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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

#201

Post by grujicd »

Miraste wrote: post #148
Rapzid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS. It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days. But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole: * Frequ…

I also think Windows' native window tiling is one of its best features, but there's a fantastic program called Swish that implements tiling for MacOS in a very native-feeling way. It supports keyboard shortcuts, but it's built around really elegant touchpad gestures. Highly recommend if that's all that's keeping you on Windows. The other native Windows feature I really like is the clipboard manager, and I don't have…

I'm using Raycast on Mac, it has a bunch of stuff included but I use it only for its Clipboard History extension.

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

#202

Post by oliwarner »

marssaxman wrote: post #121
oliwarner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> far more political than technological I don't know. A company worth trillions of dollars does a pretty fine job of making Windows incrementally worse in new and interesting ways, each release. There's some truth; the bloated company structure has contributed to these unforced errors, but just at an engineering level, people are releasing this tripe without the skill or training or backbone to know what is bad, and…

Who says the engineers have any leverage they can push with? I sure didn't, when I worked there.

Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem that's played out in construction, automotive and software engineering dozens of times over.

The penalty for Microsoft ignoring their devs might just be a slow decline into irrelevance, not a bridge collapsing, or an autonomous vehicle hitting the lane barrier because the boss refuses to use LiDAR, but it's all bad management causing an engineering problem.

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

#203

Post by 3form »

kstrauser wrote: post #85
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ctrl-R reloads the page in every browser that I have used, so perhaps that's what you're looking for.

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

#204

Post by goldenarm »

chocochunks wrote: post #94
goldenarm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specs may be comparable, but not the end result : my $2000 Windows 11 laptop is slower and laggier than the Neo.

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

Personal PC. Fresh install from the official ISO with the least bloatware. It's still a nightmare.

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

#205

Post by WarmWash »

imoreno wrote: post #167
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.

That's how it has to be. Volunteer community doesn't have the bandwidth to make everything maximally user friendly. Users have to do their share too, by accepting the responsibility to learn about their system. Otherwise the model isn't feasible. If you want an appliance experience where you have zero responsibility as a user, you can go to the commercial vendor, but they will also have power over you and abuse it. L…

>there's basically no solution

Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS.

Ironically, 3 of the 4 are unix based with product people in the loop.

Linux can work as the savior of computer users, but it's not going to happen with a bunch of people who fetishize using a computer like trinity in the matrix.

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

#206

Post by grujicd »

john_strinlai wrote: post #164
willy_k wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This alone obviously doesn’t put Windows in danger, but if it does go over well then it’ll mark a turning point; A large non-techy institution getting away from Microsoft’s castle and being better off for it would signal to the world that it’s not only doable, but could even be worth it. It’ll take a while, but this could be the start of the end for Windows.

> This alone obviously doesn’t put Windows in danger, so, the quote i specifically replied to said that today windows is in "significant danger", and i said it isnt. we seem to be in agreement. as for what the future holds, i think it will be much slower than other people. but maybe i am wrong! which would be fine with me. but, today , windows is not in "significant danger".

That "significant danger" was a bit of dramatization on my part. I don't expect anything to significantly change in the short term. I was more referring to long-term tidal-like change, which would be very hard to stop once momentum builds up.

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

#207

Post by zadikian »

I only deal with Windows during a little IT volunteering. The org's PC has an MS account, which is ok per se, but the nagging doesn't stop there. Like it randomly started asking for SMS verification at login, which looks like a real auth challenge, but you can actually skip it. So that's in their handbook now.

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

#208

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Rapzid wrote: post #64
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…

As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS. It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days. But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole: * Frequ…

The only tolerable Windows 11 experience is a corporate PC with Active Directory login.

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

#209

Post by zadikian »

taeric wrote: post #39
throwa356262 wrote: post #7

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

Fundamentally, I think you are driving at a legitimate complaint and it should be a concern with Apple products. The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.

Mac doesn't require an Apple ID to use. iPhone only needs one for installing apps, and my only complaint is it's the strictest auth check on the entire phone besides disabling the account. Shouldn't need to input the Apple ID password just to install a free app, shouldn't even ask for passcode.

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

#210

Post by rurp »

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…

This happened on my work machine. One day I noticed tons of important files had been deleted without my permission after being migrated to OneDrive online only. At no point did I authorize anything like this and it took some time to copy them all back and disable everything I could access related to this.

Utter insanity that this can happen in a major OS. I switched to Linux for personal use years ago and have only gotten more grateful for that decision over time. My head would explode if a Linux distro tried any number of things that Windows regularly does to abuse their users, it's unfathomable.

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