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People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account

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

#291

Post by whyoh »

hackyhacky wrote: post #72
dahdum wrote: post #30

You’ve always been able to install and use without an account (oobe\bypassnro). As long as power users and businesses can avoid it, they have no real incentive to change.

Note on Current Status (2025/2026): Microsoft is actively removing this command in newer Windows 11 updates, especially in 24H2/25H2 and Insider builds. If oobe\bypassnro fails, the command is not recognized, or simply reboots without enabling the option, you must use alternative methods.

The command (oobe\bypassnro) still works in 25H2. There was some talk that they're going to remove it, but so far it hasn't happened.

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

#292

Post by pooploop64 »

varispeed wrote: post #155
Rapzid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS. It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days. But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole: * Frequ…

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.

It's weird how it does seem to do something even though it doesn't do anything. You can see the search indexer running and it's pulling a varying amount of power towards some kind of goal but nobody seems to know what it is. Does it build an index that always corrupts? Is it in a loop of crashing and restarting itself? And it's been like this my whole life practically. It really shows how anything can be normalized if it goes on long enough.

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

#293

Post by john_strinlai »

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.

>The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows.

i dont think this is true. steam surveys also do not agree: linux gamers are about 2x the number of OSX

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

#294

Post by mikkupikku »

voxl wrote: post #111
user432678 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.

"Product people" have long been involved, it's called Ubuntu and SteamOS. Do we think these companies aren't selling anything??

Ubuntu is a good example of why you don't let "product people" near the thing, Ubuntu is not even remotely the most noob appropriate distro but costs on marketting. As for SteamOS, Valve does many things which everybody else fails at, so they're not a good model for typical outcomes.

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

#295

Post by emptyfile »

alemanek wrote: post #157
emptyfile wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse. Not that I'd know, I've probably seen <10 apple laptop devices in my life and never used one.

Apple is in the process of fixing Tahoe which was a regression from Sequoia the previous release. Tahoe is decent with 26.4 though from what I am hearing. Either OS version is far far better than regular Windows 11 though. Apple’s real differentiator is their silicon. M series chips are just incredibly good and you get a full workday out of them on battery. The M1 Pro I still have at work is easily the best laptop I…

[dead]

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

#296

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

I’ve got three monitors on my MacBook plus its screen; I know all the keyboard shortcuts and then have automation with various other things. It was hard at first back in 2010 when I moved from Windows. It became second nature within a year and I’ve never looked back. Windows is fucking awful.

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

#297

Post by sunshowers »

kstrauser wrote: post #85
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5. Not to mention the muscle memory for pressing CTRL in the corner of the keyboard rather than CMD where Alt is. Though I will say that having "Copy" (cmd-c) being different from ^C (ctrl-c) was kind of nice. Though Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it, and sends ^C…

Conversely, when I use a PC, I have to stop and wonder why alt-R doesn't reload the web page like it's supposed to, and alt-C doesn't copy, and I have to stretch my pinky all the way over to use that shortcut. And what's the mnemonic for "F5 means reload"? Which is to say that neither Windows nor Mac shortcuts are inherently better. It's just what we're used to. IME, the main difference is that once you learn the Mac…

A big issue with the macOS style I'd that there isn't a modifier key free for the user to build their own shortcuts around. The Win/Super key is a very good place to hang custom shortcuts off of on Windows and Linux.

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

#298

Post by DauntingPear7 »

internet101010 wrote: post #126
longislandguido wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop. They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."

You are right about the first part but I think you're overestimating the number of people that see Apple products as status symbols. Maybe that was true a decade ago but I don't think it is anymore. Enough of the products have found their way to every country imaginable over time that an Apple laptop is... just another laptop. A fun, brightly colored, relatively inexpensive, Windows-less laptop that you can use for d…

People do see a high quality build laptop as a status symbol or a piece of luxury. Not having keyboard flex or general creaks really makes a laptop more enjoyable to use.

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

#299

Post by gregates »

I was a MS-DOS 2.0 user as a child. I have always preferred windows to OSX. I used WSL for years at companies where every other engineer had a MacBook.

Last weekend I finally started dual-booting Arch Linux as a trial. Yesterday I deleted my windows partition.

Too late, Microsoft.

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

#300

Post by kipchak »

anthk wrote: post #165
kipchak wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues. If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs. https://github.com/christitustech/winutil

Bloat will come back on every update. It's futile.

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or it's because I have feature releases deferred or if the tool ripped enough things out but this hasn't been my experience so far. If it does you could save off the changes as a JSON template and re-apply after updates, or automatically with task scheduler.
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