- They are presenting ad 'experiences' on the Start menu, lock-screen, notification area, taskbar and now the File Manager, too. This is happening even on Enterprise.
- Windows 10 will automatically install games from the Windows Store which are not wanted such as Candy Crush
- Extensive and opaque 'telemetry' being sent back to MS which cannot be completely turned off
- Lack of control over windows updates
These are my own personal reasons why I will never be installing such an anti-consumer OS.
- they are showing "suggested apps" in the start menu, which can be turned off. The others are OneDrive and Edge suggestions and can also be turned off.
- those apps are installed at the time of installation and can be removed. If so, they are not reinstalled ever again.
- telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.
- MS found (via telemetry) that users don't like installing updates, and thus left themselves open to many vulnerabilities that antivirus systems don't even look for. So, MS has chosen to force users into a more secure paradigm.
These are my personal responses why I don't mind windows 10 at all, and don't feel it to be anti-consumer at all.
- they are showing "suggested apps" in the start menu, which can be turned off. The others are OneDrive and Edge suggestions and can also be turned off.
How about they ask users first if it is okay to do this? That is a better approach, opt in.
- those apps are installed at the time of installation and can be removed. If so, they are not reinstalled ever again.
That wasn't true for the first few years and even Microsoft admitted it in one of the release notes that they weren't retaining option to never reinstall the apps. AU update reinstalled these apps for me.
- telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.
Again, they should be opt-in, not forced and found out later that they were collecting more data than they should.
- MS found (via telemetry) that users don't like installing updates, and thus left themselves open to many vulnerabilities that antivirus systems don't even look for. So, MS has chosen to force users into a more secure paradigm.
If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.
>If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.
If there is any single thing that I've learned during my time on Earth, it is that people, collectively, "know" a lot of things that aren't actually true. Everyone knows that pouring sugar in a car gas tank will kill the carb or fuel injectors. (This is false.) Everyone knows that you taste sweet with a different part of the tongue as sour. (This is False.) Everyone knows that waking a sleepwalker is dangerous. (It isn't.) Everyone knows that Napoleon was short. (He wasn't.) ad infinitum... I will not fault MS for taking the time to actually prove a suspicion true or false, to themselves or to anyone else. This happens far too rarely, and a lot of people believe a lot of things that aren't true as a result.
The people MS are aiming for with the ads are not the type of people who would ever opt-in to these things. Microsoft know (again, via telemetry it is proven) that clueful users will either know how to opt-out of thing they do not like, or will know how to find out how to opt-out. An opt-in preference would be preferred to myself and probably a large portion of users, of course, and would probably result in approximately 0% participation, which is very likely not what Microsoft are aiming for.
With the Creator's Update, pre-installed applications, once uninstalled, will not be reinstalled when the OS is upgraded. I, personally can attest to this one. I've been installing the fast-ring builds since the Anniversary Update, and I uninstalled Candy Crush Saga exactly once. It has not returned.
You don't need to audit the code to know if something sends telemetry. For many things (such as your kernel) you can rely on reputation/quickly searching through github issues. For others you can rely on packet sniffing.
I'm pretty confident that the only things I use regularly on my computer (not counting my phone here) that send telemetry are
- Firefox (opt out, but prompts you)
- Visual Studio Code (opt out, doesn't prompt you, requires re-opting out on updates)
- rustup (not sure if opt in or out, don't mind if it's recording telemetry)
My applications sure dont. If my word processor was phoning hone with encrypted data, ANY data, id be in serious trouble with many people (clients, professional associations, my insurer, a bunch of different police types). Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.
> Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.
Unfortunately, "that would be bad for me" does not imply "that is not happening"
Telemetry is awesome for devs but totally opaque to end users. It's very difficult to know what your applications are really doing on the backend. You have to start packet sniffing, and that's a pretty deep rabbit hole.
Not opaque to me. I (and others) audit my machines. Unussual network activity from my secure work-only desktop will be detected and eventually traced to whatever process triggered it. That's basic network security imho that shouldnt go unnoticed on any regulated/secure network.
I find that very hard to believe. Also, telemetry comes in many forms, many of which are not visible as unwanted network activity.
An application could:
* send telemetry in URL parameters when it checks for updates
* send telemetry data exactly one time after, say, an hour of use.
* send telemetry data during a time when you are already sending a lot of traffic, and send it to an amazon web service endpoint (good luck plucking that out of normal network activity based on IP data alone, when so much software communicates with most likely the same AWS endpoints.)
My point is that there is probably < 5 people on the planet who scrutinize every scheduled task, every Wireshark trace, and everything else well enough to know for certain that nothing is going on. The only people who know for sure that no telemetry is going on are those who airgap their PC from any network at all.
Yep, and if that wasn’t enough, they have the gall to charge consumers for the OS too!
I mean, monetizing users by tracking their behaviour and showing them custom ads is bad enough (although somewhat understandable when the OS is free), but charging users for the privilege too (Windows 10 costs money¹)? Disgusting.
How does not being able to maintain 100% privacy elsewhere matter in this discussion? The fact that there are thousands of abuses happening every minute doesn't justify abuse in any way.
This being the most upvoted argument against Windows 10 only shows how good of an OS it actually is. I personally think they are complete non-issues I haven't even noticed. Windows 7 is a nightmare in comparison.
Every single one of those things can be fixed with a few minutes of Googling. Is it a shame that some of them (I'm looking at you, updates) took a while to have a good solution? Yes, welcome to software. Should the defaults be different? Maybe, but realize that most Microsoft customers don't exactly read HN...
The dev are not directly against windows 10, but against forcing their users to upgrade to a new os only because Microsoft decides everytime to support latest directX versions only in their newest os version.
> That took two clicks to disable. Hardly makes the entire OS bad.
German data protection acts even make it illegal to use Windows 10 in commercial environments in many cases because of the built-in telemetry and cloud functions. Not what I would call "hardly makes the entire OS bad".
This is a polite way to say "it probably is illegal".
As long as there is no court judgement, one cannot write a definite opinion. If the authors directly wrote that it is illegal, Microsoft would surely admonish [is this the correct English translation of the German verb "abmahnen", which has a very specific meaning in Germany's legal system?] the authors of the texts or the medium that publishes such a statement.
I purchased a newspaper, it had ads - which I couldn't disable.
I purchased a magazine, it had ads - couldn't disable.
I purchased a book - an ad for another book in the back.
I purchased a movie ticket - an eternity of commercials even after I arrived "late" to the show.
I purchased a cable subscription - still scads of ads, no way to get rid of them.
So taking ten seconds to deactivate ads in an OS isn't really the kind of outrageously onerous burden you're laying it out to be. I agree to the extent that it seems like a pointlessly minuscule revenue stream in comparison to the ill will that it generates. And it was deceitful to sneak the ads in after people had already upgraded from Windows 7 instead of making their intentions clear from the outset. Microsoft would probably generate more income with an option to permanently disable the ad experience (and telemetry) for a one-time fee the way Amazon does with their low-end Kindles.
The difference I see is that it breaks previous expectations. Ads in media have a long history, and there's a bargain that people understand (even if they don't fully understand the details).
Operating systems historically have not been like media. Perhaps this is the future (shudder), but pretending there has not been a difference doesn't get us anywhere. And it is jarring: compare it to one day, ads start appearing on your towels at home.
Personally, OS ads and invasive telemetry are way, way too invasive for me. Never used Windows as more than a utility thing for specific apps, but I'll never use Win 10 without crippling the mothership comms, and I'm moving away from OS X as well, because of the increasing cloud-everything centricity and the neglected unix subsystem.
Finally, this is probably a complaint specific to me and a not that many other people. I do systems engineering professionally. When OSes start doing things that I can't control and start communicating without explanations as to what, exactly, is going on for reasons that are not driven by my intent, I cannot trust the software. My machine, my environment, my rules.
People always jump to the phone comparison here. My phones are rather locked down too, snd I'm not happy about the direction, but can do little about that.
>Operating Systems are tools, not entertainment or informational media.
For your specific use case, sure. My Windows machine is essentially a game console to me though. Do I get upset when I see an ad on Xbox live? It's essentially the same thing to me.
Of course Windows isn't meant to be a tool for professionals. But it's great for what it is; an easy to use general OS that plays games.
yeah, the exdplorer advertisement on top of chrome took another two click, the office advertisement another two, the edge is more secure popup, two clicks..
