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I'm so frustrated with Microsoft. I want to like them -- I'm using (and loving) C# and Visual Studio, I've used Visual Studio Code with Go and Typescript, I'm u

by muraiki 10y ago

I'm so frustrated with Microsoft. I want to like them -- I'm using (and loving) C# and Visual Studio, I've used Visual Studio Code with Go and Typescript, I'm using whatever they call their cloud version control system, and I'm really enjoying these things... but then they pull moves like this and make me question as to whether I really want to invest my skills and money in their tech. Say what you will about Google's data mining, but I think that putting ads right in the OS is in a whole other league. And as many of us geeks know, this is inevitably going to lead to calls from friends and family trying to figure out what the heck this thing popping up is, and if it's a virus. "Nope, it's just Microsoft." I feel bad for the MS employees who are making awesome products but then have to deal with all the ridiculous fallout of Windows 10 decisions. Sorry for the rant, but these actions are honestly making me think about discontinuing my use and support of Microsoft's products, and I hope that someone somewhere is listening to us geeks.

licked 10y ago
You can't just say you love Microsoft, except for this part though. Putting malware and spyware into their paid products after the fact is part of the cash machine that keeps the more attractive products afloat.
sqeaky 10y ago
I switched away from ms some time ago. I almost left Ubuntu because of the one Amazon link that comes in the default install. Operating systems are abundant nowadays. Something has to be really good to not switch away from based purely on its own merit. The real problem is compatibility with applications. I bet the real thing holding most to a single OS is that availability of their applications on a given OS.
- muraiki 10y ago
  Yeah, I had been using Ubuntu as my main OS until I got a new job at a place that is mostly Windows. There are a few applications that I need to use for work that simply aren't available on Linux (or even OSX). Work encouraged me to use MS tech, although I do most of my work in R. But I had had a good experience with VS Code and TypeScript, so I tried out C# for things that I normally would have done in Python. I guess that I could always boot to Linux and run a Windows VM...
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    Yes. Run a VM, it's so much better. And then convince the company to move to non-proprietary tools.
rl3 10y ago
I found myself in a similar situation back in 2011. The .NET ecosystem went stagnant as resources were shifted towards the upcoming Windows 8 release, and that in turn made everything weird. That weirdness continues today in the form of UWP. I'm glad I extricated myself from their ecosystem when I did. As much as I loved C# and wanted Microsoft to succeed, it felt very much like being on board a sinking ship.
- da02 10y ago
  What ecosystem do you work on and use today?
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Can't speak for GP, but jumped over to Node myself near that time... spent a few years migrating .Net apps, and today mostly work in Node. I've enjoyed it a lot, despite some recent pain (going from Webpack 1 and nyc/mocha/chai to Webpack 2 and Jest) it's still been nicer than when I have to fire up VS (in a VM even) to help with a bug at work. I will say the .net core stuff is looking really nice to work with though.
  - rl3 10y ago
    Anything that isn't Microsoft, with the exception of Typescript. Primarily the Node/NPM ecosystem though. .NET Core is looking nice, but I'd rather not risk being burned twice.
    - narrator 10y ago
      Typescript is supported by Google in Angular2, so it's not a completely Microsoft dominated effort. It's also just a transpiler so it doesn't call into a bunch of closed source Windows APIs which might not work quite right when implemented on non-MS platforms.
cheald 10y ago
Totally agreed. I really like Windows 10 - and then you have things like the advertising, forced resets of default browsers, forced reboots, and other things which, as a power user, do exactly nothing except piss me off. If they just focused on the feature delivery and stopped trying to push their crap, it would be a legitimately great OS. Every time something like this happens, I get a little closer to jumping to a Linux desktop for good.
- elementalest 10y ago
  I'm just curios, disregarding performance aspects, what is there to like about w10 over, say w7? Two things that have put me off upgrading to w10 is the inconsistency of the UI, and the fact the user has less control over the system in a variety of ways.
  - username223 10y ago
    W10 gets rid of w7's endless, sneaky "upgrade to w10" crap.
    - andrepd 10y ago
      Can't tell if facetious
      - justusthane 10y ago
        Yes.
  - nerdy 10y ago
    I truly think these things are overblown. This article references "sync" providers, but having sync disabled I've never seen the ads they show. I also disabled Cortana and most of the new W10 stuff but never looked back after switching. Edit: I do have Windows 10 Pro, which other users mention does not show ads. W10 has multi-desktop support, which is great when you're doing distinctly different things with an overwhelming number of programs open. It also has better use of windowing if you use those features (snap works by quadrant, etc). So by pressing Win+Ctrl+D it creates a whole new desktop (empty taskbar), and you can switch between them with Win+Tab. I don't use this often but it was amazing the few times I reached for it. Another small thing which bothered me but I've learned to rely on in W10 is if you have two monitors and are moving your cursor from the left monitor onto the right monitor near the top of the screen, it will be "blocked" at the rightmost edge of the left monitor, preventing your cursor from changing from the left monitor to the right monitor. This is useful for quickly minimizing or closing applications on the left monitor without mistakenly moving the cursor onto the right monitor. I have not yet found anything which I've "lost control" over except item-level customization of the left-hand side of the start menu, which is where pinned programs would sometimes end up. Having the entire right-hand side of the start menu plus the task bar is really sufficient though so this isn't a big deal. There are some other welcome improvements like the process list and/or performance monitor are improved, I can't remember specifically what wasn't available before though.
userbinator 10y ago
Quite frankly, I liked the old Microsoft a lot more. Yes, things were more proprietary and closed, but at least they seemed to leave you alone once you paid for the product. Now it makes perfect sense why the Windows 10 upgrade was "free", and they're giving away/opening up so much other software. They want to become like Google or any other ad-supported company, luring users in with the free/openness but then "monetising" them in this way. And I do not like that at all.
- baumandm 10y ago
  I don't like it either, but it's probably unsurprising given that neither corporations nor users tend to upgrade to new Windows versions in a reliable fashion. I think using ad-based monetization was short-sighted and will damage their brand in the long term, but presumably they did the math and decided it was a good idea anyways.
  - scholia 10y ago
    > I think using ad-based monetization Can you give me some examples of ad-based monetization, please? I'm on Windows 10 Pro with suggestions turned off, so all I've seen is a popup that suggests using Edge. I don't see this as being particularly different from Google showing me an advert for Chrome every time I do a search....
    - lewisl9029 10y ago
      The suggestions that you have turned off, which happen to be opt-out rather than opt-in, and suggest non-Microsoft products, is a pretty blatant example of ad-based monetization, if you don't want to count promoting Microsoft's own products as advertising.
      - scholia 10y ago
        "Paid advertising" is where you take money from somebody, and the person you take money from controls the content. I don't see how Microsoft suggesting that you try Edge or OneDrive (which are free, and which you already have) fit into that category.
timcederman 10y ago
Just installed Windows 10 on a new machine - amazed at when I did custom settings, every last setting needed to be flipped over.
- zecg 10y ago
  Please note that those settings are not even near enough, it's still leaking telemetry like a rusty bucket.
  - rossrubacon 10y ago
    http://www.hwinfo.com/misc/RemoveW10Bloat.htm http://www.hwinfo.com/misc/RemoveW10Bloat.htm this will /might help with that and It's a compilation of several scripts into a single batch file
greenhouse_gas 10y ago
That's why I don't like MS, and don't buy the whole "New MS and OS rainbows and unicorns" bit. I judge companies on how they behave when they're "at the top" - MS in the late 90s-early 00's or Google (Android and search) in the late 00's - now. The reason is that companies at the bottom have to behave nicely (Cyanogen learned that the hard way), community-cred is literally all they have. You judge companies behavior once they get to the top and can do whatever they want. Now, back to the topic, MS was losing developer cred lately(and don't want to become IBM), so what do they do? They Open Source some developer tools and part of their language (less than Java, BTW). Oh, they also realize that developers were switching to Apple and Linux, so they added WSL. It's not they became ethical, it's not that they're stopping vendor lockin, it's not that they're going to finally fully document the Win32 API (their online documentation is quite often inaccurate), it's not that they're going to allow you to stop their spying (unless you're a huge business who had enough purchasing power to actually leave - try telling the CIA that if they're using Windows, everything they type is seen at MS). They're at the top there and don't need to do any favors to anyone. MS is simply business as usual.
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  What tech company has ever been at the top and acted nicely?
  - greenhouse_gas 10y ago
    Honestly, even Google is more ethical. Google is at the top in Mobile. Yet Android is 90% Open Source. It's not that even that. If I want to install an APK, I can do it. No need to be a Enterprise or pay $100 for a developer license, anyone can install FDroid. And they let people write competitive software (Firefox, etc.) and set them as default. Actually, as a user, I don't have to see anything be Google if I don't want to. And don't forget open sourcing TensorFlow.
    - Dayshine 10y ago
      And then there's Chrome...
rdslw 10y ago
what really pisses me off, is a fact that somewhere in microsoft there was an actual meeting (even many), where this phrase “Show sync provider notifications.” was PROPOSED by a human (like you and me), then discussed and approved. They're intelligent ones. And no, no some shady/remote executive. One of us (maybe a little more product oriented) who then wrote in some internal memo: "Using this phrase will result in tricking users of not disabling it. It's better to conceal it and not write the truth. It's better to cheat". And then they signed it off and went home to their families and children. YUCK.
- userbinator 10y ago
  Almost everyone involved may have been unaware of the final purpose --- they could've been told/were thinking all along that this would be for something like "Your OneDrive is getting full" and not "Pay $$$ to upgrade your OneDrive!".
  - vuyani 10y ago
    I find that very hard to believe
laumars 10y ago
As seemingly one of the older guys on HN these days, I went through this kind of frustration several times already with Microsoft. In the late 80s / early 90s Windows was, in my personal opinion, one of the worst UIs. It wasn't even a proper OS. Nearly every other personal computer shipped a better windowing system. But IBM-compatible PCs were dominant so whichever windowing system monopolised on that was going to be dominant regardless of their quality. This made me grumpy. But then Windows 95 came along and it was actually pretty impressive. I liked Windows 95 - for a bit. However it didn't take long for the 9x to show it's warts and instead of fixing the constant stream of kernel panics, fixing their reliance on DOS bootloaders, or even just adding desperately needed power user tools (many power users like myself ended up writing our own utilities to get around Windows 9x's short comings) Microsoft just kept bundling new features; forcing the system requirements to jump significantly with each new iteration for seemingly no real functional benefit. Windows ME was easily the worst of all Microsoft's OS (it made Vista look usable in comparison). But thankfully there was an alternative to the Windows 9x line, and to ME specifically. Microsoft had done some serious investment into their NT line and released Windows 2000. Hooray as because they added so many much needed usability little tweaks: shortcuts to Notepad (back then people still actually used Notepad) so no more clicking File->Save for quick edits. Windows 2000 was also rock solid compared to the Windows 9x range. In fact the only times I've managed to BSOD Windows 2000 was when playing around with undocumented APIs - so pretty much my own fault. Windows 2000 also looked doubly good because around that time Mac users were stuck on OS 9 (albeit OS X was released shortly after). Mac OS 9 was just as poor as Windows 9x in terms of the frequency one would need to reinstall. Linux was obviously around at that time but we're talking before the time when people even joked about "this year will be the year of the Linux desktop". Linux was usable but a long way from being a recommendable desktop solution for those who want something to "just work". There was another option back then though: BeOS. Sadly by the time of Windows 2000 BeOS was in it's twilight years. Struggling to gain any traction and suffering from the blow of Apple buying up Next (and Jobs). I still used BeOS 5 a fair bit around that time though but more for fun than for productivity as Windows 2000 had better software support, better development tools, etc. This was when I started to forgive Microsoft for releasing such substandard software in the 80s and 90s. It didn't last long though. XP was twice as resource hungry, twice as ugly and -upon it's initial release- offers nothing of benefit to 2000 aside quickly booting times. XP obviously branched off significantly with each new service pack but it was too late because I held onto 2000 for a long while and then by the time XP really evolved into a new entity, desktop Linux was already good enough that I'd migrated to it as my main OS (only using Windows for specialised "pro" tools). Then with the release of Vista I ditched Microsoft entirely. To be honest I'm glad I did because with each new release of Windows it's felt like control has been inched away from the power user in favour of dumbing things down for the tech-illiterate home users. As someone who spent their entire career OS-hopping with no real alliance it was painfully obviously how Microsoft was hurting competition. But I guess that's what you do when you're on top. If you're an underdog then you fight for market share by being better at particular things - lots of things if needed. But when you're at the top it's all about retaining market share - so you focus on keeping people on your platform. A priority which doesn't necessarily fall in line with being technically the "best". However the internet has dislodged the importance of the OS. In many ways the browser is now the kernel. Sure many people -myself included- still prefer native applications but the rise of web apps has done more to aid Linux adoption than anything any single company has contributed (Canonical included). Bill Gates could see this coming though. Hence why he tried to dominate the webspace with Internet Explorer and platform specific web controls like ActiveX and it's predecessors. He did a pretty good job too - for a while. I actually don't hate Windows 10. I have it on a spare work laptop as an emergency in case I manage to foobar my other Linux machines (I run Arch, so it's not too difficult to break if I'm feeling careless - but usually equally easy to fix as well). WSL is a nice feature, miles better than Cygwin ever was. The cmd terminal finally has some much needed usability tweaks. Overall it reminds me of the subtle usability improvements Windows 2000 pushed that made me warm to Windows nearly 2 decades ago. But I'm happy with Linux - it functions the way I personally find the most productive and, frankly, I doubt I would ever trust Microsoft as my primary platform again anyway. However it is amusing to watch new power users go through the same highs and lows with Microsoft as I had done in the 90s. It's just another one of those cyclic trends I've observed in IT (along with technology being discovered and reinvented)
mtgx 10y ago
And these "how to stop Microsoft from pissing you off" tips are really a losing game for users, and Microsoft knows it. Sure, maybe 0.01% of the market will always stop whatever Microsoft is pushing, but let's face it, most don't have time to learn all the tricks on how to stop all of Microsoft's tracking or advertising and whatnot. Plus, I bet Microsoft will change how this works in a near-future update, so this tip will become invalid. It did something similar for the tracking features that were getting stopped by people and tools early on.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
the moment I saw the edge ad sneaked as chrome popup I knew I made a terrible mistake upgrading :(
chappi42 10y ago
You have the priorities wrong imho: There is one checkbox to switch off the ad vs. Google's data mining where Google aggregates a full profile about you and some billion other people. And (except china-like) there is no simple 'checkbox' to switch off. THIS, I call 'a whole other league'! -- Of course I don't like the intrusion by MS either, but if people don't pay for the product (and updates!), this is what happens. Worse with Google/Facebook and now also with MS.
- vetinari 10y ago
  Apples and oranges. Google's product came as free, with the conditions upfront. When you signed up, you knew exactly what you are getting. It is also worth noting, that Google's paid product is not datamined. That comes with some slight surprises, for example, Google Now is useless. (So your off switch is right there, at $5/mo/user). Microsoft product was paid upfront. You might have used it for years, or decades even, and only then it changed to paid and privacy invading. Bait & switch like. So Google provided you with an additional option, that you could or could not take, you were informed with terms and conditions. Microsoft got you used to their product and then switched terms and conditions, they took the option away from you. Not same in my book.
  - chappi42 10y ago
    I agree somewhat. But Microsoft (or any company) cannot support a product for years without revenue. As an example I bought Win8 (unusable), free upgrade 8.1 (still terrible), free upgrades 10 (better, but still prefer mac/ubuntu). As people don't pay they have to change. Google also changed. IIRC in the beginning they didn't collect 'everything' and had borders. At some point they merged all services. You are right with $5/mo/user, but I was not talking about GoogleApps, I meant 'the net' called Google Analytics, DoubleClick, AdSense etc. which 'hunts' you down all over incl. Android. I don't much care personally if they track me, but I don't think they should be allowed to do this. And I think it's significantly worse than what MS did here. It's also much more hidden.
amelius 10y ago
Yes, it makes one wonder what's next, advertising in Visual Studio? Advertising in the command line shell? Third-party advertising in programs you compiled?
roryisok 10y ago
Skype has had ads in it for a long, long time. I always find them very jarring.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  You can disable them if you block the URL they fetch adverts from and if you modify the XML that sets up the GUI, and make it read only.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Bjartr 10y ago
One of Microsoft's flaws had long been that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. It acts more like a collection of independent companies than a cohesive whole, and this giving while taking is one more example of it.
- adrianN 10y ago
  That's a flaw every large company has.
l3m0ndr0p 10y ago
1st goal of any for-profit company: Make money, as much as you can. Even if it means locking in customers or annoying them. Make then depend on your product and extract as much money from them as possible. 2nd goal, innovation: find any and all new ways to extract money from your customers
skywhopper 10y ago
Yes this. I can't bring myself to upgrade our Windows PCs for fear of having to seek and destroy constant advertising when I'm just trying to get stuff done. I'm happy to pay for MS services but don't shove it in my face when it's inappropriate, and don't give me a sales pitch.
e40 10y ago
The virus fear by family is worse than you suggest: now, it will be difficult to remotely diagnose whether they have a nasty virus/trojan/infected system or whether it's just Windows. They are emulating behavior from bad actors. I can't imagine how this got approved.
tw04 10y ago
And moving to what? Linux? OS X does the exact same thing forcing icloud down your throat and nobody seems to be up in arms about that.
tgsovlerkhgsel 10y ago
When they started "admitting" that they made a mistake with the way they pushed the Win10 upgrade onto unwilling users, I was hoping that it was an early sign that they realized that they made a mistake, and were slowly working on reversing it. The fact that they continue to roll out this sort of user-hostile "features" shows that it was just an empty marketing gesture. Time to start some bounties on making Linux usable for desktop, I guess.

by muraiki 10y ago

licked 10y ago

You can't just say you love Microsoft, except for this part though. Putting malware and spyware into their paid products after the fact is part of the cash machine that keeps the more attractive products afloat.

sqeaky 10y ago

I switched away from ms some time ago. I almost left Ubuntu because of the one Amazon link that comes in the default install. Operating systems are abundant nowadays. Something has to be really good to not switch away from based purely on its own merit. The real problem is compatibility with applications. I bet the real thing holding most to a single OS is that availability of their applications on a given OS.

muraiki 10y ago
Yeah, I had been using Ubuntu as my main OS until I got a new job at a place that is mostly Windows. There are a few applications that I need to use for work that simply aren't available on Linux (or even OSX). Work encouraged me to use MS tech, although I do most of my work in R. But I had had a good experience with VS Code and TypeScript, so I tried out C# for things that I normally would have done in Python. I guess that I could always boot to Linux and run a Windows VM...
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Yes. Run a VM, it's so much better. And then convince the company to move to non-proprietary tools.

rl3 10y ago

I found myself in a similar situation back in 2011. The .NET ecosystem went stagnant as resources were shifted towards the upcoming Windows 8 release, and that in turn made everything weird. That weirdness continues today in the form of UWP. I'm glad I extricated myself from their ecosystem when I did. As much as I loved C# and wanted Microsoft to succeed, it felt very much like being on board a sinking ship.

da02 10y ago
What ecosystem do you work on and use today?
- tracker1 10y ago
  Can't speak for GP, but jumped over to Node myself near that time... spent a few years migrating .Net apps, and today mostly work in Node. I've enjoyed it a lot, despite some recent pain (going from Webpack 1 and nyc/mocha/chai to Webpack 2 and Jest) it's still been nicer than when I have to fire up VS (in a VM even) to help with a bug at work. I will say the .net core stuff is looking really nice to work with though.
- rl3 10y ago
  Anything that isn't Microsoft, with the exception of Typescript. Primarily the Node/NPM ecosystem though. .NET Core is looking nice, but I'd rather not risk being burned twice.
  - narrator 10y ago
    Typescript is supported by Google in Angular2, so it's not a completely Microsoft dominated effort. It's also just a transpiler so it doesn't call into a bunch of closed source Windows APIs which might not work quite right when implemented on non-MS platforms.

cheald 10y ago

Totally agreed. I really like Windows 10 - and then you have things like the advertising, forced resets of default browsers, forced reboots, and other things which, as a power user, do exactly nothing except piss me off. If they just focused on the feature delivery and stopped trying to push their crap, it would be a legitimately great OS. Every time something like this happens, I get a little closer to jumping to a Linux desktop for good.

elementalest 10y ago
I'm just curios, disregarding performance aspects, what is there to like about w10 over, say w7? Two things that have put me off upgrading to w10 is the inconsistency of the UI, and the fact the user has less control over the system in a variety of ways.
- username223 10y ago
  W10 gets rid of w7's endless, sneaky "upgrade to w10" crap.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Can't tell if facetious
    - justusthane 10y ago
      Yes.
- nerdy 10y ago
  I truly think these things are overblown. This article references "sync" providers, but having sync disabled I've never seen the ads they show. I also disabled Cortana and most of the new W10 stuff but never looked back after switching. Edit: I do have Windows 10 Pro, which other users mention does not show ads. W10 has multi-desktop support, which is great when you're doing distinctly different things with an overwhelming number of programs open. It also has better use of windowing if you use those features (snap works by quadrant, etc). So by pressing Win+Ctrl+D it creates a whole new desktop (empty taskbar), and you can switch between them with Win+Tab. I don't use this often but it was amazing the few times I reached for it. Another small thing which bothered me but I've learned to rely on in W10 is if you have two monitors and are moving your cursor from the left monitor onto the right monitor near the top of the screen, it will be "blocked" at the rightmost edge of the left monitor, preventing your cursor from changing from the left monitor to the right monitor. This is useful for quickly minimizing or closing applications on the left monitor without mistakenly moving the cursor onto the right monitor. I have not yet found anything which I've "lost control" over except item-level customization of the left-hand side of the start menu, which is where pinned programs would sometimes end up. Having the entire right-hand side of the start menu plus the task bar is really sufficient though so this isn't a big deal. There are some other welcome improvements like the process list and/or performance monitor are improved, I can't remember specifically what wasn't available before though.

userbinator 10y ago

Quite frankly, I liked the old Microsoft a lot more. Yes, things were more proprietary and closed, but at least they seemed to leave you alone once you paid for the product. Now it makes perfect sense why the Windows 10 upgrade was "free", and they're giving away/opening up so much other software. They want to become like Google or any other ad-supported company, luring users in with the free/openness but then "monetising" them in this way. And I do not like that at all.

baumandm 10y ago
I don't like it either, but it's probably unsurprising given that neither corporations nor users tend to upgrade to new Windows versions in a reliable fashion. I think using ad-based monetization was short-sighted and will damage their brand in the long term, but presumably they did the math and decided it was a good idea anyways.
- scholia 10y ago
  > I think using ad-based monetization Can you give me some examples of ad-based monetization, please? I'm on Windows 10 Pro with suggestions turned off, so all I've seen is a popup that suggests using Edge. I don't see this as being particularly different from Google showing me an advert for Chrome every time I do a search....
  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    The suggestions that you have turned off, which happen to be opt-out rather than opt-in, and suggest non-Microsoft products, is a pretty blatant example of ad-based monetization, if you don't want to count promoting Microsoft's own products as advertising.
    - scholia 10y ago
      "Paid advertising" is where you take money from somebody, and the person you take money from controls the content. I don't see how Microsoft suggesting that you try Edge or OneDrive (which are free, and which you already have) fit into that category.

timcederman 10y ago

Just installed Windows 10 on a new machine - amazed at when I did custom settings, every last setting needed to be flipped over.

zecg 10y ago
Please note that those settings are not even near enough, it's still leaking telemetry like a rusty bucket.
- rossrubacon 10y ago
  http://www.hwinfo.com/misc/RemoveW10Bloat.htm http://www.hwinfo.com/misc/RemoveW10Bloat.htm this will /might help with that and It's a compilation of several scripts into a single batch file

greenhouse_gas 10y ago

That's why I don't like MS, and don't buy the whole "New MS and OS rainbows and unicorns" bit. I judge companies on how they behave when they're "at the top" - MS in the late 90s-early 00's or Google (Android and search) in the late 00's - now. The reason is that companies at the bottom have to behave nicely (Cyanogen learned that the hard way), community-cred is literally all they have. You judge companies behavior once they get to the top and can do whatever they want. Now, back to the topic, MS was losing developer cred lately(and don't want to become IBM), so what do they do? They Open Source some developer tools and part of their language (less than Java, BTW). Oh, they also realize that developers were switching to Apple and Linux, so they added WSL. It's not they became ethical, it's not that they're stopping vendor lockin, it's not that they're going to finally fully document the Win32 API (their online documentation is quite often inaccurate), it's not that they're going to allow you to stop their spying (unless you're a huge business who had enough purchasing power to actually leave - try telling the CIA that if they're using Windows, everything they type is seen at MS). They're at the top there and don't need to do any favors to anyone. MS is simply business as usual.

jimmaswell 10y ago
What tech company has ever been at the top and acted nicely?
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  Honestly, even Google is more ethical. Google is at the top in Mobile. Yet Android is 90% Open Source. It's not that even that. If I want to install an APK, I can do it. No need to be a Enterprise or pay $100 for a developer license, anyone can install FDroid. And they let people write competitive software (Firefox, etc.) and set them as default. Actually, as a user, I don't have to see anything be Google if I don't want to. And don't forget open sourcing TensorFlow.
  - Dayshine 10y ago
    And then there's Chrome...

rdslw 10y ago

what really pisses me off, is a fact that somewhere in microsoft there was an actual meeting (even many), where this phrase “Show sync provider notifications.” was PROPOSED by a human (like you and me), then discussed and approved. They're intelligent ones. And no, no some shady/remote executive. One of us (maybe a little more product oriented) who then wrote in some internal memo: "Using this phrase will result in tricking users of not disabling it. It's better to conceal it and not write the truth. It's better to cheat". And then they signed it off and went home to their families and children. YUCK.

userbinator 10y ago
Almost everyone involved may have been unaware of the final purpose --- they could've been told/were thinking all along that this would be for something like "Your OneDrive is getting full" and not "Pay $$$ to upgrade your OneDrive!".
- vuyani 10y ago
  I find that very hard to believe

laumars 10y ago

As seemingly one of the older guys on HN these days, I went through this kind of frustration several times already with Microsoft. In the late 80s / early 90s Windows was, in my personal opinion, one of the worst UIs. It wasn't even a proper OS. Nearly every other personal computer shipped a better windowing system. But IBM-compatible PCs were dominant so whichever windowing system monopolised on that was going to be dominant regardless of their quality. This made me grumpy. But then Windows 95 came along and it was actually pretty impressive. I liked Windows 95 - for a bit. However it didn't take long for the 9x to show it's warts and instead of fixing the constant stream of kernel panics, fixing their reliance on DOS bootloaders, or even just adding desperately needed power user tools (many power users like myself ended up writing our own utilities to get around Windows 9x's short comings) Microsoft just kept bundling new features; forcing the system requirements to jump significantly with each new iteration for seemingly no real functional benefit. Windows ME was easily the worst of all Microsoft's OS (it made Vista look usable in comparison). But thankfully there was an alternative to the Windows 9x line, and to ME specifically. Microsoft had done some serious investment into their NT line and released Windows 2000. Hooray as because they added so many much needed usability little tweaks: shortcuts to Notepad (back then people still actually used Notepad) so no more clicking File->Save for quick edits. Windows 2000 was also rock solid compared to the Windows 9x range. In fact the only times I've managed to BSOD Windows 2000 was when playing around with undocumented APIs - so pretty much my own fault. Windows 2000 also looked doubly good because around that time Mac users were stuck on OS 9 (albeit OS X was released shortly after). Mac OS 9 was just as poor as Windows 9x in terms of the frequency one would need to reinstall. Linux was obviously around at that time but we're talking before the time when people even joked about "this year will be the year of the Linux desktop". Linux was usable but a long way from being a recommendable desktop solution for those who want something to "just work". There was another option back then though: BeOS. Sadly by the time of Windows 2000 BeOS was in it's twilight years. Struggling to gain any traction and suffering from the blow of Apple buying up Next (and Jobs). I still used BeOS 5 a fair bit around that time though but more for fun than for productivity as Windows 2000 had better software support, better development tools, etc. This was when I started to forgive Microsoft for releasing such substandard software in the 80s and 90s. It didn't last long though. XP was twice as resource hungry, twice as ugly and -upon it's initial release- offers nothing of benefit to 2000 aside quickly booting times. XP obviously branched off significantly with each new service pack but it was too late because I held onto 2000 for a long while and then by the time XP really evolved into a new entity, desktop Linux was already good enough that I'd migrated to it as my main OS (only using Windows for specialised "pro" tools). Then with the release of Vista I ditched Microsoft entirely. To be honest I'm glad I did because with each new release of Windows it's felt like control has been inched away from the power user in favour of dumbing things down for the tech-illiterate home users. As someone who spent their entire career OS-hopping with no real alliance it was painfully obviously how Microsoft was hurting competition. But I guess that's what you do when you're on top. If you're an underdog then you fight for market share by being better at particular things - lots of things if needed. But when you're at the top it's all about retaining market share - so you focus on keeping people on your platform. A priority which doesn't necessarily fall in line with being technically the "best". However the internet has dislodged the importance of the OS. In many ways the browser is now the kernel. Sure many people -myself included- still prefer native applications but the rise of web apps has done more to aid Linux adoption than anything any single company has contributed (Canonical included). Bill Gates could see this coming though. Hence why he tried to dominate the webspace with Internet Explorer and platform specific web controls like ActiveX and it's predecessors. He did a pretty good job too - for a while. I actually don't hate Windows 10. I have it on a spare work laptop as an emergency in case I manage to foobar my other Linux machines (I run Arch, so it's not too difficult to break if I'm feeling careless - but usually equally easy to fix as well). WSL is a nice feature, miles better than Cygwin ever was. The cmd terminal finally has some much needed usability tweaks. Overall it reminds me of the subtle usability improvements Windows 2000 pushed that made me warm to Windows nearly 2 decades ago. But I'm happy with Linux - it functions the way I personally find the most productive and, frankly, I doubt I would ever trust Microsoft as my primary platform again anyway. However it is amusing to watch new power users go through the same highs and lows with Microsoft as I had done in the 90s. It's just another one of those cyclic trends I've observed in IT (along with technology being discovered and reinvented)

mtgx 10y ago

And these "how to stop Microsoft from pissing you off" tips are really a losing game for users, and Microsoft knows it. Sure, maybe 0.01% of the market will always stop whatever Microsoft is pushing, but let's face it, most don't have time to learn all the tricks on how to stop all of Microsoft's tracking or advertising and whatnot. Plus, I bet Microsoft will change how this works in a near-future update, so this tip will become invalid. It did something similar for the tracking features that were getting stopped by people and tools early on.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

the moment I saw the edge ad sneaked as chrome popup I knew I made a terrible mistake upgrading :(

chappi42 10y ago

You have the priorities wrong imho: There is one checkbox to switch off the ad vs. Google's data mining where Google aggregates a full profile about you and some billion other people. And (except china-like) there is no simple 'checkbox' to switch off. THIS, I call 'a whole other league'! -- Of course I don't like the intrusion by MS either, but if people don't pay for the product (and updates!), this is what happens. Worse with Google/Facebook and now also with MS.

vetinari 10y ago
Apples and oranges. Google's product came as free, with the conditions upfront. When you signed up, you knew exactly what you are getting. It is also worth noting, that Google's paid product is not datamined. That comes with some slight surprises, for example, Google Now is useless. (So your off switch is right there, at $5/mo/user). Microsoft product was paid upfront. You might have used it for years, or decades even, and only then it changed to paid and privacy invading. Bait & switch like. So Google provided you with an additional option, that you could or could not take, you were informed with terms and conditions. Microsoft got you used to their product and then switched terms and conditions, they took the option away from you. Not same in my book.
- chappi42 10y ago
  I agree somewhat. But Microsoft (or any company) cannot support a product for years without revenue. As an example I bought Win8 (unusable), free upgrade 8.1 (still terrible), free upgrades 10 (better, but still prefer mac/ubuntu). As people don't pay they have to change. Google also changed. IIRC in the beginning they didn't collect 'everything' and had borders. At some point they merged all services. You are right with $5/mo/user, but I was not talking about GoogleApps, I meant 'the net' called Google Analytics, DoubleClick, AdSense etc. which 'hunts' you down all over incl. Android. I don't much care personally if they track me, but I don't think they should be allowed to do this. And I think it's significantly worse than what MS did here. It's also much more hidden.

amelius 10y ago

Yes, it makes one wonder what's next, advertising in Visual Studio? Advertising in the command line shell? Third-party advertising in programs you compiled?

roryisok 10y ago

Skype has had ads in it for a long, long time. I always find them very jarring.

72deluxe 10y ago
You can disable them if you block the URL they fetch adverts from and if you modify the XML that sets up the GUI, and make it read only.

deleted 10y ago

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Bjartr 10y ago

One of Microsoft's flaws had long been that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. It acts more like a collection of independent companies than a cohesive whole, and this giving while taking is one more example of it.

adrianN 10y ago
That's a flaw every large company has.

l3m0ndr0p 10y ago

1st goal of any for-profit company: Make money, as much as you can. Even if it means locking in customers or annoying them. Make then depend on your product and extract as much money from them as possible. 2nd goal, innovation: find any and all new ways to extract money from your customers

skywhopper 10y ago

Yes this. I can't bring myself to upgrade our Windows PCs for fear of having to seek and destroy constant advertising when I'm just trying to get stuff done. I'm happy to pay for MS services but don't shove it in my face when it's inappropriate, and don't give me a sales pitch.

e40 10y ago

The virus fear by family is worse than you suggest: now, it will be difficult to remotely diagnose whether they have a nasty virus/trojan/infected system or whether it's just Windows. They are emulating behavior from bad actors. I can't imagine how this got approved.

tw04 10y ago

And moving to what? Linux? OS X does the exact same thing forcing icloud down your throat and nobody seems to be up in arms about that.

tgsovlerkhgsel 10y ago

When they started "admitting" that they made a mistake with the way they pushed the Win10 upgrade onto unwilling users, I was hoping that it was an early sign that they realized that they made a mistake, and were slowly working on reversing it. The fact that they continue to roll out this sort of user-hostile "features" shows that it was just an empty marketing gesture. Time to start some bounties on making Linux usable for desktop, I guess.