8 ms·

The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. I’m

• hamandcheese 11mo ago
  I curious how profitable it has been for Microsoft so far. Are they making billions and billions from these dark patterns? I feel like they'd have to be making a fortune for it to be worth throwing their brand in the gutter like they have been doing.
  • PeaceTed 11mo ago
    One would assume but I do wonder how much long term damage they are doing for short term gains with this drive? I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it. At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose through quality degradation rather than Linux to openly out wit. There is still a long way to go and MS could turn their boat around but they would have to stop chasing this data scrapping scheme of theirs to begin with. But how addicted are they to that cash flow? They are probably far more interested in keep share holders happy short term than customers long term and that is not a brilliant strategy if you want to have a life time of decades.
    • akho 11mo ago
      The issues people cite all primarily affect consumer desktops. I don't think they see decades of lifetime there; it's a dying market, so they milk it.
    • bee_rider 11mo ago
      I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0. The development of their competition is ad supported, community supported, or built into the price of hardware. Turn the boat around? To where? Nobody would be willing to pay for their product even if they were to start trying to make it appealing.
      • CamperBob2 11mo ago
        I would be MORE than happy to pay for an un-enshittified version of Windows. They won't take my money.
      • galangalalgol 11mo ago
        None of their products have a decent moat left, and all are heavily competed. Focusing on making azure competitive while accepting it is a commodity industry with commodity margins is how they stick around. But they will be a value stock, not a growth stock. That is ok, as long as you know that is what you are.
      • sylens 11mo ago
        I think a lot of power users would prefer to pay somewhere between $50-$100 for a Windows license if it meant the enshittifcation wasn't included
      • tpxl 11mo ago
        > I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0. The price of the windows license has been included in the price of PCs for literally decades now. Every computer you buy with windows preinstalled nets Microsoft a couple dozen dollars.
    • TacticalCoder 11mo ago
      [dead]
  • tobyjsullivan 11mo ago
    Everything I’ve seen suggests that Microsoft has entered the metaphorical private equity phase of investment in Windows. They’ve already given up any expectation of it being a viable competitor long-term and are purely focused on milking as much short-term revenue from the product as possible before it dies. I’m sure windows will continue to exist and maybe be relevant for at least a decade. But it will be in zombie/revenue-extraction mode from here on.
    • SteveNuts 11mo ago
      My tech friends always joke that pretty soon we’re going to see “the year of the Linux Windows”, where windows will just be an OS on top of the Linux kernel. I think we’re only half joking though, I could see it happening.
      • doublerabbit 11mo ago
        I jumped ship when WSL came to be. I was more a Cygwin user, all the features of linux but done differently. Been using FreeBSD for years now.
      • ThrowawayB7 11mo ago
        > "My tech friends always joke that pretty soon we’re going to see “the year of the Linux Windows”, where windows will just be an OS on top of the Linux kernel." There's no need because the Year Of Linux On The Desktop™ already happened and it's called WSL2. Meanwhile, the opposite has also already actually happened: SteamOS + Proton is a distro whose main purpose is to be a launcher for Windows apps on a Linux kernel. Jokes aside, this chest-thumping is incredibly ironic for those of us who lived through the 1990s-2000s. First it was, "FOSS will eliminate all proprietary software and M$ (sic) will be crushed and Bill Gates will go to the poorhouse. Hooray!" Later, it became "Well, we haven't killed proprietary software but at least Linux / LAMP and Firefox are succeeding at taking down Windows and Internet Explorer. Hooray!" Now it's "Maybe Microsoft will consider switching its kernel to Windows. Probably. Someday. Hooray?" What's the backpedaling of the 2030s going to be?
        • 11mo ago
  • bee_rider 11mo ago
    I think their earnings are detailed here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2025-Q3/segment-revenues https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2025-Q3... IIRC Windows is considered “more personal computing.” It looks like that also includes: > Search and news advertising, comprising Bing (including Copilot), Microsoft News, Microsoft Edge, and third-party affiliates So, maybe that’s where they get their enshittification revenue. But yeah, the Azure company should be worried about associating with this unfortunate legacy Windows thing.
  • nisegami 11mo ago
    Perhaps the aims of these dark patterns were not to benefit Microsoft overall, but perhaps an individual or a team? For example, produce good numbers for particular KPIs at the expense of unmeasured or unmeasurable aspects.
• dm319 11mo ago
  Goodness the file save dialog(s) on Windows - it makes it so hard to save a file into my personal space. It's unintuitive and you need to click through, I think a couple of dialog boxes before you get to 'Your Documents'.
  • SteveNuts 11mo ago
    And then you still have to wonder if “My Documents” is actually “My Office 364 One Drive Copilot Pro” or something
  • dangus 11mo ago
    In what application is it like this? I don’t find this true at all. It’s a completely customizable sidebar.
    • gmueckl 11mo ago
      Office has a particularly annoying dark pattern when saving a file. It hides the regular save dialog behind a tiny button in a confusing UI embedded in the main window that is designed to misdirect the user into saving files on OneDrive. Many other programs do still open the standard file dialog directly, but even there, the local drive amd directory hierarchy is hidden behind a folded "This Computer" node in the tree view that is itself below the fold most of the time.
      • dangus 11mo ago
        Yeah, this is the only Microsoft application I am aware of that does this, and I actually think that most Office users want to save to OneDrive and that it makes sense in this context. The median Office user is using it at work and your employer doesn’t want you saving documents in places you will lose them. Ditto for universities and schools that provide 365.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  • marcodiego 11mo ago
• koakuma-chan 11mo ago
  I also stuggled with nvidia drivers on Linux until I discovered dkms.
• anonymars 11mo ago
  My favorite has to be the Windows 8 era UI disaster. How do most people log into a server? With a high-res physical touchscreen, or remote desktop? So let's make a whole bunch of functionality impossible to access, because you have to bump up against a non-existent edge of a windowed remote screen, and literally make the UI not fit into common server screen resolutions at the time. I don't remember if 1024x768 was the minimum resolution that worked, or the maximum resolution that still didn't work. But it was an absolute comedy case. I want to say that with only the basic VGA display drivers installed, screen resolution was too small to even get to the settings to fix it, but it's been a while and I can't find the info to prove it.
  • protoster 11mo ago
    Windows struck the iceberg back in 8. It took until 11 for people to finally start to abandon ship in numbers.
    • anonymars 11mo ago
      I wonder if it was losing Jim Allchin that did it. He retired after Vista and I'd say he was in charge of Windows during its golden age. 7 was basically Vista SP3, and then things took a different direction. But, to every coin there are two sides: "I consider this cross-platform idea a disease within Microsoft. We are determined to put a gun to our head and pull the trigger."
• dangus 11mo ago
  While I agree that Microsoft has not been the greatest at delivering customer-friendly stuff, and has built in a lot of revenue streams to their (mostly not-paying) users like Bing and cloud upsells, I think that your take is overly cynical to the software. Windows 11 has some really legitimate improvements that make it a really solid OS. It’s not surprising that Microsoft isn’t focusing on Windows as a server OS as they don’t expect anyone to deploy it in a new environment. They know it has already lost to Linux and that’s why .NET Core is on Linux and Mac, why WSL exists, etc. Azure is how Microsoft makes revenue from servers, Windows Server is a legacy product. The whole “server OS has the weather app installed” thing is pretty irrelevant since enterprises have their own customized image building processes and don’t ever run the default payload. It’s really not worth Microsoft’s time to customize the server version knowing that their enterprise customers already have. Microsoft knows the strength of Windows lies in the desktop environment for workstations, casual laptop use, and gaming systems, and it is excellent at all those things. They’ve delivered a whole lot of really nice and generally innovative features to those spaces. Windows has really nice gaming features, smartphone integrations including with iPhones, even doing some long-overdue work on small details like notepad and the command line. I don’t find that windows has forced me to cloud or done anything like that.
  • evilduck 11mo ago
    > I don’t find that windows has forced me to cloud Have you tried performing a fresh Home install recently without command line hacks? It's now impossible for a normal person to set up Windows without creating a MS account, forcing them to dip a toe into their cloud service connectivity and facilitate taking the next step towards paying them. They don't "force" you, but they sure will nag you incessantly about it, plopping that shit in Explorer, the Start Menu, tossing One Drive in the menubar at startup, shoving it in your face on login after a big update, etc. It's a pathetic cash grab everywhere you look.
    • dangus 11mo ago
      A lot of this isn't very relevant to my personal use case and/or has not been my experience. - I have had my Microsoft account connected since early in the Windows 10 days so that I can use my Xbox library. For my personal use case it doesn't really bother me that I have to login. Sure, most competing commercial OSes don't straight up force you to login, but as an example I never really used my Mac laptop without the Apple ID logged in because it has some pretty clear benefits and essentially no discernible downsides. It has some downsides that mostly boil down to what-if scenarios and thought experiments. To me, Microsoft forcing you to login with an account is not a big deal in the context of commercial paid software with a paid license. I can certainly understand why it might be a big deal in a different context. I can certainly see why my own Linux laptop is more appealing to not have this requirement. However, I specifically use Windows for a lot of commercial stuff - Steam, Xbox, etc. Being logged in was going to happen anyway, at least for me. - As far as being nagged to pay, use Edge/Bing, or buy cloud stuff from Microsoft, all of that has been extremely easy to dismiss permanently. I have not needed to use any power user tools or scripts. - It's an outdated notion that OneDrive is tossed in the menu bar forever. In Windows 11, OneDrive can be uninstalled entirely like a standard app. When I open my Start Menu and search for "OneDrive," nothing comes up besides an obscure tangentially-related system setting. It's literally not there. - Sure, various new things have been presented to me along with new updates, like Copilot and the like, but I have been forced into none of it. When I visit Settings > Apps > AI Components, nothing is installed. When I type "Copilot" into the Start Menu, nothing comes up besids Windows Store search suggestions (apps I have not installed) and a keyboard key customization setting. Copilot is literally not there. - I think there’s actually a good argument that upsells like OneDrive/Copilot (again, in my experience easy to dismiss once a year and uninstall permanently) that solve complicated problems for the median user (secure backups, document storage, AI assistant) is a decently tasteful way to fund a commercial operating system. All of that stuff is optional, and I can just say no, while paying for annual point releases (e.g. Mac OS X) kinda sucked.
• andyjohnson0 11mo ago
  > but I still find it hilarious that a supposedly serious server OS would default to showing you the weather and ads in the start menu. In my experience thats just not true. Microsoft's client OSs like Win 11 and 10 include these consumer-oriented "features" [1] but they're not present on servet versions of Windows. [1] I agree that the weather widget etc is annoying, even though it is easy to disable.
• kbenson 11mo ago
  I wonder how much of it is to collect data and sell ads compared to just getting people to start utilizing what is now Microsoft's core resource, which is cloud services. For them, getting you using onedrive is a (huge) step towards getting you to pay them for more storage using onedrive, and to also allowing them to use their advantage as the OS provider to get you using features that both keep you from moving away from Windows and keep you from moving to dropbox or another cloud competitor that normal consumers commonly use. For example, onedrive desktop sync tied to your Microsoft login, so you can log into a new system and have it put your preferences and files in place. Having more data to monetize people is useful, but I would bet that they value the the lock-in of integrated services far more, as that's where they can possibly grow (by offering more services once you're less likely to leave), and growth is king. It's the same thing Google does (and Samsung also attempts to do with their custom apps and store) with Android, but at the desktop level. Apple is able to do it for both desktop and mobile.
• Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  > The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. And backwards compatibility. They're really good at it. And I'd say that's the reason Windows is still dominant. There's this unfathomably long tail of niche software that people need or want to run.
  • the__alchemist 11mo ago
    Yep! I can compile a program on Windows and expect it to work on any Windows OS from the past ~15 years that has the same CPU architecture. Linux? Each binary is more provincial. I want to try some of the tricks like MUSL though; haven't explored the space beyond default compiler options.
    • hamdingers 11mo ago
      Ironically, you can run almost any vintage Windows or DOS software on any modern GNU/Linux OS too, using compatibility layers.
  • MiddleEndian 11mo ago
    >backwards compatibility They are getting worse at this. I bought a Surface Laptop Studio 2 two years ago. Windows Mail and Windows Calendar, two nice minimalist programs from Microsoft, were actively killed in this time. If you open them, it will redirect you to a new ad-laden Outlook app. If you somehow get a workaround going through the registry, they still fuck with it because the (incredibly simple) UI somehow has network dependencies. I use MailSpring for email and no longer have a native calendar on my fairly expensive laptop from Microsoft. This is actually what drove me over the edge to switch to Linux for my workstation. Unclear exactly what I'll do for my next laptop but it won't be from MS.
    • Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
      That's not a lack of backwards compatibility, that's an app purposefully self-destructing itself! What I'm talking about is, if your widget factory uses some app to calibrate all the widgets which was written by a contractor in 2005, it probably still works fine on Windows 11.
• Krssst 11mo ago
  I don't think Windows Server has ads by default in the menu (don't remember for the weather though), the default are pretty sensible there since it's a minority OS that has to compete while desktop Windows is a monopoly free to inflict whatever it wants onto users without having to fear any kind of consequence.
• ehnto 11mo ago
  Using Windows as a server feels like using your lounge room as a commercial kitchen. I can never shake the feeling that this isn't a serious place to do business. I have this impression from years of using both Windows and linux servers in prod.
  • rewgs 11mo ago
    Perfectly put.
• sgjohnson 11mo ago
  > but I still find it hilarious that a supposedly serious server OS would default to showing you the weather and ads in the start menu. Server and LTSC SKUs don’t do that :)
• codingrightnow 11mo ago
  I just installed windows on a new laptop and somehow my user directory was setup in a OneDrive subfolder and backed up to their cloud. Between that, Microsoft basically demanding I use their online account to log in, Windows harassing me to finish setting up my computer every time I turn it on because they want me to change my default browser and buy subscriptions, and the random forced update restarts I can't seem to fully disable, I've had it. So I finally made the full time switch to kubuntu. Also, it's a brand new $1k laptop with 16gb of RAM and Windows uses half of it. I'm closing apps to save the RAM. Kubuntu uses 2gb.
• deafpolygon 11mo ago
  one thing to remember is that window servers are deployed with GPO pre-configured, so you don’t usually see these unless admins leave them at their defaults. plus enterprise/education can turn off tracking using the same mechanisms