some things I've noticed: Mobil Safari seems to be using the search bar to hijack my google search (Particularly for locations which open in apple maps)
Although I'm mostly linux these days I went to install an alternative browser on a windows machine (using edge to download). I mentioned this in another post, but edge seems to watch for "chrome" or "firefox" downloads and politely reminds you that 'Edge is a great browser with added "trust of microsoft"' (A company who happen to be watching when you download a web browser).
Apple are experts are experts at creating these patterns that fall just at the edge of being classified as anti-consumer, to the point where you frequently find heated discussions about whether they are.
Battery throtteling on the iPhone 6s; The sandboxing / sideloading discussion; The no-iCloud experience; The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better; How unauthorized Apps on MacOS must be opened with a right-click.
Safari suggestions are also a great example: So far, I like them in iOS 17, since they can also provide direct links to useful sites such as Wikipedia. But don't doubt for a second, that taking traffic away from Google was the primary goal here.
Microsoft isn't so smart. Most users, including non-technical, can see through their attempts.
Don't forget making SMS in unreadable neon green (to the point that it violates Apple's own accessibility guidelines https://archive.is/4nSWV)
"iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones" -- an actual quote from the SVP of Software Engineering in charge of iOS, revealed in Epic Games v Apple court discovery
Of course, if you really cared about green bubbles, you'd switch to Android because there you can adjust outgoing message color to your heart's liking :-)
The color thing is an urban legend. Original iPhone chat bubbles were green pre-Apple having an alternative to SMS. The messages icon is green. For some reason Apple thought messages should be green.
But the argument does become a lot weaker unless they changed the shade of green after introducing iMessage. If it stayed the same, then it's just the design they chose from the beginning.
Also worth noting is that the color only applies to sent messages. When you receive a message, it's just gray in either case. It makes a certain amount of sense to let the user know which transport their outbound message went on since it will affect your expectations.
It may just be that I happen to have my reading glasses on right now, but both of those are easy to read.
But let's run with that for a moment, and assume many people do in fact find that more difficult to read. I still have trouble calling that particularly hostile given that it's sent messages, received ones are the same color no matter what.
I'm more open to the green vs blue argument than the old-green vs new-green one. Apple definitely wants you to know you're using iMessage. It just happens to be useful for me as a customer, too -- I'm glad it's prominent when I send a text message instead of an iMessage. It aligns my expectations for what features will work in the conversation.
I caution against relying on your own senses when designing for accessibility. I can tell the red and green buttons apart just fine, but I'm not colorblind. And even if I were, there's multiple kinds of colorblindness - and of vision disabilities in general, from dyslexia to astigmatism.
For small developers there's checker tools and simulators, but Apple is huge and has a responsibility to get this right.
I know a person that can only see red clearly, so he shifts colors in the iOS settings to a red tint. Green icons shifted to red work fine, but what doesn’t work are the health and music icons which are white on red. Applying the color shift in iOS just turns these into red squares. This stuff is hard to get right. For him it’s better to not have single color icons with no outlines, but that’s the trend today. You might think less detail in icons would help accessibility but that’s not always the case.
Most accessibility problems aren't things that those without some sort of sensory disability (beyond mild long-sightedness) can detect easily - at least, without using tools to do so.
Surely though there is some sort of "accessible" mode you can put it into that does improve the contrast?
They kinda did just not immediately. iMessage was introduced in iOS 5 pre-redesign. It used to be black text on a lighter green. With iOS 7 they moved to white text on searing green.
From my memories of that UI design shift, nobody cared much about text messages in particular, because we generally hated all of the flattened, vivid color and white text graphics. But it's been a while, maybe I'm misremembering how annoyed people were. That was when we lost skeuomorphic design, as I recall, which some people were/are very attracted to.
You know, I've always noticed that iMessages were blue and SMS were green, but I've never found one more or less legible than the other. To me the fact that they are different colours is nice.
I worry this a subjective matter, i.e. if the colours were reversed some people would make exactly the same complaint.
The actual argument really should focus on whether phone providers should use some interoperable standard more capable than SMS. If they can't come to consensus then the telecommunications regulators should involve themselves and force one.
For those not familiar, on an iPhone the green background only occurs on the messages the iPhone user has previously sent, and not those they have received from others. Also, whilst they’re typing, they do not have a green background in the text box. However, that said, to my eyes, the green background does indeed make it slightly harder to read what you’ve previously sent compared to the blue backgrounds of iMessage, or the black on light gray of received messages. But it’s slightly less of a problem to me because I generally remember what I’ve typed well enough to give my eyes an advantage.
What am I missing here? In iOS 5, it's black on blue vs black on green. Now it's white on blue vs white on green. Contrast between text and background looks the same to whether green or blue.
In general, Apple has lowered contrast throughout the UI over the years. There's an accessibility setting for high contrast if you need it.
Green has higher luminance than blue at equivalent saturation. The values for SMS and iMessage background colors are, respectively and in sRGB, #00CC46 and #0080FF, corresponding to relative luminance values of 0.436 and 0.227 according to the WCAG 2 formula.
With white foreground text, this gives a contrast ratio of 2.15:1 for SMS and 3.79:1 for iMessage. WCAG 2.x AA level compliances requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and at least 3:1 for large text.
Thanks! If you have a calculations workflow already, what would the contrast ratios (even if approximate) be for old iOS? To a human eye it truly looks like SMS got way worse whereas iMessage stayed around the same.
The pre-iOS 7 graphics have black text over a non-uniform background color as compared to white text over a uniform background color. This gives us ranges instead of a single value, but even in the worst case, black is a vastly more legible foreground color:
To my eyes, the green/blue doesn't make much difference in terms of legibility. I obviously find the reduced contrast throughout iOS annoying and keep increase contrast turned on.
It's worth pointing out that Apple has some of the best accessibility options out there. There's an "Increase Contrast" setting that increases the contrast for SMS messages.
Yes, one could argue that the default should provide high contrast for everyone, but once this setting is enabled, it effectively becomes just that going forward for those that need it.
Apple products seem to require more and more tweaking of the right settings to be usable. I'm dreading the day I have to get a replacement MacBook and have to tweak all my settings again.
I also Have no trouble reading text messages from Android in IOS. not sure what people are talking about. I still think its wrong to distinguish between the two platforms as it points to anti-competitive behavior. Apple does other things that are way worse.
The stuff Apple does is even more blatantly anti-consumer than their competitors. The difference is that Apple have fans who will defend them, in a way that Microsoft, Google or Facebook don't really. It's the reality distortion field, not Apple being better at straddling the line.
This. Observed this so many times here on HN, its not even funny. The restriction on browser engines on the iPhone, the so-called "app-tracking privacy" feature, etc. Apple fans will defend all of this to the death.
> The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better
What do you mean by this? I have an iPhone but don't have airpods, just "regular" BT headphones. Under windows, they're hit or miss (sometimes they don't reconnect), but they work pretty well under iOS and mac os. They work best under linux (!), especially since it's the only one to support LDAC (though I understand some non-sony android phones may support this now).
So, if somehow apple came out with a way of making BT headphones work even better (what do they do better?), I don't see why you'd hold that against them. Should they not innovate just so that the competition doesn't get upset?
In terms of unique OS-level integrations:
Airpods are not paired with a device: they're paired with your Apple ID. If I pair the airpods with my iPad, I can seamlessly switch them to iphone, to Mac, to my Apple TV. They'll even auto-switch if it detects you've stopped using your current device.
Airpods automatically try to pair with a nearby iphone when opened, if one of your own devices isn't around. All of this is through a pretty fancy UI, just for Airpods and Beats
But is there a way of making this work with regular bluetooth headphones? AFAIK whey you pair them, the HP will remember the device's physical address, so the random apple devices you may have would have to present the same address to the headphones. Hell, this doesn't work on its own, even between a Linux and Windows install on the same PC. You have to manually move some connection information between the two to get e.g. a mouse working in both.
So if Apple figured a way of bypassing this limitation, it's really not clear to me why that should be considered "bad", even if it's clearly better than what the competition does. It's on the bluetooth standard to do better.
Or is your point that apple should have standardized the protocol they use to make this happen?
Very often when Apple decides to go in its own direction, you can criticize them for not improving standard ways of doing things instead. File transfers, contact sharing, etc.
But with Bluetooth I believe Apple is right to forge its own path. The standard is convoluted, built on old methods, still cannot pair two buds in a sane manner, and can’t provide enough bandwidth for Apple’s uncompressed format.
I expect Airpods to leave Bluetooth behind sooner rather than later.
I don't have any particular problem with this feature existing, it helps me as an apple user. Though I can imagine a standardized protocol would be what the OP of this thread wanted.
To connect regular bt headphones, you must go to Control Center > Hold on Bluetooth > Hold Bluetooth again > Select the headphones > wait > tap once to exit > tap twice to exit > swipe up from the bottom.
AirPods are always accesible via the AirPlay-menu, which is prominently featured in many media apps.
Again: still fine, but just bad enough to partly influence my next buying decision.
I don’t think this is a case of Apple crippling non-Apple headphones but more a case of Bluetooth being pretty limited.
Either way, the user experience is still better than on Windows. Whenever I start up my PC it steals my headphones, even if I’m currently listening on another device (or worse, making a phone call). I’ve searched online and it seems there is no way to switch this off. The only solution seems to be to manually unpair or disable Bluetooth after using it.
But that's how bt heaphones work everywhere, right? I have to go and manually pair them.
But once they're paired, they connect automatically to my iphone, and I can select them easily from a list when e.g making a phone call, though they're usually selected automatically when connected.
No, this is for connecting headphones that are already paired but disconnected. For my Sonys I had to do this every time I activated them, because I use them with multiple devices, and its not guaranteed that they connect to the right one.
Some headphones support connecting two devices simultaneously, which is great... unless you have 3 devices :)
Anyways, if I was Apple, I would have added paired headphones to the speaker menu.
The W2 chip or whatever it’s called, inside the AirPods, allows it to detect the closest “known” (not “paired”) device when it’s removed from its case, and if it’s not the one that it was connected to when it last went to sleep, then the headphones will avoid automatically connecting to the device they were previously connected to on last use, instead going into an implicit “trusted pairing” mode that allows the first known device to express an audio intent to become the BT auto-pair + auto-connect device.
You can’t do this with a regular Bluetooth audio device that doesn’t have the W2 chip, because according to the Bluetooth spec, you can only be paired to one device at a time; there is no separate concept of “known” devices; devices that auto-connect stay auto-connected on sleep+wake; and devices that connect (therefore devices that auto-connect) must stop announcing themselves as available over BT discovery. (BT is essentially a protocol state machine — a device can be either idle, in pairing mode, searching for its paired device to auto-reconnect, or connected, and none of these states can overlap.)
These are all limitations of the audio device, not of the host OS. Limitations required for Bluetooth conformance! Apple can only work around these limitations by having the device and host both run a completely separate, second discovery protocol over completely separate hardware, that just forces the BT hardware into certain states as a result of its own negotiation. They can’t magically make audio devices that don’t have a W2 chip do this out-of-BT-band negotiation.
Nope. Google's Pixel Buds have first party integration with a custom UI to connect them as soon as they're out of the box. So are Samsung's Galaxy Buds, and both of these use regular Bluetooth.
I have this issue sometimes. If switching doesn’t work automatically when my Bluetooth speaker is turned on it’s not an quick option to select them.
Apple has a “select audio out” menu thats on a lot of music and video apps. It shows “Apple airplay enabled” devices and makes switching easy. If it’s just Bluetooth it’s harder (you have to go into setting…)
BT headphones are certainly less reliable at auto-switching, but that process you're going through isn't the norm for me. I just click on the output menu and select my Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones if I want to use them instead of my airpods. I don't have to pair them every time.
Apple first party devices have proprietary H1/H2 chips that supplement the Bluetooth stack and enable easier pairing, audio sharing, spatial positioning, etc.
That only works if you use two Apple devices together. You don't get those functions with other Bluetooth on a Mac, or using Airpods with an Android. It doesn't really make that big of a difference IMO but it's there.
> Apple are experts are experts at creating these patterns that fall just at the edge of being classified as anti-consumer, to the point where you frequently find heated discussions about whether they are.
I argue that they are blatantly anti-consumer, but have created a brand identity association that causes people to pretend (and argue) they are not. Try using an ipad without handing over your credit card details. Even google is better in this area.
This is one of the ways I can tell what preconceived opinion someone has. The only problem with the battery throttling was PR. The engineering solution was correct and objectively better than not throttling. Should they have told users their battery was failing? Sure. But keeping the phone from crashing was better than letting it.
> unauthorized Apps on MacOS must be opened with a right-click
Then try to run it from the command line. Be told that it "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". This is NOT the "is an app downloaded from the Internet, do you wish to run it?" dialog.
Go to Finder, and double click it. Get the same message.
You have to go to Finder, then right click the app, specifically hit Open (which will open a terminal that will immediately exit), and only now can you run this app in your original terminal.
Interesting, thanks for the link. I've never run into that before. I've downloaded a lot of software, much of it open source. I've only downloaded from the Mac App Store maybe twice ever. But this is the first time I've gotten completely denied. Is it because it was a zip file with an executable inside, rather than an installer? Or as someone else mentioned, because it isn't signed at all? Are all the open source projects paying for signing certs for their OSX installer packages?
Again, thanks for the link. That's probably the only time I'll run into that, it clearly isn't my usual use case, but I'm glad you could back up the assertion with something I could see for myself.
I do agree that it should be clearer how you can run the executable if you really do trust it.
> Then try to run it from the command line. Be told that it "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". This is NOT the "is an app downloaded from the Internet, do you wish to run it?" dialog.
Yes, you get the “developer cannot be verified” error if the code isn’t signed. Which is perfectly fine, I don’t see how this is anti-consumer.
It’s $99 for a code signing cert (per developer account) on macOS/iOS, which I believe is less than what they cost on Windows.
Yes, but the dialog doesn't tell you what to do if you do want to run the code. Why would I think that clicking "Open" in the popup menu would do anything different from double-clicking?
Also, an individual Microsoft Store cert is $19 (one-time, not per year), and a company account is $99.
So what? The average user is going to assume that it can’t be run (which is a good thing, as we don’t want people to run random unsigned binaries they find on the internet), and the tech-savvy ones will find a way.
It’s not like Apple is stopping you from running it. 1 quick google search and there you go. It’s a good design, in my opinion.
The average user has no need whatsoever to run unsigned code on macOS. Or on Windows for that matter, but code signing on Windows doesn't really matter as nobody reads those popups anyway.
Many of the Apple-related concerns fall squarely within the definitions of anti-trust laws. The problem isn't that Apple toes the line so much as no one cares to enforce the line.
Google seems just as bad tbh. The only browser I have installed on my phone is Safari but when I click links in YouTube it always asks which browser I want to open the link in. Safari or Chrome.
No I don’t want to install your shit browser on my phone Google. Kindly frick off.
It is a difference for Google to advertise their browser on their properties (eg Youtube) versus Apple hijacking the search bar of some other browser, and in general not allowing third parties to provide full browsers in the Apple App Store (and not just a shim which mandatorily has to use Safari behind the curtains)
I don't want Apple's shitty AppStore on my iPhone. I'd like to replace it, but I can't because Apple doesn't think I should be able to install apps that aren't approved by Apple. They can go fuck off as well.
The issue with iPhone batteries was one of communication — what they were doing, they still do, as do all smartphone manufactures, because it’s just a downside of lithium batteries.
> the no-iCloud experience
What?
> The way regular Bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work better.
I… I don’t see how this is apple’s fault. Bluetooth, as a standard, is obviously limiting. Apple, making both headphones and the devices that play audio, had an opportunity to offer a better product to their customers if you use other apple devices. That’s fine, and I would argue, eminently reasonable. I just don’t get what you’re driving at here, would love to hear more.
The reason I like apple is that, in vague general terms, their interests as a company often align with my interests as a consumer.
Yes, you can argue that apple has made changes in safari detrimental to google for business reasons. But shit, I’m happy about that. The less data my phone silently sends off to google, the better.
Maybe I’ve just fallen for their ploy, but I do actually really like the apple products I own (and I often try the non-apple alternatives because I love tech). No company is perfect, and I know they aren’t my friend or don’t care about me. But until I feel apples interests diverge from my own significantly, I’ll find alternatives.
Heh. I can't blame them for doing this, but not telling people what's happening (and why) was the big mistake.
People generally want their gadgets to be as lightweight as possible, cheap as possible, last as long as possible, and be reliable. There's tradeoffs in balancing those. eg: overbuilding the battery to make the device run longer in the face of degradation adds weight, size, and cost. Somebody has to make a call on where the balance should be.
What nobody really talks about in the context of device longevity is wear levels in the onboard flash. A battery replacement or three doesn't extend that clock. It's pretty good but it doesn't last forever. This is more of an issue on devices with smaller amounts of flash storage with a lot more storage churn.
One nice thing HN has taught me is that I should be wary of anti-Apple claims like this. Inevitably someone comes along to add context or explain what's actually going on, and 9 times out of 10 it turns out that Apple's solution wasn't unreasonable at all.
Which isn't to say that things like the 30% app store cut is entirely defensible, though you can certainly make some halfway plausible claims in that direction (based mostly on how retail works, especially at the time iPhones were invented). Or sideloading. There are legitimate gripes. But a lot of crap spewed regularly on HN turns out to be exactly that, crap.
You can always find a reason to defend any feature. In the case of this article you could say it's more seamless to open Outlook links in their browser. And that's exactly what Microsoft's PR says.
But for some reason Apple's fans are way more insistent in defending everything and sticking to the PR department's arguments. No criticism is allowed to stand.
I find that more often than not, the anti-fans are more strident these days than the fans are. What I like is that there are some knowledgeable fans here on HN that don't just retort with "nuh-uh!" whenever a critic levels some sort of unfounded conspiracy theory at Apple, but actually explain what is going on. They provide context, documentation, and important details that seem to get lost when the only discussion is emotional.
HN isn't perfect, but it's so much better than a lot of other online discussion forums these days.
Shipping a device that will overheat and reboot when the device is a couple years old and fixing it by silently throttling the device isn't pro consumer either
Those devices really should have been recalled or offered a generous trade-in value to account for the fundamental design flaw
It has nothing to do with overheating. It is battery ageing. The internal resistance of a battery increases as it ages, leading to brownouts when peak current happens.
The throttling feature still exists in iOS. All that’s changed is that you will be made aware that it’s happening and you can switch it off if you prefer a brownout when your battery is degraded.
Other manufacturers are happy to let your handset reboot, it could lead to another sale for them. Some would call that planned obsolescence.
> It has nothing to do with overheating. It is battery ageing. The internal resistance of a battery increases as it ages, leading to brownouts when peak current happens
yawn Why my 8 years old Moto XT910 eat the battery like cookies but did not reboot? It's battery wasnot only old, but swollen a bit, it's USB port was damaged so sometimes the charge didn't actually happened... but it still could survive a couple of hours with enabled radio and GPS, serving a navigation app with 3G updates? And didn't reboot?
I’m not sure what answer you’re looking for here - each system is different. Design, manufacturing, usage patterns will all play a part.
When batterygate happened my wife’s phone was throttled but mine wasn’t. She didn’t care and never got the battery replaced but she definitely would have upgraded sooner if it was rebooting.
Are you saying that Apple use different battery technology to everyone else? Or what is your point?
It was a rhetorical question, yet a Jobs' fanboi couldn't resist, see the neighbouring comment.
> each system is different
Except in that part it's pretty much the same. Or your battery, even discharged, can keep up with a full load from a CPU, GPU, WiFi and GPS modules eating amps, or it couldn't even when it's fresh.
If at 3V your battery couldn't power the system then you shouldn't show 3V as 30%, you should show it as 0% and adjust %/V curve accordingly.
It's simple, it's about momentary load in amps, but "only some iPhone 6S models manufactured in September and October 2015 had suffered from a battery manufacturing defect" yet millions of iPhones were slowed down ~~totally not beacuse Apple needed to sell the next iPhone~~.
And as an anecdote - even after the years of abuse, the last time I used my XT910 it was literally showing 10% when I enabled the radio so I could receive a SMS from my bank on it. I really expected it to just shutdown (because enabling radio means data too, so all that bullshit rushed to update their things and using data => more power draw) and for me to be stranded in a remote city without money. But not only it did survive that, it kept chugging for another 4 hours, with radio disabled, ofc. *shrug_emoji*
> Or what is your point?
What people would eagerly drink any Koolaid what would make them feel entitled or standing out. Which most Apple fanbois vehemently deny.
NB: there are people who just use iPhones/Macs/whatever and don't engage in defending 'their favourite brand', of course they aren't fanbois.
This is a low quality comment not fitting with the discussions we try to have on HN. Please stop trying to call people fanboys for no reason.
> yet millions of iPhones were slowed
Citation needed. Only handsets with degraded batteries were slowed, and only after the first brownout. Replacing the battery brought it back to full speed. This is the main point people don’t understand. Every phone got the software update. The feature still exists today. But not all phones were slowed. My iPhone 11 will slow if the battery degrades.
If they wanted to sell you a new phone, was that the best way to do it? Couldn’t they… have just done nothing instead? Like the other manufacturers? Instead of prolonging the life of resetting handsets?
I had one of the early generation 17" MacBook pros that ended up with a swollen battery. And when I say swollen, I mean the case eventually split in two and was about 1/2" taller than it was originally.
Granted this happened because glue in the battery was compromised by excess heat because Steve Jobs preferred heat over the sound of a fan, but the machine never rebooted or shut down due to heat or decreased max voltage.
I haven't actually seen Google specifically call out that their devices will be throttled in a year or two. I'd be curious to see thatif you have a link though, I haven't kept as up to date with the more recent pixel devices.
Anecdotally: a while back while I was running a long build in termux in a warm room with my tablet plugged in to charge, I got a notification that my device was being throttled to prevent thermal damage. I wouldn't be surprised if this was common I haven't gotten such a message since, however I also don't have a habit of building software on my tablet (I have a vague memory that whatever it was didn't offer a cross compilation method outside of qemu/emulation)
> most devices are designed with a commination of passive and active cooling
Smartphones with active cooling? You must live in world that's very different from the one I live in.
Also, as mentioned in other replies, your whole point about "overheating and rebooting" is a straw man. Throttling was introduced to address battery aging. Again, a problem that affects every device with rechargeable batteries.
> Apple just has a history of prioritizing design asthenic and they're willing to push the limits on thermal regulation.
Device design is always constrained by the current technology. It isn't impossible to make a phone with current battery tech that doesn't overheat after a year or two of normal use
Apple just pushed design to far and underestimated the cooling/heat dissipation required
Heat had nothing to do with it. The internal resistance of the battery increases as it wears out, lowering the peak output current.
Increased heat when operating near the current limit is a symptom, not a cause. Adding a fan or a chonky heatsink to your iPhone wouldn't magically raise this limit.
I don't believe I ever said heat was the cause, if I did I misphrased my point. Excess heat was absolutely the symptom, but it was a symptom of a design that was pushed beyond the limits of regular operation.
A two year old lithium battery under normal use will hardly degrade at all. Any design that pushed the limits so far that a degredation of a few percent over promised and under delivered. In Apples case it could be remedied with a software update, but that doesn't mean the device held up to the original performance claims over a standard life cycle of device use.
The phone didn’t overheat. That’s just the point. The options were either the phone slows down to keep the phone from shutting off when the battery got weak or the phone shuts off. What was the other alternative?
You keep mentioning cooling / heat - this is the first I’ve ever heard of this in relation to batterygate, and in fact the first I’ve ever heard of any battery “overheating” (generating more heat?) as a result of a normal ageing process - where are you getting this from?
My understanding was that the concerns were related to degraded batteries having a lower voltage potential.
The hardware and software were shipped with performance optimized to the initial voltage curves of the battery. Once that voltage curve decreases slightly the device will either reboot when the processor attempts to run at a higher clock speed than the battery voltage can support, or the battery can technically keep up though begin to overheat as the operating voltage is a higher draw than the battery can safely handle.
Dont get me wrong I'm not aware of any concerns over the phone actuary catching fire like that one generation of Samsung years ago, but the degraded battery would either lead to reboots or excess heat.
Apple gets away with some anti-competitive practices that is mind boggling. On iOS, their own app (Apple Maps) can draw a large custom notification for their turn by turn navigation but no other apps is allowed to do the same.
> The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better
bluetooth headphones work to the best of their ability on Apple devices. Apple invented a better technology for their own headphones to improve problems inherent with bluetooth. I’m struggling to understand how improving upon a flawed technology is anti-consumer? Apple devices still support bluetooth, and Apple headphones work with non-Apple devices over bluetooth.
Not long ago I couldn't read an SMS message on iPad without enabling iMessage service first. Not sure if that is still the case. But that felt anti-consumer as I didn't want to use iMessage, I just wanted to use SMS reading functionality.
This is because the "search with Google" feature is not actually provided by Terminal, it is a service[1] provided by Safari. Other browsers could easily provide their own service, but I haven't seen any that actually do.
You can see and configure all available services by going to the app menu in the menu bar and selecting Services -> Services Settings
Thanks, appreciate the info. Strange though that the services make zero mention of who is providing them.
And really Apple should have made a generic service using the default browser, rather than this being a Safari provided thing. I guess the OP's "edge of anti-consumer" theory has some merit.
> The way that regular bluetooth headsets work fine, but AirPods work even better;
I think this is one thing a ton of people don't realize. Apple doesn't want to sell you individual devices. They want you to sell an entire electronic ecosystem that serves all of your technology needs and seamlessly integrates all of it for you.
It's why they put effort into things like handoff, copy & paste on iPhone/mac, AirDrop, iCloud photo sharing, et al. Sure there's a profit motive in having you use all their stuff, but they really do make a genuine effort to make things work together better than disparate devices, companies or manufacturers do.
I still have to use a private channel in Signal to share things like pics or links from iOS/OSX/Windows because there just isn't a good cross-ecosystem app that I've found. Discord and slack sort of work, but they're not E2E encrypted like Signal is.
WSL2 in Windows means you can just run a Debian underneath and launch a non-snap Firefox from there and have it appears in Windows.
Now you get the benefit of Windows power management (and that beautiful laptop battery life) but a web browser Microsoft isn't going to mess with.
This sounds hilarious were it not the way I actually work.
PS: I'll also mention that VSCode from Windows to WSL2 + Debian is a mind-blowingly wonderful thing, I don't know how it works but it's near magical as a dev environment when you need a full Linux but like having battery life.
Linux has never been this, and likely never will be. On any hardware supported fully by both, Windows will always have better battery life. Back when I was a thinkpad user, i'd literally live in a vmware workstation linux VM on windows, and THIS had better battery life than linux natively on the same thinkpad.
I don't know what you mean by "supported", but the HP EliteBook 845 G8 (amd 5650u) I'm typing this on has noticeably better battery life under Linux than Windows. Ditto for its cousin with an 11th gen i7. They get around 5-6 hours on Linux, and around 4 on Windows. Windows also likes to spin those fans while sitting around doing nothing.
Oh, HP recommends Windows 11 (tm) (r) (c). Both worked 100% from day 1 on Linux. But both laptops had issues during the first year under windows (no webcam on the amd, boken external screen output on the intel), so maybe they don't qualify as "supported by both".
Support is a funny term anymore. Who is supporting it?
I have a pair of ASUS VivoBooks that BSOD on Windows every third or so boot with the NVMe they shipped with. That is the supported, manufacturer shipped OS.
On any Linux distro I've installed they run without issues. They also pass any diagnostic I have tried.
Battery life wise, some laptops I have get better battery life on a Windows install, and some get better battery life on a Linux install. Very hit and miss here.
I have a lenovo laptop that gets 4-5 hours battery life on Windows and about 70 minutes on Fedora Linux.
I suspect part of it is due to some incompatibility with the nouveau graphics driver, but it's not been a big enough problem that I had to solve it yet.
That is not true. Maybe it is your experience but it is not universal. And you have to look at that particular device you used. Depending on the distro you most likely will have to do additional configuration to enable different power saving features on Linux.
From the Thinkpads I have seen and used (last one in 2023) I haven't yet seen one that is "fully supported" out of the box on Linux and all of them required some degree of tinkering.
> Thinkpads I have seen and used (last one in 2023) I haven't yet seen one that is "fully supported" out of the box on Linux and all of them required some degree of tinkering.
Yes, that is my limited experience with Thinkpad as well.
This don't ship with Linux and are not Linux Hardware. They're Windows hardware.
You’re comparing an OS with a specific device. In the union case (Asahi Linux on MacBook), the battery life is much higher than 3h. Not yet 13, but soon should be close.
Let's hope it will be close. MacBook has twice the battery capacity as a run of the mill thinkpad. So 6h of battery would be the default I expect. More than that, and I will be impressed.
Note that I have been using Linux for 20y. And I fully accept the short battery life in exchange of the tooling and freedom I get with Linux.
This is what i experienced as well. 3h on light battery use. After having read every how-tos and used tlp, auto-cpufreq, powertop, ...
I hate to say it, but, for me, it is the price to pay to not have to deal with Windows anymore. I'm on Ubuntu right now, but have tried with other distros in the past. YMMV.
Battery life of hackintoshes never was that impressive or was it? But if you want apples to oranges instead, then even in its very basic, hacky state linux on that macbook gets 8-10 hours:
That's pretty good indeed! I don't like the keyboard layout (I want my delete key!). But that's a minor inconvenience compared to how good the machine appears to run Linux.
I had a Lenovo p15 running fedora for a while and got 6 to 8 hours battery life whilst working which was approx. the same as the original OEM windows install. So it might be a case by case situation.
This hardware does not exist, or at least it's exceedingly rare. something most folks miss is that the OS supports the hardware (though for Windows it's more the drivers than the OS, but I digress), but equally (and perhaps moreso) the hardware supports the OS.
Modern hardware is full of code (almost always proprietary), in ACPI, in EFI, in the EC, in all the devices. You cannot (without significant engineering effort) make the hardware support both OSes equally.
It's actually gotten a lot better in the last 3 or so years. Especially with power-profiles-daemon. I think it's pretty much at par with windows at this point. Assuming you are running an up to date kernel.
> Windows power management (and that beautiful laptop battery life)
Is that sarcasm? I never had good battery life on a laptop running Windows. Linux has always been superior to me in that regard (maybe if nvidia optimus is at play?).
In this case Windows is the only sane choice (at least based on my experience from 2 years ago).
After a lot of reading random docs, I got to a point where I could stop the GPU from eating the battery doing nothing, but I could only disable/enable it by logging out then in. It was either no GPU at all or a GPU drawing maximum power, no in-between.
Maybe Nvidia's latest code releases will help with that?
I've only had an Nvidia GPU laptop for 2 years so no experience of using older series of drivers, but Nvidia's 5xx series of drivers work great on my T460s running the latest Mint, drivers installed using the Ubuntu driver tool.
Secure boot works out of the box, prime render offload works without a hitch (and no need to log in/out to switch GPUs), battery life is ballpark similar to Windows.
On my thinkpad, arch install squeezes 9 hours after 7 years of use.
On a dell XPS I'd get about 13 hours with the gpu disabled and display set to 1440p instead of 4k. Sure you might say "but I need my GPU and 4k 15'' display" to which I reply eh maybe but I don't.
My ThinkPad running linux gets absolutely fantastic battery life with the exception that when I close it and put it in my backpack, I have about a 25% chance of discovering later that, while closed, it turned the screen on and and ran the fans at full speed to kill the battery because it was, I don't know... bored of being in a bag?
I've noticed once in a blue moon, my thinkpad will get the screen state reversed if I close and open it too fast, interrupting the standby sequence. I wonder if its bouncing open in the bag?
Mine's a 4th gen X1 carbon with an ancient Antergos install from 2016 that I converted to normal arch after they closed the project. i3wm, probably some thinkpad specific tweaks from the arch wiki but the machine is so damn stable I rarely think about it.
Definitely not physically possible in my bag. I've chalked it up to the fact that linux desktop environments are just a total hodgepodge of weird components with unclear responsibility boundaries that couldn't possibly handle all the edge cases properly when you stick them all together. This leads to stuff like the fact that if I suspend my laptop with an external monitor connected, but then un-suspend it without that external monitor connected, I'm often presented with a lock screen that I can't actually interact with, forcing me to either seek out a monitor or switch over to text console to log in and kill my session.
Incredible. Can you post your configuration? On my XPS15 that's about 4 or 5 years old, I can get max 2.5 hours with the GPU disabled and 1920×1080 resolution.
I didn't do anything special.Years ago the xps15 had some issues installing linux, there was a git repo with a special post install script to get the drivers sorted. Dell fan control can be weird but this was many years ago at this point.
I have a normal ubuntu install, I use the i3wm to reduce general load. Resolution set to 1440p with xrandr, no scale adjustments.
GPU disabled, totally on intel graphics.
My xps is about 4.5 years old right now, I have replaced the battery when it started to swell slightly, the replacement was salvaged from another and even worse, so after a year I put the original battery back in.
I honestly think the biggest thing is a tiling wm. Any time I go from full gnome to i3wm, my battery life gets an instant 3 hour bonus.
Big ole note, because of the age and battery degradation, i can squeeze about 6-7 hours out of with if I limit myself to a single firefox window and text editors. When it was brand new, 13 hours of normal use was totally doable.
I got fed up with trying to run Fusion360 on Linux, no longer had a Mac, and reignited my long disused Windows installation recently. Updated and restarted. Looked around for WSL, nothing. Searched online, loads of blog spam of mixed helpfulness, no way of telling (for me, new to it) if they were v1 or v2, no basic information like they're talking about Ubuntu but is that a requirement? What changes if I want x? Looked in the app store, ..stuff yes, including 'Arch WSL' for example, but is this right? It seems to work, but really, I'm supposed to install something third-party?
I assumed it was just something that was there built-in by default, but apparently not? Probably is if I first go start run regedit and set Computer Computer Windows HKLM Software Windows Windows Linux Software WSL enable to '2', right? Easy.
It is 10 yes. I glossed over a few steps as 'updated and restarted' - I actually spent an entire day trying to enable secure boot and (as required in order to) upgrade to 11 and then recovering from fearing I'd bricked it. (GPU doesn't support it, I now think (beforehand had no idea that even might be an issue). Motherboard then wouldn't revert to integrated graphics even with the card removed.)
I really can't fathom how any technically-minded professional gets anything done with Windows - nevermind SEs - it just feels constantly in the way. And I'm not a die-hard Linux (nor Apple) fanatic, I grew up with Windows, it got me into 'computers'. It just seems like an uncontrollable (as in literally, operator not in control) mess compared even to macOS to me now.
(I also really wanted to like it coming back to it - I thought with WSL surely that was going to take the Unixy strength of macOS and far supersede it as a when-I-can't-use-Linux device. But so far, egh, nevermind that I think the hardware's great, I think I'd pay the Apple tax just for the OS.)
Maybe I'll try again to upgrade if the integrated graphics support it.
You blame Windows for all these issues around Secure Boot, then you need to be equally annoyed at Apple for how "not easy" it is to run Linux on a Mac with a T2 security chip and disabling System Integrity Protection...
I wasn't blaming Windows for it being difficult as such, though for requiring it I suppose.
Macs ship with SIP enabled and it's easy to disable, I don't know what the (comparable) issue is there?
Again, not that I'm at all an Apple/Mac fanboy, I've had one personal Apple device (2013 Air) and a couple of work MBPs since. If anything macOS could be credited with moving me to Linux. Before it I only really knew Windows, but now I'd say 'Linux is what you make of it, macOS is just about manageable, and Windows is what it is'.
> Macs ship with SIP enabled and it's easy to disable, I don't know what the (comparable) issue is there?
I generally use a Mac too, connected to Linux systems, but from the last time I disabled Secure Boot on a PC, the process was press F2 for Setup, go to the System tab in the BIOS, and uncheck Secure Boot, Save.
It's not particularly harder than a Mac: Restart in Recovery Mode, Launch a terminal, `csrutil disable`, Reboot.
> though for requiring it I suppose
Just like Mac "requires" it? I guess I just don't see how this is a "Windows sucks compared to Mac, let alone Linux" thing.
I was trying to turn it on, not off, because it was required for Windows 11 upgrade. That involves going into the BIOS, being perplexed by key generation options and obscure acronyms, trying my best, ending up with an unbootable computer, and having to remove CMOS battery and short a couple of jumper pins to reset the BIOS (battery pull alone was insufficient).
A non-technical user could disable SIP, though they'd never need to; good luck to them upgrading to Windows 11.
Newly requiring it on upgrade when it's hard to do and hardware may be incompatible anyway isn't great IMO. It's not really protecting anyone from anything, because it just leaves them unprotected in exactly the same way on the older OS. As long as they don't brick it trying.
During the last 10 years or so I’ve gradually been using less and less Windows. Used to do everything on Windows - now at home, it’s only for gaming and I’ve been dabbling with proton to hop off the sinking ship. Due to some proprietary windows tied software, I have to use dualboot at work. All development work is and has been done on Linux for a good while.
Don’t want to support WSL - due Microsoft being Microsoft, mediocrity and smoke and mirrors to leech on your telemetry. Am waiting anxiously for the moment to cut off the final ties with Microsoft OS.
What is the benefit of doing this over simply installing Firefox on Windows? After you download the Firefox installer, you're done with Windows "messing" with you.
The Windows Firefox will be removed by an enterprise security suite forced upon you from your IT security. Or bogged down by antivirus. Luckily for us, 99,99% of those corporate security and IT drones have no idea what you can do with wsl.
What security person in their right mind would remove firefox as a security threat? In my opinion you can make firefox drastically more secure with adblock and tracking blocker addons and better default settings. You'd have to be totally unconcerned with actual security to force everyone into edge. Or maybe there are some draconian incentives at big-corp's that I haven't seen yet.
I leave few things on Windows as Microsoft have opinions, and then OSQuery gives IT admins opinions.
I prefer as few outside opinions on what I run as possible, so I only leave Chrome and VSCode in Windows and everything else is in Linux.
I had run Linux for years, but whilst I still have Linux on desktop machines I leave Windows on my laptop as it truly gives me 8-9h battery life and Linux only gives me a matter of a few hours tops.
I think people have started using “dark pattern” to mean any UX decisions they disagree with.
There is a hugely substantive difference between this feature being on by default and say, making a ”reject tracking” button in 2 point grey font. Dark patterns are primarily things that if presented equally would result in a different decision which often go directly against the users self interest.
How do I get this to happen? I turned them all on typed in an address, hit return, hit the button on Google and it opened in Google Maps. I'm on the latest version of iOS.
It's the "safari suggestion" feature. As you type it does a sort of auto complete. For me it was a restuarant name, that "safari suggested" and put at the top of the browser window above the google results. I think the trick is happens before the return is clicked. I was on the go and trying to work fast. I turned it off as a user suggested.
I am baffled by this thread. Never seen any such behavior. Just enabled Safari suggestions. Looking up a place on Google, clicking Maps, Google Maps opens.
I am not sure whether to be against this feature because I cannot get it working... Is it an US only feature or some magic combination of other settings is required?
Maybe you don’t remember when Google started inserting its own maps at the top of location searches in place of the top-result: MapQuest. Probably a good 15 years ago.
Turning something on by default and then making the user drill down three menu layers to turn it off is equivalent to that scam where you're walking through Rome and someone hands you a flower, then demands five euros for it. If you're involved in writing software like that, then congratulations, you're a con artist.
Some feature that appears from nowhere, enabled by default, changes you workflow to draw you attention to ecosystem owner. Feature that you have to do a search to disable it.
I wish they would label that section of the results (would have given a hint to what it was). The google search results are labeled and appear below those unlabeled suggestions.
It feels a little sneaky to me (like having to go to settings to turn off the a"subscribe to apple music" in the music app..)
gmail app on iOS refuses to load a link from an email in Safari. It will monthly ask you to confirm if you want to load it in Chrome. If you stick with safari it will load the site in an internal safari webview, requiring a second tap on the bottom to launch in the real safari. Can break some magic link login emails.
This is encouraged and is a step in the right direction of discouraging app developers from implementing their own web views which can intercept the traffic.
I really don't like to use Edge, and I don't like imposed changes, however if you read the article, it says that it can be turned off, or am I missing something?
"Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that."
Like android playstore notifications. You can turn them off sure. But you'll keep getting the notification that reminds you to turn them on. You only have to say yes once. But it dutifully asks you again and again if you say no to something.
These things have become so yawn to me these days.
Yes, you're missing the fact that the user ALREADY set the default browser to something other than Edge, and Outhouse is now going to ignore your declared preference "for your convenience".
The fact that it does it at all is the issue. Someone wrote code that literally is watching for users trying to download another browser.
You usually download a browser just once, so turning if off isn't the issue. I suspect some of less technically inclined might abide by it and not download the new broswer.
It almost seems like trial run for stopping the download. I can imagine "clippy" popping up an saying "I see your trying to download a browser, I'm sorry, I can't allow that"
The code itself likely comes from Google, not Microsoft. You can open Chrome and go download Edge/FF, IIRC, it only shows if chrome is the default browser. At least it used to a couple of years ago.
Yeah I've complained on here about that as well. I'm not sure what they think they're doing but that made me want to stay as far away from Edge as possible. They really think they're going to win me over by creepily watching my downloads and popping stuff up the whole time I'm in the process of installing it?
No, they know you hate it. They know we all hate it. But there's enough retired dads and old grandma's out there to more than make up for us. People like us have been saying things like this for decades, if they still don't understand how we feel then it's willful ignorance. They know we hate it and they don't care because it makes them money and that's the only thing that matters in the world anymore. I'm all for businesses businessing, but god damn I guess all the low hanging fruit got picked and now they have to keep stepping on ever increasing numbers of faces to get ever higher for their shareholders and portfolios.
no, no, no.. it is not "retired dads" strawmen.. control of the installation process is a feature for management and security. It is not "nice" to say it in public apparently.. you the computer operator are not in control of the machine you are using. Your employer and their security people are in control of the machine that YOU are using.
never mind putting people off edge, they risk getting sick of outlook! If my company had a product that was deeply embedded and collecting massive amounts of detailed information about the inner workings of so many companies across so many industries the last thing I'd do is risk scaring them off my product by making it more annoying. The insights MS must gain from the data they pull out of outlook (and office in general) is worth a hell of a lot more than an increase in edge users.
To be fair, you trust Microsoft to be your OS. Installing another browser means that there are now two parties that could be malicious or hacked (distribute a compromised update) rather than one.
FWIW, I run Firefox on Debian Linux and an open source browser on Android as well (so no Safari hijacking going on either), but I can see valid logic in their statement ...even if they might not themselves have considered whether this is true before using it as marketing
I don't think it is Linux per se that is better as open source software. It seems to support a much more competitive market, which is something that busines seem to shun in their never ending lust for growth. And there are good checks and balances for open source. Just consider what happens when a project becomes too arrogant: if a new independent project isn't spawned, one based upon their existing code base will.
>Canonical already did that, when they dropped Flatpak support to force people to go through their "Snap Store".
You mean not installing it by default? This does make sense for me personally I never had good experience with flatpacks or snapped desktop apps. Snap CLI tools worked great for me on server.
Then your install instructions start with "first install Flatpak".
This is unacceptable for an end user program.
If you use the "Snap Store", you're imprisoned in a walled garden and subject to arbitrary decisions by Canonical, Inc.[1] They also take a cut if you charge for an app.
And is Flatpack so hard to install?
I use not flatpacks and probably many are like me, why should we get 10 different package managers installed because some minority wants it's prefered one pre-installed.
Anyway I was right, it was FUD, you were referring about not beeing installed by default. Can you maybe do a self-diagnostic and find out why you spread FUD? Would it be nice if I would do the same about Flatpack or your distro? (Do not respond, just analyze this and maybe realize you can be better)
> Mobil Safari seems to be using the search bar to hijack my google search
Unless you are referring to the search field on google.com, it is not hijacking’s your google searches. It is suggesting actions based on your input to the url bar.
I was introduced to the following concept[1] some time back, and I can't help but think it gives a very reasonable explanation as to why everything is a subscription these days.
Windows is just full of hostile, anti-user patterns these days. I've considered building a windows box just to have a gaming rig multiple times over the last few years, but every time an article like this or their crusade against Chrome reminds me that Bill Gates is still the same anti-trust monster he was in the 90s.
Google has an equally annoying crusade against anything that isn't Chrome. Visit google.com with Edge (on desktop) and you immediately get a popup on the top right "Google recommends using Chrome. Built for Windows. Easily search on Google with the fast, secure browser". As if there was any material difference between the browsers.
We need a comeback of antitrust enforcement with teeth to get both Microsoft and Google to do honest competition, instead of backhanded methods.
I'd say it's far better because messing at the OS level is straight out evil.
On Firefox I can stand the suggestion to use Chrome when I use google, I can even block it with uBlock, but haven't really bothered to.
Now, when they keep tweaking my OS settings, and use every upgrade as the excuse to reset my browser settings over and over, then I get mad. When I get ads on my start menu too.
That's why I don't use windows anymore.
I agree in general but Google has done things like let YouTube be slow in non-Chrome browsers or “accidentally” break GCP logins or Meet for months at a time.
TBF internal sites break on firefox for months too. People foocus on Chrome outside too, I think it's just that the mindset of coding against the standards and tracking all the version rollout for multiple engines is gone now that many "browsers" are just chorme reskins.
You can also block such things in your OS. It requires more expertise to modify machine code rather than obfuscated HTML, but in the end, it's cosmetically altering software to make it look the way you want it to.
Equal levels of 'evil' either way, to me
If they had gone out of their way to add DRM specifically to the pop-up (detecting div deletion for the web version, for example), that would be more evil, but such things aren't being done for showing browser advertisements (might come as a side effect for Windows licensing, but one who chooses to employ licensed software naturally invites that)
I like that they do that for Windows for ARM too (admittedly niche) but can't be bothered to produce a native ARM Windows port of Chrome (you can get Chromium though) so the experience is just absolutely dreadful.
Which company? You can run an unsigned .app on Mac with a ctrl+click, and there's also a system flag to change the block to a click-through popup. Apple is generally good at providing hidden flags to permanently turn off nanny mode, with a few exceptions (the context menu translation feature will happily tell you that a language isn't supported instead of letting you use Google Translate).
I think maybe they are referring to iOS, where you can't install any software not on the app store, and all non-safari browsers are required to use webviews instead of their own engine.
> Visit google.com with Edge (on desktop) and you immediately get a popup on the top right "Google recommends using Chrome. Built for Windows. Easily search on Google with the fast, secure browser".
You make it out as if this is only done by Google. The same company that tries everything it can to make you use Edge on Windows also tries to make you switch to Edge on their site. Google is perfectly entitled to do what they want on their site, Microsoft however takes it to a whole new level - which is par for the course with Microsoft.
"Experience AI-powered browsing with the new Bing built-in. Get comprehensive answers and summarized information side-by-side in Microsoft Edge"
I discovered a fun one yesterday; downloaded google drive for desktop, wasn't able to sign in, got an "unknown error". Search for it, try all the solutions, delete gdrive cache, reinstall, reboot, etc. Started to think it might be registry related (I had done a bunch of weird stuff to the storage recently), then it ocurred to me to try the login flow through chrome instead of firefox.
It worked first try.
I don't think they explicitly broke it in ff, just that they don't test on anything that isn't chrome, which results in these nice side effects.
How about enforcing direct control about Microsoft business? Not just another “low” fine in the ten to twenty billion range. Just stopping Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Enforcing AT&T to not enter any new business worked well. In consequence we got UNIX, C, open-source and documentation and finally the TCP/IP-stack of BSD, GNU and Linux. This had a positive effect for the complete computing industry and society. Reagan relaxed all rules, allowed AT&T to split up - the results were bad. No IT company had to fear any regulation afterwards, either politics didn’t want regulate or didn’t understand computing at all.
We don’t need this companies with too much power using incompatibility, vendor lock-in and storing away our data (the newest approach).
Chances for regulation Europe seem a little better? Less lobbyists and less tax money involved and people don’t believe in capitalism. Too late (10xtimes) and too little but at least they react.
You probably could do that for some parts but have to control the interaction. For big integrated parts is is probably easier to control them as howl?
A mere split up will lead to “baby bells” and the bigger one will just buy others - and centralize again.
PS:
We should remember that Microsoft was able to destroy Nokia with an installed CEO (Stephen Elop) of their own. Killed the already shipping Linux smartphone. Installed Windows Mobile and Nokia was finally dead. Nokia itself did mistakes before but from outside this was questionable?
While what you're proposing is probably in the spirit of antitrust laws, the actual effect would be the US perceiving this to be an "economic act of war" not unlike the economic sanctions they have been dealing out lately...
That "region" is a very big market. So that is not really an option for them. On the other hand large parts of the economy and government in the EU are totally dependant on Microsoft products and would be screwed if they would pull the plug.
IMO, abandoning the EU would be fatal to MS, not exactly because of lost revenue but because of second order effects. But I didn't want to put my opinion on the GP post.
Munich itself is weird case. There some smaller municipalities which have done better with Linux, lower-saxony and the police and the recent switch to Matrix of the Army.
Regarding Munich:
Three competing IT-Departments! Repeat, three. An own special distribution. They didn’t migrated all applications (either do it or not) and a lot of stuff was always done on Windows. Finally Microsoft moved a headquarter to Munich and solved it with “tax money”.
Rumors say that the reverse migration to Microsoft itself was also “bumpy”. Let me guess, three IT-Departments?
The former major of Munich also gave an interesting interview about the “experience”.
They wouldn't abandon the market, they'd just introduce a complying version for Europe like N or K versions in the past. That way they can continue to screw everyone else.
Not to defend in any way his past stances against Open Source, but Bill Gates has nothing to do with today's Microsoft choices.
About the Windows gaming machine, you can surely build one just for gaming; just never put any personal data on it, never use it for surfing or doing anything that is not gaming, never give it any unfiltered access to your LAN, assume it contains malicious software then put it on dedicated Ethernet port on the firewall, setting up rules that allow only very restricted storage sharing so that it can't read or write anywhere but directories set up to contain exclusively what one would want to be readable/writeable by that machine.
Yes, it's a nightmare, but I don't see alternatives, save for giving Windows the middle finger for good also wrt gaming, which might end up easier than expected given the recent development with Proton and DXVK.
Gates set up the (toxic) culture that continues today, and still provides high-level input. Definitely has something to do with their choices in the same way Jobs still does at Apple.
You've basically described my plan for a windows gaming machine, but these days I'm thinking it won't even be needed. I think the steam deck has shown that linux can run plenty of games without much issue. I'll start there at least and if that +consoles isn't enough for me I'll go down the road of turning a windows machine into a locked down game console.
> That is on iOS, on MacOS they allow other browsers and respect the systemwide defaults.
Why is that in any way exonerating? Most people do most of their actual computing on their phones now, it is not an irrelevant toy platform. We should be more, not less, hard on Apple than Microsoft for pulling this shit on their mobile platform.
Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users.
Its a psychology trick that took decades of marketing to pull off, but they are deeply entrenched as someone's identity. These users have a religious devotion and will defend them, because an attack on Apple is an attack on them and their group.
If you don't care about a corporate in-group, you are most likely wanting a quality computing platform. Which is why people are so hard on Google an Microsoft when they restrict computing.
This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.
>Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.
That is just the bare minimum. Its 2023, every phone is like this.
Anyway, any teenager can tell you what its like to have the wrong kind of bubbles. They are extremely susceptible to in-group bias. Heck I wore Abercrombie and American Eagle, it wasn't because the clothes fit.
I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.
At some point, its denialism to think in-group bias doesnt exist. Not that someone exploited can easily admit to it, its far too difficult to imagine your brain being incorrect about something. Much easier to say things like "they are reliable and consistent" than to accept that marketers have exploited us.
> I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.
Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way. People do the same thing about cars, shoes, clothing, alcohol, zip codes, etc. The only upside is that it lets you very quickly identify and avoid them.
In the messaging case, it’s important to remember that Google is currently funding a huge lobbying campaign trying to get governments to restore the market position they gave up a decade ago. SMS messages have been green on iOS since the first iPhone – and shortly after the App Store launched most people were using Google Chat since everyone using Gmail was on it and it even federated with other XMPP services. Google spent the next decade pushing users away with a bunch of poorly conceived and executed attempts to lock users into their proprietary system. Only after those failed did they start picking up RCS, but most of their catch up with iMessage work has been proprietary extensions which help sell carriers on Google’s Jibe cloud service.
I like the idea of open protocols but Google is acting out of self interest and I have no doubt that they’d try to lock things up in a heartbeat if they think they could get away with it.
Let them park for their own PR, and we can talk about more open alternatives.
>Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way.
Oh yeah its not a Apple thing, its a human thing.
Apple takes advantage of that weakness in humans and reinforces it with their marketing. I personally don't have the ethics to take advantage of people who are class insecure, but Apple stepped up in the tech space.
Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and its fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute. If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.
> Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and it’s fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute.
Yes, that’s the claim but it’s glaring how it’s an emotional position presented as a given but completely unsupported by any evidence and bears a striking resemblance to a competitor’s PR campaign. If this was true, it’d be easy to point to things like ads or marketing material disparaging SMS users – not to mention some effort to extend this outside of the United States where apps like WhatsApp are far more popular.
> If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t buy phones (or computers) to “compute”. If you look at an Apple ad, it’s full of people doing things like creating photos or videos, sharing moments with their friends, traveling, etc. – that’s what they’re selling and the repeat purchase rate suggests most people feel like they are getting what they were promised.
I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed or part of some weird social club but you might want to consider why you need to justify your preference this way. Most iOS users are buying something which they find useful and you’d be far more successful in your advocacy if you focused on what tangible benefits normal people are missing out on. What you’re doing sounds insecure, not persuasive.
>I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed
No, we learned this during my MBA. Apple is basically 50% of your marketing classes. I'm not sure you want to call academics incorrect here. They were spot on, they knew you'd come to apologize. Your identity is wrapped in Apple. An attack on Apple, is an attack on you.
Meanwhile I hate google and microsoft. I'm agonistic and trying to find anything better. Heck, I even think Linux isnt great for consumers given all the USB issues I've had.
Do Apple fans complain about butterfly keyboards, international high stakes security breaches, and holding your phone wrong? Or do they rush to Apple's defense. Weird you don't see people doing that in Google and Microsoft threads.
Exactly. The power over iMessage is in Apple’s hands. Yet Google, with their RCS push, have not made something open-source were they have less power than Apple.
Google doesnt control RCS. Its a general format. Apple could implement RCS. At most, they are a loud voice. Any phone can adopt it.
This is completely different from a closed imessage that cannot be adopted by others. Not to mention, imessage has been pretty anti-consumer with all their security problems, inability to accept high quality video, etc... None of this is good for the consumer.
What is good for the consumer is that the color of the bubble are different, this is important for status seeking individuals who want to be part of the in-group.
Back to the parent comments, RCS is better if you want a computing device. iMessage is the best if you want to buy your way into an in-group.
Google does control the proprietary extensions to RCS they use to try to catch up to iMessage on security and features. The developers of apps like Signal, etc. have been asking for access for many years but Google chose to exclude them as they try to build their user base. Similarly, most of the carriers in the US haven’t actually implemented it themselves - they’re just paying Google’s Jibe subsidiary to host it for them. This is not open in practice even if there’s a theory where it could eventually be open.
I don't think it makes sense to confuse the preferences of teenagers (a market group who, overwhelmingly, don't buy their own phones) with adults. In other words: the fact that teenagers prefer the same kind of free devices as their friends have is not particularly strong evidence that adults make purchasing decisions based on just chat bubble colors.
I'm in that group. I like the "openness" of Android more. But the iphone 7 gifted from my mother is still supported while the samsung i bought in 2019 is not anymore.
I don't really care particularly about the icloud/imessage ecosystem but all close people around me have iphones (the network effect was not the primary reason for the switch).
>This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment.
This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Likes this post.
Yeah, there isn't anything going on beside out-group cope. Really glad most plans have unlimited text these days. Having spam texts where the person I'm communicating with just parrots what I'd just typed with the words "Liked this" would have driven me insane back in the days when you only got a thousand texts for the month.
> "I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop"
All you have to do is search HN for "linux laptop", look:
"newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872
Reply: "With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022."
"I have a slimbook pro (the model before the silver keyboard) and sadly I am very unhappy with it, I got a fairly maxed out version and it's fans are always on full blast and I have found no way to keep the power management under control except throttling the CPU - so it is constantly overheated, suspend is not working properly and the chassis is not strong enough so the fans stall unless you have it on a flat surface. [...] Still I will keep buying these things.. eventually someone will figure out how to make reliable laptops that align with the ethos of free software. I've researched system76, puri.sm and also lately the way too expensive MNT reform, but really the only laptop people seem to be happy with is thinkpad x220 / x230 which came out 12 years ago.... This makes me sad. I would pay a lot for a super sturdy laptop which works (and aligns with the free software ethos)." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729
NB that they say what they want is 'super sturdy which works' but their actual behaviour, and the market signal they send, is they pay a lot for an unreliable and inconsistent piece of junk, knowing and expecting it will be that way, and that they will keep doing so indefinitely as long as companies keep making them, and as soon as companies make a good thing they will stop buying. Hmm.
> People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users.
Since you're projecting onto people, I'll provide a counter point in that I dislike Android enough, the hardware is often of poor quality, support for updates don't last very long, OEMs install unremovable software (unless you root).
All in all, an awful ecosystem, in my personal experience.
I don't think I ever used iMessage or Facetime in my life and I've been using iPhones for 15 years. Most people I know that have an iPhone also don't care, in the 3 countries I lived in. We use WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram.
I buy Apple stuff because it's good quality, largely secure and generally Just Works and gets out of my way while I concentrate on the stuff that matters. I'm busy, I've got better things to do than try to make my tech work the way it should.
I don't buy Apple for fashion reasons, some mythical "in group" or any of the reasons you say.
I agree on all points, but the access you get to other Apple users comes with access to iMessage, FaceTime, and all the other services specifically tied to the iOS ecosystem. A lot of people, me included, hate Apple for the way the wall their garden, but these services are valuable to me and others. So I would caution against everything being a psychology trick. They objectively do make a great product.
I don't know whatever weird psychology junk you're talking about. I bought an iPhone Mini because it's literally the only phone on the market that fits in the human hand. iOS sucks and I'd love to go back to Android, but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is.
> but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is.
My local dollar store has a couple of prepaid android 5.5" phones. Not much size diff from my iphone 12 mini.
Point still taken though - 'regular' sized phones from 6 years ago are mostly gone from the mainstream market. I really hope there's another mini or a bumped up iphone se. I would like them to keep the physical home button with touch id as well. Or maybe a touch id sensor someplace else...?
those android phones will have terrible materials, terrible internals and non-existent support. Their existence doesn't really say much.
I also dislike many things apple does but all too often, their hardware quality is good and lasts a long time. I'm still using a 2014 macbook. it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing.
>it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing.
I think that is pretty normal. I'm still using my 2014 $700 Asus 'gaming laptop' for CAD, emulators, gaming, etc.... Only reason I even upgraded was so I could have 6gb VRAM for various AI purposes.
Time for my kid to use it for a few years... Then I'll turn it into a server.
Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users.
This reads like the whining of a 14-year-old standing in a dark corner during the school dance. Translation:
"Look at me! I'm different! I'm so very counter-culture. People like Apple products, so I'm going to pretend it's a problem with the people and not other products. That way I can cosplay like I'm better/smarter/cooler than all those 'lemmings.' Now I'm going to smoke cigarettes, wear jeans, pop a leather jacket because nobody's been doing that since the 1940's. I'm special!"
I mean that is exactly what happened more or less. Apple made their phones a status symbol, and locked in users to their ecosystem. And now, even if you don't care about being cool you care about imessage and airdrop with friends.
> on MacOS they allow other browsers and respect the systemwide defaults
on a new install of MacOS, when you have installed Chrome and explicitly set it as the default browser, MacOS will still ask you, albeit once, whether you really want to open that resource in Chrome, or Safari. And Chrome isn't the default option.
Have you seen a viable "alternative browser engine" that doesn't require javascript support these days?
It is not about "performing slowly" but about getting your app rejected from the App store because it violates an Apple policy of scripting languages/interpreters not being allowed. And also another one that forbids you from competing/replacing the Apple applications, i.e. Safari. So if you want to display a web page you have to use webview (i.e. Safari behind the scenes).
You don't need Windows for gaming any more. Ubuntu 22.04 comes with graphics drivers. Steam has Steam Play and Lutris has a huge library of install scripts, so everything is handled for you.
The one thing you will need to do occasionally is experiment with different Wine distributions. This means you will need to right click on your game and select the distribution from a drop-down box. Exhausting, I know.
That's not entirely true. Most games are still built for Windows, and all of the tools for playing games on Linux have come a long way, but there are still a lot of combinations of games and drivers that don't work.
I'm past the deadline to edit this, but rereading it after coffee, I wanted to add: If you haven't tried in a few years, definitely try gaming on Linux. You will be surprised at how much just works. But I wouldn't suggest to someone who has no Linux experience that they can just wholesale drop Windows.
Here's the thing... I have limited time for gaming and when I want to play I just want to sit down and play. My days of sodding about with (the equivalent of) autoexec.bat, config.sys, QEMM configurations, drivers and IRQ allocations are way way behind me for one when one of these combos of drivers and scripts doesn't work, or my game isn't supported, and I just want to spend a hour or two gaming to chill out.
Your comment describes the perpetual state of Linux desktop use in general. Every couple of years I check it out again because people on HN, Reddit, or some other forum *swear* that it "just works" now and you don't have to mess with config files, drivers, or spend hours researching some strange issue. After booting a Linux distro I learn that's still not true within 15 minutes or so, and go back to Windows.
All games I want to play these days work under Linux without effort. Older titles work even better where under Windows you could run into compatibility issues not so under Linux because of the great effort put on backward compatibility by Wine.
Also, a bit susprising and unfortunate, the Windows version of a game that has native Linux support often runs better.
I run Manjaro Linux and have an Nvidia GPU for if it matters. My Steam games I run with Steam and for the games I bought on GOG I use Lutris.
I would really suggest people to check out how far it has come.
I didn't even know about this when I installed steam on Linux in order to play two games. "Nice, they support linux" I thought. It wasn't until the third time that I understood that they were windows games supported by steam/wine
I think Manjaro is a great choice for gaming rigs. You get easy access to latest kernels and drivers without having to babysit your computer.
Only problem with Linux gaming is that you don't get stuff like fan, voltage, frequency control for newer AMD hardware. This hasn't been an issue for me until I got a 6800XT. I thought about RMA until I remembered their Adrenaline software exists. I wish I could save my settings to the card's BIOS.
I no longer use this machine for anything but gaming. Going back to windows sucks
They are not necessarily applicable to everyone, but most of the time they are accurate. Makes it easy to see whether setting it all up under Linux is worth it for your library.
It's in progress, but it's one of very few sacrifices you make. Anti-cheat is really the only other one of note, and many games are now supporting anti-cheat on Linux.
If by "gaming" you mean "be able to play a selection of games you might or might not be interested in, in varying states of support and performance", then yes - absolutely true.
None of the games I've played recently even are on Steam, so no, your answer is misleading at best.
And no, I've not tried it recently on my main machine but I've tried it often enough that my summary is still: Feel free to try it, but many (or most) of us still have to stick with Windows even if we don't like it.
Unless you are playing the competitive games that won't turn on anti-cheat for Linux, this seems statistically incorrect. Valve prioritizes fixes for the most popular games, so the games most people want to play will work (if they are not actively prevented by the publisher as with anti-cheat).
I wonder why in these threads nobody ever says to just pirate Windows. It's not hard to do. Sometimes people will float security concerns but it's a safe process if you just load an official ISO and then crack it, and even if it were questionable on the security front it's not like you're doing anything that really needs that sort of security if you're just playing video games. If Windows is going to make itself mandatory for some games but they're also going to pull nonsense like in the OP, piracy seems like a reasonable option to voice your objections without abstaining completely.
And yes there are also ways to stop data collection if you're concerned about giving that to them.
Because that's not objecting; you're still feeding into the power Windows has over computing.
Bill Gates said so himself in 2007: "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not,"[1]
I'm not pretending that the intervening 16 years hasn't changed things; I am happily gaming exclusively on Linux after all, something most people didn't truly expect back then. But that statement remains true regardless.
I think at some point the onus lies with the games that have Windows as a requirement. Them having that mandate at all is what's feeding the power Windows has over computing. Of course that also relies on people playing those games so you could still in some way blame them, but gaming has hit such a critical mass that certain games will always be sustainable regardless of how predatory they are. At that point if you want to, for example, play with friends and not be left out, the least wrong option for you would be to pirate Windows to deny Microsoft of everything else.
With Valve finally managing to make fetch happen, any large company starting a project today must consider the value of releasing on Linux for Steam Deck.
The problem is the games coming in the next years started development five years ago.
The real sore spot is with multiplayer anticheat, about 50/50 according to https://areweanticheatyet.com/ ... plus maybe a few singleplayer games with draconian DRM. Otherwise, things usually just work with the occasional hiccup (those hiccups, in all fairness, can be a real PITA to resolve though from my experience; but things are getting better with time too!)
> Sometimes people will float security concerns but it's a safe process if you just load an official ISO and then crack it,
What makes you think the crack you apply to your official ISO isn't compromising your OS?
> even if it were questionable on the security front it's not like you're doing anything that really needs that sort of security
If you're going to install steam on your PC, then you'd be giving an attacker access to your steam account and if you ever install or use a platform that doesn't already have your credit card info stored then the attacker gets your credit card data.
> And yes there are also ways to stop data collection if you're concerned about giving that to them.
This isn't true. There is no way to stop windows from collecting data. No version of windows is capable of disabling all data collection, and there's no setting you can configure that can't be undone by MS at any time, and without any notice at all to you.
At best, you can install a copy of windows on a machine that is left offline 100% of the time, but i think most gamers would find that unacceptable since even if you don't care about MMOs or multiplayer, steam is still pretty popular.
I don't object to the idea of pirating software you don't like, don't want, but feel "forced" to use, but the idea that there are no real risks to your security or your privacy by doing it is just plain wrong.
> What makes you think the crack you apply to your official ISO isn't compromising your OS?
I guess the crack being FOSS with readable source code helps. It's a 9000 line cmd file with insane Windows-y things everywhere that make it hard to read, but being open at all and with that many users gives me quite a bit of confidence in it.
He's completely gone from Microsoft. To invoke Gates now on a anti-Microsoft screed would be missing the point. If anyone has beef with Microsoft about Windows, their ire is better directed at Panos Panay and Satya Nadella.
Everything you said is accurate except for the word "completely". He's no longer on the MS board of directors or in any officer role, but there is this bit of ongoing involvement:
> In 2020, Bill Gates left the board of directors of Microsoft, the tech giant he cofounded in 1975. But he still spends about 10% of his time at its Redmond, Washington headquarters, meeting with product teams, he says.
Eventually, only the owners are responsible. Every second they don't kick the managers that implement this crap to the curb is a moral failure on their part.
Gates owns 100x more shares than Nadella - about 1% of all shares - and thus has 100x the responsibility.
They are both guilty of greed and disrespecting their customers through their actions, or their willful or negligent ignorance and inaction.
I don't know how they can live with this, they are already rich, why not try to be better even if you earn less money in the short term?
Disrespecting your customers will get you nowhere in the long term.
Public companies are out for one thing, and one thing only.
Shareholder returns.
It has nothing to do with CEOs "already being rich", their job is literally to run the company properly so that the shareholders make more money.
Like it or not, that's how it is. Now, if this "crap" actually hurts the brand and the bottom line, they shouldn't implement it. If they are seeing more profits, and not many complaints, it's likely it will stay.
I disagree. The company's DNA and general approach to the market was set by Gates 40 years ago, the culture he established still stands, so invoking him when criticising MS for it's monopolistic practices is still valid.
I recently switched from Windows to Kubuntu for my gaming machine. It works pretty well, and all of the games that I want to play are supported. Proton gets you pretty far, and many games these days even have native Linux versions.
Windows + 3rd party game launchers + shitty buggy games on release is triple the nightmare, better reserve 2h of your time for surprises if it's first time in a while you turn on your PC to play something on Windows. Probably reason #1 I love PS5, it has it's flaws but never takes longer than 5 minutes to go from power off to playing the game.
Is Bill Gates even making decisions at this point? It's weird. When Microsoft does something good it's credited to Satya Nadella but when they do bad shit, it seems to be blamed on Ballmer or Gates. lol
Shouldn't it all, good or bad, be attributed to Satya Nadella at this point?
Or does the great CEO lack agency?
Even weirder, for some reason people have no issues blaming Google's sorry state directly on Sundar Pichai.
I have a windows gaming rig. You can download windows for free (11, 12, 13 or whatever the latest one is I can’t remember) on the official website. That’s what I use. It comes with some missing features like not being able to change certain personalised settings and a weird background but it’s 99% the same and more than enough for steam and gaming.
> Windows is just full of hostile, anti-user patterns these days.
I wonder since the initial "free" W10 upgrade, where the hell are the regulators? The browser selection window happen these years ago and seems they call job well done both for themselves and MS.
Windows has basically already been relegated to an OS I run on a PC dedicated just for gaming. I do all my serious computing on a mac now and my windows PC is a glorified game console.
We have standards wars, a stale browser that just woke-up and became a bit less stale (but no promises for the future), anticompetitive practices all around. We are right inside a browser war.
Microsoft is always striving to improve and streamline our product experiences—offering a new way to use the classic Microsoft Outlook app on Windows and the Microsoft Edge web browser.
to help you stay engaged in conversations as you browse the web.
I wonder if the people who write this sort of BS-filled prose really believe in what they're writing. To be completely honest, the style almost sounds like LLM output.
No, they don't believe in it, I know from experience. They know it's BS. They know it's bad. But it's not appropriate to say out loud things like "We made this change because we want more money and don't really care about freedom or privacy, so that's how it's going to be whether you like it or not", so they are trying to find nice sentences. But they know, trust me.
Some 10-15 years ago I would consider that some people have to write in such way but they really don't believe in all that bullcrap. But nowadays? There's lots of people who got their brains eaten by this corporate newspeak, and they spill it even into FOSS.
Google does something like this with the GMail app on iPhone— you click links and instead of just opening Safari, it pops up a "which browser to use" selector modal, which is really just an advertisement for you to install Chrome.
Then it doesn’t open safari! It opens a safari web view inside the chrome app, which has a whole different set of local settings and cookies, and you have to re log into everything.
I use different browsers for different things: let me fucking chose which browser to use.
I am currently wondering how easy it would be to build a "shim browser" that you can set as default but does not actually open the page, it only list the urls apps tried to open and lets you copy them to whichever browser you prefer.
I think a key difference here is that the prompt is not asking you to choose between the browsers you’ve already installed, it’s asking you if you want to launch chrome or safari, and if you don’t have chrome it’s an install button to the App Store. It’s essentially just an ad, presented like a selection UI.
Properly implemented such prompts would be great though. Someone else in the thread mentioned how location search results on mobile Safari always launch Apple Maps - it would be great to have the option to choose from whatever I have installed.
Not really, because sometime default settings are weird and I would also want a "Forget all associations".
My point is broader than browsers: if an app wants to redirect me to another app I want a modal where I can select an alternative app and cancel the "redirect".
I'm okay being prompted when I have more than one app of the same type.
I'm not okay being prompted to install an additional app when I already have one that can handle the link. This is advertisement spam and it's disingenuous to claim Google does that to give you choice.
Browser Tamer[1] registers itself as the URL handler on Windows, and allows you to configure based on domain name which browser to open the link in. [it probably won't override the kind of hack in this article where Outlook is coupled directly to Edge].
It's such an obvious dark pattern; I'm really surprised Apple accepts this from Google, but I expect there's some mutually assured destruction horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes with players this large.
Since it's still safari under the hood running on their OS they probably get the data they want anyway. Apple uses the same and worse dark patterns themselves, they used to filter out non Apple devices from bluetooth discovery.
Even with this setting enabled (for Safari), it still asks me every week or two where I want to open the link and tries to get me to download Chrome. I doubt they do this if you have Chrome enabled.
Google Chat on Windows as well. Even if it is “installed as an app”, it does not act like one, and always opens links in Chrome. I understand that the “app” in this case is a Chrome wrapper, but it at least should respect system defaults.
PWAs in Edge have the same issue -- links clicked inside the PWA always open in Edge. This is especially annoying because certain apps in the Windows store (like Snapchat) are really just Edge PWAs.
FirefoxPWA gets it right and opens in the default browser (but it is a bit janky for other reasons).
I hate that menu so much. It even shows chrome and google search app in the menu when they aren’t installed. They do the same thing with maps links (open in maps or safari) if you don’t have maps installed.
I don't know if it's still happening, but for a while windows updates were helpfully "fixing" the EFI boot partition (or maybe it was a boot firmware thing, I never figured it out) by making windows primary and breaking my Linux entry .
My friends would be like "do you want to play games?" and I'd be like "yeah hang on while I make some boot media so I can recover afterwards."
This bullshit still happens with the latest version of Windows 11. I found that I had to demote Windows Boot Manager to a lower position in my EFI boot order, whereas removing it completely from my boot order and removing the boot entry cause Windows to install itself as first priority the moment it booted. I have not tried retaining the boot entry (skipping efibootmgr -b0000 -B) but removing it from the boot order (efibootmgr -o 0001).
Windows 10 updated my laptop's BIOS and in the process reset it to defaults. This basically bricked my laptop. Yeah I know how to go in and set a boot drive again, but not everyone should have to understand how that works.
That's almost certainly your laptop manufacturer's fault. Dell pushes BIOS updates via Windows Update on a regular basis, and I've never had the settings reset because of said update. (source: I administer 80 Dell desktops, 40 Dell laptops, and 8 Dell servers)
However, I do feel your pain, I don't understand why other motherboard manufacturers don't save your existing BIOS settings. Asus and MSI, I'm looking at you all... why can't you just ask me instead of undoing my work?
Windows and GRUB will both compete for who gets to own \EFI\boot\bootx64.efi; but that file is only used when you tell your firmware "boot off this hard drive".
If Windows is removing another OS's entries from the boot list (displayed when you run 'efibootmgr -v' in Linux) then that's 100% deliberate anticompetitive behaviour from Microsoft; this list is where the entires like Windows, Fedora, and so on appear in the list of boot entries your firmware shows you.
This happened on my new PC. I dual-boot Ubuntu with grub2. After Windows update, it booted into Windows immediately and bypassed grub. The EFI had been "fixed".
I worked around this by installing Ubuntu on a second SSD, then I can use my bios menu to change the boot device.
You never had control over windows. Not since the ME/XP days. You don’t have control over MacOS either. The only OS you have any control over is Linux and even some of those you don’t.
I suppose they weren't as obnoxious/desperate about it in the past, though. I feel like past methods were more about lawsuits and software patents than about annoying every individual consumer that paid for your damn product
* StevenBlack/hosts: Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. | https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
I always love how Windows 10 shows Cortana using something like 0.1% or 0.2% of system CPU even after I disable it. Really what is it doing at that point?
You don't. Windows even overwrites custom boot loaders on certain updates, to try to make your life miserable if you dual boot linux. It's a roughly twice-annual problem to solve
I'm using Thunderbird on Linux with an Outlook work account. Granted, I have to pay for 'Owl for Exchange' for it work, but I absolutely hate the Outlook program, I'm willing to fork out the $10/yr of my own money just to avoid it.
If you still have IMAP access, thunderbird supports OAuth2 for connecting to O365 IMAP. tbsync for calendar access. Seems to work pretty well currently.
It does, but the applications and environments I need to use are Windows only anyway.
IT policy also doesn’t let us have anything other than Windows. I could skirt it for the day to day stuff, but I wouldn’t want to maintain my setup in multiple places anyway
However I still have Teams. And Teams occasionally opens up a webpage for oidc authentication. Unlike Slack this isn't my default browser (firefox), it's some embedded browser in teams, which has no access to my password store. It's terrible, but it's microsoft, what do you expect?
> Some programs and drivers in some pre-release builds of Windows 3.1 include code that tests for execution on MS-DOS and displays a disingenuous error message if Windows is run on some other type of DOS. The message tells of a “Non-fatal error” and advises the user to “contact Windows 3.1 beta support”. Some programs in the released build include the code and the error message, and even execute the code, performing the same tests, but without acting on the result to display the error message.
> The code in question has become known widely as the AARD code, named after initials that are found within.
I get so many support requests of "I clicked on a link and then I was logged-out".
They weren't logged-out, they just didn't notice that the link was opened in the wrong browser. Doesn't help that most browsers kind of all look the same.
Honestly, for a non-techie I think the "I was logged out" is totally reasonable. I'd bet that a majority of Internet users aren't going to recognize that the UI has changed, especially when they're focused on getting some other task done.
I'm currently using Linux due to this kind of hostile behavior from Microsoft on Windows.
However, we are power users and the big masses won't care about an ever increasing misalignment between the users' needs and Microsoft's. We cannot vote with our wallets, e.g. by using Linux instead. It won't matter.
What we could maybe do is contribute to projects like ReactOS[0] and make it easier for the layperson to migrate to it if modern Windows finally annoys them. Just food for thought.
I keep thinking that when my grandma's laptop gets too slow from all the Windows updates, I'll install some linux on it and teach her that so she doesn't have to keep learning how the new Windows works every time (because, indeed, the masses aren't switching). Won't have a problem with malware either. Cinnamon is 100% stable for me and very similar to Windows, that's going to be as much effort to learn as Windows 11 would be.
Now, if only I could convince my dad, he might allow me trying to put it on my mom's computer as well... he insists on buying Microsoft Office for everyone under his roof so that I don't have an excuse to install LibreOffice
Sometimes it seems like old-ish white men is why we can't have nice things (I'm gonna be one of those :/)
Shows that antitrust law isn't real. The government wasted millions on chasing Microsoft over IE, and Microsoft isn't even scared to use the OS to force users to use Edge. They've been as far down the path as US regulation goes, and came out of it fearless.
The sooner we realize that 'product managers' and 'UX designers' are now as bad as used car salesmen and NFT hucksters, the better.
I'm sorry, I LOVE building products and I LOVE design... but these fields have become grift central. No disrespect to folks in these fields, but remember how you came into this field talking about usability, cooperation, beautiful typography, color theory?
Why not? You can absolutely call people out for using Nuremberg defense. Just because someone ordered you to intentionally mistreat people doesn't mean that you did not intentionally mistreat people.
The most productive approach IMO is a little of both. Build designs that are intended to help people do what they want (instead of what you might want), and be loud about it.
Neither being nice nor mean will persuade people working at Microsoft to be different. Being better and letting them know might though.
Oh I don't have a problem calling out Microsoft at all. But I'm not gonna internet-shame some poor UX designer who is trying to pay her bills in this clown world – just want to encourage her to push back when she can.
Microsoft has always been horrible at building web-based products. Recently they are also horrible at building Windows-based products. And at building Windows.
How about you don't decide that for everyone, Microsoft?
<rant>
This is the same BS that pushes 'conditional acces' based on what browser you happen to be using, or their idea of SSO where your console login also dictates all other logins... and it happens that you must use Edge. Turns out people don't give a shit if they have to pick an account more than once. That used to be a big point of friction on LanMan networks and when there was no Kerberos, but the same principles simply do not transfer to the web.
Just like Teams and all their other packaged nonsense (Intune): they are creating a fake ecosystem where usage isn't based on requirements or best tool for the job, but on 'what else happens to come with the package', making the UX worse for everyone. Entry-level admins and middlemen don't actually need (or want) to know how any of it works, delegate responsibility and defects to the vendor (Microsoft) and then essentially stall all local wants and needs because they cannot actually fulfil anything themselves.
Ugh can't wait until Linux is accessible for blind people like me. Y'all seen the new Windows File Explorer context menu? Freaking sucks. I'm sure I've posted this here before but dang, it just keeps getting worse.
Sorry for being ignorant, but I always imagined that the terminal workflow should work much better for blind people than Windows‘ reliance on graphical widgets. Or is the issue elsewhere?
Thanks to wayland, it's about to get even worse instead of better. Linux had surpassed windows in most aspects already (and I am enjoying this - no Windows on any machine, not even for gaming, thanks to Proton), then came Wayland and unfortunately it wasn't widely ignored.
Please understand that I understand the reasons behind Wayland, that the Wayland Devs are also behind X, and that X is an awful mess. I know and I believe, but Wayland is still the worst solution for the problem X created, in my humble view.
Please also accept that this is not a criticism of the awesomeness of Wayland/X devs. They are awesome. But they also were tired of X, and the result is, Wayland is undercomplex by at least a gut-factor of 10. And anything accessiibility-related is part of that.
It's incredible how bad it is. Tiny icons of the most important actions, like copy, paste, rename, along the top that are unique designs with no tooltips. If an action isn't available it's not disabled, but missing entirely. This is all not to mention the new strange delay and how it doesn't match the theme of file explorer at all. And if you want to access to options not in the very limited default ones, you have to click "show more options" that opens the classic menu in the old theme. It's just a mess.
Ad revenue from increased user count, spying on browsing habits, scraping user-input data, and promotion-hunting by product managers who want to advertise how their new feature led to X million more clicks per day.
I assume every website I look at on Chrome is sent to Google, I don't see Microsoft not doing the same. But the thing Google has and Microsoft wants is to be in full control of web standards.
You can't think of Microsoft, or any company, as a monolith or personify them. The question is not how Microsoft benefits from this but rather which executive benefits from this. Given that I believe Windows team is now grouped together with the Bing (and Edge) team, I think the reasons for these sorts of changes are obvious.
If you think it's so obvious, why don't you provide the answer? I don't think GP would have posted the question if it were obvious to them.
Whether you talk about Microsoft-the-firm or Microsoft-the-shareholders when asking about "what's in it for them": that's the same thing because it's a for-profit business, so that's an irrelevant thing to post as well.
I think the point (which I agree with) is this doesn't benefit Microsoft at all. It benefits a VP by them being able to show some metric move from Q to Q, and get a fat bonus. They couldn't care less about the long term effect on Microsoft's PR / reputation (they'll likely skitter off after collecting a few of those bonuses either rest&vest with some D&I initiative, or move off to the next victim to suck from).
Microsoft, why?? It's an easy fix sure (within the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center) but why is it so hard for you to respect people's default browser choice?
Even respecting the settings. Every time Windows gets an update it asks me if I want to change my Edge settings, the first couple of times I didn’t pay attention and it changed my default search engine and started showing the useless news thumbnails that I explicitly took the time to hide.
I’ll need to reconsider Chrome or Firefox, which is a shame since I really liked some Edge’s features.
Try brave browser?
The bitcoiny stuff can be hidden (and blocked). As for the rest, I'm remarkably impressed. I even go through the brave://flags for extra oomph. I rn it from a ramdrive, too.
> why is it so hard for you to respect people's default browser choice
Why should microsoft respect anyone if they don't have the self respect to use literally any other OS? They keep getting away with this shit, because people keep letting them.
If you choose to use Windows then I have no pity for you.
I’m one of the dinosaurs who still uses Skype to talk to some non-computer people who haven’t moved away from it.
Skype similarly gets worse and worse each update. They removed the ability to have multiple windows, they made links open in some kind of in-Skype browser I can’t find a setting a to turn off, they added a weather widget which is dumb.
Thankfully the weather widget exists, though, because their new in app browser doesn’t have any way to close the in app “window” it opens - no x, nowhere to click to close it. The only way I’ve found to close it is to click the weather widget which loads into the same space and that has an x to close it. I bet they’re getting tons of positive numbers about weather widget use from users just looking to close the shitty in app browser. I don’t know if it even counts as a dark pattern - I can’t tell if the Skype designers are this incompetent or actually hate the few users left still on that shitty platform. Maybe they’re purposely trying to get Microsoft to shut it down by making it worse every update?
Every second I use skype I want to get away from it, I just have to convince a handful of people to move as well, or I guess let them know they won’t be able to reach me through there and give up talking to them.
I noticed the outlook link handling thing on my personal machine and figured out how to turn it off but damn that was annoying. I’m not going to be annoyed into using edge - I won’t be tricked into it either. Every time this happens my willingness to go along with this gets smaller and smaller. I have a bunch of paid Microsoft licenses - windows, office365, etc. Once gaming off windows matures a little more I think its time to move away from this abusive shit.
Recently went all-Linux on my new workstation, and news like this makes clear that it was the right move to give up on Windows completely. I dual-booted for... 20 years? Just not worth it anymore. The disk storage reclaimed, the file system partitioning undone, the user-hostile patterns avoided. Couldn't be happier.
The title is a little clickbaity - the behaviour can be changed:
“ Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that. ”
Having said that, Microsoft seem to be entering another phase of baiting antitrust regulators.
It's not. The title is about the default behavior. Being able to manually change it in an ad-hoc manner, not in the default os settings, confirms the title is correct.
Absolutely a conference room decision to try to push more people to their browser. Apple see their OSes as a way to sell hardware. Microsoft very clearly sees their OS as a way to sell ads. I was hopeful for a sec as aspects of Windows got better and better, but the amount of junk that's appeared lately really feels user hostile. I don't want to "stay up to date with news and interests" in the dang start menu. No one ever has.
That is very annoying. On s related note I personally hate how I need to enter the settings of every app on my phone to tell them not to use the embedded browser? Why would I ever want to use something which is not my default browser? The only scenario I csn see is offering to open in private browsing but still in my browser or something like tor. Just some web view makes no sense.
And this is similar. There is no non-malicious use case for this setting that I can see.
On Android at least, browsers can also provide the "embedded" overlay, and Fennec, Vivaldi, etc. all do, so it's not really necessary to mess with app settings, changing the system default browser is enough.
The only reason I realized this was a thing is because a coworker blew past the initial popup about the behavior and couldnt figure out what the hell was going on.
Users don't pay attention to this stuff. And then when you have to go back and switch it to the correct behavior of using the default browser, they've buried the option in Outlook (Options > Advanced > Link Handling).
What kind of post-Orwellian shitfuckery is this? It really grinds my gears when a prompt puts words in your mouth (e.g. "Yes, please" or "No thanks, maybe later") but this reaches a new level by trying to reframe something as simple as wilfully ignoring a stated preference. It sounds like a modern car ad in that it's all about catering to you the "main character" writing your own story and presenting themselves as the facilitators of your perfect customised destiny.
But they're just trying to change your browser and hope you have enough to worry about that you won't notice and their metric will tick up.
> Microsoft seem to be entering another phase of baiting antitrust regulators
On the "FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud" post, llimos says "When did we move to a "do whatever you think you can get away with" model of society?" [0].
Like light_hue_1 says in response, "Because the cost of fraud is far too low and it's now factored into business plans." That seems to be exactly what is happening here too. It's honestly disheartening.
If we want to live in a society that's not supported by tech that's weaponized against its users, we need to find better ways to fight back than smugly switching to Linux.
Walking away while they prey on our friends is insufficient. Whatever it is, it has to be costly. Bonus points if it's legal.
Chrome got to do it with Gmail/etc. when they were ramping up, so I don't see the issue with Edge doing it.
Edge has another funny behavior where if you go to a Chrome extension page, it says you can install the extension. However, Chrome puts a web-page warning over the install button to block it and try to get you to install Chrome again.
It's clear companies value being your default browser.
It can, although having just received it this morning, it definitely changes first and asks you to roll it back afterwards, rather than being opt-in. It's still obnoxious.
Sure, Ubuntu is still a level-up from Windows, but it isn't really the best Linux experience - Canonical isn't all that great.
I would recommend Fedora if you want the bleeding edge or Debian if you want a super stable system (Or NixOS stable, but NixOS is kind of hard to get started using).
RedHat also has been declared isn’t all that great recently.
Looks like only decent operating system remains is MacOS, others are highly specialised, like BSD, box of unfinished toys like most of Linux distros, betas as Windows 11 or ads and spyware infested services upsell platform: android, windows again, redhat and ubutu..
That was great, until Ubuntu introduced snaps for everything, to the point where `apt install` started installing snaps.
The ads for Ubuntu Pro every time I open a terminal or update my computer aren't very welcoming either. If Ubuntu had a browser of their own, it would be as worse as Windows.
I did this many years ago, ran into a bunch of issues and switched back.
Tried again maybe 4 (?) years ago and have stuck with it - everything is pretty smooth for my purposes now. I do run into some random issues sometimes - like display drivers randomly resetting. That seems to be the biggest one.
Windows has random issues, too. Everything has random issues. When it happens on Windows, people think it's Just The Way Computers Are, but when it happens on anything but Windows, it's Not Ready For Prime Time.
You're absolutely correct on your assessment and it makes them sound absolutely ridiculous when you are on the other side of the fence. I have used Linux for decades and barely notice its issues. Every time I use Windows, all I notice are the issues. It has nothing to do with being biased towards one operating system or another. Rather, it is the outcome of being accustomed to something and unfamiliar with the other.
People should really try putting themselves into the place of those they are speaking to before making broad statements, and temper those statements with the realization that different people have different experiences and expectations.
For me it was always Nvidia Optimus not working properly, causing poor battery life.
Turns out I now have a related problem in Windows, with the integrated GPU spinning at full throttle despite not doing anything important.
I've somewhat improved battery life(and CPU temperature) by setting the system to prefer the discrete GPU, which is a ridiculous solution to a problem which I shouldn't have had in the first place.
At this point I think I can live with selecting one of the GPUs and sticking to it for a given session, like I did in Linux on my previous machine. Even if I have to restart the system each time.
I actually switch to Tiny11 after a little over 2 decades of only Linux… mostly due to performance issues on newer hardware. Windows does substantially better on graphics and Wi-Fi on my desktop, so there it goes.
It took us half a day to roll back our systems to get rid of the new Outlook. It's a web based email client through an Edge browser window and it's awful. I do not want to use an Edge browser window to access email, I don't want to even have to see the edge browser at all.
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next person, but AFAICT this is about opening the link inside Outlook, in a sidepane:
> ... browser links from the Outlook app will open in Microsoft Edge by default, right alongside the email they’re from in the Microsoft Edge sidebar pane.
Also the title has been editorialized here, the original title describes what is actually happening:
> Outlook emails open next to web links in Microsoft Edge
You can also turn it off:
> Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that.
Devil’s advocate: Microsoft, an ethically unclean company, is justified in using this tactic to compete with Google, because (a) Google did it to acquire Chrome users in the first place, and (b) breaking the browser hegemony at a user mindshare level (not rendering engine level) is worth some UX pain.
Note on (a): some will argue a difference between Google advertising Chrome on Google’s property (something they could do when bootstrapping Chrome) and advertising Chrome on other people’s property (something they could not do). But here, Windows and Edge are Microsoft’s property, like it or not.
Yikes. But also how unusual. I just checked in Gmail on my iPhone and not only does it have a third option of Safari, it has a fourth option of "Default browser app".
It seems (?) to be a bug but it makes me wonder how widespread the bug is, how often it's triggered. But that is very not cool. Thanks for the screenshot.
Google's behaviour is also bad but it is ahistorical to describe it as Google doing it first. Microsoft did it first, got sued, and lost. We're still being punished today with the fallout from the technical decisions made by Microsoft trying to prove IE was an integral part of the OS - if the file explorer crashes, your toolbar does too.
Side A is fighting side B, and therefore has to take these measures that harm bystander C. Nope, their fight, their problem, don't mess with my computer. I can happily say MS is wrong and Google is wrong
> Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that.
Windows 11 can multitask and is used on a widescreen display and has the ability to align windows, so why not just put Outlook next to Edge instead of using Edge's sidebar to display email?
Ironically, Outlook has been opening mailto links in the Windows mail app for me, which I’ve never once used. So if they want override defaults somewhere, this is the only one I would allow.
It is opening the links in a sidebar pane so you can view your email and the link contents at the same time. You now aren't being taken out of Outlook to view the page.
The title is a bit editorialized. Microsoft is doing the equivalent of embedding a "Web View" in Outlook. Instead of having some stale custom build of MSIE, they're using Edge because it's already installed and they're in control of the API and its compatibility. They're also offering a setting to disable this behavior.
The links don't "open in Edge". That would suggest they launch the Edge app (instead of the default browser) and open the link in that. Instead the links open in a pane in Outlook that embeds Edge (presumably with the same settings and session context as the actual app). This also only affects the desktop Outlook app, not the far more modern and less clunky web version. I genuinely wonder how many HN users commenting on this story actually use desktop Outlook app or know someone who does and doesn't also use Edge (or their IT department's mandated out-of-date copy of Firefox ESR).
Now, bear in mind I'm saying this from a position that is in favor of splitting up Microsoft (and Google and maybe Apple). The feature is certainly useful if viewed in isolation, but it is in effect anti-competitive behavior because even if they wanted, they couldn't provide generic integration of your browser of choice the same way and the new behavior is opt-out rather than opt-in. It's bad, but let's not pretend it's worse and more deceitful than it truly is, just because you already don't like Microsoft (and presumably don't use their products).
This is probably a genuine usability improvement. It's also anti-competitive. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Microsoft's black patterns are starting to irritate me. This most recent incidence had an effect on several of our 365 users. Even with GPO, this still overrides the browser's default settings. Microsoft buried the option to set the browser to its default in the settings of Outlook. For every user, we must change it manually. We'll be searching for alternatives to Microsoft Office in the future.
That's different and an unfair comparison. Android will open the system browser (which will be chromium based in most instances). It can't just open the default browser because that might break certain functions of android apps if the non system default browser is broken
That argument is surprisingly similar to the one that Microsoft argued back in their antitrust case [1]: that "the merging of Windows and IE was the result of innovation and competition" and "that the two were now the same product and inextricably linked".
For those who were too young at the time, Microsoft lost the first instance of that trial and eventually reached a settlement.
just checked, and Bing opens their own webview. I believe when Edge is installed they opt to use this first before. you get the option to use the default, but this is not happening without interaction.
note: not going to test this further... but regardless, why not use your default!
I wouldn't mind Edge if it were a Microsoft branded version of Chromium. It started out that way, and it was nice. But it's attracted every team at Microsoft and a total explosion of semi-useful features until it became totally bloated.
I have a Windows box just for playing a few games, but even for that Windows is freaking rubbish. It keeps asking me to sign in with some BS Windows Live account!
How painful is the Steam on Linux/Proton experience on average?
This is reminiscent of the USA vs Microsoft case in 2001... I wonder how much the antitrust team at Microsoft gets a say in product decisions like this. Just feels like they're toeing a line...
Also definitely not in the best interest of users, which isn't the Satya Nadella way of operating, at least not as demonstrated in the developer tools side of the business.
> Also definitely not in the best interest of users, which isn't the Satya Nadella way of operating, at least not as demonstrated in the developer tools side of the business.
Oh yes, good tsar, bad boyars.
Whenever Microsoft does something good, like open-sourcing some dev tool, it's because of Nadella. But he isn't responsible for the state of Windows. If only someone told him about the forced telemetry, forced updates, forced Microsoft account login, pushing Edge down users' throats, and so on... I'm sure he would fix all those problems, but sadly, he doesn't know. And it's just a coincidence that all this stuff intensified when he became the CEO.
I even saw a comment on HN saying that it's "Ballmer loyalists" who are truly at fault for the current state of Windows.
OK, the page gives us a guide to submitting feedback about the feature. Everybody with Edge installed, please fire it up just this once and submit a plea to revert this! We can make Microsoft notice!
"Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that."
Still inexcusable. They're wasting power users' time by making them have to search for a way to change this unexpected and undesirable setting. I'm glad that the first time Edge hijacked my Outlook link I saw a popup message that allowed me to change the setting to use the default browser. But I could have easily missed it and it would have wasted my time.
So ultimately though, Outlook ignores the Default Browser setting of the OS, unless you tell it not to? Does that mean that it's ok for every application to ignore the system-wide settings until you explicitly configure it otherwise?
Then what it the point of having system-wide settings in the first place?
I'd be happy to give Edge a chance but honestly Windows has so many anti-user patterns that it's intentionally forcing me to not use Edge because of how mad it's making me.
Exactly my attitude. Not just for Edge, I use Microsoft products and services as little as possible. Even if they might be technically superior, I will go with the solution that isn't being shoved down my throat.
Don’t get me started on the fucking gamification of the start menu with microsoft reward coins (+100 to try bing on edge) to drive microsoft internal team KPIs
This is as bad as Facebooks legendary QP abuse in metrics season that everyone used to win their PSC because we are talking about 300$ product here, Win11 PRO that is as crammed with adware - tiktok, instagram, office, onedrive, blah blah blah as in the worst days of steve balmer now.
Just a matter of time until you get to unlock RAM and storage from your own hardware by completing chores, "Make Edge your default browser to unlock +1GB of RAM".
I haven't touched Windows in a decade and don't miss a single thing. Every computer literate user should make the switch.
I would expect the EU to have something to say to this.
For people more into the legal side, why do MS think that EU will not think about this as abusing its monopoly?
Fortunately, I only have to deal with Microsoft products at work. Unfortunately, one of those products is Outlook.
Years ago, I developed the muscle memory of copying links from outlook and pasting them into a browser rather than clicking on them directly. This was to avoid various "helpful" things Microsoft insists of doing. Now, that habit will pay off in spades.
It, too, has its issues. Especially the 'New Outlook', which is esentially the web version in an app wrapper. Like always wanting to open the web versions of Office products when you go to open attachments instead of the actual app installed on your machine.
I noticed. But I don't care. Currently, I use Microsoft products on a daily basis for my work, I only use Outlook for access the company email.
Honestly, I'd never plug a personal email account in it, nor ever browse personal content on a Microsoft's browser. Firefox+Thunderbird all the way.
Since probably a year back I can't get links in emails to open correctly from Outlook with any browser without copying the link manually. So for me it does not matter.
I think apps should work in the general way an OS is designed. This change may lead to the same mobile app horrors where every app is also a browser that breaks common user flows.
To me this isn't a huge loss as I have set firefox as my default browser, but I really use Chrome. The net result is that all of the tracking links I click in email get opened in a browser that I hardly use and that has hardly any context about me - no cookies, etc. Then I can copy the actual destination url into my real browser.
While obnoxious, they’re not doing anything truly nefarious under the hood: they’re just prepending every link with “edge://“ to open edge. This functionality was available to basically every single app since apps have become a thing, it might be interesting if other apps decided to force open chrome in response…
It's part of a long term plan. A couple of years ago I noticed the same decision in Control Panel help links. They do not allow choosing a different Open With other than Microsoft programs. Even though I had some other browser installed, the only browser in the list of Open With was Edge.
For example, when you 'accidentally' click the help question mark instead of the exit cross, it will open Microsoft Edge with a search on Bing for "help with paint in windows".
Correct - Edge is Chromium with a bunch of different features surrounding it. Same core engine. Generally, they release a few days after a Chrome stable release comes out with the same code.
I noticed this last week during a brief foray into Windows on the desktop and honestly, I don't hate it. Before you down-vote let me tell you why.
I use Outlook for work only, and I segregate my browsing so that work browsing is done in Edge and personal is not. I could do (and have done) Chrome or Firefox profiles, but moving completely to Edge hasn't been terrible. (Hello vertical tab bar on my widescreen laptop).
I agree the pattern is bad if someone is using Outlook for their personal email, but I suspect the Venn diagram of people who use Outlook for personal email and people who install a different browser is probably small.
As always this should be an option!
On my Linux desktop and laptops I have my default browser set to firefox --profilemanager %u so that every link I click in Slack, Teams, Thunderbird etc I can select the correct profile to open it in.
My biggest complain on Outlook is loading external image. The settings to turn it off is so hard to find. I don't understand why is was so simple before now it's hidden and its also hard to find in the help files.
I don't really want links - I want a machine learning algorithm to summarize and categorize, provide action, and ultimately reply for me so that I can converse with my relative's AIs regularly.
It's AMAZING to me Microsoft is framing this as a UX improvement, when it's going against explicit user choice... which is one of the tenants of good UX?
The Windows Start menu is already so broken though.
I would use edge if I could have shared bookmarks, passwords, etc with chrome (not simply import). But since I can't there's no point to using a Windows only browser when I also use Linux
"Ultimately though, if this experience isn't right for you, you can turn off this feature the first time it launches in Microsoft Edge, and then in Outlook settings at any time after that."
Also, it opens the email itself in a sidebar. Edge has been super hostile in the past few months, and it seems to coincide with the Bing Chat push. So much garbage like Workspaces and Discover.
I'm getting office365 nagging me to change the pdf viewer on android after each download in chrome about 15 minutes after the download. Can't find the setting to stop it.
I thought the sarcasm would be more obvious. Why would anyone love this change?
I was making fun of all the idiots that always comment "loving the new microsoft" when in fact, as you say, nothing is new, and they are as shit as ever.
Windows has had a mechanism called Windows Resource Protection[1] for a long while now, if you delete notepad.exe (I guess nowadays that file isn't even deletable), after a few seconds it will reappear again. If you delete edge.exe (or whatever it's called) or replace it with a copy of, let's say firefox.exe, the WRP will see the file has been removed/modified and restore it, because somewhere inside C:\Windows there's a backup copy of the files..
I didn’t think it could be easily removed (yes - I appreciate the audience here) - and if removed, it is so ingrained into the OS I expect the problems it’ll cause would be incredibly frustrating…
This does make a bit of sense; Edge on Windows logs you into 365 and keeps the authentication around. So company links/attachments on Outlook can open easier on Edge using the 365 credentials. Now, if only they were actually smarter about which 365 profile's mail you are reading in Outlook (for those of us that are working across multiple orgs) and open the link under that profile on Edge, that would be awesome.
Edge makes a lot more sense as a smarter 365 client than it does as a browser, but it's not a bad browser either.
Yeah, no. This is insanity. Firefox can keep your authentication too. Just login on FF or show a prompt. WHAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF TOKENS. It already works perfectly fine with non-Edge browsers. This is ridiculous anti-competitive garbage and I can't believe people are defending it.
I was looking at Distrowatch with my son.. lamenting at all the different distros, the distros I've never heard of, and the frequency of changes in the top 10 with distros I'm not familiar with. Free software devs are obviously free to do as they wish, but Apple vs Microsoft vs Google vs 100+ Linux distros wasn't going to lead to the outcome some of us were hoping for.
We're looking at building a monster Davinci Resolve workstation and we might use Linux. He certainly wants to.
But between our mobile devices (all iOS etc) and laptops -- we'd have a very mixed and heterogenous environment. I'm tired of maintaining all the different incompatibilities. I'm inclined to go all Apple, just to keep things clean.
But the Distrowatch situation showed me how much Linux missed its "year of the desktop" window, so many years ago, and how having optimal hardware experiences across form-factors doesn't include Linux as a default, or obvious, or user-friendly option.. the way it does for servers and cloud ops.
The issue is that [non-tech] people don't go around changing OSes. So long as PCs come with a default of user-hostile-OS-1 or user-hostile-OS-2, the question of "Linux year of the desktop, when?" is invalid.
That said, be responsible where you put your money. My wife no longer uses iOS. I no longer use iOS or Android. Raspberry is a media server for TV.
I changed it back to use default browser. It took all of 60 seconds to google the answer. They totally should take a calculated risk like this in order to gain more market share. Exercising control over software defaults rarely causes users to abandon a product entirely. The pain of changing the default back is much less than the pain of finding a new tool. Microsoft will not lose Outlook users by doing this. They will gain Edge users though. Yes, they will enrage the craftspeople who aren't a part of THE GRID, but that still won't affect the bottom line enough to matter.
They should NOT try this manipulative approach as what remains in the heads is the attitude they employ towards their users: ignoring them! If this was the one and only one of their dirty attempts it may have been gone unnoticed but their attitude they allow themselves is approaching of a scumbag through the repeated user hosility and ruining usability, proactively wasting the time of the very people they live on.
There may be many who does not care but growing number of people on the grid - who they ask advice from - will spread the dirtball reputation of Microsoft, reaching a lot of people, fortunately.
Will this be a “good” move for them, money-wise? Perhaps. SHOULD they do this unequivocally user-unfriendly move? Absolutely not. Businesses SHOULD never screw over their customers for a little extra profit, but of course this sentiment will never stop them.
Yes, this dirty tactic will almost certainly work unless we conk them with the regulatory hammer, which we absolutely should. Harder than last time, so that they remember.
some things I've noticed: Mobil Safari seems to be using the search bar to hijack my google search (Particularly for locations which open in apple maps)
Although I'm mostly linux these days I went to install an alternative browser on a windows machine (using edge to download). I mentioned this in another post, but edge seems to watch for "chrome" or "firefox" downloads and politely reminds you that 'Edge is a great browser with added "trust of microsoft"' (A company who happen to be watching when you download a web browser).
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/2/22813733/microsoft-window...
Linux seems like an OS that is way more respectful.