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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

#611

Post by jasomill »

grujicd wrote: post #224
kakacik wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Total Commander mention, its bizarre how many otherwise smart folks completely ignore this productivity enhancer. I keep showing it to colleagues but they all anyway revert back to basic clunky File explorer and variants. Doesn't matter if I show them that I can be easily 10x faster, do stuff simply impossible otherwise, has tons of plugins etc. its just ignored.

The only negative side of Total Commander is I'm extremly used to it - been using it since mid 90s. When I compare alternatives on Mac I'm searching for exact keyboard commands, navigation patterns, etc. I'm using Crax Commander, but it's not the same. TC is probably one of the reasons I don't care that much about problems in newer versions of Windows, I don't use Explorer, I don't use windows search, text is viewed…

I'm the same way except with command prompts. So long as I have a decent shell (bash and PowerShell are both good enough) with the ability to open files and some reasonable form of tab completion, I mostly only open up Windows File Explorer windows to use context menu items, or with Win+E to quickly check free disk space, and Mac Finder windows to drag and drop files into file picker dialog boxes in GUI apps.

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

#612

Post by jasomill »

stronglikedan wrote: post #182
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…

> OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only Holy shit that's nuts!

Worse, when Microsoft made this change, One Drive actually deleted almost a terabyte of files from my Mac.

Uninstalled, restored from a recent backup, and haven't used it, or any other cloud sync application, since.

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

#613

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

p_ing wrote: post #416
justonceokay wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quibbling about ram is strange only because Apple is much better positioned to utilize ram since they are vertically integrated. I produce music and occasionally compile Haskell on my 2016 MacBook with an i3 and 8gigs of ram. So I’m in the 99th percentile power user and a 10 year old machine works great. I bet the new Mac would be even better. It doesn’t have 8gigs of ram to cheat the consumer. It’s because this…

No, they're not "better positioned" to utilize memory. NT has a far better VMM than macOS does and handles OOM significantly better than macOS (and Linux, for that matter). Look no further than the various Mac subreddits for applications such as TextEdit, Calculator, Safari, and other first and third party applications leaking like a sieve to the point of OOM for multiple versions of macOS at this point. Not to menti…

> NT has a far better VMM than macOS does and handles OOM significantly better than macOS (and Linux, for that matter).

All of them handle OOM the same way: paging to disk with subsequent thrashing. How can any OS be better than any other in that respect?

If your computing experience leaves much to be desired it’s more-often-than-not the fault of the fact more and more applications are eschewing (admittedly neglected) efficient native platforms and using Electron/WebViews.

…looking at you, Balena Etcher. No-one needs a 200MB front-end for `dd`.

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

#614

Post by [deleted] »

hluska wrote: post #532
ryandrake wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to…

You’re exaggerating - my computer has never prevented me from doing what I want to do with it. There are some annoyances but that can be said about absolutely every system.

[deleted]

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

#615

Post by fsflover »

yourapostasy wrote: post #517
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…

I use Linux exclusively on the backend, a Windows laptop is usually what my clients issue to me for gigs, and I migrated years ago from macOS to a Linux laptop as my personal primary daily driver (though I still use macOS, just not where I spend 90% of my personal time). I agree with Windows having its own issues like you pointed out. To be fair however, Linux and macOS daily driver experiences are also not without t…

> not having a solution to encrypt our disks and hibernate under Secure Boot

Did you consider coreboot with Heads and a hardware key instead?

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

#616

Post by robotnikman »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #498
roenxi wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable? In fairness it wasn't just the rewrite that was the problem, but it looks for all the world like there was a large faction in the Linux UI world around Wayland that believes accessibility is insecure and designed the new systems to make it impossible. It has been an interesting if unfortunate situat…

Why was gnome pushed so hard? In my eyes it looks horrible and I still prefer xfce...

I wonder the same thing. I've been using KDE Plasma and have not looked back.

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

#617

Post by jasomill »

kstrauser wrote: post #197
janalsncm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to buy Apple adapters. You can buy a $10 usbc to hdmi adapter off Amazon and it’ll work just fine. Same thing with the USB A ports. Not really selling point imo.

Or just use a Thunderbolt cable to send video, power, and USB to a newer monitor with a single cord. That’s my work setup and I’d never go back. And yeah, USB A? I got a cheapo C-to-A hub for my dwindling number of legacy devices. There’s no remaining upside to A.

I can see exactly one, and it's niche: the ability to safely leave tiny USB-A peripherals like flash drives, wireless dongles, and SFF YubiKeys connected while not in use (not that I'm recommending a YubiKey be left connected to a laptop when not in use).

Hubs are mostly only relevant for docking or increasing the number of ports, given that USB-A to -C adapters are so cheap (assuming they're not bundled with the peripheral in the first place) you can reasonably leave them permanently attached to larger form factor USB-A peripherals.

As for full-sized HDMI, assuming you're not talking about the hellish mini or micro HDMI as alternatives, I'll take USB-C, or even mini DisplayPort, over full HDMI, as both have decent connectors and provide more and better inexpensive options for display connectivity (though admittedly finding good active DisplayPort-to-HDMI dongles can be harder than it should be because chroma subsampling is a thing that's not frequently touched upon in product descriptions).

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

#618

Post by maleldil »

chuckadams wrote: post #238
larusso wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The location of the command key is also a lot more comfortable. Thumb vs pinky.

It takes thirty seconds to remap anyway

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

#619

Post by jasomill »

autoexec wrote: post #346
kstrauser wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read any of those, did you. They're asking about things like, literally: How can I delete the Chess app? How do I disable Spotlight? How do I remove Siri? Those are not in any way comparable to ads or Candy Crush in the start menu.

What is the difference between a chess app and a candy crush app exactly? They are both "Games I didn't ask for, but were preinstalled" Ads aren't as intrusive or annoying on a mac yet, but they aren't not intrusive or annoying either ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256235494 )

Amen to this.

I still haven't figured out how to remove Microsoft Store apps from the Start menu in recent non-LTSC versions of Windows 11, even on Enterprise with the Enterprise-only "disable consumer experiences" Group Policy key set.

Suggestion for any Microsofties listening: give me an easy way to override Windows key press-and-release to open the PowerToys Command Palette, and I'll never complain about the Start menu again.

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

#620

Post by phendrenad2 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #279
phendrenad2 wrote: post #249

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.

A few people installing Linux on their friend's PCs is nothing. They can check their email, do their taxes, and play games from their iPad. It's an illusion of accomplishment. The entire Linux community, including people who actually build things, used to be focused on making Linux usable by EVERY class of user, including engineers, doctors, and lawyers.
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