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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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531–540 of 804 posts

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#531
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Consumers have the final say, our economic system fundamentally is consumer spending. (Ok, save for most recent year(s) of mag7 AI buildout. But generally that's the case for USA economy). We have to stop taking out our wallet and just accepting things like sheep. (nearly) Every one of the "scrapped" comput…

Sort of related, I think this is why big tech loves “free, ad-supported” so much. Using Google search or YouTube or ChatGPT or Fortnite doesn’t seem like an action that is “supporting a company.” When none of the money comes from your pocket, you don’t really feel like you’re making an important choice to patronize one business or another.

But the money is coming out of our pockets. The costs of the ads are added to product prices, which everyone is paying.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#532
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line. I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Until we change that, the power will always be with these kind of companies. Perhaps governments could levy punative fines in such situat…

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

Do people really have a choice though? Many people don't choose what OS they use for work, and even when one can pick, the environment we exist in is one where being less productive is often hard to afford.

Another instance where companies can have more leverage than consumers is gaming. Console exclusives are a thing because they work; not giving consumers the option to play Pokemon on anything but the Nintendo Switch drives switch sales. Microsoft is better off working with other gaming companies to ensure Windows keeps being dominant, than building an OS to gamer's preferences.

I think time has proven many times that consumers aren't always good regulators for the market. The market is best regulated by organized entities.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#534
Just a guess, with Macbook Neo releasing, M$ likely got scared of mass exodus to MacOS (the average PC user can now consider a Macbook and it likely wipes the floor with all Windows laptops out there) and decided to throw in a damage control piece.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#535
post #11

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats. But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use. Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engine…

Am I the only one who prefers Teams to the Slack and Zoom? The ability to write in the meeting chat before and after a meeting for example. That is some serious quality of life function that all others are lacking.

Well I genuinely like Teams. Being forced to work on a mix of Zoom & teams in my new work, I have found an appreciation of using M365 connected tools - Outlook,claendar, teams, sharepoint, copilot etc just work very well together for me.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#536
post #532
post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

Do people really have a choice though? Many people don't choose what OS they use for work, and even when one can pick, the environment we exist in is one where being less productive is often hard to afford. Another instance where companies can have more leverage than consumers is gaming. Console exclusives are a thing because they work; not giving consumers the option to play Pokemon on anything but the Nintendo Swit…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#537
post #5

Why are there so many "slop" animations in this article? They don't actually provide anything useful over the already explained text, and the "click to restart" is incredibly distracting.

Whenever I see stuff like that I ask myself "who is this for", like who wants to see those elements animated for no good reason?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#538
post #22
post #7

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. Especially with software where they can just go flip a switch and turn off whatever feature did cross the line but keep everything they gained by inching up to the line, which seems to inevitably result in things like the condition of windows 11. I think the only way this gets b…

> It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. this is in general how the market for pretty much everything works (sometimes 'users' are replaced by 'the regulator', but it doesn't matter too much). lesson in there is 'majority of users don't care nearly as much as you think', usually.

A single product meant for all the users will inevitably be a poor fit for most of them. We need more variety of products for the different segments of the market. Alternatively we need more knobs to tune things to user needs. One promise of AI is enabling folks to personalize product experiences, but so far it's all been surface level.

I think the desktop Linux ecosystem is an example of something healthier, but it goes too far in the other direction. There are too many options to choose from that it's hard to find the one for your needs.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#539
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about markets. It has nothing to do with capitalism. And in fact, it is usually _because_ of healthy competition that this type of enshittification happens everywhere because quality is hard to compare for the buyers and so the sellers are forced to compete on cost.

How the hell can healthy competition breed enshittification? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Take an industry with healthy competition like restaurants. You can compete in price, quality, format, service and probably a lot more. Now tell me how that competition enshittified eating at restaurants? For me, nothing stands out. If a restaurant charges nonsense fees, under-staffs to increase profits, reduce portions…

> Take an industry with healthy competition like restaurants. You can compete in price, quality, format, service and probably a lot more.

Yes, and you correctly point out: On the average restaurant visit, nothing stands out. A good restaurant only needs to provide not-terrible food and not-terrible service to be almost indistinguishable from all others. Quality of a restaurant visit is hard to measure and compare. Price is easy to measure. Thus, the rational consumer will prefer the cheaper option (and even at the same price, a restaurant with lower costs will be more profitable, thus expand more easily).

The same thing happens on Amazon and other market places: When it is difficult to compare quality, price always wins out. Some products are interchangeable with well defined specs, like a 16GB RAM stick is obviously twice as good as 8GB RAM and so it can be twice as expensive and still sell. But when I'm looking for a new light for my bicycle there are no standardized specs to compare. All the product descriptions and pictures are exaggerated. I have no reliable information to tell if the lamp that is twice as expensive is really twice as good (and from personal experience: they never are), so I'm buying the cheapest one cause I expect all of the products to be equally crappy no matter the price.

It's not Amazon's fault. This happens everywhere.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#540

This follows the standard windows pattern of every release alternating between bad/good. 98 good ME bad XP good Vista bad 7 good 8 bad 10 good 11 bad When 12 comes windows will be tolerable again.

Really highlights the plummet in quality and massive shift in user tolerance that w10 is considered "good" now
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