You know what is more frustrating? Edge is nice browser (it would be even better if they allowed you a way to remove all the bloat they insert it), Microsoft didn't need these dark patterns.
Actually, there's one. Not insisting on using the last profile used to open an external link, which is the reason I'm using Edge myself. In other word, I can't designate a profile as default profile for external links. It seems like Chrome's not interested implementing this.[1]
Versus Chrome: tab groups, vertical tabs, collections, much better sleep/offloading of tabs, great synchronization across devices, "CoPilot" built in. I use Edge across Windows, macOS, iOS and iPadOS because of the collections. At the time Chrome was trialing tab groups but they were broken garbage and I haven't checked since.
Invariably someone is going to note that with this extension and that extension and various canary flags you can do similar things, but I'd rather not have the nuisance.
Edge actually has its uses. It is unfortunate that Microsoft is tainting it -- something the company just seems unable to stop itself from doing -- as it should sell itself.
It used to be faster in Windows and you could disable omnibox suggestion and autocomplete stuff (google won't because they need that traffic for ad revenue).
Then microsoft started adding MSN type of bullshit to it (rewards, bing chat gp nonsense, reset new tab page / privacy settings / games (wut?) / shopping suggestion).
Switched back to firefox after using edge for around two years.
A study from 2020 found Edge to be the worst browser when it comes to privacy, in a separate category of privacy invasion shared only with Yandex the Russian browser.
> From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are
qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both
send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests
(and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge
also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft
and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to
back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot
be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete
functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both
transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated
to search autocomplete.
I was really excited about Chromium Edge when it initially landed, but grew tired of the dark patterns. Seeing that grim report (or one very much like it on the ieee site) a few years back was an eye opener.
If a browser is "nice if it weren't for all these dark patterns and annoyances", it's arguably not that nice, especially given that it's not open-source and there's no real way to patch out these bad behaviors.
The software itself is pretty good, you can see that they put enough work on making something more than just a chromium skin. It's a optimized version of chromium that runs pretty well, especially in Windows. And they implemented very cool features, such as their vertical tabs, which I believe to have its best implementation compared to other chromium browsers, their sidebar which enables you pin sites on it, and its side by side mode, which is something that I would love to become a standard features in browsers.
I think people are getting too cared away on things such as "open-source" or "it invades my privacy", or some weird deep hatred for Microsoft aspect, when most people don't care with that. It's not even a parameter for them to judge if a browser is bad or not, because they simply do not care. So you have to see the situation through the average people's eyes.
I don't use Microsoft Edge, but I'm not some radical free-software absolutist either, I'm capable to see that most people don't care with that and make a fair observation about a piece of software. If you are worry with privacy/open-sourceness, there is Firefox, there is LibreWolf, etc...
I wouldn’t call myself a “radical free-software absolutist” (and I hope you’ll agree that there’s a lot of ideological middle ground between an RMS and the average happy/dispassionately content Microsoft user), but one big advantage of open source in this context is that it’s a kind of insurance policy against the developer/owner taking things into a direction I don’t appreciate.
I’d be much more likely to run a fork of Edge without the incredibly annoying/distasteful coupons and rewards it keeps trying to push on me, for example.
> I think people are getting too cared away on things such as "open-source" or "it invades my privacy", or some weird deep hatred for Microsoft aspect, when most people don't care with that. It's not even a parameter for them to judge if a browser is bad or not, because they simply do not care. So you have to see the situation through the average people's eyes.
That is... an odd take?
While it's true that society, as a whole, don't care much about, and I cannot stress this enough, many things, outside whatever may have some direct effect on everyday everyone's lives, someone needs to do the job of informing them about why something is actually more important than they may think.
Thus, Edge users who are fine with the software, for a variety of reasons, may not understand why the browser is better or worse than the competition, if they choose to ignore the facts about it, regardless of it being open source or not.
I think privacy is a big one. Perhaps I wouldn't choose Chrome over Edge, but I would absolutely not choose Edge over pretty much anything else. Privacy violations do have a larger effect on people lives than they may think, and they choosing Edge just because they can have vertical tabs, is a bit like choosing to smoke because it "calms the nerves".
It really is painful that out of the chromium browsers I'd choose Edge in an instant if they just would remove or allow me to remove the bloatware they ship with. I currently use Brave, which thankfully lets me disable all the crypto nonsense they ship with. I could see myself using Arc if they end up releasing a Linux/Windows port.
For clarification, It is available for beta testing where you have to apply [1]. I am not part of thus test but judging from the survey questions it seems it is not ready for everyday usage yet. Though I maybe wrong.
It's in super-beta right now and has hardly any of the features of the Mac Version. Only split view and spaces work. No little arc, no easels, no Arc Max, no popup, no search discovery stuff.
I'm still a happy user, but don't go into it expecting the exact same thing today.
Oh interesting, I wasn't aware. I'll have to try my hand at beta access, and try it out. I enjoyed my time with it on Mac. But use too many different OS's to daily drive it.
personally, I love the split tab view. Works really well during web dev where I can leave the left split to 3/4th size and the other split to show mobile like view port. With hot reloading, that makes things super nice.
Remember how MS wasn’t doing all this shit 5-10 years ago?
It was thanks to the EU regulations on MS. Now that the limits on that had ended MS is sinking to new lows.
So next time an Appleoid tells you how the horrible EU is destroying innovation by asking Apple to use the USB-C connector on its phone that it does on every other device in its lineup, remember MS. (also the fact that if it wasn’t for anti trust actions against MS by the U.S. and the EU Apple almost certainly wouldn’t exist).
And now they're complaining about the EU requiring Apple to open up iOS like the Mac, and they are pushing back against that.
It's the regulatory version of how everything sucked until Apple did it (so multi-tasking on phones is awful, until Apple decided that actually now it's ok and now Stage Manager is the best thing since sliced bread).
It's perfectly reasonable to like the present outcome without liking the methods or the road taken to get there. I, for one, expect the regulation to stifle innovation in a few years. USB-C isn't perfect, and moving off it will probably be difficult.
You could already do this before the port change, you just need a USB-C to Lightning cable (which has been included in the box for a few years now). Being able to use the same cable is nice and all, but in practice I want two or more cables anyway to charge multiple devices at the same time. If one of those cables happens to have a different connector on one end it isn't the end of the world.
> Remember how MS wasn’t doing all this shit 5-10 years ago?
You mean just these dark patterns with their browser, right?
I may have written about this a dozen times on HN, but there was a time when Exchange refused to play nice with anything that wasn't an Outlook client. Even nowadays, Outlook doesn't support half a dozen standards that would allow better interoperability with other calendars and clients.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is not something Microsoft has reneged of since the origin of the phrase back in the 90s.
> Microsoft displays a big blue accept button to encourage Windows users to enable the feature, with a darker “not now” button if you want to opt out.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, and “dark patterns” are a very surface level observation of a product, so forgive me for yelling into the HN void but… I am still so annoyed seeing “not now” in a UI. It’s so ubiquitous. I know why it’s like that, I’ve been in meetings where I’ve discussed it with UI design folk. You want to make sure users aren’t stressing about making some final un-revokable decision before they even use the app. People think it’s actually a user respecting decision.
I still hate it. My proudest achievement at work in 2023 was getting an up-sell pop up to say “no” with details about where to find the deal again in the billing page displayed underneath the button.
> You want to make sure users aren’t stressing about making some final un-revokable decision before they even use the app
It has never come across that way as an end user. As it has always been on some terrible change or option where the answer should be "no, now bugger off forever", I have viewed "not now" as the same as "ask me again later":
an explicit thumb in the eye and statement by the software developers that they think their mandate takes priority over my preferences and that I am not qualified to make decisions about the software I run.
It is a very easy way to maximize my disdain for a developer/team/org.
Amen, 'not now' is belittling no matter the users experience level. The idea that I or anyone would be 'stressed' by an app settings update is absurd, hard to believe anyone believes it. Am I also supposedly 'stressed' by not wanting to review your app on the app store? Those 'not now' pop up review suggestions are the worst offenders here, and impossible to justify from any perspective.
This attitude is patronizing and malicious. It's the same logic that allows the Supreme Court to revoke women's autonomy about what's happening inside their own body.
The IMDB app's constant "enable notifications? yes/not now" is what got me to pay a subscription to a competing app. You can't even tap yes, then go and disable the notifications in system settings; the app checks and immediately starts nagging again.
I saw a comment online recently that was something to the effect of, "not taking 'no' for an answer is rape culture", and as I thought about it, I can't say I disagree. The whole "take action now" / "take action later" with no option to say "no" is a really toxic and coercive position software vendors put on the people using their software. It's a trend that needs to eff off into the sun ASAP, if you ask me. Yet another "reminder", whether accurate or not, that tech consumers are essentially powerless against the unilateral might of the corporations whose products and services they use.
> You want to make sure users aren’t stressing about making some final un-revokable decision before they even use the app
I've seen solutions like "if you change your mind you can access it from xyz setting". I'd much rather prefer that than constant nagging that won't go away.
After clicking 'not now' 10 times over a period of a month, you will eventually think: this must something useful/common/the new normal, if this is such a hot topic. You click yes.
Meanwhile I find Edge a very handy browser.
Why throw designers under the bus here? It would be just as easy to add one additional <button> or <a> if it weren't for the same reason the designers didn't do it: management.
It's worse than helping users feel like they can decide later. Much worst IMO.
As a life long android user, I recently purchased an iPad to see if I could stomach IOS because I'm really sick of Android's shit.
In going though the initial setup, I elected not to set up face unlock..."maybe later." Same with iCloud and one other thing, I forget.
In trying to use the device for the next hour or so I was nagged constantly to "finish setting up your device" because I hadn't turned this crap on that I never ever wanted to use.
I interpret "no (you can change the decision later)" as respecting user decision. I interpret "not now" as "you can say no, but we may keep harassing you until you say yes" as very often is actually the case.
There is a Windows 11 version that you can install without Edge now if I remember and read this correctly. Its because of some EU law that requires M$ to ship without a browser. Not sure if there is also a way to actually remove it if you did not a fresh install now, when I read about it there was not.
Recently started getting a warning in Windows 10 that my computer is not Windows 11 compatible. Talk about dodging a bullet - if I had a proper TPM module (or whatever Microsoft calls it) I might have gotten an unexpected "upgrade" instead.
I did too. And later I did a bios upgrade that enabled the chip again and suddenly windows started showing me pop ups and telling me to upgrade.
After a lot of panic and powering down on an upgrade screen without a 'no' button I went to the bios and found my setting reset. Then I put a group policy in place not allowing such despicable behaviour.
Does Microsoft have any idea of the amount of stress they cause? They clearly don't care, at least at management level, but I wonder if they are even aware.
All I can say is, and I don't use this lightly, What the Fuck?
And the fact that they are getting away with such behavior for years now is just the cherry on top, but they keep getting more brazen with their techniques over time. Who knows what they are going to do next to top this to push Edge and all their other programs down our throats?
At least on macOS the cookies are actually encrypted by Chrome, in a way not accessible to apps signed by a different code signing certificate. Not sure if that's an option on Windows too.
"The computer said my browsing would be faster so I did it, but now I have all these coupon offers, so it's pretty cool I guess, and there's this AI thing, we live in star trek timez!!!!!! they have all my data anyway right so who cares?"
Something that I really like about Chrome on macOS is that it encrypts various aspects of user profiles, including (at least) the cookie jar, with a key stored in macOS Keychain, only accessible to its own binary.
This reliably prevents other apps from "helpfully" peeking at Chrome cookies. I'm not sure if they also do that for the "open tabs" database, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.
I also really wish Firefox would copy this feature.
Oh and market capture: "maybe that excel spreadsheet I look at once a year won't work in OpenOffice/GDocs" ++ "My work is Microsoft so its the easier path"
They're trying to pull an Apple, that you can use whatever browser you want, but they want you using their rendering engine underneath, as apple with webkit, Microsoft with edge, which is just a clone of chrome with all the google spyware replaced with Microsoft's.
The problem is you're stuck with all their suckage in doing so, such as poor bastards using IOS that get no basic privacy protection in the browser with extensions like ublock origin or noscript, and Microsoft simply trying to keep themselves relevant to continue slurping your data first hand.
With the web by and large having moved to using https/tls for everything, it's no longer easy to see what people are doing passively sniffing traffic, even the os, so now they build browsers to go back to watching everything you do via the rendering engine client.
Even this wasn't good enough for Apple that they implemented their default-on "privacy proxy" to provide justification for running almost everything out of your phone through them network-wise too. Plus you're held to using only Apple's webkit that they release security updates constantly for, since beside imessage is the most popular infection vector to get malware on iphones. Google is trying this now too with their "privacy vpn" (ha), I'm sure monkey see monkey do Microsoft will soon too.
This is why the EU is trying to force Apple to allow 3rd party rendering engines, to open up the ecosystem. Someone should really apply the same to Microsoft for doing this too. They might get sued if they just deleted chrome and told you to use Edge instead, but this passive aggressive and overreaching coercion is truly sinister they play at.
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[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadMuch better memory and power efficiency on Windows devices. Plus the Copilot/Bing AI mumbo jumbo.
[1]: https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/110870809/default-p...
Invariably someone is going to note that with this extension and that extension and various canary flags you can do similar things, but I'd rather not have the nuisance.
Edge actually has its uses. It is unfortunate that Microsoft is tainting it -- something the company just seems unable to stop itself from doing -- as it should sell itself.
Then microsoft started adding MSN type of bullshit to it (rewards, bing chat gp nonsense, reset new tab page / privacy settings / games (wut?) / shopping suggestion).
Switched back to firefox after using edge for around two years.
> From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete.
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
I think people are getting too cared away on things such as "open-source" or "it invades my privacy", or some weird deep hatred for Microsoft aspect, when most people don't care with that. It's not even a parameter for them to judge if a browser is bad or not, because they simply do not care. So you have to see the situation through the average people's eyes.
I don't use Microsoft Edge, but I'm not some radical free-software absolutist either, I'm capable to see that most people don't care with that and make a fair observation about a piece of software. If you are worry with privacy/open-sourceness, there is Firefox, there is LibreWolf, etc...
I’d be much more likely to run a fork of Edge without the incredibly annoying/distasteful coupons and rewards it keeps trying to push on me, for example.
That is... an odd take?
While it's true that society, as a whole, don't care much about, and I cannot stress this enough, many things, outside whatever may have some direct effect on everyday everyone's lives, someone needs to do the job of informing them about why something is actually more important than they may think.
Thus, Edge users who are fine with the software, for a variety of reasons, may not understand why the browser is better or worse than the competition, if they choose to ignore the facts about it, regardless of it being open source or not.
I think privacy is a big one. Perhaps I wouldn't choose Chrome over Edge, but I would absolutely not choose Edge over pretty much anything else. Privacy violations do have a larger effect on people lives than they may think, and they choosing Edge just because they can have vertical tabs, is a bit like choosing to smoke because it "calms the nerves".
[1] https://www.isarconwindowsyet.com/
The only good feature they had - the vertical tabs - is now in Brave also
It was thanks to the EU regulations on MS. Now that the limits on that had ended MS is sinking to new lows.
So next time an Appleoid tells you how the horrible EU is destroying innovation by asking Apple to use the USB-C connector on its phone that it does on every other device in its lineup, remember MS. (also the fact that if it wasn’t for anti trust actions against MS by the U.S. and the EU Apple almost certainly wouldn’t exist).
Here's John Gruber (who I like a lot, but you know when his Apple blinders are blinding him).
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/09/23/eu-usbc-mandate
And now they're complaining about the EU requiring Apple to open up iOS like the Mac, and they are pushing back against that.
It's the regulatory version of how everything sucked until Apple did it (so multi-tasking on phones is awful, until Apple decided that actually now it's ok and now Stage Manager is the best thing since sliced bread).
The people who complained about one thing isn't even necessarily the same group complaining about the other.
You mean just these dark patterns with their browser, right?
I may have written about this a dozen times on HN, but there was a time when Exchange refused to play nice with anything that wasn't an Outlook client. Even nowadays, Outlook doesn't support half a dozen standards that would allow better interoperability with other calendars and clients.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is not something Microsoft has reneged of since the origin of the phrase back in the 90s.
Like, the search basically doesn't work for me in Acrobat but works fantastic in Edge/Chrome.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, and “dark patterns” are a very surface level observation of a product, so forgive me for yelling into the HN void but… I am still so annoyed seeing “not now” in a UI. It’s so ubiquitous. I know why it’s like that, I’ve been in meetings where I’ve discussed it with UI design folk. You want to make sure users aren’t stressing about making some final un-revokable decision before they even use the app. People think it’s actually a user respecting decision.
I still hate it. My proudest achievement at work in 2023 was getting an up-sell pop up to say “no” with details about where to find the deal again in the billing page displayed underneath the button.
It has never come across that way as an end user. As it has always been on some terrible change or option where the answer should be "no, now bugger off forever", I have viewed "not now" as the same as "ask me again later":
an explicit thumb in the eye and statement by the software developers that they think their mandate takes priority over my preferences and that I am not qualified to make decisions about the software I run.
It is a very easy way to maximize my disdain for a developer/team/org.
What a contemptible practice.
Google Maps' navigation feature absolutely FORCING their alternative "better" route when I have REPEATEDLY chosen otherwise.
When I see that, I take that as the company being honest about the deep disdain with which they view their customers.
I've seen solutions like "if you change your mind you can access it from xyz setting". I'd much rather prefer that than constant nagging that won't go away.
It's really not hard.
As a life long android user, I recently purchased an iPad to see if I could stomach IOS because I'm really sick of Android's shit.
In going though the initial setup, I elected not to set up face unlock..."maybe later." Same with iCloud and one other thing, I forget.
In trying to use the device for the next hour or so I was nagged constantly to "finish setting up your device" because I hadn't turned this crap on that I never ever wanted to use.
Do you want to go stomp some puppies?
What!? No!!
I'll take that as a "maybe later."
Absolutely not.
"Not now" means "Fine, but we will harass you in the future, until you accept".
If it was really about respecting the user, the "OK" button would also be rebranded "OK for now", which it, obviously, is never.
There is a Windows 11 version that you can install without Edge now if I remember and read this correctly. Its because of some EU law that requires M$ to ship without a browser. Not sure if there is also a way to actually remove it if you did not a fresh install now, when I read about it there was not.
After a lot of panic and powering down on an upgrade screen without a 'no' button I went to the bios and found my setting reset. Then I put a group policy in place not allowing such despicable behaviour.
It's such a widely hated behaviour that tv shows take the piss out of them for it: https://youtu.be/2zpCOYkdvTQ?si=_qGffU2M3k847C3H&t=8
And the fact that they are getting away with such behavior for years now is just the cherry on top, but they keep getting more brazen with their techniques over time. Who knows what they are going to do next to top this to push Edge and all their other programs down our throats?
What a mistake, not importing cookies and local storage as well...
This reliably prevents other apps from "helpfully" peeking at Chrome cookies. I'm not sure if they also do that for the "open tabs" database, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.
I also really wish Firefox would copy this feature.
Oh and market capture: "maybe that excel spreadsheet I look at once a year won't work in OpenOffice/GDocs" ++ "My work is Microsoft so its the easier path"
The problem is you're stuck with all their suckage in doing so, such as poor bastards using IOS that get no basic privacy protection in the browser with extensions like ublock origin or noscript, and Microsoft simply trying to keep themselves relevant to continue slurping your data first hand.
With the web by and large having moved to using https/tls for everything, it's no longer easy to see what people are doing passively sniffing traffic, even the os, so now they build browsers to go back to watching everything you do via the rendering engine client.
Even this wasn't good enough for Apple that they implemented their default-on "privacy proxy" to provide justification for running almost everything out of your phone through them network-wise too. Plus you're held to using only Apple's webkit that they release security updates constantly for, since beside imessage is the most popular infection vector to get malware on iphones. Google is trying this now too with their "privacy vpn" (ha), I'm sure monkey see monkey do Microsoft will soon too.
This is why the EU is trying to force Apple to allow 3rd party rendering engines, to open up the ecosystem. Someone should really apply the same to Microsoft for doing this too. They might get sued if they just deleted chrome and told you to use Edge instead, but this passive aggressive and overreaching coercion is truly sinister they play at.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc...