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That took two clicks to disable. Hardly makes the entire OS bad.

If I had anything to complain about Win 10 it's that they still haven't properly unified the control panels.




> That took two clicks to disable. Hardly makes the entire OS bad.

German data protection acts even make it illegal to use Windows 10 in commercial environments in many cases because of the built-in telemetry and cloud functions. Not what I would call "hardly makes the entire OS bad".


Link?



After a quick skim of these, they all seem to say "is being looked into" and "could" and "spoke out against".

Not "have been determined to be illegal".


This is a polite way to say "it probably is illegal".

As long as there is no court judgement, one cannot write a definite opinion. If the authors directly wrote that it is illegal, Microsoft would surely admonish [is this the correct English translation of the German verb "abmahnen", which has a very specific meaning in Germany's legal system?] the authors of the texts or the medium that publishes such a statement.


You shouldn't have to do even two clicks to disable ads in an OS you purchased. The fact that people try to defend this is absurd.


I purchased a newspaper, it had ads - which I couldn't disable. I purchased a magazine, it had ads - couldn't disable. I purchased a book - an ad for another book in the back. I purchased a movie ticket - an eternity of commercials even after I arrived "late" to the show. I purchased a cable subscription - still scads of ads, no way to get rid of them.

So taking ten seconds to deactivate ads in an OS isn't really the kind of outrageously onerous burden you're laying it out to be. I agree to the extent that it seems like a pointlessly minuscule revenue stream in comparison to the ill will that it generates. And it was deceitful to sneak the ads in after people had already upgraded from Windows 7 instead of making their intentions clear from the outset. Microsoft would probably generate more income with an option to permanently disable the ad experience (and telemetry) for a one-time fee the way Amazon does with their low-end Kindles.


The difference I see is that it breaks previous expectations. Ads in media have a long history, and there's a bargain that people understand (even if they don't fully understand the details).

Operating systems historically have not been like media. Perhaps this is the future (shudder), but pretending there has not been a difference doesn't get us anywhere. And it is jarring: compare it to one day, ads start appearing on your towels at home.

Personally, OS ads and invasive telemetry are way, way too invasive for me. Never used Windows as more than a utility thing for specific apps, but I'll never use Win 10 without crippling the mothership comms, and I'm moving away from OS X as well, because of the increasing cloud-everything centricity and the neglected unix subsystem.

Finally, this is probably a complaint specific to me and a not that many other people. I do systems engineering professionally. When OSes start doing things that I can't control and start communicating without explanations as to what, exactly, is going on for reasons that are not driven by my intent, I cannot trust the software. My machine, my environment, my rules.

People always jump to the phone comparison here. My phones are rather locked down too, snd I'm not happy about the direction, but can do little about that.


> ... newspaper ... magazine ... book ... movie ...

Operating Systems are tools, not entertainment or informational media. Does your hammer have ads you "couldn't disable"?

> it had ads - couldn't disable

Scissors can be used to disable magazine ads.


>Operating Systems are tools, not entertainment or informational media.

For your specific use case, sure. My Windows machine is essentially a game console to me though. Do I get upset when I see an ad on Xbox live? It's essentially the same thing to me.

Of course Windows isn't meant to be a tool for professionals. But it's great for what it is; an easy to use general OS that plays games.


The difference is that a newspaper does not send data about your usage to the publisher and does not track you.


yeah, the exdplorer advertisement on top of chrome took another two click, the office advertisement another two, the edge is more secure popup, two clicks..

I see a pattern there, don't you?




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