I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10

I'm not sure, it really depends in Microsoft's execution of the vision.

Over the years, if they really make Cortana useful and seamles pdates and systems maintenance the default due to the new "cloud" nature of Windows, they might see a similar adoption or switching pattern as SaaS solutions have seen in business.

At this point most traditional or slow businesses still using licensed software with local IT admins are being outcompeted by more agile competition using SaaS solutions.

Then again, what alternative do corporates have? They could stick to an older version of Windows, and become less competitive (assuming Microsoft pulls it off), or switch to Linux, which is doubtfl for most office workers (though our entire devshop uses now Linux ultrabooks).

>Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops?

I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, that's just fine. I like Cortana. I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for.

I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine.

But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you've watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site build these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week?

So who wanted that? I did. And so did several million other people. For the people who don't want it, I mean it's not even really opt-out. They ask you up front do you want the default or do you want to pick your own privacy settings. If you still don't trust it, Windows 7, OSX, and Linux are right there, just a click away.

We had speech recognition back in the 1990s on computers less powerful than a Raspberry Pi V1. We're talking 200-400mhz 32-bit Intel boxes. So yes, the cloud dependency is very dubious.

If leveraging a lot of data allows for better speech recognition, why can't your computer access a remote speech recognition data set that stores and shares the results of its machine learning algorithms rather than uploading actual audio data? Instead of sending actual audio, send and receive very non-personalized non-specific derived model data to/from a repository somewhere (or even peer to peer).

I think you're assuming they're doing something they're not.

Microsoft is capturing text input and handwriting from touch input interfaces the same way Google's Android keyboard , Swype, or Swift Key do to improve predictive input, spelling correction/suggestions, personal dictionaries etc. Remember Windows 10 is touch enabled operating system like iOS or Android.

I'm not as familiar with the Apple Keyboard but I would be surprised if it didn't do that too in some form. Their Quick Type feature states it performs heuristics locally but it doesn't mention other aspects. Their policy states they don't collect personal information or conversation history but that doesn't mean they aren't capturing corrections or things they deem to be non-personal but sound pretty personal to me (e.g. occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier). Remember how researchers were able to identify Netflix users based on lesser anonymized meta-data? That non-personal information sounds pretty damn personal in comparison.

I hope you're not using a 3rd party keyboard on iOS with Full Access enable because if so then you agree to the same thing Microsoft is asking for.

I'm surprised you're ok with Apple recording Siri Queries and sharing them with Walk N’Talk Technologies who has humans listening to them but you're opposed to Microsoft doing anything similar in Cortona. How do you feel about Google Now? Did you ever use Google 411 because that was just a quick way to get a massive archive of audio samples.

Some of these are scary. But sending to M$ what I'm typing? That's the exact definition of a keylogger - it's straight up bundled malware.