Saying that here as someone that isn't fond of the Windows experience these days, but the two are not relatable.
Not trying to turn everything "woke", but phrasing of scenarios around this just takes away from the severity of what actual abuse is.
Username checks out, but you might want to check with your mother about how she feels about this comparison.
TFA brings up abuse not stndef.
An analogy is "a thing which is comparable to something else in significant respects" and stndef is right to point out that microsoft behavior, while abusive, is not comparable to domestic abuse "in significant respects". Not even close.
The TFA title is sensational for effect and in very poor taste.
I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line. The risk of losing other gains at the expense of the user should discourage companies from trying to go full on maximum extraction.
Sadly the only recent cases to achieve that level of success were the reactions to Unity’s install pricing and wizards new OGL. Mostly companies get away with “oh my bad, this final step was just an experiment, we’ve rolled it back for now” to try again later, or just toughing out the negative reception and hoping their competitors come along for the ride too so users have no choice
Most standard users simply dont have an option. Mac Neo brought Apple into a lower price range, but requires a new device. Linux is there (and frankly fantastic at this point) but good luck getting the average person through the setup process.
an enterprising hardware manufacturer can take on the mantle, and be the trail blazer with a no-setup machine that works.
Personally, i would imagine something like framework laptop, and steam machine, are the best candidates.
AI is part of the problem with what MS has shoved in to things but it may be part of what can help with the underlying issue of this behavior by corporations.
The average user increasingly will not need to be walked through in certain ways, they’ll only have to be aware something, some way, is possible. Because we are most of usthe average, meaning outsider to knowledge and understanding of things their functioning on a computer. I can strip out tired windows behavior to some extent and certainly stand up a Linux desktop. But I didn’t know how to easily manage retrieval of data from an old disc image that refused to mount. But I knew it was there and not impossible so I asked Claude. A one shot prompt that a few minutes later had Claude reading raw bytes in someway and finding the location of a few files I needed.
So there is potential for AI to fill some gaps in this way and make some things easier and more in reach of average users. It’s potential only though, so continuing to work and ensure open models remain a thing, it’s important. Just like the Internet enabled a lot of things previously out of reach of people. And yeah, that was not an un mixed blessing with the rest, so all the more reason to move forward thoughtfully.
OneDrive managers on the other hand are one step away from inventing some way of adding a gacha mechanic.
"Infecting with screwdrivers" now see how dumb that sounds?
React is the symptom here, not the cause.
lol what a weird response.
As a user, however, I find that the Start menu has become more sluggish than it used to be, and that's pretty annoying. What about that?
So React, the most popular front-end library and used my hundreds of thousands of successful apps, is the ridiculous electric screwdriver? See how weird that sounds and makes it obvious you guys can't give an honest assessment?
Idk, and I'm not saying it's not a good question, but it's irrelevant to the comparison in OP's comment.
Other apps are successful despite being slow and bloated, since performance isn’t a primary concern of users. In contrast it’s critical for OS internals like the start menu, so a javascript runtime and framework is just the wrong tool for the job.
this is in general how the market for pretty much everything works (sometimes 'users' are replaced by 'the regulator', but it doesn't matter too much).
lesson in there is 'majority of users don't care nearly as much as you think', usually.
This is capitalism's biggest flaw: it's based on the assumption that there will be competition, but competition eventually leads to winners that then consolidate their positions and we end up with no real choices.
You're telling me people would pick a worse OS because they don't care even if they had real options? I don't believe that for a second.
The fact that governments allow Microsoft to abuse its position to force OEMs to install Windows is the biggest problem. This would never happen in a market where regulation ensures healthy competition.
Unfortunately this also allowed the USA to have companies so large that they basically control the government, changing this now will require massive political will and a political body untethered from corporate interests. I really don't see that happening in the USA, it's been thoroughly captured after so many years driving on that path.
As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.
And that doesn't even get into gaming.
It's not 2016 anymore, you don't have to switch to LibreOffice if you need an office suite of apps.
That obviously would be preferable, but if you're an avid Microsoft ecosystem user, just use WinApps. It's simple enough to the point that a child could use it.
Gaming on Linux is a mostly solved issue for anyone that doesn't do competitive multiplayer gaming. If a game isn't using some root kit level anti-cheat or copyright protection, it is going to run just fine. Same with running most other software.
The only part where Linux is sucks is for certain creatives fields. If you need Adobe products you are out of luck. Video editing well you use Da Vinci or free software. There are some good DAWS but no Ableton.
Yes, you have to compromise but Linux is definitely getting there. Not everything runs on Mac either and people cope just fine.
Turns out, a lot of people do exactly that. Hundreds of millions of people play CoD, Fortnite, Battlefield, Apex and many many other games which won't work on Linux at all.
I think the state of gaming on Linux is absolutely incredible - what used to be a very esotheric and "roll of the dice" process 20 years ago now is extremely simple and it mostly just works. But when I play games with friends every week it's almost never a game that would work on Linux.
Hard disagree. Not that it has to be FOSS, but you have a product that is predatory towards you and you refuse to change your ways.
Leaving an abusive relationship is hard, but sometimes you have to do it.
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" engineering is to get govvies off it. My 2c.
A lot of companies are paying for office and teams comes bundled with it. Why pay extra when its included?
In our office, we'd definitely need the enterprise version for compliance reasons, not because of the features. That's about 14/user/month.
At a workforce of roughly 2500, that's a 4million+ yearly cost for something that is comparable to something you can get without that pricetag. It's no competition at all at that point. Think about it, would you be willing to ask your boss to pay 4 million so you can have a different chat app? No matter how much more ergonomic and friendly and intuitive it is.
I, living in Germany, rather wonder myself quite often why US-American tech startups don't act much more frugally: this would give them so much more leeway/runway to make their startups succeed.
Regulators should be all over it. EU has tried, but unsuccesfully, since it was lawyers who came up with the mitigation.
The ability to write in the meeting chat before and after a meeting for example. That is some serious quality of life function that all others are lacking.
Objectively.
We tried not using Office or Windows. Ended up needing a laptop with Windows and Office anyway.
Note to MS Product Manager: this should not be a success story. I was once your biggest cheerleader, now I am so desperate to get away from you that I am starting to look at Google as my savior.
Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows, it was their flagship product after all. It was terrible in some aspects, but also excellent in some others. I particular, they took compatibility very seriously, which is far from an easy task in the wild PC ecosystem. They were also quite good in the UI/UX department. The Office suite was unmatched too, I tried a few alternative, none of them came close.
Now, they completely broke their UI/UX, and that's not just the ads, forced Copilot stuff, etc... It is pure incompetence. They still have good compatibility, but it is not as impressive of a feat as it once was, as apps today are naturally more portable because of all the abstraction layers (performance be damned, but that's another story). The traditional Office suite is still good, but they are in the process of sabotaging it with web-based apps that remove tons of features without actually simplifying anything.
I don't think so. The web version is mostly incompatible with the Windows or Mac desktop versions.
Have you compared the UI of Word/Powerpoint/Excel with alternatives like Apple Pages/Keynote/Numbers or Google Docs/Sheets? For me, the MS products are a complete mess with arbitrary collections of unrelated buttons, abysmal font rendering and insane defaults.
The situation has only just changed now that Apple and Valve are getting close to threatening the Windows monopoly.
Microsoft being good to their customers is the anomaly, not the other way around.
Microsoft is often good to their customers. Generally in situations where badness has a poor RoI, or they're trying to lure you deeper into their clutches.
1. An analysis of what allowed the situation to get out of control to begin with
2. Systematic changes to prevent it from happening again
Otherwise you will just be in the same situation again in 3 years. And neither is included in Microsoft's messaging here.
Microsoft doesn't have any trust to lose, and they won't be gaining any by this move.
That is the one advantage they have in all of this. Their public image is as bad as it can get.
Then why even do it?
They have made so many unforced errors in recent years its hard to imagine serious people currently inhabit those roles.
Office.com, the cornerstone of Office, is now just a prompt. A prompt!!!!
They make it near impossible to manage a small/medium sized company with the unending tweaking, moving, and rebranding of every single portal in that product.
It's absolutely wild that a company as big and important to the business world as they are is playing this fast and loose. I'm quite frankly embarrassed for them.
Did they increase profits and/or stock price or not? That's the only relevant question. Not what happend to Office.com or what you think about their products.
Also, you and me are not the customers. Govs and corporations are.
I am customer and I absolutely hate it that they have restricted the machine that Windows can run on.
If they don't fix this sort of anti customer garbage then all their words are pure horseshit.
Either give a solid set of requirements that let a dev assume things about a windows 11 system (good hardware security, in particular), or fuck off entirely.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/nwr4kd/best_d...
All because it has some AI stuff on it that I don’t want.
Copilot isn't in Visio (at least in the subscription my work pays for).
I used Copilot's chat interface instead, and it is unable to generate a diagram in the Visio .vsdx format; it tried, failed, tried to fix it, failed.
Sigh.
If anyone knows how to revert to non-AI version of the subscription let me know
But that being said, I have a good laugh at their announcement because you know they will spend money to try to make the thing nice, everything they can at their own cost, to be able to win the users back and lock them, and then they will start to fuck them up again once they feel confident enough.
It's remarkable that computer users are paying $139 to give data to Microsoft through an ad-supported "operating system"
Back in the day (generally) only OEMs paid
What is the $139 for
sorry, I have never seen these supposed ads in win11. the lock screen does display icons for things like local events and weather, but i consider them useful at best, and innocuous at worst - it's not like i spend much time in the lock screen. i have never seen an ad in the start menu or settings.
am i specially blessed, or is there a bit of (wrong) groupthink going on here?
as for microsoft accounts, i find having one (i have 365 subscription) more useful than not. day to day it doesn't irritate me at all, because i never see it.
mostly, i find win11 pretty good - its fast, smooth and the UI is about as good as UIs get.
It's a setting called "Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen", and it's checked by default.
There was a rumour 1-2 months ago about Lenovo and Asus meeting Microsoft execs and warning them that if win11 issues continued to cost them support hours and devicw returns they would be forced to find an alternative.
I sure wish we could just have Windows 10 back. My machine was so much faster.
I will have to use Teams and Outlook at work because I don't have a choice. But that's it Microsoft.
I'd say the problem these days is not Ads, its Content. Firefox and Chrome (desktop and android) and Edge start with a tab of content - celebrity tat and sensationalistic world news. Windows taskbar was the same, weather and news gave me a load of tatty Content. You go and find the setting to turn it off and it goes away. But I hate Content much more than I hate Ads. Content is the problem and on that front Windows is about the same as everything else.
Swarming, as in locusts, or else flies on shit.
I know people run an operating system to run programs on so it isn't easy to switch but so many windows users make it sound like they have Stockholm Syndrome.
My advice as a Linux user of 32 years for normal people is to buy a Mac.
no_shadowban_3•1h ago
If you don't use Linux or MacOS yet, why?
jacooper•1h ago
troupo•1h ago
This hasn't been true for at least a decade. And it's especially not true for the M* series Macs.
Even Macbook Neo can handle editing several layers of 4k video files in several apps while running everything else https://youtu.be/Mo6o8RKn7jE?is=opeCYMDbt7bUAdvS Try that on "the same performance/ram" Windows Machine
maxnoe•1h ago
There, fixed it for you.
It's not like Linux is the blocker here.
nunodonato•1h ago
spookie•1h ago
When I hear these arguments I just think these people are simply chained.
yourusername•1h ago
mschild•1h ago
I dont know any private person in my circle that actually sold their laptop until it wasnt broken or so painfully old that the used value was mostly for spare parts. That may change a bit with the skyrocketing pc part prices but still.
someonenice•1h ago
someguyiguess•54m ago
troupo•1h ago
nextlevelwizard•1h ago
troupo•1h ago
- All core services and apps experience significant performance degradation (to thenpoint that Spotlight regularly fails to find installed apps) which are currently only offset by the insane performance of the M* series chips
- Services become more and more pervasive, with ads throughout the system
nextlevelwizard•1h ago
Yeah, spotlight has been rough for years, I grant you that.
I haven't seen a single ad in my system. Where do you see them?
9dev•1h ago
nextlevelwizard•1h ago
troupo•45m ago
Not just glass. It started with Big Sur at least. It's forcing narrow and/or devoid of controls interfaces into every app, breaking decades-old system behaviours (misbehaving controls, wrong or non-functioning keyboard shortcuts, mobile-like interfaces in desktop apps etc.). It's eschewing MacOS-native development for shoddy half-assed ports of iPhone software even for first-party apps. Etc.
> I haven't seen a single ad in my system. Where do you see them?
I've seen notifications for Apple Music, and I've seen ads in the System Settings
9dev•1h ago
I'm really afraid of that one. MacOS engineers don't have to worry about performance optimizations anymore, because the chips gobble it up anyway. Ever more powerful hardware is how we ended up with the awful performance of modern-day computing.
conceptme•1h ago
mschild•1h ago
I switched from Windows 10 to Fedora recently. Most of the games I play work without issue but I know there are some which categorically refuse to work (mainly some specific anti-cheating software reasons).
no_shadowban_3•1h ago
eknkc•1h ago
For debugging I installed Bazzite (Linux gaming distro) assuming compatibility would be shit but I can at least test native linux builds of some games to see if there is a hardware issue. The thing runs perfectly. I've been playing propert windows games on Proton with higher / more consistent FPS. It is kind of funny at this point. Granted I do not play any competitive / multiplayer games.
I guess Valve did a great job on the Steam Deck sw.
wildrhythms•42m ago
dude250711•1h ago
scrollop•1h ago
"It sucks"
Ha!
bob1029•1h ago
Each is good at its own thing. I don't understand the game of picking exactly one hill to die on.
I spend about 60% of my time on Apple operating systems, and 40% elsewhere. Windows really does suck from a UX perspective, but if you are trying to make money doing things professionally with a computer, it's hard to beat. Running outlook and office on Mac just doesn't hit the same way.
hu3•1h ago
And it scans every executable and command run and sends a hash to motherbase. I don't know how people put up with this. There's probably some dangerous way to disable that like, let me guess, disabling SIP...
And it sucks at gaming.
Linux on the other hand is great for power users!
alex_duf•1h ago
So you're right, it's great for power users, it's also great for other users.
hu3•1h ago
dahcryn•57m ago
I'm perfectly happy with my "vanilla" macbook. Runs Baldurs Gate 3 and my final fantasy ps2 emulator just fine, and even trackmania was quite easy to get installed and runs well.
Can't comment on that hash thing, but I don't see why that would be a problem? It's not linked to your name or something. Windows does a ton of things too that I find inexcusable, such as changing settings or permissions after updates, those have an actual impact on my daily experience with these things
g947o•14m ago
Gaming: that's a fact but again doesn't matter to most people. Most people play video games on phones/tablets/consoles if they play games at all. PC gaming is a relative minority, and (regular) Windows laptops can only do lightweight gaming anyway. The amount of people who decides what "everyday computer" they should buy based on whether they are going to play games on it is very small. Plus, you get much better ROI by buying a PS5+Macbook Air than spending the same amount of money on a gaming laptop.
skc•1h ago
I'm a dev, I don't game. No issues.
Why people find this hard to believe is kind of puzzling to be honest. As if everyone's experience simply HAS to match your own.
matltc•21m ago
nirava•18m ago
My windows machine is also “fine” for the most part because i turned off whatever I could and tried to mod whatever I could not. Even so, every once in a while, typing “code” and being taken to an edge bing search makes me want to rip it to shreds.
And I delay every update as far as possible and am filled with dread when it finally wont let me postpone it.
It isn’t that fine now that I think about it.
Mashimo•48m ago
Still use it on my server though.
I might try a MacBook air at some point, but they are quite expensive when you need 1TB disk for your music files. But for now my ThinkPad T14 Gen1 still runs fine. I don't need more battery or power. No fan could be cool.
alexb_•45m ago
The real crime, by a lot, it middle click. I did not realize how often I use middle click scroll until I switched to Linux and it didn't work anymore.
nirava•28m ago
You can fault Linux as the primary desktop environment for a few things, but that it’s different to MS is not one of those.
Do you also rant about having no windows key on a MacBook?