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People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

windowscentral.com

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

#81

Post by john_strinlai »

grujicd wrote: 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…

>I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore.

i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy.

the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)

but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent). and the number of machines in those places absolutely dwarfs the number of home installs.

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

#82

Post by bombcar »

longislandguido wrote: post #35
TheRoque wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13 inch screen though.. it's really small And with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say

I'm seeing a lot of "8GB ought to be enough for anybody" here over the last week....

Steam report is a good thing to look at:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac

For Mac, 30% are at 8GB, 43% at 16GB.

Windows has nearly nobody below 16GB (27%) and the biggest is 32GB (58%)

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

#83

Post by larusso »

kstrauser wrote: post #56
malfist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They didn't mention cross-OS shortcuts, though. I interpreted "across the operating systems" as meaning "across the various versions of Windows". Yes, Windows is more consistent with their own common shortcuts. But Macs have exceedingly consistent shortcuts across Mac applications, compared to my experience with Windows and especially Linux. I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existe…

Apple also invented their own key “Apple” now “CMD” for operation like copy / paste to explicitly not have the issue to overload the already know escape sequences. Windows being on a system without a normalized keyboard had to reuse keys that are common to keyboards used back then. Vertical integration played into apples cards even back then.

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

#84

Post by chocochunks »

kstrauser wrote: post #44
longislandguido wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The GPU in the Neo isn't particularly fast...nor is the storage. Neo makes loads of compromises to hit $600 with some of it's features. Even for $400 you can get Windows PCs with TWO whole USB 3.0 ports. $400 quickly hits diminishing returns territory.

Like here's a $500 PC:

https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processo... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic...

Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.

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

#85

Post by kstrauser »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #71
malfist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5. Not to mention the muscle memory for pressing CTRL in the corner of the keyboard rather than CMD where Alt is. Though I will say that having "Copy" (cmd-c) being different from ^C (ctrl-c) was kind of nice. Though Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it, and sends ^C…

Conversely, when I use a PC, I have to stop and wonder why alt-R doesn't reload the web page like it's supposed to, and alt-C doesn't copy, and I have to stretch my pinky all the way over to use that shortcut. And what's the mnemonic for "F5 means reload"?

Which is to say that neither Windows nor Mac shortcuts are inherently better. It's just what we're used to. IME, the main difference is that once you learn the Mac shortcuts in a handful of apps, they'll pretty much work on the other apps you encounter, too.

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

#86

Post by sidkshatriya »

john_strinlai wrote: post #81
grujicd wrote: 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…

> I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy. the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anti…

Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.

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

#87

Post by ihsw »

shevy-java wrote: post #58
ano-ther wrote: post #2

That would improve things. Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine. When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online o…

> saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only This is why local backups should always have the highest priority. Storing online can be useful, but people should never forget that local backups are the best.

[dead]

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

#88

Post by john_strinlai »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #86
john_strinlai wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy. the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anti…

Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.

>gradually and then suddenly.

governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". they have contracts, and cash flow concerns. you cannot suddenly replaces tens to hundreds of thousands of machines.

20-50 years down the road? maybe! they (microsoft) surely arent doing themselves many favors. but they are certainly not in "significant danger" today.

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

#89

Post by Arainach »

miyoji wrote: post #70
WarmWash wrote: post #22

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 Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS. We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!

Windows is arguably philosophically user-hostile.

Anyone who's ever tried to get support online with a question about Linux will quickly meet *actual* user hostility as they're asked why they didn't know to check for the config file in the filing cabinet in the basement behind a locked door saying beware of leopard, how dumb they are, etc.

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

#90

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dpark wrote: post #40
TheRoque wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13 inch screen though.. it's really small And with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say

13” is not really that small. It’s a screen size many people choose. The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. It seems pretty clearly a play for students who will eventually enter the business world with their personal laptop preferences.

> The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly.

This really is the key point.

The Neo is not a work laptop (At least, not for engineers). It's a low-end laptop designed to compete with Chromebooks.

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