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Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#301

Post by yojo »

underlipton wrote: post #249
colechristensen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store. Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.

>Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests. Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen S…

I got a Zune on clearance when they were shutting down the whole mess (a nice fugly brown one for 80% off).

Build quality was rock solid, UI felt premium, and it mostly just got out of my way/let me play tracks. They were great little media players, as good as or ahead of the equivalent iPod.

Hardware was really good out of MSFT at the time, although when mistakes were made (e.g. the RROD Xbox 360 debacle), the broader organization seemed allergic to making thing right.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#302

Post by ethbr1 »

3form wrote: post #216
ttoinou wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are dark patterns for sure. I don’t know how big companies can still pull that in 2026

People were eased into a defeatist attitude over time. Easily done when everyone's trying to achieve it.

Management and PM kung fu:

   - Here's the KPI
   - Team can't figure out another way to boost KPI
   - Team implements dark pattern
System working as pathologically-intended.

The root problem is there are seemingly no user experience quality KPIs on the development side to counterbalance revenue / usage / adoption ones.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#303

Post by shevy-java »

Very unconvincing. Microsoft seems to want to calm the storm.

I think a dead-giveaway is the realisation that issues that come with Microsoft-specific software, is met with an increasing amount of complaints by end users. Thus, either we buy into the PR explanation by Microsoft, or we rely on what end users says. Now there is a question how accurate the end users are, but the amount of complaints is not static; it has increased a lot in the last some weeks, and even way before that. There is a reason why Microsoft is now called Microslop - the decrease in quality is one big reason for that. AI has not led to an increase in quality - Microsoft needs to acknowledge that. But they won't, because they already committed totally to AI without any way back now.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#304

Post by iamtedd »

duzer65657 wrote: post #214
nickjj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this seems to be a trend over the last few years. Google does this too. I don't have photos backed up to my Google account on a Pixel and every few days if I open the photos app it prompts me to backup to the cloud and I always have to click "maybe later", "not now" or whatever they decide to name it. It's messed up because if I were to accidentally ever click yes to that it would fill up my Google storage and I…

or every time you click a YT link in firefox on android it asks "do you want to open this in the YT App?" where you're options are Yes (with an always use app checkbox) and "Cancel" to open in the browser. Like "Cancel" means "no, get out of the way and do what I want before you injected yourself in this flow"

You can disable the YouTube app's handler for YouTube URLs. In the app info, open by default. I haven't tried it, but presumably, all YouTube URLs will then open in your browser.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#305

Post by shevy-java »

sagacity wrote: post #81

I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account. Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password becaus…

> Edit: yes, I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I shouldn't have to switch :)

The computer on my left uses Windows (Win10) so I still use Microsoft-related software. I switched to Linux in late 2004 or so. Linux kind of spoiled me here; every time I transfer files on Windows and notice how slow it is, I wonder what the heck Microslop is doing here. Why does it waste my time and my computer's resources so much? That's one example of so many more. It would be kind of great to be able to abandon Windows completely. For that Linux has to improve a lot, so that Average Joe also is able to use it just fine.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#306

Post by xxs »

ethbr1 wrote: post #281
colechristensen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store. Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.

> Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. *XBox and Microsoft gaming's $23.5b revenue (~10% of MS's total) enter the chat* You were saying something about not letting facts get in the way of a preferred narrative, I believe?

xbox is a catch-it-umbrella that includes all the studios bought, and game pass. The xbox hardware sales are beyond appalling[0], $220m a quarter, and it'd be below $1b yearly. That's revenue - the consoles have pretty terrible profit margin by design. (likely negative when it comes to xbox)

No need for snarky remarks.

[0]: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/111349/xbox-hardware-revenue-...

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#307

Post by chris_wot »

Windows Explorer always freezes for me. Teams is constantly interrupting me with popovers to tell me about features I’ll never use. on startup, it takes some time for panels to load.

The file system still uses drive letters. Can’t they scrap the old file system folder layout to something… organized?

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#308

Post by ethbr1 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #286
zombot wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using a program that regularly simulates keypresses or mouse movements so the computer thinks the user is still active? The `SCROLL` key for instance can be pressed without causing unwanted side effects, but it stops my Windoze VM from going to sleep.

I have not, interesting idea and I'll definitively try it out. Thanks!

There are some well-known scripts. All variants of the same pattern.

E.g. https://gist.github.com/LuisAGC/843a2a45617d7ad05687c2f8a15c... or https://github.com/TheBear1616/CapsLock-PreventSleep-Script/...

Scroll lock and F13 are commonly used

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#309

Post by ethbr1 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #122
theandrewbailey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.

Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night. Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what…

Windows power / restart has gotten absolutely fucked in the last 10 years.

Hibernate? Gone by default.

Sleep? Ineffective 1/2 the time because a Microsoft utility force-wakes it.

It's sad that 15 year old Windows system was more usable than one today.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#310

Post by rincebrain »

hiq wrote: post #46
rincebrain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the main focus but, FYI, a number of pieces of hardware will default to full tilt fans unless you have their tooling running to manage things. NVIDIA GPUs were infamous for doing this with nouveau on less ideally supported cards, for example.

But it's the kind of things you'd expect Windows to take care of automatically, or in the worst case, to prompt the users to install on first boot, especially if Linux (with overall less driver support from manufacturers). And with a preinstalled Windows (tuned to the laptop) this behavior should not be observed at all.

One would hope.

I have never personally owned one, but I have been told that some Alienware and similar flavored devices have had issues like this when you closed their bespoke Alienware management software because it was the thing driving the fan controls.

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