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Microsoft Adding More Ads To Windows 10 Start Menu (theverge.com)
Microsoft plans to double the number of promoted apps in Start menu. The change, which is scheduled to come with the upcoming Anniversary Update to Windows 10, will see the promoted apps count rise to 10. Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Some promoted apps are pre-installed, but Microsoft notes that they can be fully uninstalled and any promoted items removed from the Start menu. Microsoft has not revealed exactly why the number of promoted apps is doubling, but it's likely that the company is using it as another method to attract developers to its Windows Store.
Candy Crush and Twitter already re-install themselves every time I update the OS. It's a trivial powershell script to remove them again but how many more will re-install themselves every time I update after this garbage is added. Installing apps I haven't requested ONE TIME is already too many fuck this nonsense no one is ever going to use your proprietary app store, Microsoft, give it up please.
MS finally got me to switch back from Linux from a host OS to a guess one. It was stable, secure, gorgeous, ran smooth without winrot of XP, and was a great but boring desktop OS to get work done.
As an IT professional I need to use the latest and greatest to keep my skills up and not look incompetent when an executive for example in a conference room needs help on his Windows 10 tablet etc.
Win 8 was fine except the GUI and artwork. I upgraded kicking and crying because I needed to learn Hyper-V. Windows 10 my God is just terrible. Re0imaged my system 4 times already due to bugs. If you run a sfc /scannow it will corrupt ESSENT database. Only a re-image can fix it. No DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth will make it worse! Acutally it will complain about the source files. Put on your installation cd and it will break Windows 10 as it will put outdated .dll's back. It is Vista quality.
Windows bright white windows titles ARE TERRIBLE. I enabled color in settings but I do not like how it looks. The icons on the taskbar pinned are too freaking SMALL. Oh, that is right I should have a gigantic start screen and pin down "My documents" "My downloads", etc. Under Windows 7/8.1 if you install Office 2016 it will actually put the icons there for you pinned in the taskbar. MS is forcing it's view of tiles and running cell phones on computers for familiarity hoping us old farts who hate change will want to use Windows Phones. YEAH RIGHT.
I am not an MS hater anymore. But man, Windows is bad again after it finally stopped sucking. The only good thing about MS is visual Studio and Office. I suppose I like tablet features and Netflix and Hulu apps on the road or on a 2nd monitor if I want to watch Star Trek while I work etc. But, man Windows 10 is years off.
Do not get me on the schziphrenic gui either. Now with 3 UI's which include a hamburger menu.
But MS is making it worse by forced upgrades, spyware, and now ads. I do not want 10 anywhere near my computers! But I need them for Hyper-V for my MS certifications so what choice do I have?
Windows 10 is going to be the next XP sadly after 3 short years. Sigh. I hope if we all yell enough MS will mature it and change by 2019 when Windows 7 goes EOL and we are forced to use it.
http://saveie6.com/
Windows started out as a convenient wrapper for Dos, and now we're here. We have updates that are non-negotiable, apps that are installed by default, integration with a video game console, and an entire ecosystem of advertising built-in to the UI. Theres powershell, Linux BASH, and ssh as well as a talking assistant.
after 197 mergers or takeovers in its history its taken Microsoft just 15 years to pedal themselves to an early grave, and windows 10's schitzophrenic laundry list of things it seeks to achieve for the user is an excellent barometer of the companies 'significant changes' after Ballmer was quietly hustled out to the parking lot. There really isnt any direction, but a very obvious pattern.
1. a trend emerges, catches on, and becomes a hit.
2. Microsoft, four years later, creates its own version of the product or technology at the center of the trend.
3. The product, (zune, windows phone, market) is brutalized for three or four more years while microsoft keeps it on X-Box revenue life support.
4. MS quietly shuffles the technology under the rug four more years later, abandoning and alienating nontrivial numbers of users and sacking the entire division that once handled the product.
Hololens, minecraft, the self driving car, surface, phone, cloud -- these are all things that have existed better and cheaper in many cases than microsofts version yet still unaccountably exist as a microsoft offering seemingly just out of spite. Bing was a 7 year attempt at a hostile takeover that is entirely powered by yahoo engine patents and screen scrapes from Google and it still hands out some of the least meaningful or relevant garbage results. The walk-in microsoft store is a godless abortion of over-illuminated copy-paste from whatevers going on in an Apple store, and its performance is so dismal its being rolled into Best Buy stores as a kiosk.
So the question still remains. after 15 years, where the hell do you want to go today, Microsoft? because everywhere isnt a direction.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I bought a Microsoft certified Alienware for gaming on because I was sick of bloatware and crapware being bundled with Lenovo boxes.
Now Microsoft is bundling bloatware and crapware with their OS - this is self-defeating.
I don't want to spend time uninstalling crap. What part do they not understand?
I don't think it's an operating system anymore, it's generation 1 of the customer engagement interface.
I don't know how they'll deal with this at the business level. Really small businesses that buy PCs with Windows preinstalled probably will be told to just stuff it up their asses, most won't switch to Linux or MacOS due to software dependencies and other issues. Which is part of MS plan, obviously, to be able to provide advertising "reach" to the business demographic and not just the hapless home users.
Larger businesses will be told they can buy enterprise licenses where these features are off by default and/or see the 10 page technet document on 47 changes that can be made at each workstation to disable these features. Microsoft will end up using added features as a way to extract more money from customers who don't want those features.
More businesses that wouldn't ordinarily want enterprise will end up buying it at greater cost and probably more than a few double-buying Windows by buying enterprise volume licenses to image over the Pro version it shipped with.
Maybe I'm just too naive to understand the MBA financial model behind all of this, but it strikes me that had Microsoft consolidated their desktop operating system into a single edition around the time of XP or 7 and stopped trying to use it as a marketing platform they would have a lot more end user good will. Why they're choosing to lose even more good will by force-feeding their marketing platform when alternatives are more prevalent than ever (linux, mac os, saas, cloud, mobile, etc etc etc) is mystifying to me.
Exactly. When you buy into a proprietary vendor's offerings, you're buying into their business model and their reputation. Why would you continue to patronize a vendor that blatantly abuses its customers? At some point, the abuser is no longer to blame, the blame lies with the abusee who refuses to leave and willingly submits to the abuse.
I like customization. That's why I use Linux Mint with KDE.
But if you use Windows, then you have no right to complain about MS's software. You've freely chosen it, and you're refusing to abandon it in the face of alternatives.