Ah, another thing to learn to ignore because everyone seems to think my attention is owned by them. These companies don't seem to realize that continuing to add these petty things will just make us learn to ignore them more and more. It's like notifications. My discord is always on no notifications and the @heres and stuff make my icon badge always say 9+ or whatever. So now I never see things people want to share because they've overused the alerts.
Facebook was the same. I turned off notifications completely because I couldn't disable specific ones I didn't need so they started emailing me so I blocked them as spam. Sorry FB, your loss. My life is better without your garbage product anyway.
This 100%. I turn off notifications every time an app abuses them. Spotify wants to tell me about a random album I should listen to? Notifications blocked. Twitter recommends an account to follow? Notifs off. The pattern has continued to the point where I now do not get any social media notifications and I only see the app's content when I actively open it up and check.
They waste our time so we disable their functionality.
Right? Or the pattern of opening Spotify to find/listen to something, something pops up, I close it immediately without reading it because it's In My Way and never find out about what they were trying to tell me.
Apple Podcasts sending you notifications for new podcasts that are subscription only. You tap on it. You wait for it to load. And then you get a popup 'subscription only'.
If you are on an android phone what supports shelter[1], I can recommend installing "social" apps inside the shelter, and just sleep the apps when you don't use them.
In regards to windows, it feels to me as morphing into a solution for large corporations if disregarding the tabloid news while leaving private users just waiting for a friendly OS to be presented for them.
Not quite as good, but you can turn off background app refresh on iOS to cripple their ability to do anything, though I believe push notifications come via Apple’s server anyway.
The worst thing is, these notifications/error badges consume your attention even if you choose NOT to engage with them. If you have OCD (or are OCD-adjacent, or just enjoy seeing a screen that is not full of unremovable “call to action” badges), it’s a nightmare.
This shit should be illegal. Make it truly optional so I can turn off or dismiss the badge/“error” permanently, or just don’t do it this way.
Facts facts facts. For anyone with any kind of obsessive tendencies towards cleaning your inbox or anything, it's literal torture. It's crazy that it's even legal.
I hate it. I always set up my Windows PCs with an offline admin account and normal user accounts for day-to-day work. Some of those I log in with my Microsoft account(s). Some I don’t. It depends on what my needs are.
Encouraging everyone to use one administrator, do everything account just because it makes it easier for Microsoft to push their services seems pretty pathetic to me. Toss in the per-profile licensing and activation for Office, etc. and it’s obvious Microsoft doesn’t care about security if it gets in the way of sales.
Oh yeah, go try to install Chrome through edge on that new setup. Windows alerts like 3-4 times during the process that Edge IS Chromium and stuff trying to keep you using their browser. I am not about to start using a browser that has special backdoors to annoy me when I try to do things that it doesn't approve of...
I was also trying to install windows 11 on a VM to do some one off work. It was next to impossible to create a local account with internet connection on. I had to restart my installation process with Internet disconnected. And even after I installed, I realized how many times it asks me to login. Even desktop features like widgets need login.
It really is a testament to the power of the Windows monopoly that MS can continously make the product worse without losing a meaningful amount of customers.
Windows is more than ripe for disruption, but unfortunate the monopoly is enforced by drivers, productivity software, habit, gaming etc.
It's depressing to think about how much better our computers could have worked if there had been real competition in the market of PC OSs for the last 25 years.
It's all the little things. I just set up my first Linux / Windows dual boot laptop to ease my way out of Windows, but my day 1 experience with Linux involved disabling IPv6 so that I could get onto WiFi + internet, disabling the HiDPI daemon so that my screen resolution changes would persist across restarts, and wearing headphones most of the day because the laptop's external speakers don't work out of the box. The Apple-like "everything-included" model might work well for desktop Linux, but the Windows-like "BYO everything" model is still quite rough... and I don't see that changing because it's mostly hardware / driver-related, and there's a constant churn of new devices, chips and accessories.
Windows has already been disrupted: first by the web, and second by mobile.
The reason Windows continues to dominate desktop is because Apple isn't a competitor, more like an off-ramp for those that can afford better. And Linux on Intel/AMD is finicky on most OEM machines except for a couple of machines that are 10 years old.
Yes! Incredibly annoying. Just checked my iPad and I had 2 notification markers or whatever they are called (the number on the Settings app icon) telling me about "special offers" since I recently purchased an iPhone and one to set up Apple Pay. On my Mac when I wasn't signed into iCloud I would get occasional popups telling me to sign in. Thanks Tim Apple
I'm not signed into iCloud on the main account on my mac. It brings some annoyances but in general it works remarkably fine.
One day I desperately needed something from the App store, so I made another account to sign in there. Ever since then I've been getting a "sign into you account" badge on my Settings app prompting me to remove it from the dock.
I was just thinking that as one popped up just now. "Some account services will not be available until you sign in again" all day every day. Whenever I try to close it, it (of course) brings me to settings.
Guess what? If I haven't used those services over the past 6 years, I don't think I need them.
Pretty sure this day is today. It probably doesn't matter much on a personal device, but my company-issued test and dev iPhone has several "unread" suggestions that I can't seem to remove.
I can understand the outrage over dark patterns, but I think you could also view this change from a different perspective: Microsoft makes it clear that long/medium term they want to make Microsoft accounts mandatory to use Windows and view local accounts as a legacy exception which should be progressively eliminated. If you follow that assumption, it's perfectly logical to see a local account as an "error".
So if the roadmap is that clear, I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
Or alternatively: Why are software companies allowed to just make those decisions, even it could potentially disrupt the work of millions of users.
>"I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows."
I've been using Windows for almost 30 years now, and while I've given different distros of Linux and MacOS an honest try, I am never as comfortable or as fluent with them as I am with Windows. I know there is an extensive amount of customization that can be done with Linux to get it really close but it just isn't the same.
I'm also at the level where I am comfortable enough with gpedit and regedit that as long as there is a way to turn most of the annoying and onerous "features" off, I can keep on truckin'. For instance, disabling Cortana in the start menu.
> I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
The reason investors and CEOs love monopolies and oligopolies so much is that they don't have to care about users, they can abuse them as much as they want.
Windows machines are the only affordable option for millions of people so they have to keep using it, no matter how much they hate Microsoft. Governments should be less tolerant of important companies that abuse their power.
And before anyone chimes in saying "Linux is Free Open Source Software!", remember the old saying: Time is money.
Almost noone wants to spend time messing with their computer. A computer might be the end to a means for Linux neckbeards, but for the rest of humanity a computer is simply a means to an end.
Windows, unlike Linux, satisfies that role of being a means to an end, of just being a tool for bigger things. Buying a Windows license is, in fact, more affordable than messing in Linux.
Because it's a well-studied science just how much most people will put up with. Most people are 100% path of least resistance, and that is simple to manipulate.
People also willingly addict themselves to the dumbest things. They can't use linux because some stupid nike sneaker app doesn't work on it, they can't use libreoffice because the menus are different. Even most of the real differences are unneccessary gimmicks that only exist to create exactly that trap. Developers too slurping up the whole vs stack, feeds back to all the shitty apps that people can't live without only existing on windows.
> I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows
A lot of non-open source desktop software available only for Windows and MacOS. While I dislike MacOS less than Windows 10 or especially 11, MacBook is more expensive than Windows notebook or mini-PC.
The more and more I see, the decision to finally install Windows 10 LTSC is more and more justified for my gaming PC.
I have to wonder though how much of this stuff are they going to try to shove into Windows 11 LTSC when that comes out or are they going to continue the pattern of a lot of the shady stuff magically being missing from LTSC?
There is a GitHub project that you may find valuable.
But yeah, and it make sense. I mean Microsoft doesn't want to make it easy to strip out all of the crap they add in (or really never have it in the first place).
Not that I am defending Microsoft since this is their own doing, but I can understand why LTSC is not... easy isn't the right word. Can't think of the word I am looking for.
Edit: The best part is I have not noticed any downsides. I did have to install the Windows Store for the Xbox app but that still leaves a TON of stuff that isn't there.
If you're affiliated with a university or high school (or know a student who will help you out), you can get free Windows Server licenses through their Azure student/educator deal. Also includes all the fancy versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, and education versions of Windows 10 and 11 (which include Group Policy).
Windows is incredibly broken and yet miraculously its power is that it works.
My exotic mix of apps work. Games work, new ones and 20 year old ones. All peripherals and hardware combinations work, or have a way to make them work. There always seems to be a path towards success.
Years or decades of muscle memory fueling resistance to change, corporate lock-in, game compatibility...that's how Microsoft can get away with almost anything.
Should Apple want to, they could get the ultimate revenge by reversing the lost PC wars. And actually dominate the laptop/desktop market. They have the hardware, software and resources to do so.
But it won't happen, it would require too many non-Apple moves, like wide compatibility, very long term legacy support, low margin products.
Ironically, macOS already shows an error message when an account is not using iCloud.
Using both macOS and Windows 11 on an almost daily basis, they are really not that different when it comes to nagging users. Both show full-screen displays on startup from time to time where they want to change some settings (activating Siri, using Edge as default browser, ...), try to sell additional services, make you use an online account, and come with a lot of bloatware.
I used Edge (logged in) + Bing for 3+ years and recently switched back to Firefox. When it was new, Edge was great. It was a Google free Chromium browser that integrated with my MS account and got out of my way.
Now Edge is a bloated piece of trash because Microsoft can't stop jamming crap into it.
I jumped from Chrome to Edge ~3 years ago, and ever since it has been a steady downward trend with each release. I switched back to FF a couple weeks ago when the giant Bing Button appeared and can't be easily removed.
Readit News
Facebook was the same. I turned off notifications completely because I couldn't disable specific ones I didn't need so they started emailing me so I blocked them as spam. Sorry FB, your loss. My life is better without your garbage product anyway.
In regards to windows, it feels to me as morphing into a solution for large corporations if disregarding the tabloid news while leaving private users just waiting for a friendly OS to be presented for them.
[1] https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter
This shit should be illegal. Make it truly optional so I can turn off or dismiss the badge/“error” permanently, or just don’t do it this way.
Encouraging everyone to use one administrator, do everything account just because it makes it easier for Microsoft to push their services seems pretty pathetic to me. Toss in the per-profile licensing and activation for Office, etc. and it’s obvious Microsoft doesn’t care about security if it gets in the way of sales.
Unfortunately Microsoft/windows does not care what your needs are, it only cares about data collection and ads.
I recently had to install windows in a vm because I could not get adobe reader working through wine. The install process was awful:
* Dark pattern to try and force me to login with a MS account during setup
* Majority of setup steps pertain to data collection and/or ads
After setting it up, I had to open up edge to download and install adobe reader, once again
* Nags me to login to an account
* Most if not all setup steps are about ads and data collection
All for the sake of filling out some pdfs. I am truly grateful that Valve is pushing proton as it makes me (almost never) have to leave linux.
Windows is more than ripe for disruption, but unfortunate the monopoly is enforced by drivers, productivity software, habit, gaming etc.
It's depressing to think about how much better our computers could have worked if there had been real competition in the market of PC OSs for the last 25 years.
All of these moves I call “KPI features”, as in: “I have to make this worse to meet my personal bonus criteria, sorry.”
There are so many dark patterns in Windows now because of this.
Nobody at Microsoft cares about the products at all any more.
The reason Windows continues to dominate desktop is because Apple isn't a competitor, more like an off-ramp for those that can afford better. And Linux on Intel/AMD is finicky on most OEM machines except for a couple of machines that are 10 years old.
One day I desperately needed something from the App store, so I made another account to sign in there. Ever since then I've been getting a "sign into you account" badge on my Settings app prompting me to remove it from the dock.
Guess what? If I haven't used those services over the past 6 years, I don't think I need them.
The day they don't is the day I throw my iPhone in the river.
Deleted Comment
So if the roadmap is that clear, I think the better question is why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
Or alternatively: Why are software companies allowed to just make those decisions, even it could potentially disrupt the work of millions of users.
I've been using Windows for almost 30 years now, and while I've given different distros of Linux and MacOS an honest try, I am never as comfortable or as fluent with them as I am with Windows. I know there is an extensive amount of customization that can be done with Linux to get it really close but it just isn't the same.
I'm also at the level where I am comfortable enough with gpedit and regedit that as long as there is a way to turn most of the annoying and onerous "features" off, I can keep on truckin'. For instance, disabling Cortana in the start menu.
Deleted Comment
Because it's often the only option in the corporate world.
It's only the home-users that get hit by this....
The reason investors and CEOs love monopolies and oligopolies so much is that they don't have to care about users, they can abuse them as much as they want.
Windows machines are the only affordable option for millions of people so they have to keep using it, no matter how much they hate Microsoft. Governments should be less tolerant of important companies that abuse their power.
And before anyone chimes in saying "Linux is Free Open Source Software!", remember the old saying: Time is money.
Almost noone wants to spend time messing with their computer. A computer might be the end to a means for Linux neckbeards, but for the rest of humanity a computer is simply a means to an end.
Windows, unlike Linux, satisfies that role of being a means to an end, of just being a tool for bigger things. Buying a Windows license is, in fact, more affordable than messing in Linux.
People also willingly addict themselves to the dumbest things. They can't use linux because some stupid nike sneaker app doesn't work on it, they can't use libreoffice because the menus are different. Even most of the real differences are unneccessary gimmicks that only exist to create exactly that trap. Developers too slurping up the whole vs stack, feeds back to all the shitty apps that people can't live without only existing on windows.
A lot of non-open source desktop software available only for Windows and MacOS. While I dislike MacOS less than Windows 10 or especially 11, MacBook is more expensive than Windows notebook or mini-PC.
Because Windows runs Win32.
I have to wonder though how much of this stuff are they going to try to shove into Windows 11 LTSC when that comes out or are they going to continue the pattern of a lot of the shady stuff magically being missing from LTSC?
But yeah, and it make sense. I mean Microsoft doesn't want to make it easy to strip out all of the crap they add in (or really never have it in the first place).
Not that I am defending Microsoft since this is their own doing, but I can understand why LTSC is not... easy isn't the right word. Can't think of the word I am looking for.
Edit: The best part is I have not noticed any downsides. I did have to install the Windows Store for the Xbox app but that still leaves a TON of stuff that isn't there.
My exotic mix of apps work. Games work, new ones and 20 year old ones. All peripherals and hardware combinations work, or have a way to make them work. There always seems to be a path towards success.
Years or decades of muscle memory fueling resistance to change, corporate lock-in, game compatibility...that's how Microsoft can get away with almost anything.
Should Apple want to, they could get the ultimate revenge by reversing the lost PC wars. And actually dominate the laptop/desktop market. They have the hardware, software and resources to do so.
But it won't happen, it would require too many non-Apple moves, like wide compatibility, very long term legacy support, low margin products.
Using both macOS and Windows 11 on an almost daily basis, they are really not that different when it comes to nagging users. Both show full-screen displays on startup from time to time where they want to change some settings (activating Siri, using Edge as default browser, ...), try to sell additional services, make you use an online account, and come with a lot of bloatware.
I used Edge (logged in) + Bing for 3+ years and recently switched back to Firefox. When it was new, Edge was great. It was a Google free Chromium browser that integrated with my MS account and got out of my way.
Now Edge is a bloated piece of trash because Microsoft can't stop jamming crap into it.