8 ms·
Some people are tired of an OS that by default phones home about actions you do on it, include advertisement in your start area, and regularly push updates to a
by hackcasual 7y ago
Some people are tired of an OS that by default phones home about actions you do on it, include advertisement in your start area, and regularly push updates to add new features that also break existing software.
- owenwil 7y agoThe 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.
- fkdo 7y ago> every OS is calling home to some degree. It's funny to speak in absolutes. Plenty of operating systems don't phone home regularly, just not ones popular with consumers.
- eslaught 7y ago> Safari harasses you about being the default browser But does it advertise to you by default? This seems not comparable at all. Pretty much every browser will want you to set it as default (and at least the option to stop the nagging is usually front and center). Maybe this is just me, but advertising by default in something as basic as a start screen seems very user hostile....
- plorkyeran 7y agoI get semi-regular notifications in macOS telling me I should give Safari another try and I haven't found any way to turn them off.
- ymolodtsov 7y agoThat’s interesting, I switched to Chrome months ago and haven’t seen any — even though I might open Safari from time to time.
- latexr 7y agoI’ve been on macOS (OS X) for over a decade, never used Safari as the default browser, and have no idea what you’re referring to.
- latexr 7y agoI may have found what you’re referring to and how to disable it[1][2]. [1]: Original blog post: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion.html https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion.... [2]: Archival link, for future-proofing: https://web.archive.org/web/20190814011835/https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190814011835/https://www.ctrl....
- halfarmbandit 7y agoI have been on MacOS for a few years now and I have never received a notification about safari.
- wayneftw 7y agoEvery time you go to check updates for macOS you have to see ads in their app store. Not only that, but Apple installs a ton of apps I don’t need, which are essentially advertised by simply existing on my launchpad. Things just show up after an update and I don’t see a difference between that and some third-party apps that Microsoft puts on the start menu for you.
- eslaught 7y agoThis is no longer true on the latest macOS; OS updates are no longer delivered via the app store. (You get to it via settings, or you can get to it via the apple menu in the top bar.) But anyway, I figure the app store is a place I go to get apps, and if the app store chooses to offered paid placement in that list, at least that's sort of relevant. My start area... is a place I go to use basic functionality of the machine. There is no implication that I want to install anything, or buy anything. Has Apple ever installed a third-party app on your system? macOS is a batteries-included OS, I think most people consider the wide variety of first-party apps to be a feature not a bug. And if you want a specific app, type its name into Spotlight and you don't even have to hunt and peck through all the icons.
- blub 7y ago1. Updates are done through settings. 2. Advertising is communication about a product or service. A product is not advertising in itself, logic doesn't work like that. It's also worth differentiating what one gets: free, quality apps with a decent privacy policy vs. pay to win games in Windows. You're trying a too hard to excuse customer-hostile behavior and it's embarrassing.
- wayneftw 7y ago> You're trying a too hard to excuse customer-hostile behavior and it's embarrassing. That was rude. I’m telling it like I see it. Did I offend your favorite OS or corporation or something like that? Why get personal with me?? 1. OS updates had not been done through settings for a long, long time. However updates to Apples preinstalled applications are done through the App Store... Anyway, if it was OK for Apple to do through their store for 10-15 years, then it should be fine for Microsoft to do something comparable now. Right? 2. There are no ads in the Windows start menu according to your definition either then because Candy Crush simply exists as an icon there. As a matter fact I just setup a new Windows laptop last night and I didn’t see one ad. Just some preinstalled apps. Are you sure that you know what you’re talking about?
- jevgeni 7y agomacOS is way more expensive as well. Compare it with Windows 10 Pro for a fairer price point and ads are not a problem all of a sudden.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoHow is it more expensive. The last macOS I had to pay for was mountain lion. That was 10.8. I get that I have to buy a mac to get the os but once I have it, I get the most recent version of macOS for free from the AppStore. https://www.apple.com/shop/help/downloadable_software https://www.apple.com/shop/help/downloadable_software
- jevgeni 7y agoThe price is included in the price of the whole product. I mean, it’s not the price of materials that dominate Apple’s pricing. And you actually have to pay money to people developing the OS. So no, it’s not free.
- beatgammit 7y agoYou're paying for the brand, design, etc. Yes, Apple funds OS development though other sales, but it's not sold separately and new OS releases are free. As far as I understand the law, I can legally install macOS on a machine that did not originally come with it installed (hackintosh), with the caveat that I violate Apple's EULA by doing so. Microsoft bundles all sorts of software with their OS that can be installed separately for free, does that mean they're actually not free because development is funded through other product sales? A lot of their services have a free tier, are those services not free because there's a paid tier? Apple's inflated hardware price certainly includes room for funding their OS development, but that doesn't mean the OS isn't free. Windows sales also likely go toward funding things other than OS development, but that doesn't mean that all of their products aren't free if you're running them on Windows.
- jevgeni 7y ago
- dTal 7y agoOh yeah, plenty of control. Just book the afternoon off and follow this handy-dandy guide: https://github.com/adolfintel/Windows10-Privacy https://github.com/adolfintel/Windows10-Privacy
- jsmith99 7y agoPeople follow dangerous guides like this and then complain Windows doesn't work well. For example, following this guide turns off 'Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results'. You then see loads of posts on hacker news complaining that start menu search doesn't give them their most used apps at the top.
- iaml 7y agoStart menu search is garbage regardless of tinkering with those internals. Source: have had unmodified 10 for a couple of years.
- nvrspyx 7y agomacOS does not harass you about being the default browser. All it does is show a separator in the dropdown menu [1], which I've always assumed to indicate that it's "built-in". Meanwhile, Windows will show "Recommended" next to Edge, show a pop-up asking you to try Edge before switching the default browser, and then continue to harass you every time you use Bing from a different browser on Windows. Chrome does the latter on Google as well. 1: https://imgur.com/xqnueDe https://imgur.com/xqnueDe
- lozenge 7y agoOh, and then it will still open Edge from Cortana queries and other places.
- kup0 7y agoThat and for some reason it seems like Edge likes to try very hard to keep itself the default PDF reader. Very annoying.
- beatgammit 7y agoFortunately, it's not bad as a PDF viewer. That doesn't excuse it, it just makes it less annoying.
- jawilson2 7y agoThere a lot of whataboutisms here. MS shouldn't do phone home, OSX shouldn't do it, and I'm pretty sure my work CentOS doesn't do it. This should be the default, and you should have to opt in, preferably for some period, for it to happen. For ads, this should be disabled by default, and the user should be compensated in some way for receiving ads on an OS they paid for. Also, these and Candy Crush seem to be re-enabled after some updates.
- jevgeni 7y agoCounterpoint: users are mostly fine with telemetry on average. Users ARE compensated by a cheaper OS license in case of Windows 10.
- vondur 7y agoHow are users “compensated” with a cheaper OS licenses in Windows 10. Most everyone uses the OS included with their device and will rarely pay for an update.
- jevgeni 7y agoIt doesn’t mean it’s free. When you buy a Mac Book you usually dish out around 1500 USD at the very least, where the cost of materials is at best 1/3 of that. You mostly pay for the design, the OS and the privilege. You can get a PC with Windows 10 Home Edition for 400 USD or so. The implied price point for the OS is way lower. The economic decision here (re ads) is to be able to make some money on the mass low-end market, while still being able to develop a decent OS. Case in point: Microsoft Surface Book, which runs at about 2000 USD and is a product comparable to Apple’s has no ads.
- lasagnaphil 7y agoMaybe part of that decision is because so many people pirate Windows and are unwilling to pay for it, they’re trying to earn money through advertising instead...
- rasz 7y agoIs every OS running kernel traces and uploading them to the mothership behind your back? Have a look at C:\Windows\System32\SleepStudy C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI
- safeplanet-fesa 7y agoYou can also search for *.etl files to find what is traced. There are Autologger and GlobalLogger for live kernel tracing. Some of the tracing entries are present by default, but others are added by Intel's drivers! I could not control my anger when I discovered it. And it's not the .sys files, but the .inf files that add entries to Autologger. Now if I need to install Intel's drivers I first clean the .inf files. It ruins driver's signature of course, but at least I will not have any tracing sessions constantly written to disk.
- esotericn 7y agoControl? My OS does not phone home. It contacts package mirrors when I ask it to and only when I ask it to. It contacts NTP servers because I specifically enabled that. That's it. By contrast Windows is a black box of nonsense. The copy I have running in a VM has the marketing name "Cortana" process running even though I specifically chose "no" at install. I enabled a data limit the other day and played some games. The game used 30MB and the combined OS used >60MB doing who knows what despite the fact it tells me updates are not downloaded on metered connections. Sorry, no, there is no excuse for this. If it's not opt in, it's malware. If it's opt in defaulted to yes and with no clear benefit to the user, it's malware.
- jevgeni 7y agoObviously: we don’t care. Apple and Microsoft do roughly an equal amount of telemetry. Ubuntu has telemetry. Obviously most people are fine with telemetry. Apple charges WAY more for its OS than Microsoft does for Windows 10 Home Edition. Don’t want adds? Buy the Pro version. This “apples are better than oranges” indignation about Windows 10 is getting old. Don’t like it? Fine. Let other people enjoy things they like.
- PavlovsCat 7y agoThings get pushed on people, and most are not even aware enough for the question "do they care?" to even become meaningful. We're moving from sofware you run without any interference to subscription and surveillance models, and that's not because users want that, that's not "what they like", they don't have an easy way to get what they do like while also being treated ethically.
- jevgeni 7y agoThey have enough alternatives. Free alternatives at that! If they don’t switch, then that’s their choice and they are obviously fine with it. The whole “Windows telemetry bad” meme is mostly just an excuse for a flame war.
- 7y ago
- bassman9000 7y agoand every OS is calling home There's OSes beyond Windows and OSX.
- beatgammit 7y agoLast I checked, my Linux and BSD systems don't phone home. I primarily use openSUSE, Arch, and FreeBSD, with some Debian thrown in, and I know none of those phone home by default (and I don't know if there's a way to ask them to phone home). There may be other OSes in those families that do (I've heard Ubuntu does), but that's completely fine since you have a choice (I can run any Linux or BSD app on another OS in the same family that doesn't phone home).
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoYou cannot disable or control the phoning home. It’s pervasive. MS is obsessed with using telemetry to track everything you do, and they don’t believe users should have a choice.
- jodrellblank 7y agothey don’t believe users should have a choice. Microsoft adds more telemetry in PowerShell 3: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-powershell-7-preview-3/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-p... And there is an opt out. Guess they do believe users should have a choice.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoGuess again!
- jodrellblank 7y agoOK. the .NET Core SDK includes telemetry, here's the official documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/telemetry https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/telemetry Section three, "How to opt out". I guess the same way again.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoYou’ve found a way to opt out of one particular thing that they collect. This is irrelevant to the broader issue. You can’t opt out of all of the hundreds of other things they collect across the other products. There is no way to opt out entirely for Windows.
- UnFleshedOne 7y agoNo fan of ads and stuff, but OSX is the "all you software is breaking by us" OS currently. Every major release breaks something. A lot of it for good reasons, but the churn is very much there, unlike for windows.