7 ms·

You can't turn off Cortana in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

21 points by us0r 10y ago

spdustin 10y ago
And there goes what little faith I had that Microsoft was a trustworthy steward of private data. Why is nobody commenting on this story? Is everyone really okay with this?
- majormjr 10y ago
  "Customers can expect the same great search experience powered by Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana’s personality." I don't want any of those things. Cortana search doesn't work nearly as well as the plain local search. All I want to do is quickly launch my own applications. I have no use for a builtin search using a subpar search engine with an added delay for getting results.
- gravypod 10y ago
  It's not that I'm not mad, it's that I expected this years ago. Since I've seen this coming it's not as big of a deal. I've already moved my personal computing to Linux. If you don't do any gaming it's very easy to switch in my experience. I'm assuming many other people here have had a similar experience.
  - smacktoward 10y ago
    And even if you do game, lots of AAA and indie games are available on Linux these days too. So being Linux-only is not the completely unrealistic scenario for gamers that it used to be.
    - gravypod 10y ago
      I've just setup steam streaming. It's fine enough for me since my network it all Gig-E.
- Sylos 10y ago
  I wanted to comment, but what is there to say? Anyone here can figure out themselves that this is shit. It's not like there's a question about it. And it's neither terribly surprising that Microsoft would do this. I mean, maybe it's surprising for the Microsoft fanboys who adamantly defended Microsoft, because you could turn off Cortana, but they'll avoid a discussion about such a change anyways.
- tim333 10y ago
  I updated 7 to 10 then went back to 7. I'm not that bothered, it's just I didn't really want that stuff.
e1ven 10y ago
Part of what I find particularly egregious is that Microsoft made it difficult to decline updates on Windows 10. Users will have no easy way to avoid this, even if they're privacy inclined.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  There are some things you can do with group policy to make updates not install automatically on Win10 Enterprise. Not sure about other versions and I don't have a good link right now that describes the process, and it's not trivial, but not impossible (on Enterprise). Really sad to see MS doing these things, and gaming is the only reason I stay with Windows. Overwatch doesn't support OS X or Linux and they have no plans to add support.
  - rescbr 10y ago
    You can also defer/manually install updates via group policy on Windows 10 Pro too. Don't know about Home, though.
brudgers 10y ago
It is not unreasonable to me that a preview build would not allow the disabling of telemetry regarding important OS features. It's not clear whether PC World is describing the behavior of a preview build or not. Microsoft's customer base includes defense contractors, militaries, governments, and other security conscious organizations. I would not be surprised if the commercial version provided more control.

21 points by us0r 10y ago

And there goes what little faith I had that Microsoft was a trustworthy steward of private data. Why is nobody commenting on this story? Is everyone really okay with this?

majormjr 10y ago
"Customers can expect the same great search experience powered by Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana’s personality." I don't want any of those things. Cortana search doesn't work nearly as well as the plain local search. All I want to do is quickly launch my own applications. I have no use for a builtin search using a subpar search engine with an added delay for getting results.
gravypod 10y ago
It's not that I'm not mad, it's that I expected this years ago. Since I've seen this coming it's not as big of a deal. I've already moved my personal computing to Linux. If you don't do any gaming it's very easy to switch in my experience. I'm assuming many other people here have had a similar experience.
- smacktoward 10y ago
  And even if you do game, lots of AAA and indie games are available on Linux these days too. So being Linux-only is not the completely unrealistic scenario for gamers that it used to be.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I've just setup steam streaming. It's fine enough for me since my network it all Gig-E.
Sylos 10y ago
I wanted to comment, but what is there to say? Anyone here can figure out themselves that this is shit. It's not like there's a question about it. And it's neither terribly surprising that Microsoft would do this. I mean, maybe it's surprising for the Microsoft fanboys who adamantly defended Microsoft, because you could turn off Cortana, but they'll avoid a discussion about such a change anyways.
tim333 10y ago
I updated 7 to 10 then went back to 7. I'm not that bothered, it's just I didn't really want that stuff.

e1ven 10y ago

Part of what I find particularly egregious is that Microsoft made it difficult to decline updates on Windows 10. Users will have no easy way to avoid this, even if they're privacy inclined.

seanp2k2 10y ago
There are some things you can do with group policy to make updates not install automatically on Win10 Enterprise. Not sure about other versions and I don't have a good link right now that describes the process, and it's not trivial, but not impossible (on Enterprise). Really sad to see MS doing these things, and gaming is the only reason I stay with Windows. Overwatch doesn't support OS X or Linux and they have no plans to add support.
- rescbr 10y ago
  You can also defer/manually install updates via group policy on Windows 10 Pro too. Don't know about Home, though.

brudgers 10y ago

It is not unreasonable to me that a preview build would not allow the disabling of telemetry regarding important OS features. It's not clear whether PC World is describing the behavior of a preview build or not. Microsoft's customer base includes defense contractors, militaries, governments, and other security conscious organizations. I would not be surprised if the commercial version provided more control.