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It’s not Windows. It’s the broken social contract the entire PC industry has in believing it’s ok flood us with ads and surveillance driven “marketing”. Any re

It’s not Windows. It’s the broken social contract the entire PC industry has in believing it’s ok flood us with ads and surveillance driven “marketing”. Any retail PC is a sewer of bloat and crap ware.

MBCook 4y ago
People want low prices, and care about little else. Possibly because it’s simply one of the easiest to understand metrics. How does a Ryzen 4678v compare to an i12363k? I follow computers and have no idea. Price matters a lot even if you do know all the ultra-technical things. How do you make computers cheaper than the next guy? Subsidizing. Who will pay? Ads and internet companies. People complain Apple stuff is overpriced. It’s not subsidized by Intel or AMD or Candy Crush or TMZ. Yeah they like their profit margins (especially upgrades). But they only shill for themselves (which IS getting annoying). They’re not angels. Still sounds better than that experience to me. Without a privacy law to make data collection illegal or something to make junk legally easy to remove… this is where the race to the bottom goes. It’s just like what happened to TVs. You can’t buy a consumer model at any price that doesn’t suck. $4500? Still tracks you and wants to push apps.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  I always found it interesting how every business that used to sell a product based on demonstratable customer value and quality user experiences wants to instead cling to the ad industry. Whether or not there's a little more money to be had there now is somewhat irrelevant. The bigger deal is that advertising is a hyper-fickle industry, very much subject to tossing out babies, bathwater, bathtubs, and entire metropolitan water infrastructures in a single fell swoop. There's a clear and identifiable risk factor here. Somewhere, at the end of the line, there's someone actually writing checks for to ad service providers, who's going to ask "We're spending (collectively) 829 kazillion dollars to feed these adtech gigaunicorns, basically out of FOMO that we had to be more data-driven than our competitiors. Did this actually move $829 kazillion more Pepsi than just running a 30-second TV spot with a hot boy band would have?" When the bubble bursts, how many otherwise viable products are going to implode because they've become too financially dependent on ad/data sales, or have become so eroded by the compromises for ads that they won't be able to recover their reputation after the adpocalypse?
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Every few months/years we see reports of how the numbers coming out of ad-tech are basically lies. People drastically cutting spending with no impact on things because no one but boys are seeing the ads. It’s got to pop at some point. Maybe as a side effect of privacy legislation? When it pops it’s going to be a hell of a wild ride.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  > People want low prices, and care about little else Yeah I mean look at the iPhone, this was key to the success of that product. Oh wait no, its the opposite and testament that enough people don't just want the cheapest no matter what that a whole extra ecosystem from silicon to apps exists just to satisfy the pent up demand of it.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    The iPhone is unique. Like the Mac. There aren’t 12 manufacturers competing making identical iPhones. Wintel computers are a dime a dozen. And with little else to differentiate them price seems to have quickly become the prime factor for many people.
hooverd 4y ago
People keep buying that sewer of bloat and crap ware unfortunately.
Ekaros 4y ago
Just look at Android phones. I really believe that if Linux was dominant what would end up being shipped on these computers would be entirely filled with random crap that someone paid to be there.

MBCook 4y ago

People want low prices, and care about little else. Possibly because it’s simply one of the easiest to understand metrics. How does a Ryzen 4678v compare to an i12363k? I follow computers and have no idea. Price matters a lot even if you do know all the ultra-technical things. How do you make computers cheaper than the next guy? Subsidizing. Who will pay? Ads and internet companies. People complain Apple stuff is overpriced. It’s not subsidized by Intel or AMD or Candy Crush or TMZ. Yeah they like their profit margins (especially upgrades). But they only shill for themselves (which IS getting annoying). They’re not angels. Still sounds better than that experience to me. Without a privacy law to make data collection illegal or something to make junk legally easy to remove… this is where the race to the bottom goes. It’s just like what happened to TVs. You can’t buy a consumer model at any price that doesn’t suck. $4500? Still tracks you and wants to push apps.

hakfoo 4y ago
I always found it interesting how every business that used to sell a product based on demonstratable customer value and quality user experiences wants to instead cling to the ad industry. Whether or not there's a little more money to be had there now is somewhat irrelevant. The bigger deal is that advertising is a hyper-fickle industry, very much subject to tossing out babies, bathwater, bathtubs, and entire metropolitan water infrastructures in a single fell swoop. There's a clear and identifiable risk factor here. Somewhere, at the end of the line, there's someone actually writing checks for to ad service providers, who's going to ask "We're spending (collectively) 829 kazillion dollars to feed these adtech gigaunicorns, basically out of FOMO that we had to be more data-driven than our competitiors. Did this actually move $829 kazillion more Pepsi than just running a 30-second TV spot with a hot boy band would have?" When the bubble bursts, how many otherwise viable products are going to implode because they've become too financially dependent on ad/data sales, or have become so eroded by the compromises for ads that they won't be able to recover their reputation after the adpocalypse?
- MBCook 4y ago
  Every few months/years we see reports of how the numbers coming out of ad-tech are basically lies. People drastically cutting spending with no impact on things because no one but boys are seeing the ads. It’s got to pop at some point. Maybe as a side effect of privacy legislation? When it pops it’s going to be a hell of a wild ride.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
> People want low prices, and care about little else Yeah I mean look at the iPhone, this was key to the success of that product. Oh wait no, its the opposite and testament that enough people don't just want the cheapest no matter what that a whole extra ecosystem from silicon to apps exists just to satisfy the pent up demand of it.
- MBCook 4y ago
  The iPhone is unique. Like the Mac. There aren’t 12 manufacturers competing making identical iPhones. Wintel computers are a dime a dozen. And with little else to differentiate them price seems to have quickly become the prime factor for many people.

hooverd 4y ago

People keep buying that sewer of bloat and crap ware unfortunately.

Ekaros 4y ago

Just look at Android phones. I really believe that if Linux was dominant what would end up being shipped on these computers would be entirely filled with random crap that someone paid to be there.