6 ms·

I would love to use W10. I just don't support MSFT's new business model. I want the OS to be the product, not me.

KirinDave 11y ago
This is such a ridiculous meme. I assure you, MS's business model is not you. Their business model is selling enterprise support and making Windows directly competitive. They're doing this because Apple and Google. Apple's made massive enterprise inroads. And Google has made massive education inroads. Windows has been relegated to gaming and "that OS no one wants to use at work." And that's a tenuous and dangerous position. It's also to try and compete on cross-platform mobile tools which get them big enterprise contracts. These have always been MS's bread and butter and will continue to do so. Windows 10 as a service is just MS recognizing the reality of OSs in a modern world. It is a change Google has already adopted with Chrome (and its evergreen model of change updates) and Apple only discards with iOS when they want to promote sales of the next major handset. They've also made major strides towards openness and helpfulness in the open source community. Their compiler, core library, runtime, JIT, etc? It's all open source now. Under many open-source-compatible licenses. I'm not saying we should suspend all disbelief or not call them out when they have stupid bugs or make positively boneheaded moves like that fiasco of putting a Tomb Raider add on the default lock screen. We should. But we should also be willing to say, "Perhaps this company is capable of change and there are some genuinely interesting and laudable signals of that."
- cm2187 11y ago
  My understanding of their new strategy is to focus on search and the cloud. They are investing into linux for the latter, and are instrumenting their desktop OS for the former. It might make sense but they are clearly now treating their users as a product.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    Bing is not a part of their renewed focus. I helped build the technology that made Bing competitive. Trust me, that road has not panned out for them. You say, "They are now clearly treating their users a product." That is not at all clear to me. Please explain.
    - cm2187 11y ago
      Serving ads in the start menu. Serving ads on the screen saver. Serving bing search result in the start menu. OS coming with an advertising ID. Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else. You are pretending they are not treating their customers as product and every windows install comes with an advertising ID? What is the advertising ID there for then?
      - KirinDave 11y ago
        > Serving ads in the start menu. "Serving ads in the start menu?" Fascinating. My start menu never had ads... It did have a "setup skype" which is part of their "get skype" campaign, but that was already installed. It did have the "activate your office" stuff but again, I already had those... Do you mean the store livetile that sometimes shows product pictures? > Serving bing search result in the start menu. Bing is the second most popular search engine in the US, and uh... the sad insider truth is that Bing searches are less of a privacy exposure that Duck Duck Go or Google. But whatever... Ubuntu was doing this forever. So was Firefox. They get paid to set your default search engine. To the tune of millions. > Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else. I mean, you can see what they send back if you're so inclined. It's not hard. You can even find articles where people have done that analysis. > OS coming with an advertising ID And you think... your cellphone... doesn't have one of these? Or your Mac doesn't have a distinct ID for the purposes of Mac store purchases? Or that Canonical didn't make a "Store ID" for their store? Do you think websites also aren't doing this? In ways that Do Not Track can never even address? If Microsoft is your whipping boy for this, then you've got a lot of anger to direct towards them. But the reality is that your entire digital experience is heavily instrumented. And you know what? We're instrumenting them because it's the only way we can possibly do what users ask us to do. We desperately need telemetry on failure, user engagement, and performance. Otherwise our customers choose products that CAN make changes based on these things. Simply put, the Market has spoken. You kinda have to look in awe at Microsoft for being able to put this off for so long. But with the complete collapse of Desktop Linux as a serious contender there are only a few shops in town that service OSs and they're locked in frantic competition to produce what most people treat as a commodity.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  MS's business model is not you And this is why it pings the mothership endlessly even when explicitly told not to? Even on Enterprise SKUs? W10, for me, represents an new, scary era of the OS working against my desires and interests, rather than for. When I say "telemetry off", I fucking mean OFF. I don't care what Microsoft says they're gathering or for what reason or for how much of my own good it is, that is a level of control that as the owner of the computer, I should have.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    You need to block what you don't want in the LAN router.
    - TrevorJ 11y ago
      That's the point. You shouldn't have to do that. Why should I be forced to expend any energy at all securing myself FROM my OS?
      - mirimir 11y ago
        Because Microsoft ;) And yes, I totally agree. Linux and BSD are good. Even OSX. But if you need Windows for whatever reason, you do what's necessary.
        cm2187 11y ago
        The problem with OSX is the very expensive hardware (and worrying signs that Apple is progressively locking down the OS). The problem with Linux is that unless you are trying to do something really really basic, you will be facing a command prompt, and then you have to RTFM. No time or appetite for that (and the perspective to have to "compile my own drivers" gives me the chills). I wish their was a cheap/free alternative with a decent UI.
      - KirinDave 11y ago
        Ask friends at Canonical. Or Apple. Why does only Microsoft get called on this?
- taneq 11y ago
  So they're not forcing ads onto home users, trying to turn Windows application development into a walled garden a la Apple App Store / Google Play, or using home users as beta testers before rolling out to enterprise customers? They're desperate to force customers into the SaaS business model because their old model of charging a one-time fee per OS install is no longer viable. Desktop computers have well and truly reached market penetration, the upgrade cycle has slowed significantly and since Windows 7, they haven't found anything new to offer that's compelling enough to entice customers to upgrade.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    > So they're not forcing ads onto home users I have seen some examples of this. I screamed loudly. It's not appropriate. > trying to turn Windows application development into a walled garden a la Apple App Store / Google Play Actually no, they're not. That's a negotiating tactic by a game developer and he's admitted there is no current substance to it. It's all speculative. You can distributed UWP apps without the store right now, just like you can distribute Mac apps without the App store. And why would you even put Google's ecosystem in that statement? That's a completely incorrect comparison. The only OS that does total lockdown right now is iOS for mobile and iPad pro. > They're desperate to force customers into the SaaS business model because their old model of charging a one-time fee per OS install is no longer viable. This is true. But to be honest, it was never very viable or fair to the customers. OSs in a modern security climate are a service. Making that clear is much more honest. > Desktop computers have well and truly reached market penetration You're wrong there. Their hybrid interface design is superior for next generation portable computing. People give them VERY high marks on this. Even really persnickety and principled people like Tog agree MS is further along than anyone else in a universally usable interface context that works with traditional M&K and Touch applications. My job forces me to use a Macbook with El Captian on it. I hate it. It feels like a dowdy piece of abandonware. I get hope and open my surfacebook and it feels like a modern, integrated, useful device. And that's my perspective as a cloud services developer. OSX has pissed me off so much I hate doing dev on it. It's slow, full of weird undocumented behavior, made devving harder, has very dated feeling hardware, comes with just abysmally bad bundled apps (dear god Keynote, how bad can you get? And Apple notes is like OneNote but 2x as difficult to use, and don't even get me started on how awkward Pages has gotten as it tries to be all things to all people. Need we even mention the nightmare that is iTunes and iPhoto?)
- Silhouette 11y ago
  But we should also be willing to say, "Perhaps this company is capable of change and there are some genuinely interesting and laudable signals of that." The trouble is, there is plenty of evidence that Microsoft's technology and business models have changed, but not always in laudable ways. If they were doing something genuinely new and better than how things were done before, I suspect the overall response on HN would generally be favourable -- this is pretty much a forum full of people interested in disruptive new technologies, after all.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    So a completely open development model for their core platform, including unprecedented levels of commitment to patent pacifism and MIT/BSD level licesning is not? > I suspect the overall response on HN would generally be favourable It was. > this is pretty much a forum full of people interested in disruptive new technologies, after all. Most people here are incredibly conservative in their technology choices. Hell, Clojure is still considered minority, people actively defend Apple's anti-competitive stuff and dismiss the crazy progress Google and Microsoft have made, people say, "I'd love to use Erlang but..." Even if we ignore the general novice factor, rate limiting stops real technical conversations here, anyways. Every time we get into a real technical discussion we hit the rate limits almost instantly.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      So a completely open development model for their core platform, including unprecedented levels of commitment to patent pacifism and MIT/BSD level licesning is not? Sorry, I must have missed the memo. When did Windows 10 become Open Source, and how do I get hold of the source so I can build a version without the telemetry and forced updates? It was. Perhaps you and I have different versions of HN. In the discussion I'm reading, you seem to be just about the only person on Microsoft's side, and many of your posts are being downvoted close to invisibility.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
This is basically nonsense. Windows licenses are paid, they always have been, and for the foreseeable future, they always will be. They changed to making updates free, but that's it. Every new computer comes with a paid Windows license as part of the cost. And if you build your own, you have to buy Windows 10. But once you have Windows, you'll always get the latest version. The whole 'you are the product' thing doesn't really apply to paid OSes. Even if the updates are free.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Microsoft is clearly trying to monetize users. The fact that they still make the users pay for it only adds insult to infamy.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    This! Win XP and Win 7 were OK. All the hidden logging etc was cringe-inducing, for sure. But Win 10 has gone way over the line. They're treating their customers like Google does. They're mining data from them, and they're pushing ads at them. But this is an OS, which requires a license, not just a bunch of free online services. As much as I dislike Apple's business model, it at least respects its customers' privacy! If I ever need to use Windows again, I'll get an anonymous copy, and treat it like the malware it is.

This is such a ridiculous meme. I assure you, MS's business model is not you. Their business model is selling enterprise support and making Windows directly competitive. They're doing this because Apple and Google. Apple's made massive enterprise inroads. And Google has made massive education inroads. Windows has been relegated to gaming and "that OS no one wants to use at work." And that's a tenuous and dangerous position. It's also to try and compete on cross-platform mobile tools which get them big enterprise contracts. These have always been MS's bread and butter and will continue to do so. Windows 10 as a service is just MS recognizing the reality of OSs in a modern world. It is a change Google has already adopted with Chrome (and its evergreen model of change updates) and Apple only discards with iOS when they want to promote sales of the next major handset. They've also made major strides towards openness and helpfulness in the open source community. Their compiler, core library, runtime, JIT, etc? It's all open source now. Under many open-source-compatible licenses. I'm not saying we should suspend all disbelief or not call them out when they have stupid bugs or make positively boneheaded moves like that fiasco of putting a Tomb Raider add on the default lock screen. We should. But we should also be willing to say, "Perhaps this company is capable of change and there are some genuinely interesting and laudable signals of that."

cm2187 11y ago
My understanding of their new strategy is to focus on search and the cloud. They are investing into linux for the latter, and are instrumenting their desktop OS for the former. It might make sense but they are clearly now treating their users as a product.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  Bing is not a part of their renewed focus. I helped build the technology that made Bing competitive. Trust me, that road has not panned out for them. You say, "They are now clearly treating their users a product." That is not at all clear to me. Please explain.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    Serving ads in the start menu. Serving ads on the screen saver. Serving bing search result in the start menu. OS coming with an advertising ID. Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else. You are pretending they are not treating their customers as product and every windows install comes with an advertising ID? What is the advertising ID there for then?
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      > Serving ads in the start menu. "Serving ads in the start menu?" Fascinating. My start menu never had ads... It did have a "setup skype" which is part of their "get skype" campaign, but that was already installed. It did have the "activate your office" stuff but again, I already had those... Do you mean the store livetile that sometimes shows product pictures? > Serving bing search result in the start menu. Bing is the second most popular search engine in the US, and uh... the sad insider truth is that Bing searches are less of a privacy exposure that Duck Duck Go or Google. But whatever... Ubuntu was doing this forever. So was Firefox. They get paid to set your default search engine. To the tune of millions. > Collecting data on usage, browsing habits, and god knows what else. I mean, you can see what they send back if you're so inclined. It's not hard. You can even find articles where people have done that analysis. > OS coming with an advertising ID And you think... your cellphone... doesn't have one of these? Or your Mac doesn't have a distinct ID for the purposes of Mac store purchases? Or that Canonical didn't make a "Store ID" for their store? Do you think websites also aren't doing this? In ways that Do Not Track can never even address? If Microsoft is your whipping boy for this, then you've got a lot of anger to direct towards them. But the reality is that your entire digital experience is heavily instrumented. And you know what? We're instrumenting them because it's the only way we can possibly do what users ask us to do. We desperately need telemetry on failure, user engagement, and performance. Otherwise our customers choose products that CAN make changes based on these things. Simply put, the Market has spoken. You kinda have to look in awe at Microsoft for being able to put this off for so long. But with the complete collapse of Desktop Linux as a serious contender there are only a few shops in town that service OSs and they're locked in frantic competition to produce what most people treat as a commodity.
Karunamon 11y ago
MS's business model is not you And this is why it pings the mothership endlessly even when explicitly told not to? Even on Enterprise SKUs? W10, for me, represents an new, scary era of the OS working against my desires and interests, rather than for. When I say "telemetry off", I fucking mean OFF. I don't care what Microsoft says they're gathering or for what reason or for how much of my own good it is, that is a level of control that as the owner of the computer, I should have.
- mirimir 11y ago
  You need to block what you don't want in the LAN router.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    That's the point. You shouldn't have to do that. Why should I be forced to expend any energy at all securing myself FROM my OS?
    - mirimir 11y ago
      Because Microsoft ;) And yes, I totally agree. Linux and BSD are good. Even OSX. But if you need Windows for whatever reason, you do what's necessary.
      - cm2187 11y ago
        The problem with OSX is the very expensive hardware (and worrying signs that Apple is progressively locking down the OS). The problem with Linux is that unless you are trying to do something really really basic, you will be facing a command prompt, and then you have to RTFM. No time or appetite for that (and the perspective to have to "compile my own drivers" gives me the chills). I wish their was a cheap/free alternative with a decent UI.
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      Ask friends at Canonical. Or Apple. Why does only Microsoft get called on this?
taneq 11y ago
So they're not forcing ads onto home users, trying to turn Windows application development into a walled garden a la Apple App Store / Google Play, or using home users as beta testers before rolling out to enterprise customers? They're desperate to force customers into the SaaS business model because their old model of charging a one-time fee per OS install is no longer viable. Desktop computers have well and truly reached market penetration, the upgrade cycle has slowed significantly and since Windows 7, they haven't found anything new to offer that's compelling enough to entice customers to upgrade.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  > So they're not forcing ads onto home users I have seen some examples of this. I screamed loudly. It's not appropriate. > trying to turn Windows application development into a walled garden a la Apple App Store / Google Play Actually no, they're not. That's a negotiating tactic by a game developer and he's admitted there is no current substance to it. It's all speculative. You can distributed UWP apps without the store right now, just like you can distribute Mac apps without the App store. And why would you even put Google's ecosystem in that statement? That's a completely incorrect comparison. The only OS that does total lockdown right now is iOS for mobile and iPad pro. > They're desperate to force customers into the SaaS business model because their old model of charging a one-time fee per OS install is no longer viable. This is true. But to be honest, it was never very viable or fair to the customers. OSs in a modern security climate are a service. Making that clear is much more honest. > Desktop computers have well and truly reached market penetration You're wrong there. Their hybrid interface design is superior for next generation portable computing. People give them VERY high marks on this. Even really persnickety and principled people like Tog agree MS is further along than anyone else in a universally usable interface context that works with traditional M&K and Touch applications. My job forces me to use a Macbook with El Captian on it. I hate it. It feels like a dowdy piece of abandonware. I get hope and open my surfacebook and it feels like a modern, integrated, useful device. And that's my perspective as a cloud services developer. OSX has pissed me off so much I hate doing dev on it. It's slow, full of weird undocumented behavior, made devving harder, has very dated feeling hardware, comes with just abysmally bad bundled apps (dear god Keynote, how bad can you get? And Apple notes is like OneNote but 2x as difficult to use, and don't even get me started on how awkward Pages has gotten as it tries to be all things to all people. Need we even mention the nightmare that is iTunes and iPhoto?)
Silhouette 11y ago
But we should also be willing to say, "Perhaps this company is capable of change and there are some genuinely interesting and laudable signals of that." The trouble is, there is plenty of evidence that Microsoft's technology and business models have changed, but not always in laudable ways. If they were doing something genuinely new and better than how things were done before, I suspect the overall response on HN would generally be favourable -- this is pretty much a forum full of people interested in disruptive new technologies, after all.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  So a completely open development model for their core platform, including unprecedented levels of commitment to patent pacifism and MIT/BSD level licesning is not? > I suspect the overall response on HN would generally be favourable It was. > this is pretty much a forum full of people interested in disruptive new technologies, after all. Most people here are incredibly conservative in their technology choices. Hell, Clojure is still considered minority, people actively defend Apple's anti-competitive stuff and dismiss the crazy progress Google and Microsoft have made, people say, "I'd love to use Erlang but..." Even if we ignore the general novice factor, rate limiting stops real technical conversations here, anyways. Every time we get into a real technical discussion we hit the rate limits almost instantly.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    So a completely open development model for their core platform, including unprecedented levels of commitment to patent pacifism and MIT/BSD level licesning is not? Sorry, I must have missed the memo. When did Windows 10 become Open Source, and how do I get hold of the source so I can build a version without the telemetry and forced updates? It was. Perhaps you and I have different versions of HN. In the discussion I'm reading, you seem to be just about the only person on Microsoft's side, and many of your posts are being downvoted close to invisibility.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

This is basically nonsense. Windows licenses are paid, they always have been, and for the foreseeable future, they always will be. They changed to making updates free, but that's it. Every new computer comes with a paid Windows license as part of the cost. And if you build your own, you have to buy Windows 10. But once you have Windows, you'll always get the latest version. The whole 'you are the product' thing doesn't really apply to paid OSes. Even if the updates are free.

cm2187 11y ago
Microsoft is clearly trying to monetize users. The fact that they still make the users pay for it only adds insult to infamy.
- mirimir 11y ago
  This! Win XP and Win 7 were OK. All the hidden logging etc was cringe-inducing, for sure. But Win 10 has gone way over the line. They're treating their customers like Google does. They're mining data from them, and they're pushing ads at them. But this is an OS, which requires a license, not just a bunch of free online services. As much as I dislike Apple's business model, it at least respects its customers' privacy! If I ever need to use Windows again, I'll get an anonymous copy, and treat it like the malware it is.