This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services.
It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.
I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
drewda 2 minutes ago [-]
FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...
riversflow 15 minutes ago [-]
> I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
I realize you probably are referencing visual studio, but at the OS level KDE plasma seems to have copped Windows hot keys wholesale. I was giving it a go recently and was delighted that even meta+arrow keys for monitor switching fullscreen apps works. My only gripe, and what got me booting back into windows, was that even the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky to reliably play multiplayer online games.
ano-ther 53 minutes ago [-]
That would improve things.
Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine.
When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only. And OneDrive was also affected by the Teams bug.
Spent a good part of the day cursing in the direction of Redmond.
SirFatty 16 minutes ago [-]
That must be the free version of OneDrive that forces cloud only.
no_shadowban_3 46 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
spandrew 22 minutes ago [-]
I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in).
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
bushbaba 10 minutes ago [-]
The neo is the Chromebook for education revolution. It’s cheap and better than 98%+ of windows laptops. I’d not be surprised to see further Mac penetration to the business sector
freediddy 2 minutes ago [-]
I have Windows and Mac PCs/laptops. I've used Windows since Windows 3.0, for 30+ years now. In the early 90s I invested in Windows NT 3.5 as a college student and learned how to use that over Windows 3.1 or OS/2. I attended the Windows 95 celebration in person. I almost went into becoming a Microsoft MCSE because it would have doubled my pay but went the programming route instead because I loved it more.
I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".
If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.
ooterness 51 minutes ago [-]
Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.
pipes 15 minutes ago [-]
I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.
WarmWash 10 minutes ago [-]
The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.
user432678 3 minutes ago [-]
I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.
throwa356262 27 minutes ago [-]
Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?
Jare 20 minutes ago [-]
I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.
25 minutes ago [-]
ubermonkey 10 minutes ago [-]
The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac.
Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.
My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
kstrauser 24 minutes ago [-]
How do you mean?
Supermancho 21 minutes ago [-]
people remember creating an Apple Account login and using it on their laptop, but don't understand that it's connected in fundamentally different ways.
The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.
ChocolateGod 16 minutes ago [-]
I wonder how much pressure is coming from OEMs given the MacBook Neo is coming straight for them in the budget laptop range.
jmclnx 24 minutes ago [-]
>Windows 11 will still force you to setup an internet connection and sign-in with a Microsoft account during the out of box experience
One has to wonder if this change will occur, that is due to these state laws requiring various levels of age verification. I can see MS stating you need to have this account because of the Age Verification Law in your State.
In a way, California's law is a huge gift to big tech, and now it is being replicated to other US states with additional requirements.
kstrauser 25 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft has, by far, the absolute worst sign-on experience of any enterprise vendor I've ever used in any industry for any reason. Try to log in to AWS and you'll either get authed or a clear denial reason. Google Workspace? You're in or you're out. Enterprisey MS service like Outlook or Azure? Well, if you've logged in from that computer before, you might get to log in, but you may also have to hunt around for your organization login. I recently tried to log in to an org but it ended up creating a personal account with an email address at the org's domain, and then I could sign in to the org because that account was already taken, and it took something like a week for the anti-fraud cooldown to let me delete the account and eventually re-register it inside the org.
For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing my an "Your privacy matters" explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take my to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)
You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call `legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password)`. It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so call `minecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password)`, unless it also contains `foo@minecraft.`, in which case call `minecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password)`, except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.
I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally, as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.
masfuerte 14 minutes ago [-]
This is so true. When you log in to their website it bounces around through about fifteen different domains before it concludes. I'm nearly sure passport.com is still in there.
18 minutes ago [-]
lousken 34 minutes ago [-]
And they have not yelled when they were implementing it years ago?
That sounds more like they were ok with it at the time and now they are seeing how much it actually backfired.
keeda 2 minutes ago [-]
Alternatively, they yelled back then and were dismissed but now have some political ammo to push their case. I mean, if it was actually backfiring enough, they would not have to "fight" for it now, Windows PMs themselves would be scrambling to do it.
xeromal 36 minutes ago [-]
Windows LTSC gang.
Rendered at 16:03:31 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.
I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
I realize you probably are referencing visual studio, but at the OS level KDE plasma seems to have copped Windows hot keys wholesale. I was giving it a go recently and was delighted that even meta+arrow keys for monitor switching fullscreen apps works. My only gripe, and what got me booting back into windows, was that even the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky to reliably play multiplayer online games.
Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine.
When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only. And OneDrive was also affected by the Teams bug.
Spent a good part of the day cursing in the direction of Redmond.
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".
If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.
Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.
My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.
One has to wonder if this change will occur, that is due to these state laws requiring various levels of age verification. I can see MS stating you need to have this account because of the Age Verification Law in your State.
In a way, California's law is a huge gift to big tech, and now it is being replicated to other US states with additional requirements.
For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing my an "Your privacy matters" explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take my to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)
You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call `legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password)`. It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so call `minecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password)`, unless it also contains `foo@minecraft.`, in which case call `minecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password)`, except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.
I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally, as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.
That sounds more like they were ok with it at the time and now they are seeing how much it actually backfired.