Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

That's precisely the question I keep asking: how much more anti-consumer features people need, in order to switch? At this point it's hard to understand why there is so much resistance in leaving windows, I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done.

What kind of thing? That it comes with a News app that has a pre installed widget that can be removed with a single right click?

Yes, for instance. Because defaults actually matter.

Since mid-90s I allways had Linux and Windows. But when I updated a Testnotebook from Win7 to Win10 and saw CandyCrash and XBox all over the place, it was clear form me, I don't have professional licenses to let me spam from Microsoft with such BS. Since then, I'm Linux only.

Common anti virus, weird update windows, weird scary Dialogs you learn to blindly confirm to install things. Blinking and animations in the taskbar, ... Not even a common design pattern for the annoyances.

As someone who hasn't used Windows in more than 10 years the whole desktop is full of distractions popping up unasked. IMO it's horrible for a productive environment because it doesn't allow to focus properly

Worst thing is how it slows things down compared to a clean linux install. Sticking with Windows though because it is a family shared PC, for now.

You have to remember that these issues do not apply to all users equally. Between different editions, regions, accounts, a/b testing, usage patterns etc different folks can have very different experiences.

Don't you think it is a strange default that users (even people that pay for the enterprise version) are bombarded with the worst of the worst clickbait that takes up 1/3 of your screen if you mousover a certain part of the screen?

Absolutely, I think it's bizarre. But I find that many users actually seem to like it. The apple news app seems pretty tabloidy too (although not as bad) so I'm cautious about projecting my taste onto others.

The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently (I haven't tried it, because of the vendor lock). Linux on the other hand is great, but has abysmal quality check due to wide variety of everything. Windows is just works (until Win11, which was a marketing pushed bullshit, without half of the featured from the Win10 branch).

> I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done.

I switched from Windows to Arch Linux on Thinkpads for about 15 years and had a great time and learned a lot, but dealing with things on a daily basis was why I switched back to Windows 10 a few years ago, along with a new gaming habit during the pandemic. Gaming on Linux with Steam is wonderful these days, but the daily overhead of random stuff to deal with was too much when sometimes I just want to play games.

> The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently

I would argue against that. Just the fact alone that you can’t use Windows 11 Home without your machine being connected to a Microsoft account is proof enough that Windows is more anti consumer than macOS.

Isn't there some kind of physics law that says every 2nd Windows version sucks?

I think it fits quite well, XP was good, Vista sucked, Win 7 was good, 8 sucked, 10 was good, 11 sucks. Windows 12 is going to be the next version to try I guess.

You specifically chose a high maintenance distro?

I'm running linux mint and I haven't had to fiddle with anything for years

At this point, I wouldn't be that surprised if people working at Microsoft competitors would receive more distracting junk.

Apple provides a clear and beneficial point of difference. They are vertically integrated and now with Apple silicon, have arguably the best productivity laptops on the market. My M2 Air, lets me do all the personal dev and admin work my XPS 17 does, but I can easily go several days without a charge. My work provided MBP will easily go all day on a single charge and have plenty of charge left.

Linux provides easily the best dev environment, is free, gives you all the control you could possible want, runs on lots of hardware and is speedy even on old hardware. Most of the internet is probably hosted on some flavour of linux, and open source frameworks so it's easy for you to do the same.

Windows is good for games and if you need to use Excel? It also has the best drivers for my printer. Am I being unfair here?

Every week or so, my Windows 10 desktop pops up a dialog telling me to upgrade to Windows 11. I spend about a minute looking for the one tiny link to dismiss the dialog without upgrading. I swear it changes locations each time...

Lately I've also had it sprout similar dialogs about converting my local account to a Microsoft account. Those are even harder to thwart, requiring multiple clicks through "Are you sure?" dialogs and dark patterns.

It's easier to bear this little weekly hide-and-seek ritual when you think about it like a small child making bids for attention. "Mommy, Mommy, I hid your glasses! Play with me before you start your workday!" Kind of endearing in its own way.

As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether.

Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.

> Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently

I've never seen anything as abhorrent as the stuff this article is reporting on, in macOS. A lot of Apple's hardware policies and anti-consumer, I'll give you that — is there anything in macOS that you're aware of, that's in a similar ballpark?

As I said, I haven't actually used macOS because I can't without significant money investment for unclear reason. But just from the random mentions here and on Reddit over the years I've created a picture that there are issues with that OS too. Like for example there was a gigantic article a few years ago linked here by a windows switcher and pro user, who listed multiple complaints about window handling in the macOS DE. Like happens when use maximize/minimize windows, alt-tab through them, interaction with a taskbar etc. I wouldn't be able to recount all of it, but I got an idea that Win10 was miles ahead in this area (Win11 is trash though).

There were articled about upgrade issues, and of course a lot of hardware issues.

I guess vendor lock is the key problem. As long as everything is nailed down without options, any defect or even design choice can be effective anti-consumer. All hardware issues become a whole product issues, because OS and hardware are inseparable.

Some day maybe I'll try it, even just to see what's all the fuss is about, but vendor lock makes is just hard enough that I simply upgrade my Windows box every time.

> multiple complaints about window handling

Gotcha. macOS has its own paradigm and does certain things differently, that's for sure, but I don't think it's anything a reasonably experienced user couldn't get used to. It's added things like full-screen in recent years — not as good as a maximised window, IMO, but there are utilities that can handle that.

> There were articled about upgrade issues, and of course a lot of hardware issues.

I've never run into an upgrade issue, and the fact that they're free is a big bonus. I've had one or two issues with my macbook pro, hardware-wise, but the general quality of the hardware is second-to-none, as far as I'm aware.

> everything is nailed down without options

This is typically why I, and many others, prefer macOS. I actually don't want to be endlessly tinkering with my OS — I quite enjoyed doing that in the early days, but now I just want to get my work done in the most pleasant environment possible. However, I haven't used any recent Windows versions, so I can't really compare.

> You specifically chose a high maintenance distro?

I guess so? Overall Arch was pretty easy to maintain, I just got tired of bailing on friends because I needed to spend hours figuring out some random issue.

yeah... bad choice :) if you wanted the Arch ecossystem without all the manual work you could have picked Manjaro or other arch-based distro

Usually in your BIOS you can disable your TPM chip. That will make it stop asking as you'll fail the min requirements check.

Although it did seem to randomly announce to me just a few times that mine is not compatible with Win11. Which isn't even true, since the TPM chip thing is a completely arbitrary requirement.

I did try Manjaro, it was definitely more user-friendly. Still not what I was looking for, unfortunately.