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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

#171
Are people inside apple fighting to drop the mandatory apple account for iOS and various core apple features?

I can buy a thinkpad and install linux on it without once creating a microsoft account. I can buy an android phone supported by GrapheneOS, and use it as a perfectly fine phone without ever creating a google account.

I cannot buy an iPhone without creating an apple account, without getting ads shoved in my face by apple, without them deciding what I can and can't install on it, and them charging me for the privilege of writing my own software.

Microsoft doesn't deserve as much shame here as Apple does since MS isn't requiring their hardware vendors to lock down the hardware to only be able to run Windows (even though they very well could). Apple, with iOS, is.

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

#172
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.

well, it happened with Teams meetings replacing fancy CISCO equipments. It happened with all the vpn+shared drives buried to just use SPO. different experience,I guess. Did your employees got trained? or just sent the link to 3 'online trainings'? Managers manage to switch to Mac seamlessly. I am sure the rest will follow with cheaper macs now available. And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office eve…

>And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)

office is a tiny, almost negligible, piece of the puzzle. quickbooks, solidworks and other cad software, bespoke software, security software, user management, permissions management (replacing active directory), contractual obligations, the millions of dollars required in implementation, the millions more dollars required for increased user support, and so on...

but, again, just to reiterate: i am disputing that windows is in "significant danger" today.

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

#174
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s impossible to install XCode without an Apple account. It’s only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID. And even XCode beta downloads are locked behind an Apple login.

You can install XCode CLI dev tools without an Apple account, which comes with clang and swift for example. With this, you can build most Mac software, but I don’t think you can run Swift tests without a full XCode.

As the sibling comment notes, you can install GCC/llvm and whatever other open source tools and build Mac software without full XCode.

You can also install Apple container support without an Apple account.

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

#175
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…

> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with

The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware.

That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.

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

#176

Are people inside apple fighting to drop the mandatory apple account for iOS and various core apple features? I can buy a thinkpad and install linux on it without once creating a microsoft account. I can buy an android phone supported by GrapheneOS, and use it as a perfectly fine phone without ever creating a google account. I cannot buy an iPhone without creating an apple account, without getting ads shoved in my fa…

I use both, almost on a daily basis, but spend most of my time in Linux (Arch btw).

Both of them deserve equal amount of shame because they're both trying to do the same, force you to have an online account associated with a local user profile, either directly or indirectly.

Not sure why it has to be a contest who "we should shame the most" or whatever, how about saying both of them suck when it comes to this?

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get twice as much RAM, twice as much storage. 4x faster storage too. You get a full sized HDMI port. You can do multiple monitors if you need to. It has a fan for better sustained performance. You can plug in a flash drive, mouse, monitor or other external peripheral without a dongle. Oh, and it's actually COOLER running than the Neo. The Neo costs a $100 more, needs a $30 dongle to connect to 90% of the stuff pe…

You don’t need to buy Apple adapters. You can buy a $10 usbc to hdmi adapter off Amazon and it’ll work just fine. Same thing with the USB A ports. Not really selling point imo.

Apple's official HDMI adapter is $70. I was already talking generic.

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

#179
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.

lol wtf

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it your personal or corporate PC with corporate junk on it?

So… the contention is that Windows isn’t good for work use? That’s not a compelling argument in its favor.

No, the contention is that corporate junk has a tendency to slow down PCs and equivalent software would do the same to the Neo or worse.
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