Maybe change the title, too? It's absurdly inaccurate, just look at how all the comments here are completely unrepresentative of what is stipulated in the article, everyone has read only the title and assumes:
* Ads are popping up on the desktop ("full-screen"). Which they are not - it is restricted to the lock screen. Neither the tweet nor the article mentions "full-screen" once.
* You can't opt-out of this process. The central point of the entire article is how to opt-out.
* This is new. I personally opted out of this feature a while back.
Possibly something like: "Windows is Showing Lock-Screen Ads (How to Opt-Out)". As per the guidelines:
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
This post not only fails to adhere to the guidelines, it does the exact opposite by changing the meaning of the article entirely. It should actually be deleted and I have flagged it due to such a blatant disregard for the guidelines.
There were 275 million PC units sold in 2015, and approximately the same number is expected for 2016. Sales were growing until 2011, when they peaked at around 360 million units. So certainly sales have shrunk, but I wouldn't describe them as "shrinking quickly", according to forecasts.
Shipments were down in 2015 even if you include Apple computers, which outperformed the rest. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40909316 Things look even worse when you take them out. Which forecasts are you using?
IDC PC numbers are depressed partly because it doesn't count tablets/2-in-1s as PCs, it counts them as tablets.
The story to which you link notes that "The impact for 2016 will be larger as detachable tablet volume grows, boosting earlier forecasts of PC growth in 2016 from -3.1% to growth of 1 to 2%."
The quote is saying that if you add those "tablets" back, it's predicting that the PC market will grow this year.
Another important point is that the vast majority of Windows 7/8/8.1 PCs will run Windows 10, and the upgrade is free. There's very little need for most users to buy a new PC.
If users only buy a new PC every six years, then Windows PC sales should halve, compared with a three-year upgrade cycle. It doesn't mean that PC usage is declining (though it might be), it just means that PCs are lasting twice as long.
Smartphone sales were, of course, hugely inflated by the fact that they only lasted for 18 months or so. When people keep their smartphones for three years, smartphone sales with halve as well.
Windows runs on everything from USB thumbdrivess to supercomputers. Windows 10 also runs on phones and games consoles. The IoT version runs on the Raspberry Pi etc. I'm not sure how many of those I'd want to count, but Windows 10 on a Asus T100 looks like a legitimate PC to me, whatever IDC says ;-)
Total "PC" units are shrinking, and Windows PC sales are shrinking compared to Mac computer sales, and phones are exploding compared to PCs. What comparison could you make where Windows PC sales are "up"?
source? Total units sold are shrinking (or steady, depending on your definition of PC and who's numbers you are using), but total units in operation is much closer to describing Microsofts market and hard to measure.
>Windows PC sales are shrinking compared to Mac computer sales
Macs are personal computers in every sense except marketing speak. The competitor selling better isn't a sign of the market shrinking.
>and phones are exploding compared to PCs
And in the summer desk fans sell better than hair driers. Phones are not in the same market as PCs.
Yeah? Care to back this up with some data? Because I'm looking at a very expensive market research report which disagrees. Sales of new PCs are down, because people don't need a new computer every 2 years. This doesn't mean total PCs in usage are down.
But more than 5 out of 10 PCs are still running Windows 7, and more than 2 out of 10 are still running other older versions of Windows.
Windows 10 has reportedly now passed 10% market share and just overtaken Windows 8.1 and Windows XP (individually, not combined).
For an operating system that Microsoft are so aggressively promoting to current users of 7/8, not to mention literally giving it away to them, that looks like an awful reaction from the market six months in already.
I really don't like this direction that MS is heading. I'd rather they charger for Windows 10 and newer and not start bundling software and pushing ads by default.
Also, fuck buying games off the Windows store, Steam and any other service that locks you into DRM. My steam client in Linux is hopelessly broken due to updates. Some of my games will still play, but most require the stupid Steam DRM layer. I should have bought them off Humble instead.
Steam is the best of a bad bunch really - it's not perfect, but it's much fairer than other platforms. There's another article on HTG (linked from this one) that outlines the differences between Steam and Windows Store, and Steam scores quite highly. I was very surprised when some of my older games suddenly popped up as being available on Linux for no extra cost. When the Steam DRM works properly, it's pretty non-invasive.
Can't deny Humble have it right though. This war over DRM was fought with music and non-DRM has mostly won. Maybe something similar will happen with games.
gog.com is the best option out there in my opinion. A strict no DRM stance, with sales on par with Steam's. You can download the installation binaries once and install offline as many times as you like with no extra effort, so there's no worries about losing your entire collection when a Russian script kiddy hijacks your Steam account to facilitate Counterstrike item scams and then Steam bans your account and says "we will no longer respond to further inquiries and consider this matter to be closed".
Gog is great for consumers, not so much for developers. The terms of their contracts are not particularly friendly to developers. The specifics are all NDA'd.
Which is like drm on steroids. And kind of exactly what people were warning drm would lead to - you don't own any music. But damn it's cheap and convenient.
The major benefit of owning music was that you could consume it easily on-demand. Since streaming services have expanded their libraries, delivery channels, and made songs available offline, there are less competitive benefits to actually owning a digital copy.
As a still-music-hoarder, I tried Spotify Premium for a while, but decided I didn't want to pay for it - I spent about the same cost monthly in new music, but if I stopped paying, I'd still have free access to all that music with no ads, and be able to play it all on any device with or without an internet connection (e.g. the old iPod connected to my car stereo). Streaming is certainly convenient, but they make it very difficult to walk away once you commit.
That's weird, because the variety of new music I listen to each month greatly exceeds the $10 price tag to own it, by magnitudes. Even if you pirated, the time spent each month finding, managing, and evaluating torrents is worth $10.
With the money saved you could always just purchase the songs if the service stopped.
I don't see how it could possibly cost $10 for this service. I do most of my music listening in my car, so using a streaming service would require using my cellular data connection to access this music. Cellular data isn't free, it's charged by usage. So playing hours and hours of music a month over a cellular data connection would cause my cellphone bill to balloon.
Much cheaper to just buy it.
And that's neglecting the fact that my data connection is spotty anyway. Fixing that would require buying a new Verizon phone and subscribing to Verizon, so that's probably at least $150-200/month right there, plus whatever the phone costs.
You can save music offline on your device, as if you owned it, so yes the cost of streaming is just $10/mo and cheaper than buying.
This was already pointed out, so I'm beginning to think you have some sort of cognitive bias against streaming services. Who are you really trying to convince, me or yourself?
I'm in the same boat. Steam was DESTROYING my PC for a long time. I couldn't figure out what it was and finally tracked the random spikes and focus losses to Steam's update service being corrupt. Re-installing Steam means uninstalling everything you've downloaded with steam, possibly losing save games and stuff like that, then having to wait for everything to re-download and install. There are ways around it, which I found later but I had already screwed up half of my downloaded games because I had assumed that I would be able to just do a uninstall-reinstall on it without losing all of my stuff. Total garbage. I will definitely not be using anything like steam, in the future, if I have any choice in the matter.
You should have backed up your games first. That's pretty easy. You can even install steam into an existing library folder and it will find all the games.
Sorry you got burned, but I installed a whole new primary drive and didn't have to reinstall all my games. There's also a backup feature that you didn't use.
Games have also generally always put their saves in your documents folder.
I appreciate it might have been an easy assumption to make, but it's even right there in google searches instant answer thing[1] so it must be a common question.
It obviously caused you a lot of hassle but steam's wildly popular and mainly loved, not total garbage. I'm really only commentating to make it clear to non-steam users that this poster has a minority opinion on the service, it's been years since there was any wide user dissatisfaction in steam (mainly when it first came out).
They even recently added a no-questions-asked refund system if you bought a game in the last 2 weeks and have played the game less than 2 hours[1].
> Re-installing Steam means uninstalling everything you've downloaded with steam
This is not true. Delete everything apart from the steamapps and userdata folders (which contain all your games and related data) and the Steam executable.
Next time you click it it will redownload and install itself and all your installed games will be intact.
Except they actually are¹ charging for Windows 10. And even if you pay for it, they still shove this tracking crap down your throat.
It seems the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap is to pay for the Enterprise version of Windows 10 (good luck with doing that if you’re not a business though).
Seems like the only way people want to make money these days is through invasive advertising without the end-user's explicit consent. Granted the expectation of free software is driving most of this, but it starts a vicious cycle because those who get annoyed with them develop countermeasures, which the creator responds to with more aggressive ads, ad infinitum.
It does start explaining some of the highly controversial telemetry MS was collecting in Win10 - turning everyone's PCs into billboards.
You can drop something that doesn't exist but was announced. Thechnically Skylake support for Win7 wasn't announced, but the effect is the same since there was an implicit expectation that the feature would come.
But I presume dropping support just means not being able to use the latest features.
Even a very old system image of windows 7 will run on the very latest skylake. It doesn't need the very latest updates. I doubt they will create a kill switch in a windows update that refuses to boot if the system detects a too modern CPU.
>Thechnically Skylake support for Win7 wasn't announced, but the effect is the same since there was an implicit expectation that the feature would come.
From where did this implicit expectation come from?
Windows 7 mainstream support ended in Jan 2015 and that was known since forever.
Extended support implies:
>Microsoft no longer supplies non-security hotfixes unless you have an extended support agreement
>All warranty claims end
>Microsoft no long accepts requests for new features and design changes
It's more prevalent than you would expect. People pay for cable and magazines. People even pay to become walking ads when they buy brand name clothing.
When I was still reading paper magazine, the first thing I did when I received a new issue of The Economist was to shake it over a garbage bin to remove all the inserts and tear up the card board insert in the middle...
It was either the Economist or FT that did a cost/benefit analysis of removing those inserts for their already-subscribed customers copies, and found that it would cost more in lost new subscriptions to remove them.
I guess because people are reminded weekly to resubscribe or buy subscriptions as gifts.
I dunno if it applies to me since I would habitually forget to resubscribe until they sent me the YOUR LAST ISSUE wrapping like an invasive Santa Claus.
Opportunity cost of lost subscriptions. A certain percentage of those inserts will convert to new subscriptions, even if the person receiving the insert was already a subscriber.
Wow, that really brings me back. I remember reading on Quora TE's chief editor explaining that the reason digital and print subscriptions were the same price was because digital ads were easier to avoid or block and were worth less to advertisers than print ads, which are more prominent and harder to ignore (unless you fold it over, but even then you'll certainly notice it).
For a while, there were people who used to drop them all in the mail.
Force the publishers and advertisers to pay the postage for them with the idea of making it less profitable to include them with the magazines in the first place.
I used to do that, back in the 90s in college. First I just put tons of trash paper in business-reply envelopes and drop them in the mail, then I started filling them up with gravel.
Years later, on the internet, I remember seeing some article about people doing this, and they had pictures of things like business-reply envelopes attached to bricks, which the USPS had received. IIRC, they said that the USPS didn't actually send these or charge the business for them, unfortunately.
So stick with just dropping them in the mail as-is, to make sure the business gets charged for it.
One time, back in the 80s, American Express had some kind of disagreement with the union that my step-father belonged to and the members of his union went out and every time they'd see the American Express credit card applications, they'd take them all and send them back in blank.
They had been told that each application cost a dollar to have mailed and processed.
I was a child so I never cared enough to ask about the details of the dispute and I don't know how long they did this, only that they did.
With magazines, at least those for very specialized audiences, the ads can actually be quite useful. For a general interest magazine, like TIME, or Scientific American, the ads are just filler for me. I'd rather have an ad-free version of the magazine.
But for something like QST (a ham radio magazine) where almost every advertiser is offering something I have an interest in, and where there are no physical stores in my area where I can go to browse the merchandise in person, the ads do a great job of keeping me current on what is available but are easy to ignore when I'm reading an article. I'd be disappointed if QST was ad-free.
My brother cut me a login to his Comcast Xfinity. I tried watching "The Magicians" on syfy.com--- and there's 100 seconds of ads, six times over a 45 minute show! It makes the cliffhangers and pauses even more obnoxious. I'm going to go back to torrenting.
No TV/cable, but on a trip recently I tried to watch syfy on the hotel TV -- and it was more ads than show. I can't believe anyone puts up with it; I swear it was five minutes of ads and five minutes of movie. No thanks; I'll just wait until things come to Prime or Netflix.
Yeah, if you stop watching TV for a few years, trying to watch again after is really jarring. The volume-boost of ads, while not as bad as it used to be, is still pretty obnoxious, and the sheer quantity of ads makes shows much less enjoyable. I really believe that our parents are the last generation to really put up with all the ads, and our generation will just torrent / wait for Netflix / Prime or something else with minimal ads. The days of paying $100/month for 60 channels with linear programming spending a third of their time on ads are numbered.
Unfortunately the industry's response to people avoiding explicit ads seems to be including ever more product placement. At least I can skip the ads with my PVR. Better that than having immersion in a show I enjoy totally broken by some blatant product logo or, worse, a really out-of-place line delivered dutifully but still awkwardly by an actor whose character would never say that.
Possibly the only more annoying thing in TV is when some totally out of place, usually bright and animated logo pops up a couple of minutes before the end of the show I'm actually watching, usually with a boxy ad for some other show on the same channel next to it. Way to completely ruin the ending of the current show.
It won't be too long before someone figures out how to de-product-place a show. Your dvr will scan for brand names like "Dell", "HP", "Ford", etc., and blur them out. The audio can also be similarly processed. Eventually, we'll only see what we want to see, which is what "on demand" should be!
When cable TV first came out, way back in the previous century, one of the benefits was supposedly going to be no commercials. Because you're paying to receive it. Now I'd guess more commercials are delivered via cable (and all those channels) than broadcast.
The logos and model numbers on cars seem to be about as weird as having Microsoft's name and logos around the OS and the logo of the hardware's manufacturer on the outside of the machine. Unless you're talking about dealer-provided license plate holders. Those are much easier to remove than most of the logos in software would be.
Software will never truly be "free" because someone pays for it to exist.
It has upfront fixed costs and variable costs to maintain, which need to be covered by the developers, users, advertisers, or some combination of the three.
By that definition nothing can be "free" (as in beer), there's always someone paying for it (even if it's just opportunity cost). For any useful definition of the word free there can also be free software.
Yep, also called TANSTaaFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch).
Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...". With IP, the costs are hidden and it's easy to fall into the trap of expecting it to be totally free.
The problem with TANSTaaFL is that it uses a completely different definition of the word free than normal English. Normally the word free only references the price paid by the consumer, not the cost of production.
If I give you a lunch without asking for anything in return, and without inconveniencing you, that's a free lunch for you. Of course somebody paid for it, but that doesn't stop me from giving it to you for free.
>Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...".
"I get my software for free but be offered the option to donate" is the model that's giving us Dwarf Fortress. It's free (as in beer) software in any useful sense of the word free.
Having read the article, this is about the "Windows Spotlight" feature -- which shows you a different wallpaper just before you log in. For me it's usually the default "cave and beach" wallpaper[1] although it's shown interesting photos from time to time, so I've left the feature on. It's on by default but pretty easy to disable.
Not sure how I'd feel if it started showing me blatant ads. I'd probably just turn it off. And if they annoy me too much, well, hello Mac or Linux.
I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, they're still trying to figure out what "Windows as a Service" looks like. Note that Google has ads on its homepage and even Apple delivers ads via push notifications, breaking its own rules in this regard[2].
That cave and beach is by my house in New Zealand. Was super confusing when I saw it on someone elses computer as well and realized the photo wasn't one of mine
I saw this too. If it didn't have the tiny text there that said "Discover the adventure inside." Then I'd hardly consider it an ad. It is then almost "free" wallpaper. Which I frequently have to go out and find for games I actually like and play.
It's such a fine line between delivering something people want without them having to ask for it (nifty feature), and shoving things down peoples throat (ads). I really hope they address this properly.
I have a hard time calling this an ad. It was one of the wallpapers released for the new Tomb Raider game, and it's a pretty nice lockscreen picture in it's own right.
Hopefully they'll fix it soon so people can't disable any of this stuff, and the ads get really blatant and annoying.
It's just like the old adage about boiling a frog. Except that in reality, frogs aren't actually that stupid, and will jump out of the pot when the water gets too hot. Humans aren't that smart.
People want free. Things aren't free. But people want free, so let's give them "free" and monetize them indirectly with surveillance, invasive advertising, etc.
The entire Internet has gone down this road since it's very hard to compete with someone who is giving something away for "free" (note quotes). Free has given us George Orwell's bidirectional it-watches-you TV set.
Free was fine back when people paid their ISP or university to host their pages for them. The stuff put up by hobbyists was a lot more interesting in general anyway.
I wouldn't put Torvalds in the same category as Stallman here. IIUC, Torvalds initially made Linux free simply because he was doing it for fun. Now he couldn't change the license if he wanted to, and he's getting paid to work on it anyway. In any case, it seems that he's always been much less idealistic about software freedom than Stallman.
What's the difference between OSX and Windows, in your mind? It's even more "free" than Windows is, since you can't buy it separately and all OS updates for the last few versions have been free.
>it's very hard to compete with someone who is giving something away for "free" (note quotes)
There's at least one very promising competing model: give something away for free (note lack of quotes) and offer people the option to pay.
In the software world we usually do that by using the free version as advertisement for a better paid version, Patreon (and Dwarf Fortress etc) show that the model can even work if paying offers no notable advantages.
I agree with your point but I doubt that something published by such a large company which many consumers have a distaste for ("my stupid computer is always blue-screening; I hate Microsoft") would be able to sustain such a huge development effort on just donations.
Edit: if it were open-source and they paid some people to work on it still, that would be...interesting.
I believe getting enough people to donate on a regular basis requires two things: a certain amount of customers have to be real fans of your product, and they have to be aware that the product ceases to exist if nobody donates.
Both aspects are a challenge for software: most people see software as a mere tool, and most people don't see the need for updates (and in fact see them as annoyance).
That's why a twitch streamers or youtube creator can easily get decent amounts of donations while donation buttons in software go completely ignored in almost all cases.
Open source is the one existing model in software development where donations work with some consitency (though donations are mostly in terms of development time, and some widely-used projects still go completely ignored).
For closed source there's are a few working examples with passionate fanbases (mostly games), but for the most part we haven't figured out how to do this well yet.
Yeah, except Windows 10 actually does cost money. And the people who pay for it still get to see ads.
It seems like the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap in Windows 10 is to pony up for the Enterprise version (which is basically impossible if you’re not a business).
Not quite the entire Internet has gone that way. However, it's frustrating seeing sites that offer original content with paid access being criticised all the time, as if they're somehow evil or trying to rip visitors off by honestly charging a reasonable price for their work instead of giving it away for free and making a deal with demons to fund it some other way. This is what we get for letting $0.99 ifart apps become the benchmark for a whole generation, I guess.
>Seems like the only way people want to make money these days is through invasive advertising
Edit: I see "want" in there now..
Microsoft had over $12BB in net income last year, so I'd hardly say the "only" way to make money is through invasive ads like this. I can't really explain why they do this (other than "why not?"), but any revenue from this is sure to be a drop in the bucket.
It's not a drop in a bucket, but a drop in Windows sales. By giving away free upgrades to Windows 10, revenue for Windows has dropped. This is their answer.
Isn't pretty much all advertising everywhere "without the end-user's explicit consent"?
Websites, TV, radio, print media, billboards, sides of buses, posters in public bathrooms, Disney-branded kids' food at the grocery store, product placements embedded in actual Hollywood movies, desktop search in freakin' Ubuntu...
I didn't sign up for seeing ads in any of these. They're just an implicit part of the social contract in 2016.
You can block websites, only listen to radio channels without ads, switch to another TV channel when ads are coming up, use print media that have no ads but are subscription financed, etc.
In many cities you’ll even find that bus advertisements are toned down, and in public bathrooms there are no posters either.
I don’t remember when I saw or heard an ad the last time, but it was not this week.
Oh man, it's absolutely true for FOSS, unless you develop FOSS purely because of idealogical reasons, Richard Stallman-style. FOSS development can be turned into reputation and popularity, which can be turned into cash. It's much easier to get your startup off the ground (or find a good job or decent clients as a contractor, etc.) if you have 10,000 Twitter followers, because you write popular FOSS.
Which is exactly how FOSS is supposed to work. You give away something free of charge and available to everyone and you're getting something back from your users.
That doesn't make the software's user "the product" though. In your case the developer is making himself the product he tries to sell, not the users. This is really not comparable to advertisement and data collection.
But the user is not really 'the product' in any meaningful way. The developer's reputation from having +1 user does not have a negative impact on the user like advertising does.
Telling people not to trust anything they don't have to pay for seems a really obvious footgun for FOSS.
Yup, they are having their cake and eating it, too. Free for 10% of the PC users, the rest 90% will pay for it, but because of those 10% we're also going to serve everyone ads, too.
> "When the item is free, you are the product" is the lesson of this past decade.
A more accurate lesson would be, "if the item is free, and often if it is not, you are paying for it in something other than money, or are receiving benefits incidentally to someone else paying for it."
1. New spotlight feature = on;
2. Toggle "fun facts and more" = on;
You know that images will stream in from the internet along with "fun facts and more" whatever that is. And when a Tomb Raider image appears, you're suddenly in Orwellian future shock mode?
The day MS takes away the toggle so you can't switch ads off, is the day to be outraged. Not before.
Okay... that would annoy me too. I'm still on Windows 7 and haven't seen anything like that. Not one Windows 10 ad, and I've been doing Windows updates (manual ones from time to time). On both my laptop and desktop - Win 7 and Win 8, I have yet to see any GWX ad. Maybe I will see it one day.
This is interesting. In my experience any off-domain (i.e. workgroup) Win 7 installation which is taking Windows Updates (required, not optional) gets the GWX update. The relevant Update is KB 3035583.
"To install this update, you must have April 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 (2919355) installed in Windows 8.1. Or, install Windows 7 SP1" [0]
Apparently it also does not apply to Enterprise Edition.
[0]
I still remember the last time I used Windows (outside of a VM for testing.) I had been given a Surface to develop on for my video game. At one point, it started playing an advertisement as a part of the operating experience. My reaction:
I didn't even realize that it was an advertisement. But if it is, it's not the first one. The Beatles images shown in December were then probably also technically ads for the just-released-on-streaming Beatles catalog.
Disclosures: I work at Microsoft and really don't like advertising-supported products.
Kind of complete bullshit to do that, but at the same time it's very easy to disable via settings. It's not as though you have to tinker with the register or modify your hosts file or whatever else.
On the other hand, it's a static Tomb Raider image on your lock screen.
I'd prefer that to say an "arty" photo of a new father holding his newborn baby to his bare chest in the morning sun or something... That would fill me with rage.
> One day [ReactOS] may be the only way to use Windows programs without this kind of end-user harassment.
There's a lot of code sharing between ReactOS and Wine. For the most part, Wine works really well to run Windows software... there's no need to run an entire somewhat-Windows-compatible OS that has limited hardware compatibility when you're just interested in running a particular Windows application. [0]
However, I expect that you neither meant to imply that Wine wasn't a good option for running Windows software, nor that work on Wine was likely to stop before work on ReactOS stopped. :)
[0] Edit: To be clear, I'm quite aware that the task that the ReactOS devs face is monumental. I also acknowledge that those devs have put in a lot of good work over the past ~eighteen years.
Aren't plentiful, unrequested ads for games an integral part of Microsoft's XBox systems? I don't remember hearing too much outrage about those. Is that a different situation somehow?
Great point. I've always had an issue with those ads on the home screen. One ad that stands out in my memory was a particularly gruesome looking game ad, something about zombies. I thought it was way too dark for the little kids in my house to be seeing, but had no way to turn it off.
Yeah, by the author's standard, any nice picture would be an ad for the photographer.
Pretty picture of a New Zeeland countryside? Ad for NZ tourism office.
Pretty picture of a data center chockfull of network equipment and mainframes? Ad for IBM and Cisco.
Microsoft have been doing that since Bing, show a pretty interesting picture with a little icon to know where that picture is from. It just happens that one is from a game.
People are so tired of obnoxious and disgusting ads that they tend to forget why they hate obnoxious and disgusting ads; because they are obnoxious and disgusting. Then they go on an irrational crusade about every picture, awesome viral video, mystery public campaign just because it originates from a corporation.
This is about as tasteful as they could've gotten and I applaud them for their choice. It's visually appealing concept art showing a cool setting, and it's completely devoid of logos and obtrusive indicators of brand. It doesn't say "TOMB RAIDER" in the corner. There is a call-to-action, but it's absolutely tiny, and takes you to their Store app, not some sketchy website.
This is product placement at it's best, really. It's subtle, attention-catching on its artistic merits, and stays out of your way if you're uninterested.
I'll even go as far as suggest that this is exactly the kind of advertising I'd prefer, if we must have advertising (that point can be debated).
I was shocked and very worried when ads for Microsoft Office started popping up in the Action Center (10's centralized notification area) last year. When I wrote about my concerns on a Windows forum, most pf the responses were along the lines of, "why are you complaining, Windows 10 is free." If people no longer feel that they own their operating systems, then there is no check on Microsoft's behavior. Inevitably, ads will become personalized and telemetry that Microsoft now uses to improve the operating system will be used to improve ads. The challenges to privacy that we currently experience online will expand to the desktop.
What is the harm done? Of course you don't "own" your operating system. You also paid nothing for it. I also struggle to grasp the double standard of why Google, Facebook, et al are able to endlessly track and personalize ads, but when Microsoft follows a similar model, there is outrage.
The argument that Win10 is free won't hold for much longer, it's only 'free' if you upgrade from Win7 or 8. It's already being sold retail in stores for a similar price to the old versions. And from later this year, people will have to pay for upgrades too.
On the flipside, you don't "own" your software anyway, you own a license to use it (EULA).
The double-standard probably has something to do with the ability to block most of Google's ads and tracking, or use another search platform if you really want. This is the OS on top of which you'll be using all of your other software (web platforms included), and it's impossible to control what is going on in the background.
While I agree with the difference, it should still be possible to block these types of ads with some kind of firewall. Unless the OS is blocking the blocking at a lower level (which I'd be VERY surprised by), something like Privoxy and using that as the system proxy for http[s] should be able to knock these out if they're loaded dynamically. I haven't tested this, so it would require some inspection and network monitoring to figure out what's serving these. Some hosts file entries may even be enough.
I think that's different because you are subverted the OS's attempts to advertise to you. Most people are not willing to go to this level. Changing search engines is not subverting Google, it's just not using their product.
> I'll assume from the downvotes that some people want to pretend that pattern-of-life data isn't valuable
I'm pretty sure it's from people who either payed for Windows and just got a free upgrade, or who directly bought Windows 10. Computers with "free" Windows obviously also have the price of Windows factored in. The closest you get to free Windows is with Dreamspark (their MINT student program), and even that costs money for the university.
Like many in posts in this thread, the "free" I was replying is the Win10 upgrade. Unlike previous upgrades that cost money, many people instead had to pay for that upgrade in data.
Obviously Windows is sold in other forms, and new pre-built computers still have a Windows Tax.
I expect to own my operating system in the same way that a tenant owns the interior of building. The landlord cannot walk into the home uninvited. The landlord cannot install cameras or listening devices in the home. As Justice Roberts said in Riley v. California (which also applies to computers, surely), "Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life.'"
>I expect to own my operating system in the same way that a tenant owns the interior of building. The landlord cannot walk into the home uninvited. The landlord cannot install cameras or listening devices in the home.
Yeah, and I want a unicorn that farts rainbows.
If you continue to use Windows, you're going to get all kinds of uninvited stuff you don't want. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Sit around a whine?
Personally, I love this stuff, and I hope MS makes it so people can't disable it, and even requires that all Windows PCs must be connected to the internet at all times to phone home, or else they stop working.
The Microsoft Office one is far worse than this example.
I actually had Office installed and was STILL seeing those annoying as heck notifications. That was just blatant and annoying advertising.
All this is, is you're opting to receive dynamic lock screen images that rotate constantly, Microsoft threw in a few ads. It isn't ideal but you you get something in return (a constantly changing set of lock screen images from Windows Spotlight).
With the Office thing you get nothing in return, it is just irritating and pointless.
> I actually had Office installed and was STILL seeing those annoying as heck notifications. That was just blatant and annoying advertising.
Same thing here. I don't see how hard could it be to verify that the Microsoft account I have used to create a Windows account has an Office 365 subscription.
This behavior is caused by a preinstalled modern app called "Get Office", which you can find in your Start Menu's All Apps list. Along with it's brethren "Get Skype", right click and uninstall both. The fact that these apps are unable to tell that you already "Got Skype" and "Got Office" is definitely irritating.
Honestly, I've done a lot of support for seniors and non-technical users, and I'm absolutely positive there are people getting feedback like "we don't know where to get Office" and the like. And that decisions like this (along with the questionable methods of streamlining Windows 10 installs for Windows 7 and 8 users) are primarily motivated by a desire to make Windows not seem harder to use than popular mobile platforms.
But there's been a huge breakdown, I think, in realizing that it's not correct to treat all users the same way. The fact that my Pro-licensed, domain-joined PC auto-installs Candy Crush on it is kinda an indication they're missing this critical piece.
This is the exact reason why Google is so valuable- when I use Google, I'm actively searching for something, so I'm happy to see relevant ads in my search results.
If I search "bike shop London," I want to find a bike shop in London, so if I see an ad for a bike shop in London, I'm ecstatic, and I'll probably go there.
When I go to check my inbox, on the other hand, that's because I want to see what email I've received. I don't want to see ads there.
This is the inherent problem with Facebook/Twitter- I go to Facebook/Twitter to find what my friends are up to, not to search for something. I have no interest in seeing ads in my Facebook/Twitter feed.
I proactively do not click on adwords or suggested links or anything. In fact if I see an ad for bikes shops in London I will scroll down and click on the next link.
Clicking advertisements also helps to pay for the service you are using for free. In the case of google search the ads don't significantly diminish the product, so I'm happy to give google a bit of ad revenue.
Same here. I "trust" the Google algorithm to show me the most relevant search results first, but know that ads are not part of that ranking. So if I'm looking for the most relevant result I'm clicking on the first results after the ads.
I think Google is massively overpaid for what it does at this point.
In your scenario, you've decided you want to 1) buy a bike 2) from a brick and mortar store 3) by going there and talking to them. Your mind is made up. Why does your local bike shop have to pay Google to show up in those results? What if a bike shop uses its budget to advertise on Google instead of training its employees, you'll go to the one that's advertising instead of the good one, because Google is playing middleman on intent. I don't like there being economic incentive to mess with my research when I've already decided what I want.
On the other hand, I like AdSense. If I'm reading an article about commuting problems in the Bay Area or on how to buy a car for cheap, ads for bike shops might be helpful. It turns out that SF is a good place to ditch the car and commute on your bike because the weather is so good. That's new information in the moment I'm making the decision, not re-ranking existing information when I'm trying to find something more commoditized.
The problem is the Google has built a legitimate monopoly on search, and they're extracting the value they can from it. Sure, it's based on being a better search engine than everybody else, but it still frustrates me that they're taking their monopolists cut.
>> I don't like there being economic incentive to mess with my research when I've already decided what I want.
The effects of this are subtle, but it could be that they are pretty big.
Just look at Google removing forum search from it's engine - so instead of reading discussions among people(and some shills, sure), most people often read commercial stuff or crap journalism.What does that do to democracy ? consumer choice ?
Eh. I don't use Gmail because their login page is ad-free. I use it because my workflow is better.
I was expecting your screenshot to show the minimized amount of ads within the inbox. But you could argue that Outlook is reasonably minimal, Gmail is only text, and Yahoo/AOL are panelled ads.
> Slapping ads all over my login page is a great way render the fat from brand advertisers into short-term revenue gains at the price of ENRAGING me.
Exactly. And the advertisers usually don't benefit either. When I was looking for a password manager, I saw Dashlane listed and it looked like a decent product … but I didn't click on it or research it because it had kept showing up on my Firefox homepage, and I associated "ads in my Firefox" with "Dashlane". Sure, I had more brand awareness, but it didn't do them any good.
Well that's a fairly misleading comparison. Where is the screenshot for Outlook.com which has no ads either?
Not to mention the fact that Gmail is valuable to Google because it gets people to sign in in all the browsers they use, allowing them to track them via cookies on all Google properties including search.
The "World's Most Valuable Advertising Business" does things like track which physical stores Android phone users and Google maps users on iOS visit.
Plenty of Android OEMs install adware and bloatware, sometimes which cannot even be uninstalled, so I guess people are already conditioned to this.
Just FTR, GMail puts quite a few ads in the inbox though. And until a few years ago, GMail also had fancy images and (internal only) ads on their login page as well. I didn't particularly care about those, though, because I usually never see the login page. But I do agree that GMail's advertisement is a lot more lightweight than other email services I have used (rediffmail? inline ads anyone?)
Although presently I just use GMail's https://inbox.google.com which hasn't shown me an advertisement yet.
And yet when I login into Gmail, I see several ads on top of my inbox that are styled exactly like mails, except they have a teeny-tiny yellow "Ad" sign next to them. I'd rather have huge ads than deceptive ads that pretend to be content.
I seem to remember some recent articles about MSFT which detailed how they had really turned things around. They've been missing the boat for years, and finally got their act together. They had a really aggressive goal for getting windows 10 on XYZ millions of devices by June or July this year. And now....this?! This does not fit Satya Nadella's recent narrative. Why would MSFT do this?
I'd rather pay full price for a OS release than become a product.
Of course, another issue is that the Windows Store is completely broken on my computer and quite a few apps no longer work (including Windows Calculator, Photos, etc.).
This is not how you design good products and tools. If I grab my drill, it's because I want to make a hole. I don't want to click through even one annoyance. Also, in the real world, it's one annoyance today, but it'll be five tomorrow if people don't push back.
Computers are annoying because apologists keep saying things like "just turn that off".
I don't disagree with your general point. But we have here a relatively new image showcase feature called "spotlight". I'm not really seeing the deception or poor design if you chose to enable this new feature in the first place.
Edit - I've just found out Spotlight is enabled by default. I don't have Windows 10, didn't know.
You could say the same about installers bundled with some crapware toolbars installed by default - you just need to uncheck one checkbox! It's not about how much effort it requires to turn such bullshit off, to me it's a clear message from the company that you're just a sucker to be milked as hard as possible. "Oh, you've turned it off? No problem, we'll be more clever next time!" I refuse to use anything coming from such companies, even if it means more effort in everyday life.
Whether it's justified or not is nearly beside the point. Will backlash happen from this? If it hits the login screen of every Windows 7 user, it'll almost certainly be in mainstream press within the next couple of days. It won't last, of course. That's why I think Microsoft will have an opportunity to learn from it.
There was backlash against iTunes 'helpfully' giving you a crappy U2 album. Traditionally, advertising is something you see when you 'go on the internet'. It doesn't usually appear before you even log onto the machine.
This is the price for the "free" upgrade to windows 10.
I really don't like this trend of turning your personal computer into a thin client, where its properties can be manipulated remotely by the vendor like if it was a web app.
This is why I stayed away of products like Windows 10 and ChromeOS.
Microsoft added the Spotlight feature last year, and this is pretty much exactly what it was billed as: if you don't have a lock screen image of your own, you get random wallpaper images from Bing, and also occasional app offers and tips. You can upvote/downvote the offers to personalize the suggestions in the future. It's an app discovery mechanism, and you can turn it off by picking your own lock screen image. I don't know why it's only in the news now. This isn't the first time wallpapers for an app have been in the rotation.
I'm fine with jumping aboard the hate train for things like the Office ads but this seems like a pretty non-issue and I agree with you. Just like the Google Play widget or notifications for the App Store on iOS; Windows is doing the same-thing but with a lock screen background.
I'm not sure if this is a default (I thought it wasn't; it certainly wasn't when I bought a Surface a couple of weeks ago). If this is a default then I think that should be changed but beyond that? Not a big deal. Let's focus on other Windows 10 issues that should be addressed versus this.
I look at it as a part of a larger arc of issues. Windows is going fremium.
I feel like advertisements as a direct component of an operating system have crossed a line. This is like when Ubuntu started advertising amazon products in their launch bar. It crossed a line.
Yeah, and the worst part is, Windows 10 actually does¹ cost money. And the people who pay for it still get to see ads.
It seems like the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap in Windows 10 is to pony up for the Enterprise version (which is basically impossible if you’re not a business).
Well there is some truth to the pervasiveness of Windows 10 that at times makes it feel like it may be toeing the line with freemium (I'm looking at you Microsoft bundled games though that technically happened with Windows 8). I'm not really convinced this is it though. I mean do you have an issue with the Play Store widget or the iOS notifications of new apps? Seems like the same thing to me except less interaction with the Microsoft one.
Granted, as I said before, this wasn't a default on my Surface but if it was then that's not cool and they should change it. But as far as its existence goes? I don't see it as an issue. Honestly if it let me filter to a crazy degree I would love cool images for some of my favorite or upcoming games. I could be in the minority with that last point I'll admit :)
Only on the Kindle With Special Offers which is priced lower than the standard Kindle. A way more upfront approach. It's literally in the title of the product that you are purchasing something with advertising on the lock screen.
But they aren't the same at all. Kindle is literally ads, with big text, calls to actions, discounts, etc. This wallpaper is 99% a wallpaper, 1% an ad.
This comment should be unreadably light gray by now. Amazon’s ads are such as explicit part of what a customer is buying that it’s in the title of the product Amazon is selling: “Kindle WITH SPECIAL OFFERS.” Microsoft isn't even calling these “ads” in the SPECIFIC FEATURE TOGGLE that controls it.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 331 ms ] thread* Ads are popping up on the desktop ("full-screen"). Which they are not - it is restricted to the lock screen. Neither the tweet nor the article mentions "full-screen" once.
* You can't opt-out of this process. The central point of the entire article is how to opt-out.
* This is new. I personally opted out of this feature a while back.
Possibly something like: "Windows is Showing Lock-Screen Ads (How to Opt-Out)". As per the guidelines:
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
This post not only fails to adhere to the guidelines, it does the exact opposite by changing the meaning of the article entirely. It should actually be deleted and I have flagged it due to such a blatant disregard for the guidelines.
There were 275 million PC units sold in 2015, and approximately the same number is expected for 2016. Sales were growing until 2011, when they peaked at around 360 million units. So certainly sales have shrunk, but I wouldn't describe them as "shrinking quickly", according to forecasts.
The story to which you link notes that "The impact for 2016 will be larger as detachable tablet volume grows, boosting earlier forecasts of PC growth in 2016 from -3.1% to growth of 1 to 2%."
The quote is saying that if you add those "tablets" back, it's predicting that the PC market will grow this year.
Another important point is that the vast majority of Windows 7/8/8.1 PCs will run Windows 10, and the upgrade is free. There's very little need for most users to buy a new PC.
If users only buy a new PC every six years, then Windows PC sales should halve, compared with a three-year upgrade cycle. It doesn't mean that PC usage is declining (though it might be), it just means that PCs are lasting twice as long.
Smartphone sales were, of course, hugely inflated by the fact that they only lasted for 18 months or so. When people keep their smartphones for three years, smartphone sales with halve as well.
https://www.asus.com/2-in-1-PCs/ASUS_Transformer_Book_T100TA...
source? Total units sold are shrinking (or steady, depending on your definition of PC and who's numbers you are using), but total units in operation is much closer to describing Microsofts market and hard to measure.
>Windows PC sales are shrinking compared to Mac computer sales
Macs are personal computers in every sense except marketing speak. The competitor selling better isn't a sign of the market shrinking.
>and phones are exploding compared to PCs
And in the summer desk fans sell better than hair driers. Phones are not in the same market as PCs.
Right, but the comment I'm replying to 'way up there is about MS annoying its customers to the point that they leave.
Yeah? Care to back this up with some data? Because I'm looking at a very expensive market research report which disagrees. Sales of new PCs are down, because people don't need a new computer every 2 years. This doesn't mean total PCs in usage are down.
Windows 10 has reportedly now passed 10% market share and just overtaken Windows 8.1 and Windows XP (individually, not combined).
For an operating system that Microsoft are so aggressively promoting to current users of 7/8, not to mention literally giving it away to them, that looks like an awful reaction from the market six months in already.
Also, fuck buying games off the Windows store, Steam and any other service that locks you into DRM. My steam client in Linux is hopelessly broken due to updates. Some of my games will still play, but most require the stupid Steam DRM layer. I should have bought them off Humble instead.
Can't deny Humble have it right though. This war over DRM was fought with music and non-DRM has mostly won. Maybe something similar will happen with games.
The major benefit of owning music was that you could consume it easily on-demand. Since streaming services have expanded their libraries, delivery channels, and made songs available offline, there are less competitive benefits to actually owning a digital copy.
With the money saved you could always just purchase the songs if the service stopped.
Much cheaper to just buy it.
And that's neglecting the fact that my data connection is spotty anyway. Fixing that would require buying a new Verizon phone and subscribing to Verizon, so that's probably at least $150-200/month right there, plus whatever the phone costs.
This was already pointed out, so I'm beginning to think you have some sort of cognitive bias against streaming services. Who are you really trying to convince, me or yourself?
https://www.gog.com/galaxy
Games have also generally always put their saves in your documents folder.
I appreciate it might have been an easy assumption to make, but it's even right there in google searches instant answer thing[1] so it must be a common question.
It obviously caused you a lot of hassle but steam's wildly popular and mainly loved, not total garbage. I'm really only commentating to make it clear to non-steam users that this poster has a minority opinion on the service, it's been years since there was any wide user dissatisfaction in steam (mainly when it first came out).
They even recently added a no-questions-asked refund system if you bought a game in the last 2 weeks and have played the game less than 2 hours[1].
[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=does+uninstalling+steam+dele... [2]http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/
Many games do, but there are still plenty that put them elsewhere. You probably want to use something like Gamesave Manager [1] to find them all.
[1] http://www.gamesave-manager.com
This is not true. Delete everything apart from the steamapps and userdata folders (which contain all your games and related data) and the Steam executable.
Next time you click it it will redownload and install itself and all your installed games will be intact.
It seems the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap is to pay for the Enterprise version of Windows 10 (good luck with doing that if you’re not a business though).
――――――
¹ — http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?keywords=windows+10&Site...
It does start explaining some of the highly controversial telemetry MS was collecting in Win10 - turning everyone's PCs into billboards.
I'm so glad Win7 will be supported until 2020.
Even a very old system image of windows 7 will run on the very latest skylake. It doesn't need the very latest updates. I doubt they will create a kill switch in a windows update that refuses to boot if the system detects a too modern CPU.
Still better than Chrome endig support for Windows Vista this upcoming April...
From where did this implicit expectation come from?
Windows 7 mainstream support ended in Jan 2015 and that was known since forever.
Extended support implies:
>Microsoft no longer supplies non-security hotfixes unless you have an extended support agreement
>All warranty claims end
>Microsoft no long accepts requests for new features and design changes
edit: comma
It was either the Economist or FT that did a cost/benefit analysis of removing those inserts for their already-subscribed customers copies, and found that it would cost more in lost new subscriptions to remove them.
How does that make sense?
I dunno if it applies to me since I would habitually forget to resubscribe until they sent me the YOUR LAST ISSUE wrapping like an invasive Santa Claus.
Force the publishers and advertisers to pay the postage for them with the idea of making it less profitable to include them with the magazines in the first place.
Years later, on the internet, I remember seeing some article about people doing this, and they had pictures of things like business-reply envelopes attached to bricks, which the USPS had received. IIRC, they said that the USPS didn't actually send these or charge the business for them, unfortunately.
So stick with just dropping them in the mail as-is, to make sure the business gets charged for it.
They had been told that each application cost a dollar to have mailed and processed.
I was a child so I never cared enough to ask about the details of the dispute and I don't know how long they did this, only that they did.
But for something like QST (a ham radio magazine) where almost every advertiser is offering something I have an interest in, and where there are no physical stores in my area where I can go to browse the merchandise in person, the ads do a great job of keeping me current on what is available but are easy to ignore when I'm reading an article. I'd be disappointed if QST was ad-free.
Possibly the only more annoying thing in TV is when some totally out of place, usually bright and animated logo pops up a couple of minutes before the end of the show I'm actually watching, usually with a boxy ad for some other show on the same channel next to it. Way to completely ruin the ending of the current show.
but I see a ton of paid cars driving around with advertisements stuck on the back too
It has upfront fixed costs and variable costs to maintain, which need to be covered by the developers, users, advertisers, or some combination of the three.
Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...". With IP, the costs are hidden and it's easy to fall into the trap of expecting it to be totally free.
If I give you a lunch without asking for anything in return, and without inconveniencing you, that's a free lunch for you. Of course somebody paid for it, but that doesn't stop me from giving it to you for free.
>Which is the point in context to someone saying "If only there really was universal expectation of free software...".
"I get my software for free but be offered the option to donate" is the model that's giving us Dwarf Fortress. It's free (as in beer) software in any useful sense of the word free.
I don't think they meant "universal expectation of free software with donations only".
Not sure how I'd feel if it started showing me blatant ads. I'd probably just turn it off. And if they annoy me too much, well, hello Mac or Linux.
I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, they're still trying to figure out what "Windows as a Service" looks like. Note that Google has ads on its homepage and even Apple delivers ads via push notifications, breaking its own rules in this regard[2].
[1] http://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Windows-10-lo... [2] https://marco.org/2014/12/01/app-store-rule-5-6
It's such a fine line between delivering something people want without them having to ask for it (nifty feature), and shoving things down peoples throat (ads). I really hope they address this properly.
It's just like the old adage about boiling a frog. Except that in reality, frogs aren't actually that stupid, and will jump out of the pot when the water gets too hot. Humans aren't that smart.
The entire Internet has gone down this road since it's very hard to compete with someone who is giving something away for "free" (note quotes). Free has given us George Orwell's bidirectional it-watches-you TV set.
Free didn't ruin the web, advertising did.
I used to think PCs that were sold had some vendor bloatware, but now the OS itself is bloatware.
Were Stallman & Torvalds simply precient for their viewpoints 20+ years ago?
Can't disable unless it's Win10 Enterprise or Education editions (does any PC sold come with Win10 enterprise or education editions)?
There's at least one very promising competing model: give something away for free (note lack of quotes) and offer people the option to pay.
In the software world we usually do that by using the free version as advertisement for a better paid version, Patreon (and Dwarf Fortress etc) show that the model can even work if paying offers no notable advantages.
Edit: if it were open-source and they paid some people to work on it still, that would be...interesting.
Both aspects are a challenge for software: most people see software as a mere tool, and most people don't see the need for updates (and in fact see them as annoyance).
That's why a twitch streamers or youtube creator can easily get decent amounts of donations while donation buttons in software go completely ignored in almost all cases.
Open source is the one existing model in software development where donations work with some consitency (though donations are mostly in terms of development time, and some widely-used projects still go completely ignored).
For closed source there's are a few working examples with passionate fanbases (mostly games), but for the most part we haven't figured out how to do this well yet.
It seems like the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap in Windows 10 is to pony up for the Enterprise version (which is basically impossible if you’re not a business).
Edit: I see "want" in there now..
Microsoft had over $12BB in net income last year, so I'd hardly say the "only" way to make money is through invasive ads like this. I can't really explain why they do this (other than "why not?"), but any revenue from this is sure to be a drop in the bucket.
Websites, TV, radio, print media, billboards, sides of buses, posters in public bathrooms, Disney-branded kids' food at the grocery store, product placements embedded in actual Hollywood movies, desktop search in freakin' Ubuntu...
I didn't sign up for seeing ads in any of these. They're just an implicit part of the social contract in 2016.
In many cities you’ll even find that bus advertisements are toned down, and in public bathrooms there are no posters either.
I don’t remember when I saw or heard an ad the last time, but it was not this week.
That's at least my way of looking at it.
That doesn't make the software's user "the product" though. In your case the developer is making himself the product he tries to sell, not the users. This is really not comparable to advertisement and data collection.
Telling people not to trust anything they don't have to pay for seems a really obvious footgun for FOSS.
[0]: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-...
"Free" in that context is what I am referring to.
A more accurate lesson would be, "if the item is free, and often if it is not, you are paying for it in something other than money, or are receiving benefits incidentally to someone else paying for it."
Win 10 isn't free.
Ever since Ubuntu did it.
1. New spotlight feature = on; 2. Toggle "fun facts and more" = on;
You know that images will stream in from the internet along with "fun facts and more" whatever that is. And when a Tomb Raider image appears, you're suddenly in Orwellian future shock mode?
The day MS takes away the toggle so you can't switch ads off, is the day to be outraged. Not before.
GWX certainly qualifies as an "ad." Just curious, where is the "toggle switch" in the "settings" that I can turn "off" to disable GWX?
Oh, there isn't one?
I thought so.
"To install this update, you must have April 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 (2919355) installed in Windows 8.1. Or, install Windows 7 SP1" [0]
Apparently it also does not apply to Enterprise Edition. [0]
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/3035583
1. What is happening?
2. Why is this happening?
3. How do I shut this off?
4. Who the hell decided this was a good idea?
5. Where's the nearest trash bin?
Disclosures: I work at Microsoft and really don't like advertising-supported products.
I'd prefer that to say an "arty" photo of a new father holding his newborn baby to his bare chest in the morning sun or something... That would fill me with rage.
Tomb Raider image, not so bad.
One day it may be the only way to use Windows programs without this kind of end-user harassment.
There's a lot of code sharing between ReactOS and Wine. For the most part, Wine works really well to run Windows software... there's no need to run an entire somewhat-Windows-compatible OS that has limited hardware compatibility when you're just interested in running a particular Windows application. [0]
However, I expect that you neither meant to imply that Wine wasn't a good option for running Windows software, nor that work on Wine was likely to stop before work on ReactOS stopped. :)
[0] Edit: To be clear, I'm quite aware that the task that the ReactOS devs face is monumental. I also acknowledge that those devs have put in a lot of good work over the past ~eighteen years.
I personally would have just assumed the ad to be yet another random lock screen image. Which I like for the most part.
It's a very attractive piece of high quality concept art. It doesn't even have a logo.
Is it for a game that they sell? Yes. But come on. This is one of the least invasive advertisements I've ever seen.
Pretty picture of a New Zeeland countryside? Ad for NZ tourism office.
Pretty picture of a data center chockfull of network equipment and mainframes? Ad for IBM and Cisco.
Microsoft have been doing that since Bing, show a pretty interesting picture with a little icon to know where that picture is from. It just happens that one is from a game.
People are so tired of obnoxious and disgusting ads that they tend to forget why they hate obnoxious and disgusting ads; because they are obnoxious and disgusting. Then they go on an irrational crusade about every picture, awesome viral video, mystery public campaign just because it originates from a corporation.
This is product placement at it's best, really. It's subtle, attention-catching on its artistic merits, and stays out of your way if you're uninterested.
I'll even go as far as suggest that this is exactly the kind of advertising I'd prefer, if we must have advertising (that point can be debated).
On the flipside, you don't "own" your software anyway, you own a license to use it (EULA).
The double-standard probably has something to do with the ability to block most of Google's ads and tracking, or use another search platform if you really want. This is the OS on top of which you'll be using all of your other software (web platforms included), and it's impossible to control what is going on in the background.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Local...
edit: I don't necessarily know about their legitimacy, and I've never used them myself.
Windows requires payment, just not in dollars. The data gathered from "telemetry" (spyware) is valuable.
edit: I'll assume from the downvotes that some people want to pretend that pattern-of-life data isn't valuable
I'm pretty sure it's from people who either payed for Windows and just got a free upgrade, or who directly bought Windows 10. Computers with "free" Windows obviously also have the price of Windows factored in. The closest you get to free Windows is with Dreamspark (their MINT student program), and even that costs money for the university.
Obviously Windows is sold in other forms, and new pre-built computers still have a Windows Tax.
Yeah, and I want a unicorn that farts rainbows.
If you continue to use Windows, you're going to get all kinds of uninvited stuff you don't want. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Sit around a whine?
Personally, I love this stuff, and I hope MS makes it so people can't disable it, and even requires that all Windows PCs must be connected to the internet at all times to phone home, or else they stop working.
I actually had Office installed and was STILL seeing those annoying as heck notifications. That was just blatant and annoying advertising.
All this is, is you're opting to receive dynamic lock screen images that rotate constantly, Microsoft threw in a few ads. It isn't ideal but you you get something in return (a constantly changing set of lock screen images from Windows Spotlight).
With the Office thing you get nothing in return, it is just irritating and pointless.
Same thing here. I don't see how hard could it be to verify that the Microsoft account I have used to create a Windows account has an Office 365 subscription.
But there's been a huge breakdown, I think, in realizing that it's not correct to treat all users the same way. The fact that my Pro-licensed, domain-joined PC auto-installs Candy Crush on it is kinda an indication they're missing this critical piece.
HEY YOU GUYS LETS PLASTER ADVERTISING ALL OVER ALL OF THE THINGS!
Look at Gmail: http://imgur.com/M8RF1TV
Look at Yahoo Mail: http://imgur.com/Cjwxspc
Look at AOL Mail: http://imgur.com/ZeaIe1L
Which email product do you use?
Which would you rather use?
The advertising business that is sustainable is owning the user at a moment of high-intent, aka SEARCH.
Slapping ads all over my login page is a great way render the fat from brand advertisers into short-term revenue gains at the price of ENRAGING me.
MSFT get the tracking and the ads the fuck out of my kitchen and my OS or at least give me a REAL way to pay you for a clean, no ad version!
If I search "bike shop London," I want to find a bike shop in London, so if I see an ad for a bike shop in London, I'm ecstatic, and I'll probably go there.
When I go to check my inbox, on the other hand, that's because I want to see what email I've received. I don't want to see ads there.
This is the inherent problem with Facebook/Twitter- I go to Facebook/Twitter to find what my friends are up to, not to search for something. I have no interest in seeing ads in my Facebook/Twitter feed.
Yeah, well, I'm part of the 47% in this situation.
In your scenario, you've decided you want to 1) buy a bike 2) from a brick and mortar store 3) by going there and talking to them. Your mind is made up. Why does your local bike shop have to pay Google to show up in those results? What if a bike shop uses its budget to advertise on Google instead of training its employees, you'll go to the one that's advertising instead of the good one, because Google is playing middleman on intent. I don't like there being economic incentive to mess with my research when I've already decided what I want.
On the other hand, I like AdSense. If I'm reading an article about commuting problems in the Bay Area or on how to buy a car for cheap, ads for bike shops might be helpful. It turns out that SF is a good place to ditch the car and commute on your bike because the weather is so good. That's new information in the moment I'm making the decision, not re-ranking existing information when I'm trying to find something more commoditized.
The problem is the Google has built a legitimate monopoly on search, and they're extracting the value they can from it. Sure, it's based on being a better search engine than everybody else, but it still frustrates me that they're taking their monopolists cut.
The effects of this are subtle, but it could be that they are pretty big.
Just look at Google removing forum search from it's engine - so instead of reading discussions among people(and some shills, sure), most people often read commercial stuff or crap journalism.What does that do to democracy ? consumer choice ?
I was expecting your screenshot to show the minimized amount of ads within the inbox. But you could argue that Outlook is reasonably minimal, Gmail is only text, and Yahoo/AOL are panelled ads.
Exactly. And the advertisers usually don't benefit either. When I was looking for a password manager, I saw Dashlane listed and it looked like a decent product … but I didn't click on it or research it because it had kept showing up on my Firefox homepage, and I associated "ads in my Firefox" with "Dashlane". Sure, I had more brand awareness, but it didn't do them any good.
Not to mention the fact that Gmail is valuable to Google because it gets people to sign in in all the browsers they use, allowing them to track them via cookies on all Google properties including search.
The "World's Most Valuable Advertising Business" does things like track which physical stores Android phone users and Google maps users on iOS visit.
Plenty of Android OEMs install adware and bloatware, sometimes which cannot even be uninstalled, so I guess people are already conditioned to this.
Although presently I just use GMail's https://inbox.google.com which hasn't shown me an advertisement yet.
I'd rather pay full price for a OS release than become a product.
Of course, another issue is that the Windows Store is completely broken on my computer and quite a few apps no longer work (including Windows Calculator, Photos, etc.).
Computers are annoying because apologists keep saying things like "just turn that off".
Edit - I've just found out Spotlight is enabled by default. I don't have Windows 10, didn't know.
Did every single Windows 7 user get this? Perhaps they can recover from this by learning quickly from the backlash that's about to happen.
Oh, there isn't one?
I thought so.
I really don't like this trend of turning your personal computer into a thin client, where its properties can be manipulated remotely by the vendor like if it was a web app.
This is why I stayed away of products like Windows 10 and ChromeOS.
Because, ChromeOS seems to be mostly about web apps, thus can suffer from the same issue that this post describes, for example.
I'm not sure if this is a default (I thought it wasn't; it certainly wasn't when I bought a Surface a couple of weeks ago). If this is a default then I think that should be changed but beyond that? Not a big deal. Let's focus on other Windows 10 issues that should be addressed versus this.
I feel like advertisements as a direct component of an operating system have crossed a line. This is like when Ubuntu started advertising amazon products in their launch bar. It crossed a line.
It seems like the only sure way to avoid all this tracking crap in Windows 10 is to pony up for the Enterprise version (which is basically impossible if you’re not a business).
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¹ — http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?keywords=windows+10&Site...
Granted, as I said before, this wasn't a default on my Surface but if it was then that's not cool and they should change it. But as far as its existence goes? I don't see it as an issue. Honestly if it let me filter to a crazy degree I would love cool images for some of my favorite or upcoming games. I could be in the minority with that last point I'll admit :)
There is also advertising on-by-default on the full-priced Kindles, but they call it 'Recommended Content' . It takes-up a chunk of the home screen.
Easy enough to disable but it's still advertising.
I think this is somewhat less intrusive than the Kindle Special Offers, which is already not very intrusive, but both are still advertising.
“Exact same,” my ass. You ought to be ashamed.