The new Windows 11 defaults manager is amazingly user hostile. [1] Microsoft decided it's a great idea to make non technical users manually adjust 15 different file and protocol associations in order to change the default browser.
Microsoft's statement on this: we are implementing customer feedback to customize and control defaults at a more granular level, eliminating app categories and elevating all apps to the forefront of the defaults experience.
More granular control is nice and all, but I don't buy for a second that it couldn't be behind some "advanced" button. I think the most probable explanation for removing the app categories is a calculated move to steer people towards Microsoft products which have access to backdoor internal functions to change all of these automatically.
I do remember how bad things were back in Windows XP days when every random toolbar would change all the associations. I don't wish for that experience to come back for non technical users either. Microsoft could perhaps look into allowing digitally signed apps to change the associations automatically (a single summarizing OS confirmation prompt might be wise), and non-signed apps would have to instruct users to manually change things.
> More granular control is nice and all, but I don't buy for a second that it couldn't be behind some "advanced" button.
In fact, they could've just kept it the same as Windows 10 because this exact system was under "Choose defaults by app", along with a "Choose defaults by protocol" option, at the bottom of the defaults apps pane.
Windows 11 is a step back from more granular control considering there is no longer the option to change defaults by protocol. Instead, you need to go through multiple apps to see which protocols each app supports rather than going straight to the protocol/file type you want to change the default for.
Windows 10's version was definitely better, but it still had its own brand of sketchiness.
Specifically, they had chosen a window size that placed the "default web browser" selector conveniently scrolled off the bottom. It would never be scrolled into view by default, even if the defaults control panel had been explicitly opened for the purpose of setting a default browser.
Oh there were definitely dark patterns, especially if you add in the "Microsoft Edge is the recommended browser for Windows 10" or whatever was displayed when you tried to change the default browser.
My only point is that, even by their own logic, it's a step backwards, which makes the stated reason seem like straight up deceit.
It baffles me that Microsoft cares what browser people use; Edge is based on Chromium and Edge's user count confers absolutely no authority over web standards (one of the major things Google gets from making Chromium) to Microsoft.
Edge defaults to Bing for searches, which is a direct source of revenue via ads. Edge also uses browser history for ad targeting via the "personalize your web experience" option; I don't recall whether that's enabled by default but I'd expect it is. On top of those there's a price-comparison feature (affiliate revenue) and a Pinterest partnership.
No more than a year ago the little "help" icon in explorer linked to bing with a prefilled search query that didn't even include a guard to make sure only microsoft.com results were returned (that has since been fixed). The results were (predictably) full of blog spam.
Microsoft was deliberately showing blog spam, just to route users to bing. I can't understand how that's a good business model.
Why doesn't control of Edge give Microsoft a say in web standards? They are not just a Chrome reskin: they can and do add features that Google doesn't like or hasn't prioritized, etc.
>Windows 11 is a step back from more granular control considering there is no longer the option to change defaults by protocol. Instead, you need to go through multiple apps to see which protocols each app supports rather than going straight to the protocol/file type you want to change the default for.
haven't had a Windows machine for a couple years so I'm wondering - is there still a registry and are protocols still registered in it? I'm obviously not thinking about everyday users going through that to change permissions, just thinking about me.
But what makes it even worse is that Microsoft overrides your choice frequently on OS updates, which means you will need to repeat all these manual steps not just for each machine, but also for each major OS update. And you can’t script it.
I see this statement repeated often but I have never had this happen - not even once. I use Windows Pro and don’t do anything special either, I just apply Windows updates. If this is happening, I wonder why it is not happening to me.
Same, I never had Windows Update change defaults. This is one of those urban legends that is only very loosely based in fact (KB3135173 back in 2016 indeed had a bug that reset defaults, afaik it never happened since) but keeps persisting.
It's the same with ads; everyone claims Window 10 shows ads but I never saw any ads and I doubt it even has the capability of downloading and displaying random ads. It does occasionally show "recommendations" for using its apps (like Edge or Teams) and I guess if you squint really hard you could call those "ads", but I never saw an actual advertisement for some 3rd party website or product or anything of the sorts.
Yes, Windows 10 is bloated and the fact MS refuses to release a SKU with fully opt-out telemetry is bad, but this kind of hyperbole rubs me the wrong way.
Windows 10 reinstalled "Candy Crush Soda Saga" on my machine multiple times during updates, so it's absolutely not just first-party software like Edge and Teams that they've pushed.
Not doubting you but that is so weird. I deleted it (and a few other apps) once on that first install of Win 10 and it has never come back. I've never used any tool to disable or clean anything, etc... Just removed the apps through supported means.
It shouldn't happen anymore, but what kind of braindead update system didn't check for that in the first place?
> One of the ongoing feedback items we’ve heard is how the apps that come preinstalled with Windows will reinstall after each upgrade – particularly noticeable for our Insiders that receive multiple flights per month. We’ve heard your feedback, and starting with Build 14926, when your PC updates it will check for apps that have been uninstalled, and it will preserve that state once the update has completed. This means if you uninstall any of the apps included in Windows 10 such as the Mail app or Maps app, they will not get reinstalled after you update to a newer build going forward.
"Oops, we totally forgot to consider that any users would want to uninstall this bloatware, so we just included it again as part of each update. And definitely no one inside our organization had personally uninstalled Candy Crush, pointed out this problem, and had their concerns ignored because we wanted to maximize the number of installs that our partners are paying us for. User experience is our highest priority, and what're you going to do about it, switch to Linux?"
So MS turned Windows into the device OEM bloatware infested version of stock Android, combined with Google level tracking. Nice. I guess corporate customers are treated different, at least my commercial Windows liscense and my work-laptop has no bloatware worth mentioning.
Urban legend? Every time Windows updates I have to go into the Sound settings to disable the low-quality bluetooth endpoint on my headphones, because it is the default option and every update clears my selection and reestablishes the default.
I agree that can be annoying; did you try submitting a bug report?
I sent one once through their "Send Feedback" thing and someone actually got back to me (several months later, but still).
FWIW, I'm using wireless headphones that have the same 2 options (for calls and for "gaming") but never had the issue you're describing (though they're not Bluetooth, they come with a custom usb dongle).
You'd have to stretch the definition of ads quite a lot for those to fit. At worst, they'd be bloatware (but IIRC they're not even pre-installed apps, just stubs that link to the store that you can simply remove permanently). Still in bad taste and those should not show up especially in Pro SKU.
An ad would be a banner that shows up when you open the Start menu with "meet singles near you" or "try ubereats" or "buy Chevrolet cars" or some other bullshit of that sorts.
They're ads. Just like product placement in videos. When the actor is drinking Coca-Cola(tm) with the label pointed perfectly to the camera, that's an ad.
The fact that it doesn't "feel" like an ad to you, is just the industry adapting to audiences general dislike of "obvious" ads.
I really do wonder what causes the unevenness of this. For me, I installed Foxit reader and it's always stayed my default. I also switch .txt files to open in Notepad++ and it has always stayed the default too. I've changes a lot of file extensions over the years and they always stuck through all the Windows updates, etc... I've never used any version of Edge as my main browser nor has it ever become the default for anything automatically. I may have been prompted to try it during an upgrade welcome screen but I've always said no and it's never bothered me again.
I dual boot. Once a year or so, windows update trashes my boot loader and makes me do a grub repair in order be able to boot into ubuntu again. It’s inconvenient for me, but amateur Linux users could really panic and think it was Linux’s fault
This used to happen to me with the quarterly? version increments but hasn't been the case for a couple of years now. I even upgraded from W10 to W11 and was pleasantly surprised that grub was left intact, i.e. as the default boot manager.
I use the Professional edition too, and Windows resets my default image viewer and PDF viewer every now and then. Not sure if it's related to Windows updates, though. IIRC the resets are correlated more with one of those apps updating itself and Windows no longer trusting it with the defaults it had been previously granted.
Just speculation but perhaps the way the installers work makes it appear to Windows that the app was uninstalled first and then a new version is installed. If it looks like it was uninstalled then I can see why Windows might change the default.
Which feels quite amateurish and thus ridiculous for Microsoft. Like, they invent a new app store in Windows 10 and they still can't even be bothered to implement a working update routine that isn't infuriating to end users?
I honestly don't remember any details but this had happened to me once, about 1.5 or 2 years ago, where a major W10Pro update had somehow reset the default browser to Edge. It was just a normal bi-annual update, however it could be that I've installed manually using Windows Update Assistant without waiting for the normal rollout.
Microsoft just forced all of their office suite file extensions to look at their MS Office... which I don't (shouldn't) have installed. I happily use LibreOffice. But suddenly things are going to different apps!
User Friendly, as long as by "friendly" you mean "actively sabotaging"
That's happening on my dad's new laptop as well - he still uses his MS Office 2013 license because why not, but even after many attempts we couldn't figure out a way to make Windows open double-clicked files in that old Office. It would always pop up the newest unactivated test version. And before that it took a while until the OS even listed the programs in the start menu. MS literally fights its own software when you don't pay the annual 365 ransom.
This was happening to me after a system restore. Uninstalling all other versions of office on my computer, then rebooting and changing the default program to Office 13 worked for me.
I recently gave a friend my old PC, I installed Windows, updated it then did a factory reset so they could go through the first run setup themselves. Watching them set the machine up and blindly agreeing to all telemetry without even blinking really opened my eyes to how much "normal" people dont care about telemetry.
The great irony here is that we - technical people - have done this to ourselves. We opt out of telemetry (as we should IMO) as a default so out usage patterns never get sent to the mothership. So of course Windows gets dumbed down, options disappear, and the OS gets targeted at the normal folk.
I have no horse in this race to be fair as a linux user but I do find it amusing.
I have my first Linux machine since this weekend, and I really love how that feels a lot like old school Windows. Just an OS running on your own hardware, no calling home, no cloud, no account somewhere if I don't want to. And surprisingly easy to install as well, again not really more difficult than, say, setting up Windows XP yourself. or Windows 2000.
It is really quite refreshing to have some of the freedom from the "old days" back. Honestly, I don't think I'll go back for private usage. Work is different, a) because employers provide hard- and software and b) because Office 365 is quite good for corporate use.
What makes you think that old school Windows didn't use telemetry?
(I ask because I'm genuinely curious, not just playing devil's advocate -- I strongly suspect that even in 2000, Microsoft was collecting user data. But I'm to young to have been in the industry at the time, so maybe telemetry just wasn't that big in 2000?)
> The great irony here is that we - technical people - have done this to ourselves. We opt out of telemetry (as we should IMO) as a default so out usage patterns never get sent to the mothership. So of course Windows gets dumbed down, options disappear, and the OS gets targeted at the normal folk.
There's no irony here. Even if every single technically apt user sent their feedback to Microsoft at once, it would still be drowned out by the 99% of the general population that clicks through everything without reading or adjusting.
It's not even close, and we shouldn't be giving MS the benefit of the doubt anymore, considering what they've done to Windows in the last 10 years. They did it deliberately, while hiding behind "improving user experience" and "security".
Heck people default to donating their organs if that’s the option that’s preset when they register for a driving license. Or the reverse if that’s the option that’s preset. It’s not even close: whatever is the default option, no matter how serious, the vast majority of people seem to shrug and get on with their day.
I am so comfortable with personal computers that I take it for granted how intimidating the setup can be for the average Joe and Jane. Telling someone to change which app handles a certain file extension is like a mechanic telling me how to adjust one of the valves inside of a carburetor. Certainly do-able, but a nightmare to someone who thinks they can break the whole thing with one wrong move.
There is nothing wrong with well-implemented telemetry. It's an extremely valuable tool for improving software quality. I don't understand the antipathy some people have for it.
I'm not strongly against telemetry, but I previously wrote a comment explaining why I question the need for it (which was a source of cognitive dissonance given my employer at the time): https://lobste.rs/s/htbkqd/console_do_not_track#c_hqev1u
I worked for Mozilla over a period during which we went to having no telemetry to good telemetry and the benefits for quality were huge, especially for crashes. Without crash telemetry you simply have to guess which bugs are the most important to fix first. With telemetry you know. This is especially important when a bug suddenly shows up in the field, e.g. some antivirus vendor ships an update that breaks your product. Diverse teams are good but you are never going to have a team that truly represents the experiences of non-technical people.
Of course it's calculated. Try putting Chrome/Google search on a fresh install of Windows and see how many times you are one click away from being reverted back to Edge/Bing. It must be over a dozen
I appreciate the way MacOS handles these sorts of things: Applications can say "I am a browser!" and then the user can choose their preferred default from a drop-down. Also works for e-mail and FTP clients, as well as possibly others.
> Microsoft could perhaps look into allowing digitally signed apps to change the associations automatically (a single summarizing OS confirmation prompt might be wise), and non-signed apps would have to instruct users to manually change things.
I don't think that should be acceptable until Microsoft provides a way for developer to sign their programs at no cost.
What I really want is a way to tell Windows to open a different application for the file or URL type based on the application it comes from. I run a dedicated browser for work that proxies all its traffic across an SSH SOCKS proxy, and really just want clicks from Outlook and Teams to load in it, and everything else to load in Firefox.
Instead, I wrote a little thing myself[1] to make a distinction based on the pattern matching the URL. I took the chance to learn a bit more about Deno and deploying standalone apps, which I don't regret, since it was actually super easy, but I still wish I didn't have to. (Note: that utility isn't quite ready to be used easily, it needs to default the config file to a more standard location for the user to be easily useful as an filetype/URL target).
On a related note, I find it really frustrating that I can't just select a default text editor. I even want to use a MS product, VS Code, but there is not really an easy way to tell Windows to use VS Code for all text files.
Really what I would like is a two step association list. Be able to specify what category a particular file type is under (i.e. text file, web browser file, etc.) as well as specifying which text file or web browser should be used in general. Obviously many file types only need a direct association with an application, but that is not always the case and as is the case with text files, it may not be possible for an application installer to know all extensions it needs to associate with itself.
My solution to that problem is mostly via my favorite text editor KEDIT and some good directory tree walking via some simple Rexx scripts.
So the usual way of working is to use a text window (with a nicely juiced up set of environment variables) to go to a relevant directory. Uh, several directories are fairly easy also since a command line MARK A will set environment variable MARK.A to the directory name and command G A will make that directory current, for A, B, AB, C, ABC, .... Then with a directory current, use command K to run script K.REX to run KEDIT which right away displays the directory contents and right away gives me lots of ways to edit, manipulate, select lines in the display. Then one keystroke can view a file, that is, run my KEDIT macro VIEW.KEX which is pretty smart on what program to run to process that file.
I have, let's see, in my main collection of KEX macros 265 macros!
That process works for essentially all my typing for any and all reasons -- email, blog posts, macro writing, code writing, TeX word processing, PDF file reading, movie watching, etc. I'm thrilled, happy as a clam, especially with the Windows file system NTFS -- not so thrilled with some other aspects of Windows.
I seem to remember a checkbox during install for this. Though if you use winget/chocolatey, unsure of how to do it after the fact.
Though, 99% of my VS code use is launched from terminal anyway, and I can always right-click. That said, the Win11 right-click menu buries most of the options.
Long ago I gave up on letting Windows use associations. So, instead, I run programs (apps) via a script that makes the associations I want based on more than just a file extension.
Windows keeps thinking that it knows where I want files for music, movies, documents, images, etc. Nope, for me it knows no such things. If Windows was correct, then I would be making only nearly trivial use of Windows. Going back to PC/DOS, I knew where I wanted files, had my own way of keeping track of files, and still do.
I'm pretty sure 11 is my new 7. I won't be using it (well, maybe my employer will, but that's one machine out of three I use regularly), and it's pushing me towards alternatives again.
Let's hope Windows 12 solves these problems, as 10 solved 8's.
I used to share your belief, but as I got older, I realized... Windows isn't targeted to us, the faux technocratic elite that grew up with computers: it's targeted to the average person, and the average person, largely, is technologically illiterate to some degree.
You cannot get file/uri associations correct in a UX in a way that handles all situations. Essentially, this is a subset of the "many to many relations in database tables fundamentally suck" problem, and every time this happens where it is directly exposed to the user it has never turned out well.
Combine the potential UI/UX nightmare of this with literal actual criminals putting malware on the PCs of technologically illiterate users: it now hijacks 15 different file/uri associations in ways that are not easily fixed.
What Microsoft should do? Do an Android-style ask (yes, the one that all the people like us hate) every time a new handler can be associated. What they can't do? Expressly this because it didn't exist in Win98 when they added uri handler system to the existing file handler system, and Microsoft is obsessed with backwards compat.
Side note: Technically, Firefox could trigger the OTHER existing API for this that UWP apps are forced to use as per MS Store sandboxing, from the C++ WinRT API; any app could. It isn't well documented, and isn't the intended use but WinUI 3.x's path is allowing apps to piecemeal their way into the future without all-or-nothing rewrites. I'm not going to insult Mozilla by saying they "choose not to", I'd rather someone else jump in the deep end first on that.
How Microsoft ended up fixing the actual issue at hand? Removing the need to get another browser in the first place, but still allowing technologically literate users to install one if they want. Edge is Chrome, but without the boneheaded decisions Google makes ruining it, and actually moving forwards in usability.
Edge has vertical tabs built in, it has an actually visually correct dark theme built in[1], has the existing bookmark/history/open tab/etc syncing (which some Chromium-based browsers still do not, as they have to write their own backend), it has an Android version (many desktop Chromium browsers do not have a matching phone version), it has the beginnings of a ABP/uBlock style ad blocker built in (its already in the Android version as well) (Chrome will never ship with adblocking built in, Google's entire business model depends on their ad network), its the first Chromium-based browser that supports the VBS-based hardware-enforced browser sandbox (Microsoft wants to bring it to all Chromium-based things including Electron apps), and it also has tab collections built in (which is also supported on the Android version), and last but not least, they have an actually working PWA container on the desktop (reviving the code Google killed because they didn't want a future where Android couldn't be a vendor lock-in moat).
The number of extensions I need to make Edge actually productive is less than any other browser.
You know what Mozilla brought me? Panorama, which is now gone. An extension system that could actually deeply modify the UI (thanks to XUL), which is now gone (and has been replaced with a partial WebExtension implementation). A PWA-first OS, called FirefoxOS, that would be lighter and faster than Android by several magnitudes, which is now gone. An Electron alternative that used Gecko instead, called Positron, also gone. A PWA container for the desktop called Prism, also dead.
Almost everything Mozilla thought of, half-assed, and then killed, Edge has succeeded, and brought to not only Windows, but OSX, Linux, and Android too, and also salvaged the slowly rotting Chromium codebase at the same time.
[1]: Dark themes should never have backgrounds darker than 16, as the eye has poor "bright on dark" focusing, but most monitors, even ones being sold today, have very poor tracking of values below the limited 16-240 range (even HDR monitors); the two of those together make standard viewing conditions (dimly lit office or indirect sunlight lit room or single 60W equivalent on a desk in a small bedroom, with a 100 nits monitor (sRGB defines optimal brightness as 80 nits + offset for ambient, BT1886 defines SDR white as 100 if not otherwise calibrated, BT2020 defines SDR content in HDR display mode as 100)) hard to read for standard distance and DPI monitors (ex: 24" 1080p or 27" 1440p at ~29 inches, given a 1.2 ratio of screen size to distance) at the standard text size (16px).
Dark themes that have pure black for misguided reasons should be eradicated for user accessibility reasons; contrast and readability are very important for everyone, not just people with diagnosed vision problems.
> I used to share your belief, but as I got older, I realized... Windows isn't targeted to us, the faux technocratic elite that grew up with computers: it's targeted to the average person, and the average person, largely, is technologically illiterate to some degree.
I mean, the average user has been capable of installing and using alternative browsers for a significant period of time. Most folks exist as some shade of gray between your Grandma with an Ask toolbar and the "HN elites." If anything, I think there is often an underestimation of what regular users understand and are willing to do with their tech (to improve their experience, privacy, etc.) If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems. See what browsers they use, what adblockers they configure, etc. I predict you'd be surprised.
I rarely meet this "average user" who is often discussed on HN; this person who isn't interested in using non-standard software, who doesn't care at all about their privacy, who will use only the easiest and cheapest solution possible, etc. Dark patterns don't just work on these "average users," they work on plenty who even work in tech. I click "Accept All" on the cookie banner on this one-off website if it's the fastest way to read the contents, I will put off changing default apps if I have to hunt for the correct settings, heck I've been charged for subscriptions an extra month because I put off dealing with the hassle of cancelling the thing.
I think this "average user" is constructed in the collective imagination because it makes implementing user-hostile design choices a little more conscionable if you view your users as tech illiterate morons. Considering the state of the industry, one where dark patterns and user hostility permeate nearly every design choice, it doesn't surprise me that HN, a subset of this industry, holds this dim view of its users.
> If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems
Everyone I know who doesn't work in tech "configures" their system by calling me and saying, "it doesn't work" (no other details provided), and asking if I can just fix it.
> I rarely meet this "average user"...who isn't interested in using non-standard software...doesn't care about privacy...will use only the easiest and cheapest solution
Consider yourself lucky, and consider the circles you travel in are may not be reflective of the majority of users.
Everyone's anecdotes will be different (and may differ along generational lines.) For a more concrete example of users seeking non-standard software, within a few years of it coming out Chrome became the most popular desktop web browser, surpassing IE. People perferred the experience on Chrome over that on IE to a considerable degree. On the privacy front, 96% of users opt out of surveillance-based advertising [1] when empowered to do so.
The longer we consider concepts like user freedom and privacy as only things that "HN elites" would appreciate, the more tolerable user-hostile design choices will be among HN types.
I'm inclined to agree with you on this one. I spend a lot of time and effort customizing my setup so it fits my needs perfectly. Because I believe that spending even a day or two on setup for a system I'm going to use for a year+ is well worth my time.
So many of my coworkers at every job have just blindly accepted all defaults for Windows, macOS, etc. setups. Even when something really annoys them, they'll only occasionally express it... and when I show them that it's a setting they can actually change to better suit their workflow, they're super grateful and excited at this new thing they learned. As if they couldn't possibly have navigated to preferences on their own.
Even things that are massively broken, like my dad's router that was constantly overheating and shutting down because it was stacked in the back of a closet surrounded by other crap, many people just accept and move on from.
My personal favorite? I'm constantly frustrated by almost everything I do in the Spotify app:
- General lagginess, slowness to start up or respond to clicks
- loading in albums and playlists that reorganizes the homescreen as a I scroll and try to click on things
- albums I click on that never load unless I back out and click on them again
- music that shows up as "playing" but doesn't actually play any audio
- unplugging headphones leading to half a second of audio blasting out my speakers because the app takes so long to respond to the headphone disconnect event...
I asked a software engineer friend if he's ever frustrated by those same things. He said "it's fine." I showed him some of these frustrations (because they're very replicable).
He said "it's fine. It plays music, what else do you want it to do?"
Most people are content with mediocrity. Perfect example: the folks who use built-in apps on Samsung phones that display ads in between weather and text messages and emails.
Honestly the way I look at it, these issues all have such a simple solution. The user experience can be so much better, but MSFT does not want that. They want a confusing experience that pretends they aren’t monopolizing their platform.
Even if the lowest common denominator can navigate the settings (eventually) it’s still not an excuse to make shitty UX paradigms. This is a company with some of the best and brightest engineers—and we’re on three decades of Windows… and they can’t figure out how to design a proper defaults page? Come on.
"Open all browser file types in a single browser I select" is good enough for both the average user and the "technocratic elite" in basically all cases, and there are certainly zero cases where choosing every file association manually is better for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
I don't understand your complaint about Firefox's dark mode; I've been using it for years and I don't remember any pure black elements. And as far as extensions, Firefox may be missing a couple minor APIs but it's the only browser that doesn't block the important ones (e.g. the ones uBlock Origin needs) so ad companies can make more money.
I use dark themes with pure black backgrounds precisely because it maximizes contrast and increases accessibility. I don't understand your dislike for them and desire to eradicate them, especially when they can exist alongside grey dark themes (as is commonly the case with Android apps).
It was removed from the core browser because they reached the point where it could be entirely implemented in an extension, and also wasn’t as popular as they’d hoped. … it should then be noted that it can no longer be perfectly implemented in a WebExtensions world; there are some compromises that need to be made, comparatively minor is my impression but I don’t use it (I used Panorama at first, but found before long that multiple windows and Tree Style Tab was more useful to me).
> An extension system that could actually deeply modify the UI (thanks to XUL), which is now gone (and has been replaced with a partial WebExtension implementation).
Replaced for entirely legitimate performance reasons, even if you ignore the security and maintainability arguments. As with many things, it’s a balance. So long as userChrome.css still works, I’m fairly OK with where things lie.
> Firefox OS, Positron, Prism
Sigh. Yeah. I’d count XULRunner here too. I won’t comment on Firefox OS or Prism, but I believe a substantial reason in the killing of XULRunner and Positron is that they were too hard to maintain and held progress on Firefox back.
> Almost everything Mozilla thought of, half-assed, and then killed, Edge has succeeded
It’s funny how these things go: an early implementer before its time, and then later something else reinvents much the same thing but actually succeeds at it. The first two examples of this that my mind always springs to are actually both Microsoft: HTA, which was basically Electron lite, but in 1999; and tablet PCs in the mid-2000s, that quite flopped because the hardware wasn’t quite right yet, and so Microsoft abandoned the space and licked their wounds for another decade before returning (with the iPad and Android tablets having occupied the space, including things like ASUS’s Eee Pad Transformers).
And the related phenomenon of cycles like how OSes used to be all colour-customisable, then they steadily lost that, then eventually they all added dark modes back in again, treating it as something all new and never-before-seen.
> Dark themes
You’re subscribing to the common fallacy that dark themes are just one thing. The fact of the matter is that there are actually several substantially different types of dark modes. This is theory I’ve been mulling over for the last few years; I’ve vacillated between reckoning three and four types and exactly where to draw lines, but I’m currently going with four: ① æsthetic, which is fairly low contrast and certainly avoids true black and white; ② accessibility, which is high contrast in both colours and styles (that is, no gentle gradients, just harsh boundaries between colours), and uses true black and white—note here that light accessibility mode is much more likely to be useful than dark accessibility mode, but both have a place; ③ low-light, which uses true black and mostly fairly bright whites up to and including true white, but is not scared of in-between colours or actively trying for super-high contrast; and ④ power-saver, which is largely for things like OLED panels, where true black definitely uses less power and can look great, and certainly not for TN LCD panels where true black tends to look awful. Which type of dark mode is most appropriate depends on the user’s eyesight, the device screen type, the ambient lighting conditions, the nature of the content being presented, user preference, and power availability.
I'm pretty sure browser share is done by useragent, which will report Firefox if you're using Firefox. Unless of course you change your useragent but the number of people doing that will be vanishingly small.
To be fair, one of the very few add-ons available for Firefox on Android is an add-on that does exactly this on Google properties so Google won't degrade your experience for using FireFox.
So maybe it is more popular than we think. Very hard to know for sure.
Not sure you can really blame android, when Android allows Firefox as a first class replacement for Chrome and with ease for the user, whereas iOS doesn't even allow the real Firefox.
iOS is a very important platform for Firefox, so apples anti-competitive behavior in this regard really undermines firefox's future.
I'm very sad that this issue has not come up in all of the debate about the app store.
~98% of Androids use the default browser, which is an incredible amount of people, like in the billions. We tend to forget iOS is a minority worldwide.
Not sure it's reasonable to ask a for-profit company to do more than make it easily and fully changeable. Neither Microsoft nor Apple come close to that.
Dark patterns from Microsoft and Google. They nag users to set their own applications as the default. You can't expect users who don't know any better to to always say no, they get tired and then say yes.
Because the reasons why its market share ever got as high as it did to begin with no longer apply. Firefox isn't basically competing with a piece of abandonware that happens to ship with Windows any more.
The amount of dark design patterns around getting edge as the default browser is sickening. Opera was flagged as PUA by many AVs for simply changing the default browser after asking users post-install if they wanted to use that browser as their default - just as edge does (and before Firefox copied that same mechanism here). Now every post-windows update screen (which takes place before you even log in...) comes with a full-page nag screen asking you to "Use Microsoft recommended browser settings" [1]... This is on the heels of a screen that says "Let's make Windows even better - this shouldn't affect what you've already set up" [2]. Even more disappointing is not that they're doing this but that nobody is taking these platforms to court over it in a meaningful way.
+1 on that: It's still manageable to set a default browser which is not Ms Edge, but I found especially dark pattern - that Windows apps do not respect that setting. Take a look on the news feed in the recent Windows 10 release. When you click on a link, it opens Ms Edge regardless what you have set as default browser. I think I've seen also some user guides / support pages opening also in Ms Edge that way. Frankly speaking, even if I found some news feeds interesting, the fact it will be opened in MS Edge made me to disable the feed at all.
Changing votes won't solve the problem in America's two-party system. It needs serious election reform not just in donations but also in how the election works.
I think the first step is to changing voting system so that it isn't possible to have spoiler candidates or "throw away" your vote. Of course it'll probably be 20-30 years before that happens.
IMO the solution is at least releated to ranked choice voting, where people can vote for people that will never win (at least this time around) without their vote becoming meaningless.
If you're in BC (probably) then you need to look a little further back. The reason we have the BC Liberals (aka Conservatives) is because the NDP (socdems) won on FPTP and the Libs and Cons merged. Voting 3rd party is why we are the only province in Canada with a vaccine passport.
I fully expect the Greens to win eventually. BCers will vote their conscience, everybody else be damned.
Yeah, considering the amount of money needed to be known and collect votes i guess it's either the government starting to fund campaigns and disallowing corporate donation or i see it as very hard to change that
If anyone is going to save public sector from private, it's gonna have to be good-actors in private sector.
Public sector is long, long, long beyond corrupted. The only way forwards is to carefully migrate away from the infested wreckage into something built from the ground up.
It's like a code-base that's been hacked mercilessly, and was written in a dead language to boot.
As I was reading this article I kept thinking to myself "Microsoft is going to boot Firefox from Windows" before realizing that MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to say Apple).
It's really interesting how MS will approach this. Unlike Apple, MS doesn't have direct control over which apps go on the operating system, they aren't even in a position like Google where their app store is the dominant platform for getting apps.
This will be interesting, interesting to see how MS responds. Will they give in and let users easily set their default browser or will this turn into a cat and mouse game.
Lastly I think what MS is doing with the default browser is foolish. Did they learn nothing from the antitrust cases of the 2000's
> Did they learn nothing from the antitrust cases of the 2000's
They learned for awhile- until the rest of the industry caught up.
This might sound weird but I've actually been rooting for Microsoft a lot lately. A majority of their revenue is not from ads and lock-in BS and they weren't called in front of Congress recently over antitrust concerns. I was hoping they would set themselves apart from the pack in an odd way by making good software and hardware products that people enjoy using. (xbox, windows, office, WSL, VSCode, Visual Studio, hololens, phones, laptops, Halo on Steam, etc.)
Seeing the new browser war and direction Windows 11 is headed, now has me worried. The widgets pane is obviously for serving ads.
I understand that these public companies are required to act in the best interests of shareholders but I fear that the obsessive push for revenue gains only benefits short term shareholders. Long term shareholders get the shaft when every decision is aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next quarter.
Edit: I'm not a Microsoft/Windows-Stan either, I've been using Linux intermittently since 2006-ish and now daily drive Fedora as my main.
Microsoft's ad problem is that they damage their existing products to advertise new products that are a lost cause.
There was that "crash your desktop" bug caused by an ad for Teams but longer ago there was OneDrive... DropBox, Box, Google and many others could make file sharing programs that could sync successfully, but somehow Microsoft couldn't.
To add injury to insult they made OneDrive the default way to save files in Microsoft Office, but sometimes a problem with OneDrive would mean YOU COULDN'T SAVE YOUR WORK AT ALL.
If you've had that experience ONCE you are NEVER going to use OneDrive ever.
Then there was that time that OneNote was a pretty good product but Microsoft killed it by inserting at least five icons on and around your desktop (practically up your nose) signalling that it is absolute garbage that they're trying to force up your A*.
Google kills products after the launch, but Microsoft kills them in the process of launch with it's internal advertising.
> To add injury to insult they made OneDrive the default way to save files in Microsoft Office, but sometimes a problem with OneDrive would mean YOU COULDN'T SAVE YOUR WORK AT ALL.
It's worse than that. The change to default OneDrive breaks auto-save everywhere that isn't OneDrive. On the Mac, this includes breaking auto-save on pre-Azure Sharepoint instances and network shares, but some of that works sometimes on Windows. So Office is a worse product even if you never use OneDrive.
Yep and as a Mac user with office your just left wondering why. Why on earth would I use one drive on Mac. One of the many reasons stopped using office on Mac. Rip excel.
OneDrive on Windows is fine now, but oh my gosh OneDrive for Mac is a mess. I didn't use it until my new M1 Mac (so maybe they are re-implementing everything without kernel extensions and it's causing issues), but it absolutely sucks. Every time it starts it can't find the folder, and I have to tell it where it is, then it will say "up-to-date" but nothing will actually have synced, then when it eventually catches up it spews duplicate files everywhere because every other box I have OneDrive on has updated since this computer actually synced. And Office doesn't understand that when I save in the ~/OneDrive folder, it goes into OneDrive, so it won't enable AutoSave or sharing unless you do a Save As and save it to the OneDrive SharePoint site it automatically adds.
It's like OneDrive on Windows 5-6 years ago. I know other people that used it, it worked fine at one point, but now it's terrible.
Icon fonts like `Material Icons` are a terrible idea for exactly this reason.
They can also confuse search engines (Try a Google search for "keyboard_arrow_up" and scroll down a few results for instance, Bing too if you put it in quotes).
Webmasters should use SVGs or bitmaps with appropriate alt or aria attributes; but it's easier to just load in a font and hope that it loads fast enough to not cause problems / that the user doesn't override it
I was also kinda liked The New Microsoft and prepared to put my anger towards them to the side (I remember the ACPI memo days). Also, as a grown-up computer user, I got appropriate number of licenses (for every Microsoft application we use) for my family and personal computers.
However, the latest GitHub Copilot stuff, their agreement with OpenAI, return of their embrace, extend, extinguish tactics with GitHub, VSCode and other stuff undone everything.
It's their DNA now. All Microsoft Empire is built with crushing monopoly as their core value and driving force. Changing this requires more than changing a mere CEO and posting a "We Love Linux" banner.
The only really good thing they do is hardware.
Posted from my Debian 11 box using Microsoft Keyboard.
Every company aspires to be big enough to integrate the entire stack and kick out all their competition. Only a few manage to do it.
There was never a new Microsoft. There was only Microsoft when they admitted they didn't have a stranglehold monopoly on PCs anymore.
It's as basic a strategy as anything you'd find in Art of War: When you're #2, cooperate with #3 to take down #1. When you're #1, pull up the ladder so #2 and #3 can't use it.
> The existence of company DNA is a marketing fib.
It isn't - company DNA doesn't always represent positive attributes.
Company culture, incentive structure, priorities and skill-sets are all part of what's given the shorthand "company DNA" (and all are self-reinforcing/self-replicating. Google's DNA makes it exceptional at developing and scaling complex web services, but terrible at product longevity (except for the break-out hits), and terrible at consumer electronics. Apple is mostly the opposite. In spite of all their efforts, both companies struggle to be half as good as the other one in the areas outside of their core competency, because of their respective company DNA.
I recently left Apple and my new company gave me a choice of windows or macOS as my device and I chose windows. I’m not really sure why. But I do have to say after not using windows for 10+ years it’s come a long way. Wsl simply is amazing. Vscode works perfectly with it. The office apps are leaps and bounds better than there macOS counterparts. I certainly have never been a MS lover but I think they are much better now than their 90s reputation.
They are also, very much, embracing Linux. More and more of Azure has Linux underpinnings and we'll see more integration of Linux in Windows, starting with WSLg.
I mean a lot of the Azure stuff is realising that they could either: continue offering Windows Server only and likely miss out on a lot of potential customers but gain some sales of Windows Server, or start offering Linux in their cloud offering. Ultimately they decided to do the latter, and I'd bet that it's the more profitable option.
I think the writing has been on the wall for a while now - Windows (server or otherwise) is no longer considered the money maker - now it's Office and Azure.
Nadella was literally the top Cloud Computing executive at the company before he was picked for CEO.
Yes, but likely they will then "extend" Linux so if an dev is using WSL to develop a linux project you will need to install MS things on your production enviroment, likely in the NET Core world... I am sure this will happen with the full support the Linux Foundation whom they paid off. It will also come by default in Azure I am sure
After they "extend" with MS open source then start to require just a few closed binaries, that is not a big deal right, for the functionality... see VSCode as an example of this in modern times. This likely will be a paid feature unless you use Azure where it will be free...
I don't really see that as much of a concern. If Microsoft announced plans for world domination tomorrow, all I'd need to change in my workflow is which fork of VS Code I'm using.
What kind of EEE do they currently do? Outside of GH, I don’t even see them having any kind of position dominant enough to extinguish anything and GH doesn’t seem to have shifted in any way since MS bought them, they were "value add on top of git" before and are still now.
Why? I mean it's clearly Embrace. But Embrace and Extend are the goals of OSS. MS is a for profit company true. But OSS has never been anti-profit. The last E is problematic of course and MS has a history of going for Extinguish in the past. However I haven't seen any sign of that behavior in the current leadership and they've been doing their thing for a while now. You may not believe MS can change and you may not trust them. But that's a faith statement right now not a fact statement.
I think, Microsoft clearly understands that Linux is not going anywhere, but they can try to limit where it goes instead of trying to make it go away.
Linux has two fronts: Server and Desktop. It's clearly won in server space, in some very important categories.
But, what if Microsoft can make Windows attractive enough, so it can run Linux applications without the Linux desktop itself, and prevent developers from installing a bona fide distribution to their boxes alongside Windows? With this, they can
- Add some proprietary extensions to WSL to keep some dev tools trapped
- Double down on secure boot and key management, citing "We can run these applications anyway, where's the monopoly?"
- Slow down adoption of desktop Linux installations
Hence, push Linux to server space to reclaim the "creative/young" desktop space, and prevent them from becoming irrelevant, and pushing Linux to systems rooms of cloud, so it becomes something like "The real world" in Matrix (the movie)?
I've understood the second E to mean "...with our proprietary stuff". Building OSS on top of other OSS is still just Embrace.
An example of Extend would be building features for WSL that only work in WSL, not Linux proper. So now people become dependent on the MS ecosystem, and lock-in begins; the lock-in is what enables the Extinguish phase.
Hard to say. I think to some extent there would have to be something to 'extinguish'.
At this point, 3d rendering is a bit of a crapshoot; Multi-platform vendors will likely have a pluggable rendering pipeline anyway (i.e. need to use DirectX for XBox, PS4/PS5 APIs, Metal for iOs, DirectX for Windows, maybe Vulkan if they developed on Linux or just want to make it easier to port later).
If I reach in my head, perhaps some form of 'DirectAI' API could limit competition in some markets or force vendor lock-in.
Otherwise, I think Microsoft is in a space where they seem to be pretty OK with; being the #2 in a lot of spaces is still profitable, with the benefit of less oversight regarding antitrust.
The other place I -might- forsee Microsoft doing 'lock-in' is around their developer tooling. By that I mean, they have a lot of cool tech that is a PITA to deploy at scale... unless you use Azure. SignalR scaleout would be a prime example that comes to mind.
I don't exactly see how WSL fits in any "extinguish" strategy. Maybe in regards to desktop Linux? I doubt Microsoft are aiming to extinguish desktop Linux considering its currently irrelevant market share and Windows no longer being Microsoft's bread winner. WSL seems to be more for the benefit of Azure, their real money maker, and backend developers.
I'd wager it started development as an internal tool considering how much of their workforce now works on Azure and the Windows team being absorbed into the Azure department.
I imagine WSL doesn't really affect most Linux desktop users and it really only impacts those that used full-blown VMs for dev work on Windows anyway.
I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market. Both ChromeOS and macOS are more direct competitors to Windows.
Why would they work to extinguish a non-competitor for a product that has taken a backseat from all of their other products? It just doesn't make sense.
> I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux) for work.
I was dual booting Linux. I find WSL perfect for this because I can basically have different distributions with a lot of common tools stored in a windows folder. It’s perfect!
>Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the market.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
How much do you think it would cost to port Office to Linux? How many extra Office licenses do you think they'd sell? Given your estimates of these two numbers, do you think Microsoft would turn a profit off of Office for Linux.
Anyway they've already 'ported' a decent subset of Office to Linux in form of Office365
This isn't helping your argument. Why would they do that? Again, Linux is comparatively irrelevant at 1% market share. It's not worth the cost, which is why most games don't have Linux ports.
I'd argue the opposite... Although I'm changing jobs in a few weeks, WSL2 has allowed for a push towards Linux/Docker usage and a significant uptake for new development. This is in a historically mostly Windows environment... if it weren't for WSL, it would still all be windows.
The shift in open development of .Net Core/5/6 has been nice too. I absolutely love the Remoting extensions/tooling for VS Code as well. I can edit/terminal on remote systems with ease. All of these things have made actually building/deploying to Linux servers a pleasure.
I jokingly say that Windows is one of the best Linux Desktop distros at this point, and there's some merit to that claim. I have the new terminal set to my WSL environment as default, spend most of my time in VS Code using WSL and Docker. Of course, I'm also switching my personal desktop back to (only) PopOS in a few weeks, also bought an M1 Macbook.
I'm not tethered to Windows in any meaningful way, but the water is pretty nice. It's crap like in TFA that causes me to not want to stay in the Windows pool.
GitHub is still pretty independent of Microsoft. Internally it’s a different pay structure, somewhat different employee benefits, finance decisions, and different leadership.
Oh no, not the "potential!" Please, I had completely forgotten that Microsoft owned npm until reading your comment. There's no more "potential" there than any other product/service from any other company, and Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to indicate that they will screw with npm.
For CoPilot, you need a language model, where the current best one is made by OpenAI, which doesn't like to share its stuff.
This is the same OpenAI, which got $1B from Microsoft, and gave commercial licenses to Microsoft to use GPT-3.
Which is the company which also owns GitHub, and also has a platform like Azure, so it can just "lend" GPT-3 and some servers to train the said model on some code, which GitHub clearly has possession of.
So, while they're different, and it's casually owned by the other, this ownership allows them to put one's code and other's GPT-3 access into "good" use.
At the end of the day, public code is public, so license doesn't matter, eh?*
*: CoPilot is trained on all public code containing GPL, AGPL and similar licenses which doesn't allow proprietary use, so it's another ball of hair.
I think they recognize that, but are stating that Microsoft has taken a hands-off approach after acquiring GitHub and that GitHub mostly runs independent of Microsoft, similar to NPM.
I understand the temptation to root for New Microsoft, but we should all remember that large corporations are extremely powerful psychopaths. Anything they do that seems ethical is self-serving, not part of a moral code that they will follow even when it hurts them.
I understand, but disagree with the sentiment... Companies are a collection of different people, with differing actual personalities, including agreements, disagreements and meaningful conflict and negotiations.
To some extent it comes from leadership down, to another it starts at the ground floor. In the end, I think most MS movement has been self-serving, that doesn't make it inherently bad or good. I'm not liking the OS-shift, which seems to be following Apple/Google in a lot of ways.
Of course not. I love New Microsoft's products and customer/dev support. I vastly prefer Microsoft over any other FAAMG. I trust them more and think they're far less harmful than any of the others.
All that said, I don't believe any of this is because of ethical principles. It's because they make more money by being "good" than by antagonizing their own society and customers.
> Companies are a collection of different people, with differing actual personalities, including agreements, disagreements and meaningful conflict and negotiations.
Yes, but as we've seen throughout human history, morals disappear as soon as people are part of a large group. You can participate (and even lead!) while telling yourself that the things you're doing as a group are totally out of your control.
For example, I have a Jewish friend at Facebook who is appalled by their enablement of conspiracy theories, but he still works at Facebook.
If everyone at Facebook who objected to their company's behavior would find another job, I guarantee the behavior would change or the company would collapse.
> I think most MS movement has been self-serving, that doesn't make it inherently bad or good
I guess it depends on your definition of "bad". I have never observed a large corporation take a huge hit to its bottom line in order to stand up for something moral. I don't think I ever will. To me, that's "bad" -- a group of people who exercise an enormous amount of power without feeling that they're personally responsible for the consequences. That's why I described it as psychopathy.
> I understand that these public companies are required to act in the best interests of shareholders
This is not true. Public companies are only required to be honest with shareholders, no more or less. The shareholders are free to invest elsewhere if the don't like how a company is run, or to exercise whatever voting rights they bought with the shares.
That might have been true in the past, but now there are activist shareholders who will try to take control rather than dump the stock and move on to something else. After all, it is their investment, and if they choose to raise their voice then that is their right as well.
Sure they can raise their voice but they're limited in what they can achieve, legally speaking. Especially in large companies with a lot of shareholders. Unless the companies by-laws give shareholders undue influence, which would be unusual.
It's true that activists can make a nuisance of themselves if there are enough of them but they basically have to hope to get sections of the press on their side and for the company to care about that. The risk, of course, is the bad press ends up hurting their own investment.
In short, they have no legal recourse unless the company mislead them in some way.
Are you really this unfamiliar with this or being obtuse about it? Of course it is unlikely that a single shareholder will have enough stock to hold clout, but that's not how these people operate. Just like no one person makes a difference when protesting anything. You find like minded people, gather together, and make your large number of people heard. Sure, it's not easy to get a large enough percentage of the stock, but there are ways of doing it and it has been done and will continue to be done. A recent tech example is how Disney was pushed by its investors to pursue the streaming options [0].
Have you tried playing this out to the end? You're hung up on words like "require" that I, some random dude on the interweb used, rather than actually realizing the intent or spirit of the comment. You think any company receiving negative press is going to just allow that to continue without addressing the concerns somehow? An activist investor/shareholder doesn't just stop with press briefings. If they still feel agrieved, they can attempt to manipulate the board by having their own member installed. From there, they can direct if the CEO even gets to keep their job. As a board member, they have a lot more power.
I feel like you're limiting your imagination on how much power stockholders can have. Some companies are probably a little more resielient against this type of "attack", but rich people play all sorts of games because they feel slighted or bored. Watch the TV show "Billions" if you want some fun fictional aspects, but these stories are not made in a vacuum.
Btw, naming calling does not help you make your case, whatever that may be. Neither does watching a fictional TV show. I'm really not inclined to continue this if this is the level of discourse.
Can you show me one instance of activist shareholders of a major company ousting a CEO via filling the board with shareholder nominated directors? And no, "imagining" it happening isn't evidence of it happening.
If you think the term obtuse is name calling then that's kind of on you. That's not my intent. It's just a word that aptly describes the conversation. Obtuse and ignorant are often misunderstood and taken as name calling when if someone was name calling words like stupid and dumb would be better suited.
Shareholder activism can work. Yes, there are plenty of search results titles that show the activism attempts to oust someone failed. However, I did not pursue further (beyond the scope of your question and lack of willing to search on your own) if the attempt still had a change towards the activist's agenda.
It seems that shareholder activists seem to be disliked in the normal business world, but the normal business world has taken us down some dark paths so I think they can take a hike. Businesses have shown they care little to nothing about the "greater good", but are only concerned about the stockholders. So people have gotten savvy to that notion, and have started to weaponize stock ownership. Just like anything else, it can used for "evil" and it was for a long time with hostile takeovers. Now, these takeovers can have an impetus for good instead of greed.
> I understand that these public companies are required to act in the best interests of shareholders but I fear that the obsessive push for revenue gains only benefits short term shareholders. Long term shareholders get the shaft when every decision is aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next quarter.
Never so succinctly have I seen described the economic problem of the modern age; endless growth for its own sake. Sure, it's motivated by profit, but society and global elites don't act as if there are significant downsides to an investment-driven economy. Rather, it's treated as a virtue, else we wouldn't all be buying into it, literally and figuratively, for the bare minimum of not losing our wealth.
> Halo on Steam
Hah, you don't hear much about Halo anymore. But it's entirely possible you may be able to play Halo on Steam on your Linux machine in the near future. Combat Evolved plays really well on my M1 Macbook through Parallels (even with Anniversary mode, given some settings tweaks) and Reach is playable but drops a lot of frames; if you ever get a Linux machine that runs on ARM then you can virtualize Windows for ARM in a way that blows away any x86_64 emulation I've seen in the past.
Of course most of the work to make that a reality isn't even because of Microsoft besides their compiling of Windows for ARM.
Besides that...
> xbox, windows, office, WSL, VSCode, Visual Studio, hololens, phones, laptops, Halo on Steam, etc.
Honestly, the only decent things you mentioned are Office, VSCode, and Halo, which are all things that just about any other company could have created. Office itself is begging for a viable alternative, but has been effectively grandfathered in to being a necessity for businesses. I mentioned Halo but not Xbox because, IMO, Xbox is an obsolete concept and Microsoft knows this.
There's GitHub, but it's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides to add "plans" for features that are already free as well as forms of prioritization for all things Windows.
I guess I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make besides that I kind of agree with you in the sense that M$ has been less problematic than other Big Tech in recent years. With Windows 11, now I'm not so sure.
Imo their Lumia phones (and the accompanying OS and new UI philosophy) were also something special, and I say that as a hater of those products earlier on (i.e. before I got to know them better). It's a shame that those phones didn't catch on.
Just a side note: I already can play Halo on Steam on Linux with only one minor issue (Proton's conversion of DirectX to Vulkan works almost flawlessly, but doesn't seem to handle single-faced triangles, so the hologram of Cortana in the opening scene looks bad as you see the back of her head transparently through her face).
> but doesn't seem to handle single-faced triangles
Highly unlikely that this is a problem with backface culling, that's too basic to screw up without also affecting countless other games.
I haven't played Halo but if [0] is how it is supposed to look then there is proper occulsion (i.e. depth testing) between different parts of her body. This would also make backface culling only a performance optimization if everything else is working correctly so may have been left disabled.
I suspect it that this is like the usual situation at MS, most employees think this strategy is dumb, but there's that one guy who's still living like it's 1991 and he's got good connections with management, so they let them run unchecked. That's the person who's coming up with such idiotic strategies.
I'm not so sure. It's possible all the employees who thought this was dumb left before or shortly after Windows 8, so all that's left are people who don't care and the incompetent.
> and they weren't called in front of Congress recently over antitrust concerns
Congress hasn't exactly been a hotbed of anti-trust activity over the past 40 years. I wouldn't take the absence of action here as anything particularly meaningful.
Microsoft has all kinds of ways they do vertical lockin, it is not has overt as say Apple, but do not think for a second that the company that promoted Embrace, Extend, Extinguish does not have methods to lock in users
I suspect they will buckle -- but only partially, with an allowlist of browsers blessed with this ability. This will quiet the noise, but will also make it harder for small and innovative browsers to compete, as I doubt Microsoft will build out the processes to become blessed due to cost/benefit.
Probably, but for security reasons the only correct thing to do is remove the ability of Edge to set default browser within the browser.
The only option app developers - including internal Microsoft ones - should have is open some OS settings app in a supported way, but the user has to accept the selection.
It should work like an Android permission prompt. The OS should have an official method for apps to request to become the default (not merely link to the default apps page of settings). The OS prompt should look like this:
Would you like to make <APP NAME> the default app for <APP CATEGORY>?
[No and don't ask again] [Yes]
Any app that wants to become the default (including Edge) should go through the official prompt. If the user has already said no, and the app wants to continue nagging, at this point the app will be able to link into the settings (but not pop up the official prompt).
> I kept thinking to myself "Microsoft is going to boot Firefox from Windows" before realizing that MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to say Apple).
Actually, when it comes to Windows and macOS, Microsoft has about the same power as Apple does when it comes to limiting what software can and can't run on their operating systems.
Defender on Windows works like Gatekeeper does on macOS. Defender gets to decide what runs or doesn't run on a Windows system, using a similar approach to Gatekeeper.
Both Apple and Microsoft require developers to regularly buy certificates to sign the software they intend to distribute to macOS and Windows users, and they require developers to remain in good standing with either company. Unsigned software is treated as if it is radioactive by both operating systems, and macOS on M1 Macs goes one step further by deprecating unsigned binaries entirely.
If Apple or Microsoft want to, they can revoke a developer's certificates, and any app that was signed with them will be prevented from running by Gatekeeper or Defender. They can also choose not to renew a developer's certificates, preventing apps from running when the certificates they were signed with expire.
To 99.9% of users, apps signed with revoked or expired certificates will be portrayed as either being broken or malicious by macOS or Windows.
Which is similar to what Apple does for MacOS (and Google for Android).
They haven't prevented people from installing untaxed software, but they have made it a scary and difficult process for the average user, and made it very difficult for anyone to sell software without giving Apple/Google a cut.
It would be funny if Firefox would warn you about downloading Firefox because it is marked as malware. Would server Mozilla right for letting Google maintain that list, who have shown they do not care about false positives.
Microsoft were doing this for ages... From the NT kernel to the shell. To stay above competition, they have tons of different undocumented APIs they keep for themselves to use, and don't guarantee it to exist or stay unchanged in future. In fact this is the response. Nothing special about this particular one. Developers reverse engineer those, and try to rely on them, all the time.
Every OS and library has some form of undocumented/internal APIs that they don't want users of that library or OS to be relying upon.
Hell, Linux even uses DRM (not the Direct Rendering Manager, Digital Rights Management) to check if your LKM is licensed properly to call those APIs. GPL-incompatible libraries only get to link to functions that are rough equivalents to syscalls.
Calling what you describe DRM is pretty deceptive. Can you get access to DRM-ed materials by promising to share them freely under an open license?
That said I'm surprised by what you describe as I'm struggling to understand how that works -- you're saying the Linux kernel has a secret API, surely one can read the source and/or documentation and find the API details. Or are you saying calls to kernel APIs are cryptographically protected? Could you give details of what this system is called, thanks.
Under the GPL, a "combined work" must also be distributed under the GPL. Given that use of certain kernel APIs requires the inclusion of large GPL'd header files, the kernel developers require that any modules that include this GPL'd code be also released under the GPL.
In order to make it more difficult for developers of kernels modules that break the law by running roughshod over the GPL, the kernel developers decided to only make these available to modules that claim to be under the GPL [10]. Please note that module developers can still easily distribute modules that use the "GPL only" APIs but they have to explicitly state that they are using GPL only code (thereby signalling that any copyright infringement is willful).
Calling this "DRM" seems a little disingenuous to me. Anybody can legally remove these protections from their own kernels without any legal repercussions. Removing DRM protections (in the USA) is a felony that carries up to five years in prison. DRM is intentionally obfuscated and poorly documented. The kernel makes its license clear and obvious.
Under DMCA 1201, this sort of measure would probably be legally considered DRM. All you need is a technical mechanism that controls access to a copyrighted work. You do not need obfuscation or encryption in order to make 1201 claims.
Whether or not GPLv2 precludes a DMCA 1201 claim is still in question. On one hand, the GPL says you can make whatever changes you like. On the other, the Linux kernel module loader is specifically enforcing GPL's share-alike requirement, which is a predicate of the right to make modifications to the kernel. This is the heart of what DMCA 1201 is trying to do: extend copyright protection to software that enforces copyright.
If Linux had been re-licensed to GPLv3, this wouldn't be an issue, because v3 specifically has a clause intended to disclaim any and all construable technical protection measures under DMCA 1201.
The zfsonlinux developers complained a while ago that some API they were using became GPL only and I think they had to write a wrapper in GPL to get around it.
I'm on mobile so I can't give you more details but you can probably find more if you look in that direction
Kernel is GPL, so only GPL modules can touch its internal APIs. For non-derived works, there is a subset of APIs, that are declared to be fine if used by non-GPL code. ZFS had a problem, where they were using something that should not be used (fp in kernel), which got removed and they had to find a replacement, which was GPL-only.
It is also necessary to say, that this is honor-based. Any module declares its license and the linker either allows or not allows resolving a symbol. There are no checks whether the module is really GPL or not, it is to show intent, and if you want to cheat, you must do it willfully, not by accident.
> ZFS had a problem, where they were using something that should not be used (fp in kernel), which got removed and they had to find a replacement, which was GPL-only.
All that symbol did was tell the kernel to save the fpu registers.
It's dishonorable of the relevant kernel developers to pretend that's something relevant to the GPL.
It was more complicated than that. Some architectures do not support that.
And what's more pressing is, that it is an internal implementation details. Preserving it for ZFS would mean that they have to keep internal implementation detail for an external project, that does not care to cooperate!
These two symbols were obsolete for almost two decades. Should they keep them just for ZFS? Or should ZFS switch? If it were GPL project, or better, part of the kernel, it would be already fixed and everyone would go on with their lives.
There were two sets of exports. __kernel_fpu_begin/end and kernel_fpu_begin/end.
The only meaningful difference was that one was marked GPL and the other wasn't.
Removing the one with __ can be justified pretty easily.
Insisting that the ones they kept should still be marked 'GPL' is where it gets ridiculous. Going in and out of FPU mode is not something that makes your code derivative of the kernel code.
it seems quite clear ZFS is not a derived work of the Linux kernel, given it was developed for and extracted from Solaris, and that same code works on FreeBSD and Illumunos
> In other words: it's still very much a special case, and if the question was "can I just use FP in the kernel" then the answer is still a resounding NO, since other architectures may not support it AT ALL.
They do have some control though. If you don't list with their app store they default to accusing your software of being malware and hiding the run button.
This isn't completely accurate, if the app is being seen only in very small numbers the run button is hidden under "More Info" but when Smartscreen has seen your app enough that it can be more confident it's less harmful the "Run Anyway" button is surfaced.
FWIW, on iOS, links from Google apps open up on Chrome if it's installed, regardless of what your default browser is. Apple seems to be okay with that.
Any app can do app specific URLs on iOS to invoke particular apps with content. I would guess that Google apps detect the presence of Chrome and modify the URLs to be Chrome specific rather than generic https URLs. Its ok with Apple because that is a standard supported mechanism on iOS.
As a user who expects all https links to open within my default browser, Google's exploitation of this workaround breaks the guarantees I expect out of the OS.
There are a lot of other "features" that are technically feasible but not allowed on AppStore. This to me should have been on that list.
Good point. Yeah, I don't like it either. Thinking about it a bit more, I share your surprise that they allowed this. I guess they need it for google.com links to make things work together, but Apple could have told them non-google links should be opened in the default browser.
> MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to say Apple)
That's an interesting question. I suppose Apple could refuse to sign the executable, which would make things tricky but could they actually boot Firefox from MacOS?
Do I remember Apple updating XProtect to remove a Zoom component that allowed attackers to potentially hijack users' webcams? I do. Zoom had installed a hidden web server on users' computers that was (a) exploitable and (b) not removed upon deletion of the app. As a result, users who had previously deleted Zoom might not even realize they were vulnerable to this potential attack.
Zoom worked with Apple and updated the app hours later.
You can kill XProtect if you want by disabling System Integrity Protection and modifying the malware signature file.
I suspect Microsoft will modify their undocumented API that they have no obligation to maintain as-is so that it only accepts EXEs in Edge's program folder or something.
My guess is they'll just leave it. You'll have the one-click for Edge, whatever this workaround/RE is for Firefox, and everything else will be the same. Maybe Mozilla will open source this workaround.
Just wait for those "store-only" versions of windows to grow in distribution, then Microsoft touting store policy for not allowing Firefox in the store...
So I was at my parents house some time ago and my mom's computer is for some reason set allow installing software from the Microsoft store only. Nobody knows how that was set, my mom's computer usage is characterized by randomly clicking on things until the website she wants open, but somehow that option have appeared for her to click on.
I've been wondering. What happens if Edge beats chrome?
Chromium is developed by google, and used by Edge. Will google continue developing chromium just to have Microsoft reap the rewards. If not, is google going to abandon chromium? Will microsoft pick up the slack? If so, are they going to fork chromium and develop on the form, or are they going to work on the original repo? What about the chromium name / trademark.
If this goes wrong, what is google going to think of open-source development. If the second biggest (I think) open source application turns out to have been a failure for the company backing it, what is that going to do to commercial open-source development?
Desktop browsing is the minority and shrinking every year. Google will always have more Chrome users on Android than there are Windows devices in existence.
If it goes well enough for Microsoft, I'd expect Google to change the license/stop publishing and Microsoft to fork from there.
The point of the chromium name is to provide a name that's not the general product name. I haven't looked at the license, but I don't think Google can take that name back; but if they do, Microsoft would just change it to something else, no big deal.
Google has already turned their back on open-source development; so much of Android isn't in AOSP, and I don't think it's coming back. Chrome so far has stayed open-source, but whenever it becomes inconvenient for that to stay, I expect it will. Such is corporate life.
No. The Mozilla Corporation is the largest contributor to the Mozilla Foundation, though most of their money comes from selling the default search rights to Google.
No, I think it was "yes but I want to be pedantic about it". If you had just said "Mozilla" the answer is an easy yes. But you made the mistake of specifying MoFo (as opposed to MoCo).
That said, I work for Mozilla and in practice we're very independent. Our user base, small as it may be compared to the past, is still a valuable bargaining chip. We are still very much fighting for an open and accessible Web in the standards arena (where technical and philosophical arguments work well with the actual Google people doing the work, even if the outcome is not optimal for google the advertising juggernaut.)
> Our user base, small as it may be compared to the past, is still a valuable bargaining chip.
Your userbase is not just small, it is shrinking. While initial attrition may have been do to anti-competitive practices by other browser makers (who you could have taken actions against, if you were actually independent of them), your continued loss of even the hard-core userbase that has stuck around this long can only be explained by your own disregard for the wishes of those users.
You might be right. I would probably even agree with respect to certain decisions.
But I'm also doubtful of your and my armchair quarterbacking, especially when it's hard not to bring in a self-serving angle (as in, it would obviously be better to prioritize X, where X is something I really want). Mozilla does a lot of surveying of current and potential users, and evaluates things in terms of maintenance costs that might not immediately be obvious. I'll bet that neither of us would be able to accurately predict all of those findings.
Stories like "...but power users are who are going to drive adoption, so investing in them is clearly the right strategy even if they're a small component of current users!" are intuitively persuasive. But again, someone who has studied the situation extensively is going to know things that we won't. Off the top of my head: "power users" is an amorphous group (and "self-reported power users" only weakly overlaps with "users who depend on advanced features"); the range of things that cater to power users is vast and all over the place; security, privacy, and maintenance concerns are far larger than the "why can't you just..." crowd ever seems to realize. None of which mean power users are unimportant, just that the tradeoffs are not at all clear.
Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. (Well, except maybe about the anti-competitive bit. The time frames of any legal or governmental action on those grounds is far too long, and often far too sidesteppable. Those things are good for dead companies to eventually receive justice, and for the playing field to be leveled out for future companies. The ROI of $1 spent on chasing down the legal or regulatory rathole pales in comparison to $1 spent on development or marketing.)
Which in this case is equivalent to 'if you owe 10k to Bank its your problem, but if you owe 10M its the bank's problem'.
One way or another Mozilla relies on Google remaining its customer for vast majority of money, while Google being their biggest competitor who eats out ever more of Mozilla's market share every year, further reducing any reason for Google to remain their customer going forward.
They've had other customers in the past and present, and could have others in the future. Should they take less money to not take the money from Google?
This idealism is nice but if you remove privacy unfriendly customers you rule out basically every customer and don't have the money to make a browser at all. Behind Google are Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu before you reach duckduckgo who somewhat respects privacy.
If I didn't like to admit it, I wouldn't have clarified that most of the Mozilla Corporation's money comes from Google.
As the other poster mentioned, there's a meaningful distinction between customer and contributor. If Google stopped buying the contract for the default search, someone else would buy it. Like Yahoo did in around ~2014. Or like various other search engines already do in other countries/languages.
Tangentially related, but I recently spun up a Windows VM and used Edge to search Bing for "Firefox" and this is result I got[1].
It's a giant banner that says, "You're already browsing in Microsoft Edge. Keep using to get world class performance with more privacy, more productivity, and more value."
That banner is followed by another giant banner image telling me to get "Get Robux using Microsoft Edge. Join Microsoft Rewards and use Microsoft Edge. Get a 100 Robux eGift Card on us when you search with Microsoft Bing on Microsoft Edge for 5 days after you join."
I had to scroll to even see the relevant search results for my search term. I'm assuming most non-power users won't scroll because they were just assured that they were "already browsing in Microsoft Edge", which is apparently more private, productive and valuable than what they intended to search for.
Ostensibly this is the exact opposite function one wants out of a search tool, obscuring results. For Microsoft to design such an egregious UX for one of their key platforms, the incentives must be staggering. Calling this a dark pattern doesn’t go far enough, in my opinion. It’s outright user-hostile.
The targeted ad banner is hilarious. It reminds me of that scene in Silicon Valley where Dominos appears in a fantasy medieval universe because Dinesh mentions pizza.
Where were they when AT&T joined all of the Baby Bells back together? It was ok because the competitive landscape changed during the decades in which AT&T was broken up. Same here. Microsoft has nowhere near the power over general computing that it once had. What they did with IE back in the day was only a problem because of their dominant market position. Others doing the same from a minority market position would have been fine. Now that the majority of devices are running something other than Windows, it's more difficult to claim Microsoft dominates the market unless you define the market very narrowly, in which case, lots of other companies would also be in trouble.
The only thing that changed was that other companies started doing the same evil stuff Microsoft was doing when they got in trouble, except instead of regulators going after those other companies too, they've... idk, disappeared?
So in a weird way, I agree that it's unfair that Microsoft can't do unfair things while all the other companies are doing unfair things. That puts them at a competitive disadvantage!
They've been shy about it because of their history, but I predict Microsoft will eventually lock Windows down in the same way Apple and Google lock down their operating systems. Or, knowing Microsoft, they'll probably take it as far as they possibly can.
> Others doing the same from a minority market position would have been fine.
So where's the interest in slapping billion dollar fines on Google for bundling Chrome and Google Search with Android? They own the majority market share for both mobile operating systems, web browsers, and search engines.
I guess they probably get away with it because they bundle it with Google Play Services instead of Android, but you could make an argument that GPS is fundamentally a part of Android given it is necessary to provide the features generally associated with the OS. It's not rock-solid, but it's at least a better argument than any of the other big-tech monopoly cases the US has been pursuing.
This kind of stuff has been going on for years as well; it's not something new. I don't normally use Windows, but a few years ago when I got a new ThinkPad I figured I'd have a looksie around with the pre-installed Windows 10 just to see what it's like out of curiosity since I never used Windows 8 or 10, and it displayed all sorts of stuff trying to force Edge on people, including "ads" that just pop up; see [1].
I'm not sure what I find more objectionable: that they're trying to push Edge so hard, or that they feel this is so important to pop up unprompted notifications for it distracting people from the actual work they're doing. I've been using Linux or BSD for a very long time for the simple pragmatical reason it just works better for me, and this sort of user-hostile behaviour only strengthened that.
The difference, I suppose, is that IE/Edge doesn't have the position it had in the past with >95% market share. Both macOS and mobile platforms removed a lot of teeth from Microsoft compared to the early/mid-2000s. Still, the actual behaviour is worse, even if the effects are less bad.
> The whole thing looks super easy for Microsoft to break in a future Windows release unfortunately.
There are more aggressive techniques available that cannot be turned off very easily. TrustedInstaller is the first one that comes to mind. If you cant politely ask the registry, you can always nuke edge from orbit.
I hope Firefox keeps pushing down this route. Make your installation process as inflammatory as possible. I would encourage a "Remove all existing web browsers" checkbox in the final pane of the installation process - Default selected, of course. Give them a proper taste of their own medicine.
Users having multiple browsers installed that they switch between is a good thing that puts more pressure on browsers to improve, and I would hate to see Firefox or any other vendor push the dynamic farther away from that.
Microsoft is using "protected associations" to keep people using Edge, but I think people are forgetting how badly this used to be abused before Microsoft added this feature.
Applications would regularly change default associations without any user notice or consent.
For example, installers would bundle Adware and even Google Chrome (hidden with common dark patters of the time), setting your default browser or changing your homepage.
The issue is mostly one of fairness: If Microsoft played by the same rules as Firefox/Chrome, then there is no issue (e.g. UI pops up, you have to select Edge). The problem is that Microsoft has one rule for them and another for everyone else, then designed an incredibly hostile defaults UI on Windows 11 to make changing it to non-Edge time-consuming.
Yup, the fact the settings dialogue behaves differently if your current browser is Edge is clearly unfair, and Edge has already been doing what Firefox is doing how, and skips the UI entirely by spoofing the signature in the registry that served to protect against non-consensual changes.
The concept of protected associations is only reasonable if you ignore the fact that there will be a default. It is, de facto for many users, making it impossible to change that default.
If it were just unreasonably hard to change default browsers, I wouldn't even care that much. The problem is that it's unreasonably hard to change away from Edge, but really really easy to change back to Edge.
I think it’s less that they block this (as much as us powerusers might prefer them not to), and more that they decided they obviously deserve to be exempt.
It's a really handy utility to force windows to actually use your default browser in spaces where it currently forces Edge. You've probably seen this opening links from other Microsoft products where Edge unexpectedly pops up. Like from MS widgets on your toolbar, some links within MS Teams, etc.
This. Changing the default browser in Windows and the application for *.htm? links is not enough - especially Microsoft Apps just ignore that and call Edge directly.
I recently had to help my parents since they could not login to their email service anymore because Microsoft silently switched the default browser to edge. And of course their saved credentials aren't available anymore. They asked me what they did wrong. I had no other words to say than that Microsoft is literally abusing their position to force them to use something else. It's Microsofts fault and we can't do anything about it. Then I had to video call them to guide them through the anti-patterns when switching the default browser. So, I do like Mozillas behavior and wish Chrome offered the same.
In the end of days, amongst the smoldering ruins, a cockroach scurried over a keyboard and triggered yet another computer to default back to Microsoft Edge. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing left moving but the flitting of black vermin, illuminated by glowing screens filled with the sulky, impassioned, and now joyful gradient blue and green curved wave of the Microsoft Edge logo. It had won. It had finally won.
Unfortunately the US kind of has forgotten. The Bush administration took power and undermined all that anti-trust stuff and it lay forgotten for most of 20 years. The Biden administration is picking up some of it now.
If I was working on the Edgeium team, I would beg the Windows and Bing people to be less heavy-handed. It's a quality product, but the advertising and nudging is souring me.
The more advertised one will win. Chrome is a joke privacy-wise compared to Firefox, but at the moment the winner is Chrome. Also the target audience is important: to the average Windows user, if Microsoft says Edge is best, then Edge is best, and Mozilla has no resources to fight back on equal terms since it's Microsoft deciding what runs on their operating system and what their users read or watch.
That is not true. Public polling indicates that most people do care about privacy, but are unaware of how software tracks them, or when aware, feel powerless to change anything.
I'm sure I have a biased view, but i hear people care about privacy in the same way they care about leaving facebook. They would like to, in a purely theoretical manner, but they aren't willing to change anything about their life to get that effect. It seems like many people only care enough about privacy to click a button.
Sure some people actually remove facebook, but the overwhelming majority of people are voting that they prefer the services offered, even with the tradeoffs. Unfortunate, but seems likely to me.
Software constantly uses dark patterns and even “well-behaved” software asks questions with answers like “yes” (large writing) and “maybe later” as the only no option. It’s completely normalised.
Switching costs! I suspect there is a high degree of knowledge and experience you posses that you are discounting. Most people would need to learn a really tremendous amount to understand what they were switching to and why. Hell, I've got enough know how that I could figure it out, but it doesn't rise high enough in my priority to do.
You might also be discounting people who use their machines to play games with. Although I hear good things about SteamOS, that might push the needle.
In my opinion, switching costs are real and are a problem. I've especially seen it with the elderly.
However, different Windows versions now have not-insignificant switching costs as well. So while I agree that it is a concern, Windows users must deal with switching costs every three to five years whereas KDE users have had to pay those costs exactly once (KDE 3 -> 4) during the almost two decades that I've been using KDE.
This explains why the other day on a fresh Windows install, Firefox set its self to the default browser with just 1 click. Very easy and great especially as the computer was very slow.
Though I will admit, I thought something had gone wrong and it didn't work as it couldn't open the default apps dialog.
I don't understand -- US v microsoft was about literally this, except it was netscape. How do you go through the largest tech antitrust action ever and then just forget.
Why does msft even want their thing to be default? The only site I've ever seen recommend it is the NY DMV, and it was a bad recommendation -- they actually needed IE11.
Exactly. They're not protections. They're strategies to make it harder for non-super-users to change their default browser.
As technical people, it's easy to underestimate just how well these tactics that introduce friction work at making "regular" folks shurg and say "meh, okay, whatever -- sure, I'll use Edge" just because they don't want to repeatedly have to figure out how to change their default browser.
It's one thing to push "protections" on your users because you think you know better and they can't navigate their way around their devices without ruining them. That's the Apple way.
But what Microsoft has done here is push their own product in the name of protection. That's much more malicious. To argue whether it is a protection because they call it one is semantics.
Get back to us with that when it's less of an utterly transparent lie. When, for instance, switching your default handler for .txt files leads you through three dialogs that ever more insistently extol the virtues of MS Notepad for this purpose.
In Windows XP the "set default programs" control panel had a one-click "non-microsoft" setting that would change all default programs to your installed alternatives. It seems like the effects of their 90s antitrust trial seem to be wearing off.
Many here would argue they have less of a monopoly than ever. Even as someone who thinks Windows does and will continue to dominate the desktop for at least another decade, I find that hard to disagree with given the mass migration of users from desktop to mobile.
Keep in mind too- Microsoft is almost at the point of giving windows (as an OS) away for free. Whereas in the past they would charge around $99 for windows (or less per machine to OEMs). Other OSes have forced Microsoft to pretty much give their OS away for free.
From a msft/revenue point of view, Microsoft will now feel less inhibitions with regard to using windows to drive revenue via other Microsoft products.
(Ie Windows will now be seen internally as a “loss leader” product that must drive revenue via other sources such as Bing, edge, office 365 etc)
Outlook and Teams on Android force me to install Edge to view links. I can't even paste links to non MS apps since the plaintext will be a notice instead.
I may be wrong (I am not a lawyer) but I suspect that if Microsoft prevent Mozilla from doing this, Mozilla may be able to win a lawsuit (probably not in the US, but in the EU seems likely) arguing that it is anti-competitive to restrict defaults in this way. See judgements against Google for similar restrictions on Android.
Every time you hear something being done for "security" or "protection", think more carefully about what they're actually trying to protect or secure. That's something I wish more people would do. In this case, it's protection for securing Micro$oft's monopoly.
Wait a minute. Firefox is Open Source; wasn't Microsoft in love with Open Source? (their words)
So it appears they are only when they don't smell competition.
One of the reasons why I'm extremely worried by whatever they're planning to do with Linux.
I'm not holding my breath for Microsoft to 'extinguish' Linux. That's not really how open source works, especially Linux given the sorts of folks who develop it.
They don't need to physically destroy Linux, all they need is to offer something similar with the Microsoft name attached to it. Communities and hackers may ignore it, but businesses will always see it as a better choice.
Still no problem for die hard enthusiasts, now, but say one day 75% of Linux developers are employed in companies where they work only from a Windows machine under WSL, using VSC and possibly some closed blobs nicely donated by Microsoft, that day the penguin corpse will be already cold.
Based on how you didn't even recognize the acronym, [c|sh]ould you perhaps consider the possibility that there are more things between heaven and earth that you don't know about?
That was unnecessarily condescending. At this point you're asking me to accept that MS is going to EEE Linux on no evidence other than a personal attack and some numbers you made up off the top of your head. I'm sure you see the issue here. Onus is on you to prove the point, not for me to blindly accept it because I didn't know what a business acronym meant.
I expect that Microsoft won't like this and they will patch it.
Even if Firefox does this with good intentions, malware creators can follow Firefox's example to do the same. Since Firefox is open source they only need to copy the code from the repo.
TFA seems to say that Chrome and others don't yet do it like Firefox does. If this really turns out to be an advantage watch the others copying the reverse-engineered code. I assume you could look it up in the Firefox repo now?
I think it's very likely Firefox want everybody to copy them. This is a fight best fought with everyone against Windows, and it's no particular skin off Firefox's nose if Chrome is also easy to use: since Chrome is basically the default non-Edge browser, everybody choosing Firefox is already aware of Chrome and has decided against it.
If Microsoft's concern is default app hijacking by malicious players, why isn't there some sort of app-signing process to provide programs the better API?
This is particularly frustrating, yes. I think I'd actually prefer it if applications could not make arbitrary changes to system/user defaults on their own. I've had problems with this on Windows, when I've needed to use it, but also on Android, and even desktop Linux (Chromium in Debian sid currently, rather bafflingly, seems to make itself the xdg-open default even with $BROWSER, Gnome's default browser setting, and x-www-browser all set to Firefox).
But to ostensibly create central, user-controlled methods and restrictions for setting defaults to prevent unwanted default changes and hijacking, and then actually use that space as an advertisement for your own products (Are you sure you want to change away from Edge? Have you tried Edge? Do you want to switch back to Edge? Microsoft recommends Edge!), while exempting your products from the restrictions, completely destroys the point of those controls, and any respect people would have for it.
This might not be an issue for default apps, but there was a time when websites and toolbars abused setting the default homepage, so I have mixed feelings about this. It also improves the user experience if you use two browsers because when Chrome reminds me it's not the default, it's harder to accidentally make it the default.
Meanwhile, Firefox released version 57 that killed most of their extensions and add-ons. Then it imposed terrible changes to their UI that you can't change with the new extensions. Want tabs below the address bar? Too bad. Github now has numerous projects for re-vamping Firefox's userChrome.css because its UI is THAT bad. And now there's Proton. I'm sure there's someone out there that likes it, but I haven't heard from anyone who does. Want to turn it off? Too bad. Mozilla thinks they know what's best for their users and seems incapable of internalizing any criticism. If Firefox is so great, why would so many calories get burned creating Waterfox? If Mozilla were really doing a great job with Firefox, giving people what they really wanted in a browser, they wouldn't need to be quite so concerned about Microsoft's shenanigans. If it were a great and wonderful browser, people would want it and do what they needed to do to install it. This is not an argument that what MS is doing is okay; it's not. But after everything Firefox has dished out over the last few years, it's just difficult for me to feel too sorry for them.
So when FF reduces customization by changing the extension system they are bad. When they let you customize the UI ad-infinitum through userChrome.css it's because, "its UI is THAT bad.". Right, got it, FF bad. Some of the devs who have worked on the FF extension system over the years both before and after the changes have blogged about why they had to do what they did, https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addo..., are security and maintainability difficult to grok? FF is large and has had to live in an increasingly hostile web for a very long time. As for your reasoning about why there are alternative browsers and ecosystems, it's simply not good. One of the main reasons people work on alternative browsers is they like making things. This is evident everywhere in Free Software/Open Source, where there are options for almost every part of every stack.
Your point that extensions to modify the UI vs. userChrome.css is well taken, but I would argue that it's apples and oranges. I did a poor job of explaining myself. I'll attempt to elucidate and apologize if I do a poor job again. My argument regarding breaking extensions was in the context of allowing users to modify the browser's UI/UX to their liking.
Installing an extension is a common practice performed by many people who possess little-to-no "computer skills." (for lack of a better way to put it.) Just about anyone can search for an extension, perform a few clicks, and install it. And this used to be a popular method for those who disliked UI changes Mozilla foisted upon them so that they could easily return to a UI they enjoyed. Unfortunately, the UI modifications that can now be made with extensions are minimal. Users are encouraged to modify userChrome.css instead. While this may seem trivial and perhaps preferred by some in the HN demographic, this effectively takes it out of the mainstream. Most users are not going to find their FF profile folder, create a chrome folder (which doesn't exist by default), and start coding css to make their browser look different. Nor are they going to have any idea that there are projects on github which would provide solutions for them. But let's say, for argument's sake that one did go to the trouble. Would you like to move the tabs below the address bar? Good luck with that. And then watch your css no longer work when Mozilla makes further changes making your modifications ineffective. There is one project that does manage to move the tabs below the address bar but it leaves a blank area above the address bar where the tabs would be. Mozilla has dug in on their tab bar dogma, user preference be damned. We're seeing it again with proton. It seems to be universally reviled, but guess what: you're gettin' it whether you like it or not. Want to use your operating system's printer dialog box instead of FireFox's incomplete and buggy one? Too bad.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1322589?page=2#a...
I also understand that people create derivatives of open source projects as an intellectual pursuit, which is wonderful. However, I used Waterfox as an example. Indeed, Waterfox appears to have begun its existence in much the way you describe. But fast-forward to now, on their website's main page, they trumpet their tab bar thus: "Fan-tab-u-lous - Everyone likes to use their browser in a specific way." And indeed, in the preferences there is a simple way to set the position of the tab bar. Why would that be so hard for Mozilla to do in Firefox? Why? They also highlight, "Limited Data Collection," "No Telemetry," and "The most extension support of any browser." Do you not think it safe to infer that this may be their current raison d'être and how they would like to differentiate themselves from Firefox?
Yes, I know there are alternative projects. My criticism is directed primarily toward the Firefox UI team. It is a mystery to me why an organization that expends so much energy and money marketing itself in an attempt to get new users, regularly angering its existing users to the point where they want to bail. This article is nice explainer: https://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/its-cheaper-to-keep-em.htm...
> Meanwhile, Firefox released version 57 that killed most of their extensions and add-ons
Palemoon supports older addons. Even has a archive of all the old FF extensions on its homepage[0]. I never needed that many addons though. I can't live without uBlock Origin though. It should ship with FF IMHO
Imagine how many decisions were made similar to this at the cost of smooth user experience. This is why windows or any MS products will never be my favourite because user experience takes back seat mostly.
Gmail performance is pretty horrific, for what it does. It used to be even worse (twice as much memory and CPU as Youtube according to about:performance), but they've improved a bit since then.
It was once unusually fast on FF right after google shortage a couple of month ago. Everything I click was instant, never had those kind of experience.
Now I feel like it's slow on both. There might be a priority issue but I doubt its slowness is FF only.
Fun Fact, if you go to Settings -> More Tools -> Math Solver, Edge has a built in math tool that will solve for equations in the browser window when highlighted.
Microsoft's statement on this: we are implementing customer feedback to customize and control defaults at a more granular level, eliminating app categories and elevating all apps to the forefront of the defaults experience.
More granular control is nice and all, but I don't buy for a second that it couldn't be behind some "advanced" button. I think the most probable explanation for removing the app categories is a calculated move to steer people towards Microsoft products which have access to backdoor internal functions to change all of these automatically.
I do remember how bad things were back in Windows XP days when every random toolbar would change all the associations. I don't wish for that experience to come back for non technical users either. Microsoft could perhaps look into allowing digitally signed apps to change the associations automatically (a single summarizing OS confirmation prompt might be wise), and non-signed apps would have to instruct users to manually change things.
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/22630319/microsoft-windows-11-defau...