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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

#211

Post by tzs »

SirFatty wrote: post #17
ano-ther wrote: post #2

That would improve things. Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine. When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online o…

That must be the free version of OneDrive that forces cloud only.

It doesn't force cloud only. It defaults to cloud only. This is for both free and paid versions.

It has been this way for 3 years.

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

#212

Post by varenc »

SirMaster wrote: post #78
dpark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.

But what about our phones? Why are people so OK with an online account for their phone or tablet but not laptop?

An Apple account also isn't required on an iPhone. They certainly encourage you create or link one on device setup, but it's not required to use the phone. Though one IS required to download apps, so you could argue it functionally is required.

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

#213

Post by skeeter2020 »

Rapzid wrote: post #166
varispeed wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the search that doesn't work. You have app "X" installed? You type X and it doesn't find it, but gives you irrelevant results about X.

At one point (last year?) internet search results would load in first so quickly typing and pressing "enter" from muscle memory would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted.. Then also in the past year or two the internet search results were lagging the entire search UI causing type jank and stutters. I disabled internet results in the registry but a recent update seems to have cause…

>> would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted.

and even worse, in Edge!

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

#214

Post by Levitz »

TheDong wrote: post #175
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…

> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware. That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.

>That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.

I don't think you are aware of how much the landscape has changed regarding gaming and Linux.

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

#215

Post by hparadiz »

larusso wrote: post #83
kstrauser wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't mention cross-OS shortcuts, though. I interpreted "across the operating systems" as meaning "across the various versions of Windows". Yes, Windows is more consistent with their own common shortcuts. But Macs have exceedingly consistent shortcuts across Mac applications, compared to my experience with Windows and especially Linux. I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existe…

Apple also invented their own key “Apple” now “CMD” for operation like copy / paste to explicitly not have the issue to overload the already know escape sequences. Windows being on a system without a normalized keyboard had to reuse keys that are common to keyboards used back then. Vertical integration played into apples cards even back then.

I setup my Linux system to use it because it's more consistent for copy pasting in a terminal.

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

#216

Post by jon-wood »

john_strinlai wrote: post #104
jon-wood wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.

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.

An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine, or only occasionally having done so when it was absolutely necessary.

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

#217

Post by zadikian »

yearolinuxdsktp wrote: post #174
nananana9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to make one to download Xcode from the store. I couldn' figure out a way around it, but admittedly I have about 4 hours of macos experience.

It’s impossible to install XCode without an Apple account. It’s only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID. And even XCode beta downloads are locked behind an Apple login. You can install XCode CLI dev tools without an Apple account, which comes with clang and swift for example. With this, you can build most Mac software, but I don’t think you can run Swift tests…

Xcode is also available as a standalone download from developer.apple.com, which requires an account too, but at least it's way more reliable than downloading from the store.

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

#218

Post by imzadi »

My company is still on windows, but it's only because most of our users are over 60 and would stroke out if they had to learn something new. I predict within the next 10 years we will move to something else. The hoops I have to jump through to setup new devices without a Microsoft account are ridiculous. Every time we have a workaround they disable it and we have to do a deeper dive on it. The process right now requires using the command line to create an account with administrator permissions and no password and then create a password after logging in. Then we can create a non-admin local account.

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

#219

Post by kmeisthax »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #101
drewda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...

I've used macOS for years and still don't understand their windows minimize/restore logic. I'm always hunting for my minimized window. Yes, the fault probably lies with me. OTOH the Windows UI is far better well designed and intuitive. But yeah... I'd rather fumble around in macOS: Windows is always trying to upsell a service that I don't need. If I say no it will helpfully keep reminding me (my answer is never going…

macOS does not and never has had a good strategy for handling minimizing windows. Keep in mind that prior to Mac OS X, you couldn't minimize windows at all, you could only roll them up. When OS X added the dock, they made minimized windows go there. Except, the Dock is an icon grid, so there's no way to see window titles, and the windows themselves are so small that it is difficult to identify them at a glance. Making things worse, the Dock is also a place you put app icons, so now you have an icon to show all your non-minimized app icons, right next to all your minimized window icons.

Meanwhile, Windows had minimize since version 2[0], except for whatever reason windows minimized to desktop icons, and there was no desktop folder. They'd known they'd invented a worse version of Mac OS, and in Windows 95 they made sure that there was not only a real desktop, but also a list of all open windows. This design was so successful that the only major tweak that stuck was merging the taskbar and Quick Launch[1] into something that superficially resembles the OSX dock, but is just plain better[2] because clicking an app icon actually shows you all the open windows.

[0] I don't have a Windows 1 install to check with.

[1] Strictly speaking you could put anything in Quick Launch, but only apps go in the Win7 taskbar

[2] Oldschool NeXT users will point out that in NeXTSTEP, minimized windows had an actual title on them, and the app icon instead of a screenshot of the window at tiny scale.

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

#220

Post by lpcvoid »

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…

And then there's me, hoping they don't realize that Windows is in danger. The world needs less Microslop.
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