13 ms·

This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user. The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some

This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user. The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn't used video chat on it before this. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off. As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
>Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. That is a pretty strange conclusion to draw. I would say this is a reason computers should ship with no software installed whatsoever. Hardware vendors using software as a differentiator is what started this mess. All PCs are pretty much interchangeable and should be treated like it. (If they aren't interchangeable, that's because someone is selling broken hardware. Looking at you, Nvidia.)
- jbjbjbjb 6y ago
  That was really only the case in the last decade and now no longer the case with M1 chips. Before that we had a wonderful plethora of different personal computers.
duxup 6y ago
It's old software, it's not like there was much of a standard on how to apply filters and etc decades ago. Everything was a one off attempt to get the job done. And even today everything about audio / video chat is wonky. I'm always trying to figure out what application is using what audio or video device. Is the OS messing it up or the application or what is any given conference app choosing to use today .... It's bad when Lego Star Wars is onto it: https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191 https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191
- cjohansson 6y ago
  Same here, even if Google Meet, Skype, Teams, Slack et. al worked last week will it work now after latest firmware- and software update? Many times it doesn't without tweaks and the UI might have changed as well. I would like a external physical device I can use for video meetings that guarantee 100% working without needing to tweak anything, I think a lot of companies would be willing to pay for that
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Facebook is trying (tried?) that with the Portal, but it was only limited to Facebook Messenger IIRC
politelemon 6y ago
Hard disagree, it's a very selective (and unnecessary) reasoning that completely ignores the dangerous mindset and harm to users that closed ecosystems promote.
yardie 6y ago
> Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. This is only part of the story but functionally it was the same. Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure. And they didn't take security seriously until it started getting really bad mid-2000s.
- markdown 6y ago
  > Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure. Who could forget the login bypass "hack": https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif
  - gibolt 6y ago
    Would have been amazing if their QA team had this as something to test for
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Something similar works with the Windows 7 recovery partition; it pretends you have to login to one of the administrator accounts to get control, but one of the dialog has a link to a privacy policy that opens in Notepad and from its file open dialog you can start command prompts, explorer etc.
    - kemotep 6y ago
      You can do a trick on Windows 10 too (if the disk isn't encrypted and secure boot enabled). Boot a Linux usb live boot of choice, mount the Windows C: parition. Rename the Command Prompt exe to be the accessibility or sticky keys exe (something roughly along those lines). Save and reboot into Windows. Hit the on screen keyboard button on the login screen and an administrator level command prompt opens allowing you to reset the local admin password to be able to log in or do anything else that you would like to do.
      - black3r 6y ago
mannerheim 6y ago
Sounds more like a legal problem than a problem with the model.
iso1631 6y ago
> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost Haven't heard that, but haven't paid much attention to windows since c. 2000 - I believe it's more stable and secure now than it was in the windows 98 days. Why not have a "reset to clean install" option in windows, which resets everything to just the installed state? Why not distribute the windows CD with the machine so the user can reinstall?
- thrusong 6y ago
  I could be wrong because, like you, I haven't used Windows in quite some time (jumped ship when Windows 8 came along and never used it), but I think Windows 10 does include some sort of clean install/reset setting.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Because you want the drivers and hardware quirk fixes that the oem included, just not the bloatware/malware that they were paid to include. Not all hardware is as friendly as Linux on a Thinkpad... Sometimes a clean install would leave you without a display, or would put some bizarre peripheral in an unusable state.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    A big green 'Accept Windows Defaults' button on the first boot that bricks the computer would be a pretty big incentive for vendors to sort out their drivers.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      But they wouldn't sort out their drivers. They'd just tell the user not to click it.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    Why wouldn't the OS manufacturer bundle required drivers?
elicash 6y ago
I think in the NYT story about this incident, it said that he was using his assistant's computer.
kawsper 6y ago
> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. And now they are actively distributing it through Windows Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24502768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24502768
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  These manufacturer "drivers" are so incredibly obnoxious. How can Microsoft be powerless against this? I managed to reverse engineer's most of my laptop's features and replace the slow manufacturer software with my own. Surely Microsoft can pay professionals to do the same thing...
- jamesgeck0 6y ago
  Not exactly. The popup in that example is an installer for companion software which provides functionality for the hardware that was listed on the box. The installer appears when you first plug in the device. If you close it, nothing is installed and it never appears again.
jacobsenscott 6y ago
Step one, back in the day when computers shipped with cd drives and a windows cd, was to format c:, and then re-install windows from scratch to eliminate the crap ware. I haven't used windows in many years. I assume that's still the way to go.
- gcatalfamo 6y ago
  If you think the average user understands a single word of what you just said, you’re in for a rude awakening. Not meant to diss you the slightest.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bmurphy1976 6y ago
  Download ISO, burn to USB, boot from USB and install is the modern equivalent.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Doing this for MacOS is surprising hard. Fortunately crapware isn’t a thing, although a few of the built in apps seem to try and drive me demented (looking at you Siri, Stock, Music, auto update).
    - pronoiac 6y ago
      I've bookmarked directions for it. For the admittedly out-of-date High Sierra, for instance: https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-installer-for-macos-sierra/ https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-us...
    - bhj 6y ago
      It’s quite easy and well-documented: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
WorldMaker 6y ago
> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. One of the greatest losses from the retail Microsoft Store shutdown was the loss of Microsoft's "Signature Edition" PC program. They only sold in their Stores PCs with clean Windows installs, which they labeled "Signature Edition". Many of the OEMS participated (Dell, Lenovo, others), and generally when you could directly compare Signature Edition models to their regular direct from the OEM counterparts (which the companies model naming/numbering schemes often intentionally tried to make hard to do) it was often about a $50 premium over the "full of junk installed" PC (showing about how much all that bloatware is valuable to the OEMs if it subsidizes machines by about $50). For a brief period it even looked like other retailers might adopt Signature Edition sales and you could even walk into a Staples or a Best Buy and find sales people that could source Signature Edition machines, for the people that still liked to try to deal shop between multiple retail stores. I miss being able to give the advice "buy whatever computer you want from Microsoft Store, or if you go to Staples/Best Buy keep asking sales people until you meet the person that knows what Signature Edition means and you generally won't have any problems with the machine". Now the advice is back to "buy a Surface from Microsoft or be prepared to spend a couple hours using the Windows Fresh Start tool from Microsoft first".
- neves 6y ago
  Nice, I never heard about Fresh Start Tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-fresh-start-0ef73740-b927-549b-b7c9-e6f2b48d275e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-f... Would I miss the updated drivers from Dell or other vendor?
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    WHQL standards _should_ mean that for any PC purchase today (and many in the last decade or so) Windows Update will always have the most up-to-date "basic driver" on its servers. There's some controversy (linked elsewhere in this thread) that those basic drivers are allowed by Microsoft to advertise their "full bloat" versions in notifications and launch time popups. The flipside to that controversy is that if you want the "full bloat" versions (such as the Geforce Experience if you are a game player), that makes it easy to acquire them as it is general a case of go through the notifications and popups on first launch, from what I've seen.
jonas21 6y ago
> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. This was actually central to the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft. As part of the settlement, Microsoft had to agree to allow OEMs to keep installing crapware [1]. It's things like this that make me a little nervous when people say that going after big tech with antitrust law will necessarily be good for the consumer. [1] https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453172665253890 https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453172665253890
- haram_masala 6y ago
  Matt Stoller’s “Big” includes an interesting (though flawed) history of how anti-monopoly efforts have often been sacrificed for the good of the consumer. Which arguably was a short-term good.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    Yes, a bunch of DOJ lawyers who barely know tech will decide the good of tech.
- fossuser 6y ago
  If I had to guess (without reading the case specifically), it's probably because Microsoft screwed up by forcing OEMs to not install netscape in order to crush them. It's hard to differentiate 'crapware' from competition, particularly given the context where Microsoft had just leveraged their power over OEMs to crush a competitor. This still sucks though, a better outcome for users would have been Microsoft being able to require the machines to sell with a clean OS and then allowing OEMs to install software for the user at their request (rather than the OEMs being able to bundle crap for kickbacks). Somewhat related, apparently the netscape guys went to Redmond and hung up signs around Microsoft's campus mocking them for ignoring the internet. Legend has it Gates saw these and pivoted teams to IE with a focus on crushing Netscape. Startup talk often discusses how most startups fail not due to competition, but because of internal collapse. Big companies can't compete, innovator's dilemma, etc. There's a lot of truth to that but this is a counter example (and others exist too). Wildly stupid to antagonize the elephant that's focused on other things to direct all of their resources to destroying you.
zelon88 6y ago
> Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Yeah, I personally love vendor lock in, price gouging, and having no aftermarket parts support whatsoever.</sarcasm>
echelon 6y ago
> Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. This makes it possible for the OS companies to bilk the entire industry while they protect their ecosystem with an infinitely deep moat. There's a spectrum here. On one end, we have completely a completely open OS. Less knowledgable people can certainly be harmed. On the other, the OS is a protected fiefdom. An entire industry is protected and taxed, and the execution model held hostage. You can't run or distribute software freely. There's good reason Microsoft lost their case. The requirements for openness are better for competition and innovation, even if it sometimes hurts the little guy. A better, targeted solution for this exact case might be regulation requiring that OEMs offer a zero-bloat option to consumers. They could add a price markup to make back their margin. (Hardware, other than luxury hardware, can have razor thin margins.) Zero regulation (maintaining the status quo) isn't really the end of the world, either. All giants should have weak points. Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. If they don't, we get trampled.
- zepto 6y ago
  > The requirements for openness are better for competition and innovation, even if it sometimes hurts the little guy. Except that this is completely false. Microsoft has almost the same PC market share, and no innovation has occurred on the desktop other than by Apple, and to a lesser extent Microsoft’s own response to Apple.
wly_cdgr 6y ago
You're making a mountain out of a hill. The threat level here is purrrrple at most
Igelau 6y ago
It's probably "on" in the sense that it creates a virtual webcam device. When Zoom pulls up the list of cameras, it probably doesn't know "Actual Camera" from "Cat Mode Virtual Camera" whatever heuristic it uses to decide which one is going to be the default picks Cat Mode.
yagya 6y ago
I don't want the same to happen to Android. Basically every single non-Pixel phone these days ships bloatware with it.
- black3r 6y ago
  Android being open source based, Google can't realistically stop bloatware. They can theoretically tie the bloatware ban to the Play Store license, like how they force OEMs to install Chrome, Maps and YouTube if they want to have Play Store on their phone, but alternative stores are already on the rise after recent controversies (deleting negative reviews (robinhood, tiktok), deleting unwanted apps from store (fortnite, parler), regional app blocking (tiktok in india)), and doing so would probably just push OEMs to abandon play store in favor of their own store...
- sellyme 6y ago
  I got a ROG Phone 3 recently, and while it does come with some OEM software, most of it is actually pretty useful. The only obvious "yeah you were paid to put this crap on my phone, not because you thought it improved the experience" application was Netflix, which - while entirely useless to me - is a pretty decent showing as far as OEM bloatware goes. Still not quite as clean as a Nexus/Pixel but the best install experience I've ever had on any non-Google device, and the only one I've ever decided not to install a fresh ROM on.
ralfd 6y ago
The strange thing is that no one will be surprised. If that would have happened with Macs the dissing about Apple would be endless, but Dell will get a pass because expectations are low.
gerdesj 6y ago
"OS companies should make their own hardware." That sounds like car firms should make their own petrol/gas or 3D printer firms should enforce their PLA/etc or perhaps printer firms (like HP) should enforce their own ink/toner. That's my personal definition of a monopoly with benefits - no thanks.
- wp381640 6y ago
  Performance car and motorcycle manufacturers _do_ have recommended oil and fuel providers But it's more akin to car companies making both the car _and_ the engine - which wasn't the case in the stagecoach/early era
- awad 6y ago
  That's not at all what a monopoly is, just a very constrained product. Which...can describe Apple from day one. And you know what? Even if you despise Apple, you should give them credit for being relevant in even the most dominant days of the PC just for providing some competitive pressure.
chx 6y ago
He said he is using the laptop of his secretary.
aufhebung 6y ago
> fossuser 10 hours ago | parent | on: Viral 'I'm not a cat' filter is decades-old softwa... This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user. The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn't used video chat on it before this. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off. As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Isn't candy crush installed on new windows 10 installs?
userbinator 6y ago
Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Authoritarian walled gardens and "herding" users? Do NOT want! The freedom to install and uninstall (and also modify, but that's a slightly different argument...) whatever software you want on the hardware you own is extremely valuable to the concept of general-purpose computing, and yet we are slowly losing that freedom due to these stupid "security" and "damaging their brand" arguments --- and the same goes for right-to-repair. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using What's even more hostile? A proprietary feature that only works in one application. Composition is one of the cornerstones of computing freedom, and another thing that is being slowly chipped away by the corporatocracy; also under the guise of security and privacy, not surprisingly. They want to slowly take away your choices and then nickel-and-dime you to get a fraction of them back. Having the filter on by default is not nice, I'll agree with you on that --- but it's a huge stretch to go from that, to essentially declaring war against general-purpose computing.
- zepto 6y ago
  Nobody has every forced you to buy a Mac or iOS device, and there are thousands of other options available.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. You're thinking of this backwards. The problem isn't too much antitrust enforcement, it's not enough. If all the major OEMs are bundling crapware then it's a cartel and installing the crapware is anti-competitive tying (or is the cartel shaking down the crapware vendors for money to include theirs instead of encouraging the user to choose a competitor), so go enforce antitrust against the OEMs too. If not all of them do it then the ones who do get panned in reviews and lose business, reducing the incentive to do it.
trinix912 6y ago
> OS companies should make their own hardware. If we can't expect hardware companies to write good software, it's unlikely that software companies' hardware will be much better unless they put a ton of effort into it (which they likely won't unless they're a premium brand like Apple).
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Microsoft's Surface line of hardware is held in high regard though.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
I would agree with their own hardware. I do like their surface machines a lot (PowerMacBook User before, switched because of the pen input/drawing for workshops). They should have a fancy/premium Windows version that everyone wants and that's more like OSX for their machines to pull people over. Everyone else gets stock Windows (a little bit like Android model to prevent being sued).
franga2000 6y ago
> OS companies should make their own hardware. Microsoft does make their own hardware amd last time I checked, it's still full of bloatware. Not as full as old consumer-tier HP laptops used to be, but still. As for removing OEM bloatware, an option in Windows to ignore the OEM force install partition would be trivial to add, so people could just factory reset to a clean install after buying their machine.
WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
The guy was interviewed by Inside Edition and said that he was using his assistant's computer which she uses to communicate with her daughter. She had the filter set for her. He did not know how turn it off.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

>Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. That is a pretty strange conclusion to draw. I would say this is a reason computers should ship with no software installed whatsoever. Hardware vendors using software as a differentiator is what started this mess. All PCs are pretty much interchangeable and should be treated like it. (If they aren't interchangeable, that's because someone is selling broken hardware. Looking at you, Nvidia.)

jbjbjbjb 6y ago
That was really only the case in the last decade and now no longer the case with M1 chips. Before that we had a wonderful plethora of different personal computers.

duxup 6y ago

It's old software, it's not like there was much of a standard on how to apply filters and etc decades ago. Everything was a one off attempt to get the job done. And even today everything about audio / video chat is wonky. I'm always trying to figure out what application is using what audio or video device. Is the OS messing it up or the application or what is any given conference app choosing to use today .... It's bad when Lego Star Wars is onto it: https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191 https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191

cjohansson 6y ago
Same here, even if Google Meet, Skype, Teams, Slack et. al worked last week will it work now after latest firmware- and software update? Many times it doesn't without tweaks and the UI might have changed as well. I would like a external physical device I can use for video meetings that guarantee 100% working without needing to tweak anything, I think a lot of companies would be willing to pay for that
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Facebook is trying (tried?) that with the Portal, but it was only limited to Facebook Messenger IIRC

politelemon 6y ago

Hard disagree, it's a very selective (and unnecessary) reasoning that completely ignores the dangerous mindset and harm to users that closed ecosystems promote.

yardie 6y ago

> Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. This is only part of the story but functionally it was the same. Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure. And they didn't take security seriously until it started getting really bad mid-2000s.

markdown 6y ago
> Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure. Who could forget the login bypass "hack": https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif
- gibolt 6y ago
  Would have been amazing if their QA team had this as something to test for
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Something similar works with the Windows 7 recovery partition; it pretends you have to login to one of the administrator accounts to get control, but one of the dialog has a link to a privacy policy that opens in Notepad and from its file open dialog you can start command prompts, explorer etc.
  - kemotep 6y ago
    You can do a trick on Windows 10 too (if the disk isn't encrypted and secure boot enabled). Boot a Linux usb live boot of choice, mount the Windows C: parition. Rename the Command Prompt exe to be the accessibility or sticky keys exe (something roughly along those lines). Save and reboot into Windows. Hit the on screen keyboard button on the login screen and an administrator level command prompt opens allowing you to reset the local admin password to be able to log in or do anything else that you would like to do.
    - black3r 6y ago

mannerheim 6y ago

Sounds more like a legal problem than a problem with the model.

iso1631 6y ago

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost Haven't heard that, but haven't paid much attention to windows since c. 2000 - I believe it's more stable and secure now than it was in the windows 98 days. Why not have a "reset to clean install" option in windows, which resets everything to just the installed state? Why not distribute the windows CD with the machine so the user can reinstall?

thrusong 6y ago
I could be wrong because, like you, I haven't used Windows in quite some time (jumped ship when Windows 8 came along and never used it), but I think Windows 10 does include some sort of clean install/reset setting.
ohazi 6y ago
Because you want the drivers and hardware quirk fixes that the oem included, just not the bloatware/malware that they were paid to include. Not all hardware is as friendly as Linux on a Thinkpad... Sometimes a clean install would leave you without a display, or would put some bizarre peripheral in an unusable state.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  A big green 'Accept Windows Defaults' button on the first boot that bricks the computer would be a pretty big incentive for vendors to sort out their drivers.
  - notriddle 6y ago
    But they wouldn't sort out their drivers. They'd just tell the user not to click it.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Why wouldn't the OS manufacturer bundle required drivers?

elicash 6y ago

I think in the NYT story about this incident, it said that he was using his assistant's computer.

kawsper 6y ago

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. And now they are actively distributing it through Windows Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24502768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24502768

matheusmoreira 6y ago
These manufacturer "drivers" are so incredibly obnoxious. How can Microsoft be powerless against this? I managed to reverse engineer's most of my laptop's features and replace the slow manufacturer software with my own. Surely Microsoft can pay professionals to do the same thing...
jamesgeck0 6y ago
Not exactly. The popup in that example is an installer for companion software which provides functionality for the hardware that was listed on the box. The installer appears when you first plug in the device. If you close it, nothing is installed and it never appears again.

jacobsenscott 6y ago

Step one, back in the day when computers shipped with cd drives and a windows cd, was to format c:, and then re-install windows from scratch to eliminate the crap ware. I haven't used windows in many years. I assume that's still the way to go.

gcatalfamo 6y ago
If you think the average user understands a single word of what you just said, you’re in for a rude awakening. Not meant to diss you the slightest.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bmurphy1976 6y ago
Download ISO, burn to USB, boot from USB and install is the modern equivalent.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Doing this for MacOS is surprising hard. Fortunately crapware isn’t a thing, although a few of the built in apps seem to try and drive me demented (looking at you Siri, Stock, Music, auto update).
  - pronoiac 6y ago
    I've bookmarked directions for it. For the admittedly out-of-date High Sierra, for instance: https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-installer-for-macos-sierra/ https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-us...
  - bhj 6y ago
    It’s quite easy and well-documented: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

WorldMaker 6y ago

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. One of the greatest losses from the retail Microsoft Store shutdown was the loss of Microsoft's "Signature Edition" PC program. They only sold in their Stores PCs with clean Windows installs, which they labeled "Signature Edition". Many of the OEMS participated (Dell, Lenovo, others), and generally when you could directly compare Signature Edition models to their regular direct from the OEM counterparts (which the companies model naming/numbering schemes often intentionally tried to make hard to do) it was often about a $50 premium over the "full of junk installed" PC (showing about how much all that bloatware is valuable to the OEMs if it subsidizes machines by about $50). For a brief period it even looked like other retailers might adopt Signature Edition sales and you could even walk into a Staples or a Best Buy and find sales people that could source Signature Edition machines, for the people that still liked to try to deal shop between multiple retail stores. I miss being able to give the advice "buy whatever computer you want from Microsoft Store, or if you go to Staples/Best Buy keep asking sales people until you meet the person that knows what Signature Edition means and you generally won't have any problems with the machine". Now the advice is back to "buy a Surface from Microsoft or be prepared to spend a couple hours using the Windows Fresh Start tool from Microsoft first".

neves 6y ago
Nice, I never heard about Fresh Start Tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-fresh-start-0ef73740-b927-549b-b7c9-e6f2b48d275e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-f... Would I miss the updated drivers from Dell or other vendor?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  WHQL standards _should_ mean that for any PC purchase today (and many in the last decade or so) Windows Update will always have the most up-to-date "basic driver" on its servers. There's some controversy (linked elsewhere in this thread) that those basic drivers are allowed by Microsoft to advertise their "full bloat" versions in notifications and launch time popups. The flipside to that controversy is that if you want the "full bloat" versions (such as the Geforce Experience if you are a game player), that makes it easy to acquire them as it is general a case of go through the notifications and popups on first launch, from what I've seen.

jonas21 6y ago

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. This was actually central to the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft. As part of the settlement, Microsoft had to agree to allow OEMs to keep installing crapware [1]. It's things like this that make me a little nervous when people say that going after big tech with antitrust law will necessarily be good for the consumer. [1] https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453172665253890 https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453172665253890

haram_masala 6y ago
Matt Stoller’s “Big” includes an interesting (though flawed) history of how anti-monopoly efforts have often been sacrificed for the good of the consumer. Which arguably was a short-term good.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Yes, a bunch of DOJ lawyers who barely know tech will decide the good of tech.
fossuser 6y ago
If I had to guess (without reading the case specifically), it's probably because Microsoft screwed up by forcing OEMs to not install netscape in order to crush them. It's hard to differentiate 'crapware' from competition, particularly given the context where Microsoft had just leveraged their power over OEMs to crush a competitor. This still sucks though, a better outcome for users would have been Microsoft being able to require the machines to sell with a clean OS and then allowing OEMs to install software for the user at their request (rather than the OEMs being able to bundle crap for kickbacks). Somewhat related, apparently the netscape guys went to Redmond and hung up signs around Microsoft's campus mocking them for ignoring the internet. Legend has it Gates saw these and pivoted teams to IE with a focus on crushing Netscape. Startup talk often discusses how most startups fail not due to competition, but because of internal collapse. Big companies can't compete, innovator's dilemma, etc. There's a lot of truth to that but this is a counter example (and others exist too). Wildly stupid to antagonize the elephant that's focused on other things to direct all of their resources to destroying you.

zelon88 6y ago

> Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Yeah, I personally love vendor lock in, price gouging, and having no aftermarket parts support whatsoever.</sarcasm>

echelon 6y ago

> Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. This makes it possible for the OS companies to bilk the entire industry while they protect their ecosystem with an infinitely deep moat. There's a spectrum here. On one end, we have completely a completely open OS. Less knowledgable people can certainly be harmed. On the other, the OS is a protected fiefdom. An entire industry is protected and taxed, and the execution model held hostage. You can't run or distribute software freely. There's good reason Microsoft lost their case. The requirements for openness are better for competition and innovation, even if it sometimes hurts the little guy. A better, targeted solution for this exact case might be regulation requiring that OEMs offer a zero-bloat option to consumers. They could add a price markup to make back their margin. (Hardware, other than luxury hardware, can have razor thin margins.) Zero regulation (maintaining the status quo) isn't really the end of the world, either. All giants should have weak points. Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. If they don't, we get trampled.

zepto 6y ago
> The requirements for openness are better for competition and innovation, even if it sometimes hurts the little guy. Except that this is completely false. Microsoft has almost the same PC market share, and no innovation has occurred on the desktop other than by Apple, and to a lesser extent Microsoft’s own response to Apple.

wly_cdgr 6y ago

You're making a mountain out of a hill. The threat level here is purrrrple at most

Igelau 6y ago

It's probably "on" in the sense that it creates a virtual webcam device. When Zoom pulls up the list of cameras, it probably doesn't know "Actual Camera" from "Cat Mode Virtual Camera" whatever heuristic it uses to decide which one is going to be the default picks Cat Mode.

yagya 6y ago

I don't want the same to happen to Android. Basically every single non-Pixel phone these days ships bloatware with it.

black3r 6y ago
Android being open source based, Google can't realistically stop bloatware. They can theoretically tie the bloatware ban to the Play Store license, like how they force OEMs to install Chrome, Maps and YouTube if they want to have Play Store on their phone, but alternative stores are already on the rise after recent controversies (deleting negative reviews (robinhood, tiktok), deleting unwanted apps from store (fortnite, parler), regional app blocking (tiktok in india)), and doing so would probably just push OEMs to abandon play store in favor of their own store...
sellyme 6y ago
I got a ROG Phone 3 recently, and while it does come with some OEM software, most of it is actually pretty useful. The only obvious "yeah you were paid to put this crap on my phone, not because you thought it improved the experience" application was Netflix, which - while entirely useless to me - is a pretty decent showing as far as OEM bloatware goes. Still not quite as clean as a Nexus/Pixel but the best install experience I've ever had on any non-Google device, and the only one I've ever decided not to install a fresh ROM on.

ralfd 6y ago

The strange thing is that no one will be surprised. If that would have happened with Macs the dissing about Apple would be endless, but Dell will get a pass because expectations are low.

gerdesj 6y ago

"OS companies should make their own hardware." That sounds like car firms should make their own petrol/gas or 3D printer firms should enforce their PLA/etc or perhaps printer firms (like HP) should enforce their own ink/toner. That's my personal definition of a monopoly with benefits - no thanks.

wp381640 6y ago
Performance car and motorcycle manufacturers _do_ have recommended oil and fuel providers But it's more akin to car companies making both the car _and_ the engine - which wasn't the case in the stagecoach/early era
awad 6y ago
That's not at all what a monopoly is, just a very constrained product. Which...can describe Apple from day one. And you know what? Even if you despise Apple, you should give them credit for being relevant in even the most dominant days of the PC just for providing some competitive pressure.

chx 6y ago

He said he is using the laptop of his secretary.

aufhebung 6y ago

> fossuser 10 hours ago | parent | on: Viral 'I'm not a cat' filter is decades-old softwa... This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user. The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn't used video chat on it before this. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off. As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Isn't candy crush installed on new windows 10 installs?

userbinator 6y ago

Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. Authoritarian walled gardens and "herding" users? Do NOT want! The freedom to install and uninstall (and also modify, but that's a slightly different argument...) whatever software you want on the hardware you own is extremely valuable to the concept of general-purpose computing, and yet we are slowly losing that freedom due to these stupid "security" and "damaging their brand" arguments --- and the same goes for right-to-repair. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using What's even more hostile? A proprietary feature that only works in one application. Composition is one of the cornerstones of computing freedom, and another thing that is being slowly chipped away by the corporatocracy; also under the guise of security and privacy, not surprisingly. They want to slowly take away your choices and then nickel-and-dime you to get a fraction of them back. Having the filter on by default is not nice, I'll agree with you on that --- but it's a huge stretch to go from that, to essentially declaring war against general-purpose computing.

zepto 6y ago
Nobody has every forced you to buy a Mac or iOS device, and there are thousands of other options available.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. You're thinking of this backwards. The problem isn't too much antitrust enforcement, it's not enough. If all the major OEMs are bundling crapware then it's a cartel and installing the crapware is anti-competitive tying (or is the cartel shaking down the crapware vendors for money to include theirs instead of encouraging the user to choose a competitor), so go enforce antitrust against the OEMs too. If not all of them do it then the ones who do get panned in reviews and lose business, reducing the incentive to do it.

trinix912 6y ago

> OS companies should make their own hardware. If we can't expect hardware companies to write good software, it's unlikely that software companies' hardware will be much better unless they put a ton of effort into it (which they likely won't unless they're a premium brand like Apple).

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Microsoft's Surface line of hardware is held in high regard though.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

I would agree with their own hardware. I do like their surface machines a lot (PowerMacBook User before, switched because of the pen input/drawing for workshops). They should have a fancy/premium Windows version that everyone wants and that's more like OSX for their machines to pull people over. Everyone else gets stock Windows (a little bit like Android model to prevent being sued).

franga2000 6y ago

> OS companies should make their own hardware. Microsoft does make their own hardware amd last time I checked, it's still full of bloatware. Not as full as old consumer-tier HP laptops used to be, but still. As for removing OEM bloatware, an option in Windows to ignore the OEM force install partition would be trivial to add, so people could just factory reset to a clean install after buying their machine.

WheelsAtLarge 6y ago

The guy was interviewed by Inside Edition and said that he was using his assistant's computer which she uses to communicate with her daughter. She had the filter set for her. He did not know how turn it off.