Imagine your favourite burger place packing a credit-card sized piece of plastic in the middle of the bun.
You can remove it. It's fairly trivial. You know it's there, it's too big to swallow, you pull it out, chuck it in the bin, and get on your way.
That's what advertising in Windows feels like.
It's just not polite.
I'm trying to do a thing and you've put this colorful flashy box in front of it.
Imagine if people tried to "monetize" their conversations. They might claim that otherwise they couldn't afford to talk to anyone (rent ain't gonna pay itself, right).
You'd be talking about football or whatever and suddenly a different tone of voice would emanate from your conversational partner for 10 seconds whilst they talk about some Super New Product.
As far as I can tell the whole industry is impolite, rude, gauche, just a bit icky, really.
I live in a city that has a characteristic mountain. So, naturally, advertisers are placing their towering billboards so that they constantly block the view when you're driving on the avenue that would have the best unimpeded line of sight.
What do you think the cost would be for these free things without advertising?
The biggest downside I can think of is while I would happily pay for Google search (per search, subscription, whatever) in an ad free world, there's lots of people who simply wouldn't bother to search and learn new things.
Really though I think they have a good model for their search page, it's unobtrusive and not rude, and it made them the most powerful tech company in silicon valley, so clearly it works. Wonder why other adtechs had to get so much shittier about it.
I just know that I do in fact have these things today because of advertising.
But free tshirts are pretty nifty.
It was (maybe still is) particularly annoying on Bitcoin forums for example, where signatures can contain images.
People do try to monetize their conversations. That's why "networking" is a different word than "socializing".
This holds true for a lot of things related to sales & advertising - if you tried to repeat the same practices in person to your family or friend, you'd get distaste or a punch in the face.
The Product people understand what makes a great product, but Marketing / Business people need short term fix in order to reach their KPIs, which pressures them to do what they do to the product, fill it up with advertisement. Otherwise marketing people will be out of a job.
There is a disconnect between Product and Business from within Microsoft. This is where Apple still has an edge, I'm not saying apple doesn't have internal conflicts they do, but they resolve it and when they speak they all speak the same message, this IMO is Apple's true strength.
Making the 2 teams work in a cohesive manner will take a lot of effort from the management, having understanding and patience to make Marketing and Product work together in harmony.
Just my $0.02
Either he must be using a Mac or Linux, or he's approved these shenanigans himself.
Gonna need a source on that one. Not the "telemetry" part, the "spyware" part.
Edit: Because it's possible now to see all telemetry sent and even delete it from Microsoft's servers.
I seriously do not see the harm in usage telemetry...
What I hate are all the dark-patterns, registry keys and obscure processes that you have to locate to perform the opt-out (and even don't clearly know they are disabled). I'm a bit sick of fighting the OS that I purchased to make my life easier.
Even published Group Policy seems like an arms race, every time a new Windows 10 release there are a crap-ton of new telemetry settings.
And why-oh-why does Windows Server have the XBox client installed?
Windows is becoming the weakest part of the Microsoft stack.
I remain unconcerned.
Honestly a lot of you must just have piles of questionable stuff you aren't proud of but also somehow can't stop collecting/creating, and you don't want anyone to ever see, because no one else will ever understand or something.
Not even my employer, the most risk-averse place I have ever worked, worries about the security telemetry.
You're not "making something available" and they're not asking you for permission. They taking it if they want it and you can't do anything about it.
I think that's what people object to most, the loss of freedom to say no, this is mine, it's private and I control who has access to it.
If you don't use Windows, or are forced to, then just admit that you want/need something to complain about.
It's easy then - You simply don't work in very risk-averse environment. None of my employers in last 8 years would ever put anything like current Win10 on any computer in the company, precisely because of that.
My current employer is more risk-averse than State Farm, a very large insurance company, whose livelihood requires a strong aversion to risk. I worked there for 3.5 years.
I know risk-averse when I see it.
Paranoia and risk-aversion are very different things.
I could at least somehow understand if this was a home edition, but imho totally unacceptable to have it on an Enterprise version.
Not to mention after installing Office 365 I was still greeted with a 'helpful' prompt to 'Get Office'. Sigh.
My Nexus Android phones were clean. And yes, Sony etc phones are adware, but so are Sony Windows computers.
Samsung is more like the eMachines or Packard Bell of the Android world as far as bundled crapware is concerned.
I heavily disagree. The main reason google was fined by the EU was their anti-competitive monopoly abuse, forcing manufacturers to bundle all their apps. While I like chrome, its market dominance in particular on android is worrisome. Since Samsung can not offer another browser instead of chrome, but only in addition, this is the best they can do in this situation. Instead of complaining about "duplication", I applaud them for their efforts.
My favorite is I have 6 new contacts for AT&T, like "Pay My Bill".
Any large enough company can get away with customer-hostile behaviour without the market correcting it.
Do you see Apple loading up third-party apps into macOS? No? I wonder why.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
While that's true, a browser pretty much needs a default search engine, and Google is widely regarded as the best. I'm not sure that Apple could make a more customer-centric choice.
They couldn't default to the least intrusive? Or rotate randomly amongst the options?
Remember, we're talking about people that Google "Facebook" to go to Facebook.
Yes Safari includes Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo as built-in search providers.
That is not the same thing as bundling Candy Crush Soda in the Dock. Hell Apple don't even include the free iWorks apps such as Pages and Numbers in a clean macOS install you have to go and get them via the Mac App Store.
Mac OS does come with a fairly deep iCloud Drive integration, and iOS defaults to backing up photos and files then tries to upsell to a higher package when space runs out. It's only fairly recently that iOS shipped with a dedicated file manager, instead making you store any documents you have either in individual apps or on iCloud Drive.
Well, yes, people DO in fact want candy crush.
If you meant that as a question, end it with a question mark (?).
If you meant it as a statement, you're wrong. Uninstalled apps do not reappear upon upgrade to newer Windows 10 version.
The ads can be turned off. That setting is persisted via your Microsoft account, if you use one. The ads stay off when upgrading. I haven't seen any ads in the start menu (or anywhere else in Win10 except a browser) for many, many months; at least 2 years, and probably more.
If you log in with a Microsoft account instead of a local user account, all those settings persist across devices, even fresh installs where you also log in using the same MS account. It takes a bit of time for everything to sync up, and most of those things get applied to all machines when you make a change on one. The things that aren't take less than a minute, and only need to be done once. (I am unsure here, I haven't set up a new Windows 10 install in over a year, and I can't recall doing anything other than uninstalling a few apps, less than 5, on a new install. It literally takes 15 seconds, so forgive me if I don't have precise infallible memory on this one point.)
The thing that really gets my goat about people that complain on the internet is that their complaints are never updated when the situation changes. Some of those complainers think they are making valid complaints, when in the eyes of someone who has actually followed up on things, they appear to be completely ignorant and baseless complaints.
I see a lot of people spending more energy ranting about this, a problem that doesn't necessarily exist in the way that people might think, than doing a quick investigation to find that the apps aren't there in the first place.
Sorry, but Citation required.
I've installed more than my fair share of Windows 10 Home and Pro versions, had both shipped on new devices and nowhere was I offered any options which controlled installing this shit.
> a problem that doesn't necessarily exist in the way that people might think
Even if it was a shortcut to the Windows Store, but it still there eating up space on the start screen... But even still it doesn't help.
I have to go uninstall it (because yes, it's actually installed goddamn Candy Crush and other shit for me)
I'll open up my laptop and find it's decided that it'll install Windows Update right now and fuck whatever I wanted to do with the machine.
Worse, once it's completed it's screwing with my machine, it's gone and re-installed shit, and now bugs me (again) about "Hey, instead of using Chrome, how about you use Edge!" and has reset a bunch of other system options to be the way MS wants them.
I'm hardly alone in this experience - I saw at least half a dozen presenters at NDC Oslo last year bitching about this happening to them the morning of/right before presentations, and I've had it happen to me during meetings/conference calls/etc - where it's fucked off with work that I'm in the middle of.
Windows 10 is why I'm on a full-on effort to move my primary machines over to Linux after decades of Windows use.
Please be specific, and/or link to any relevant documentation.
'cause I hit Advanced any time there was an option, and switched every privacy setting/tracking option off. Yet it still installs ads for Office, various other Bing shit, Installs Candy Crush, etc.
How do I avoid those using settings in the OOBE?
Candy crush does get installed on fresh Win10 installs, and the person responsible for that deal was drummed out of Microsoft, I believe, and once that agreement expires, that'll stop. In the meantime it takes literally 5 seconds to right-click the icon and choose "uninstall" then click the confirmation, and it wont ever come back.
Removed applications do not get reinstalled on a patch or OS upgrade.
Turning off advertisements turns off advertisements, and it will never switch back on by itself.
I don't understand what you mean by updated situation? Have things changed in the last month or two? From a commenter above, that's apparently not the case.
> once that agreement expires, that'll stop
Microsoft is large enough and profitable enough that if they actually cared, they'd pay out the agreement's terms and stop it. They could actually use it as a "We're sorry, we've stopped doing this" marketing to the folks who're pissed off about it.
> Removed applications do not get reinstalled on a patch or OS upgrade.
This isn't true, I've uninstalled various Xbox, Bing, Skype, "Get Office" and other stuff a few times now on the one machine.
> it takes literally 5 seconds to right-click the icon and choose "uninstall" then click the confirmation
And to repeat that again for eeevery damn ad/preload application. It takes a damn sight longer than 5 seconds to remove the ones you can actually remove. But there's still other preloaded apps like OneDrive that I can't remove or even hide.
Things have changed since Windows 10 was released, yes. The last 3-4 releases have honored your uninstallations; if you remove candy crush, upgrades to newer versions of Windows 10 will not replace it, UNLESS the image used to upgrade marks it for installation. The stock Windows 10 media from Microsoft does not, so stock media from Microsoft will not reinstall anything you uninstalled before you began the upgrade.
Other commenters agree with me, as well. Something situational to you is putting them back, I suspect.
>> it takes literally 5 seconds to right-click the icon and choose "uninstall" then click the confirmation
> And to repeat that again for eeevery damn ad/preload application. It takes a damn sight longer than 5 seconds to remove the ones you can actually remove. But there's still other preloaded apps like OneDrive that I can't remove or even hide.
It only takes me 5 seconds, but maybe my computer performs better than yours. If you're not on an SSD I can see why you say it takes longer than 5 seconds, certainly. You only need to uninstall the one time before upgrading to one of the last 3-4 releases of Windows. I forget exactly which one implemented the change. If you are using Windows 10 versions prescribed to you by your IT department, then all bets are off, because a lot of things tend to get customized in those scenarios and I can't know about those customizations and/or limitations.
If you use a Microsoft account, your settings for ads and other personalization preferences will persist across all devices you use that account on. You don't even need to associate your login details with your MSA, simply logging into that MSA on the account in question is enough to sync up those things.
It's just vaguely schizophrenic. You have all this genuinely cool, nicely done engineering, then the initial impression is ruined by a load of slapped-on garbage. It's like selling a BMW with a bunch of McDonnalds special-offer vouchers stuck to the steering wheel.
Or, to take the laptop analogy, like having unnecessarily-difficult-to-remove stickers showing off the processor, graphics, and chipset inside… we're all oddly desensitised to devalued products and apply different standards depending on what strikes us as more outrageous.
> I don't want to spend 3 hours reading articles about how to get rid of adverts
Sure, so just be sure to disable ads during the OOBE session when you first turn the computer on. It's a checkbox or switch or whatever Windows has decided to use now.
Of course, I do take the point. Especially when it comes to regular people, whose apprehension at seeing the words 'advanced' and 'setup' in the same place make the prospect of choosing anything other than the Express Setup out of the question. I'm just saying it's not the drama that some people make it out to be, not for the technically minded I assume this site's audience to be.
I'm not outraged by it. I just feel bad for the talented people at microsoft who sweat over the OS, only to have somebody glue-gun a bunch of trash to the front at the last minute.
You are correct in that they are stubs however the moment Windows finds internet access it begins downloading them. This is obviously their preferred solution to ensure the user gets the latest and greatest version of the appvert.
Some can be removed easily and some not. I know Microsoft are working on making it easier to remove more of their own apps which they should have done in the first place IMHO.
Yes I am spending energy ranting about this because it is a problem to me. I shouldn't have to spend any time on removing such crap from an OS that I paid around £200 for (Pro license remember not some free upgrade from Windows 7 back in 2015) that is baked into the £3000+ price of my Surface Book 2.
It isn't that it is too difficult just that it shouldn't be required. It would be like buying a Mercedes and having to remove advertising stickers from the back Windows.
On the one hand, it would get an Enterprise copy running.
On the other hand... this is old (may 2017) and the URL shortner hiding the "followup article" is down, but there's this: https://twitter.com/m8urnett/status/866353982217699328 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14389441
Why do you think the average person wouldn't want these popular apps a click away?
Making a default in a mainstream OS where many people would not know how nor would care to put in the effort is basically making it forced.
I think the main issue in this thread though is that it is just not worth the hit to brand and UX compared to the trivial money it might make.
It exists in exactly the way it manifests. It's obnoxious. I paid (I _paid_ for this!) for an OS, not to be a node in an ad delivery network.
There's nothing "fair" about that. I shouldn't have to.
"Get Office" is nothing but an advert, and an annoying one at that considering it continues to appear after MS Office is installed. Paint 3D on the other hand is a supplemental tool to regular Paint that is actually extremely powerful once you get used to it.
I myself actually started out ignoring it, and it hasn't replaced regular Paint for many things, but I find myself going into it on purpose now and for the things it is good at it is VERY good.
People have dismissed it out of hand because of the "3D." The 3D actually refers to Photoshop style layering but you can manipulate the Z axis to generate different 2D image views, which can be output.
The main output of Paint 3D is the same as Paint 2D image files e.g. PNGs, BMPs, and JPG. Sure, you can save a project file, but that is just your source images and Z axis layering information (akin to a Photoshop's PSD).
PS - It also supports PNG transparency layers which is a welcome addition.
For starters, there's that "3D Objects" item underneath "This PC" in the Explorer treeview. It's not relevant to me, and I'm skeptical that it's relevant to the average user.
If I recall, there was a registry key that could be modified to remove this item, but after I applied this modification, a subsequent update undid this. I find this incredibly frustrating.
(Below, I'm speaking to this point more broadly)
It's my computer and I should be able to use it the way that I want to. I have my own user account because others may use this machine differently, and each user deserves the ability to customize their experience based on their preferences.
I honestly don't understand how Microsoft gets to make these decisions on behalf of users. They shouldn't even have a say in the matter at all for anything a user has explicitly configured. Feel free to change the defaults, but at no point should it be considered acceptable to override an explicit configuration of the user.
I tend to wonder about that - is it done on purpose or it's because the half-year releases of these semi-annual updates are essentially being applied in upgrade process and not the old service pack way.
Also a "funny" thing from last few days: SO logged onto parents laptop with Microsoft Account credentials and surprise: OS didn't fetch a single piece of data already synchronized into their cloud but uploaded all recent changes made on that device and pushed them onto desktop.
While those are definitely irritations I would like to add something a little (IMO) more important: file path limits.
I can fudge around it in various ways, but it is infuriating: https://serverfault.com/questions/232986/overcoming-maximum-...
Everyone: update your complaints when the situation changes, please.
Summary: this is a real, current problem experienced in the enterprise which disrupts work. It's all very well being a lone Dev upgrading to Harvest Festival Cutename at your whim.... but the reality of enterprise updates are that Windows is cumbersome compared to Linux.
The 250-character path limit is gone. It's fixed. You not adopting it is a wholly separate issue.
It depends a lot on your modem manufacturer though.
> So I go and check out a new Windows 10 laptop and the first thing I see, ..., is a bunch of adverts on the start menu and sigh.
Microsoft is not a single team. They have different products, different division owners, different managers, etc. At a company of this size you'll always find people making cool stuff and marketing trying to squeeze in as much content as possible. (and many other teams) This shouldn't be surprising that they coexist.
I'm not saying this is a good state and they do overall good work. Just that releasing procdump and embedding ads are two different worlds visible under one name outside.
This is Nadella's strategy: stop copying Apple and copy Google. TBH, I liked their previous one a lot more.
I have not bought from that seller, but they have sold 765 of them, with 100% positive feedback.
Selling licenses invalid in the US that happen to pass the automated checks since ... Whenever.
Its NEVER been rebuilt. With Windows I simply had a process of expecting to do a complete clean reinstall every year or two.
Another of the many big reasons I ditched Windows for OSX.
That said, we probably articulate our issues better than some, so we're probably still worth listening to.
Well, they used to, around the turn of the century. Not any more.
Explicit instructions for purchasing a Windows 10 LTSC license? https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
"Have now upgraded to Window 10 LTSB build 1607 and Hyper V is fully working." https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1690823-windows-10-en...
"I just installed WSL on LTSC and it worked great." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18271829
Please, see: * https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1281
A random Joe says it works <--> Supported and stable configuration.
But you are right HyperV seems to be working as of 1607.
WSL is also supported in LTSC and can be installed with these instructions from Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual
See https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9r48x0/does_wsl_...
(with apologies to Walt Whitman)
It has literally nothing to do with the linked post.
That’s why I don’t care about candy crush or twitter. As far as I remember it took me 10 minutes to remove them, and despite I always update my PC, they never came back.
It’s rather disappointing. In fact; I have not used this system since (mostly due to unrelated logistics).
Maybe you clicked "use defaults" on some setup messages?
When a software or a web site asks me anything related to privacy, advertisements, tracking, etc., I usually pick best settings for me. The defaults are likely to be the best ones for the developers of software/web site.
Either way; I state my experience with the platform.
Uninstalled apps don't reinstall on upgrade (or at any other time) unless you have something in place that manually does it. This was a major complaint for a long time and MS fixed it 18 months ago or so.
I, manually; removed candy crush. (Months And months prior)
Candy crush was automatically reinstalled, with a notification, without me initialising it. There was no manual action taken by me except that to close the notification (from notification centre) that it had been reinstalled.
This reinstallation happened within the last 6 months.
Happy to try review audit logs when I am, once again; logistically able.
As noted; I have barely touched this asset since (for unrelated logistical reasons - I’m about 150kms away from it, and it is powered down).. so confident the logs would exist.
I would appreciate you not suggesting it happened otherwise.
The fact that the stuff is even there to begin with leaves a bad taste in my mouth still, but glad to see the OS is now properly respecting the opt-out at the very least
That was a while ago, so admittedly it may have changed since then.
Regardless, when you have Windows set up, they then scatter those settings throughout various menus instead of having one centralized place where you can turn off all the advertising / some of the telemetry.
They also seem to be adding more of this as time goes on, which your one time disabling won't apply for. I turned off everything I could find, only to have more advertisements appear in my start menu months later due to what I believe was them adding in more advertisements in an update. I then had to go and toggle off.
I want to like Microsoft, I really do, but they don't make it easy. Advertisements in the operating system that I paid for is entirely galling to me.
I upgraded back when they were doing the free upgrade, laundering a slightly questionable license in the process. Are the pre-loaded bits and pieces fairly new? Was there no opt-out on first run?
I'm not doubting they are there - it is Microsoft after all - just confused why they would choose to spam paying customers when people with keys from, hypothetically, long expired MSDN packs are still chugging along with no interference...
So I go and check out a new Windows 10 laptop and the first thing I see, even on Microsoft's own Surface devices running a 'clean' Windows install, is a bunch of adverts on the start menu and sigh.
FFS Microsoft.
Why do you do so many great things then ruin your most popular brand with crap like Candy Crush and Twitter on your clean Windows install on your £3000+ premium laptop running Windows 10 Professional?
Not to mention how you conveniently always reset my settings to your defaults including reinstalling all your ad-crap every 6 months with a new Windows release. So I have to go find that damn PowerShell script again to wipe them out because a normal uninstall option is just too much to ask for isn't it!
Honestly it does my head in. Windows 10 is a solid OS but they trash it with these awful little pointless decisions. Fine stick your Candy crap in the Home edition but leave Professional alone, especially as you offer me no alternative as an independent development as I can't meet your Enterprise level requirements.
Do you see Apple loading up third-party apps into macOS? No? I wonder why.
Solving a lot of the complaints about Windows 10 isn't some super hard development problem. All they have to do is provide an actual clean version of Windows 10 with no third-party crap and cut out a few of the MS apps as well like 3D Paint (really?), 'Get Office' (again really? In your Professional version?), stop nagging me about changing from your own products, remove all 'suggestions' and tips, allow me to properly disable Cortana and OneDrive with a single option and they be actually gone for good, and maybe have an option to fully disable telemetry (not that I would as I know it is beneficial to you and I but it will shut up some noisy people online and makes everyone happy).
See not that hard is it? Also please go to a one release per year. The fact you have screwed up the last two consecutive updates shows you are pushing to do too much too quickly. Who are you in a race with anyway? Just take your time and do a nice solid update every Spring and everyone will be much happier.