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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

#331

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

skipants wrote: post #273
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.

I think that's a fair criticism for issues where Linux devs might be blind to the friction a lot of Linux distros come with, but I don't think it's universal for all devs and for all features, all the time. Personally, although I'm not a Linux maintainer, I am a dev and I love doing work that makes UX better for everyone.

Yeah, I could agree to that.

If I could wave a wand, I would reduce the number of Linux distributions down to 10 and absolutely no more.

It is a ridiculous waste to have this many duplications of work and bugs, along with the lack of collaboration.

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

#332

Post by john_strinlai »

thesuitonym wrote: post #318
john_strinlai wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" t…

And how many times this year have you seen a headline with some European country's government starting to migrate away from Microsoft?

a couple? and as far as i know, none of them have completed the transition.

it is great that some are starting, seriously. but windows is not in significant danger as of today.

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

#333

Post by p_j_w »

emptyfile wrote: post #38
spandrew wrote: post #13

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…

Meanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse. Not that I'd know, I've probably seen <10 apple laptop devices in my life and never used one.

> Meanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse.

Having been using Macs for work and home use for the last few years, I have to say you’re right. And yet, in spite of that, I’d still rather use MacOS over Windows. The fans on my Mac never start spinning up as soon as the login screen appears or randomly when it’s sitting untouched on my desk, I never find MacOS to have rebooted in the middle of the night without asking me, it doesn’t constantly nag me to use iCloud more, and it never shows ads for Apple shit in Finder.

When I use MacOS, the worst I feel is the developers are a bit sloppy. When I use Windows, I feel like the developers actively hate me.

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

#334

Post by john_strinlai »

criddell wrote: post #313
john_strinlai wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most people are not willing to learn an entire new operating system for no reason, though. this might happen in tech-based companies, sure, but banks? accounting firms? ive never seen them offer macbooks. this is also ignoring all of the critical software that is windows-only (e.g. quickbooks, solidworks, bespoke programs in banks and government). point is: microsoft is not in "significant danger" today.

My daughter works at a bank in Canada and she was issued a Macbook.

surprising! what i know of canadian banks is admittedly little, so they might be moving faster than the banks i am familiar with. may i ask what department? do you know if it is managed by intune?

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

#335

Post by mrweasel »

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…

The home market is interesting, because they do need to address that as well. I'm not sure how many people are switching to macs, and even fewer are switching to Linux, That's not Microsofts problem, not on the large scale.

If you have a PC at home right now, and you're not technically inclined, and Windows is driving you nuts, you're just not getting a new PC again. More and more people are managing without PCs at home, using their phone or a tablet.

To many of us, the idea of your phone as your primary computing device is complete bonkers, but more and more people are choosing that option. Microsoft isn't really giving them a reason to stay, because every time they fired up their laptop Windows updates starts rolling in, taking forever, the UI keeps bugging them about things they don't care about and now there's ads in the start menu. So will Windows attempts to boot, the average person already did the thing they needed to do on their phone.

Windows Home Edition, or whatever it's call now, isn't competing with Linux and Mac, it's competing with Android and iOS, and it's losing.

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

#336

Post by pdpi »

malfist wrote: post #46
kstrauser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Many of those shortcuts already existed in macOS before they were added in Windows. Inversely, a lot of desktop Linux stuff was designed specifically to mimic the Windows behaviour.

So, really, it's Microsoft that decided "we're different".

Also, as somebody who sort of lives in the terminal, the lack of the Command/Ctrl distinction is one of the things that really bothers me about Windows. In default GUI applications, application shortcuts use Command, and Ctrl is used almost exclusively for headline-style shortcuts (ctrl-k for kill line, ctrl-a for home, ctrl-e for end, etc). Ctrl-a Ctrl-shift-e is kind of baked into my brain as "select whole line".

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

#338

Post by fsflover »

kstrauser wrote: post #327
autoexec wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn’t load your computer up with crapware and ads from the five different companies in the supply chain. No apple prefers to have a monopoly on ads and crapware but they're still there. The internet is filled with annoyed apple customers who want to debloat their systems: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254337272 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/414682/how-can-i-r... https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/…

You didn't read any of those, did you. They're asking about things like, literally: How can I delete the Chess app? How do I disable Spotlight? How do I remove Siri? Those are not in any way comparable to ads or Candy Crush in the start menu.

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams (kirkville.com)

1178 points by cdrnsf 49 days ago | 564 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46911901

Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results (9to5mac.com)

618 points by ksec 67 days ago | 514 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46680974

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46463180

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46325114

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

#339

Post by pllbnk »

autoexec wrote: post #285
stronglikedan wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only Holy shit that's nuts!

Makes it easier for them to mine your files for personal data they can use to push ads I guess.

All they (all big tech companies) have been doing for the past decades has been mining data for ads. Yet, they still are pretty much stuck on the same level:

- I search for and buy something, they keep showing me ads for the thing I don't need anymore.

- I check out some random product, they all think if they just show me one more ad with that product, I will surely buy it.

While I am not immune to ads and they help with brand recognition, it can sometimes serve opposite purpose than intended.

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

#340

Post by tomwheeler »

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.

And I'd imagine that this decline accelerates as _developers_ begin migrating to other platforms, since the applications they created are what made that platform appealing to non-developers. That's why Steve Ballmer was jumping up and down, shouting, in a sweaty fervor. Say what you want about pre-Nadella Microsoft, but they definitely recognized the importance of having lots of developers writing software for Windows. And they treated developers like VIPs.
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