Anybody who has done similar checks for windows will see an order of magnitude more connections being made. As someone who got their start managing windows devices, and who has gone through the painful steps of mapping out what each such connection is meant for, I was suprised to see that there was ONLY 63 connections being made in an hour for this article. The last time I mapped such connections for a windows device, we had measured about 200+ similar connections within a single hour.

To be fair, "about 200+" is far from "an order of magnitude" of 63.

Windows telemetry is way more insane

Small sample of telemetry and spying domains (out of date):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocke...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocke...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocke...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Strappazzon/teleme7ry/mast...

That "small sample of telemetry and spying domains" also contains login pages and update downloads, among others. You're just saying everything Microsoft is telemetry and spying, here are all their domains.

Same with all those Apple domains. This is the world we live in now. Operating systems and most applications are now backed by cloud services.

How does one verify all those domains are not essential to the OS?

Microsoft explains what all (most?) of the domains are for

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-11...

Thanks. I think some apps do need to connect to Microsoft to deliver services like update and antivirus.

Some are used by the products itself to maintain reliability like maps and store.

Others are diagnostics, which can still be manually turned off.

Not sure why one would maintain a dedicated hosts file to block endpoints if they can simply configure this on app level itself.

If I recall correctly, Windows isn’t very user-friendly either.

Humor.

It cannot be humor as it doesn't have, at the end of the comment, the tag /s

Thank you for ending yours with /s

1) The ads in my start menu all come from one domain.

2) One is less than 63.

3) Profit?

Probably in exchange of some privacy it gives its users time/money?

Their hardware is quite nice - I have a mac book air from mid-2012 myself. (Although I moved to Nixos linux in 2016).

Why use Apple or Windows at all if they are so user-hostile? (I’m a Linux user.)

(Bluetooth) audio never works consistently for me on Linux, especially after wake from sleep I have like a 10% chance to get crackling/stuttering

How do you get all the bloatware off and de-metric your Windows? With Apple it is one criminal instead of an oligarchy of crime.

Installing LTSC takes you a long way towards that goal.

Why use Windows at all since it's more user-hostile in terms of overt advertising and telemetry-gathering? (I'm a Linux user.)

(slight /s here but I'm also serious)