5 ms·

That's precisely the question I keep asking: how much more anti-consumer features people need, in order to switch? At this point it's hard to understand why the

That's precisely the question I keep asking: how much more anti-consumer features people need, in order to switch? At this point it's hard to understand why there is so much resistance in leaving windows, I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done.

jsmith99 4y ago
What kind of thing? That it comes with a News app that has a pre installed widget that can be removed with a single right click?
- herbst 4y ago
  Common anti virus, weird update windows, weird scary Dialogs you learn to blindly confirm to install things. Blinking and animations in the taskbar, ... Not even a common design pattern for the annoyances. As someone who hasn't used Windows in more than 10 years the whole desktop is full of distractions popping up unasked. IMO it's horrible for a productive environment because it doesn't allow to focus properly
  - gcr 4y ago
    Every week or so, my Windows 10 desktop pops up a dialog telling me to upgrade to Windows 11. I spend about a minute looking for the one tiny link to dismiss the dialog without upgrading. I swear it changes locations each time... Lately I've also had it sprout similar dialogs about converting my local account to a Microsoft account. Those are even harder to thwart, requiring multiple clicks through "Are you sure?" dialogs and dark patterns. It's easier to bear this little weekly hide-and-seek ritual when you think about it like a small child making bids for attention. "Mommy, Mommy, I hid your glasses! Play with me before you start your workday!" Kind of endearing in its own way.
    - jdsully 4y ago
      Usually in your BIOS you can disable your TPM chip. That will make it stop asking as you'll fail the min requirements check.
      - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
        Although it did seem to randomly announce to me just a few times that mine is not compatible with Win11. Which isn't even true, since the TPM chip thing is a completely arbitrary requirement.
        gcr 4y ago
        Doesn't Windows 10 use TPM for FileVault? I might need it enabled.
- c0l0 4y ago
  Yes, for instance. Because defaults actually matter.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Worst thing is how it slows things down compared to a clean linux install. Sticking with Windows though because it is a family shared PC, for now.
- yourusername 4y ago
  Don't you think it is a strange default that users (even people that pay for the enterprise version) are bombarded with the worst of the worst clickbait that takes up 1/3 of your screen if you mousover a certain part of the screen?
  - jsmith99 4y ago
    Absolutely, I think it's bizarre. But I find that many users actually seem to like it. The apple news app seems pretty tabloidy too (although not as bad) so I'm cautious about projecting my taste onto others.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    At this point, I wouldn't be that surprised if people working at Microsoft competitors would receive more distracting junk.
_trampeltier 4y ago
Since mid-90s I allways had Linux and Windows. But when I updated a Testnotebook from Win7 to Win10 and saw CandyCrash and XBox all over the place, it was clear form me, I don't have professional licenses to let me spam from Microsoft with such BS. Since then, I'm Linux only.
zokier 4y ago
You have to remember that these issues do not apply to all users equally. Between different editions, regions, accounts, a/b testing, usage patterns etc different folks can have very different experiences.
Yizahi 4y ago
The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently (I haven't tried it, because of the vendor lock). Linux on the other hand is great, but has abysmal quality check due to wide variety of everything. Windows is just works (until Win11, which was a marketing pushed bullshit, without half of the featured from the Win10 branch).
- zuhsetaqi 4y ago
  > The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently I would argue against that. Just the fact alone that you can’t use Windows 11 Home without your machine being connected to a Microsoft account is proof enough that Windows is more anti consumer than macOS.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    Isn't there some kind of physics law that says every 2nd Windows version sucks? I think it fits quite well, XP was good, Vista sucked, Win 7 was good, 8 sucked, 10 was good, 11 sucks. Windows 12 is going to be the next version to try I guess.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  Apple provides a clear and beneficial point of difference. They are vertically integrated and now with Apple silicon, have arguably the best productivity laptops on the market. My M2 Air, lets me do all the personal dev and admin work my XPS 17 does, but I can easily go several days without a charge. My work provided MBP will easily go all day on a single charge and have plenty of charge left. Linux provides easily the best dev environment, is free, gives you all the control you could possible want, runs on lots of hardware and is speedy even on old hardware. Most of the internet is probably hosted on some flavour of linux, and open source frameworks so it's easy for you to do the same. Windows is good for games and if you need to use Excel? It also has the best drivers for my printer. Am I being unfair here?
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether. Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.
jackstraw14 4y ago
> I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done. I switched from Windows to Arch Linux on Thinkpads for about 15 years and had a great time and learned a lot, but dealing with things on a daily basis was why I switched back to Windows 10 a few years ago, along with a new gaming habit during the pandemic. Gaming on Linux with Steam is wonderful these days, but the daily overhead of random stuff to deal with was too much when sometimes I just want to play games.
- Lewton 4y ago
  You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I'm running linux mint and I haven't had to fiddle with anything for years
  - jackstraw14 4y ago
    > You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I guess so? Overall Arch was pretty easy to maintain, I just got tired of bailing on friends because I needed to spend hours figuring out some random issue.
    - nunodonato 4y ago
      yeah... bad choice :) if you wanted the Arch ecossystem without all the manual work you could have picked Manjaro or other arch-based distro
      - jackstraw14 4y ago
        I did try Manjaro, it was definitely more user-friendly. Still not what I was looking for, unfortunately.

jsmith99 4y ago

What kind of thing? That it comes with a News app that has a pre installed widget that can be removed with a single right click?

herbst 4y ago
Common anti virus, weird update windows, weird scary Dialogs you learn to blindly confirm to install things. Blinking and animations in the taskbar, ... Not even a common design pattern for the annoyances. As someone who hasn't used Windows in more than 10 years the whole desktop is full of distractions popping up unasked. IMO it's horrible for a productive environment because it doesn't allow to focus properly
- gcr 4y ago
  Every week or so, my Windows 10 desktop pops up a dialog telling me to upgrade to Windows 11. I spend about a minute looking for the one tiny link to dismiss the dialog without upgrading. I swear it changes locations each time... Lately I've also had it sprout similar dialogs about converting my local account to a Microsoft account. Those are even harder to thwart, requiring multiple clicks through "Are you sure?" dialogs and dark patterns. It's easier to bear this little weekly hide-and-seek ritual when you think about it like a small child making bids for attention. "Mommy, Mommy, I hid your glasses! Play with me before you start your workday!" Kind of endearing in its own way.
  - jdsully 4y ago
    Usually in your BIOS you can disable your TPM chip. That will make it stop asking as you'll fail the min requirements check.
    - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
      Although it did seem to randomly announce to me just a few times that mine is not compatible with Win11. Which isn't even true, since the TPM chip thing is a completely arbitrary requirement.
      - gcr 4y ago
        Doesn't Windows 10 use TPM for FileVault? I might need it enabled.
c0l0 4y ago
Yes, for instance. Because defaults actually matter.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Worst thing is how it slows things down compared to a clean linux install. Sticking with Windows though because it is a family shared PC, for now.
yourusername 4y ago
Don't you think it is a strange default that users (even people that pay for the enterprise version) are bombarded with the worst of the worst clickbait that takes up 1/3 of your screen if you mousover a certain part of the screen?
- jsmith99 4y ago
  Absolutely, I think it's bizarre. But I find that many users actually seem to like it. The apple news app seems pretty tabloidy too (although not as bad) so I'm cautious about projecting my taste onto others.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  At this point, I wouldn't be that surprised if people working at Microsoft competitors would receive more distracting junk.

_trampeltier 4y ago

Since mid-90s I allways had Linux and Windows. But when I updated a Testnotebook from Win7 to Win10 and saw CandyCrash and XBox all over the place, it was clear form me, I don't have professional licenses to let me spam from Microsoft with such BS. Since then, I'm Linux only.

zokier 4y ago

You have to remember that these issues do not apply to all users equally. Between different editions, regions, accounts, a/b testing, usage patterns etc different folks can have very different experiences.

Yizahi 4y ago

The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently (I haven't tried it, because of the vendor lock). Linux on the other hand is great, but has abysmal quality check due to wide variety of everything. Windows is just works (until Win11, which was a marketing pushed bullshit, without half of the featured from the Win10 branch).

zuhsetaqi 4y ago
> The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently I would argue against that. Just the fact alone that you can’t use Windows 11 Home without your machine being connected to a Microsoft account is proof enough that Windows is more anti consumer than macOS.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  Isn't there some kind of physics law that says every 2nd Windows version sucks? I think it fits quite well, XP was good, Vista sucked, Win 7 was good, 8 sucked, 10 was good, 11 sucks. Windows 12 is going to be the next version to try I guess.
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
Apple provides a clear and beneficial point of difference. They are vertically integrated and now with Apple silicon, have arguably the best productivity laptops on the market. My M2 Air, lets me do all the personal dev and admin work my XPS 17 does, but I can easily go several days without a charge. My work provided MBP will easily go all day on a single charge and have plenty of charge left. Linux provides easily the best dev environment, is free, gives you all the control you could possible want, runs on lots of hardware and is speedy even on old hardware. Most of the internet is probably hosted on some flavour of linux, and open source frameworks so it's easy for you to do the same. Windows is good for games and if you need to use Excel? It also has the best drivers for my printer. Am I being unfair here?
- ryandrake 4y ago
  As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether. Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.

jackstraw14 4y ago

> I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done. I switched from Windows to Arch Linux on Thinkpads for about 15 years and had a great time and learned a lot, but dealing with things on a daily basis was why I switched back to Windows 10 a few years ago, along with a new gaming habit during the pandemic. Gaming on Linux with Steam is wonderful these days, but the daily overhead of random stuff to deal with was too much when sometimes I just want to play games.

Lewton 4y ago
You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I'm running linux mint and I haven't had to fiddle with anything for years
- jackstraw14 4y ago
  > You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I guess so? Overall Arch was pretty easy to maintain, I just got tired of bailing on friends because I needed to spend hours figuring out some random issue.
  - nunodonato 4y ago
    yeah... bad choice :) if you wanted the Arch ecossystem without all the manual work you could have picked Manjaro or other arch-based distro
    - jackstraw14 4y ago
      I did try Manjaro, it was definitely more user-friendly. Still not what I was looking for, unfortunately.