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> how effective is this data in terms of actually improving their profitability? I work closely with telemetry data coming back from Windows devices. There's s

> how effective is this data in terms of actually improving their profitability? I work closely with telemetry data coming back from Windows devices. There's surely a line from collecting this telemetry to an answer to your question, but I've never heard anyone in our group talk about the profitability of this data. In fact, it costs a lot of money to process and store such huge data, which is absolutely a concern -- so there's strong belief (which I share) that this cost of business is worth it because it lets us make what I hope are good decisions about where we should focus our efforts. The telemetry that comes back encompasses many dimensions of the user experience, and it helps us do things like figure out when an insider feature is ready to GA; what drivers or devices do poorly and how we can improve the experience; how accurately we can predict battery life; etc. > they can optimize their dark UI patterns to be better at tricking people into setting Edge as their default browser? I don't think whoever is in charge of 'tricking' people into using Edge actually have the kind of telemetry that most people think about with respect to Windows data collection. A lot of people think there's some sinister plot here -- apparently as evidenced by your phrasing. But if you look at the UI for default programs, it's really just a slightly annoying "are you sure?"-kind of message. (I don't use Edge by default, but I just reset my prefs to Edge then back, and I wasn't harassed again, so this isn't a persistent nagging.)

formerly_proven 5y ago
> how accurately we can predict battery life You do remember that Windows nowadays only shows "Battery xy %" instead of giving an estimated runtime, right? (Which is, btw., a "holy fuck what braindead idiot thought removing this is a good idea" moment, at first I thought Windows wasn't giving an estimate only in the first few minutes, but after a while I started googling around thinking that the lack of estimated runtime was a bug, but no, someone actually went in and removed it. A very clear and obvious example of actively, explicitly and intentionally user-hostile UX for what sure seems like no other reason than "we could, so we did".)
- dunnevens 5y ago
  Apple did the same thing. Big Sur will only show you the percentage. Not the estimated runtime. You can find the estimated runtime by looking at the energy tab in Activity Monitor. There are also 3rd party tools that will show it. But by default, it's not readily visible. Apple claims they did it because the runtime estimate wasn't accurate enough. Maybe Microsoft's reason was the same. Though it does seem user hostile to remove it, unless the estimate was substantially off and there's no way to fix it.
  - throwaway_8625 5y ago
    > Though it does seem user hostile to remove it, unless the estimate was substantially off and there's no way to fix it. I think the problem is that users expect percent charge to be a direct, linear correlate of time remaining, but battery discharge isn't linear. Even if it were, predicting time left is tough. Giving the user a percentage rather than a (likely incorrect) time estimate seems like the less bad approach.
    - skohan 5y ago
      idk I always found it to be accurate enough. Also it was a helpful canary to see that if the estimated time remaining dropped quickly, it probably meant I was doing something power-intensive, which maybe I would want to do something about. It seems like it would be trivial to change the default and leave the time estimate as an option.
    - uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5y ago
      Well they show it on a linear bar graph so thats on them
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      Battery discharge is quite linear, because the OS is using the information from the BMS chip in the battery pack, which tracks the energy stored in it rather accurately, and also tells you very accurately how much power is drawn or put in. Personally I don't use Windows on any of my laptops, so I only noticed this one day on my work laptop. On my Linux laptops my status bar is literally just doing a weighted average of "time_remaining = energy_remaining / current_power", which works rather nicely. That a supposedly top-notch software company like Microsoft is trying to gaslight their users into "predicting battery life is like hard you know! We're gonna remove it because it's so inaccurate, it's basically unsolvable aha" makes me throw up a little, but is also such an accurate and damning reflection of the way these companies conduct themselves.
skohan 5y ago
Can you give an example of a type of decision where you feel telemetry was valuable in terms of making the best choice?

formerly_proven 5y ago

> how accurately we can predict battery life You do remember that Windows nowadays only shows "Battery xy %" instead of giving an estimated runtime, right? (Which is, btw., a "holy fuck what braindead idiot thought removing this is a good idea" moment, at first I thought Windows wasn't giving an estimate only in the first few minutes, but after a while I started googling around thinking that the lack of estimated runtime was a bug, but no, someone actually went in and removed it. A very clear and obvious example of actively, explicitly and intentionally user-hostile UX for what sure seems like no other reason than "we could, so we did".)

dunnevens 5y ago
Apple did the same thing. Big Sur will only show you the percentage. Not the estimated runtime. You can find the estimated runtime by looking at the energy tab in Activity Monitor. There are also 3rd party tools that will show it. But by default, it's not readily visible. Apple claims they did it because the runtime estimate wasn't accurate enough. Maybe Microsoft's reason was the same. Though it does seem user hostile to remove it, unless the estimate was substantially off and there's no way to fix it.
- throwaway_8625 5y ago
  > Though it does seem user hostile to remove it, unless the estimate was substantially off and there's no way to fix it. I think the problem is that users expect percent charge to be a direct, linear correlate of time remaining, but battery discharge isn't linear. Even if it were, predicting time left is tough. Giving the user a percentage rather than a (likely incorrect) time estimate seems like the less bad approach.
  - skohan 5y ago
    idk I always found it to be accurate enough. Also it was a helpful canary to see that if the estimated time remaining dropped quickly, it probably meant I was doing something power-intensive, which maybe I would want to do something about. It seems like it would be trivial to change the default and leave the time estimate as an option.
  - uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 5y ago
    Well they show it on a linear bar graph so thats on them
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Battery discharge is quite linear, because the OS is using the information from the BMS chip in the battery pack, which tracks the energy stored in it rather accurately, and also tells you very accurately how much power is drawn or put in. Personally I don't use Windows on any of my laptops, so I only noticed this one day on my work laptop. On my Linux laptops my status bar is literally just doing a weighted average of "time_remaining = energy_remaining / current_power", which works rather nicely. That a supposedly top-notch software company like Microsoft is trying to gaslight their users into "predicting battery life is like hard you know! We're gonna remove it because it's so inaccurate, it's basically unsolvable aha" makes me throw up a little, but is also such an accurate and damning reflection of the way these companies conduct themselves.

skohan 5y ago

Can you give an example of a type of decision where you feel telemetry was valuable in terms of making the best choice?