You're extremely lucky then. On our (very large, very strictly managed Windows 10 fleet) Edge is CONSTANTLY becoming the default PDF handler. Its a real PITA and MS has failed to give admins the tools to manage this correctly.
These anti customer dark patterns are going to drive a wedge into the golden goose of corporate sales. At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in places you'd never have guessed before. Clinics, law offices, regulated environments. IE corporate MS bread and butter. Someone over there needs to get their head out of their corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full steam.
> At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in places you'd never have guessed before.
I switched to Macs in 2004, and have loved the experience most of the time, but fear that it's not so much that Apple is above this sort of thing as that they're a little bit behind Microsoft in doing it. Already, do you want to use iCloud? Are you sure you don't want to use iCloud? Maybe now you want to use iCloud? And it's relatively easy to ignore, but of countless small such choices is Microsoft-style user hostility made.
I'm aware of the things you're talking about and I also find them annoying. But I just setup a brand new Windows 11 Pro laptop and I had NO idea how bad things had gotten. By default out of the box a brand new Windows Pro install will:
1) Only let you login using a Microsoft account. No local account
2) If secure boot is enabled in the BIOS it will be locked to 'S' mode where it will only install and run software from the MS App store. You can not disable it without logging into the MS Store and downloading and running a tool to disable it. The only way I found around this was to go into the BIOS and disable Secure Boot. That immediately disabled 'S' mode. This was not documented anywhere.
> Someone over there needs to get their head out of their corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full steam
It was probably some manager's KPI at Microsoft to increase Edge market share so he decided that forcing Edge to default everytime would push him ahead and get him that sweet promotion.
Microsoft lacks a common vision for Windows and good leadership. As with the products of any massive corporation, Windows now feels like a product built "by committee", a result from various internal turf wars, where every manager or gang tries to push their agenda to gain visibility inside the org to show something at their next performance review and hopefully get promoted, at the expense of the end-user and the OS being universally hated by consumers and businesses. "So, what did your team achieve last year? Well, I was in charge of putting Candy-Crush and other partner-network ads in the Star Menu, giving us an extra 10 Million USD a year. Great, the investors and bean counters will love the extra revenue. HR will contact you about your promotion. Congrats!"
I think much of Apple's success was Jobs dogfooding every product being developed before giving the final go ahead for shipping. I wish Satya Nadela and other higher ups there would dogfood fresh installs of Windows (not the images provided by their IT department) and see the horrible mess they're shipping to their customers. Then Nadela and those execs should ask themselves, "Would I actually want to spend money on this and have to live with it every day? If not, what could I fix to make it desirable so that others would want to buy it?". This way of consumer first thinking allowed Jobs to make Apple what it is today.
Microsoft needs to put in charge of Windows someone who's in touch with consumers and business to guide this project with an iron fist instead of letting various committees and gangs sneak their own agendas in the end product. But I think Microsoft just doesn't care that much about Windows anymore and is instead focusing on Azure & cloud, OneDrive, Office365, Xbox and buying game studios, etc. so Windows is slowly rotting away unnoticed by those at the helm.
> so Windows is slowly rotting away unnoticed by those at the helm.
I wouldn't call it slowly, but you are right about your assessment. It is already quite some years ago, when evaluating the privacy and security measures of my machine, I had to conclude that MS *is* the adversary.
I have a chuckle when people ask me what virus scanner they would need for their Windows machine. It is like asking how to prevent a deadly disease from catching a cold.
It's not a hyperbole. All the opt-outs are illegal in the first place, but the damning fact is that MS does not allow you to switch of stealing part of your personal data anyway.
You should not run Windows. If you have to, because some legacy software does not have an alternative (and I find that has become increasingly rare), then run it in a vm with no internet access.
Also, we should really stop the meme about the year of the Linux Desktop. KDE has far surpassed Windows already. I use both OSes and have to conclude Windows is beyond repair. Nobody cares about this sinking ship, and that is a positive end of this rant.
*EDIT*
I even think MS thinks the same wrt win in a vm. I can imagine they will ship Linux one time and have win apps open in a legacy win vm.
> Windows now feels like a product built "by committee"
Since Windows 10, it definitely feels more like a Linux distribution than a polished, paid product. A hodgepodge of garbage with differing (and sometimes opposite) UI paradigms, incentives and terrible quality.
This is something we tolerate in the Linux world because it's all done by mostly unpaid random people with different goals, skill levels and opinions, but seeing this from a huge, for-profit company that produces masterpieces such as Windows 7 is ridiculous.
These anti customer dark patterns are going to drive a wedge into the golden goose of corporate sales. At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in places you'd never have guessed before. Clinics, law offices, regulated environments. IE corporate MS bread and butter. Someone over there needs to get their head out of their corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full steam.