11 ms·

Microsoft do cool things like this which makes me think "oh wow they really are a different company to 15 years ago" So I go and check out a new Windows 10 lap

• zapzupnz 8y ago
  Being fair, the advertisements can be switched off (and Windows Setup offers this during the Out of Box Experience when the computer is first used or a major update occurs), and those icons can be removed fairly simply. Also, those third party apps aren't preinstalled; they're just shortcuts to the Microsoft Store to download them. I see a lot of people spending more energy ranting about this, a problem that doesn't necessarily exist in the way that people might think, than doing a quick investigation to find that the apps aren't there in the first place.
  • davidy123 8y ago
    People shouldn't have to spend any time on this, at all. Very few people want ads for games or anything else than their operating system focus in their start menu. There should be at most a subtle opt-in option.
    • hackinthebochs 8y ago
      >Very few people want ads for games or anything else than their operating system focus in their start menu. Why do you think the average person wouldn't want these popular apps a click away?
      • dragonsky67 8y ago
        Because if I want software to perform a particular action I will go looking at it. I don't want unwanted icons hanging around waiting for me to accidently click on them.
        • vntok 8y ago
          That's because you are not part of MS Store's target user segment.
      • komali2 8y ago
        I actually have yet to meet a person that plays Candy crush windows, and not for lack of hanging around non technical people.
      • nitrogen 8y ago
        Is there some way I can opt out of "average person" justifications for crappy experiences? If I'm paying a niche price for a niche product I should expect more than "average".
  • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    > Being fair, the advertisements can be switched off... There's nothing "fair" about that. I shouldn't have to.
• jimnotgym 8y ago
  I guess the point is none of that affects enterprise users who are joined to a domain and have all of that turned off in group policy.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    I use Enterprise connected to a domain and our admins have at least tried very hard to turn off all of this, and I still get ads in the start menu. Now you may well say that we just missed time setting... But our Windows admins aren't incompetent, so to me that just says that MS intentionally obfuscated it even in Enterprise.
• brian_herman 8y ago
  If you get windows server 2016 and use that as a workstation no crapware is on there and it runs faster. Unfortunately it costs 5 times the price...
  • Const-me 8y ago
    Not that expensive: https://ebay.us/G7Jk1S https://ebay.us/G7Jk1S I have not bought from that seller, but they have sold 765 of them, with 100% positive feedback.
    • naikrovek 8y ago
      Good old gray-market. Selling licenses invalid in the US that happen to pass the automated checks since ... Whenever.
• esotericn 8y ago
  Yeah. Imagine your favourite burger place packing a credit-card sized piece of plastic in the middle of the bun. You can remove it. It's fairly trivial. You know it's there, it's too big to swallow, you pull it out, chuck it in the bin, and get on your way. That's what advertising in Windows feels like. It's just not polite.
  • chambo622 8y ago
    Strange but accurate analogy
    • esotericn 8y ago
      Advertising _is_ strange. I'm trying to do a thing and you've put this colorful flashy box in front of it. Imagine if people tried to "monetize" their conversations. They might claim that otherwise they couldn't afford to talk to anyone (rent ain't gonna pay itself, right). You'd be talking about football or whatever and suddenly a different tone of voice would emanate from your conversational partner for 10 seconds whilst they talk about some Super New Product. As far as I can tell the whole industry is impolite, rude, gauche, just a bit icky, really.
      • rising-sky 8y ago
        I'm surprised this was not an episode of black mirror, sounds crazy ...but that's just me in 2018 thinking that
      • thaumasiotes 8y ago
        > Imagine if people tried to "monetize" their conversations. People do try to monetize their conversations. That's why "networking" is a different word than "socializing".
        • TeMPOraL 8y ago
          That's also why it's relegated to special events and occasions, like professional conferences. If you try to "network" when normal "socialization" is called for, you'll be seen as tactless or sleazy. This holds true for a lot of things related to sales & advertising - if you tried to repeat the same practices in person to your family or friend, you'd get distaste or a punch in the face.
• Someone1234 8y ago
  What's wrong with Paint 3D? "Get Office" is nothing but an advert, and an annoying one at that considering it continues to appear after MS Office is installed. Paint 3D on the other hand is a supplemental tool to regular Paint that is actually extremely powerful once you get used to it. I myself actually started out ignoring it, and it hasn't replaced regular Paint for many things, but I find myself going into it on purpose now and for the things it is good at it is VERY good. People have dismissed it out of hand because of the "3D." The 3D actually refers to Photoshop style layering but you can manipulate the Z axis to generate different 2D image views, which can be output. The main output of Paint 3D is the same as Paint 2D image files e.g. PNGs, BMPs, and JPG. Sure, you can save a project file, but that is just your source images and Z axis layering information (akin to a Photoshop's PSD). PS - It also supports PNG transparency layers which is a welcome addition.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • Rychard 8y ago
    > What's wrong with Paint 3D? For starters, there's that "3D Objects" item underneath "This PC" in the Explorer treeview. It's not relevant to me, and I'm skeptical that it's relevant to the average user. If I recall, there was a registry key that could be modified to remove this item, but after I applied this modification, a subsequent update undid this. I find this incredibly frustrating. (Below, I'm speaking to this point more broadly) It's my computer and I should be able to use it the way that I want to. I have my own user account because others may use this machine differently, and each user deserves the ability to customize their experience based on their preferences. I honestly don't understand how Microsoft gets to make these decisions on behalf of users. They shouldn't even have a say in the matter at all for anything a user has explicitly configured. Feel free to change the defaults, but at no point should it be considered acceptable to override an explicit configuration of the user.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• derblitzmann 8y ago
  OEMs are ms' Achilles tendon
  • yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    This happens on the Surface line.
• kccqzy 8y ago
  > Do you see Apple loading up third-party apps into macOS? No? Well, they used to, around the turn of the century. Not any more.
• cwyers 8y ago
  The market doesn't really seem to care all that much about it. Windows is practically clean on install compared to any Android phone I've owned. My favorite in terms of pointlessness was my Samsung phone that had both Chrome and a Samsung browser based on Chromium on it, and the Samsung browser was the default. It was worse in every way than just Chrome.
  • daxfohl 8y ago
    Unless it does. Maybe if there was no junk they could command Apple premiums for their devices and get Apple sales numbers.
    • cwyers 8y ago
      Can you uninstall Apple Music from iOS devices?
      • 8_hours_ago 8y ago
        Yes. I was able to delete it from my iPhone.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • Mononokay 8y ago
        Yes. In fact, you can delete almost every preinstalled app on iOS devices.
        • dijit 8y ago
          Wow. I didn’t believe you. But you’re right, I just removed my music app. :o
          • Gaelan 8y ago
            It's fairly recent, iOS 10 or 11.
• pupdogg 8y ago
  I always wondered if personalities like Satya Nadella browse these forums under different identities to understand what the rest of the tech world might be saying? Wouldn't it be pragmatic for them to align 80% of their priorities with their core users? I guess they can still use the remaining 20% to focus on their obtrusive advertisers!
  • voltagex_ 8y ago
    HN is not their core users.
    • fragmede 8y ago
      To further this idea, while Twitter is probably paying for the privilege of being pre-installed, for Windows 10, I wouldn't be surprised if (shortcuts to download) Candy Crush and Twitter are the result of market testing and focus groups and such. Not understanding being able to download apps via the Windows Store may be totally foreign to us, but non-technical users may need some hand-holding.
    • truncate 8y ago
      HN is still a good place to quickly get a lot of_critical_ insights, which is much harder to get from core users.
    • rakoo 8y ago
      HN is probably not their core Home Edition users, but I'm pretty sure it's a good window into their Professional and Enterprise Edition users, those who don't nee the crap addendum but just need to work
      • naikrovek 8y ago
        HN is a fucking tire fire when it comes to comment toxicity for certain segments of readers. We're no better than Reddit or anywhere else really. MS would be wise (and justified) to ignore us completely.
      • rkangel 8y ago
• frabbit 8y ago
  Windows 10 is a solid OS but they trash it with these awful little pointless decisions While those are definitely irritations I would like to add something a little (IMO) more important: file path limits. I can fudge around it in various ways, but it is infuriating: https://serverfault.com/questions/232986/overcoming-maximum-file-path-length-restrictions-in-windows https://serverfault.com/questions/232986/overcoming-maximum-...
  • naikrovek 8y ago
    The 250-something character path limit was removed several versions ago. It's a 32k limit, now. Everyone: update your complaints when the situation changes, please.
    • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      If Linux users still have to put up with people constantly regurgitating 20-year-old complaints like wifi and audio not working then Windows users should have to put up with it too ;)
      • hashhar 8y ago
        For me the Wifi issues in Linux are not 20 year old. They happen to me almost once every week randomly. It depends a lot on your modem manufacturer though.
    • frabbit 8y ago
      The version currently available to us through our IT department suffers from the limit. The updates you mention are held back from us because of 2 problems: one of them being a bitlocker lock-out. Summary: this is a real, current problem experienced in the enterprise which disrupts work. It's all very well being a lone Dev upgrading to Harvest Festival Cutename at your whim.... but the reality of enterprise updates are that Windows is cumbersome compared to Linux.
      • naikrovek 8y ago
• kerng 8y ago
  Very accurate. Ads in windows and those games that no ones wants are a real drag. Is there no way to get a clean install, and not have it reinstall every single crazy app after upgrading. Its one of the most annoying things when using Windows these days... it takes good 20 minutes to remove everything, get rid of ads and games, and Cortana doing random internet searches - I really dont want that by default.
  • naikrovek 8y ago
    > Is there no way to get a clean install, and not have it reinstall every single crazy app after upgrading. If you meant that as a question, end it with a question mark (?). If you meant it as a statement, you're wrong. Uninstalled apps do not reappear upon upgrade to newer Windows 10 version. The ads can be turned off. That setting is persisted via your Microsoft account, if you use one. The ads stay off when upgrading. I haven't seen any ads in the start menu (or anywhere else in Win10 except a browser) for many, many months; at least 2 years, and probably more. If you log in with a Microsoft account instead of a local user account, all those settings persist across devices, even fresh installs where you also log in using the same MS account. It takes a bit of time for everything to sync up, and most of those things get applied to all machines when you make a change on one. The things that aren't take less than a minute, and only need to be done once. (I am unsure here, I haven't set up a new Windows 10 install in over a year, and I can't recall doing anything other than uninstalling a few apps, less than 5, on a new install. It literally takes 15 seconds, so forgive me if I don't have precise infallible memory on this one point.) The thing that really gets my goat about people that complain on the internet is that their complaints are never updated when the situation changes. Some of those complainers think they are making valid complaints, when in the eyes of someone who has actually followed up on things, they appear to be completely ignorant and baseless complaints.
    • picsao 8y ago
      Oh wow I didn't know that you could devaluate criticism with pulse width modulated updates. Thank you anonymous shillbilly
• nostalgiac 8y ago
  How do I report this comment? It has literally nothing to do with the linked post.
  • manigandham 8y ago
    You can downvote comments you feel are not relevant. Flag comments that are otherwise breaking rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
• daveslash 8y ago
  I don't mean to sound smug, only offer a perspective. I've heard of what you're talking about, but I've never actually seen it for myself. On every Windows 10 system that I've used, including developer preview (& excluding my work laptop) is one that on which I've installed Win10 myself. During the installation process, I selected 'advanced' settings -- there was a glaring option that said something similar to "allow Microsoft to show ads in places like the start menu and apps" -- That was on by default and I turned it off in quick order. Additionally, I turned off every single setting that attempted to "learn" from my behavior and "provide" what I most likely wanted. I've only set these settings during installation, but here's what I found online. https://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windows-10s-built-in-advertising/ https://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windo...
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • suby 8y ago
    The last time I installed, they designed the installation screen so that it would be non-obvious that you could toggle those settings off. For instance, they had the link to the page to toggle those options on the bottom in small text which was a similar color to the background color. That was a while ago, so admittedly it may have changed since then. Regardless, when you have Windows set up, they then scatter those settings throughout various menus instead of having one centralized place where you can turn off all the advertising / some of the telemetry. They also seem to be adding more of this as time goes on, which your one time disabling won't apply for. I turned off everything I could find, only to have more advertisements appear in my start menu months later due to what I believe was them adding in more advertisements in an update. I then had to go and toggle off. I want to like Microsoft, I really do, but they don't make it easy. Advertisements in the operating system that I paid for is entirely galling to me.
    • ry_ry 8y ago
      I'm running win10 at home and with the exception of cortana conspiring to escape her banishment, I don't think I've ever seen a direct advert as such. I upgraded back when they were doing the free upgrade, laundering a slightly questionable license in the process. Are the pre-loaded bits and pieces fairly new? Was there no opt-out on first run? I'm not doubting they are there - it is Microsoft after all - just confused why they would choose to spam paying customers when people with keys from, hypothetically, long expired MSDN packs are still chugging along with no interference...
• HFE_C282Y 8y ago
  This comment/complaint is basically completely orthogonal to the posted item.
• partycoder 8y ago
  Same reason Google TV will fail: because you will find yourself looking at ads 50% of the time.
• viraptor 8y ago
  > Microsoft do cool things like this ... > So I go and check out a new Windows 10 laptop and the first thing I see, ..., is a bunch of adverts on the start menu and sigh. Microsoft is not a single team. They have different products, different division owners, different managers, etc. At a company of this size you'll always find people making cool stuff and marketing trying to squeeze in as much content as possible. (and many other teams) This shouldn't be surprising that they coexist. I'm not saying this is a good state and they do overall good work. Just that releasing procdump and embedding ads are two different worlds visible under one name outside.
  • blub 8y ago
    As I said in another comment: does MS have a leadership team and CEO? Yes. This is Nadella's strategy: stop copying Apple and copy Google. TBH, I liked their previous one a lot more.
• Const-me 8y ago
  On my main PC, I need a huge pile of both general-purpose and specialized software, starting from something as ubiquitous as MS office, and down to a long tail of compilers, debuggers, SDKs, drivers for strange hardware I use, and many others. Last time I did clean reinstall of Win10, maybe a few years ago, it took me a couple days to set it up. That’s why I don’t care about candy crush or twitter. As far as I remember it took me 10 minutes to remove them, and despite I always update my PC, they never came back.
  • gU9x3u8XmQNG 8y ago
    I assure you; they will randomly reinstall with a friendly, focus stealing, notification. It’s rather disappointing. In fact; I have not used this system since (mostly due to unrelated logistics).
    • Const-me 8y ago
      > they will randomly reinstall with a friendly, focus stealing, notification. Maybe you clicked "use defaults" on some setup messages? When a software or a web site asks me anything related to privacy, advertisements, tracking, etc., I usually pick best settings for me. The defaults are likely to be the best ones for the developers of software/web site.
      • ants_a 8y ago
        This is one part of it. A good user experience doesn't require the user to solve a word puzzle to avoid getting spammed. Good user experience is having good defaults.
      • gU9x3u8XmQNG 8y ago
        This particular windows 10 experience is from an upgrade method. Quite confident I toggled appropriate settings off - but I have done so many deploys / upgrades personally and professionally - perhaps I missed something on this asset? Either way; I state my experience with the platform.
    • naikrovek 8y ago
• ixacto 8y ago
  Windows 10 LTSB is really close. Then M$ decides to put candy crap + windows 10 home on the surface PRO. This puppy has great hardware but windows 10 feels like what some MS advertising exec wants everyone to use, not an actual os.
  • mateuszf 8y ago
    Can't buy it as an individual tho, afaik.
    • miles 8y ago
      I recently spoke to a rep at a well-known Microsoft Partner; apparently it can be purchased for around $300, including 4 inexpensive CALs necessary to round out the order (5 licenses are required if you don't have an existing volume license agreement): Explicit instructions for purchasing a Windows 10 LTSC license? https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-instructions-for-purchasing-a-windows-10-ltsc-license https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
      • kraptor 8y ago
        LTSB means no WSL, no Hyper-V, no support for VStudio neither for Windows SDKs (which refuse to install or don't install cleanly), so it's not for "developent" anyway.
        • miles 8y ago
          > LTSB means no WSL, no Hyper-V "Have now upgraded to Window 10 LTSB build 1607 and Hyper V is fully working." https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1690823-windows-10-enterprise-ltsb-not-enabling-hyper-v-management-tools https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1690823-windows-10-en... "I just installed WSL on LTSC and it worked great." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271829
          • kraptor 8y ago
• King-Aaron 8y ago
  I was honestly stunned with my recent Dell laptop purchase. Windows10 pro on a workstation does not need Candy Crush Saga or Minecraft preinstalled.
  • satysin 8y ago
    I was even more stunned when I bought a Surface Book 2 directly from Microsoft for over £3000 running Windows 10 'Professional' and the first thing I see after booting it up is Candy Crush, TripAdvisor, Twitter and Minecraft on my start menu. Not to mention after installing Office 365 I was still greeted with a 'helpful' prompt to 'Get Office'. Sigh.
• masonic 8y ago
  Do you see Apple loading up third-party apps into macOS? No? I wonder why. Well, they do load up Google as their default search provider to make an extra $3 billion per year off Apple users. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billion-to-remain-default-search--bernstein.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
  • marricks 8y ago
    Sure, because search is actually a feature people want. I don’t want one drive or candy crush or telemetry data and all those are harder to turn off then changing search to DuckDuckGo on MacOS or iOS.
    • davb 8y ago
      > one drive Mac OS does come with a fairly deep iCloud Drive integration, and iOS defaults to backing up photos and files then tries to upsell to a higher package when space runs out. It's only fairly recently that iOS shipped with a dedicated file manager, instead making you store any documents you have either in individual apps or on iCloud Drive.
      • vetinari 8y ago
        To be fair, macOS asks once about the iCloud, and when told 'No', it respects the user and never asks again, and never puts anything iCloud related into users face.
    • megaremote 8y ago
      People? I? Well, yes, people DO in fact want candy crush.
  • nordsieck 8y ago
    > Well, they do load up Google as their default search provider While that's true, a browser pretty much needs a default search engine, and Google is widely regarded as the best. I'm not sure that Apple could make a more customer-centric choice.
• artellectual 8y ago
  I believe it's this way because teams within Microsoft are not working towards the same goals. The Marketing / Business team and Development team have very different goals. This is a classic symptom I see a lot coaching smaller companies, seems like it happens in large companies too. The Product people understand what makes a great product, but Marketing / Business people need short term fix in order to reach their KPIs, which pressures them to do what they do to the product, fill it up with advertisement. Otherwise marketing people will be out of a job. There is a disconnect between Product and Business from within Microsoft. This is where Apple still has an edge, I'm not saying apple doesn't have internal conflicts they do, but they resolve it and when they speak they all speak the same message, this IMO is Apple's true strength. Making the 2 teams work in a cohesive manner will take a lot of effort from the management, having understanding and patience to make Marketing and Product work together in harmony. Just my $0.02
  • blub 8y ago
    Nadella doesn't know that Windows has ads and spyware-like telemetry? Either he must be using a Mac or Linux, or he's approved these shenanigans himself.
    • naikrovek 8y ago
      > spyware-like telemetry Gonna need a source on that one. Not the "telemetry" part, the "spyware" part. Edit: Because it's possible now to see all telemetry sent and even delete it from Microsoft's servers. I seriously do not see the harm in usage telemetry...
      • lawnchair_larry 8y ago
        No it isn’t. Microsoft refuses to disclose what is sent as part of the required “security” level telemetry.
        • tinus_hn 8y ago
          And, according to the agreement, they have access to all your documents if they ‘have a good faith believe that doing so is necessary’
• andrewstuart 8y ago
  I'm using the exact same build of OSX that I started with over 12 years ago. It's been upgraded many times and undergone several machine changes and even moved from hard disk to hard disk. Its NEVER been rebuilt. With Windows I simply had a process of expecting to do a complete clean reinstall every year or two. Another of the many big reasons I ditched Windows for OSX.
  • chrisper 8y ago
    So you never updated and missed out on security updates? Or what do you mean by "exact same build"?
    • apexalpha 8y ago
      He says he updates his OS in stead of reinstalling it with the newer version. He probably switched away from Windows during XP or Vista.
  • Joeri 8y ago
    Microsoft reinstalls the OS when they do a new release of windows 10 and moves your files over, so on windows 10 you no longer need to do this.
• chrisper 8y ago
  I work on a Windows 10 Enterprise Virtual Machine. I keep seeing ads in the start menu for Netflix, Forza Horizon etc. I could at least somehow understand if this was a home edition, but imho totally unacceptable to have it on an Enterprise version.
  • Holybed 8y ago
    It's weird. I use Windows 10 all the time both at work and in office and I never see these ads. I'm in Sweden, maybe it's not targeted somehow.
    • naikrovek 8y ago
      I'm in the US. I don't see them either. I haven't for a long time, tens of months.
    • chrisper 8y ago
      You probably have "Show Suggestions occasionally in Start" disabled.
• naikrovek 8y ago
  These things were part of Terry Myerson's realm, as I recall, and he was sort of ejected from Microsoft. Once the agreements that put the things like Candy Crush in the start menu are expired, I expect they won't be returning.
• pndy 8y ago
  > Not to mention how you conveniently always reset my settings to your defaults including reinstalling all your ad-crap every 6 months with a new Windows release. I tend to wonder about that - is it done on purpose or it's because the half-year releases of these semi-annual updates are essentially being applied in upgrade process and not the old service pack way. Also a "funny" thing from last few days: SO logged onto parents laptop with Microsoft Account credentials and surprise: OS didn't fetch a single piece of data already synchronized into their cloud but uploaded all recent changes made on that device and pushed them onto desktop.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    "Feature Updates" are actually entire in-place OS installs on Windows 10. Whether it is intentional that they often fail to migrate certain settings or merely incompetence is difficult to determine.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• emmelaich 8y ago
  Microsoft is large, it contains multitudes. (with apologies to Walt Whitman)
• TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  I think the reason that this situation exists, in the face of a lot of online rebuke, is that they're heading towards a free-to-use version of Windows which will be entirely supported with un-removable crapware and telemetry, and they are testing the market.