I have not had any issues I can remember with Linux wifi for as long as I have used wifi.
Every product person I have worked with was just a SME in their domain, and pushed for a cohesive piece of software that solved their (users) needs.
I think I'd probably say that the problem with Windows is it's made and maintained by people who own macbooks.
We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!
That sounds more like they were ok with it at the time and now they are seeing how much it actually backfired.
The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.
I'd definitely much prefer if even for "ecosystem" the companies would not require online account except where truly necessary (purchases?), but for operating the OS itself, I do feel there's a line in the sand where online account requirement = no.
Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.
My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.
Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.
The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.
Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.
For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing me a "Your privacy matters" popup explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take me to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)
You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call `legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password)`. It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so call `minecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password)`, unless it also contains `foo@minecraft.`, in which case call `minecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password)`, except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.
I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.
One has to wonder if this change will occur, that is due to these state laws requiring various levels of age verification. I can see MS stating you need to have this account because of the Age Verification Law in your State.
In a way, California's law is a huge gift to big tech, and now it is being replicated to other US states with additional requirements.
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 enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.
I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
I realize you probably are referencing visual studio, but at the OS level KDE plasma seems to have copped Windows hot keys wholesale. I was giving it a go recently and was delighted that even meta+arrow keys for monitor switching fullscreen apps works. My only gripe, and what got me booting back into windows, was that even the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky to reliably play multiplayer online games.
A GL.iNet travel router in WiFi to ethernet bridge mode is an excellent stopgap until Linux support arrives. It also has the benefits of (a) taking with you on trips for safer/easier internet use (use your home SSID, even auto-VPN traffic if you want) and (b) letting you plug in other wired-only devices adjacent to the computer.
Here are their travel routers filtered to just those that support WiFi 6 and 7: https://store-us.gl-inet.com/collections/travel-routers?filt...
A lot of shortcuts are shared between windows and linux and fairly consistent across applications. Mac is the one that takes a decided "we're different" approach to shortcuts. I.e., Alt+L for address bar instead of Alt+D, Command swapping with Control, Q instead of W for closing tabs, Command+Control+Q for locking a computer instead of Super+L, etc
I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existed, so it's not really fair to describe them as the "different" one when MS chose their own, different shortcuts for Windows.
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 the second time.
I used to be, but in 2004 I switched to Linux.
I still use windows as a secondary operating system on another computer, though only Win10. I decided I will not transition to anything after Win10 as Microslop declared war on the users with Win11. Which was the case already before Win11, of course, but I feel the qualitative difference is too much now.
I don't know. A company worth trillions of dollars does a pretty fine job of making Windows incrementally worse in new and interesting ways, each release.
There's some truth; the bloated company structure has contributed to these unforced errors, but just at an engineering level, people are releasing this tripe without the skill or training or backbone to know what is bad, and push back on toxic management decisions.
Engineers collaborating with oppressive management is a technical failure. Google is riddled with the same problem. I'm sure all the FAANG-a-likes do. Paying billions in salaries to sycophant devs. They have the market share to keep failing upwards. They don't deserve it.
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:
* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates
* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead
* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)
* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)
* Internet search results in the "Home" search
* Random popups and product recommendations
* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update
Holy. Hell.
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, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)
but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent).
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
And with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac
For Mac, 30% are at 8GB, 43% at 16GB.
Windows has nearly nobody below 16GB (27%) and the biggest is 32GB (58%)
The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. It seems pretty clearly a play for students who will eventually enter the business world with their personal laptop preferences.
I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed.
Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such.
The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.
This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.
Around 300$ it gets better, specifically if you're open to Dell and other brands.
To me, all of those seem woefully underpowered, but $180 is $180...
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."
Like here's a $500 PC:
https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processo... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic...
Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.
I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".
If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.
Now maybe you shouldn't have to do those tweaks but it's certainly not a major hardship.
I bought a Windows Pro license a decade ago (maybe for Win7) and I'm still using the same license for Windows 11 on a new PC.
I look back fondly to the time I had using my Dell XPS when WSL first came out, they had me hooked. I've been using MacBook Pro for about a decade now and I can't even fathom going back to windows. Every time I open the start menu I feel personally attacked.
I used to obsess over reading xda developer forums and playing around with my android phone. I would laugh at the "sheeple" using apple products for not being customizable and giving away their freedom.
At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.
Windows account login provides decent value: Bitlocker recovery, device management, Onedrive sync (even the free version), simpler RDP & remote RPC authentication.
You won’t even defeat telemetry with a local account. Windows TOS grants telemetry consent.
Why do you guys care so much about this? It feels like a bikeshed – something easy to complain about with little nuance. What will be won if MS concedes?
ano-ther•1h ago
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 only. And OneDrive was also affected by the Teams bug.
Spent a good part of the day cursing in the direction of Redmond.
SirFatty•57m ago
shevy-java•19m ago
This is why local backups should always have the highest priority.
Storing online can be useful, but people should never forget that local backups are the best.