My OS does not phone home.
It contacts package mirrors when I ask it to and only when I ask it to.
It contacts NTP servers because I specifically enabled that.
That's it. By contrast Windows is a black box of nonsense.
The copy I have running in a VM has the marketing name "Cortana" process running even though I specifically chose "no" at install.
I enabled a data limit the other day and played some games. The game used 30MB and the combined OS used >60MB doing who knows what despite the fact it tells me updates are not downloaded on metered connections.
Sorry, no, there is no excuse for this. If it's not opt in, it's malware. If it's opt in defaulted to yes and with no clear benefit to the user, it's malware.
Obviously most people are fine with telemetry.
Apple charges WAY more for its OS than Microsoft does for Windows 10 Home Edition. Don’t want adds? Buy the Pro version.
This “apples are better than oranges” indignation about Windows 10 is getting old. Don’t like it? Fine. Let other people enjoy things they like.
Personally this is probably the process by which I become a luddite. You can pry my free OS from my cold dead hands.
For now, the server market is enough to keep general purpose computing going. In twenty years, who knows?
My friends and family who are not power users don't know enough to even understand what malware is or means. They likely never will, just as they don't understand all of the ingredients in their food.
This doesn't make it OK.
We're moving from sofware you run without any interference to subscription and surveillance models, and that's not because users want that, that's not "what they like", they don't have an easy way to get what they do like while also being treated ethically.
The whole “Windows telemetry bad” meme is mostly just an excuse for a flame war.
I guess you could say companies are obviously afraid of offering the choice, of offering the same product with and without telemetry, clearly labeled.
> The whole “Windows telemetry bad” meme is mostly just an excuse for a flame war.
Why are you putting such mocking words into my mouth? I'm not saying "Windows telemetry bad", I'm saying what I'm saying.
I would think differently if I saw the same amount of criticism towards other products which commit similar if not worse “offenses”. MacOS does a comparable amount of telemetry. Ubuntu does telemetry (albeit presumably less).
If telemetry as done by OS providers is an offense, then half the tech industry is built on top of even more severe privacy offenses. Can you imagine any serious digital product NOT doing what is essentially telemetry? Imagine online ad companies NOT spying on you? I mean, if it offends you, then sure, voice your discontents. But if a collective in aggregate constantly criticizes minor offenses by one player but lets other players off the leash for way more, it’s not about privacy, sorry.
Also, I don’t agree that people are ignorant. Most of media coverage about Windows 10 revolved around its telemetry. It’s asked when you install it. It’s in the settings. I mean, if you don’t care about it after that then you don’t care.
Personally, I think telemetry is OK. So I’m not bothered, as long as it’s not outright spying. I’m also OK with paying more for Windows 10 Pro to not have the stupid ads.
But does it advertise to you by default? This seems not comparable at all. Pretty much every browser will want you to set it as default (and at least the option to stop the nagging is usually front and center).
Maybe this is just me, but advertising by default in something as basic as a start screen seems very user hostile....
But anyway, I figure the app store is a place I go to get apps, and if the app store chooses to offered paid placement in that list, at least that's sort of relevant. My start area... is a place I go to use basic functionality of the machine. There is no implication that I want to install anything, or buy anything.
Has Apple ever installed a third-party app on your system? macOS is a batteries-included OS, I think most people consider the wide variety of first-party apps to be a feature not a bug. And if you want a specific app, type its name into Spotlight and you don't even have to hunt and peck through all the icons.
2. Advertising is communication about a product or service. A product is not advertising in itself, logic doesn't work like that.
It's also worth differentiating what one gets: free, quality apps with a decent privacy policy vs. pay to win games in Windows.
You're trying a too hard to excuse customer-hostile behavior and it's embarrassing.
That was rude. I’m telling it like I see it. Did I offend your favorite OS or corporation or something like that? Why get personal with me??
1. OS updates had not been done through settings for a long, long time. However updates to Apples preinstalled applications are done through the App Store... Anyway, if it was OK for Apple to do through their store for 10-15 years, then it should be fine for Microsoft to do something comparable now. Right?
2. There are no ads in the Windows start menu according to your definition either then because Candy Crush simply exists as an icon there. As a matter fact I just setup a new Windows laptop last night and I didn’t see one ad. Just some preinstalled apps.
Are you sure that you know what you’re talking about?
You honestly don't think those are ads? It's Microsoft pushing "install this!" icons for third-party apps from the store in your face in a non-related UI place in the OS, that you have not chosen to install. There is no other proper name for that than an ad. The apps are not even remotely related to Windows as a product and you don't have to even go to the store to see them- they are in a standard OS menu.
To be fair- I don't (as much) mind some Microsoft products being treated this way (OneDrive, Skype), because I would expect the creator of the OS to push their own stuff.
There is zero comparison to the MacOS App Store (where obviously there would be ads for apps... because it's a store... for apps.) If Apple started putting Candy Crush, Racing Games, and Spotify in my Dock on a new install- I would have just as much a problem with that.
You honestly don't think those are ads? It's Microsoft pushing "install this!" icons for third-party apps from the store in your face in a non-related UI place in the OS, that you have not chosen to install. There is no other proper name for that than an ad.
"Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga[..] Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame." - Wikipedia
Is there no way to explain this as "giving an easy way to find Candy Crush to the millions of paying customers who want that"? Isn't HN always on about "build things people want"?
A significant amount of people view games like Candy Crush as crapware and those so-called icons as ads. There are articles from multiple reputable publications discussing how to turn off start menu ads. Some Microsoft-developed Windows 10 apps also have ads and yes there's guidelines available on how to get rid of them.
It seems that many MS customers have spoken, and they think MS's approach to ads sucks. And we will continue to complain about that, even if those ads don't match your strange definition of what an as is or should be.
Anyway, as others have pointed out to you… Many many many people enjoy candy crush. Look it up pal :-)
Nothing, absolutely nothing that you’ve said to me has changed my view. Apple also puts crapware that I don’t want on my Mac and others in this thread have agreed with me. The fact that you don’t think it’s crapware has zero bearing on this conversation.
I mean, it’s not the price of materials that dominate Apple’s pricing. And you actually have to pay money to people developing the OS. So no, it’s not free.
Microsoft bundles all sorts of software with their OS that can be installed separately for free, does that mean they're actually not free because development is funded through other product sales? A lot of their services have a free tier, are those services not free because there's a paid tier?
Apple's inflated hardware price certainly includes room for funding their OS development, but that doesn't mean the OS isn't free. Windows sales also likely go toward funding things other than OS development, but that doesn't mean that all of their products aren't free if you're running them on Windows.
MacOS is a premium product. Windows 10 Home edition is obviously not. You mention yourself in another comment that you estimate the cost of it to be around $40.
HN collectively throwing a fit because Windows 10 Home doesn’t fit their needs is silly, because they are not the target audience.
IF you intend to compare macOS with Windows, you need to compare same market segments, i.e. macOS and Windows 10 Pro.
Forcing ads through the OS os is also very aggressive and rude, because there's no way to turn them off.
[1]: Original blog post: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion....
[2]: Archival link, for future-proofing: https://web.archive.org/web/20190814011835/https://www.ctrl....
It's funny to speak in absolutes. Plenty of operating systems don't phone home regularly, just not ones popular with consumers.
MS shouldn't do phone home, OSX shouldn't do it, and I'm pretty sure my work CentOS doesn't do it. This should be the default, and you should have to opt in, preferably for some period, for it to happen.
For ads, this should be disabled by default, and the user should be compensated in some way for receiving ads on an OS they paid for. Also, these and Candy Crush seem to be re-enabled after some updates.
When you buy a Mac Book you usually dish out around 1500 USD at the very least, where the cost of materials is at best 1/3 of that. You mostly pay for the design, the OS and the privilege.
You can get a PC with Windows 10 Home Edition for 400 USD or so. The implied price point for the OS is way lower.
The economic decision here (re ads) is to be able to make some money on the mass low-end market, while still being able to develop a decent OS.
Case in point: Microsoft Surface Book, which runs at about 2000 USD and is a product comparable to Apple’s has no ads.
Also, a $400 laptop is hardly comparable to a $1500 Apple laptop. I've had one of those, and the hardware really sucks, and stuff starts breaking within a year. It may have the same CPU, but the rest of the components are really crappy. If you want an closer comparison, compare high end laptops with the Apple laptops (Lenovo X- series, Dell XPS series, etc), which run at a much more similar price. If they're lower, it's because they have more competition than Apple does (Apple doesn't license its OS to competitors, so if you want their OS, you must buy their hardware).
There's OSes beyond Windows and OSX.
Microsoft adds more telemetry in PowerShell 3: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-p...
And there is an opt out. Guess they do believe users should have a choice.
Section three, "How to opt out".
I guess the same way again.
A lot of it for good reasons, but the churn is very much there, unlike for windows.