I don't want to have to tweak my fucking operating system to remove ads!! Also, I think we're asking too much of the average user. It's not obvious how to do most of the tweaks, so your random older/casual user won't do them, or maybe even realize that such a thing might be possible and go off to look up how to do it. They're more likely to just turn off updates.

I am slightly bemused we're making excuses for people not trying anything.. especially when computers these days are all about "Expressing yourself" and "identity"..

Presumably some freak compatability issue (I've noticed ads always appear when I open files using a certain program).

if we're playing this game, we should play it fairly.

What i do see is that when i use outlook.com it doesn't pop down telling me to switch to Edge, but when i use Gmail its always telling me to switch to edge.

Have you actually used MS products in comparison to google? didn't think so..

Windows is the paid one here.

YouTube, Gmail, Google et all have a dropdown advertisement asking me to switch to chrome no matter which browser I user that isn't chrome..

Lets also not forget that MS apps show up on google store, apple store and are fully cross platform whereas google is selective in what it supports. We're at a day and age where Microsoft has Cortana, One Drive, Office, Bing, Skype, Photos and so much more on iOS, Windows, Android and people are telling me that MS is bad when google is good (and is far from as cross platform as ms is) I just say use whatever, but if people want to nit pick about "Ads" that everyone does without knowing how everyone does it, that's lame. MS has a TON of "Free stuff" that isn't always dropping toasts to switch browsers, switch to chrome so on and so forth..

If people have so much energy to hate on something, that should be directed at sloppy companies like Yahoo that actually are detrimental to security/safety..

With the Microsoft services, the crucial difference is, that "Cortana, One Drive, Bing, Skype, Photos" is stuff that Microsoft is pushing on people, not stuff that people asking for from Microsoft. It is me too solution, it is Microsoft's version of Google+, except that Microsoft didn't learn their lesson yet.

Out of this, Office is an exception. iOS and Android users would not give up their platform, but they were willing to use another lite office suite. On a platform, where there is not a such threat, such as desktop Linux, there is no Office port. Even the macOS port hasn't got feature parity with the Windows version. Google is treating Windows Phone exactly the same way Microsoft is treating other platforms with Office.

If you consider this hate, maybe you should also consider whether it is deserved. There's no reaction without action.

People are asking for these services.. just because you don't run them doesn't mean no one does. Skype is still the largest voip network, bing is slowly still growing against goole, onedrive is huge for private and corporations, Cortana ins on over 600 million devices..

As for office on OSX, it is updated all the time and feature comparable if you bother to run 2016 with updates enabled..

THe hate is far from deserved, its misguided.

Microsoft is so cross platform Visual studio for OSX is full RTM, Visual studio code runs great in Linux/windows/OSX, they're writing Linux drivers, they have the Linux subsystem for windows that runs native windows apps, they're a core supporter of the Linux foundation. .net is cross platform now too and they're starting to merge xamarin/XAML/xml forms so apps can be written once and run everywhere..

doing more for software and systems than google is but people will continue to have this misguided hate

If you claim people are asking for these services, then what about not showing them down the throats of those who didn't ask for them? Seem simple, right? If they are so popular, why piss off those who don't care about them? Why do I have look after every Cmd-O at Onedrive file chooser, when I'm never going to use it and there's no option "do not bother me with this again?". I'm sure that Cortana might be on 600M devices, but there are not 600M active users... more likely users what resigned on looking for a new ways to turn it off. See the difference?

Office for Mac 2016 is updated every month indeed, but it is still missing features. For example, everything that starts with Power (PowerQuery, PowerPivot, PowerMap), or Inquire. The Mac version of Office does work with exactly 3 ODBC drivers. It doesn't work with exactly the same ODBC drivers, that the Windows has no problem with (PostgreSQL, for example - it crashes).

There was a lot written about Visual Studio for Mac and it being a rebranded Xamarin. See past discussions here, at HN.

And let's go back to the Office for Linux, shall we? That's the Microsoft prime lock-in device for many. Drivers for Hyper-V or Linux subsystem for Windows help Microsoft, not Linux.

VIsual studio for mac is a re-write of xamarin, that doesn't change anything - xamaerin/visual studio/c# are all converging to offer a unified platform.

And i'm so glad you seem to know everything about everyone. THe same "billion google now" users probably only 1% USE it day in/day out.. but we're just going to be blindly bashing windows..

please, do us a favor and get over yourself. We get it, you don't run/don't like windows... so just stop wasting energy hating something you really don't have any clue about or care about.

BTW, i never see any ads/popups other than after a fresh install when the guided tour is starting up so i have no clue what people are flipping out about.

The "ads" are recommended software. It is annoying that you get a toast notification asking if you want to use office online just as its annoying every few weeks my iPhone asks if I want to buy more icloud.

But what is really happening is that anything with an app store is tracking you to build a marketing engine that recommends other apps to you. The fallacy is that Microsoft is the only one doing this, the truth is that everyone is doing this.

There are ways around this in OSX and Windows.. you don't have to use the store, you can still download stuff and install away and you can still enable developer mode and side-load anything you custom write if you want to use the new API features.

I don't like it when I choose to use edge and every time I go to gmail it asks me to swtich to chrome.

I don't like it on my iPhone that every time I use gmail it asks me to switch to chrome even though I selected the checkbox to use safari.

I'm tired of this conversation being so one sided and biased as it is doing the world a huge disservice.

Ads for apps are ads, no matter how you spin it. People don't pay for android, they pay for windows. A pay OS/platform shouldn't force you to disable ads. Gmsil/Chrome are free apps.

Apple doesn't track you. On installs it asks if it can collect usage info, but you have to agree, and it's one time. They don't show you ads in either OS. They don't track your personal info. They don't give government agencies backdoors like MSFT got caught doing. They go to court to fight illegal searches of your devices.

Its painfully apparent you really hate Microsoft for your own deply personal reasons. I'm not changing that. But I will stand up and say that what you have said is not true and not the case of Microsoft today.

I'm not saying you have to change but we must be clear that you are speaking from perceived history rather than current day times.

Google android is "Free" as Windows 10 is free.. you paid for it with hardware... now if you could build your own handset you could install android but it would NOT be the official "google" android because reality is - hardware companies still have to license it in such a way to get the official apps. But again, we're not going to talk about this in apples and apples, you're only framing it in your obsession of fear/doubt/hate against Microsoft. And again, that's ok, I really don't give a hoot.

Apple does track you. The Apple Privacy statement is almost exactly the same as GOogle and Microsofts. https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/ - they all enable services and warn you about services that provide value add in some cases but can seem in violation in others.

Its up to YOU to understand what you want to share, enable/disable what you want to share and understand how changing that changes the system you're running in.

But its up to you to use what YOU want to use and respect others for what they want to use.

Spending so much energy spreading FUD does nothing.

Chromebooks aren't free, phones aren't free, tablets aren't free, Apple/Google/Microsoft all provide app metrics to all their respective app stores and all go above and beyond to try and make them secure (google actually having to struggle with this compared to the other giants)

This isn't true. I had to explicitly go out of my way to pay hundreds of dollars for a Windows license for my computer, which I assembled from components. It's not possible to pay money to anyone for Android; it's gratis. Google makes money on ads, not on selling Android.

unfortunately i can't find any cases that show how much of the estimated ~60 dollars per handset is licensing costs for the google apps (as some have been licensed to mfrs) or patent / indemnification agreements needed that google doesn't offer but still are a cost to selling android handsets.

I know google makes a LOT more money on ads.. but lets be real, while android was open source its current incarnation is nowhere to be found and his hidden behind represive agrements, advertising, and marketing and android phones in the end are no cheaper than any other phone price wise..

When i buy a surface/tablet/oem pc it just comes with windows.. When i build a PC i buy an OEM license for 30 bucks.. if you know the platform you're running you can know how to save cash and make the best of it.

So you're suggesting I avoid Microsoft then? Because that's the only way I can control it, otherwise I'm only an OS update away from MS re-enabling features I explicitly disable.

Users have been very very vocal about dozens of things that Microsoft refuses to stop. What about all of the forced upgrades to Windows 10 without consent? For the longest time Microsoft just denied that they were even doing it. Then they just tried to justify it with marketing B.S. about how "Windows 10 is great, so no one should be complaining."

Then there's the embedded spyware in Windows 10 that's not able to be removed or disabled. Even just the adware, it should go without saying that no one wanted ads to show up in their OS. This shouldn't be something I should be forced to opt out of, it shouldn't exist in the first place. I shouldn't have to deal with Microsoft installing crap like candy crush on every windows PC on the planet.

Microsoft categorically doesn't listen to their users. Can you name a time when Apple or a prominent Linux distro has pulled any of this crap?

Yes, unfortunately. Ubuntu served Amazon ads in the dash search. No idea if they're still there (I use Fedora) but it's not like they had to ask anyone what they thought of it to be well aware that the majority of their users would think that sucks.

Apple? Well now- that's the company that continuously tries to force its users to run only the apps it choses, isn't it? Apple sucks as much as MS in the way it treats its users.

As for Apple though, I disagree with a lot of their design decisions but Apple hasn't introduced Spyware, Adware, and Malware into any of their products. Their walled garden philosophy is crappy but they aren't doing what Microsoft has been doing.

Even just the upgrade itself broke more than hundreds of thousands of computers. Sure, you can blame that on drivers or sketchy hardware but the bottom line is that Microsoft still upgraded those computers and caused them to become nonfunctional. Even after the upgrade, Microsoft allowed users to revert back to the previous version of Windows but I've personally seen that fail on three separate occasions.

I'm not just using hyperbole here, Microsoft really did do all of that and more with Windows 10.

And if you doubt the users who say that it upgraded when they weren't at the computer and that they never consented, there are plenty of cases of isolated machines like HVAC computers that didn't even have a display or input hooked up to them that broke because Windows 10 was installed. How exactly did Microsoft get consent for a computer that had literally zero input devices and no display?

Yes, Microsoft had some updates that updated some machines but they fixed that so it wouldn't. Yes, MS mad some silly assumptions to cache the update - that isn't what this is about.

THis is about the fact that the HVAC company SHOULD have upgraded. They should have known their outdated/unsupported OS constitutes a security risk and THEY should have corrected it and not assumed to leave it up to users who have/had no clue.

Windows 10 "Redstone 2" allows you to disable the supposed "spyware" that isn't really spyware when compared against any other OS out there. There are also easily abundant scripts to completely remove the concept of the store and anything attached to it from ever starting.. luckily you can do that on Windows 10 and pretend being isolated is what matters more than being current..

As for the ads, its supid easy to turn off the notifications. There is this "Notification center" where when you see the Office Notification - just click "don't show notifications for this app" and its gone. And if you see "Recommend apps" in start bar, click click and disable show recommended apps.

Both are dumb defaults, we can agree on that, but they're there and they can be removed/disabled. It's not that hard.

I've personally seen a computer that was upgraded to windows 10 after being left on over the weekend. The user claims that they never clicked on the upgrade and seeing as tons of other people reported the same thing I'm inclined to believe them. Fun fact, rolling back the Windows 10 update frequently doesn't work. The longer you wait after upgrading, the less chance you have of it working IMHO. After seeing this, I figured I'd test it myself and I booted up an old netbook that I had lying around and after running updates on it, it started installing windows 10.

>Yes, Microsoft had some updates that updated some machines but they fixed that so it wouldn't. Yes, MS mad some silly assumptions to cache the update

I've yet to see any reasonable explanation as to how that could possibly have been unintentional. MS just started trying to excuse their BS behavior by lying about what they did and trying to justify it with "but it's an upgrade".

>THis is about the fact that the HVAC company SHOULD have upgraded.

That HVAC company shouldn't have upgraded to Windows 10, they should have upgraded to a reasonable operating system fit for the purpose.

>Windows 10 "Redstone 2" allows you to disable the supposed "spyware"

>As for the ads, its supid easy to turn off the notifications.

Just because I can remove Microsoft's adware and spyware doesn't change the fact that it's spyware and adware. As for being easy to do either of those things, you might as well be speaking Greek to at least 95% of Microsoft's users. It's simple if you know a little bit about Windows, but most users out there don't know much of anything about Windows. Just look at all of the outrage over changing the start button in Windows 8. There was literally hoards of people who couldn't even figure that out. I guarantee you those same Einsteins aren't ever going to figure out how to disable telemetry with third party software or figure out that "Notifications" are all of the ads that they're getting spammed with.

Also, Redstone 2 isn't out yet, and to be honest, I don't have high hopes that Microsoft will allow Home users to completely disable telemetry when it does come out. They've lied about everything else involving Windows 10, why should this be any different?

> This is now fixed..

Once bitten, twice shy.

Most if not all of the non-tech people I work with would respond to this with "yeah, well, I don't care, I don't want to take the chance it reboots during a presentation/webinar/demo/etc ever again".

Likewise. Stop spying on me, stop advertising to me, stop pushing products I don't want on me, stop treating my computer like your personal playground.

None of this is going to gain traction. All of those are the point. No amount of listening will fix this.

BTW, this isn't unique to MS.. phones update all the time and the concept of the phone is going to change.. soon you will have just one device that does everything. Are people going to complain that MS can't then do what Apple/Google do in regards to spying, updates & patches?

Apple actually fights to protect your privacy, when you pay them money for hardware they just try to make it work well for you, not advertiser. And their updates/reboots are optional.

MSFT takes your money, then doesnt protect your privacy AND sells you out to advertisers.

Microsoft offers a very similar ecosystem.. You can use office online, One drive, bing.com, skype, Cortana, Outlook.com and many services free for use with advertising (or no advertising)

MS doesn't "take your money" either, you buy something with Windows 10 on it or you buy a mac with OSX..

iOS updates aren't usually optional, as they quickly spam the crap out of you to upgrade and stop allowing publishers to post apps for the old release ergo "forcing" upgrades.

Android has the inverse problem.. handsets never getting upgrade so people flock to versions that do and happily upgrade away..

which is why I don't understand anything you have said. :)

oh and MS doesn't sell your privacy data to advertisers..

That was the only part that was correct. Apple reminds users of critical updates, doesn't force. Apple allows every publisher to upgrade their apps (I'm an IOS dev), just don't try to link with outdated APIs. I have iOS 6 apps that still run fine without changes.

And you don't know what MSFT sells to advertisers.

MSFT does spell out what they share with advertisers the very same way Apple and Google do.

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

https://www.apple.com/privacy/manage-your-privacy/

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/

Microsoft does take my money--just because the cost for the OS is hidden in the hardware doesn't mean some fraction of that money isn't going to Microsoft, i.e. in the end I have to pay to use Windows. Windows 10 was not free either as advertised, since it required an older version to upgrade from.

Compared to Google's and Apple's offerings, Microsoft's do kinda look shitty.

[1] https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-offi...

As far as product comparison, I prefer Office over google docs (And the link you posted is about their commercial offering).

office.com offers the online versions of office (web like google docs) and its as feature rich.

Also, lets be real.. You can get office 365 for up to 5 pcs for 99 a year and each account you link to it gets the extra benefits such as terabyte of onedrive and such, its not a bad deal at all.

This isn't true for many of us that build our own computers. I bought a boxed copy of Windows and installed it. It certainly didn't come with or on anything.

30 bucks in most stores..

or get licenses through visual studio benefits, schools or transfer from another PC you may be shutting down. It's not rocket science to save money if thats your biggest concern.

That's already true, for people who only have a phone. In the long term, it's completely wrong. Today's "super"-devices will explode into a constantly-changing constellation, as soon as personal networking is ironed out. Future generations will laugh at caricatures of people today, who constantly tend to and obsess on one hunk of plastic to the exclusion of the wider world.

The problem are not (security) updates themselves. The problem is the intrusive update process and non-security updates bringing "features" nobody asked for.

I'm not sure where these absolutely incorrect assumptions are coming from but they're entirely false. Windows believe it or not is community driven these days. MS is delivering features for its "enterprise insides" and for its "xbox insiders" and for its "windows insiders" and this is a HUGE community.

Because all in all, Windows is getting less and less useful and more and more annoying. No, you don't need to stuff Cortana, Onedrive or whatever new initiative you have. If I wanted it, I would sign up by myself.

In my case, after I disabled the infamous KB 3035583 update for N-th time and it was back again, I lost my patience and switched the platform. I'm too old for such games. Some of my colleges still need win32 specific apps, but you can be sure, that as soon as they will be able to replace them, they will jump too.

I have no idea what the KB 3035583 problem is.. everyone makes mistakes. My mac had failed updates where I had to reset, my iPhone has had bad updates, my kindle fires have been borked, my android phones have been bricked, my wifi routers have been bricked.. I just take the time to learn and move on.

People are obsessively convinced Microsoft is bad, for no other reason that they're not giving them another chance yet the world turns a blind eye to very similar issues across the board.

Software isn't perfect. You don't fix software by never updating it. We're used to updates on Mobile/Tablets - many people are used to updates on PC/Tablet/Desktop but there are people who continually beat this non sequitur horse that PCS can't and shouldn't be updated.

Software is eating the world. If people want to compare MS to google - Google updates their shit all the time - does hundreds of releases a day. Now so does Microsoft. But hot damn, if MS does it they're "Evil" and "pushing crap or features no one wants" when we full know that is BS.

If Microsoft has feedback hub, throws parties, online meetings, etc., then they are very good at ignoring the feedback. Did they fix the privacy issues with Windows 10? Did they re-enable end-user control over updates? Did they stop resetting user preferences after updates? It's not that they are not aware of all of these.

The problem with KB3035583 (gwx - Get Windows X) was, that no matter how many times you have hidden it (to indicate do not install), Microsoft un-hided it, and several times it has flagged it as security update, which caused for many people to install it automatically. It definitely wasn't an mistake, it was clear intent, to make target figures with Windows 10 upgrades. It is one of the biggest reason why people were turning off windows update!

> People are obsessively convinced Microsoft is bad

You know, I'm some 25 years in this business and there are many reasons why they are right. Microsoft worked hard to earn this reputation. From "knifing the baby" to their today's attitude regarding privacy and pushing their services.

> Software isn't perfect. You don't fix software by never updating it. We're used to updates on Mobile/Tablets - many people are used to updates on PC/Tablet/Desktop but there are people who continually beat this non sequitur horse that PCS can't and shouldn't be updated.

As I've written elsewhere, existence of updates is not the problem. The update process (hogging up entire core with wsupdate service? No problem! Installing updates for 30 minutes? No problem either!) is one problem. The shoveling of unwanted stuff into updates is another. Compare that to apt/dnf on Linux side or App Store on Apple side - they are as unobtrusive as possible.

> Google updates their shit all the time - does hundreds of releases a day.

Google updates do not make your machine unavailable for 10-30 minutes at the most unfortunate times in the day. Ever been to ambulance, where the nurse has lined up patients, because her computer doesn't work right now? Guess which fault it was, Googles or Microsofts?

I'm pushing 41.. I've been into computers since i was 8. I've been through wishing OS/2 would win, Hating on Windows for years, begrudgedly using WIn95 OSR2.. I was the first BBS in Houston to offer Linux to download on 8 floppy disk images, i was the first to mirror a larger FTP site for Linux distros (ygdddrasil), I use Linux on THOUSANDS of computers - i work for a larger internet company running 10-s THOUSANDS of servers running Linux.. sometimes i wish they were all solaris since that was what really grabbed my hart but guess what - things change - systems change - people change - companies change.

Today i sport a Surface Pro 4, an iPhone 7, a MacBook pro and a Ryzen 1700 as my primary compute/phone devices.. I use them all. Windows 10 on my Surface Pro 4 is the best mobile experience I've ever had. i have Ubuntu/Suse/Redhat as bootable native shells, i have a web browser with extension support, gesture support and great experience, i have power shell, i have hyperv if i need it, i have docker - the experience in windows 10 lately far surpasses the experience of say - docker on OSX which has always been very goofy until recently and now with docker on windows i can run windows or Linux native containers.

MS is not only providing lots of open source code but they're a HUGE sponsor of the Linux foundation - a SUPPORTING member - the biggest you can achieve.

As for update times, you can schedule your updates. If you need to upgrade your android phone, you're not going to be able to use it during the upgrade - same with your PC, if you have pending updates - just schedule them when you need them.

You're still defending everyone else for facing the same problems MS does and for some reason, still hating MS for solving problems that need to be solved.

I for one am SO FREAKING GLAD windows doesn't fester for years between "Service packs" that then took years to get released because people had it in their goofy heads that people actually tested them for them.. i'm so glad that windows finally releases iterative updates on TUESDAYS and everyone in the world knows when PATCH TUESDAY IS if they run windows.. if you KNOW patch Tuesday is coming up, reboot when you're done patching on TUESDAY.

It really isn't as hard as everyone is making it out to be.

Now that I've written all this, its laughable how hard people are making this appear to be.

I hope the responsible people at Microsoft are better at receiving and processing the information regarding their products and the problems with them.

Microsoft is 100% responsible for this malware, they trained users to turn off updates by making them unbearable.

I have a MacBook pro, a surface pro (windows 10), a gaming pc (windows 10), a Plex HTPC (windows 10) and an iPhone.. I'm quite happy regardless and I find all ecosystems have their +/-

I clicked the option to disable this when prompted when I upgraded. It was easy and I've moved on. Life is great, i'm back to playing games, watching content and enjoying my device without it asking me if I want to upgrade office.

(but my damn iPhone keeps telling me to upgrade icloud)