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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#591

Post by major505 »

As I saw it, there are 4 things that lock people in the windows platform today.

- Gaming: a problem being tackled by Valve mainly, and I getting better day by day;

- Printing Services: a lot of manufacturers, specially of high end business printers only work on windows.

- Photoshop: I think many of these will eventually just fully migrate to mac.

- Excel: the rest of microsoft office is used because its in the package. But is not necessarly irreplaceable.MOst people already exchanged Outlook by the webmail (damn, outlook itself is just the webmail in a electron wrap in the new version). Word is a pain, but there are suitable open source and paid replacements. But Excel is the big one. Tons of small and big business runs on Excel, and there's simply no alternative in the market for it, with 100% compatibility. And considering the ammount of stuff running on obscure excel formulas, and excel macros, it will take a lot of time before one arrives.

Its the curse of the power user.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#592

Post by elboru »

runjake wrote: post #561

One point that wasn't mentioned is that we've been through this cycle many times before with Microsoft, and we will again. It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft went "all in" on Windows for developers and power users. WSL was drastically improved, developer tools were revamped and open sourced. The press adored the "new" Microsoft. Many developers moved over to Windows because they "got the best of both worlds". And…

I remember being excited about Edge, I even started using it because it was fast and had a couple of built-in features I liked. It was a big improvement over the old IE, it felt like Microsoft was going the right direction, but then they kept using dark patterns to change my default search engine to Bing.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#593

Post by hnlmorg »

j_w wrote: post #550
nicoburns wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a power disparity here. I think the clearest example is smart TVs where there have been examples of consumers buying a TV, and then having ads retroactively added to the product a year later. There's not much a consumer could to avoid that. It's our regulatory environment allowing that.

You don't need a TV. If there are only smart TVs then simply don't purchase one. Most consumers are unwilling to take an option that they perceive as inconveniencing them more than getting screwed by the company inconveniences them.

Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience.

The reality is that companies know they can get away with crap because they all get away with crap. And because they all do it, consumers are powerless.

This is why regulation isn’t a bad the thing that many HNers seem to recoil at. The real problem with regulation is when it’s defined by lobbyists rather than consumer groups. But even then, it’s really no different to the status quo where businesses are never held accountable.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#594

Post by bigstrat2003 »

selectively wrote: post #244

Domestic violence analogies for computing....really gross. I wouldn't hire or work with 'Sam Bent'.

There's nothing "gross" about it. You are making a mountain out of a molehill, and honestly the kind of behavior you're displaying here would be absolutely miserable to deal with at any job. Nobody likes someone who complains about trivial non-issues like this.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#595

Post by tombert »

major505 wrote: post #591

As I saw it, there are 4 things that lock people in the windows platform today. - Gaming: a problem being tackled by Valve mainly, and I getting better day by day; - Printing Services: a lot of manufacturers, specially of high end business printers only work on windows. - Photoshop: I think many of these will eventually just fully migrate to mac. - Excel: the rest of microsoft office is used because its in the packag…

Excel is the biggest blocker for my dad, and why I keep losing the argument to get my parents to move to Linux or Mac.

Pretty much all their other stuff is stuff that either works fine on Linux or is just in the browser anyway, but the only thing that I don't really have a rebuttal to is when my dad points out that he uses the full-fat excel and a lot of the more modern features.

I would so rather they move to Linux, and just put Excel inside Winboat or something, but they won't have it. Annoying since I'm still expected to play tech support for them and Microsoft's recovery tools do not work, and as far as I can tell have literally never worked for anyone in human history, and I'm not entirely convinced that the people at Microsoft have ever tested them.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#596

Post by adiabatichottub »

major505 wrote: post #591

As I saw it, there are 4 things that lock people in the windows platform today. - Gaming: a problem being tackled by Valve mainly, and I getting better day by day; - Printing Services: a lot of manufacturers, specially of high end business printers only work on windows. - Photoshop: I think many of these will eventually just fully migrate to mac. - Excel: the rest of microsoft office is used because its in the packag…

Don't forget general familiarity. I don't know about today, but Apple was once very big on giving large discounts to education specifically for the purpose of getting students familiar with their machines.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html#kids

My point is it's harder to switch from the system you know.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#597

Post by coole-wurst »

major505 wrote: post #591

As I saw it, there are 4 things that lock people in the windows platform today. - Gaming: a problem being tackled by Valve mainly, and I getting better day by day; - Printing Services: a lot of manufacturers, specially of high end business printers only work on windows. - Photoshop: I think many of these will eventually just fully migrate to mac. - Excel: the rest of microsoft office is used because its in the packag…

You can run Photoshop and small Excel (fine for 90%) on Mac without an issue.

The real problem is more specific industry software - Revit, Solidworks and probably a thousand smaller ones.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#598

Post by mkup »

wackget wrote: post #498
mkup wrote: post #276

Shameless plug: My products (FlashBoot and Emergency Boot Kit) can filter all types of potentially unwanted traffic from your Windows PC to Microsoft cloud: namely, Telemetry, Windows Updates, OneDrive, builtin advertisements, tracking of your location and many more — making Windows 10/11 completely quiet online — something competitor’s tools (e.g. various GitHub scripts) can’t achieve. https://www.prime-expert.com/

I admire your effort to increase user privacy but it's very difficult to argue that allowing a piece of proprietary closed-source software to make fundamental changes to your operating system is a good idea. For starters, it doesn't explain what exactly it does. This is all I could see on the info page: > Privacy Enablement Center: Politely ask already installed Windows 10/11 to phone home less, or add Privacy Enhanc…

Pure hosts file solution won't cut it for several reasons:

1) certain domains (the most offensive privacy infringers) are whitelisted by Microsoft's DNSAPI.DLL to always bypass hosts file lookup (DNSAPI.DLL is a place where hosts file parser lives on Windows, so this parser just ignores hosts file records which don't align well with data vaccuming purpose of modern Windows versions)

2) hosts file can't blacklist domain hierarchies (domain + all subdomains), it can blacklist only apex domains

3) some domains to block are not quite domains, rather domain names regexps (set of domain names to block is not finite)

So, I would say it's rather list of regexps to block than list of domains to block (in our product it's compiled to highly efficient finite state machine in C, plus a user-friendly list of categories to choose blocking preferences from); but in principle you are right: all of it currently boils down to DNS packet interception.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#599

Post by tombert »

tremon wrote: post #90
ptero wrote: post #11

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats. But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use. Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engine…

It's a bit baffling to me that people are talking about Microsoft "losing their way" as if they ever operated differently. They have always been user-hostile if it increased next quarter's outlook. There's a clear continuing thread from the Halloween files in the 90s via antitrust probes in the 00s, the handling of Skype and Teams in the 10s, and now Copilot -- and that's ignoring all the mishandling on the business…

I mean, at least their software used to be pretty good. The Windows NT kernel is arguably a better design than Linux. I complain about NTFS now, but thirty years ago it was better than most other filesystems. And Windows NT at least didn't jam a billion ads down your throat.

Granted, MS has always been a pretty evil anti-competitive company, so I'm not trying to sanitize them much here.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#600

Post by redml »

Even if they fix it, and that's a big if - It doesn't really mean anything when they have a ton of MBAs and product managers working internally to make it creep back in. It's going to take a decade to grow trust again and I don't think they're up to the task.
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