This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services.
It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.
I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS.
It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.
But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:
* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates
* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead
* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)
* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)
* Internet search results in the "Home" search
* Random popups and product recommendations
* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update
Holy. Hell.
Edit: I recall now; Windows was installing a power automate extension into Chrome during Windows Update un-prompted last year. Caused a minor panic.
I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore.
i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy.
the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)
but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent). and the number of machines in those places absolutely dwarfs the number of home installs.
Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine.
When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only. And OneDrive was also affected by the Teams bug.
Spent a good part of the day cursing in the direction of Redmond.
I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in).
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
I think the decreasing fondness of Windows can mostly be blamed on Microsoft forcing their internet services on users; with the need for Microsoft accounts being the most recent & damning of the bunch.
You had gadgets in Vista & 7, but they could easily be disabled. 8 had live tiles for things like the news (effortlessly removable) and introduced the Microsoft Store (which increasingly needs an account). 8.1 added Bing Search to the start menu (requires Regedit to remove nowadays), 10 added news & current events to the start menu, and in 11 they want us to register Microsoft accounts to use the OS.
It's ridiculous how much control we've lost over Windows so that Microsoft can tell shareholders more people are doing Bing searches and signing up for Microsoft accounts than ever before.
Apple makes a nice distinction between their "app layer" (iCloud drive and Messages, etc.) and the OS login. This would work fine for Windows power users, and for the most part Windows has already had this (your "store" login). But to require the cloud to replace your login, the cloud has to be essential to the functioning of Windows and you have to explain the security implications clearly, and it's not clear that any of these things happened.
For instance, almost none of the useful settings from win32 apps sync - migrating to a new PC is painful, your apps don't move, your settings are all missing. It takes weeks, you don't just login to it. So this idea that it makes all your settings sync is maybe 10% true.
The argument for this online account (vs just a container for apps) is that you think a few Windows appearance settings must be synced always, or that you want to save things like your BitLocker keys in the cloud (which probably makes them visible to FBI or whoever else). And the security implications need to be spelled out in plain language. And in the end, it's a pretty bad argument - Grandma doesn't need BitLocker, but the people who do want a clear explanation. A lot of the rest could live in a "Microsoft apps" credential layer: Edge, OneDrive, Office, etc.
I want to feel like I can login to a recovery console and fix a bad partition. I want to keep using the same username across Linux and Windows. I want to recover a router with the old laptop that has actual ethernet, and who knows if it has cached credentials? My Microsoft account is my least used one, and who knows if it is secure?
One last thing: logging in with biometrics is amazing, but why must I use a low-security PIN in place of your pre-existing password?
I was a MS-DOS 2.0 user as a child. I have always preferred windows to OSX. I used WSL for years at companies where every other engineer had a MacBook.
Last weekend I finally started dual-booting Arch Linux as a trial. Yesterday I deleted my windows partition.
Are people inside apple fighting to drop the mandatory apple account for iOS and various core apple features?
I can buy a thinkpad and install linux on it without once creating a microsoft account. I can buy an android phone supported by GrapheneOS, and use it as a perfectly fine phone without ever creating a google account.
I cannot buy an iPhone without creating an apple account, without getting ads shoved in my face by apple, without them deciding what I can and can't install on it, and them charging me for the privilege of writing my own software.
Microsoft doesn't deserve as much shame here as Apple does since MS isn't requiring their hardware vendors to lock down the hardware to only be able to run Windows (even though they very well could). Apple, with iOS, is.
I have used Microsoft operating systens for 30 years. I started moving servers onto Linux 5 years ago. The desktops on laptops stayed on Windows (10). I have started converting those ss well.
Windows had a good thing going (if you ignored some bad releases), but them pushing it too far with 11 and the Linux desktop making great strides, sort of put the nail in that coffin for me.
Not sure what they can do to make me reconsider. It's a trust issue now.
My 30000+ person Windows centric company has discovered that Macs are not only cheaper to order (than the 2.5k HP laptops they’ve been fed) but people don’t complain about the fans as much, batteries last longer, speakers are better and screens are brighter, so there has been a massive wave of Windows to Mac transition.
It went from web devs and designers to now HR, admins, anyone. I don’t think we’ll swap Active Directory just yet but I would’ve never thought we’d do this. We’re an old school slow red tape wrapped industry.
Cloud too, Azure could not secure our business even though we’ve been Microsoft everything. We’re in AWS.
For what it’s worth, start ms-cxh: localonly after Shift+F10 during installation still works. Another way is to prepare a custom installation image. Of course, such workarounds shouldn’t be needed, so this is nevertheless a good fight.
I've always understood why they do this. Its data collection, its a really weak lock-in to their ecosystem, it gets users embedded into Windows more. Its just not very compelling, just another hoop to jump through. Also I don't really see Microsoft accounts as a major SSO offering on many sites, its usually Google/Apple/Facebook and maybe some other related sites. Seems logical to call this one done and just focus on making a more enjoyable experience in Windows.
I moved from windows to Linux a few years back. As of now the only thing I've not been able to do is update my Chinese gaming mouse's firmware. I'm afraid to brick it if I upgrade using wine.
Honestly, for anyone who's on this site, switching to Linux isn't hard or problematic. Go for something like fedora silverblue and you get a similar experience where you don't have to control the operating system yourself.
The only thing would be if your company wants you to be on windows.
The irony of needing to fight internally for something users have been asking for since day one. Local accounts should be the default, not a hidden workaround
Too little too late. I've been a Windows user since 2.1. It hasn't always been my primary OS but I've always had it running somewhere. Win 10 LTSC is the last Windows I'll use. I still have it on my desktop but will be moving completely off to Linux.
My dad has also been primarily a Windows user since it existed. A few weeks ago he switched over to Linux, his first time running it.
At this point windows should be classified as a public utility and regulated as such. Microsoft has turned the most popular operating system on earth into an ad riddled and dysfunctional joke. Satya Nadella destroyed what would’ve been a stellar legacy as CEO of Microsoft by allowing all this crap to go on, chief among them is the war on local accounts.
My "favourite" with this is the new Windows app (terrible new name for the remote desktop app). You now have to sign in to use the app but then as soon as you connect to any corporate resources (ie remote PCs/Cloud PCs), you have to sign in again! It seems like the perfect opportunity to SAVE the user some hassle but instead it's adding it.
Using Windows these days feels like "you're the product" in a way that's really annoying.
Like, I know that "I am the product" when I open Instagram or Facebook, but the overall experience makes me not think about it; using Windows I get constantly remembered that I am the product: ads, forced Copilot, telemetry making things slow/showing up in the Task Manager, more ads, mandatory account (more telemetry, yay!), Edge begging me to use it... I'm just trying to do my work and the OS gets in front of it!
This is (technically) a paid operating system. Ubuntu is free and doesn't do 1/100th of that (and Ubuntu isn't even the best distro in that regard). I tolerated Windows 7, tolerated 10 a little bit less, but Win 11 is impossible to use. And I haven't even touched the performance issues...
Ss it just me or did Microsoft never actually fix/figure out their account merge? I found that anyone who had a legacy skype/hotmail account basically got locked out once Skype/Hotmail/Outlook.com all merged. Multiple frustrated message threads online complained about this and from my personal experience it never got fixed. Basically two out of three accounts became inaccessable.
That was when I completely left that ecosystem, Office 365, everything. It was literally impossible to log in. Not surprisingly, the Office 365 bills continued to charge even though accounts were inaccessible. To this day, i'm far too scared to even attempt to use Azure on a personal account for this reason.
Totally random observation, but this site, Windows Central (I think it belongs to a company named Future PLC), is bloated as hell. So it was somewhat ironic seeing them publishing about how Microsoft should make Windows less shitty for its users
My company is still on windows, but it's only because most of our users are over 60 and would stroke out if they had to learn something new. I predict within the next 10 years we will move to something else. The hoops I have to jump through to setup new devices without a Microsoft account are ridiculous. Every time we have a workaround they disable it and we have to do a deeper dive on it. The process right now requires using the command line to create an account with administrator permissions and no password and then create a password after logging in. Then we can create a non-admin local account.
>Windows 11 will still force you to setup an internet connection and sign-in with a Microsoft account during the out of box experience
One has to wonder if this change will occur, that is due to these state laws requiring various levels of age verification. I can see MS stating you need to have this account because of the Age Verification Law in your State.
In a way, California's law is a huge gift to big tech, and now it is being replicated to other US states with additional requirements.
I posted something similar the other day, but at this point it is too little too late. Using windows feels like actively submitting to a hostile user experience.
I look back fondly to the time I had using my Dell XPS when WSL first came out, they had me hooked. I've been using MacBook Pro for about a decade now and I can't even fathom going back to windows. Every time I open the start menu I feel personally attacked.
I used to obsess over reading xda developer forums and playing around with my android phone. I would laugh at the "sheeple" using apple products for not being customizable and giving away their freedom.
At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.
Of all the things wrong with windows, I don't feel that having a Microsoft account is the worst of them, or the one that needs the most attention.
Is the reasoning that if you don't have a Microsoft account, they'll do less of the ads nonsense which is baked into the OS? Maybe I don't get what the issue is.
I've tried linux, but haven't converted (though I'm tempted), but my mac has a mac account and nobody seems to complain about that, my android has a google account, why is a Microsoft account so much worse.
The things I feel it is more important for Microsoft to get rid of
1) the push for OneDrive everywhere - Mac is as bad if you don't have iCloud
2) updates requiring "set-up" and trying to trick you into adding services in the process
3) Windows Hello moving the "sign in" button down 10px once it recognizes you....WTF!!
4) ads, ads, ads (though if you don't use start button much or Edge, I think this is mostly avoided
5) letting apps add shortcuts to your desktop on an update.
I only deal with Windows during a little IT volunteering. The org's PC has an MS account, which is ok per se, but the nagging doesn't stop there. Like it randomly started asking for SMS verification at login, which looks like a real auth challenge, but you can actually skip it. So that's in their handbook now.
They might drop it for end consumers but I doubt it.
It's such a small niche right now they do not even care if they're in their cloud. Enterprise users are the absolute majority of their user base revenue-wise.
However dropping the requirement might force them to change some things. Like in Azure-related stuff such as OneDrive where you have to design/build/test it behave differently if the user is not constantly logged into the Azure account. This means that they might decide to continue to force the Azure account and if they lose more of the end consumers so be it.
Unless they decide to separate Home and higher versions of Windows even more and drop the requirement for the home version users. But it might be more trouble than it's worth.
This entire article is based on a one sentence tweet with zero details provided.
"Ya I hate that. Working on it." - Could mean anything, which I would argue in this case, is equivalent to being meaningless. Does this mean Hanselman has a team with tickets lined up for the next sprint to allow offline accounts as a first-class workflow? Or does it mean he sent an email to the relevant stakeholders asking, "Hey guys, what can we do about this"?
I am not encouraged that we will see a change in momentum from Microsoft on this issue.
I’m a Windows fan, and I could see this being a pain for OEMs and installers / IT guys – but I don’t see why people are making a huge deal . Windows quality is a much bigger issue: latency, reliability issues, inconsistencies in the UI, etc.
You won’t even defeat telemetry with a local account. Windows TOS grants telemetry consent.
Why do you guys care so much about this? It feels like a bikeshed – something easy to complain about with little nuance. What will be won if MS concedes?
I hope they succeed, and this is from someone who loves Linux and hate Windows. I want as many positive general purpose computing platforms as possible. No, this won't make Windows perfect, but every step in the right direction is crucial.
Much like politics, you want sane, healthy competitors. Microsoft enshittifying as much as possible might bump up the Linux numbers in the short term, but I think it would be unhealthy for Linux in the long term. You want a major power like Microsoft pushing back on some of these trends, which completely opens the door for small players to benefit from that pushback.
I hope the folks at Microsoft can roll back as much of the slop as possible.
But remote account is just one of the many evils they cane up in the last decade or so. Honestly, not sure if the net benefit for humanity is negative if Windows gradually disappears.
If you can't set up without an account, this should work, no?
1. Create an admin user "setup" with a throwaway Microsoft account on first boot.
2. From there, create a local user "admin".
3. Reboot into "admin" with internet off, delete "setup", and run a bunch of deshittification scripts to get rid of AppX(Provisioned)Packages.
I have Windows and Mac PCs/laptops. I've used Windows since Windows 3.0, for 30+ years now. In the early 90s I invested in Windows NT 3.5 as a college student and learned how to use that over Windows 3.1 or OS/2. I attended the Windows 95 celebration in person. I almost went into becoming a Microsoft MCSE because it would have doubled my pay but went the programming route instead because I loved it more.
I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".
If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.
The OneDrive thing drives me crazy too. I set up a fresh Windows install last month and spent the first hour just undoing defaults and disabling prompts. It's weird how Microsoft keeps doubling down on this when the backlash is so consistant. At some point they have to realise they're pushing more technical users toward Linux.
I was shocked to install Windows 11 in a VM today for some throwaway purpose I needed (specifically, proving that some piece of software that's 3 years old will absolutely not work on up-to-date Windows 11), and was not required to use a Microsoft account. Just prompted to make a local account and that was it.
Microsoft has, by far, the absolute worst sign-on experience of any enterprise vendor I've ever used in any industry for any reason. Try to log in to AWS and you'll either get authed or a clear denial reason. Google Workspace? You're in or you're out. Enterprisey MS service like Outlook or Azure? Well, if you've logged in from that computer before, you might get to log in, but you may also have to hunt around for your organization login. I recently tried to log in to an org but it ended up creating a personal account with an email address at the org's domain, and then I couldn't sign in to the org because that account was already taken, and it took something like a week for the anti-fraud cooldown to let me delete the account and eventually re-register it inside the org.
For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing me a "Your privacy matters" popup explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take me to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)
You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password). It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so call minecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password), unless it also contains foo@minecraft., in which case call minecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password), except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.
I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.
Is this a reaction in part to the threat posed by the launch of very affordable Macbook Neo; and partly the rise of AI Agents like Cowork that will drive massive demand and scale of sanboxes and virtual machines and Windows OS is not a great fit for that today.
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It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.
I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.
But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:
* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates
* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead
* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)
* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)
* Internet search results in the "Home" search
* Random popups and product recommendations
* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update
Holy. Hell.
Edit: I recall now; Windows was installing a power automate extension into Chrome during Windows Update un-prompted last year. Caused a minor panic.
>
I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore.i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy.
the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)
but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent). and the number of machines in those places absolutely dwarfs the number of home installs.
Over the weekend, a family member could not log into their laptop any longer. Turned out to be “a problem with Teams” that required an unscheduled update which was marked as optional. Needless to say that they never used Teams on that machine.
When the login worked partially, their files weren’t accessible because they accidentally saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only. And OneDrive was also affected by the Teams bug.
Spent a good part of the day cursing in the direction of Redmond.
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
You had gadgets in Vista & 7, but they could easily be disabled. 8 had live tiles for things like the news (effortlessly removable) and introduced the Microsoft Store (which increasingly needs an account). 8.1 added Bing Search to the start menu (requires Regedit to remove nowadays), 10 added news & current events to the start menu, and in 11 they want us to register Microsoft accounts to use the OS.
It's ridiculous how much control we've lost over Windows so that Microsoft can tell shareholders more people are doing Bing searches and signing up for Microsoft accounts than ever before.
For instance, almost none of the useful settings from win32 apps sync - migrating to a new PC is painful, your apps don't move, your settings are all missing. It takes weeks, you don't just login to it. So this idea that it makes all your settings sync is maybe 10% true.
The argument for this online account (vs just a container for apps) is that you think a few Windows appearance settings must be synced always, or that you want to save things like your BitLocker keys in the cloud (which probably makes them visible to FBI or whoever else). And the security implications need to be spelled out in plain language. And in the end, it's a pretty bad argument - Grandma doesn't need BitLocker, but the people who do want a clear explanation. A lot of the rest could live in a "Microsoft apps" credential layer: Edge, OneDrive, Office, etc.
I want to feel like I can login to a recovery console and fix a bad partition. I want to keep using the same username across Linux and Windows. I want to recover a router with the old laptop that has actual ethernet, and who knows if it has cached credentials? My Microsoft account is my least used one, and who knows if it is secure?
One last thing: logging in with biometrics is amazing, but why must I use a low-security PIN in place of your pre-existing password?
Please fix it all.
Last weekend I finally started dual-booting Arch Linux as a trial. Yesterday I deleted my windows partition.
Too late, Microsoft.
I can buy a thinkpad and install linux on it without once creating a microsoft account. I can buy an android phone supported by GrapheneOS, and use it as a perfectly fine phone without ever creating a google account.
I cannot buy an iPhone without creating an apple account, without getting ads shoved in my face by apple, without them deciding what I can and can't install on it, and them charging me for the privilege of writing my own software.
Microsoft doesn't deserve as much shame here as Apple does since MS isn't requiring their hardware vendors to lock down the hardware to only be able to run Windows (even though they very well could). Apple, with iOS, is.
Windows had a good thing going (if you ignored some bad releases), but them pushing it too far with 11 and the Linux desktop making great strides, sort of put the nail in that coffin for me.
Not sure what they can do to make me reconsider. It's a trust issue now.
It went from web devs and designers to now HR, admins, anyone. I don’t think we’ll swap Active Directory just yet but I would’ve never thought we’d do this. We’re an old school slow red tape wrapped industry.
Cloud too, Azure could not secure our business even though we’ve been Microsoft everything. We’re in AWS.
start ms-cxh: localonlyafter Shift+F10 during installation still works. Another way is to prepare a custom installation image. Of course, such workarounds shouldn’t be needed, so this is nevertheless a good fight.Honestly, for anyone who's on this site, switching to Linux isn't hard or problematic. Go for something like fedora silverblue and you get a similar experience where you don't have to control the operating system yourself.
The only thing would be if your company wants you to be on windows.
My dad has also been primarily a Windows user since it existed. A few weeks ago he switched over to Linux, his first time running it.
MS is killing themselves with this mess.
It's just better without Microsoft.
Like, I know that "I am the product" when I open Instagram or Facebook, but the overall experience makes me not think about it; using Windows I get constantly remembered that I am the product: ads, forced Copilot, telemetry making things slow/showing up in the Task Manager, more ads, mandatory account (more telemetry, yay!), Edge begging me to use it... I'm just trying to do my work and the OS gets in front of it!
This is (technically) a paid operating system. Ubuntu is free and doesn't do 1/100th of that (and Ubuntu isn't even the best distro in that regard). I tolerated Windows 7, tolerated 10 a little bit less, but Win 11 is impossible to use. And I haven't even touched the performance issues...
That was when I completely left that ecosystem, Office 365, everything. It was literally impossible to log in. Not surprisingly, the Office 365 bills continued to charge even though accounts were inaccessible. To this day, i'm far too scared to even attempt to use Azure on a personal account for this reason.
> People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account
This is the minimum peace offering acceptable to your long suffering users.
2026 is the year of the Linux desktop. It's time - Linux has never been better or easier to use than it is right now.
>Windows 11 will still force you to setup an internet connection and sign-in with a Microsoft account during the out of box experience
One has to wonder if this change will occur, that is due to these state laws requiring various levels of age verification. I can see MS stating you need to have this account because of the Age Verification Law in your State.
In a way, California's law is a huge gift to big tech, and now it is being replicated to other US states with additional requirements.
I look back fondly to the time I had using my Dell XPS when WSL first came out, they had me hooked. I've been using MacBook Pro for about a decade now and I can't even fathom going back to windows. Every time I open the start menu I feel personally attacked.
I used to obsess over reading xda developer forums and playing around with my android phone. I would laugh at the "sheeple" using apple products for not being customizable and giving away their freedom.
At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.
Is the reasoning that if you don't have a Microsoft account, they'll do less of the ads nonsense which is baked into the OS? Maybe I don't get what the issue is.
I've tried linux, but haven't converted (though I'm tempted), but my mac has a mac account and nobody seems to complain about that, my android has a google account, why is a Microsoft account so much worse.
The things I feel it is more important for Microsoft to get rid of 1) the push for OneDrive everywhere - Mac is as bad if you don't have iCloud 2) updates requiring "set-up" and trying to trick you into adding services in the process 3) Windows Hello moving the "sign in" button down 10px once it recognizes you....WTF!! 4) ads, ads, ads (though if you don't use start button much or Edge, I think this is mostly avoided 5) letting apps add shortcuts to your desktop on an update.
What am I not understanding?
It's such a small niche right now they do not even care if they're in their cloud. Enterprise users are the absolute majority of their user base revenue-wise.
However dropping the requirement might force them to change some things. Like in Azure-related stuff such as OneDrive where you have to design/build/test it behave differently if the user is not constantly logged into the Azure account. This means that they might decide to continue to force the Azure account and if they lose more of the end consumers so be it.
Unless they decide to separate Home and higher versions of Windows even more and drop the requirement for the home version users. But it might be more trouble than it's worth.
Enterprise is where the money is.
Get out before their terms allow them to sue your company and hold your data to ransom if you think about migrating away.
I think he needs to be replaced before his obsession kills the golden goose that is windows.
"Ya I hate that. Working on it." - Could mean anything, which I would argue in this case, is equivalent to being meaningless. Does this mean Hanselman has a team with tickets lined up for the next sprint to allow offline accounts as a first-class workflow? Or does it mean he sent an email to the relevant stakeholders asking, "Hey guys, what can we do about this"?
I am not encouraged that we will see a change in momentum from Microsoft on this issue.
Windows account login provides decent value: Bitlocker recovery, device management, Onedrive sync (even the free version), simpler RDP & remote RPC authentication.
You won’t even defeat telemetry with a local account. Windows TOS grants telemetry consent.
Why do you guys care so much about this? It feels like a bikeshed – something easy to complain about with little nuance. What will be won if MS concedes?
It just doesn't make any sense. Starts off the user experience with a kick in the nuts and a slap across the face. "You don't own this machine"
Much like politics, you want sane, healthy competitors. Microsoft enshittifying as much as possible might bump up the Linux numbers in the short term, but I think it would be unhealthy for Linux in the long term. You want a major power like Microsoft pushing back on some of these trends, which completely opens the door for small players to benefit from that pushback.
I hope the folks at Microsoft can roll back as much of the slop as possible.
I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".
If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.
For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing me a "Your privacy matters" popup explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take me to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)
You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call
legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password). It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so callminecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password), unless it also containsfoo@minecraft., in which case callminecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password), except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.