MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by garbagecoder » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

seabrookmx wrote: post #495

garbagecoder wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate Microsoft as much as your average Gen X tech nerd, but C# is good. I don't care what inspired them to do it.

C# is great. Also VS Code.. how many Microsoft haters on HN daily drive it? I'd have to assume quite a few! The Remote SSH extension has been a game changer for how I do development.

I like VSCode too. I use it for Clojure, Python, and C#, which I am working in this year and haven't for a very, very long time. I was pleasantly surprised at the progress it has made.

Ironically compared to Windows, MS has been willing to kill backward compatibility more to improve .NET to make it more cross-platform, something that must come from a very different part of the company, probably the one that got the "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" mandate.

I make no apologies for their history, but I like these tools and I like them much better than Java, which also has its place. (This isn't a throwaway comment, notice I said I use Clojure, it's my favorite, which runs on the JVM.)

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

#502

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

WhipeeDip wrote: post #488

whimsicalism wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true for Maps and most critically Voice Assistants? How do I get Siri to navigate using Google Maps? How do I replace Siri with a different voice assistant? You can't for either of those questions. Nevermind that changing the browser doesn't actually change jack because Apple doesn't allow competition in the browser engine space. All in all, it is just hard for me to take seriously an opinion saying that Appl…

You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps". However, clicking an address in a message and being told to install Apple Maps is super aggravating and I'm not sure if there's a way around that...

> You can actually ask Siri to navigate with Google Maps by appending "using Google Maps" to a request. So for example, "navigate home using Google Maps".

Yeah, and its easy to open the link from Outlook and Teams in Chrome - just copy the link & paste into the chrome URL bar.

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

#503

Post by jacquesm » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

jarym wrote: post #368

jacquesm wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at 'they work'. They don't. To the point that I'm boycotting Teams, any customers that force us to use Team can take a hike, I'm not going to spend the first half hour (or more) of every meeting with a new set of people to get them all organized and solve a myriad of audio/video/networking issues. Teams is the biggest pile of junk MS ever released. And don't get me started on the linux client.

You're wrong, there are bigger piles of junk that Microsoft has released.

Possible, but none that I have been repeatedly exposed to. I axed Microsoft out of my life when they started their anti linux crusade and I haven't looked back but people keep pushing Teams on others.

The whole interop situation around video conferencing is ridiculous, there ought to be a common protocol and a variety of clients around this protocol, instead we have this utterly dysfunctional situation where there are five different walled gardens, each of which has their own set of problems and compatibility issues.

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

#504

Post by giobox » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

ayewo wrote: post #337

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And VSCode. One thing all three have in common is that they are all FREE to use--they don't make Microsoft any money directly . And, for the segment of the developer tools market that wrangles C# code, if VSCode gets too good , it becomes a threat to a cash cow: Visual Studio. Start here: https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/5276#is...

The relationship between VSCode and commercial versions of Visual Studio is the worst part of .net, especially the omnisharp debacle.

Given much of the key feature set of visual studio is now in VSCode for free for .Net development, I wonder what future holds for Visual Studio. My assumption is that Microsoft will eventually stop making commercial IDEs and just give the tooling away, as it all helps drive Azure/cloud compute sales.

VSCode runs in a browser and can now be launched straight from a github repo page - I don't think you need a crystal ball to see the way things are going. Imagine onboarding someone with zero dependencies to install on their development machine - just pop a browser and get to work.

> https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2021/08/31/github-...

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

#505

Post by tracker1 » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

garbagecoder wrote: post #501

seabrookmx wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# is great. Also VS Code.. how many Microsoft haters on HN daily drive it? I'd have to assume quite a few! The Remote SSH extension has been a game changer for how I do development.

I like VSCode too. I use it for Clojure, Python, and C#, which I am working in this year and haven't for a very, very long time. I was pleasantly surprised at the progress it has made. Ironically compared to Windows, MS has been willing to kill backward compatibility more to improve .NET to make it more cross-platform, something that must come from a very different part of the company, probably the one that got the "…

VS Code is pretty great, and I agree the remote dev extensions (ssh) are hands down the best feature added. I also like that it had a directory tree and the integrated terminal early on, that's what got me hooked.

C# is nice, but the experience in VS Code is sub-par and I think it's the VS (not code) managers that are responsible for that state of being.

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

#506

Post by Andrex » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #37

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…

Microsoft is actually the one reacting here. They were effectively forced to let the web be an open field by antitrust cases; Apple and Google took advantage of that to build two walled gardens, which ended up dwarfing MS's own empire. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, MS would have gone "If this behaviour is now allowed, why should we not do it too?" This is just the result of normalizing monopolistic practic…

> They were effectively forced to let the web be an open field by antitrust cases

They won that case on appeal though, and Mozilla wasn't a factor until years after the fact.

The more accurate read of the early-00s browser wars was that MS "won" with IE (95% market share!) and then pretty much lost the stomach (or focus/budget/etc.) to advance the web in any way.

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

#507

Post by lbwtaylor » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #268

nickjj wrote: 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.

>Excel [is] damn near unusable on anything complicated

There are billion dollar financial decisions with the most sophisticated financial models being made (rightly or wrongly) using Excel.

I'm sure you have had a bad experience, but saying excel can't handle complex things is not reality.

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

#508

Post by Eisenstein » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #244

capableweb wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They did a wonderful job with C# and .NET Core. Ah yes, the ecosystems where features such as hot reloading would only be in paid offers unless the ecosystem didn't start to shout at them when their plans changed from "of course it's free" to "sorry, paid customers only". > But you need to remember your org charts; the Edge and Windows 11 decision-makers are not the same people with the same incentives. I couldn't…

We often look at companies as a single monolith but that isn't conductive to productive discussions. OP is giving a different perspective, a more detailed and granular one. One interest counterpoint would be that the problematic behavior is encouraged by the CEO, then the different units wouldn't matter much (well, unless they have a tendency to go rogue). Anyway, all idle speculation on my part but I welcome the per…

A friendly nitpick: the word 'conductive' is a physics term. The term which means "tending to promote or assist" is 'conducive' with no 't', pronounced 'cundoosiv'.

> Something conducive "leads to" a desirable result. A cozy living room may be conducive to relaxed conversation, just as a boardroom may be conducive to more intense discussions. Particular tax policies are often conducive to savings and investment, whereas others are conducive to consumer spending. Notice that conducive is almost always followed by to.

* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conducive

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

#509

Post by coffeeling » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #348

bitcharmer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when good engineering principles get replaced by greedy MBAs and chasing shareholder value

Well, it's more likely that it's because the greedy MBAs are unable to chase shareholder value, so they just pushed down the task into fiefdom leaders. I mean, it's Edge that they are work so hard to push. What do they actually gain from doing that? It's stupid all the way down.

Bing adoption. Microsoft wants to get a bigger piece of the ad pie, and they hired a former Yandex exec to run it if I'm not mistaken.

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

#510

Post by Andrex » Wed, May 03, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

zyx321 wrote: post #226

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.

People seem to have forgotten how Chrome captured the desktop market to begin with. For many many years it was effectively almost impossible to download freeware without accidentally installing Chrome. Sites like download.com and even sourceforge wrapped everything in custom installers that would automatically include free trial of an antivirus, maybe some adware, and Google Chrome, unless you were aware and clicked…

Attributing Chrome's popularity to it being included in download.com bundles doesn't sound accurate at all. If anything, the "Download Chrome!" link on Google.com yielded far far more installations.

Chrome didn't even really catch on until 1-2 years after release when they finally added extensions and themes around 2010.

People liked Chrome because it really was a quantum leap over Firefox, which itself was a quantum leap over IE at the time. When Chrome was released and Google explained their tech decisions, it was a sea change. Everything they said in their illustrated comic about Chrome[1] made perfect sense and accurately predicted where web apps were moving to.

Google saw where the ball was going and designed Chrome accordingly. Isolated tab processes, seamless auto-updates, and a prioritization on JS performance were great bets that were copied by everyone else.

1. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html