What I don't get is... doesn't MS get more than enough data/telemetry from its cloud services and now AI usage? Do they REALLY have to shove it into the core desktop OS?
As much as I loathe my days being siphoned from me all day long while being forced to use Office, I'd at least forgive them if my daily driver OS wasn't a giant ad-infested spyware app.
Tbh telemetry is really useful for identifying bugs, feature requirements, and security issues. It's anonymized, not really that invasive, and the way they gather it is pretty responsible.
However...
It's my operating system. Can they not understand why people would be sensitive about this? It blows my mind that, at least, there isn't an on/off toggle in the Pro version. It's really disrespectful to those of us who care.
I think part of the problem is that it seems like an internal (corporate) push (shift?) to view it as only a "licensed" product that you're using, rather than as something you "own" on your machine.
We saw a bit of this with licensing and product validation. Now, we're seeing it with changes driven by internal (e.g.: corporate command chain) drives. They "need" this data but there's no open transparency about why they need it, where it's housed, who has access, what positive changes this data has driven (if at all), etc.
Back during the Watson or WER (Windows Error Reporting) days, that was the only "telemetry" that the company needed and they got by on quite a few versions of the OS without needing more.
I don't have an answer - but I do know that if my work didn't require Windows, I'd be happy to never see another Windows desktop again.
As much as I loathe my days being siphoned from me all day long while being forced to use Office, I'd at least forgive them if my daily driver OS wasn't a giant ad-infested spyware app.