Over the past few years we've seen Microsoft adopt increasingly user-hostile practices when it comes to privacy. It's not unreasonable to be concerned that this initiative will morph into something nefarious.

We went from "you need to have a network interface so you can activate the OS" to "Track all the things and phone home" in less than a decade.

It kind of is, though. It's a classic slippery slope fallacy. Collecting user telemetry and spying on users via webcams you force hardware manufacturers to install in machines are miles, miles, miles apart from each other. I'm not trying to defend MS's telemetry collection here, I don't like it either. But the extrapolation is hyperbolic.

>The company has developed a way to track your gaze to make sure you're actually looking at the PreShow commercial. The app also places a green border around the edges of your screen to confirm that it sees you. If you look away for too long, or leave your seat, the ad automatically pauses and you'll get a red border around your screen.

This horrific shit is all ready to go, I think there is no hyperbole or irrational slippery slope at all

I'm not a Windows fan or anything like that. Don't even use Windows as one of my main systems. I'm just dealing with it so I've seen some of these things.

Goes into more detail as to what they collect.

Browsing data, devices connected to the system, what you type, or transcribe via text or ink (speech to text, handwriting to text etc), what applications you're running and for how long.

> The opt-in/out is part of the setup process (in the cases I've seen) so it's not hidden away.

It gets reset _literally_ every time they push out a larger update. They prompt you with a modal form that defaults to tracking turned on (even though I had it turned off to begin with). Guess someone at Microsoft figured out that the tech-literate among us were turning that setting off as soon as our non-tech-literate family/friends took their PCs out of the box around the Christmas tree.

Debian didn't impress me when I upgraded my main workstation recently. A long list of important prompts and not so important prompts, enough to make me click "ok, whatever, get on with it". (Oh, and even Debian also requires a network interface and contains a phone-home package. Getting security fixes without a normal network interface is a Challenge, and security fixes aren't really optional these day.)

I’d say security fixes are rather optional these days if you have no network interface.

You certainly can buy a new laptop on Amazon, open it, remove the WLAN antenna, glue the USB plug(s) and need no security fixes. But at that point you're far from the mainstream. And I am impressed by how Microsoft manages to provide decent security in a user-friendly way, one that expects little unrealistic behaviour and doesn't restrict the term "user" to people far from the mainstream.

Even the argument for consistency is tenuous; its already consistent. Microsoft says that all laptops must have DDR memory, at least 4gb. Its the same thing; you don't need memory, technically, to run an OS. Its just better that its there, and operating systems can be more sophisticated knowing that you've got it.

Hardware shutters is what people should push for imo

This kind of thing is absolutely mandatory in this day and age. If you don't let commodity OS makers set any limits on the hardware to ensure a consistent experience, it will be very hard for them to compete with integrated solutions.

If there was some kind of a suggestion of MS self-dealing here, then maybe the concerns would make sense. E.g. requiring the laptop to have a MS-manufactured camera. But there isn't. It is clearly just an attempt to set a consistent minimum bar on the UX.

Combining these three factors, the direction W11 is heading to does not look as genuine as they describe it. And if so, the descend from OEM requirement to OS requirement could happen sooner or later. I wholeheartedly hope they do not though.

IMO the author overindexed on making vague allusions to telescreens ("1984-style future [...] laptops, desktop PCs, TVs") and criticising Microsoft for its "Productivity Score" (a different discussion entirely).

For those calling the 1984 references over the top fear mongering, I'd just ask one question: Why does Microsoft even care about users having a camera? When you answer that, I'd probably respond with "Nope, not a strong enough reason to be a requirement for Windows, try again." Rinse and and repeat. It's happening in China, it's happening at Amazon...

That's the next logical step, for "security", of course.

Putting tape on camera's leaves residue and we all get stuck in Zoom calls these days.

Put a small piece of clean paper over the lens to protect it, then tape over that.