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Comment by vetinari | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft tried, they just failed. For now. They are still trying. Windows 11 requires TPM and Secure Boot.

People forget that Microsoft tried to go the iOS route and control everything by signing everything from boot to executables which one would only get from the Microsoft app store. This is what spooked Valve into developing Steam Machines and Steam OS; I'm grateful for Proton, but it was necessitated by Microsoft aggressively closed designs.

"S Mode" is still a thing. On top of what you listed it also enforces Edge as browser and Bing as search engine. I'm not kidding: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-and-w...

S mode is like an ad-funded tier of a streaming service: you pay less up-front, but you are forced to watch more ads. Herding people to edge and bing is how microsoft makes sure they can present those ads.

It's a super soft requirement. I have secure boot and tpm disabled on my pc and win 11 doesn't care.

Why? Because I can't set my prefered GPU with uefi enabled (which is required for secure boot), and I occasionally passthrough my windows disk to a VM when I'm dual booted into my Linux OS (so naturally windows can't use the tpm).

I think they were successful in obsoleting a huge amount of functioning computers, forcing my people to buy new hardware to run Windows 11.

For now, most people and businesses ignore Windows 11; they are happy with Windows 10. In 2025, once the Windows 10 support ends, it will be more interesting.

And this is part of my point: by the time microsoft kills old computers, if they even do, they'll be 10 years old, not 2 years old.

Lets talk when You will have to go out of your way to even get access to privileged account in Windows. Right now comparing restrictions of TPM to android having majority of their api (and functionallity) gated is just laughable

Let me remind you Windows RT for ARM. Same restrictions of TPM, some screws tightened somewhat more.

>Same restrictions of TPM, some screws tightened somewhat more

Well yes, that windows was basically a direct competition to android (or tried to). Not sure what has TPM to do with anything really, but regardless;

I am not saying that Microsoft is pure hearted angel that would never dare to restrict client's freedom. Obviously they did it before many times and certainly will in the future.

What I am saying though, is that for now, Android is on completely different plane of user restriction then Windows (in it's main version) is. And even if Windows is constantly looking for opportunities to tigthen it's grip, none of the restrictions that are implemented right now can justify the conclusion, as if Windows is becoming so restrictive that it's reasonable to compare it to Android. Criticize them all you want, I will as well. But let's not bend the reality just so it's easier to say 'all corpos bad', rather then putting a small ammount of effort to distinguish between the levels of opression

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