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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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have some broken hardware. My $600 2022 corporate laptop is faster and smoother than a $600 Neo, and that's with the corporate spyware crap installed.

I had a Dell Latitude 7320 from 2022 as a corporate laptop. New it costed well over $2000. It was thermal throttling like crazy and it was even worse when I was on calls. It’s battery wouldn’t last more than an hour and even when you put it to sleep the fan would keep spinning. It would take more than 15 to restart and another 10 for most of the apps to open. It was literally unusable. Meanwhile my M1 MacBook from 20…

I have a Dell Latitude from 2010 that is still goes strong (albeit it has no more battery). None of my classmates' Apples from that era, or the replacements, or the replacements for those replacements, or the replacements for the replacements of the replacements, are still working.

I also have a Thinkpad from 2000 that still works.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux To specialize that statement a bit, Linux is made and maintained by people who showed up and contributed . These two facts create a vicious cycle. The people show up to add things they love to Linux, and Linux becomes something that only those exact people love. We're deep into this spiral where Linux has become specialized for ultra-…

The people who take that goal seriously get burned when, having persuaded a normie to install Linux, they realize they just volunteered to provide free tech support to that person until whenever time they give up and buy a Mac.

The last two people I handed Linux to were not tech literate. I offered them tech support from the beginning. They have been happy users for well over a year now that have not once called me for help. The story for normie Linux use really is pretty good now.

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

#443
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…

Get Windows LTSC instead and run Firefox ! Most problems solved.

Where?

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

#444

I think the decreasing fondness of Windows can mostly be blamed on Microsoft forcing their internet services on users; with the need for Microsoft accounts being the most recent & damning of the bunch. You had gadgets in Vista & 7, but they could easily be disabled. 8 had live tiles for things like the news (effortlessly removable) and introduced the Microsoft Store (which increasingly needs an account). 8.1 added Bi…

Yep, the continued moving of the goalposts for how much internet integration is required was really why I bailed on it.

That is putting it kindly mind you, it has become increasingly user hostile software. Distrusting you, the owner of the computer and software, whilst also exploiting your information and usage telemetry, hoovering up private files into the cloud, pushing their online services into every crevice. MSPaint connects to the internet now, like back it off just a little bit you greedy sods. Can't a man draw some pixels in peace?

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

reading all these comments about windows having better shortcuts and window management features makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills. windows for me was hands down the worst experience in ux. the shortcuts in macos are so well thought out and consistent. now i'm using kde in linux land and it's the best and most customizable experience. I can't imagine going back to windows ever and would be missing a lot from l…

It probably depends pretty heavily on your workflow. MacOS is designed around doing things visually with a trackpad. If you don't want to work that way, you're just out of luck, because that's the "right way" and if you disagree you're wrong. An example using my preferred workflow: I like to map the applications I use to (or option on mac) + number keys on the keyboard. So +1 is my editor. +2 is my terminal. +3 is my browser. Etc. If I have multiple windows open, just hit that combo again to cycle in a least-recently-used cycle. I don't have to raise all of the windows from the dock with my mouse and then go find the one I want. I don't have to open some mission control thing and go hunting for a window. I don't have to swipe to another space to remember where I put the window. I don't have to command+tab to a certain number of times to get to the window. I know exactly how to get the application I want with 1-3 key presses. Then once I've raised the window I want, I often want to tile it to one side or the other or fullscreen it with another keyboard shortcut.

Getting this to work on MacOS is a huge PITA. I tried app shortcuts in settings and they'd just randomly not work sometimes for some apps. Apps can override global shortcuts? What??? I tried the "shortcuts" app and it also similarly wouldn't work for some apps and would often forget my key bindings on an update. Tiling via the keyboard would randomly not work either. Multiple apps couldn't fix it. I finally found hammerspoon and scripted an option that consistently works. Rectangle finally solved my tiling issues. But why do I need 3rd party apps that involve writing my own scripts to get basic OS behavior? This is stock Windows behavior.

Beyond that it's just a bunch of papercuts. My dock randomly appears on the wrong screen. My windows sometimes don't get focus when I click on them. The coreutils are old and suck compared to the linux equivalents. Things built cross-platform are often the worst on Mac. Even though they're both sitting behind virtualization, WSL just feels much more integrated than running containers on mac. My usb mic randomly stops working...I've literally had more mic problems on Mac than I did on Linux. Sometimes I need to force kill my browser, and it'll sit for several minutes as a zombie descendant of pid 1 before getting cleaned up, preventing me from opening a new instance of the thing that should be killed. When I had initially mapped tiling to +something, and it didn't work, I'd get a fun unicode character in my text instead, so I had to install an ascii-only keyboard layout to stop myself from looking like a moron who couldn't type. I'm guessing if you're a mac native, the shortcuts make more sense, but after 20 years of windows/linux shortcuts burned into my brain, moving to a mac for work has made me have to pointlessly relearn everything, and it still feels very unnatural.

The hardware is great, but the OS makes me hate this machine with a passion.

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

#446
post #361

I think the decreasing fondness of Windows can mostly be blamed on Microsoft forcing their internet services on users; with the need for Microsoft accounts being the most recent & damning of the bunch. You had gadgets in Vista & 7, but they could easily be disabled. 8 had live tiles for things like the news (effortlessly removable) and introduced the Microsoft Store (which increasingly needs an account). 8.1 added Bi…

FYI, Microsoft Store doesn't need an account. You can install apps without being signed in to the Store. Source: I work on the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft store try's to dark pattern you to think you need to log in though. Or at least it did.

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

#447
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…

Since forever, I've been pretty stubborn with managing my tech/digital stuff myself, even if it's kind of a pain, and this kind of shit reinforces that belief. Other entities, especially big companies, cannot be trusted with your tech. The best place for my hardware is in my house; software, in my own git repo; data, in plain files on my hard drives. The fewer hands that touch it, the better. Just let me have it my own way, please.

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

#448

I think the decreasing fondness of Windows can mostly be blamed on Microsoft forcing their internet services on users; with the need for Microsoft accounts being the most recent & damning of the bunch. You had gadgets in Vista & 7, but they could easily be disabled. 8 had live tiles for things like the news (effortlessly removable) and introduced the Microsoft Store (which increasingly needs an account). 8.1 added Bi…

[dead]

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

#449
post #390
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, and yet: Windows accessibility actually works. I use a screen reader daily. Linux a11y is complete dogshit — AT-SPI2 is unreliable, Orca is barely maintained, Wayland broke what little existed. I need something that actually works. When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable? ADHD-Driven development might be fine if you can see your sy…

I mean, why are you even on Windows then? Apple is the accessibility king by far. Both Windows and Android are aeons behind.

Eh, no. My experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.

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

#450
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, and yet: Windows accessibility actually works. I use a screen reader daily. Linux a11y is complete dogshit — AT-SPI2 is unreliable, Orca is barely maintained, Wayland broke what little existed. I need something that actually works. When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable? ADHD-Driven development might be fine if you can see your sy…

macOS supports VoiceOver even in the boot disk selection screen. That's the real king of accessibility.

macOS has some strengths and is certainly ahead of Linux in terms of a11y but my experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.
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