding that their greatest competitor is sqlite. The two live in different worlds.

It's not about developer machines, it's about servers. There are are a lot of people who want to run the same OS, and even the same processor architecture, on their development and deployment machines. (I've almost always worked in a cross-compilation world, so this doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whenever the topic of ARM or RISC-V machines comes up here, it gets a lot of attention.)

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

#360

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

dustedcodes wrote: post #6

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…

The entire crux of any discussion on Microsoft's behaviors hinges on one figure: What percentage of their Windows and Office revenues are coming from end users versus corporate sales? I mean, I think it's kind of obvious, but yet we still have arguments about why they would screw users with these sorts of decisions. It makes no sense to me. Further, (and deference to Tom Warren), but I would bet that a lot more IT admins are happy with this change than there are those who are angry.
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