It's more proper to say that there are a lot of people who "need" a different sort of toolset. It's not about "toys"; it's about the machine as an information device for a life outside of the machine. As much as any of us like to complain about things like intrusive "peronalized" search everywhere and targeted ads and so forth, there's a reason why such things sell (until people are told what needs to be involved in making it work).

Honestly, most people are fine with the magic until they realize how much surveillance the magician does. I have no idea how they think it's supposed to work, but then most folks don't know how any part of their computer works.

And worse is that the only reason I have windows in the first place is to play games. I don't need to do anything else on it, but I have to have it in my life because big game companies will not make games for linux. Hell, I'm so excited for Oculus Rift, but at this point they have even dropped Mac support (understandably, they don't have the graphics power), so if I want to experience VR currently, I'm completely limited to windows, not even playing indie and valve games on linux.

For context (to explain your "probably") - Ubuntu in its Unity UI serves Amazon product search in its "start menu".

There was some bad update that asked you to confirm what you wanted to open certain file types when you had already set the default, but I've never seen the telemetry tracking options change, and I've double-checked the settings a few time to verify that they haven't changed.

> By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps, but that's as far as it goes

Yeah, those are ads. It's like when the homescreen of my Kindle that I paid more for to get without "Special Offers" started showing books I may be interested in buying based on my reading history. Also known as ads.

It's insulting. I'm sure over their entire customer base it comes out as a positive feature for them, though. People more likely to click through to the store when they see a game name or screenshot they recognize, while only alienating a few.

At least, as you said, they offer an explicit and easy way to disable them, unlike Amazon at the time, who then took years to add an option to disable those.

Which, by the way, is all I'm asking for on the telemetry front as well. Opt-in by default all you want. Bury the setting three panels deep (don't reset it at your whim, though). I'll feel insulted and slightly dirtied, but I'll disable it and move on, active Windows customer that I am.

> Generally: no

That's very misleading. The option is called "Suggestions" and it's on by default. I'm convinced they called it that because if they called it "Ads", everyone would turn it off.

> By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps

That is far from only problem. Here is a screenshot of a Win10 start menu, out of the box, at default settings. Count the ads:

http://cdn5.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/img_55b...