Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

theverge.com

221–230 of 277 posts

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#221
post #185

Anyone here work at Microsoft that can explain how anyone at the company thought this was a good idea? Seriously. I'm genuinely confused. MS never had the best UI (hello MS Word toolbars) but those happened over time through attrition and added features. This is one of many intentional user-hostile experiences.

I used to work at Microsoft, so I can field this one: The answer is that they want to gather data about how to improve OneDrive so people continue to use it. The PM who owns OneDrive adoption probably has to talk to a slide in a regular status meeting, and someone up the chain keeps asking pointed questions about why the curve is less than exponential. The fact that they disabled the button until you pick an answer i…

Are all proprietory software doomed to chase this kind of growth at all costs?

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#222
post #198

The onedrive integration is one of the most annoying things about windows for me right now. Not just the constant nagging, nor the "Adverts" pasted over my computer, but one day I woke up and something had decided to move all my documents to a new "onedrive" folder, despite never signing up for anything. (Or at least "asked me" in some super easy to miss clickthrough) This naturally broke a stack of apps and scripts,…

Another thing that's bugged me is in office the default location to save a file seems to be on the cloud. Most of the time I have to specifically mention that I want to save it in my PC and then choose the location

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#223

Anyone here work at Microsoft that can explain how anyone at the company thought this was a good idea? Seriously. I'm genuinely confused. MS never had the best UI (hello MS Word toolbars) but those happened over time through attrition and added features. This is one of many intentional user-hostile experiences.

I don't work at Microsoft (anymore) and never worked on this project, but I can pretty confidently say it went like this... Some exec: "Why are people quitting OneDrive?" Some PM: "I don't know." Some exec: "We should do an exit poll." ...time passes Some exec: "Why are people quittin OneDrive?" Some PM: "Those that answer say ____, but a lot of people don't answer the exit poll." Some exec: "We should force them to…

/me rolls dice to select an answer

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried shutup10?

I prefer chris titus's windows script, automates the whole process.

I would not recommend that script. On the default settings it messes with quite a few group policies which for example ends up preventing Visual Studio from installing dependencies. (i.e. InstallDefault, which prevents webview2 from being installed)

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#225
Why is OneDrive a closable thing? Shouldn't it just run behind the scenes (assuming the user has opted-in)? iCloud mostly works like this - once you sign in and tell the system to sync files, it just works. There's no visible app to start or stop.

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#226
post #185

Anyone here work at Microsoft that can explain how anyone at the company thought this was a good idea? Seriously. I'm genuinely confused. MS never had the best UI (hello MS Word toolbars) but those happened over time through attrition and added features. This is one of many intentional user-hostile experiences.

I used to work at Microsoft, so I can field this one: The answer is that they want to gather data about how to improve OneDrive so people continue to use it. The PM who owns OneDrive adoption probably has to talk to a slide in a regular status meeting, and someone up the chain keeps asking pointed questions about why the curve is less than exponential. The fact that they disabled the button until you pick an answer i…

Your sarcasm is too subtle for some people here. I hope.

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proton works well and you can add non steam games to steam

To clarify: I want to be able use GOG Galaxy for game syncing and convenience. That does not work well in my experience with Proton.

I wish GOG galaxy worked on linux, though I do not miss their library experience - it is really poor to use on a large collection

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#228
post #198

The onedrive integration is one of the most annoying things about windows for me right now. Not just the constant nagging, nor the "Adverts" pasted over my computer, but one day I woke up and something had decided to move all my documents to a new "onedrive" folder, despite never signing up for anything. (Or at least "asked me" in some super easy to miss clickthrough) This naturally broke a stack of apps and scripts,…

Breaking users' models of how a system works seems to be the playbook almost every software product these days. I hate it.

Software developers / designers do not respect or value users' muscle memory they spent half a lifetime developing at all. Even in products which ostensibly do want their users to develop expertise without being advertisement driven, such as Excel, Powerpoint or Word. Imagine if cars worked the same way: Every time you bought a new car, the steering wheel, pedals and so on are shuffled around because "users learn to drive 0.01% faster according to a AB-tests" or whatever. Fuck everyone who already got their license I guess.

Re: Microsoft won't let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself

#229
post #198

The onedrive integration is one of the most annoying things about windows for me right now. Not just the constant nagging, nor the "Adverts" pasted over my computer, but one day I woke up and something had decided to move all my documents to a new "onedrive" folder, despite never signing up for anything. (Or at least "asked me" in some super easy to miss clickthrough) This naturally broke a stack of apps and scripts,…

> This naturally broke a stack of apps and scripts,and my expectations.

A great example of why you should be using environment variables and the proper system API calls to determine path locations, not hard coding them. But never let an opportunity to blame Microsoft for poor application code go to waste.

Sounds like your expectations are a bit low.

Post reply on HN