My favorite conspiracy theory is that they do plan to add ads in the file explorer but only in 2-3 years. They leak it now so they get some flak but they just say "oh no we won't actually do it". Then when they actually roll it out people don't get as angry as the first time and they just leave it.

Like when they said multiple times "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows as it will be a rolling release" and then pretended after they never said that in order to satisfy some product manager's desire to release a new version so they could add it to their resume.

Did they actually say that?

Yes, but no. One of their developer evangelists said it on stage at a conference, but the company wouldn’t confirm it: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-window...

I suspect that changed once macOS went to version 11.

"Why don't we just make 10 better and make 10 be the last number and make that a little better?"

"Theirs goes to 11."

Please drink a verification can (from 9 years ago)

https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png

I think this is pretty true, it's not unheard of before anyways.

Why would you build such a thing if you didn't intend to use it?

Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?

*It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday.*

It could have been intended to be reviewed internally but then somehow was made public by mistake in the insider builds.

Where I work we write a lot of experimental features, behind feature flags which never end up being made available to customers.

Could of course be that they are just making it up. If this was an actual mistake it sounds like their QA is messed up.

I have been vocal against use of feature flags at my workplace, partly because of the risk of accidentally putting a feature live in a production or other client-facing environment.

Just this morning I got to ask "Why is this feature flag enabled in prod" to the stunned faces of people who had insisted that would never happen.

Maybe the same thing played out at Microsoft here.

Oh it was just for the developers at microsoft..that makes sense ;)

Meh, I can live with it if OS becomes free.

Linux is already free, so what's the problem?

Incompatibility, battery life, impossible number of combinations to support, need to use terminal, etc

> Incompatibility, battery life

Buy a computer with preinstalled Linux. Everything is fine on my Librem 15. Suspend works 100% of the time.

> impossible number of combinations to support

Support Ubuntu/Debian. It will be enough. Or Flatpak.

> need to use terminal

This is an obsolete information from the 90s.

> > need to use terminal

> This is an obsolete information from the 90s.

Except it's not in too many cases. Bluetooth, WiFi, multi-screen setups often devolve into terminal debugging sessions.

Never happened to me. External monitor, WiFi work fine. Bluetooth untested.

This got me thinking that MS might actually be telling the truth here. Maybe they only plan to enable it for pirated copies.

Pirated versions would be the first to rip that out completely.

Windows is already free