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People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

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Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#41
post #27
post #12

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…

FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...

This may be the first time that sentiment's ever been expressed.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.

> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. I think I'd probably say that the problem with Windows is it's made and maintained by people who own macbooks.

I am convinced that nobody at Microslop uses any of their products.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#43
post #19

Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.

I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.

Like what sort of response times for each?

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#44

I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in). Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch. If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really suck…

The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop. They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."

Please, by all means do post a link to a comparable new Windows laptop for $400, including a fast GPU, reasonable amount of fast storage (and not counting an SD card or such), a high-DPI monitor, and non-embarassing build quality. I'd love to see this.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#45

Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#46
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...

This may be the first time that sentiment's ever been expressed.

Why do you say that?

A lot of shortcuts are shared between windows and linux and fairly consistent across applications. Mac is the one that takes a decided "we're different" approach to shortcuts. I.e., Alt+L for address bar instead of Alt+D, Command swapping with Control, Q instead of W for closing tabs, Command+Control+Q for locking a computer instead of Super+L, etc

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#47
post #27
post #12

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…

FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...

I've always found the opposite, do you have any examples where macOS falls short compared to Windows in shortcut consistency?

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#48
post #15

Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.

I had to make one to download Xcode from the store. I couldn' figure out a way around it, but admittedly I have about 4 hours of macos experience.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#49

Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac. Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY. My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.

Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.

An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.

Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.

Re: People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

#50
post #12

This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how…

Isn't part of this Microsoft preparing for the requirement to do age verification in the OS?
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