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As a power user, I hope this doesn't ship with ads and telemetry enabled. It's things like that that pushed me away from windows and towards Linux. If Microsoft

As a power user, I hope this doesn't ship with ads and telemetry enabled. It's things like that that pushed me away from windows and towards Linux. If Microsoft had never participated in the NSA PRISM program I would have never decided to "just try this Linux thing out" and I'd probably still be a windows user. I think at this point they'll have to do more than get rid of ads and telemetry to get me (and others) to switch back. Linux turned out to be much more stable than Windows for me, and after experiencing package management and sane update policies I can't go back to an OS that won't even let me use it while it's installing updates. When I sit and try to make a list of reasons to use Windows it seems to come down to program compatibility and not operating system quality. Instead of trapping people on an OS because of vendor lock-in, try improving core parts of the OS to make it worth using.

userbinator 9y ago
What "power user" means today seems to be something different than before --- essentially, users who just use more of the features of the OS, in the way these companies want them to; notice that "more configurability/customisation" is not mentioned at all, whereas that would be what I expect as a "power user" (the old type) myself.
- Can_Not 9y ago
  The new definition of "power user" is probably going to be a user that runs applications acquired outside of the app store.
nailer 9y ago
Not wanting Ads I can understand - you've paid for Windows (and in some cases Surface hardware) and you don't want to be the product - but why do you dislike telemetry? I'd rather Microsoft know what crashes the OS (and why apps die) in the real world and fix it.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Do you want potentially sensitive information leaving your machine? That's basically the counterargument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Error_Reporting#Privacy_concerns_and_use_by_the_NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Error_Reporting#Privac...
- 8draco8 9y ago
  Maybe they should go back to good old days of Windows XP when they've asked if I want to send them crash report.
- v4n4d1s 9y ago
  There are two main arguments: - You can't disable telemetry completey. Some people want it, some don't. Let the user decide. - Microsoft does collect an insane amount of data. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...
  - rileymat2 9y ago
    > You can't disable telemetry completey. Some people want it, some don't. Let the user decide. I would be curious how many users want telemetry sent to Microsoft. It seems the two largest buckets, by far, would be those who don't care and those who don't want it.
    - basch 9y ago
      I want your (all yalls) telemetry data sent to Microsoft, so my Windows crashes less. As an aggregate, the worlds telemetry data has an extremely positive impact on me. The problem with opt in is that most people, where most crashes occur, would never read what the prompt says asking them to send the data, they would just press the x in the corner because a dialog box popped up they didnt ask for. "What did that box say. I dont know. Why did you close it. Because I didnt want it."
      - AlexandrB 9y ago
        > The problem with opt in is that most people, where most crashes occur, would never read what the prompt says asking them to send the data, they would just press the x in the corner because a dialog box popped up they didnt ask for. "What did that box say. I dont know. Why did you close it. Because I didnt want it." You're describing a UX issue with the worst possible way this could be implemented. What chafes me is not that I'm not asked for permission for every crash report, but that I don't have the option to disable crash reports at all.
      - type0 9y ago
        So would pressing the x mean that the user agreed to this? If it's unclear, I'm drawing that conclusion from all those Windows 10 upgrades where that were the case.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  There is nothing wrong with telemetry - if it's opt-in. That's all.
  - eddieroger 9y ago
    That's exactly right - I'm happy to let my OS provider know when things break with the hopes that they fix them, but sometimes I don't want to do that, and I'd rather be asked every time or have a global setting to decide than be defaulted to opt-in.
  - edraferi 9y ago
    I think it needs to be opt out. Most users AREN'T power users. They want their computer to work consistently, like an appliance. That requires that the vendor has information about the status of the device. As long as you're clearly informed about what kind of information it's collecting and you can turn it off (and ideally tune it) it's fine with me. The opt in piece is important because you need large amounts of data to detect emerging issues. It lets you distinguish between flukes and trends. This enables the quality of service that the user expects.
    - skummetmaelk 9y ago
      Why does working consistently like an appliance require the OS provider to know the state of your device at all times? Our appliances have functioned well for decades without this capability and clearly don't need this senseless data collection for the sake of data hoarding. Yet every manufacturer of every product is jamming it in wherever they can. Fridges, cars, dildos, you name it, it's got telemetry or people trying to implement it. It is simple, data is becoming worth something because you now have the ability to analyze all the data you could ever collect. And so, everybody naturally jumps on the wagon because of the inherent profit motive. If a computer was an appliance, you would buy it and it would never need to phone home. Now we both know that there is some need for updates and it might therefore be a good idea to classify computers as something other than appliances.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  Because telemetry is potentially not only the core dumps and performance metrics, but also all sorts of potentially sensitive information - like a data derived from the user input (keyboard , voice or pen - this data is said to be anonymized but AFAIK no one had audited this) or list of installed applications. Knowing that something is crashing or performing badly is one thing, knowing what I'm doing with my computer is another. Telemetry can be done right by letting end-user to see an example of the data that's going to be sent and then also audit the actual reports that were sent. Transcribed into a human-readable format with some comments about what the values mean - I can see the binary data myself, thanks. And a way to opt out if the data is found to be actually sensitive. Basically, an opt-out switch and "sure, but give me a full transparency report" mode that a "power user" can optionally access if they happen to care. This is rarely the case, and not the case with Windows.
  - rincebrain 9y ago
    While I am (probably) just as against this kind of opaque bulk data aggregation, there is an argument to be made that they could be analyzing the data you provide on their end and storing the result (e.g. "how many users did X" is not a question you could anonymize on the end user machine, but they still might discard anything other than perhaps a hash to prevent duplicates, and thereby not be able to answer the question of who said what later.) I agree with the desire for complete transparency in data shared, but eventually this will run afoul of a number of practices which rely on cat-and-mouse games where one side doesn't have complete information (an obvious example being precisely what sorts of data Windows Defender uses/sends for malware found by heuristic, presuming it doesn't just ship the entire binary off), to say nothing of the conspiracy theories that would arise every time they ever added some kind of data collection. I don't have a good answer for this friction in general - complete transparency would only fly until a piece of malware that circumvented every heuristic and strict rule caused a major incident, whereas nearly complete opacity is where we are now. (There's also the conflict of their lack of recurring revenue for Windows 10, which is why I'd anticipate them eventually at least floating the option to disable the "end user data as payment" harvesting for an annual fee, but...)
    - 9y ago
- kabdib 9y ago
  Telemetry is this close to being apparatus for spying; a court order (secret or otherwise) could strip whatever anonymization MS is doing, say, for specific IPs or even whole regions by geography. Poof: keystrokes in real-time, available to state actors. Wouldn't that be grand? Developed capacity may not equal intent, but if you can be ordered to do secret work and make it so anyway, the distinction is irrelevant.
  - jayd16 9y ago
    If a court order could do that, why do you think they couldn't just enable it remotely too?
    - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
      Which is why, if you really care about privacy, you can't trust software you can't audit.
    - kabdib 9y ago
      They could, but it would be possible for you to notice, by looking at network traffic.
giancarlostoro 9y ago
On that note if they would do updates without forcing restarting it wouldn't be as horrible. Maybe a softer approach is "logout and log back in to see updates" on Linux unless it's a Kernel update I usually don't need to restart, just logout (in some cases that's not even needed just reopen the program and keep going). Of course if you're on Slackware you may just sit with the same files for years :) At least I did, (it was my first distro) so Windows needs updating improvements heavily. Also don't slow down my whole OS while they're downloaded / being processed.
- slaymaker1907 9y ago
  It is partly because of the poor design of DOS since you need to logout to set environment variables.
  - aanm1988 9y ago
    Which has what to do with modern windows?
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    I usually don't have to. I just close the cmd window and reopen it and it's usually updated on load.
- tjalfi 9y ago
  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.11.windowsconfidential.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.11.windowsc... gives a rationale for why Windows doesn't replace files that are in use.
UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
> participated in the NSA PRISM program It is entirely unclear if they did. While the name of big companies (Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc) got dragged through the mud, it only appears that these companies were responding to court orders and that "directly" in this context meant with cooperation of these companies and the courts. Companies are legally obligated to respond to valid court orders, issued from a normal court or secret court. See this slide[0], the fact that all data from those companies was going through the FBI instead of an NSA codename project, should tell you everything you need to know about the mechanism (i.e. legal, not technological). The PRISM program seems to primarily be about hooking into telecommunication infrastructure (both in the US and abroad). Telecommunications companies were definitely complicit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/media/File:Prism-slide-7.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...
toxican 9y ago
What it comes down to for me is that I can do my job (web development) on Windows just fine. But I'm going to spend the entire time trying to trick Windows into doing Linux things. Mintty for terminal stuff, VMs or the new Ubuntu mode for Linux software, etc. And yes, that works, but it feels hacky, performance is so-so, and it takes considerably more time to setup than the native alternative. The inverse of that is that all I need Windows for is Adobe stuff and Outlook (we use Exchange for mail, meeting scheduling, tasks etc.), which all run perfectly fine in a Windows VM with minimal resources. The only real extra setup involved there is running the Windows installer, which takes like 20 minutes tops. So what's left to compel me to use Windows? The UI? Admittedly, I feel a bit more zippy in Windows than I do Linux, but Kubuntu feels pretty damn close and I kind of prefer its UI over Windows' at this point.
- megablast 9y ago
  Sounds like Mac OS would be perfect for you.
  - byefruit 9y ago
    Indeed and I'm in a similar position the parent poster. However, OS X gets excluded because it immediately constrains my hardware purchases.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Apart from the apple tax and the lag in performance both IPC and in core count plus the fact that apple seems to not realy be focusing on the real power user/workstation user
    - freehunter 9y ago
      >the apple tax Man how often do I hear "I don't want ads on my desktop" or "I want higher quality hardware" or "I'd pay more for a system that X" and then in the same breath someone says something ridiculous like "the apple tax". It's like in cell phones. People bemoan how expensive iPhones are and brag about how cheap you can get an Android phone. An iPhone is $600 but you can get an Android phone for $100! Then I ask which Android phone I should get and I'm told "Samsung Galaxy S8", which is the same price as an iPhone! I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook. It's almost like "the apple tax" doesn't exist and people are just mad that Apple doesn't make cheap low quality products that the person complaining would never buy anyway.
api 9y ago
That was my first thought as well. I was hoping for a high-end system that I actually own, but nope. Nobody will provide that. Apple still provides the closest thing, at least on Mac. (iOS is another story.) Their telemetry is more minimal than Microsoft's, and it's possible to disable it in a way that hasn't changed much in some time. There's not much evidence Apple cares if you do so. I also trust Apple's security far more than Microsoft's.
zvrba 9y ago
> Instead of trapping people on an OS because of vendor lock-in, try improving core parts of the OS to make it worth using. For a software developer, "core parts" of the OS are way more advanced and have much more to offer than Linux. If you don't believe me, start browsing here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/desktop/bg126469.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/desktop/bg126469.... Every functionality for which you would use a (one of many) 3rd party libraries on Linux, is included in the core OS on Windows.
- rocqua 9y ago
  One might argue that replacing 3d party libraries isn't doing the "core parts" better, it's just being bloated. Moreover, it's being bloated without choice because most people just use the included version so alternatives don't get to thrive.
  - zvrba 9y ago
    > One might argue that replacing 3d party libraries isn't doing the "core parts" better, it's just being bloated. First, they're not "replacing" anything. Printing, image acquisition, font rendering, advanced tracing (ETW), authentication and directory (Kerberos), remote access, internationalization, etc. are core OS services. Second, I recently installed Win10 on a machine intended for embedded use. All this "bloat" took ~10GB of disk space, compared to the most plain, cheapest OVH installation which used 2.5GB of disk space and doesn't deliver nearly 1/4 of the features that Windows does. So which "bloat" are we talking about? > Moreover, it's being bloated without choice because most people just use the included version so alternatives don't get to thrive. If the OS-provided version is well thought-out [1] (APIs since Vista seem to be), why would I want an "alternative" that, even if it provides exactly the same functionality, isn't integrated with the rest of the system? (Thankfully, systemd is attacking the integration aspect.) Linux is full of "almost does the job" alternatives, as exemplified in [2]. Thank you, but I'll choose the OS-provided facility, not the least because it vastly simplifies deployment. [1] EDIT: "Well though-out" is not the same as "easy to use". My impression is that C-level APIs are designed for performance and flexibility first, ease of use comes second. [2] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/coding-guidelines/cross-platform-performance-and-eventing.md https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/...
gcb0 9y ago
> no telemetry ha. They did that even for enterprise. But in truth they did that following Apple's footsteps. There are several projects documenting all that new versions of osx phone home data leaks. It's a ton of data and every single start up is just fine giving macbooks like it's candy for the employees.
SippinLean 9y ago
As a power user, I run a PS script once, at install, to remove ads, telemetry, and other annoyances, as I did with Win7.
- myrandomcomment 9y ago
  So it has become quite a bit harder to do this, as the package names have changed in Win10 and some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore to remove the "updated" packages. No, I cannot think of an example off the top of my head. Also there are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates, etc. I have had to delete all the tiles on the start menu by hand. OneDrive is still in your face on most systems, etc. MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in. If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us. The only place I have Windows 10 is on my Intel Compute keys for the media center running Kodi. One of these days I will get around to trying to get Linux to run on those devices.
  - SippinLean 9y ago
    >as the package names have changed in Win10 Yes, you need a different script for 7 than 10 >some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore use an updated script >here are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates That was once, it has been patched >OneDrive is still in your face on most systems Yes, my script (and most clones of it) remove it >MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in No, it's quite easy, I run one script once at install. That's the point. >If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us. Tron is probably the most comprehensive, personally I just use a modified version of Debloat: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
komali2 9y ago
What platform are you on that Linux is more stable, and what flavor are you using? I prefer Linux in everything but I am forced to use Windows and OSX for when I need to be guaranteed "the damn thing will work" - i.e. live coding, presentations, meetings, emergency hotfixes, etc.

userbinator 9y ago

What "power user" means today seems to be something different than before --- essentially, users who just use more of the features of the OS, in the way these companies want them to; notice that "more configurability/customisation" is not mentioned at all, whereas that would be what I expect as a "power user" (the old type) myself.

Can_Not 9y ago
The new definition of "power user" is probably going to be a user that runs applications acquired outside of the app store.

nailer 9y ago

Not wanting Ads I can understand - you've paid for Windows (and in some cases Surface hardware) and you don't want to be the product - but why do you dislike telemetry? I'd rather Microsoft know what crashes the OS (and why apps die) in the real world and fix it.

userbinator 9y ago
Do you want potentially sensitive information leaving your machine? That's basically the counterargument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Error_Reporting#Privacy_concerns_and_use_by_the_NSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Error_Reporting#Privac...
8draco8 9y ago
Maybe they should go back to good old days of Windows XP when they've asked if I want to send them crash report.
v4n4d1s 9y ago
There are two main arguments: - You can't disable telemetry completey. Some people want it, some don't. Let the user decide. - Microsoft does collect an insane amount of data. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...
- rileymat2 9y ago
  > You can't disable telemetry completey. Some people want it, some don't. Let the user decide. I would be curious how many users want telemetry sent to Microsoft. It seems the two largest buckets, by far, would be those who don't care and those who don't want it.
  - basch 9y ago
    I want your (all yalls) telemetry data sent to Microsoft, so my Windows crashes less. As an aggregate, the worlds telemetry data has an extremely positive impact on me. The problem with opt in is that most people, where most crashes occur, would never read what the prompt says asking them to send the data, they would just press the x in the corner because a dialog box popped up they didnt ask for. "What did that box say. I dont know. Why did you close it. Because I didnt want it."
    - AlexandrB 9y ago
      > The problem with opt in is that most people, where most crashes occur, would never read what the prompt says asking them to send the data, they would just press the x in the corner because a dialog box popped up they didnt ask for. "What did that box say. I dont know. Why did you close it. Because I didnt want it." You're describing a UX issue with the worst possible way this could be implemented. What chafes me is not that I'm not asked for permission for every crash report, but that I don't have the option to disable crash reports at all.
    - type0 9y ago
      So would pressing the x mean that the user agreed to this? If it's unclear, I'm drawing that conclusion from all those Windows 10 upgrades where that were the case.
pmlnr 9y ago
There is nothing wrong with telemetry - if it's opt-in. That's all.
- eddieroger 9y ago
  That's exactly right - I'm happy to let my OS provider know when things break with the hopes that they fix them, but sometimes I don't want to do that, and I'd rather be asked every time or have a global setting to decide than be defaulted to opt-in.
- edraferi 9y ago
  I think it needs to be opt out. Most users AREN'T power users. They want their computer to work consistently, like an appliance. That requires that the vendor has information about the status of the device. As long as you're clearly informed about what kind of information it's collecting and you can turn it off (and ideally tune it) it's fine with me. The opt in piece is important because you need large amounts of data to detect emerging issues. It lets you distinguish between flukes and trends. This enables the quality of service that the user expects.
  - skummetmaelk 9y ago
    Why does working consistently like an appliance require the OS provider to know the state of your device at all times? Our appliances have functioned well for decades without this capability and clearly don't need this senseless data collection for the sake of data hoarding. Yet every manufacturer of every product is jamming it in wherever they can. Fridges, cars, dildos, you name it, it's got telemetry or people trying to implement it. It is simple, data is becoming worth something because you now have the ability to analyze all the data you could ever collect. And so, everybody naturally jumps on the wagon because of the inherent profit motive. If a computer was an appliance, you would buy it and it would never need to phone home. Now we both know that there is some need for updates and it might therefore be a good idea to classify computers as something other than appliances.
drdaeman 9y ago
Because telemetry is potentially not only the core dumps and performance metrics, but also all sorts of potentially sensitive information - like a data derived from the user input (keyboard , voice or pen - this data is said to be anonymized but AFAIK no one had audited this) or list of installed applications. Knowing that something is crashing or performing badly is one thing, knowing what I'm doing with my computer is another. Telemetry can be done right by letting end-user to see an example of the data that's going to be sent and then also audit the actual reports that were sent. Transcribed into a human-readable format with some comments about what the values mean - I can see the binary data myself, thanks. And a way to opt out if the data is found to be actually sensitive. Basically, an opt-out switch and "sure, but give me a full transparency report" mode that a "power user" can optionally access if they happen to care. This is rarely the case, and not the case with Windows.
- rincebrain 9y ago
  While I am (probably) just as against this kind of opaque bulk data aggregation, there is an argument to be made that they could be analyzing the data you provide on their end and storing the result (e.g. "how many users did X" is not a question you could anonymize on the end user machine, but they still might discard anything other than perhaps a hash to prevent duplicates, and thereby not be able to answer the question of who said what later.) I agree with the desire for complete transparency in data shared, but eventually this will run afoul of a number of practices which rely on cat-and-mouse games where one side doesn't have complete information (an obvious example being precisely what sorts of data Windows Defender uses/sends for malware found by heuristic, presuming it doesn't just ship the entire binary off), to say nothing of the conspiracy theories that would arise every time they ever added some kind of data collection. I don't have a good answer for this friction in general - complete transparency would only fly until a piece of malware that circumvented every heuristic and strict rule caused a major incident, whereas nearly complete opacity is where we are now. (There's also the conflict of their lack of recurring revenue for Windows 10, which is why I'd anticipate them eventually at least floating the option to disable the "end user data as payment" harvesting for an annual fee, but...)
  - 9y ago
kabdib 9y ago
Telemetry is this close to being apparatus for spying; a court order (secret or otherwise) could strip whatever anonymization MS is doing, say, for specific IPs or even whole regions by geography. Poof: keystrokes in real-time, available to state actors. Wouldn't that be grand? Developed capacity may not equal intent, but if you can be ordered to do secret work and make it so anyway, the distinction is irrelevant.
- jayd16 9y ago
  If a court order could do that, why do you think they couldn't just enable it remotely too?
  - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
    Which is why, if you really care about privacy, you can't trust software you can't audit.
  - kabdib 9y ago
    They could, but it would be possible for you to notice, by looking at network traffic.

giancarlostoro 9y ago

On that note if they would do updates without forcing restarting it wouldn't be as horrible. Maybe a softer approach is "logout and log back in to see updates" on Linux unless it's a Kernel update I usually don't need to restart, just logout (in some cases that's not even needed just reopen the program and keep going). Of course if you're on Slackware you may just sit with the same files for years :) At least I did, (it was my first distro) so Windows needs updating improvements heavily. Also don't slow down my whole OS while they're downloaded / being processed.

slaymaker1907 9y ago
It is partly because of the poor design of DOS since you need to logout to set environment variables.
- aanm1988 9y ago
  Which has what to do with modern windows?
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  I usually don't have to. I just close the cmd window and reopen it and it's usually updated on load.
tjalfi 9y ago
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.11.windowsconfidential.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.11.windowsc... gives a rationale for why Windows doesn't replace files that are in use.

UnoriginalGuy 9y ago

> participated in the NSA PRISM program It is entirely unclear if they did. While the name of big companies (Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc) got dragged through the mud, it only appears that these companies were responding to court orders and that "directly" in this context meant with cooperation of these companies and the courts. Companies are legally obligated to respond to valid court orders, issued from a normal court or secret court. See this slide[0], the fact that all data from those companies was going through the FBI instead of an NSA codename project, should tell you everything you need to know about the mechanism (i.e. legal, not technological). The PRISM program seems to primarily be about hooking into telecommunication infrastructure (both in the US and abroad). Telecommunications companies were definitely complicit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/media/File:Prism-slide-7.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...

toxican 9y ago

What it comes down to for me is that I can do my job (web development) on Windows just fine. But I'm going to spend the entire time trying to trick Windows into doing Linux things. Mintty for terminal stuff, VMs or the new Ubuntu mode for Linux software, etc. And yes, that works, but it feels hacky, performance is so-so, and it takes considerably more time to setup than the native alternative. The inverse of that is that all I need Windows for is Adobe stuff and Outlook (we use Exchange for mail, meeting scheduling, tasks etc.), which all run perfectly fine in a Windows VM with minimal resources. The only real extra setup involved there is running the Windows installer, which takes like 20 minutes tops. So what's left to compel me to use Windows? The UI? Admittedly, I feel a bit more zippy in Windows than I do Linux, but Kubuntu feels pretty damn close and I kind of prefer its UI over Windows' at this point.

megablast 9y ago
Sounds like Mac OS would be perfect for you.
- byefruit 9y ago
  Indeed and I'm in a similar position the parent poster. However, OS X gets excluded because it immediately constrains my hardware purchases.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Apart from the apple tax and the lag in performance both IPC and in core count plus the fact that apple seems to not realy be focusing on the real power user/workstation user
  - freehunter 9y ago
    >the apple tax Man how often do I hear "I don't want ads on my desktop" or "I want higher quality hardware" or "I'd pay more for a system that X" and then in the same breath someone says something ridiculous like "the apple tax". It's like in cell phones. People bemoan how expensive iPhones are and brag about how cheap you can get an Android phone. An iPhone is $600 but you can get an Android phone for $100! Then I ask which Android phone I should get and I'm told "Samsung Galaxy S8", which is the same price as an iPhone! I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook. It's almost like "the apple tax" doesn't exist and people are just mad that Apple doesn't make cheap low quality products that the person complaining would never buy anyway.

api 9y ago

That was my first thought as well. I was hoping for a high-end system that I actually own, but nope. Nobody will provide that. Apple still provides the closest thing, at least on Mac. (iOS is another story.) Their telemetry is more minimal than Microsoft's, and it's possible to disable it in a way that hasn't changed much in some time. There's not much evidence Apple cares if you do so. I also trust Apple's security far more than Microsoft's.

zvrba 9y ago

> Instead of trapping people on an OS because of vendor lock-in, try improving core parts of the OS to make it worth using. For a software developer, "core parts" of the OS are way more advanced and have much more to offer than Linux. If you don't believe me, start browsing here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/desktop/bg126469.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/desktop/bg126469.... Every functionality for which you would use a (one of many) 3rd party libraries on Linux, is included in the core OS on Windows.

rocqua 9y ago
One might argue that replacing 3d party libraries isn't doing the "core parts" better, it's just being bloated. Moreover, it's being bloated without choice because most people just use the included version so alternatives don't get to thrive.
- zvrba 9y ago
  > One might argue that replacing 3d party libraries isn't doing the "core parts" better, it's just being bloated. First, they're not "replacing" anything. Printing, image acquisition, font rendering, advanced tracing (ETW), authentication and directory (Kerberos), remote access, internationalization, etc. are core OS services. Second, I recently installed Win10 on a machine intended for embedded use. All this "bloat" took ~10GB of disk space, compared to the most plain, cheapest OVH installation which used 2.5GB of disk space and doesn't deliver nearly 1/4 of the features that Windows does. So which "bloat" are we talking about? > Moreover, it's being bloated without choice because most people just use the included version so alternatives don't get to thrive. If the OS-provided version is well thought-out [1] (APIs since Vista seem to be), why would I want an "alternative" that, even if it provides exactly the same functionality, isn't integrated with the rest of the system? (Thankfully, systemd is attacking the integration aspect.) Linux is full of "almost does the job" alternatives, as exemplified in [2]. Thank you, but I'll choose the OS-provided facility, not the least because it vastly simplifies deployment. [1] EDIT: "Well though-out" is not the same as "easy to use". My impression is that C-level APIs are designed for performance and flexibility first, ease of use comes second. [2] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/coding-guidelines/cross-platform-performance-and-eventing.md https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/...

gcb0 9y ago

> no telemetry ha. They did that even for enterprise. But in truth they did that following Apple's footsteps. There are several projects documenting all that new versions of osx phone home data leaks. It's a ton of data and every single start up is just fine giving macbooks like it's candy for the employees.

SippinLean 9y ago

As a power user, I run a PS script once, at install, to remove ads, telemetry, and other annoyances, as I did with Win7.

myrandomcomment 9y ago
So it has become quite a bit harder to do this, as the package names have changed in Win10 and some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore to remove the "updated" packages. No, I cannot think of an example off the top of my head. Also there are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates, etc. I have had to delete all the tiles on the start menu by hand. OneDrive is still in your face on most systems, etc. MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in. If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us. The only place I have Windows 10 is on my Intel Compute keys for the media center running Kodi. One of these days I will get around to trying to get Linux to run on those devices.
- SippinLean 9y ago
  >as the package names have changed in Win10 Yes, you need a different script for 7 than 10 >some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore use an updated script >here are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates That was once, it has been patched >OneDrive is still in your face on most systems Yes, my script (and most clones of it) remove it >MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in No, it's quite easy, I run one script once at install. That's the point. >If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us. Tron is probably the most comprehensive, personally I just use a modified version of Debloat: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10

komali2 9y ago

What platform are you on that Linux is more stable, and what flavor are you using? I prefer Linux in everything but I am forced to use Windows and OSX for when I need to be guaranteed "the damn thing will work" - i.e. live coding, presentations, meetings, emergency hotfixes, etc.