Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 113 posts

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#11
It’s not even possible in windows 11. You can leave Microsoft behind, or accept it and move on. I think apple does this too. You have options, but they don’t include Microsoft or apple. I think chromeos, for now, lets you opt out. I could be wrong about that.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#12
post #9

You have to be disconnected from wifi and Ethernet to be offered the option of a local account. This was removed in 11.

Not entirely, you can open a terminal and input a command to bypass it. It is kind of ironic, though, considering "open a terminal and input a command" is usually considered to be a take-that against GNU/Linux.

Good to know. What is the command? And what’s the shortcut to get a terminal?

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#13

It’s not even possible in windows 11. You can leave Microsoft behind, or accept it and move on. I think apple does this too. You have options, but they don’t include Microsoft or apple. I think chromeos, for now, lets you opt out. I could be wrong about that.

For some reason, “I think Apple does this too” always comes up in the discussions about Microsoft forcing online accounts within Windows.

MacOS doesn’t do this. Accounts are machine local. iCloud integration is an optional layer on top. Always has been. Nothing has changed.

Maybe give the OS a try before assuming Apple is following all the same antipatterns just because they also happen to fall into the category of “big tech”.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#14

It’s not even possible in windows 11. You can leave Microsoft behind, or accept it and move on. I think apple does this too. You have options, but they don’t include Microsoft or apple. I think chromeos, for now, lets you opt out. I could be wrong about that.

Windows 11 pro doesnt require an ms account, you can create a local account.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#15
This definitely happened to me a while ago. I'm not that upset about it, except that I spent some time changing all my local accounts from "jon" to "jrockway", and signing in with my email address made my local account "jon". Now when I ssh places, I have to supply -l or properly add an entry to ~/.ssh/config because this is the only account I have that's not named "jrockway". All in all, this reduces the enjoyment in my life by 0.0000000000000001% but I'm not losing too much sleep over it.

(My favorite Windows 10 update was the one where you installed it, and instead of getting your desktop on reboot, there was this weird slideshow that said "HELLO" "ALL YOUR FILES ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU LEFT THEM". I thought it was malware, but that's apparently something a large team of experts at Microsoft thought would be fun for their users. Maybe they were really excited about some filesystem bug that they fixed? I'll never understand.)

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#16
The only "trick" I'm aware of is when signing into accounts in certain (Microsoft) applications. You will get a prompt where you need to select to only sign into this specific app.

Other patterns pushing you to use a Microsoft account are not dark at all. They're everywhere though!

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#17

It’s not even possible in windows 11. You can leave Microsoft behind, or accept it and move on. I think apple does this too. You have options, but they don’t include Microsoft or apple. I think chromeos, for now, lets you opt out. I could be wrong about that.

Windows 11 pro doesnt require an ms account, you can create a local account.

This is no longer correct with the latest 22H2 December update. In order to circumvent this now requires getting to the command prompt (Shift+F10) during install and issuing a command to bypass the requirement.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#18

You have to be disconnected from wifi and Ethernet to be offered the option of a local account. This was removed in 11.

I've never performed such a thing and I'm using local account.

Maybe that's because I have Win10 Pro? idk.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#19
post #13

It’s not even possible in windows 11. You can leave Microsoft behind, or accept it and move on. I think apple does this too. You have options, but they don’t include Microsoft or apple. I think chromeos, for now, lets you opt out. I could be wrong about that.

For some reason, “I think Apple does this too” always comes up in the discussions about Microsoft forcing online accounts within Windows. MacOS doesn’t do this. Accounts are machine local. iCloud integration is an optional layer on top. Always has been. Nothing has changed. Maybe give the OS a try before assuming Apple is following all the same antipatterns just because they also happen to fall into the category of “…

It is possible to set up MacOS without an iCloud account, but they do try hard to get you to sign in. You have to be diligent about looking for buttons like "Skip," "Not now," and "I'll do it later."

Fortunately those options still exist, but the pressure to sign in has been increasing over the last several versions of MacOS.

Re: Tell HN: Windows 10 might have tricked you into using a online account

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 11 pro doesnt require an ms account, you can create a local account.

This is no longer correct with the latest 22H2 December update. In order to circumvent this now requires getting to the command prompt (Shift+F10) during install and issuing a command to bypass the requirement.

Good to know, will be teaching this trick to my grandma, wish me luck
Post reply on HN