As much as I like Linux, and use it almost exclusively on desktop/laptop, every time I see something like this I am reminded how much I hate the fact that Apple of all companies is about the last bastion of commercial and consumer operating systems who isn’t trying to derive the bulk of their revenue from advertising.
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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In some sense yes, but advertising for its own stuff is advertising too. It nudges you to use their whole ecosystem.
The most annoying thing for me is that you can't remove the iTunes component in mission control (the settings deck).
It does nudge you...but it's not full screen ads that take multiple clicks to get through every week. I was a Windows zealot through W7...W10 got bad...W11 got me to start using Apple and Linux.
With how aggressive Microsoft is becoming with ads, services, and data collection they could at least make Windows itself free.
But no, you still have to pay £100+ per license to have the pleasure of putting up with this crap.
Piracy is not a real solution to the problem. Microsoft allows these sorts of things to exist in the background because they would rather lose out on some sales than lose market share.
aka spyware
Wait, so this is not about the power menu, it's about the pop up when clicking on your account picture bubble if you're signed in to a MS account. They aren't adding a step to logging out of your local Windows user, just to logging out of your Microsoft account if you're using that as a login for Windows, OneDrive and Office365.
The "Lock" button also has a new home—it now sits in the power menu alongside "Shut down," "Restart," and "Sleep" options.
THAT is where the Lock button was? Not gonna lie, I've been Windows-L-ing so long I didn't even know they had moved that to the account bubble.
I'll be honest, the article is a bit overdramatic. Yeah, they are surfacing your services there to upsell you on the ones you don't have, but it's actually not a useless piece of info (currently finding your subscriptions is an ordeal) and none of the functionality is gone. It is true that a lot of UX things around Win11 have gotten worse, though. I'm currently using additional software to replace the taskbar (which will do the Start menu, too, if you want) because the inability to move it to the sides is ridiculous on the OS you're most likely to pair with an ultrawide monitor.
I'll be honest, the article is a bit overdramatic. Yeah, they are surfacing your services there to upsell you on the ones you don't have, but it's actually not a useless piece of info (currently finding your subscriptions is an ordeal) and none of the functionality is gone.
Look up "boiling a frog"
They count on this exact reaction.
Every time they implement these little bullshit changes, people inevitably go "It's annoying but it's not that big a deal." And then they do more of it a few months later.
The article isn't being hyperbolic because it's reacting to the overall trend that this is yet another step forward in. Because the writer and everyone here knows it will get worse and worse over time.
Dark patterns are, by design, slow and incremental so as not to trigger too much pushback at once. People need to start being more aware of it and pushing back on it when they see it.
And yes, that information is probably useful to some people, but that doesn't in any way justify hiding the options that used to be there.
Do you know the term "trust thermocline"?
Basically it described a problem with the boiling the frog technique. There's a point for every user at which they're fed up with the bullshit, lose all trust in you(r company) and are hard to impossible to get back as a customer. Every customer leaving has a little unnoticeable effect on you, but with time there will be so many people that you lost that all your tactics to lock your users in will fail.
I tried building a Steam box with the bootleg version of SteamOS from the deck... Can't remember the name of the distro. Steam Games ran great for the most part, but getting Epic, EA and Ubisoft to work was a nightmare. If Linux can get that sorted, I'd never use Windows again.
You don't need the bootlegged version of SteamOS, there is ChimeraOS (GitHub).
Also Steam runs great on a lot of distros, I use ~~Arch~~ Mint btw. ;-)
For Epic Games, GOG and Amazon you can use Heroic Games Launcher (GitHub).