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Comment by __MatrixMan__ | Hacker News Reader

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but a vanilla Windows 10 install isn't very bloated imo. Did you perhaps start with an image provided by the laptop vendor? It's not Microsoft's fault that they're usually full of trash.

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I think perhaps you are in the EU and were using the "N" version of windows 10. I realized that the normal windows 10 installs a LOT of bloatware (Like I don't need candy crush), while the N version did not do that.

Oh that's a good point.

I'm in the US, but yes whenever I select the image to download I do pick the N version.

Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is from the perspective of the user.

All the windows computers at the computer shop ship with bloated 3rd party crap. Except the apple computers. It’s also not Google’s fault that most android vendors don’t support old devices for long. Or Linux’s fault that hardware vendors make linux drivers an afterthought.

As a consumer, I don’t care why any of this happens. I just want the things I buy to work properly.

Who decides what's bloat? macOS ships with Apple News, Podcasts, the App Store, Books, Garageband, Stocks, iMovie, Keynote, etc. A lot of their stuff is even pinned to the taskbar by default. Should be consider that bloat? I don't need any of those programs (or prefer alternatives), so it seems like it's bloat for me.

I’m not sure. The bloat meter in my mind certainly goes up when these programs start phoning home to update stocks or whatever. (Despite me never even opening that program).

I should definitely have the option to turn this crap off if I want to - without needing a 3rd party program like little snitch to do so.

Yes it is bloat. But there is a difference in easy to get rid bloat (just delete them in Apple) vs needing to change registry settings, etc and jump over several hoops to remove the bloat that comes with windows

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