Windows 10 could start bullying people into using a Microsoft account to install
techradar.com
techradar.com
At work we do have some Win10 machines, and they are ALWAYS doing something completely off the wall bizarre and unexpected, also doing any sort of maintenance on them is a pain, the tablet-style interface shoehorned into some places just doesn't work well.
I know Win7 support is over, but we don't intend to leave it for Win10, we might leave it for Reactos or something else, but not Win10.
Some examples of Win10 issues:
sending tons of data to MS without permission.
Not allowing us to install with local account unless we disable network on the EFI.
Despite we trying everything to disable updates, the thing updates itself, reset several configurations, and reboot the machine.
One of the times it did that, it broke some ancient but mandatory software on our business (it was a PDF driver that was mandatory to be used by our bank that would issue the invoice for our clients, so when this happened we were forced to install all banking software on a Win7 machien so we could get paid...).
Showing ads out of the blue on Start menu and on the login screen.
Installed games without permission (not Microsoft ones, I mean stuff that is popular on mobile, from king.com and whatnot).
The list goes and goes on.
And equally critical, on LTSC you can go down the customization route to fix the other issues, and not have your settings just get reset in an update.
I too had tried all the tricks, including using a remote Powershell into my own local machine as the System role to change ownership of the Update "Orchestrator" and disable it, etc., nothing worked and Windows finds a way to revert all the settings you make.
Then I discovered an open source utility written in C# that works with Windows' own internal Windows Update API to disable its shenanigans. Search for "wumgr". You can disable the automatic updates, block access to the WU servers, and even disable the WU page in the Settings app. You can also use it to manage the updates manually and selectively if you prefer. So far it has worked flawlessly on my machines and hopefully it will work for you as well.
There are many many reasons why not being in control of OS updates is a bad thing, but the absolute red line for me is having my laptop wake itself up inside of my bag while I'm traveling, potentially creating a fire hazard and certainly draining the battery life my career may be about to depend on during an important presentation, or create incompatibility issues.
10 Is still a remnant from that. I doubt they will ever backtrack fully as they want to get in on those juicy 'store' margins by any means necessary, and with the full demise of their mobile platform grabbing the desktop users is the only remaining path.
Improvements to the task bar for things like switching audio devices and condensing of the ribbons on Explorer have been huge for me. Most people are quick to point out how control panel has been bastardized and such, but honestly I love the move towards a unified "Settings" area. Not everything has made it over, but slowly with each update more and more is added. Tbh, I absolutely loathe control panel from <=Win7. Trying to find something is always difficult and there's no unified layout to any of the .cpl applets.
Windows 8/8.1 was terrible because it forced you to use this stupid full screen start menu. It was distracting and slow and pretty damn ugly when you start looking at icons for programs that haven't been updated in 20 years. All that has been scaled back and while ads on the start menu are not something that should be glossed over (they _are_ absolutely terrible, and Microsoft deserves to be shit talked), it's still the best start menu interface I've seen.
Honestly if you want an example of a terrible desktop user interface / experience, look no further than macOS. With each update they seem to move more towards an iOS model of a walled garden. What really perplexes me is Apple doesn't seem to give two damns about a touch interface on their OS, and yet they're moving all of their design to be more mobile-centric with things like Launchpad or the absolute lobotomy of iTunes.
Like linking Skype accounts to hotmail accounts without permission...
Once upon a time, not too long ago..it was Apple who did things without permission, but at least they had Steve Jobs.. now it’s everybody, without Steve Jobs.
It’s Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook...it’s the culture of companies from the valley.
But all this, is just another opportunity for a new software company.
Their arrogance and recklessness is someone else’s opportunity.
There's actually a permanent fix for this that I found on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/aavocr/after_6_mo...
I've been using it for years and have never once gotten a notification or nag screen about updates. You can still update whenever you want — no rebooting behind your back. The best part is that it's only one registry key which (ab)uses a Windows feature unrelated to Windows Update, so it's highly unlikely that they'll "fix" it any time soon.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001
We’re not “tech people”, we’re just early adopters. :)
Data is the new arms race, those who collect the most have the most to gain, especially financially where data is being a core asset to a business.
Dumb is going to be the new gold, at least for those "crazies" you speak of.
Of course it is. How else can tech sustain perpetual growth without wringing every penny out of users?
The big problem IMHO is that some of the essential technology we rely on every day -- our operating systems, communication devices, vehicles -- has been moving rapidly into that category in recent years.
When the pseudo-malware stuff was only being done by individual applications or websites or quirky IoT devices, you could mostly avoid it by just not using those things. Now it's becoming unavoidable, and that's a serious concern.
Unfortunately those people will always be with us because it's not completely ethical to weed them out at birth.
It's currently in "trick the user" mode: it has you connect to wifi to download the latest security updates, then remembers the network and automatically tries to have you create an account a step or two later.
I avoided it by rebooting, going into the bios, disabling wifi, and then resuming setup - only when it couldn't connect would it allow a local account. Just rebooting to restart initial setup doesn't work, it remembers the network.
It still keeps nagging with a notification saying that my Windows installation is not fully secure since I haven't added a Microsoft account. I've disabled that notification, but it may have disabled all notifications from the settings part of Windows, I'm not sure.
Tip- you can disable the security nag notifications in defender settings individually. There is a screen with different categories of 'threats', and you can turn on/off warnings individually. You probably don't want those notifications entirely disabled, since it is pretty useful as anti-virus, but the account and backup notifications are obnoxious.
Windows 10 Professional, freshly minted from Dell:
* "Set up for organization"
* "Local account or domain join" (it's in small print in the lower left)
* Create a local Admin account
* Do not setup a password at this time (it'll force you to set up recovery questions or some other nonsense.)
* set all the data sharing options to "no"
* skip entering data for the Dell registration
* On first login, hit ctrl-alt-del and set a password there.
Windows Home does not offer the choice to "Setup up for organization", so you are forced to make a windows account. There's no way easy way out of it.
Microsoft keeps saying "Windows is a service" and has that text somewhere in the install. I guess if you want an operating system, you have to turn to Linux.
I scratched my head for a good bit thinking that I'd missed the old pathway that let you skip the online account step, but it turned out that the installer's behaviour had actually been altered.
After some more dome scratching I eventually discovering that disabling the built-in wifi module (no wired LAN connection was made) caused the installer to let me create a local account instead.
Quite bloody annoying.
Footnote: this was an install from a bootable USB stick where I'd "burned" the full Windows 10 ISO image.
It established ads and spying as normal for an OS, it removed abilities to administrate the OS in a meaningful way and mostly ignored users in favor of nudging people to their products. Products that I would declare to be mostly in beta phase. The bi-annual untargeted channel version couldn't sort desktop symbols without bugs if you had multiple monitors attached till a few month ago.
And before anyone mentions that "normal people" like it and it is just the icky nerds that have reservations: Not in my experience. They hate MS spying on them too. It is just that there is often a lack of an alternative if they are caught up in the ecosystem.
I wonder how people even manage if they don't have some friends and family to help them get rid of the bad stuff.
There are underlying improvements, but what use is a safer system if the malware comes preinstalled.
What do you mean by that? I moved last year from macOS to Windows 10 for my personal machine, and I don't see what administrative features I could be missing.
My main frustration is the automatic reboot, but I’ve seen this behavior since at least windows 7.
For the elderly variety of normal people this is a disaster: All the behind-the-scenes UX and setting flipping, the forced installs, and the performance dips that comes with all this means that low-confidence users feel like they're working on quicksand. The experience becomes unpredictable and scary and the iPad gets more and more use and the PC gathers dust.
I don't get why this all is worth the cost of squandering the good will MS has built up elsewhere.
My mother now only touches her Macbook Air if she needs to use her bookkeeping software, or transfer embroidery files to a USB drive to use with her sewing machine. She's much happier being able to do everything else on her iPad -- plus, she can take it with her more easily, and the battery life is ridiculous.
that's pretty wretchedly ageist. I know people up and down the age spectrum for whom this is an identical unmitigated disaster with the same effects. I also know a lot of greybeards who will just go in to some "registry" thing and rip out the cancer at its source.
For whatever reason, I've fallen into a kind of side job of helping various people with their computers (I have trouble saying no) and I have noticed that as people get older, their desire to deal with UI changes declines rather rapidly. Many operate purely on muscle memory rather than re-reading and re-parsing whatever new UI gets rolled out.
New things on the screen (or in menus) can induce a kind of paralytic panic and now with Windows 10, Microsoft feels rather free to just ... add stuff, wherever. My first Windows 10 tablet was baffling because stuff kept appearing when I know I didn't put it there. This prompted me to get ahold of and install Windows 10 LTSB. I could not be happier with the result. After a bit of wrestling, I was able to control when updates occurred (if at all) and the random UI changes vanished.
I, too, am getting older.
How much bunkum fluid versus crystallized intelligence is, I do not know, but this has seemed to be a trend I have picked up.
But for the majority of people at that stage of their life, who don't really care about the technology and haven't really followed it closely, it's a valid concern that random A/B testing and continuous version updates that change how you use programs are an alienating obstacle to using computers.
From the comments on this thread, a lot of people who do follow technology and who are used to being treating like this also hate it. It's not a stretch that, for less savvy users don't know what exactly it is they should hate will just assume it's computers that are at fault and choose a different tool.
There is just no real competition, so business and private users don't have a say in it anyway. MacOS requires different hardware and only has to be a little bit better to compete with Windows, so it's progressively getting worse as well. Linux distros lack in other areas and are also heavily corporate driven and low quality, sure if you invest time in it you won't be able to tolerate Windows and MacOS, but you might need a lot of time, as usefulness and freedom of Linux only really exists for programmers. There is also pressure from iOS and Android, people do not care as much about desktop OSes, they live within their phones, and forgive desktop OSes a lot more crap because of that.
On the other hand maybe someone will see an opportunity for a high quality desktop Linux distro that addresses many problems of other OSes now that other OSes are getting so much worse.
And we have a winner!
We have voluntarily allowed much of our society to become dependent on IT facilities where a key element was provided by a de facto monopoly. We are now learning a hard lesson in why that is a bad idea.
The geeks among us may flee to Linux. The quirky or curious might try Apple (though they don't exactly have a stellar reputation for looking after their desktop OS either in recent years). But for "normal" people, if you buy a new PC today, you get Windows 10 and all the negative baggage that comes with it, and that's just how it is.
I have been convinced for some time that statutory regulation with real teeth is now the only way to protect normal people from the nasty, greedy parts of the tech industry.
I suspect the most plausible alternative -- and that doesn't mean actually plausible, just less wishful thinking than anything else -- is for popular sentiment to turn sharply against these practices and make it a liability for Microsoft to continue down its current path. We've seen a couple of issues recently in my area that went from the general population being ignorant or ambivalent about issues that really should concern them to quite suddenly becoming much better informed and demanding action.
However, it usually requires some very obvious catalyst for people to rally behind. It's not hard to imagine what that could be in this sort of scenario: a massive data leak resulting in huge inconvenience for lots of people, a bad Windows update bricking millions of laptops, a security vulnerability in phones or cars that leads to widespread damage and real people getting hurt or worse. It's sad that I suspect it would take such a damaging event to really wake people up to what's happening, though.
That would be a more convincing argument had Microsoft itself not forcefully removed the most plausible alternative from the market.
I'm one of the "normal people". I absolutely hate Windows 10 . I used it for a few years because switching to Linux seemed overwhelming. I have finally ditched Windows 10 for Elementary OS, it's just so much better.
You already have to disconnect form the network to be able to use the "offline account" option in the installer (last I checked, which was like a couple of months ago).
So this has been going on for a while.
Edit (merge the other comment I deleted):
To clarify, this was a Home Edition. I understand that the Pro edition doesn't behave this way.
To make it more fun, their "Technical Support" chat failed as well, so I was unable to get a human to even talk through this.
That would be even worse if that prevented me from installing or using Windows.
They would be legally obliged to delete my account, but at some point I had the revelation that any minute spending thoughts on them is a wasted minute of life.
"If you enable this setting, the following occurs on the affected computer: At first logon, the user receives a new local profile, rather than the roaming profile. At logoff, changes are saved to the local profile. All subsequent logons use the local profile. "
This is on Windows 10 Pro. There's a surprising number of settings that can be configured here. As Microsoft continues to dumb down menus and the control panel they are normally tucked in here. Or you may rarely have to dig into Powershell and the registry, very rarely.
As I use Outlook.com/Onedrive I didn't care until I opened up my terminal and noticed my username was the first 5 letters of my email. What the hell. I don't get why they would do that instead of just using your firstname or asking you at least. or at the very least use _everything_ up till @ instead of the first 5...
This irked me beyond belief and after googling a bunch of crazy ways to 'fix' this, the easiest turned out to be creating a local account 'chris', deleted my MS account, then attached the MS account to 'chris'
How about trying to stop a raging forest-fire and the primary tool you are supposed to use is a squirt gun? The backend that we have to work with was designed around the concept of "1 network, X users" and the biggest threat was a boot-sector virus that formatted your hard-drive after silently replicating itself to every machine.
Now you need security in layers, because even if every god-damned employee was as smart as Tim Berners-Lee and didn't open every email attachment, drive-by downloads; 0-day browser exploits that give access to ring0 coupled with an OS that releases updates that are more likely to bjork your computer then actually solve the fucking problem these computers are sitting fucking ducks.
And because we are seen as "Intrusive" we can't even get the C-level assholes to listen to us, or to follow the rules that they see are necessary for everybody else.
The environment has grown so hostile that Becky in accounting doesn't need internet access, and you are lucky we don't limit the internet to 1 terminal in the lunch room with every port disabled and filled with a hot-glue gun.
Just because YOU are "smart with computers" doesn't mean your damn computer is safe.
We (SysAdmins) are fighting a desperately hard battle. We get shit on by the end-users, and Upper Management. If you have 1 frustration with your PC multiply it by thousand, and try to put yourself in our shoes.
Or use Windows 7 if you have to. Windows 10 is just malware and bloatware built around Windows 7.
Of course, Microsoft has engineered the market so that getting any new 7 systems is now intended to be impossible and exerted considerable influence to get people to move to 10, so which is safer is becoming a moot point.
Use uBlock Origin to block ads, trackers, and other third party insidious code (preferably use uMatrix as well if you're savvy enough). Enable your firewall. Don't download files from untrustworthy sources, etc.
Personally I only do financial transaction on Linux, and don't use a password manager on Windows. I actually only use Windows to play a game sporadically, or to use software that hasn't got an alternative on Linux, which is becoming quite rare.
It just takes Soo much effort to get things to work. Netflix and deactivate mouse acceleration(which isn't perfect) to name a few.
I love ubuntu server, favorite os of all time. But Linux desktop just isn't anywhere near Windows quality.
With 20.04 imminent, it might be worth giving it another shot in a VM to see if things have changed.
Personally, I used Win10 on my carbon for a while (having previously tried and given up on Linux on a T410) before finally getting tired of the forced reboots, the software auto installs, etc, and giving Ubuntu 18.04 a shot. It isn't perfect (e.g. the fingerprint reader has never worked, and suspend sometimes doesn't work if Bluetooth is turned on) but I was genuinely shocked at how otherwise functional it is out of the box (even the USB C dock works after installing the DisplayLink drivers). Heck, with TLP installed using an out-of-the-box configuration, battery life is better than Windows.
It's at the point where I genuinely prefer it to the Win10 X1C5 I have at work.
I've been on Manjaro now for almost 2 years, doing JavaScript/React/PHP/Ruby/Python work (and some .NET Core with SQL Server!). I use VS Code and Chrome. I listen to music with Spotify. We have Slack. I can remote desktop into Windows machines with FreeRDP.
Recently someone said that they thought they would prefer to try Xubuntu because it had more official support so I decided to compare it to Manjaro and try it out on a spare machine. There's really no comparison. Setting up software on Ubuntu is painful, having to find and add keys to various disconnected software repos for every package. After a week, the Ubuntu installation ate itself after an update and wouldn't boot.
Meanwhile I have 3 workstations running Manjaro (work desktop, home desktop and personal laptop) and they all run perfectly and installing software is as easy as opening Add/Remove Software utility and finding what I want. Everything is there, even my favorite diff util from Scooter Software - Beyond Compare.
I just setup Windows 10 Pro for my brother in-law yesterday and had no problem choosing a local account.
Also, on one side they get points on the developers side, but they lose more on the consumer side with those practices.
An asshole kid who is kindly opening the doors to teachers and kicks smaller kids in the head just around the corner and tortures little animals after school is still a proper asshole.
BTW, it is entirely possible to use a smart phone without a Google or Apple account.
Just because the situation is already bad doesn't mean we shouldn't complain that it continue to get worse ...
A much more reasonable approach is to setup a normal Windows user profile and let them connected it later if they want. I don't encourage it, though, because there isn't much benefit unless you have multiple computers with synced personalization settings, which is very uncommon.
We don't know what the future has in store for us. To me, the level of control China has over its population is scary.
Data can be misused in many different ways, and one day, I suspect we'll see a catastrophic situation occur as a result of all this connectivity and mass surveillance.
Only then, people might take note and realize it's a terrible idea.
This is false. You can use any iOS device without an account. And it's not even hard, like in TFA.
I think you're just conditioned to believe that having an account for everything is normal. It is now.
So yes, being pushed towards creating online accounts for general purpose computing is a problem.
Right, and the bigger student in the cafeteria was just nudging people, sometimes forcing them, to give up their lunch money.
What does "bullying" mean to you?
> Bullying is the use of force, coercion, or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual.
> Bullying is the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another individual, physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Don’t you see a difference between an actual abuse, and the use of a UX dark pattern to get users to create/use online accounts?
But in the second place, "bullying" is not restricted to "actual abuses", however defined. Bullying refers to an attitude, the attitude of shoving someone around because you can. The reverse of "bullying" is "caving in", not "being victimized". Here are some cites I pulled from COCA:
> What are the keys to the match for Halep? It sounds trite, but Halep needs to stay aggressive -- as she was in the semis -- and not let Serena bully her around the court.
> Can someone please explain to me why Magic Johnson and other executives have been fined by the NBA for just a simple comment on another player, but yet, Kawhi Leonard can actively and outwardly recruit an under-contract player and persuade him to bully his way out of that contract?
> Just look at what China's trying to do. They're trying to bully us, hold our farmers hostage.
> the Trump administration has proposed eliminating a lot of the legal enforcement protections that are in the agreement that are particularly important for Canada and Mexico especially because they're smaller economies, smaller countries, much more reliant on the U.S. market. They can't really bully their way around to getting things that they want when things don't go their way
These four cites describe three different scenarios, but not one of them could be considered to match what you claim is the definition of bullying.
For the last few years I've been using Windows 10 rather than macOS. In general Windows seems mid-to-long-term more stable than macOS. But maybe that's because I'm used to treating macOS like a nicer Linux while they've been locking down many Linux-like abilities (kernel modules, tracing/debugging, etc). But there's also been the macOS filesystem and permissions model changes that have made upgrading a pain.
I do have a Microsoft account but I don't do anything with it. I don't use any Microsoft products that are not included in the base install. I tried Hyper-V for a while but it was painful to configure so I've been using VMWare with more success.
Generally speaking, it seems like Microsoft is looking further than a year from now -- getting design and quality right compared to macOS which no longer seems to have any particular direction. It's not just in their software; I've been seriously impressed by build quality and pricing on the Surface line of tablets and laptops. I actually mistook a Surface book for a 2015 macbook pro. In contrast, I really don't want to gamble with post-2015 Apple hardware.
And although I do a lot of development on my laptop, I'm trying to move to developing in the cloud or a home-server because compiling kills my battery. Windows enables this use-case fine. To be fair, macOS would too.
I haven't had any issues with unwanted ads. The only ads I'm aware of are the lock-screen backgrounds that show different places around the world... I don't really consider them an ad though.
People started to sell TAILS on usb keys for $10, if someone packs Linux Mint, eOS or similar for $5 .. in a web app world, linux + firefox is probably invisible to the average user.