Microsoft seems determined to make all of the wrong choices for Windows.
I tried the New Outlook after having issues with the default mail app. I was greeted with a message "To add your iCloud account to Outlook, we need to sync your emails, contacts, and events to the Microsoft Cloud."
I'm sorry WHAT?!? You're telling me that to use a local email service I need to sync with Microsoft servers?
Someone here please tell me that this is just because it was in beta and all of the features didn't exist yet? Otherwise what the hell is Microsoft thinking?
For the record I just did not do this and any chance of using Windows for productivity tasks went completely out the Window. Windows was always just primarily for gaming but having email there would have been nice.
Acompli, the mobile mail app Microsoft bought and rebranded as Outlook, was like Newton and other email apps of its day - it used OAuth and cloud APIs to check messages on its servers and then created a combined inbox by sending push notifications to your phone as it received new emails on your behalf in the cloud.
It sort of sounds like maybe the same infrastructure was borrowed here to set up the iCloud account in the local Outlook app. Presumably the local app is now based on the prior Acompli infrastructure.
That said… it really doesn’t pass the sniff test, it feels like Microsoft wants your contacts the same way LinkedIn (also Microsoft) wants your contacts. Personally, I wish I hadn’t trusted Google, Meta and LinkedIn as much with my contacts as I did in the past. Live and learn, I suppose.
the entire concept of having the users provide their credentials to a third party for them to access their accounts to provide a service is one of those things that should be included in the anti-phishing training. i don't care if the service doesn't provide a proper API for third party access or not ESPECIALLY if it is for a cloud provided service. if it was a locally running app, i might consider it only slightly less egregious.
I had this exact same reaction less than a week ago and it prompted me to switch to Thunderbird. For years I've fallen into the "if not for gaming ..." camp of Windows users. But I'm getting closer and closer to just not caring about that any more and switching to Mac or Linux instead just to get away from Windows.
Gaming hasn't been an "excuse" for years. More games run on GNU/Linux than any gaming console, installed as easily as finding the game on Steam / GOG / itch.io etc. and clicking "install".
I actually switched to GNU/Linux in college because I wanted to play video games less. This happened right before Proton was released in 2018. Let's just say that I was very unsuccessful in my goal when switching.
Maybe not an excuse for you, but there are still games that don't work out of the box, and the solutions for third party launchers are still fragmented and/or not feature complete, in comparison to its native Windows client. Let's take Heroic Games Launcher for example, looking at GoG: it does not yet track hours played nor achievements (they have work in progress [1]); Lutris on the other hand doesn't even have cloud Sync.
Proton is also no complete, perhaps one day it'll be, it's not quite there yet. I've stumbled on some games that don't work (Obscure 1, Resident Evil 0, Dark Messiah, etc) and games that didn't work in the past but now works, with some flaws that are hard to distinguish between Windows' and Linux's fault (Thief: Deadly Shadows).
I feel like just looking at the numbers isn't really a good counter on wether or not a platform is viable.
However gaming is still very much an excuse. On my Steam Deck I even primarily use Windows after not being able to use Game Pass, issues with Kingdom Hearts, and anything through Epic game launcher being a mixed bag.
Proton is great but it really isn't a silver bullet and you may need to go to Windows if you want to play a specific game.
I installed Pop on a new PC (intel, nvidia) a couple of months ago. It's been barely more trouble than Windows and gaming so far has been successful (Cyberpunk, BG3).
(Tried Linux on the desktop every year for the previous 20-something, always hit some deal-breaker within a day or so. This time it's looking good.)
I think it's kind of stockholm syndrome what's going on here. Windows users I still know are either so much accustomed to the UX that they see any alternative as bad, even MacOS, or they are clinging to a past which no longer exists.
Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two. That's speaking of my (medium sized) org of >15k Emps worldwide.
Ads, Forced Edge, Bing, Ultra-Slow file system compared to any other OS, Shady "Driver"-Sites, could go on forever. I agree this comment sounds a bit flamey, if it wasn't just describing the reality. Even MS recommends switching to Linux by now as a replacement for the Win 8 -> Win 10 / 11 upgrade.
> Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two.
I have the option and ability to use whatever OS I want, and I like and enjoy Windows. I use Windows for gaming and .NET development, macOS as my daily desktop (RDP to my Windows dev box), Android on my phone, iPadOS and ChromeOS around the house, and Debian on my servers.
I detest ads, but the portions of Windows I object to involve only some cleanup on install. I find the unblockable ads in Android/i(Pad)OS/ChromeOS (e.g. the ads in all of their app stores) far more objectionable than the ones I never see in Windows.
The worse part about Windows is x86 compared to ARM based Mac laptops they are like night and day as far as loud fans, heat, speed, responsiveness and battery life.
Even on a fully paid license that I upgraded to Windows 11...I get weird adverts for xbox gaming, one drive, teams was pre-installed, and there's some weird cortana replacement called copilot. Every now and then I'll get another disruptive notification trying to sell me on something. I paid a lot of money for that license.
Never mind that every update will try and reset defaults and it shoves Edge down your throat at every possible opportunity, and you can't change the search engine for a lot of things away from Bing. Who exactly owns my hardware, Microsoft?
It feels like windows is being managed by inexperienced MBAs who are desperate to use their heavily entrenched OS as an ad platform.
I stopped using the built-in Mail app though because it was pretty buggy. Search was useless.
Probably because the new outlook can only access microsoft servers, so they synchronise icloud to outlook server-side and you only access outlook client-side.
Most likely, but that isn't an excuse and it an incredibly stupid way to build an email client.
MAYBE give the option if for some reason I want to do it. But for it to be the default is a stupid idea. You cannot convince me there is a valid reason for this to be a thing.
It's like that because mobile clients need cooperation from the server to have push notifications, and you can't have IMAP servers cooperate in that regard :-) so the outlook servers fetch the mail for you and then send you the notifications.
I wouldn't have microsoft read my email either, of course. Thankfully in windows you have dozens of clients to choose from.
You can't realiably poll from a mobile phone. Your app may not be allowed to execute any code, let alone make a network request for hours, or maybe forever.
I tried the New Outlook after having issues with the default mail app. I was greeted with a message "To add your iCloud account to Outlook, we need to sync your emails, contacts, and events to the Microsoft Cloud."
I'm sorry WHAT?!? You're telling me that to use a local email service I need to sync with Microsoft servers?
Someone here please tell me that this is just because it was in beta and all of the features didn't exist yet? Otherwise what the hell is Microsoft thinking?
For the record I just did not do this and any chance of using Windows for productivity tasks went completely out the Window. Windows was always just primarily for gaming but having email there would have been nice.