Live data from Hacker News

Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

boingboing.net

111–120 of 239 posts

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#111
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of people willing to leave stars on an app store are already a biased sample.

Yeah, for lower ratings. People leave reviews because they’re pissed, not mildly happy.

On iOS at least, an app can quickly ask for a star rating via a modal dialog. No review necessary.

Thanks to dark patterns, users sometimes think it's asking them to rate their previous experience, or the podcast they're listening to, but those wind up tallied as app star ratings.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#112

I love OneDrive. I don't know why everyone hates it. I save things in OneDrive, and they are backed up to the cloud and synced with the other computers I use. Some computers are shared by six family members, each with their own MS account and 1TB of storage. OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive but still give everyone ready access to their files by not storing them all on the hard drive. If I…

Wholeheartedly agreed. Also the OneDrive Backup feature is great - previously people had to rely on other services (Box, Dropbox) and remember to save stuff into those folders. Now your most important Documents folder is saved in the cloud. Great. Backup! I don't think that OneDrive pestering you about buying more storage after using up your free storage is a bad thing, somebody needs to pay for stuff. I understand t…

None of this is new. They haven’t fixed it for years. At this point it’s not an oversight or mistake, but fully intentional behavior.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#113
post #98
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the "can't" necessarily, it's about friction, I could get it working on linux, but then I'd probably be just fiddling with settings way longer than I do today. Current Windows gaming experience is almost like a console, just play and forget, (if you just use your machine for that). Another potential issue is that I have games in all the major launchers (and a GamePass subscription), and the only one that wor…

I installed Bazzite just last month, it's set-and-forget. Zero hardware / driver issues, everything autoconfigured. Didn't even need to download steam. Absolutely shocked me how smooth the out-of-box experience was compared to even Windows 10. To my further surprise, I found my game library's compatibility on Bazzite was stronger than Windows 10 somehow. (Some old games like Moonbase Commander don't launch on Windows…

Agreed - Bazzite is the kind of set-and-forget level of quality I expect for a gaming appliance. I haven’t needed to twiddle with a single setting to get any games I’ve been playing (Stalker 2, Kingdom Come 2, Doom The Dark Ages, Arc Raiders, Helldivers, etc).

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#114

Saw someone calling Microsoft "Microslop". Seems appropriate given their enthusiasm for AI, lack of software quality, and lack of regard for user experience.

Used to call that Windblows and Microsucks in my early 20s, I am not sure it was edgy back then and I am sure it isn't now. The UI/UX changes from ME > XP > Win8. At least you could keep the _classic_ look until Win10, I am not certain is the case with Win11 and what every Windows Copilot is coming next.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#115
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily. Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them. In tech you are surrounded by footguns and bear traps. MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice but the logic that "dangerous things should be prohibited" is a perfectly good way to end…

> MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice > It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations. Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second? > Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them. Shift+Del asks for confirmation. I would expect OneDrive to do at least that much befor…

> Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?

I think too many people got the impression that I'm defending OD and can't get out of that trench. My point is that a generic tool being able to do dangerous things isn't a high enough bar to say don't use it (often). A tool being able to do dangerous things in the manner I described above is a completely different devil. The "how" you end up doing a dangerous thing is what should be punished.

I want to be able to do whatever I want with my computer and my data and not have someone define what's "too dangerous" for me to use. But what happened here wasn't what the users wanted, or could reasonably expect to happen. That's the key.

> Shift+Del asks for confirmation

I'm sure OD also asked for some confirmation. By that time it's too late, you're confirming what you think will happen, not what will actually happen. When you confirm shift+del you know what you are confirming. When you confirm OD's dialog you're confirming under misleading assumptions.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#116

Maintaining local, off-line backups is an endless PITA. But consider the alternative... :(

Posting this here, hoping desperately for someone to give me an example proving I'm wrong: It's insane to me that there isn't a simple, GUI-based app that provides this utility in a clean, straightforward way. Basically just "dropbox, but let me set the destination to another drive on my PC/network/VPN (or a 'repo', for 'advanced' users)". Just a plain interface that shows me my files and allows me to say "I want thi…

For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#117
When I have to use Windows for work (which I 100% would prefer over Mac when I can't have Linux Desktop), I've found OneDrive works best if you give it one file. I gzip a tar file on Windows and let OneDrive sync that. As long as it's only one file, it does a good job.

Whatever you do, don't try to sync a git repo folder with OneDrive.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#118
post #65
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many games do you use on Windows that you can not use on Linux?

It's not the "can't" necessarily, it's about friction, I could get it working on linux, but then I'd probably be just fiddling with settings way longer than I do today. Current Windows gaming experience is almost like a console, just play and forget, (if you just use your machine for that). Another potential issue is that I have games in all the major launchers (and a GamePass subscription), and the only one that wor…

FWIW - GOG and Epic games play just fine via the Heroic app on Bazzite. I’ve only played a few games from those platforms so far - but it’s been as seamless as playing games off steam in my experience.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#119
post #102
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get ~weekly crashes using an Nvidia card with arch/hyprland, but honestly it's less problematic for me to deal with than windows updates. I can format and rebuild my machine from scratch in less time than windows takes to download and perform an update. Flawless experience on non-nvidia hardware though.

That's arch/hyprland though. You're even making it harder for yourself than it needs to be.

That's understating it. There's no amount of skill that will render that setup stable - it's baked into the way those projects are managed.

Re: Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files

#120
post #41
post #33

Windows is not for doing serious stuff anymore, the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC (if you turn off all the nags, it's pretty decent). I work on a Mac, I run servers on Linux, I game on Windows.

How many games do you use on Windows that you can not use on Linux?

Battlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, GTA5 online (and likely gta6 online).

Personally, only TFT is a blocker for me, and you can get an inferior version working on linux, but it only takes you playing one of those games for it to be a blocker.

Post reply on HN