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Man, what on Earth has happened to Microsoft? It’s not just Edge, Windows is a disaster too. I just got a new laptop, and I was surprised by the sheer amount o

Man, what on Earth has happened to Microsoft? It’s not just Edge, Windows is a disaster too. I just got a new laptop, and I was surprised by the sheer amount of bloat (widgets, notifications, crappy Bing AI integration, Edge, etc). It took me a whole afternoon of delving into the registry and group policy editors to clean things up. (EDIT: forgot to mention) And then I started getting a “totally not marketing” “this is a series of welcome emails” spam with no unsubscribe links. I really want to switch back to Linux. The only thing stopping me is the lack of HDR display support.

esafak 3y ago
You seem to have only witnessed the Nadella era. Those of us who have been around longer will confirm that the leopard has not changed its spots.
devnullbrain 3y ago
>notifications Nobody at Microsoft pays attention to these. I'm sure of it. It's the only way to explain why, upon clicking the [x] of a notification, it remains in the notification widget. Surely they - like all the rest of us - are just letting that number above the button tick up and up until the next restart. If they're going to shoehorn phone features into their desktop OS, do it properly! Once they've fixed this, they can get started on fixing Modern Standby.
acdha 3y ago
This is the Microsoft of the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s winning out over the 2010s shift to actually building good products. I don’t know what changed at the executive level but it really looks like the old guard is back.
- userbinator 3y ago
  To be honest, the "old Microsoft" made better products --- or at least wasn't as focused on invasive user-hostility as now. You can easily find the installation media for older versions of MS-DOS and Windows, as well as other MS products; and try them out in a VM to see what the experience back then was like. You can even do it in a browser now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376731
  - acdha 3y ago
    They were more focused on preventing competition than mining user data, yes. I remember that era well but I will agree that they had better UI design and documentation, in no small part because you couldn’t just assume people would find a YouTube video explaining how to use something.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Definitely, GUI frameworks went down the drain after Windows 8.
blibble 3y ago
it's exactly the same awful company it's always been? apparently putting out some "<3 Linux" ads, a somewhat usable terminal and a free IDE is enough to make people forget 40 years of abusive control (not to mention their mostly unreliable software)
- aeurielesn 3y ago
  Let's not forget the free IDE comes with a telemetry tracker.
nmfisher 3y ago
Yeah, Windows is an absolute shitshow now. I disliked macOS for a long time (and mostly still do), but Windows is such an aggravating experience that I've switched over (though if Apple Silicon wasn't so amazing, I'd probably have reverted to Linux).
Conan_Kudo 3y ago
Fullscreen HDR support is coming with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland (which should be available with Fedora Linux 40 and other distributions depending on their timelines). Nightlies are available to try out now: https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html
- up6w6 3y ago
  Sadly we will still have to wait for application. Firefox doesn't have HDR support even on Windows right now.
technion 3y ago
As usual.. The target market for Windows are not you and I. The target market for Windows absolutely love this stuff. For every complaint about candy crush there are three decision makers playing it. He'll I've dealt with a cto that wanted help buying candy crush credits of whatever they are called.
Tanoc 3y ago
I seriously believe there's no institutional knowledge left at Microsoft. Seemingly everything they've been doing in the last five years has been the exact same thing inexperienced organizations who are used to the layers of abstraction do. They even failed at keeping their UI chimp simple, which was the one thing you could reliably give them credit for, even if it ended up being ugly and unwieldy at times. There's seemingly three operating systems hiding in Windows 11 and none of them were designed even knowing the others exist.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Can confirm, at least in what concerns anything WinRT/UWP/WinUI 3.0 related. Mostly interns and fresh people out of university, with a couple of old timers as managers. Everyone that actually knew Windows development already saved themselves into Google, AWS, Azure or jumped into AI craziness going on MS. Those of us with long time Windows development background, would make remarks on community calls or Github issues, regarding Windows Forms or WPF capabilities still missing, both in framework features or Visual Studio tooling, and get stare looks about what we were at all talking about.
hulitu 3y ago
> Man, what on Earth has happened to Microsoft? > It’s not just Edge, Windows is a disaster too It was always like this, getting in the way of the user.
yonatan8070 3y ago
HDR support is under heavy development and should be shipping soon

esafak 3y ago

You seem to have only witnessed the Nadella era. Those of us who have been around longer will confirm that the leopard has not changed its spots.

devnullbrain 3y ago

>notifications Nobody at Microsoft pays attention to these. I'm sure of it. It's the only way to explain why, upon clicking the [x] of a notification, it remains in the notification widget. Surely they - like all the rest of us - are just letting that number above the button tick up and up until the next restart. If they're going to shoehorn phone features into their desktop OS, do it properly! Once they've fixed this, they can get started on fixing Modern Standby.

acdha 3y ago

This is the Microsoft of the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s winning out over the 2010s shift to actually building good products. I don’t know what changed at the executive level but it really looks like the old guard is back.

userbinator 3y ago
To be honest, the "old Microsoft" made better products --- or at least wasn't as focused on invasive user-hostility as now. You can easily find the installation media for older versions of MS-DOS and Windows, as well as other MS products; and try them out in a VM to see what the experience back then was like. You can even do it in a browser now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376731
- acdha 3y ago
  They were more focused on preventing competition than mining user data, yes. I remember that era well but I will agree that they had better UI design and documentation, in no small part because you couldn’t just assume people would find a YouTube video explaining how to use something.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Definitely, GUI frameworks went down the drain after Windows 8.

blibble 3y ago

it's exactly the same awful company it's always been? apparently putting out some "<3 Linux" ads, a somewhat usable terminal and a free IDE is enough to make people forget 40 years of abusive control (not to mention their mostly unreliable software)

aeurielesn 3y ago
Let's not forget the free IDE comes with a telemetry tracker.

nmfisher 3y ago

Yeah, Windows is an absolute shitshow now. I disliked macOS for a long time (and mostly still do), but Windows is such an aggravating experience that I've switched over (though if Apple Silicon wasn't so amazing, I'd probably have reverted to Linux).

Conan_Kudo 3y ago

Fullscreen HDR support is coming with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland (which should be available with Fedora Linux 40 and other distributions depending on their timelines). Nightlies are available to try out now: https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html https://openqa.fedoraproject.org/nightlies.html

up6w6 3y ago
Sadly we will still have to wait for application. Firefox doesn't have HDR support even on Windows right now.

technion 3y ago

As usual.. The target market for Windows are not you and I. The target market for Windows absolutely love this stuff. For every complaint about candy crush there are three decision makers playing it. He'll I've dealt with a cto that wanted help buying candy crush credits of whatever they are called.

Tanoc 3y ago

I seriously believe there's no institutional knowledge left at Microsoft. Seemingly everything they've been doing in the last five years has been the exact same thing inexperienced organizations who are used to the layers of abstraction do. They even failed at keeping their UI chimp simple, which was the one thing you could reliably give them credit for, even if it ended up being ugly and unwieldy at times. There's seemingly three operating systems hiding in Windows 11 and none of them were designed even knowing the others exist.

pjmlp 3y ago
Can confirm, at least in what concerns anything WinRT/UWP/WinUI 3.0 related. Mostly interns and fresh people out of university, with a couple of old timers as managers. Everyone that actually knew Windows development already saved themselves into Google, AWS, Azure or jumped into AI craziness going on MS. Those of us with long time Windows development background, would make remarks on community calls or Github issues, regarding Windows Forms or WPF capabilities still missing, both in framework features or Visual Studio tooling, and get stare looks about what we were at all talking about.

hulitu 3y ago

> Man, what on Earth has happened to Microsoft? > It’s not just Edge, Windows is a disaster too It was always like this, getting in the way of the user.

yonatan8070 3y ago

HDR support is under heavy development and should be shipping soon