I guess using and older version of explorer, or a free one from ReactOS could be a way around it.
Another option is to use the server editions of Windows which come with a lot less of this kind of crap.
There's also Ameliorated Windows, tho questionable in legality and comes with poor documentation and some quirks due to the amount of features cut out.
I think this is just the price we are going to pay for "evergreen" operating systems.
As a consumer, you now only buy Windows once. Microsoft has to make up for these lost
sales so it makes sense.
I started daily using non-windows OS in 2004. Ever since then I’ve been finding more and more ways to remove Windows from my life. I work for companies that use macOS —- I use proton to play video games —- I have found alternatives for virtually every application I run. I occasionally use a public computer, a friends computer, or interact with systems that run on Windows Embedded.
I feel as if this journey has given me a deeper understanding of computers (a valuable skill), it has definitely provided me with more enjoyable user experiences and a more productive computational environment. My response to being exposed to non-Microsoft software was to migrate towards it. I do not understand why this response isn’t more universal.
I personally appreciate the insight. I don’t have a desire to purchase Windows ever in the future. I’m waiting on my turn to buy a Steam Deck and want to see how well that does for gaming, which is really the last barrier for me going to Linux. I’m more akin to a regular computer user outside of work. Browsing, playing games and occasionally editing pictures or documents. All which can be done easily (and usually for free) on Linux.
Good luck, now you are dependent on Google. Browsers have the exact same problems as OSes, unfortunately. I exclusively use Firefox where I can but at least at work it is becoming more difficult lately.
I've started taking Linux for gaming more seriously since the Proton devs managed to fix a stuttering issue in Elden Ring. Would so love to completely remove Windows from my life.
It really reminds me of that interview with Steve Jobs from the 90s where you can tell just how frustrated he is at Microsoft's success with what he describes as really "third-rate" software.
I know nowadays it's very commont to pick on Microsoft, but they've delivered quality products, and even if you don't like Windows (I don't love it) it's a pretty decent operating system with lots of backwards compatibility. Excel is great. Visual Studio is great
Every time I have to use Windows I think my memory of it is some exaggerated negative tribal thing and I'm always surprised that it's far worse than I remembered.
Gnome sucks but it's still better than this, and with a very minor amount of effort you can use Linux without Gnome.
Message box: DO you want to watch this 2 min ad in order to browse your filesystem? [Yes] [No]?
Who am I kidding, why would they even give us the option. Microsoft said they were looking to put ads in their software and I guess they are following through on it.
Instead of the blue screen of death, we'll get the blue screen of ads.
I think you are correct. Bit you just used the wrong command. I think better use case:
you will watch this 2 min ad in order to browse your filesystem, ok?
The search box is a favorite place for Microsoft to stuff things that you don't want while pretending it's trying to present you with useful information.
Wouldn't you like to have some autoplaying video ads in there?
Even better, just play the ad and after the ad finishes, give the user a quiz on the ad to make sure he was paying attention. If you score 80% on the quiz, then you can browse the filesystem. Otherwise, they have to watch the ad again.
Dark arts/dark patterns. I think microsoft just emailed me a job offer. Decisions, decisions.
There is already "work" being done to detect the user's eye focus. If the user looks away from the ad, the ad pauses, until the user refocuses on their garbage.
Granted, for now, it's 20 mins of ads for free tickets, and it makes sense.
We also know humans don't understand the word, "enough" when it comes to profits.
That's while you are waiting the 2min it takes to search a file using Windows explorer (for a directory tree that it takes me milliseconds to traverse programmatically).
This is basically intentionally sabotaging their own ecosystems. Try to find an expert on Microsoft technology and you will find an army of consultant grifters instead of technical knowledge. The problem seems to be getting worse. I think without the momentum of their office suite, corporate integration and PC gaming, Windows would probably quickly fade out.
Even in their 'modern' solutions such as Intune, the licensing models are so arcane and difficult to grow that you basically need an expert to figure it out.
Microsoft really leans on their VAR network and I agree, it feels so inefficient
> the licensing models are so arcane and difficult to grow that you basically need an expert to figure it out
This. Just had a call with MS today on a different matter, and the guy basically had no idea how licensing worked. All he could say was something like "we don't actively enforce those, so if you don't do anything ridiculous, we won't come banging on your door. But you should schedule a call with our licensing specialist who'll be able to help you out, just to be sure".
As soon as someone gets a better product than MS excel for the finance community they are in tough waters for relevancy. Gaming is the other one you pointed out.
The problem is that every Excel user is an Excel native. Your product would have to be magnitudes better than Excel to compensate for the cost of forcing everyone to give up their fluency in the software.
It can be better. I am no mac user but from what I have seen, Apple's excel competitor has this concept that instead of an excel tab being a single grid, it is a canvas on which you can add tables, charts, etc. As a fairly advanced excel user, this makes so much more sense than Excel's approach.
VBA is kind of a wart in Office, hasn't been updated since 1998. They made an attempt of integrating a mini visual studio in Office with C#/VB.net (VSTA), then killed it.
I see many no code alternative poping up (Microsoft power suite, alteryx, etc). But all have a pretty steep learning curve, and frankly the people who are willing to invest the time to learn them migh as well pick up SQL or even python for the same effort.
Easy way to get some serious premiums from MSFT buying your company if you ever tried to build a viable competitor. That said though you would watch your product get deep sixed if you sold
I think this would be one of those you have to make it 5-10x better than the old product. Someone who spent ins and outs of learning Excel aren't going to move to anything new unless it is FAR better than Excel.
It may sound unrealistic, but, this article and the overall tendencies in MS products gave me a weird idea that indeed someone in the position of power has decided to gradually bury Windows as a platform and shift people to Linux. Sounds like a nerd dream, but, something doesn't seem right with all of this...
I think this is the right answer, compared with something the grandgrandparent touched upon: windows apps from third party vendors do not act as competitive advantage anymore. (This us also due to how Windows OEM contracts work.)
Because it will be in the form of a locked down android or chromebook-alike, where you don't have root/admin access or control of the device. Turns out Richard Stallman was right again Tivoization is bad. To bad Stallman has the charisma of well Stallman rather than say Jobs, the world would be a better place.
Eventually a Windows update will include a "portal to Hell" feature and people will keep using it saying something like "the demons are really annoying but I need Office and don't want to learn a new UI."
I mean already they immediately lock you out of editing anything in MS suite if you let your sub lapse - or in the of my elderly parents they forgot each others passwords and get confused.
Did you have success with that eventually? I tried doing that a few years ago and gave up entirely, convinced myself that it was an impossible task and that the thought that I could was a misunderstanding of how Bluetooth works.
I ended up with device listed as "paired" while the process have clearly failed (with a message :) ). And while incoming files were detected, request for save never followed. I've transferred file using MTP over USB, but in that case it interrupted on every action (like changing directory) requiring to re-enter "file transfer mode" on the phone.
Dang, congrats. My phone's usb port was damaged at the time and I couldn't maintain usb connection long enough to get file transfer working. Think I tried ssh'ing into my phone after that and was immediately in over my head. Tried emailing the file to myself but my email provider wasn't letting me open it on that grounds that it thought it was a virus (was an apk file). I don't even remember how I ended up getting it working.
And as I think about it, I think I did get to the same spot as you, with the device 'paired' but not really. My theory now is that bluetooth works on a controller/client relationship, and that both your laptop and phone are trying to be controller and are thus incompatible with each other, while things like headphones would be clients. Would love to know if someone more familiar with bluetooth could correct me.
> A broad assumption like "you're in your documents folder; let me suggest other
> things related to documents" is annoying, but it doesn't feel particularly
> invasive.
It's truly amazing what people will put up with. Reminds me of the lobsters sitting in increasingly hot water, never noticing until they're boiled alive.
Is this in prep to just make Windows free and make money from advertising instead? To deal with pirated windows or those who don't want to pay? Or use those illegal cd key sites?
Like those items were impacting MS in any meaningful way - they've not really been significant since the introduction of online activation.
No, it's just an attempt at finding new revenue streams for something that is in the process of being commoditized. Linux/Android/ChromeOS (yes yes, spare me the pedantry) are free and increasingly good enough to fully replace the traditional OS for most tasks, which puts pressure on everyone else to squash prices to zero. Apple could commoditize the OS because they sell hardware; MS cannot do it without a significant revenue hit. Their pivot to online services is working, but still, when they finally pull the plug on desktop licenses they're going to feel it. So they're in a perennial quest to find new income sources for that division.
Microsoft has talked about subscription operating systems for a long time. At least decade, probably more.
Perhaps this is the fallback if your credit card on file in Windows expires so that you can still access your stuff when your monthly Microsoft tax comes due.
Building computers in asia is popular because it’s cheaper than a prebuilt. I’ve seen computers in the shops in Taiwan, Singapore, and other countries which have “activate windows” icon because people don’t pay for it.
You know more than 1000 great games can run on Linux thanks to the Steam Deck. And the movement of Linux gaming has gotten a lot of traction. Just saying...
That's great and all, but irrelevant if the game I want to play doesn't run or run well on Linux. I have friends, I'd like to play with them. They certainly do not care about Linux proselytizing, when at the end of the day after work, all they want to do is play games, but fiddle around with why some update broke a game that previously worked via Proton.
Honestly dual-booting with Linux and Windows on your workstation is perfectly feasible nowadays. Just treat the Windows partition as your "game console" and only use it for games (and avoid the hassle of WINE). Otherwise do everything else on the Linux side. If you want you can use disk encryption and VLANs to segregate the Windows install for security/privacy reasons.
Obviously if you need other Windows applications like Photoshop or Office this mentality doesn't work, but I've convinced people who want Linux and games to go this route. They just treat the Windows partition like an Xbox or Playstation.
There are downsides. First, it's an advanced technique not recommended for novices (too easy to destroy one OS or the other). Second, Windows will want to install updates every time you boot into it. I generally recommend... just having to computers.
Another big downside is that restarting is annoying, you can't easily switch between different things you want to do (like say run a script while you wait for something in a game), and maintaining 2 systems is more hassle. That's why I just use WSL on my PC nowadays (though I have just Linux on my laptop).
That's why part of this is the mentality of treating the Windows partition as a game console - it's a seperate system from your main Linux workspace (generally when you play on your game console you're at your TV and not working at your computer as well). If you really want to do both at once then dual-booting is not the solution for you.
I wonder if there could be a novice friendly "distro" that merely acts as a switch between operating systems. Like a fuller featured prettier GRUB. What can be done to make dual booting as easy for novices as possible?
For years I've been dreaming of a thin hypervisor as an OS that allows me to easily change what resources I give to multiple opened VMs (e.g. a Windows and Linux one) without closing anything.
Or you could stop giving money to companies that make it harder for you to migrate, and give the money to companies that make it easier... It's indeed possible to buy a different game, or even not buy a game at all!
I don't do anything graphics intensive in windows so a Windows virtual machine works fine for 99.9% of the things I need windows to do. Just throw some more memory in your machine.
That was before Apple became hostile to game developers by inventing Metal and refusing to support OpenGL past v4.3 or something. Actually they tried in the 2000s with Quicktime 3D also. And Apple always had last-gen GPUs in their machines. And let's not forget that they made it difficult to write games in C++, as ever since OS X the core APIs have required an Objective-C wrapper. Ah well.
Sorry, 30 years ago (1992) the PC already had Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima VII. It was mind-blowing, but all the good games were already on the PC platform with some Amiga die-hards still lamenting the tragedy of their platform’s fading relevance. Macs we’re by no means a gaming platform even then.
No, back then we associated Macs with artists, little children via school funding, and the elderly. People that didn’t want to get their hands dirty, think about careful memory configurations, or bolting in new power supplies. They weren’t associated with technical people much less programmers, and certainly nobody into games cared about them at the time. Myst was the only game I remember on mac, and that was in 1993, and it was lame. Would you rather be running and gunning down 3D hallways shooting nazis or watching still photos thinking about a puzzle? I mean, it had its place but no comparison.
Quick question - I'd love to migrate (or at least allow option to migrate for those who want to) from Windows. However, we are dependent on Office (Word and Excel).
Any recommendations on the best folks to pay on the libreoffice side to squash some formatting bugs etc for complex word docs. I filed the bugs (or found them). But it's hard to move over until we can get of office. If we could port some vba code over even better.
Alternatively was looking at google docs which seems a bit re-invigorated - historically as high complexity word users it didn't have the features we needed (sections, styles, styles in tables with alignment details for numbers etc) We have some VBA we can work around I think (or in Libreoffice perhaps replicate or even surpass).
Honestly I'd recommend Google Docs but the truth is, if you are an Excel power user there is really nothing quite like it without taking that next jump into SQL or something like Python/R. Google Sheets will let you use SQLite though which is cool.
I personally am starting to feel that tools are secondary and restrictions imposed by the office environment come first. You want to be able to jump between them as needed, because heavens know my place won't let me openly use Python.
Google's version of Excel has come a long way. Worth checking out again. The thing you're missing though is the shortcuts which are very important for heavy Excel users. I never understood why the open source excel clones didn't focus on shortcuts. If they could build an interface to map your own, someone could create a shortcut profile to mimic Excel, or even your own shortcut profile. That would be a game changer
Even the shortcuts on Mac are different for Excel. Sounds crazy (maybe is crazy) but that’s a jarring blow to productivity and surely intentional. If you have used excel for any length of time, you really depend on shortcuts. I probably store them in the same memory registers as the Contra cheat codes, never to be forgotten.
Google Docs still lacks some pretty basic and important features. You can't number headings and figures automatically for example. There's no cross-referencing.
Have you tried Onlyoffice? They use MS format as their defaults and promise good compatibility. They use JavaScript in their macros though, and their official recommendation is to convert them manually - so it's not a drop-in replacement.
Or if you looked at Google Docs, how about Microsoft's online editors? Unfortunately, again, no macro support.
Google Docs seems like a downgrade. At least with Microsoft, your documents are just files. With Google, (the canonical versions of) your documents only exist within the context of Google's cloud applications.
You can always export as open-format files or Office-formatted files. The re-import of those works quite well (including things like excel comments, etc).
Interop is so good I almost don't notice until I run into something like an embedded doc or something I can't open in GDocs (which I then have to download as the office doc to extract).
Looks interesting but why the fuck don't they have pricing on their site, seems they're one of those companies that wants you to talk to a salesperson so they can decide how much you can afford to pay.
Yes, they directly support LibreOffice development. I purchased a small set of licenses from a reseller (I'm too small for purchasing directly) to support their efforts.
Word isn't so hard to replace, with some teething, but you're going to have problems replacing Excel. Nothing else is at feature parity, and converted xls documents emerge looking pretty gnarly.
I use O365 on MacOS for my job and I prefers to use O365 on Windows than macOS. macOS version does not have a full feature parity as Windows. There are features that are vital in Excel that are missing in macOS version, like PowerQuery, PowerBI, etc. Also, it is missing few basic features that are not presented in macOS version.
like stuaxo commented, the shortcuts are not the same in macOS.
And I noticed that macOS version tends to be delayed UI response. If I click to apply the color fill, it takes Excel about 5 seconds to process my input and apply the color fill in the cell whereas in Windows is instant. I noticed the same UI behavior in Word as well. They just seemingly take time to take my input and apply it. I believe it is largely due to x86 code, O365 current stable version only have x86 which it relies on Rosetta2 to do the work. They have ARM version in the work, I think it is in beta stage.
Shameful, but not surprising. The moment I noticed Windows 10's start menu connected to remote services (or tries to search the internet for you? Fuck if I know what it's trying to accomplish), if an internet connection was present, is when I knew this was coming.
This article just seems like rage bait to me, tricking the anti-Microsoft crowd into giving Ars clicks.
So many things get killed before they're launched, and I'm so sure this would test absolutely abysmally if it were introduced into any paid for version of their OS, it's almost silly to think they'd just slip this into Windows 11 Home or whatever.
Maybe it's part of a potential new "free OS" offering, where you get Windows 11 for free, but with ads. I don't think that's terrible. I think it's at least seeing if it would work, writing up some code to get a feel for how it looks, both technically and from a marketing perspective.
Just seems like a great way to get a specific crowd riled up about something that will never see the light of day in any meaningful sense that would affect that crowd.
- ads on the lockscreen
- ads as notifications
- ads in the start menu
- ads in the "change file association" dialog
- ads in the apps (e.g. solitaire)
heaven forbid we critisise Microsoft for these things
I think it's both. I think the article is meant to generate clicks, but at the same time, but this is Micro$oft. Of course they are going to roll out ads in the future.
It starts small. Want Windows free? Watch ads, then when enough people get used to it, it gets rolled out in the rest. The exception would likely be Enterprise versions, because companies would lose their minds over this, but for all the "plebes"? Enjoy your ads.
They already slip promoted links into the “quick links” in Edge - the UI that any normal user would think was just their frequently-visited sites on the New Tab page - unless you turn it off under advanced customisations. It makes no difference being on W11 Pro and signed in to the browser with an M365 account.
That’s in production today, so I would consider ideas like this one more than a doomed brainfart.
afaik Windows 10 falls under the definition of malware since its release (downloads & installs further software without asking you), I assume the same will hold true for Windows 11, so this would only seem logical
Can you imagine the advertising value if Windows could offer an advertiser the file types you were looking for, the installed apps you had, and the app you "normally" open the file with.
If someone's searching for code-files, has VisualStudio installed, and normally opens it in VS-Code, then Rider would love to advertise in that space. It means the user want's professional tools, but doesn't use VS for some reason.
If someone's searching for architecture programs, has various pro tools installed, but is likely to open a sketch in essentially paint then you've once again got a huge advertising opportunity, especially if mixed into some "Would you like to, buy|try -> install -> open" this file in this advertised app in one-click?
If only the Creative Cloud would run on Linux, I could completely get rid of Windows this evening. And I'd love to, after seeing this here. But the only option would be to use Mac OS, I'm not sure I want to get into that ecosystem either.
I am out of "contacts" for this sort of thing and it looks like I will need to find someone else who will let me buy LTSB/LTSC Enterprise licenses. I think it's the only way out of this madness.
I find myself coming back to this Steve Jobs quote more and more:
"It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers."
Creatives build companies, and if you are not careful, sales will destroy them.
I don't see why that is relevant. The point was that if companies have a monopoly in a product category, improving the product doesn't make the company more successful. Since macOS and iOS do not have a worldwide monopoly, Apple (and thus Tim Cook) have to improve the product for the customer to gain more marketshare.
I think Apple's problem was that one designer that was a fan of excessive minimalism wasn't matched enough by a counterforce. Now that Ive is gone, Apple takes a more functional approach to product design. E.g. the MacBook Pro has useful ports again.
I don't think operations/logistics is a creative type role. It's striking deals with manufacturing companies and optimising costs (of course very simplified for a company the size of Apple). To me that sounds like sales.
Agreed that it's not necessarily a creative type role, though I don't think it's a stretch to say that creativity would help find new methods of optimising costs.
My mental model of TC is based on a not-very-recent reading of Steve Jobs' bio but it did not leave me with the impression that he was a dealmaker, more of a behind-the-scenes director coming up with innovative ways for Apple to optimise time/costs. I may be wrong though.
In any case, I think the actual rub is that sales vs creative is a false dichotomy; operations/logistics may not be a creative role but it also doesn't fit the sales profile in that dichotomy (imho).
Certainly it's tempting to call Cook "the Ballmer of Apple" but things are far more complicated than that. For instance, all the Jony Ive focus on purity of product design over actual end-user marketability in the MacBook line happened under Cook
Beware the survivability bias:
Maybe big companies can be destroyed by sales and marketing is just the observation resulting from small companies never getting to become big ones due to lack of good sales and marketing.
Despite his quote referencing IBM & Xerox, I believe there's a good chance that quote was self-reflective, a call back to past decisions. Jobs was a "sales" man himself despite his technical understandings though he had the awareness to realize where it was and had been leading to.
His wisdom here rings of experience. It was probably meant to be as much a warning as it is informative.
They basically invented the GUI and because they were a monopoly in other areas, they didn't have people in place to recognize what an amazing thing they had.
Halt and Catch Fire was a really fun watch! And I love these type of storylines though offhand I can only think of this and Pirates of Silicon Valley. I was wondering if you knew of other similar shows/movies? I'm highly interested.
I think the important question is what high customer value projects are dying in the brainstorming phase because the incumbent/monopoly has limited ability to capture business value.
This will force me to migrate to Ubuntu. I've been growing more and more reluctant upgrading from Windows 10 to 11 because of all the surveillance but I will never use an OS that embeds ads.
Windows should live in a VM at best and accessed for a few indispensable apps, not even allowing it internet access. But who am I kidding? There are masses of hostages to Windows, many showing signs of Stockholm syndrome.
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[ 51.2 ms ] story [ 3976 ms ] threadhttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-file-manager/9p7vb...
Another option is to use the server editions of Windows which come with a lot less of this kind of crap.
There's also Ameliorated Windows, tho questionable in legality and comes with poor documentation and some quirks due to the amount of features cut out.
But also, this is not the first time this has been tried. 5 years ago(!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903519
Microsoft says Win11 Explorer ads were ‘not intended to be published externally’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30701289 - March 2022 (21 comments)
Latest build of Windows 11 has ads inside File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30689526 - March 2022 (12 comments)
Microsoft is testing ads in the Windows 11 File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30675908 - March 2022 (498 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 ("Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed") (2012)
Time makes fools of us all I suppose.
I feel as if this journey has given me a deeper understanding of computers (a valuable skill), it has definitely provided me with more enjoyable user experiences and a more productive computational environment. My response to being exposed to non-Microsoft software was to migrate towards it. I do not understand why this response isn’t more universal.
And it's not just Windows11, it is everything else:
https://www.neowin.net/news/leaked-memo-reveals-microsoft-is...
it's another fine example of MS software being mediocre at best
whilst modern Windows is malware
Gnome sucks but it's still better than this, and with a very minor amount of effort you can use Linux without Gnome.
Who am I kidding, why would they even give us the option. Microsoft said they were looking to put ads in their software and I guess they are following through on it.
Instead of the blue screen of death, we'll get the blue screen of ads.
Wouldn't you like to have some autoplaying video ads in there?
Dark arts/dark patterns. I think microsoft just emailed me a job offer. Decisions, decisions.
https://futurism.com/moviepass-eye-tracking-ads
“It looks like you’re having trouble cooperating as a willing participant in enforced consumerism. Would you like some help?”
> Yes.
> Yes, please.
This. Just had a call with MS today on a different matter, and the guy basically had no idea how licensing worked. All he could say was something like "we don't actively enforce those, so if you don't do anything ridiculous, we won't come banging on your door. But you should schedule a call with our licensing specialist who'll be able to help you out, just to be sure".
You will probably not like them, but that doesn't make them vaporware.
VBA is kind of a wart in Office, hasn't been updated since 1998. They made an attempt of integrating a mini visual studio in Office with C#/VB.net (VSTA), then killed it.
I see many no code alternative poping up (Microsoft power suite, alteryx, etc). But all have a pretty steep learning curve, and frankly the people who are willing to invest the time to learn them migh as well pick up SQL or even python for the same effort.
Microsoft is not an ally Linux needs.
Also the entire line of Adobe and Autodesk products. Photo editing, vector graphics and CAD in any form seems to be badly under served in Linux.
Are their certifications just too easy to pass? Should they not have certifications and just have internal support teams?
Are Amazon AWS consultants turning into the same thing or does Amazon somehow do this process differently?
And as I think about it, I think I did get to the same spot as you, with the device 'paired' but not really. My theory now is that bluetooth works on a controller/client relationship, and that both your laptop and phone are trying to be controller and are thus incompatible with each other, while things like headphones would be clients. Would love to know if someone more familiar with bluetooth could correct me.
> A broad assumption like "you're in your documents folder; let me suggest other > things related to documents" is annoying, but it doesn't feel particularly > invasive.
It's truly amazing what people will put up with. Reminds me of the lobsters sitting in increasingly hot water, never noticing until they're boiled alive.
No, it's just an attempt at finding new revenue streams for something that is in the process of being commoditized. Linux/Android/ChromeOS (yes yes, spare me the pedantry) are free and increasingly good enough to fully replace the traditional OS for most tasks, which puts pressure on everyone else to squash prices to zero. Apple could commoditize the OS because they sell hardware; MS cannot do it without a significant revenue hit. Their pivot to online services is working, but still, when they finally pull the plug on desktop licenses they're going to feel it. So they're in a perennial quest to find new income sources for that division.
Perhaps this is the fallback if your credit card on file in Windows expires so that you can still access your stuff when your monthly Microsoft tax comes due.
Obviously if you need other Windows applications like Photoshop or Office this mentality doesn't work, but I've convinced people who want Linux and games to go this route. They just treat the Windows partition like an Xbox or Playstation.
And it's just entertainment.
I’m confused by the word “nowadays”. I had a friend with a dual-booting setup between Windows and Linux in the 90s.
30 years ago, the mantra in the tech world was "Businesses use Microsoft. People only use Apple for games."
Partly through school these days but it used to be mostly due to gaming when I was growing up.
Making it harder to introduce Linux in a corporate setting. We're in it for the long con ;)
No, back then we associated Macs with artists, little children via school funding, and the elderly. People that didn’t want to get their hands dirty, think about careful memory configurations, or bolting in new power supplies. They weren’t associated with technical people much less programmers, and certainly nobody into games cared about them at the time. Myst was the only game I remember on mac, and that was in 1993, and it was lame. Would you rather be running and gunning down 3D hallways shooting nazis or watching still photos thinking about a puzzle? I mean, it had its place but no comparison.
Any recommendations on the best folks to pay on the libreoffice side to squash some formatting bugs etc for complex word docs. I filed the bugs (or found them). But it's hard to move over until we can get of office. If we could port some vba code over even better.
Alternatively was looking at google docs which seems a bit re-invigorated - historically as high complexity word users it didn't have the features we needed (sections, styles, styles in tables with alignment details for numbers etc) We have some VBA we can work around I think (or in Libreoffice perhaps replicate or even surpass).
If you log into a number of machines, you see these same alerts everywhere.
Google seems less obtrusive with this stuff.
That said, yes, if I could get to open source I would.
Or if you looked at Google Docs, how about Microsoft's online editors? Unfortunately, again, no macro support.
Interop is so good I almost don't notice until I run into something like an embedded doc or something I can't open in GDocs (which I then have to download as the office doc to extract).
These guys contribute a lot to LibreOffice, and also have their own offerings: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/
I haven't looked, but I think their work ends up upstream eventually.
https://www.collaboraoffice.com/subscriptions/
We are < 100 so they have relevant pricing.
I'll download and see how it handles some of our documents if they have a trial. And they do seem to have a consultancy.
like stuaxo commented, the shortcuts are not the same in macOS.
And I noticed that macOS version tends to be delayed UI response. If I click to apply the color fill, it takes Excel about 5 seconds to process my input and apply the color fill in the cell whereas in Windows is instant. I noticed the same UI behavior in Word as well. They just seemingly take time to take my input and apply it. I believe it is largely due to x86 code, O365 current stable version only have x86 which it relies on Rosetta2 to do the work. They have ARM version in the work, I think it is in beta stage.
I’ve not tested Microsoft apps personally (I use LibreOffice).
Super bummer.
So many things get killed before they're launched, and I'm so sure this would test absolutely abysmally if it were introduced into any paid for version of their OS, it's almost silly to think they'd just slip this into Windows 11 Home or whatever.
Maybe it's part of a potential new "free OS" offering, where you get Windows 11 for free, but with ads. I don't think that's terrible. I think it's at least seeing if it would work, writing up some code to get a feel for how it looks, both technically and from a marketing perspective.
Just seems like a great way to get a specific crowd riled up about something that will never see the light of day in any meaningful sense that would affect that crowd.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
and:
heaven forbid we critisise Microsoft for these thingsIt starts small. Want Windows free? Watch ads, then when enough people get used to it, it gets rolled out in the rest. The exception would likely be Enterprise versions, because companies would lose their minds over this, but for all the "plebes"? Enjoy your ads.
That’s in production today, so I would consider ideas like this one more than a doomed brainfart.
Who are you kidding? The paid versions of Windows 10 already have built-in ads. The installer even asks about "personalized" ad preferences.
The ship's already sailed - Windows is ad-ware. The only question now is how blatant they want to be, and it looks like they're figuring that out now.
What's the buyer intent in that moment?
The goal would have to be brand recognition, but the risk/reward ratio must be absurd, in terms of damaging one's brand.
It's basically advertising like this: http://i.imgur.com/Ubip3Gq.gif
If someone's searching for code-files, has VisualStudio installed, and normally opens it in VS-Code, then Rider would love to advertise in that space. It means the user want's professional tools, but doesn't use VS for some reason.
If someone's searching for architecture programs, has various pro tools installed, but is likely to open a sketch in essentially paint then you've once again got a huge advertising opportunity, especially if mixed into some "Would you like to, buy|try -> install -> open" this file in this advertised app in one-click?
"It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful.
So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product.
They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers."
Creatives build companies, and if you are not careful, sales will destroy them.
I think Apple's problem was that one designer that was a fan of excessive minimalism wasn't matched enough by a counterforce. Now that Ive is gone, Apple takes a more functional approach to product design. E.g. the MacBook Pro has useful ports again.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call him “more of a sales guy”
My mental model of TC is based on a not-very-recent reading of Steve Jobs' bio but it did not leave me with the impression that he was a dealmaker, more of a behind-the-scenes director coming up with innovative ways for Apple to optimise time/costs. I may be wrong though.
In any case, I think the actual rub is that sales vs creative is a false dichotomy; operations/logistics may not be a creative role but it also doesn't fit the sales profile in that dichotomy (imho).
His wisdom here rings of experience. It was probably meant to be as much a warning as it is informative.
They basically invented the GUI and because they were a monopoly in other areas, they didn't have people in place to recognize what an amazing thing they had.