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.
This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to run it and make it really hard or impossible for user to turn it off. As a user, I no longer feel like I'm driving the car--I'm just a passenger. "Where do you want to go today?" has turned into "You're going here today, whether you want to or not!"
I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues.
If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs.
I also think Windows' native window tiling is one of its best features, but there's a fantastic program called Swish that implements tiling for MacOS in a very native-feeling way. It supports keyboard shortcuts, but it's built around really elegant touchpad gestures. Highly recommend if that's all that's keeping you on Windows.
The other native Windows feature I really like is the clipboard manager, and I don't have a great replacement for that yet. I'm kind of shocked Apple hasn't built one. If anyone has a recommendation that feels native instead of like a ported Linux widget, please share.
Recently I'm finding MSN home opened in Chrome over night. Aparently it's connected to some "active probing" feature, and I do have scheduled nightly restarts in the home router. But come on... No one could convince me it's not intended to inflate MSN numbers.
Windows' search has been broken for multiple generations now. Some people inside Microsoft seemingly even know, that's why the PowerToys team created "PowerToys Run." A Windows Search that actually basically functions correctly.
People act like it sudden was broken in Windows 11 when in reality it never worked correctly in 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 either. Instead of fixing it, they've only made it worse. It seems like nobody in Microsoft works on core stuff anymore.
As far as I remember it was working well in 7 and 8 (deterministic and shows programs that you expect it to show). From 10 it started behaving erratically (same time it got binged but maybe unrelated).
Yeah, I've never experienced Windows search ever working. Even on XP, it couldn't find commonly opened folders or programs for me. It always felt like some sort of joke feature just meant to fool me into wasting time.
At one point (last year?) internet search results would load in first so quickly typing and pressing "enter" from muscle memory would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted..
Then also in the past year or two the internet search results were lagging the entire search UI causing type jank and stutters.
I disabled internet results in the registry but a recent update seems to have caused that setting to no longer apply ;(
One of the first things to do on a fresh install is to disable the Web search results in Start menu search. There's a setting in the registry to do it.
>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.
Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.
governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". they have contracts, and cash flow concerns. you cannot suddenly replaces tens to hundreds of thousands of machines.
20-50 years down the road? maybe! they (microsoft) surely arent doing themselves many favors. but they are certainly not in "significant danger" today.
It means that, today, a lot of enterprises begin pondering the question, and then about a year from now, they start seriously studying and prototyping it, and then "suddenly" in 2029 Microsoft starts seeing a deluge of defections. It means a whole bunch of peopling finishing the conversion all at once, relatively speaking, even if that "all at once" is 3-4 years away.
To put it another way, the thresholds where people get annoyed enough to quit are highly correlated to each other. If individuals on HN are posting "I don't want to switch, I've been working this way for decades now, but Windows has crossed the line for me, I've switched to Linux, and it was easier than I thought it would be", then corporations and governments are having very similar deliberations internally.
This is probably a more accurate model for how "influencers" seem to work than the idea that some crazy guy in your organization falls in love with Product X and evangelizes it internally. I'm sure that happens and is a real force, but this correlation-of-experience effect is probably bigger on the whole. If Product X was good enough to make an evangelist internally, or more germane to this conversation, to make some a mortal enemy of it internally, it's usually because it was a good enough or bad enough product to be able to do that in the first place, and eventually everyone will figure it out in exactly the same way, just later.
20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. If Microsoft responds correctly that might be good, but if they just decide to rest on their laurels and extract whatever value they can out of Windows while they can, Windows would never last 20 years of that. Even the slowest organizations can move faster than that. After all, to cut Microsoft's revenues off at the knees, they don't need to remove every last Windows 2000 server in their backoffice they can't upgrade, they need to cut out just the majority of desktop licenses.
i disagree. unless intuit is also rewriting quickbooks, dassault systèmes is rewriting solidworks, every bank is rewriting their custom windows-only software, every government branch is rewriting their custom windows-only software, etc. and every company is willing to retrain 95% of their employees on a new operating system, have increased support requirements for a few years at least, etc.
not even touching the capital required for such a transition that in many cases has questionable benefits (from a business perspective).
time will tell! i have first-hand experience with how fast banks move, so i will stick by my 20 year minimum. happy to see otherwise, though.
in any case. what i replied to was a claim that windows is in "significant danger" today. it is not.
It's an interesting case to me. The company I work for has been shipping systems on windows since the 90's despite pretty consistent requests from customers to ship hardware on Linux. 2 years ago we started creating our own Linux distribution and this year started shipping products on it. We still ship a lot of stuff on Windows 11, but that market share is starting to shift now. 10 years from now I could see us completely moved to our Linux distro. Now, what's actually interesting is that it wasn't customer requests or efficient capital allocation that drove this. Microsoft effectively forced us to do this against our will by a combination discontinued products and handling of Windows 11 and now that we've spent the capital we won't be going back.
You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.
most people are not willing to learn an entire new operating system for no reason, though. this might happen in tech-based companies, sure, but banks? accounting firms? ive never seen them offer macbooks.
this is also ignoring all of the critical software that is windows-only (e.g. quickbooks, solidworks, bespoke programs in banks and government).
point is: microsoft is not in "significant danger" today.
An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine, or only occasionally having done so when it was absolutely necessary.
>An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine
i would love to see your numbers for this. what does "increasing percentage" mean? 1% -> 2%? 10% -> 20%?
i teach at a college level, in tech, and would estimate ~5% of incoming students have any experience with something other than windows on a pc, at best. outside of tech, i would estimate ~2%.
Most people dont even use the operating system. They look for the apps menu, then click what they want to run. Most people can switch between OSes easier than you think because there really isn't that much difference in how they work on the surface.
users are one component, but you are still ignoring/forgetting the rest.
user management, file management, security, windows-specific software, auditing requirements, required capital investment, lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on.
expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.
well, it happened with Teams meetings replacing fancy CISCO equipments.
It happened with all the vpn+shared drives buried to just use SPO.
different experience,I guess.
Did your employees got trained? or just sent the link to 3 'online trainings'?
Managers manage to switch to Mac seamlessly. I am sure the rest will follow with cheaper macs now available. And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
>And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
office is a tiny, almost negligible, piece of the puzzle. quickbooks, solidworks and other cad software, bespoke software, security software, user management, permissions management (replacing active directory), contractual obligations, the millions of dollars required in implementation, the millions more dollars required for increased user support, and so on...
but, again, just to reiterate: i am disputing that windows is in "significant danger" today.
out of curiosity, "large parts" of "one german state" is how many machines roughly?
i am suspecting that it is probably nowhere near enough to put windows in "significant danger". however, i am rooting for their success and hope that they thoroughly document (and publish) the process. i have never seen a transition like that go smoothly, let alone when it is in government.
This alone obviously doesn’t put Windows in danger, but if it does go over well then it’ll mark a turning point; A large non-techy institution getting away from Microsoft’s castle and being better off for it would signal to the world that it’s not only doable, but could even be worth it. It’ll take a while, but this could be the start of the end for Windows.
That "significant danger" was a bit of dramatization on my part. I don't expect anything to significantly change in the short term. I was more referring to long-term tidal-like change, which would be very hard to stop once momentum builds up.
This exact same thing (literally another german state i think) almost happened about 20 years ago and Microsoft freaked the fuck out. Thats where all the TCO nonsense came from - just one german state trying to de-microsoft.
I think Microsoft won, too.
I think theyre terrified of positive examples. Especially ones with FAR lower TCO and lower geopolitical risks.
> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with
The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware.
That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
>That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
I don't think you are aware of how much the landscape has changed regarding gaming and Linux.
I don't know. A company worth trillions of dollars does a pretty fine job of making Windows incrementally worse in new and interesting ways, each release.
There's some truth; the bloated company structure has contributed to these unforced errors, but just at an engineering level, people are releasing this tripe without the skill or training or backbone to know what is bad, and push back on toxic management decisions.
Engineers collaborating with oppressive management is a technical failure. Google is riddled with the same problem. I'm sure all the FAANG-a-likes do. Paying billions in salaries to sycophant devs. They have the market share to keep failing upwards. They don't deserve it.
Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem that's played out in construction, automotive and software engineering dozens of times over.
The penalty for Microsoft ignoring their devs might just be a slow decline into irrelevance, not a bridge collapsing, or an autonomous vehicle hitting the lane barrier because the boss refuses to use LiDAR, but it's all bad management causing an engineering problem.
> Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem.
No, that's the very archetype of a political problem. It is a political problem that impacts the engineering output, yes, but still a political problem.
FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...
I've used macOS for years and still don't understand their windows minimize/restore logic. I'm always hunting for my minimized window. Yes, the fault probably lies with me.
OTOH the Windows UI is far better well designed and intuitive. But yeah... I'd rather fumble around in macOS: Windows is always trying to upsell a service that I don't need. If I say no it will helpfully keep reminding me (my answer is never going to change). I have 32GB ram and a recent processor being fed tons of wattage -- it feels so bog slow.
reading all these comments about windows having better shortcuts and window management features makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills. windows for me was hands down the worst experience in ux. the shortcuts in macos are so well thought out and consistent.
now i'm using kde in linux land and it's the best and most customizable experience. I can't imagine going back to windows ever and would be missing a lot from linux if i went back to macos(though it would be fine).
macOS does not and never has had a good strategy for handling minimizing windows. Keep in mind that prior to Mac OS X, you couldn't minimize windows at all, you could only roll them up. When OS X added the dock, they made minimized windows go there. Except, the Dock is an icon grid, so there's no way to see window titles, and the windows themselves are so small that it is difficult to identify them at a glance. Making things worse, the Dock is also a place you put app icons, so now you have an icon to show all your non-minimized app icons, right next to all your minimized window icons.
Meanwhile, Windows had minimize since version 2[0], except for whatever reason windows minimized to desktop icons, and there was no desktop folder. They'd known they'd invented a worse version of Mac OS, and in Windows 95 they made sure that there was not only a real desktop, but also a list of all open windows. This design was so successful that the only major tweak that stuck was merging the taskbar and Quick Launch[1] into something that superficially resembles the OSX dock, but is just plain better[2] because clicking an app icon actually shows you all the open windows.
[0] I don't have a Windows 1 install to check with.
[1] Strictly speaking you could put anything in Quick Launch, but only apps go in the Win7 taskbar
[2] Oldschool NeXT users will point out that in NeXTSTEP, minimized windows had an actual title on them, and the app icon instead of a screenshot of the window at tiny scale.
A lot of shortcuts are shared between windows and linux and fairly consistent across applications. Mac is the one that takes a decided "we're different" approach to shortcuts. I.e., Alt+L for address bar instead of Alt+D, Command swapping with Control, Q instead of W for closing tabs, Command+Control+Q for locking a computer instead of Super+L, etc
They didn't mention cross-OS shortcuts, though. I interpreted "across the operating systems" as meaning "across the various versions of Windows". Yes, Windows is more consistent with their own common shortcuts. But Macs have exceedingly consistent shortcuts across Mac applications, compared to my experience with Windows and especially Linux.
I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existed, so it's not really fair to describe them as the "different" one when MS chose their own, different shortcuts for Windows.
Apple also invented their own key “Apple” now “CMD” for operation like copy / paste to explicitly not have the issue to overload the already know escape sequences. Windows being on a system without a normalized keyboard had to reuse keys that are common to keyboards used back then. Vertical integration played into apples cards even back then.
The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5.
Not to mention the muscle memory for pressing CTRL in the corner of the keyboard rather than CMD where Alt is.
Though I will say that having "Copy" (cmd-c) being different from ^C (ctrl-c) was kind of nice. Though Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it, and sends ^C the second time.
Conversely, when I use a PC, I have to stop and wonder why alt-R doesn't reload the web page like it's supposed to, and alt-C doesn't copy, and I have to stretch my pinky all the way over to use that shortcut. And what's the mnemonic for "F5 means reload"?
Which is to say that neither Windows nor Mac shortcuts are inherently better. It's just what we're used to. IME, the main difference is that once you learn the Mac shortcuts in a handful of apps, they'll pretty much work on the other apps you encounter, too.
If you want a little more consistency for muscle memory, ctrl+L goes to the address bar on Windows the same way cmd+L goes to it on Mac. Same for ctrl+W and cmd+W to close tabs.
It has more to do with Microsoft deciding to emulate Google and Facebook's surveillance capitalism business model.
If you combine mandatory online user accounts with telemetry and Windows Recall, you have a system for building out advertising profiles linked to known individuals.
+1 for Total Commander mention, its bizarre how many otherwise smart folks completely ignore this productivity enhancer. I keep showing it to colleagues but they all anyway revert back to basic clunky File explorer and variants.
Doesn't matter if I show them that I can be easily 10x faster, do stuff simply impossible otherwise, has tons of plugins etc. its just ignored.
The only negative side of Total Commander is I'm extremly used to it - been using it since mid 90s. When I compare alternatives on Mac I'm searching for exact keyboard commands, navigation patterns, etc. I'm using Crax Commander, but it's not the same.
TC is probably one of the reasons I don't care that much about problems in newer versions of Windows, I don't use Explorer, I don't use windows search, text is viewed with Lister and not Notepad...
I don't know about Total Commander because that appears to be Windows-only, but twin-pane "Commanders" (named after NC) do seem more popular in certain circles. They're still in wide use in Eastern Europe. Commanders have also influenced Dolphin, which has a built in twin-pane view (but it's not a commander because it lacks the typical keybinds) and there's a commander called Krusader that is a better fit.
I realize you probably are referencing visual studio, but at the OS level KDE plasma seems to have copped Windows hot keys wholesale. I was giving it a go recently and was delighted that even meta+arrow keys for monitor switching fullscreen apps works. My only gripe, and what got me booting back into windows, was that even the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky to reliably play multiplayer online games.
> the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky
A GL.iNet travel router in WiFi to ethernet bridge mode is an excellent stopgap until Linux support arrives. It also has the benefits of (a) taking with you on trips for safer/easier internet use (use your home SSID, even auto-VPN traffic if you want) and (b) letting you plug in other wired-only devices adjacent to the computer.
For the AI frontier, I find my windows PC just about useless unfortunately. Too much tooling and package doesn't adapt to WSL+windows host well. I've shifted my entire dev experience to my mbp which used to be my backup. Can't imagine the new generation of vibe coder will even consider a windows box.
I've been using MacBook at work for years and I still perceive UX as fundamentally broken - I'm incapable of doing basic operations in Finder or changing basic system settings, and random shit I didn't want to press pops up when I'm doing other things. I feel like my grandpa trying to adjust to new phone. I will never ever recommend anything Apple to anyone.
Having said the above, I think that KDE is almost there to have a functional UX that can replace Windows. Not there yet because of random bugs, but almost almost.
Once gamers actually switch to Linux, which is a viable thing, they'll teach their family members. Home users will switch to Linux, and Windows will become an exclusively enterprise and government thing. But once average person is comfortable with Linux because they have it at home, those institutions will start switching to Linux too. And that's how Microsoft will fall. Just like most other corporations - through their own greed.
I still use windows as a secondary operating system on another computer, though only Win10. I decided I will not transition to anything after Win10 as Microslop declared war on the users with Win11. Which was the case already before Win11, of course, but I feel the qualitative difference is too much now.
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.
This happened on my work machine. One day I noticed tons of important files had been deleted without my permission after being migrated to OneDrive online only. At no point did I authorize anything like this and it took some time to copy them all back and disable everything I could access related to this.
Utter insanity that this can happen in a major OS. I switched to Linux for personal use years ago and have only gotten more grateful for that decision over time. My head would explode if a Linux distro tried any number of things that Windows regularly does to abuse their users, it's unfathomable.
The problem is that on a fresh system with a free MS account, OneDrive shows up as the first choice as “$User - Personal files”. No notice that this actually only stores it online and offers only a fraction of the 1TB local drive.
Truly deceptive and my mistake for not noticing when I helped to set up that laptop.
Don't feel bad.
Even if you noticed,
It is likely that during the next "security" update, one drive would be re-enabled, as the default - and possibly everything moved there.
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
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.
The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop.
They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."
Please, by all means do post a link to a comparable new Windows laptop for $400, including a fast GPU, reasonable amount of fast storage (and not counting an SD card or such), a high-DPI monitor, and non-embarassing build quality. I'd love to see this.
The GPU in the Neo isn't particularly fast...nor is the storage. Neo makes loads of compromises to hit $600 with some of it's features. Even for $400 you can get Windows PCs with TWO whole USB 3.0 ports. $400 quickly hits diminishing returns territory.
Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.
So for $100 less, you get a markedly lower-DPI screen that's 40% dimmer, a slower CPU, hotter running, and a worse chassis. Almost no one's going to be slapping multiple external monitors on either of these. If they did, they might run into the problem where the Acer is often limited to 640x480: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/733442/have-a-new-a...
That is not remotely in the same category as the Neo.
You get twice as much RAM, twice as much storage. 4x faster storage too. You get a full sized HDMI port. You can do multiple monitors if you need to. It has a fan for better sustained performance. You can plug in a flash drive, mouse, monitor or other external peripheral without a dongle. Oh, and it's actually COOLER running than the Neo.
The Neo costs a $100 more, needs a $30 dongle to connect to 90% of the stuff people have, has half the RAM, half the storage, slower storage. Has considerably worse I/O. But has a better screen and build quality comparable to a MacBook Pro from 2007.
It's different compromises. Personally I'd rather have more RAM, storage and IO than a prettier case and better screen.
You're proving the point. The computer you found wins on the specs page for sure. But the proof is in the pudding; Apple makes money hand over fist because they focus on reasonable specs, and quality. The thing that kills a modern laptop is not a slow CPU or RAM on the chip; it's a cheap chassis that breaks. That's what makes people change their computer.
What makes it horrifying? Plastic? Is the only thing that's important the material it's made out of? I think there's many use cases where the Acer would be less horrifying to use than the Neo. Which device would be better for running a Linux VM for CS class homework for example?
A vanishingly small number of end users (both PC and Mac) care about how much RAM they have. I'd be willing to bet that at least 25% of PC and Mac laptop owners couldn't even tell you how much RAM they have, or they mistake hard disk storage for RAM or vice versa.
Huh, guess I’ve never worked at a Mac shop big enough to suffer Mac-ruining software. My biggest shop only had about 15,000 employees, so maybe it’s only the large companies enduring that.
You are right about the first part but I think you're overestimating the number of people that see Apple products as status symbols. Maybe that was true a decade ago but I don't think it is anymore. Enough of the products have found their way to every country imaginable over time that an Apple laptop is... just another laptop.
A fun, brightly colored, relatively inexpensive, Windows-less laptop that you can use for doing your taxes while watching a movie has appeal. The performance isn't that important, so long as it is as responsive as the owner's phone.
Used T model Thinkpad probably? That's the least original advice you're going to get if you ask a bunch of nerds, and these guys know their computers ;)
200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops.
Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768.
This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.
The only things I recognize on that are the CPU brand name (there have been times the Celeron has been good bang for the buck), the RAM, and the storage (I guess and the resolution).
To me, all of those seem woefully underpowered, but $180 is $180...
I bought my mother in law a Lenovo Thinkbook for Christmas; I didn't know that the Macbook Neo was coming else I might have waited for that.
Anyway, I installed Linux Mint on there. She has been using it every day and at least according to her there hasn't really been any jank (and I told her to call me any time if something breaks and I'll fix it).
At this point, I think Linux distros have gotten good enough to realistically start stealing users away from Windows. Linux Mint is easy to use, runs fine even on modest hardware, and doesn't push a bunch of shitty ads at you. I think there is an option for telemetry, but I also think that disabling it actually disables it.
Wine and Proton have gotten so good that outside of modern MS Office, most Windows things just run if you need it, but if you're not using MS Office heavily then you likely can get by with web apps and/or the Linux alternatives.
Maybe it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
The neo is the Chromebook for education revolution. It’s cheap and better than 98%+ of windows laptops. I’d not be surprised to see further Mac penetration to the business sector
I think it’s worth mentioning also- 8 GB ram on a Mac is not the same as 8 GB on a windows OS machine, given the poor state of windows as an OS as of the past few years.
Do browsers and Electron apps magically take up less memory on Macs? What is "good enough?" I never notice problems on my 16GB Windows laptop, so just for fun I closed all of my 6 always-on Electron-type apps, all of the 10 browser windows I had open, a couple other ever-present apps, and it looks like without anything else Windows 10 takes about 4GB, which I think is in the same ballpark as OS X. And I probably have some stuff running that I didn't close, this is very unscientific.
Anecdotally also, my one laptop that I've upgraded to Windows 11 is a lot snappier. As a rule I haven't noticed memory pressure on any device I've owned ever as a "regular user," it only really applies to gaming and heavy development with lots of VMs, especially these days.
I don’t see much “for anybody”, but I do see a lot of “for students / people who browse the web / word processing” which is still a pretty large set of people, and the Neo handles those workloads just fine
13” is not really that small. It’s a screen size many people choose.
The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. It seems pretty clearly a play for students who will eventually enter the business world with their personal laptop preferences.
I spent one year using an M1 8GB Macbook Air as a professional developer during covid. The A18 Pro flies around the M1. You can definitely use this as a dev - especially when we're just prompting AI nowadays.
Buying a gaming laptop is like buying have a sports car. Sure, it looks nice, and you may even be able to wheel it around a bit. But it's not the ideal experience.
Apple is in the process of fixing Tahoe which was a regression from Sequoia the previous release. Tahoe is decent with 26.4 though from what I am hearing. Either OS version is far far better than regular Windows 11 though.
Apple’s real differentiator is their silicon. M series chips are just incredibly good and you get a full workday out of them on battery.
The M1 Pro I still have at work is easily the best laptop I have ever used. For side projects I use an M4 air with maxed out RAM and it has no issues with anything I have thrown at it.
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.
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?
why must I use a low-security PIN in place of your pre-existing password?
FAFAIK, all characters that are allowed in a user password are also allowed in device PIN codes. Knowing Microsoft, I'm sure there's domain policies to alter/restrict this. And the idea behind it is sound: that PIN is tied only to a single device, meaning that even if someone watches you enter your device passcode (or uses a keylogger), they can't go to a different machine or online portal and re-use the captured credentials there.
I found virtual files support also somewhat critical. This is not really stable on Linux yet and makes using Nextcloud with 8TB and Million of files pretty difficult.
I recently changed my distro to Bazzite expecting it to work well on a laptop since it's supposedly optimized for handhelds. While it "just works" and I had no hardware problems, it still required tweaking to get the battery life anywhere close to what it would be in Windows. "Normal people" would still need someone to support them with the installation to get it to work well for their machine.
I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.
Interesting; I haven't had wi-fi issues in Linux for more than a decade, but admittedly I sort of selection-bias towards laptops that are known to work fine with Linux.
This is the type of thing that AI is actually good at diagnosing in my experience. Haven't had anything similar happen but seems more of a router issue upstream.
Maybe worth checking what Steam Deck's connection has configured differently given it's on the same network?
The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.
I think that's a fair criticism for issues where Linux devs might be blind to the friction a lot of Linux distros come with, but I don't think it's universal for all devs and for all features, all the time.
Personally, although I'm not a Linux maintainer, I am a dev and I love doing work that makes UX better for everyone.
That's how it has to be. Volunteer community doesn't have the bandwidth to make everything maximally user friendly. Users have to do their share too, by accepting the responsibility to learn about their system. Otherwise the model isn't feasible. If you want an appliance experience where you have zero responsibility as a user, you can go to the commercial vendor, but they will also have power over you and abuse it.
Linux is indeed for people who can love linux. For people who don't like computers, there's basically no solution.
Ironically, 3 of the 4 are unix based with product people in the loop.
Linux can work as the savior of computer users, but it's not going to happen with a bunch of people who fetishize using a computer like trinity in the matrix.
The problem with Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS.
We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!
Anyone who's ever tried to get support online with a question about Linux will quickly meet *actual* user hostility as they're asked why they didn't know to check for the config file in the filing cabinet in the basement behind a locked door saying beware of leopard, how dumb they are, etc.
Half those aren't even remotely harsh. Saying the raspberry pi wasn't designed to be mained is totally reasonable, what possible objection do you have to somebody saying that?
> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux
To specialize that statement a bit, Linux is made and maintained by people who showed up and contributed. These two facts create a vicious cycle. The people show up to add things they love to Linux, and Linux becomes something that only those exact people love. We're deep into this spiral where Linux has become specialized for ultra-nerds who enjoy solving puzzles to get their wifi to work.
If you look at old Linux magazines, the community is completely different. People were focused on "beating Microsoft" and democratizing computing. The people who took those goals seriously have left the scene.
I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.
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.
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.
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 use both, almost on a daily basis, but spend most of my time in Linux (Arch btw).
Both of them deserve equal amount of shame because they're both trying to do the same, force you to have an online account associated with a local user profile, either directly or indirectly.
Not sure why it has to be a contest who "we should shame the most" or whatever, how about saying both of them suck when it comes to this?
Being unable to install an alternate app store or sideload my own apps means I need an apple ID to use the computer I purchased.
Again, android phones with GrapheneOS or windows machines with linux let me use my hardware fully without creating any advertising-ridden-evil-corporate-company's account, including building and running my own apps.
I can't even build my own code for iOS, let alone run it, without an apple account (and paying apple money).
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.
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 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.
Mac doesn't require an Apple ID to use. iPhone only needs one for installing apps, and my only complaint is it's the strictest auth check on the entire phone besides disabling the account. Shouldn't need to input the Apple ID password just to install a free app, shouldn't even ask for passcode.
Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.
I don’t entirely know. It’s not something that especially bothers me.
I will say that I think the forced linking has encouraged other unpleasant behavior like the profile folder hijacking to OneDrive. I rather like having this stuff in OneDrive. I do not like that it is pushed so aggressively. “We moved all your stuff to OneDrive. You need to subscribe so we don’t delete it.” This feels hostile. So some of the distaste with logins tied to the cloud is probably more about the surrounding ecosystem.
An Apple account also isn't required on an iPhone. They certainly encourage you create or link one on device setup, but it's not required to use the phone. Though one IS required to download apps, so you could argue it functionally is required.
How would the answer to this question illuminate your understanding? People using windows at their job also don't care. "Caring" does not need to be consistent across a group of people.
I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.
Yes, I was bunching up Xcode with "Apple ecosystem". I presume you can get clang/gcc without AppleID (but haven't actually done it myself), and for sure many other dev tools.
I'd definitely much prefer if even for "ecosystem" the companies would not require online account except where truly necessary (purchases?), but for operating the OS itself, I do feel there's a line in the sand where online account requirement = no.
It’s impossible to install XCode without an Apple account. It’s only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID. And even XCode beta downloads are locked behind an Apple login.
You can install XCode CLI dev tools without an Apple account, which comes with clang and swift for example. With this, you can build most Mac software, but I don’t think you can run Swift tests without a full XCode.
As the sibling comment notes, you can install GCC/llvm and whatever other open source tools and build Mac software without full XCode.
You can also install Apple container support without an Apple account.
Xcode is also available as a standalone download from developer.apple.com, which requires an account too, but at least it's way more reliable than downloading from the store.
Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.
An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.
Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.
If you own more than one computer, the microsoft account syncs your desktop contents and other parts of the environment.. desktop background is one I've noticed. That can be nice
You certainly can log into a Windows machine without a microsoft account. It's actually still quite common in businesses that you log in with an account managed by your organization, although this is changing as more and more businesses migrate to MS Entra ID. This still isn't exactly a "microsoft account" but its similar.
You can also still log in with a completely local account as well. It takes a few extra minutes to set up but once configured it works fine.
The system is full of dark patterns and roadblocks that steer users towards an MS account, but you don't have to use one.
people remember creating an Apple Account login and using it on their laptop, but don't understand that it's connected in fundamentally different ways.
The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.
I also think that's what they meant. Alternatively, the person could've been asking why Apple hasn't made the same boneheaded mistake as MS. I wasn't sure how to interpret their question to know how to answer it.
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.
> I think it would be unhealthy for Linux in the long term
Mostly agree until this line. MS enshittifying their ecosystem is the resting state and if you believe in the free market (I don't btw), customers voting with their money or data (since they're the product) should be applauded.
TBF Apple does this too on macOS and arguably iOS. I think a lot of their longstanding pushes to merge the two OSes is hostile to their user base who want stronger separations of concerns; a desktop OS has different requirements and capabilities than a phone or a tablet.
Would love to have a Neo with Sequoia which in itself is a step back from Sonoma, but I haven't truly loved any of their OSes since Mountain Lion.
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.
I remember the OG XPS 13 had what Dell called "project sputnik". To my knowledge, it was the first time a Dell laptop shipped with Ubuntu, if not Linux.
Really wanted one, but was a poor recent college grad at the time.
> At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.
I am the same. I used to fiddle and obsess on customising every last thing possible. Now I just want the damn thing to work, and MacOS does exactly that.
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.
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.
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.
A lot of people are finding the Mac Neo very interesting given how unfriendly the whole Win11 experience has become. Either MS learns or the market teaches them the same lessons IBM learnt.
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.
This is so true. When you log in to their website it bounces around through about fifteen different domains before it concludes. I'm nearly sure passport.com is still in there.
The only benefit I've seen to having a Microsoft account is that I don't have to remember a cd key anymore if I have to reinstall... other than that, what was it actually used for?
The enshittifiers don't seem to understand inertia. By the time the enshittification becomes bad enough to do something about it, it's too late.
For that to happen, people have to be pissed off enough that it starts affecting metrics. Then, that needs to be detected, a decision to do something about it has to be made (we are probably somewhere around here), then that decision needs to be implemented step by step by removing all the enshittification... and in the meantime, the reputation as a terminally enshittified product keeps growing.
Even if most of the enshittification is removed, the reputation will stick for a while, just like the product was able to initially keep being successful despite the enshittification.
You’ve always been able to install and use without an account (oobe\bypassnro). As long as power users and businesses can avoid it, they have no real incentive to change.
Note on Current Status (2025/2026): Microsoft is actively removing this command in newer Windows 11 updates, especially in 24H2/25H2 and Insider builds. If oobe\bypassnro fails, the command is not recognized, or simply reboots without enabling the option, you must use alternative methods.
hmm MS killing off MS Windows by employing the Google AI and surveillance in everything push....who would have guessed that MS ran out of product ideas!
>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.
Age verification just requires that one be able to provide an age when setting up an account. Like, for example, when you setup an account for your child on the device. This doesn't seem to require any sort of online account requirement as far as I understand it.
Alternatively, they yelled back then and were dismissed but now have some political ammo to push their case. I mean, if it was actually backfiring enough, they would not have to "fight" for it now, Windows PMs themselves would be scrambling to do it.
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?
Great - so even Microsoft is not convinced to force everyone into having a Microslop Account. We need to change Microsoft - its current culture is too evil.
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.
This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to run it and make it really hard or impossible for user to turn it off. As a user, I no longer feel like I'm driving the car--I'm just a passenger. "Where do you want to go today?" has turned into "You're going here today, whether you want to or not!"
I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues.
If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs.
https://github.com/christitustech/winutil
Bloat will come back on every update. It's futile.
I also think Windows' native window tiling is one of its best features, but there's a fantastic program called Swish that implements tiling for MacOS in a very native-feeling way. It supports keyboard shortcuts, but it's built around really elegant touchpad gestures. Highly recommend if that's all that's keeping you on Windows.
The other native Windows feature I really like is the clipboard manager, and I don't have a great replacement for that yet. I'm kind of shocked Apple hasn't built one. If anyone has a recommendation that feels native instead of like a ported Linux widget, please share.
Apple did introduce one this past fall as part of Spotlight
I'm using Raycast on Mac, it has a bunch of stuff included but I use it only for its Clipboard History extension.
They mentioned Visual Studio, as in full-fat VS, not VS Code. That's only ever going to run on Windows.
It actually did run on MacOS until recently. Personally I like Rider over Studio, but yes, if that's a hard requirement they are stuck.
No, it was not real Visual Studio on MacOS, it was rebranded Xamarin IDE.
The only tolerable Windows 11 experience is a corporate PC with Active Directory login.
And an IT department vetting updates before they go out.
the same IT department that got blamed not allowed user changing wallpaper or installing crowstrike
Use LTSC. It'll fix all the issues you are mentioning here.
Second ltsc -look into it once you try you will never go back. Available from various resellers nowadays. It is, what windows should be sold as.
LTSC cannot be bought as a regular customer unfortunately. Legally, regular customers are only allowed to use the enshittified version.
Get Windows LTSC instead and run Firefox ! Most problems solved.
Recently I'm finding MSN home opened in Chrome over night. Aparently it's connected to some "active probing" feature, and I do have scheduled nightly restarts in the home router. But come on... No one could convince me it's not intended to inflate MSN numbers.
Don't forget the search that doesn't work. You have app "X" installed? You type X and it doesn't find it, but gives you irrelevant results about X.
Windows' search has been broken for multiple generations now. Some people inside Microsoft seemingly even know, that's why the PowerToys team created "PowerToys Run." A Windows Search that actually basically functions correctly.
People act like it sudden was broken in Windows 11 when in reality it never worked correctly in 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 either. Instead of fixing it, they've only made it worse. It seems like nobody in Microsoft works on core stuff anymore.
As far as I remember it was working well in 7 and 8 (deterministic and shows programs that you expect it to show). From 10 it started behaving erratically (same time it got binged but maybe unrelated).
Yeah, I've never experienced Windows search ever working. Even on XP, it couldn't find commonly opened folders or programs for me. It always felt like some sort of joke feature just meant to fool me into wasting time.
At one point (last year?) internet search results would load in first so quickly typing and pressing "enter" from muscle memory would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted..
Then also in the past year or two the internet search results were lagging the entire search UI causing type jank and stutters.
I disabled internet results in the registry but a recent update seems to have caused that setting to no longer apply ;(
>> would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted.
and even worse, in Edge!
Same problem on MacOS.
One of the first things to do on a fresh install is to disable the Web search results in Start menu search. There's a setting in the registry to do it.
>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.
Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.
>gradually and then suddenly.
governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". they have contracts, and cash flow concerns. you cannot suddenly replaces tens to hundreds of thousands of machines.
20-50 years down the road? maybe! they (microsoft) surely arent doing themselves many favors. but they are certainly not in "significant danger" today.
"Suddenly" in this case does not mean tomorrow.
It means that, today, a lot of enterprises begin pondering the question, and then about a year from now, they start seriously studying and prototyping it, and then "suddenly" in 2029 Microsoft starts seeing a deluge of defections. It means a whole bunch of peopling finishing the conversion all at once, relatively speaking, even if that "all at once" is 3-4 years away.
To put it another way, the thresholds where people get annoyed enough to quit are highly correlated to each other. If individuals on HN are posting "I don't want to switch, I've been working this way for decades now, but Windows has crossed the line for me, I've switched to Linux, and it was easier than I thought it would be", then corporations and governments are having very similar deliberations internally.
This is probably a more accurate model for how "influencers" seem to work than the idea that some crazy guy in your organization falls in love with Product X and evangelizes it internally. I'm sure that happens and is a real force, but this correlation-of-experience effect is probably bigger on the whole. If Product X was good enough to make an evangelist internally, or more germane to this conversation, to make some a mortal enemy of it internally, it's usually because it was a good enough or bad enough product to be able to do that in the first place, and eventually everyone will figure it out in exactly the same way, just later.
20 years is way too large a minimum estimate. If Microsoft responds correctly that might be good, but if they just decide to rest on their laurels and extract whatever value they can out of Windows while they can, Windows would never last 20 years of that. Even the slowest organizations can move faster than that. After all, to cut Microsoft's revenues off at the knees, they don't need to remove every last Windows 2000 server in their backoffice they can't upgrade, they need to cut out just the majority of desktop licenses.
>20 years is way too large a minimum estimate.
i disagree. unless intuit is also rewriting quickbooks, dassault systèmes is rewriting solidworks, every bank is rewriting their custom windows-only software, every government branch is rewriting their custom windows-only software, etc. and every company is willing to retrain 95% of their employees on a new operating system, have increased support requirements for a few years at least, etc.
not even touching the capital required for such a transition that in many cases has questionable benefits (from a business perspective).
time will tell! i have first-hand experience with how fast banks move, so i will stick by my 20 year minimum. happy to see otherwise, though.
in any case. what i replied to was a claim that windows is in "significant danger" today. it is not.
It's an interesting case to me. The company I work for has been shipping systems on windows since the 90's despite pretty consistent requests from customers to ship hardware on Linux. 2 years ago we started creating our own Linux distribution and this year started shipping products on it. We still ship a lot of stuff on Windows 11, but that market share is starting to shift now. 10 years from now I could see us completely moved to our Linux distro. Now, what's actually interesting is that it wasn't customer requests or efficient capital allocation that drove this. Microsoft effectively forced us to do this against our will by a combination discontinued products and handling of Windows 11 and now that we've spent the capital we won't be going back.
It doesn't take all the specialized Windows-only line-of-business software being rewritten to have massive defections to Linux happen.
The market you're describing is real, and very significant—but I don't think it's even a majority of Windows users. If so, it's a small one.
And imagine what even 30-40% of all Windows sales disappearing over the course of 2-3 years would do to Microsoft. To Windows as a platform.
Then imagine what would happen if it was 50-70%.
The former, I would describe as "a disaster".
The latter, I would describe as "apocalyptic". (Y'know. For Microsoft as a company. Not in general.)
Still, a lot of those woke up from a profound sleep about digital sovereignty and are now contemplating leaving the American software ecosystem.
It won't be sudden, until it is
You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.
most people are not willing to learn an entire new operating system for no reason, though. this might happen in tech-based companies, sure, but banks? accounting firms? ive never seen them offer macbooks.
this is also ignoring all of the critical software that is windows-only (e.g. quickbooks, solidworks, bespoke programs in banks and government).
point is: microsoft is not in "significant danger" today.
An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine, or only occasionally having done so when it was absolutely necessary.
>An increasing number of people are coming into the workplace never having used a Windows machine
i would love to see your numbers for this. what does "increasing percentage" mean? 1% -> 2%? 10% -> 20%?
i teach at a college level, in tech, and would estimate ~5% of incoming students have any experience with something other than windows on a pc, at best. outside of tech, i would estimate ~2%.
Most people dont even use the operating system. They look for the apps menu, then click what they want to run. Most people can switch between OSes easier than you think because there really isn't that much difference in how they work on the surface.
users are one component, but you are still ignoring/forgetting the rest.
user management, file management, security, windows-specific software, auditing requirements, required capital investment, lack of competent linux sysadmins compared to windows sysadmins, and so on.
and then something like COVID happens and they change fast.
expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.
well, it happened with Teams meetings replacing fancy CISCO equipments.
It happened with all the vpn+shared drives buried to just use SPO.
different experience,I guess.
Did your employees got trained? or just sent the link to 3 'online trainings'?
Managers manage to switch to Mac seamlessly. I am sure the rest will follow with cheaper macs now available. And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
>And now, with 'office on the web', you can use basic office everywhere. (even on Debian)
office is a tiny, almost negligible, piece of the puzzle. quickbooks, solidworks and other cad software, bespoke software, security software, user management, permissions management (replacing active directory), contractual obligations, the millions of dollars required in implementation, the millions more dollars required for increased user support, and so on...
but, again, just to reiterate: i am disputing that windows is in "significant danger" today.
Wait, I'm confused, are you calling moving from Windows to Linux a "decline"? Because I can agree with that ;)
"Decline" in people's trust in a particular platform, in this case. Or the decline of the platform or company itself.
Large parts of one german state switched to open source. First they laughed at them and now they are envious.
The switch to Linux is happening this year. Until the end of the year they want all workers on Linux instead of Windows.
It is possible, and fast if you want it.
> Large parts of one german state switched to open source.
Haven't they been doing this every 5 - 8 years since 2004?
kudos to them!
out of curiosity, "large parts" of "one german state" is how many machines roughly?
i am suspecting that it is probably nowhere near enough to put windows in "significant danger". however, i am rooting for their success and hope that they thoroughly document (and publish) the process. i have never seen a transition like that go smoothly, let alone when it is in government.
This alone obviously doesn’t put Windows in danger, but if it does go over well then it’ll mark a turning point; A large non-techy institution getting away from Microsoft’s castle and being better off for it would signal to the world that it’s not only doable, but could even be worth it. It’ll take a while, but this could be the start of the end for Windows.
>This alone obviously doesn’t put Windows in danger,
so, the quote i specifically replied to said that today windows is in "significant danger", and i said it isnt. we seem to be in agreement.
as for what the future holds, i think it will be much slower than other people. but maybe i am wrong! which would be fine with me.
but, today, windows is not in "significant danger".
That "significant danger" was a bit of dramatization on my part. I don't expect anything to significantly change in the short term. I was more referring to long-term tidal-like change, which would be very hard to stop once momentum builds up.
This exact same thing (literally another german state i think) almost happened about 20 years ago and Microsoft freaked the fuck out. Thats where all the TCO nonsense came from - just one german state trying to de-microsoft.
I think Microsoft won, too.
I think theyre terrified of positive examples. Especially ones with FAR lower TCO and lower geopolitical risks.
> with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isn't much for a home user to get locked-in with
The options for the average user are not linux or windows, but only macOS or Windows. Gaming is abysmal on macOS on any of the current hardware.
That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
>That said, I agree with you that there's less-and-less gaming lock-in on windows, but that's because the majority of gamers are gaming on iOS and android.
I don't think you are aware of how much the landscape has changed regarding gaming and Linux.
ios gamer and pc gamer are different kind of gamers
I agree with this. At this point, Windows is like COBOL.
> far more political than technological
I don't know. A company worth trillions of dollars does a pretty fine job of making Windows incrementally worse in new and interesting ways, each release.
There's some truth; the bloated company structure has contributed to these unforced errors, but just at an engineering level, people are releasing this tripe without the skill or training or backbone to know what is bad, and push back on toxic management decisions.
Engineers collaborating with oppressive management is a technical failure. Google is riddled with the same problem. I'm sure all the FAANG-a-likes do. Paying billions in salaries to sycophant devs. They have the market share to keep failing upwards. They don't deserve it.
Who says the engineers have any leverage they can push with? I sure didn't, when I worked there.
Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem that's played out in construction, automotive and software engineering dozens of times over.
The penalty for Microsoft ignoring their devs might just be a slow decline into irrelevance, not a bridge collapsing, or an autonomous vehicle hitting the lane barrier because the boss refuses to use LiDAR, but it's all bad management causing an engineering problem.
> Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem.
No, that's the very archetype of a political problem. It is a political problem that impacts the engineering output, yes, but still a political problem.
FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...
I've used macOS for years and still don't understand their windows minimize/restore logic. I'm always hunting for my minimized window. Yes, the fault probably lies with me.
OTOH the Windows UI is far better well designed and intuitive. But yeah... I'd rather fumble around in macOS: Windows is always trying to upsell a service that I don't need. If I say no it will helpfully keep reminding me (my answer is never going to change). I have 32GB ram and a recent processor being fed tons of wattage -- it feels so bog slow.
Windows needs to fix itself fast.
reading all these comments about windows having better shortcuts and window management features makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills. windows for me was hands down the worst experience in ux. the shortcuts in macos are so well thought out and consistent.
now i'm using kde in linux land and it's the best and most customizable experience. I can't imagine going back to windows ever and would be missing a lot from linux if i went back to macos(though it would be fine).
getting macos keybinding in linux land is a game changer to me: https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy and this just makes me feel at home.
Overall it does sound like KDE is possibly the experience that you desire - did you try it before?
macOS does not and never has had a good strategy for handling minimizing windows. Keep in mind that prior to Mac OS X, you couldn't minimize windows at all, you could only roll them up. When OS X added the dock, they made minimized windows go there. Except, the Dock is an icon grid, so there's no way to see window titles, and the windows themselves are so small that it is difficult to identify them at a glance. Making things worse, the Dock is also a place you put app icons, so now you have an icon to show all your non-minimized app icons, right next to all your minimized window icons.
Meanwhile, Windows had minimize since version 2[0], except for whatever reason windows minimized to desktop icons, and there was no desktop folder. They'd known they'd invented a worse version of Mac OS, and in Windows 95 they made sure that there was not only a real desktop, but also a list of all open windows. This design was so successful that the only major tweak that stuck was merging the taskbar and Quick Launch[1] into something that superficially resembles the OSX dock, but is just plain better[2] because clicking an app icon actually shows you all the open windows.
[0] I don't have a Windows 1 install to check with.
[1] Strictly speaking you could put anything in Quick Launch, but only apps go in the Win7 taskbar
[2] Oldschool NeXT users will point out that in NeXTSTEP, minimized windows had an actual title on them, and the app icon instead of a screenshot of the window at tiny scale.
This may be the first time that sentiment's ever been expressed.
Why do you say that?
A lot of shortcuts are shared between windows and linux and fairly consistent across applications. Mac is the one that takes a decided "we're different" approach to shortcuts. I.e., Alt+L for address bar instead of Alt+D, Command swapping with Control, Q instead of W for closing tabs, Command+Control+Q for locking a computer instead of Super+L, etc
They didn't mention cross-OS shortcuts, though. I interpreted "across the operating systems" as meaning "across the various versions of Windows". Yes, Windows is more consistent with their own common shortcuts. But Macs have exceedingly consistent shortcuts across Mac applications, compared to my experience with Windows and especially Linux.
I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existed, so it's not really fair to describe them as the "different" one when MS chose their own, different shortcuts for Windows.
Apple also invented their own key “Apple” now “CMD” for operation like copy / paste to explicitly not have the issue to overload the already know escape sequences. Windows being on a system without a normalized keyboard had to reuse keys that are common to keyboards used back then. Vertical integration played into apples cards even back then.
The location of the command key is also a lot more comfortable. Thumb vs pinky.
I setup my Linux system to use it because it's more consistent for copy pasting in a terminal.
The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5.
Not to mention the muscle memory for pressing CTRL in the corner of the keyboard rather than CMD where Alt is.
Though I will say that having "Copy" (cmd-c) being different from ^C (ctrl-c) was kind of nice. Though Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it, and sends ^C the second time.
Conversely, when I use a PC, I have to stop and wonder why alt-R doesn't reload the web page like it's supposed to, and alt-C doesn't copy, and I have to stretch my pinky all the way over to use that shortcut. And what's the mnemonic for "F5 means reload"?
Which is to say that neither Windows nor Mac shortcuts are inherently better. It's just what we're used to. IME, the main difference is that once you learn the Mac shortcuts in a handful of apps, they'll pretty much work on the other apps you encounter, too.
Ctrl-R reloads the page in every browser that I have used, so perhaps that's what you're looking for.
> The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5.
It's not like you can't change it.
System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts > add your browser > remap the Reload menu item to F5
Along with Karabiner you can pretty much make Mac OS work however you want it to when it comes to keyboard shortcuts.
If you want a little more consistency for muscle memory, ctrl+L goes to the address bar on Windows the same way cmd+L goes to it on Mac. Same for ctrl+W and cmd+W to close tabs.
I've always found the opposite, do you have any examples where macOS falls short compared to Windows in shortcut consistency?
And then there's me, hoping they don't realize that Windows is in danger. The world needs less Microslop.
go freely on Linux. did that switch myself few years back. Double Commander is an exact copy with the same (and configurable) shortcuts.
Isn't part of this Microsoft preparing for the requirement to do age verification in the OS?
It has more to do with Microsoft deciding to emulate Google and Facebook's surveillance capitalism business model.
If you combine mandatory online user accounts with telemetry and Windows Recall, you have a system for building out advertising profiles linked to known individuals.
I get that. But it's also the case that they can justify this by claiming that they have to do it for each verification.
+1 for Total Commander mention, its bizarre how many otherwise smart folks completely ignore this productivity enhancer. I keep showing it to colleagues but they all anyway revert back to basic clunky File explorer and variants.
Doesn't matter if I show them that I can be easily 10x faster, do stuff simply impossible otherwise, has tons of plugins etc. its just ignored.
The only negative side of Total Commander is I'm extremly used to it - been using it since mid 90s. When I compare alternatives on Mac I'm searching for exact keyboard commands, navigation patterns, etc. I'm using Crax Commander, but it's not the same.
TC is probably one of the reasons I don't care that much about problems in newer versions of Windows, I don't use Explorer, I don't use windows search, text is viewed with Lister and not Notepad...
I don't know about Total Commander because that appears to be Windows-only, but twin-pane "Commanders" (named after NC) do seem more popular in certain circles. They're still in wide use in Eastern Europe. Commanders have also influenced Dolphin, which has a built in twin-pane view (but it's not a commander because it lacks the typical keybinds) and there's a commander called Krusader that is a better fit.
Also a big plug for Far:
https://farmanager.com/
> I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.
I realize you probably are referencing visual studio, but at the OS level KDE plasma seems to have copped Windows hot keys wholesale. I was giving it a go recently and was delighted that even meta+arrow keys for monitor switching fullscreen apps works. My only gripe, and what got me booting back into windows, was that even the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky to reliably play multiplayer online games.
> the latest wifi drivers for my brand new wifi 7 motherboard were too flaky
A GL.iNet travel router in WiFi to ethernet bridge mode is an excellent stopgap until Linux support arrives. It also has the benefits of (a) taking with you on trips for safer/easier internet use (use your home SSID, even auto-VPN traffic if you want) and (b) letting you plug in other wired-only devices adjacent to the computer.
Here are their travel routers filtered to just those that support WiFi 6 and 7: https://store-us.gl-inet.com/collections/travel-routers?filt...
For the AI frontier, I find my windows PC just about useless unfortunately. Too much tooling and package doesn't adapt to WSL+windows host well. I've shifted my entire dev experience to my mbp which used to be my backup. Can't imagine the new generation of vibe coder will even consider a windows box.
> Too much tooling and package doesn't adapt to WSL+windows host well
Curious about this, what specifically?
I've been using MacBook at work for years and I still perceive UX as fundamentally broken - I'm incapable of doing basic operations in Finder or changing basic system settings, and random shit I didn't want to press pops up when I'm doing other things. I feel like my grandpa trying to adjust to new phone. I will never ever recommend anything Apple to anyone.
Having said the above, I think that KDE is almost there to have a functional UX that can replace Windows. Not there yet because of random bugs, but almost almost.
Once gamers actually switch to Linux, which is a viable thing, they'll teach their family members. Home users will switch to Linux, and Windows will become an exclusively enterprise and government thing. But once average person is comfortable with Linux because they have it at home, those institutions will start switching to Linux too. And that's how Microsoft will fall. Just like most other corporations - through their own greed.
> I'm still a Windows power user
I used to be, but in 2004 I switched to Linux.
I still use windows as a secondary operating system on another computer, though only Win10. I decided I will not transition to anything after Win10 as Microslop declared war on the users with Win11. Which was the case already before Win11, of course, but I feel the qualitative difference is too much now.
That would improve things.
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.
This happened on my work machine. One day I noticed tons of important files had been deleted without my permission after being migrated to OneDrive online only. At no point did I authorize anything like this and it took some time to copy them all back and disable everything I could access related to this.
Utter insanity that this can happen in a major OS. I switched to Linux for personal use years ago and have only gotten more grateful for that decision over time. My head would explode if a Linux distro tried any number of things that Windows regularly does to abuse their users, it's unfathomable.
> OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only
Holy shit that's nuts!
That must be the free version of OneDrive that forces cloud only.
It doesn't force cloud only. It defaults to cloud only. This is for both free and paid versions.
It has been this way for 3 years.
> saved it on OneDrive which now defaults to storing online only
This is why local backups should always have the highest priority.
Storing online can be useful, but people should never forget that local backups are the best.
Fully agree.
The problem is that on a fresh system with a free MS account, OneDrive shows up as the first choice as “$User - Personal files”. No notice that this actually only stores it online and offers only a fraction of the 1TB local drive.
Truly deceptive and my mistake for not noticing when I helped to set up that laptop.
Don't feel bad. Even if you noticed, It is likely that during the next "security" update, one drive would be re-enabled, as the default - and possibly everything moved there.
lol wtf
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
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.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop.
They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."
Please, by all means do post a link to a comparable new Windows laptop for $400, including a fast GPU, reasonable amount of fast storage (and not counting an SD card or such), a high-DPI monitor, and non-embarassing build quality. I'd love to see this.
The GPU in the Neo isn't particularly fast...nor is the storage. Neo makes loads of compromises to hit $600 with some of it's features. Even for $400 you can get Windows PCs with TWO whole USB 3.0 ports. $400 quickly hits diminishing returns territory.
Like here's a $500 PC:
https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processo... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic...
Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.
Should be at least 4X the RAM and 4X CPU cores, just to run Windows at a comparable speed.
So for $100 less, you get a markedly lower-DPI screen that's 40% dimmer, a slower CPU, hotter running, and a worse chassis. Almost no one's going to be slapping multiple external monitors on either of these. If they did, they might run into the problem where the Acer is often limited to 640x480: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/733442/have-a-new-a...
That is not remotely in the same category as the Neo.
You get twice as much RAM, twice as much storage. 4x faster storage too. You get a full sized HDMI port. You can do multiple monitors if you need to. It has a fan for better sustained performance. You can plug in a flash drive, mouse, monitor or other external peripheral without a dongle. Oh, and it's actually COOLER running than the Neo.
The Neo costs a $100 more, needs a $30 dongle to connect to 90% of the stuff people have, has half the RAM, half the storage, slower storage. Has considerably worse I/O. But has a better screen and build quality comparable to a MacBook Pro from 2007.
It's different compromises. Personally I'd rather have more RAM, storage and IO than a prettier case and better screen.
You don’t need to buy Apple adapters. You can buy a $10 usbc to hdmi adapter off Amazon and it’ll work just fine.
Same thing with the USB A ports. Not really selling point imo.
Apple's official HDMI adapter is $70. I was already talking generic.
Or just use a Thunderbolt cable to send video, power, and USB to a newer monitor with a single cord. That’s my work setup and I’d never go back.
And yeah, USB A? I got a cheapo C-to-A hub for my dwindling number of legacy devices. There’s no remaining upside to A.
On the Neo that doesn't support Thunderbolt? Or on the Acer that supports USB4 and might actually work with the hub?
It's a weird choice to pair with a budget laptop since monitors that support that are usually several dollars extra...
You're proving the point. The computer you found wins on the specs page for sure. But the proof is in the pudding; Apple makes money hand over fist because they focus on reasonable specs, and quality. The thing that kills a modern laptop is not a slow CPU or RAM on the chip; it's a cheap chassis that breaks. That's what makes people change their computer.
Apple wins on the perception of being a luxury brand. That's it.
I have thirty years worth of old laptops in a closet. The macs all have hinges that still work.
It’s nice to own things designed to not fall apart after a few years.
It’s not just about perception. Apple doesn’t load your computer up with crapware and ads from the five different companies in the supply chain.
They got away with it forever because at $600 there was no competition.
I would say it’s more that Microsoft will make your $600 feel cheap, Apple will make it feel respectable.
That, and having a machine at this price point that people aren’t horrified to use.
What makes it horrifying? Plastic? Is the only thing that's important the material it's made out of? I think there's many use cases where the Acer would be less horrifying to use than the Neo. Which device would be better for running a Linux VM for CS class homework for example?
Hypervisor.framework on the Mac, personally.
With half the RAM?
A vanishingly small number of end users (both PC and Mac) care about how much RAM they have. I'd be willing to bet that at least 25% of PC and Mac laptop owners couldn't even tell you how much RAM they have, or they mistake hard disk storage for RAM or vice versa.
The screen is also much worse. 60% SRGB coverage 1920x1200 300 nits vs 97% 2408x1506 500 nits. I'd pick the macbook neo for $99 extra.
The specs may be comparable, but not the end result : my $2000 Windows 11 laptop is slower and laggier than the Neo.
Is it your personal or corporate PC with corporate junk on it?
Personal PC. Fresh install from the official ISO with the least bloatware. It's still a nightmare.
So… the contention is that Windows isn’t good for work use? That’s not a compelling argument in its favor.
No, the contention is that corporate junk has a tendency to slow down PCs and equivalent software would do the same to the Neo or worse.
Huh, guess I’ve never worked at a Mac shop big enough to suffer Mac-ruining software. My biggest shop only had about 15,000 employees, so maybe it’s only the large companies enduring that.
You are right about the first part but I think you're overestimating the number of people that see Apple products as status symbols. Maybe that was true a decade ago but I don't think it is anymore. Enough of the products have found their way to every country imaginable over time that an Apple laptop is... just another laptop.
A fun, brightly colored, relatively inexpensive, Windows-less laptop that you can use for doing your taxes while watching a movie has appeal. The performance isn't that important, so long as it is as responsive as the owner's phone.
Can you recommend a Windows laptop in the $400 range? I'm interested in a craptop for various Windows things that still pop up from time to time.
Used T model Thinkpad probably? That's the least original advice you're going to get if you ask a bunch of nerds, and these guys know their computers ;)
The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people.
I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed.
Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such.
The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.
200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops. Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768.
This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.
The only things I recognize on that are the CPU brand name (there have been times the Celeron has been good bang for the buck), the RAM, and the storage (I guess and the resolution).
To me, all of those seem woefully underpowered, but $180 is $180...
Used, on eBay you can find something very capable for 200 to 250.
Around 300$ it gets better, specifically if you're open to Dell and other brands.
I bought my mother in law a Lenovo Thinkbook for Christmas; I didn't know that the Macbook Neo was coming else I might have waited for that.
Anyway, I installed Linux Mint on there. She has been using it every day and at least according to her there hasn't really been any jank (and I told her to call me any time if something breaks and I'll fix it).
At this point, I think Linux distros have gotten good enough to realistically start stealing users away from Windows. Linux Mint is easy to use, runs fine even on modest hardware, and doesn't push a bunch of shitty ads at you. I think there is an option for telemetry, but I also think that disabling it actually disables it.
Wine and Proton have gotten so good that outside of modern MS Office, most Windows things just run if you need it, but if you're not using MS Office heavily then you likely can get by with web apps and/or the Linux alternatives.
Maybe it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
The neo is the Chromebook for education revolution. It’s cheap and better than 98%+ of windows laptops. I’d not be surprised to see further Mac penetration to the business sector
13 inch screen though.. it's really small
And with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say
I'm seeing a lot of "8GB ought to be enough for anybody" here over the last week....
Steam report is a good thing to look at:
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac
For Mac, 30% are at 8GB, 43% at 16GB.
Windows has nearly nobody below 16GB (27%) and the biggest is 32GB (58%)
I think it’s worth mentioning also- 8 GB ram on a Mac is not the same as 8 GB on a windows OS machine, given the poor state of windows as an OS as of the past few years.
I forgot about magical Mac memory.
Just keep it under one browser tab, bro.
It actually is magic Mac memory. No joke. 8GB on macOS is good enough for 80% of people.
Do browsers and Electron apps magically take up less memory on Macs? What is "good enough?" I never notice problems on my 16GB Windows laptop, so just for fun I closed all of my 6 always-on Electron-type apps, all of the 10 browser windows I had open, a couple other ever-present apps, and it looks like without anything else Windows 10 takes about 4GB, which I think is in the same ballpark as OS X. And I probably have some stuff running that I didn't close, this is very unscientific.
Anecdotally also, my one laptop that I've upgraded to Windows 11 is a lot snappier. As a rule I haven't noticed memory pressure on any device I've owned ever as a "regular user," it only really applies to gaming and heavy development with lots of VMs, especially these days.
Swap on macOS is incredibly good. Not sure how Apple does it. Maybe hardware compression?
I don’t see much “for anybody”, but I do see a lot of “for students / people who browse the web / word processing” which is still a pretty large set of people, and the Neo handles those workloads just fine
Literally two comments above mine in this discussion:
> The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people.
I rest my case.
"students / web browsing / word processing" == typical people, but maybe that's my own biases
13” is not really that small. It’s a screen size many people choose.
The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. It seems pretty clearly a play for students who will eventually enter the business world with their personal laptop preferences.
> The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly.
This really is the key point.
The Neo is not a work laptop (At least, not for engineers). It's a low-end laptop designed to compete with Chromebooks.
I spent one year using an M1 8GB Macbook Air as a professional developer during covid. The A18 Pro flies around the M1. You can definitely use this as a dev - especially when we're just prompting AI nowadays.
Buying a gaming laptop is like buying have a sports car. Sure, it looks nice, and you may even be able to wheel it around a bit. But it's not the ideal experience.
Meanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse.
Not that I'd know, I've probably seen <10 apple laptop devices in my life and never used one.
Apple is in the process of fixing Tahoe which was a regression from Sequoia the previous release. Tahoe is decent with 26.4 though from what I am hearing. Either OS version is far far better than regular Windows 11 though.
Apple’s real differentiator is their silicon. M series chips are just incredibly good and you get a full workday out of them on battery.
The M1 Pro I still have at work is easily the best laptop I have ever used. For side projects I use an M4 air with maxed out RAM and it has no issues with anything I have thrown at it.
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.
Enterprise is where the money is.
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?
Please fix it all.
why must I use a low-security PIN in place of your pre-existing password?
FAFAIK, all characters that are allowed in a user password are also allowed in device PIN codes. Knowing Microsoft, I'm sure there's domain policies to alter/restrict this. And the idea behind it is sound: that PIN is tied only to a single device, meaning that even if someone watches you enter your device passcode (or uses a keylogger), they can't go to a different machine or online portal and re-use the captured credentials there.
Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.
The only two moats MS has for desktop OS usage are:
1) Kernel-level DRM for multiplayer games (looking at you, Marathon)
2) Intentionally nerfed MSO 365 apps on web and macOS
You could make a strong case that MDM (which InTune uses as well) negates the AD + GPO advantages of the past 20+ years in enterprise.
> 1) Kernel-level DRM for multiplayer games (looking at you, Marathon)
This finally forced me to quit League of Legends (this is a buff)
I found virtual files support also somewhat critical. This is not really stable on Linux yet and makes using Nextcloud with 8TB and Million of files pretty difficult.
I recently changed my distro to Bazzite expecting it to work well on a laptop since it's supposedly optimized for handhelds. While it "just works" and I had no hardware problems, it still required tweaking to get the battery life anywhere close to what it would be in Windows. "Normal people" would still need someone to support them with the installation to get it to work well for their machine.
I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.
Interesting; I haven't had wi-fi issues in Linux for more than a decade, but admittedly I sort of selection-bias towards laptops that are known to work fine with Linux.
This is the type of thing that AI is actually good at diagnosing in my experience. Haven't had anything similar happen but seems more of a router issue upstream.
Maybe worth checking what Steam Deck's connection has configured differently given it's on the same network?
100%
With ssh access to the underlying arch/fedora fork, it'd be an easy fix with AI
What is the constant? You have something that is unusual and that has not changed for 18 years. Is it specific to your home network?
I have not had any issues I can remember with Linux wifi for as long as I have used wifi.
You can mess around or go buy a $10 gbit USB dongle that you know works like a tplink.
Like what sort of response times for each?
The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.
I think that's a fair criticism for issues where Linux devs might be blind to the friction a lot of Linux distros come with, but I don't think it's universal for all devs and for all features, all the time.
Personally, although I'm not a Linux maintainer, I am a dev and I love doing work that makes UX better for everyone.
> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux.
I think I'd probably say that the problem with Windows is it's made and maintained by people who own macbooks.
I am convinced that nobody at Microslop uses any of their products.
That's how it has to be. Volunteer community doesn't have the bandwidth to make everything maximally user friendly. Users have to do their share too, by accepting the responsibility to learn about their system. Otherwise the model isn't feasible. If you want an appliance experience where you have zero responsibility as a user, you can go to the commercial vendor, but they will also have power over you and abuse it.
Linux is indeed for people who can love linux. For people who don't like computers, there's basically no solution.
>there's basically no solution
Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS.
Ironically, 3 of the 4 are unix based with product people in the loop.
Linux can work as the savior of computer users, but it's not going to happen with a bunch of people who fetishize using a computer like trinity in the matrix.
The problem with Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS.
We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!
Windows is arguably philosophically user-hostile.
Anyone who's ever tried to get support online with a question about Linux will quickly meet *actual* user hostility as they're asked why they didn't know to check for the config file in the filing cabinet in the basement behind a locked door saying beware of leopard, how dumb they are, etc.
Not my experience at least. You can go to the forum of archlinux and see the replies. They tend to be quite useful and in a good tone.
Within the last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463982
"But, a Raspberry Pi isn't supposed to be a replacement for your desktop; it is meant as a device for experimentation."
"why couldn't you read the self-contradicting docs and pick the right option?" (paraphrased)
"just because you don't know how to follow the instructions, doesn't make the OS bad."
" By now, you should see that years of experience != knowing how to use things."
"Yeah. Maybe just stop using Linux. You'll never be happy with it anyway. Most its-never-my-fault people aren't."
This has been my experience with the Linux community for 26 years.
Half those aren't even remotely harsh. Saying the raspberry pi wasn't designed to be mained is totally reasonable, what possible objection do you have to somebody saying that?
Which isn't really a problem because that doesn't stop anyone from installing it. Next year could be 6%, the year after that 7%... That's quite a lot!
> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux
To specialize that statement a bit, Linux is made and maintained by people who showed up and contributed. These two facts create a vicious cycle. The people show up to add things they love to Linux, and Linux becomes something that only those exact people love. We're deep into this spiral where Linux has become specialized for ultra-nerds who enjoy solving puzzles to get their wifi to work.
If you look at old Linux magazines, the community is completely different. People were focused on "beating Microsoft" and democratizing computing. The people who took those goals seriously have left the scene.
I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.
"Product people" have long been involved, it's called Ubuntu and SteamOS.
Do we think these companies aren't selling anything??
You really think it's product people pushing enshitification rather than the people who want to financialize every aspect of our lives?
Every product person I have worked with was just a SME in their domain, and pushed for a cohesive piece of software that solved their (users) needs.
I dropped Windows when Microsoft first added ads. My last Windows 7 machine was turned off last year.
It's just better without Microsoft.
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.
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.
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 use both, almost on a daily basis, but spend most of my time in Linux (Arch btw).
Both of them deserve equal amount of shame because they're both trying to do the same, force you to have an online account associated with a local user profile, either directly or indirectly.
Not sure why it has to be a contest who "we should shame the most" or whatever, how about saying both of them suck when it comes to this?
Does iOS truly require it? I thought that was only if you wanted to use the store.
Being unable to install an alternate app store or sideload my own apps means I need an apple ID to use the computer I purchased.
Again, android phones with GrapheneOS or windows machines with linux let me use my hardware fully without creating any advertising-ridden-evil-corporate-company's account, including building and running my own apps.
I can't even build my own code for iOS, let alone run it, without an apple account (and paying apple money).
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.
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.
No, they should leave it. Make it as onerous and tedious and annoying as possible to set up a new computer.
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.
Chaos agent hahaha
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.
Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?
Fundamentally, I think you are driving at a legitimate complaint and it should be a concern with Apple products.
The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.
Mac doesn't require an Apple ID to use. iPhone only needs one for installing apps, and my only complaint is it's the strictest auth check on the entire phone besides disabling the account. Shouldn't need to input the Apple ID password just to install a free app, shouldn't even ask for passcode.
Setting up an iPad was rather obnoxious on this front, though. So, fundamentally, it is still very similar.
Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.
But what about our phones? Why are people so OK with an online account for their phone or tablet but not laptop?
I don’t entirely know. It’s not something that especially bothers me.
I will say that I think the forced linking has encouraged other unpleasant behavior like the profile folder hijacking to OneDrive. I rather like having this stuff in OneDrive. I do not like that it is pushed so aggressively. “We moved all your stuff to OneDrive. You need to subscribe so we don’t delete it.” This feels hostile. So some of the distaste with logins tied to the cloud is probably more about the surrounding ecosystem.
An Apple account also isn't required on an iPhone. They certainly encourage you create or link one on device setup, but it's not required to use the phone. Though one IS required to download apps, so you could argue it functionally is required.
How would the answer to this question illuminate your understanding? People using windows at their job also don't care. "Caring" does not need to be consistent across a group of people.
What kind of answer is this? This seems condescending and literally provides no answer.
Why even post this?
You read what you want into the message, but have you considered turning your own perspective onto your own post?
I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.
I had to make one to download Xcode from the store. I couldn' figure out a way around it, but admittedly I have about 4 hours of macos experience.
Yes, I was bunching up Xcode with "Apple ecosystem". I presume you can get clang/gcc without AppleID (but haven't actually done it myself), and for sure many other dev tools.
I'd definitely much prefer if even for "ecosystem" the companies would not require online account except where truly necessary (purchases?), but for operating the OS itself, I do feel there's a line in the sand where online account requirement = no.
Xcode needs an Apple ID for download but the macOS SDK and toolchain does not.
Try to run any developer tool or "xcode-select install" and it'll download the command-line tools independently from Xcode.
(and then bring your own IDE)
It’s impossible to install XCode without an Apple account. It’s only distributed through the Mac App Store, and downloads from Mac App Store require an Apple ID. And even XCode beta downloads are locked behind an Apple login.
You can install XCode CLI dev tools without an Apple account, which comes with clang and swift for example. With this, you can build most Mac software, but I don’t think you can run Swift tests without a full XCode.
As the sibling comment notes, you can install GCC/llvm and whatever other open source tools and build Mac software without full XCode.
You can also install Apple container support without an Apple account.
Xcode is also available as a standalone download from developer.apple.com, which requires an account too, but at least it's way more reliable than downloading from the store.
you can totally use macOS without an Apple account
Apple is a hardware company -- their software exists to support their hardware.
Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.
The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac.
Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.
My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.
Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.
An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.
Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.
If you own more than one computer, the microsoft account syncs your desktop contents and other parts of the environment.. desktop background is one I've noticed. That can be nice
You certainly can log into a Windows machine without a microsoft account. It's actually still quite common in businesses that you log in with an account managed by your organization, although this is changing as more and more businesses migrate to MS Entra ID. This still isn't exactly a "microsoft account" but its similar.
You can also still log in with a completely local account as well. It takes a few extra minutes to set up but once configured it works fine.
The system is full of dark patterns and roadblocks that steer users towards an MS account, but you don't have to use one.
How do you mean?
people remember creating an Apple Account login and using it on their laptop, but don't understand that it's connected in fundamentally different ways.
The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.
I also think that's what they meant. Alternatively, the person could've been asking why Apple hasn't made the same boneheaded mistake as MS. I wasn't sure how to interpret their question to know how to answer it.
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.
> I think it would be unhealthy for Linux in the long term
Mostly agree until this line. MS enshittifying their ecosystem is the resting state and if you believe in the free market (I don't btw), customers voting with their money or data (since they're the product) should be applauded.
TBF Apple does this too on macOS and arguably iOS. I think a lot of their longstanding pushes to merge the two OSes is hostile to their user base who want stronger separations of concerns; a desktop OS has different requirements and capabilities than a phone or a tablet.
Would love to have a Neo with Sequoia which in itself is a step back from Sonoma, but I haven't truly loved any of their OSes since Mountain Lion.
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.
I remember the OG XPS 13 had what Dell called "project sputnik". To my knowledge, it was the first time a Dell laptop shipped with Ubuntu, if not Linux.
Really wanted one, but was a poor recent college grad at the time.
> At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.
I am the same. I used to fiddle and obsess on customising every last thing possible. Now I just want the damn thing to work, and MacOS does exactly that.
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.
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.
> People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account
This is the minimum peace offering acceptable to your long suffering users.
The lack of local account makes it so difficult to setup a PC for someone else, I wish they just used the same strategy as macOS.
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.
With a few small tweaks, Windows 11 is just as good if not better than Windows 10.
Now maybe you shouldn't have to do those tweaks but it's certainly not a major hardship.
I'm reminded of people inside Google arguing with Vic Gundotra to drop the Real ID requirement for Plus :(
A lot of people are finding the Mac Neo very interesting given how unfriendly the whole Win11 experience has become. Either MS learns or the market teaches them the same lessons IBM learnt.
I wonder how much pressure is coming from OEMs given the MacBook Neo is coming straight for them in the budget laptop range.
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.
This is so true. When you log in to their website it bounces around through about fifteen different domains before it concludes. I'm nearly sure passport.com is still in there.
The only benefit I've seen to having a Microsoft account is that I don't have to remember a cd key anymore if I have to reinstall... other than that, what was it actually used for?
They use machine id, shouldn’t need the key to reactivate on reinstall.
But you can move your key across devices -- just de-register the old machine and register on the new one.
I bought a Windows Pro license a decade ago (maybe for Win7) and I'm still using the same license for Windows 11 on a new PC.
The enshittifiers don't seem to understand inertia. By the time the enshittification becomes bad enough to do something about it, it's too late.
For that to happen, people have to be pissed off enough that it starts affecting metrics. Then, that needs to be detected, a decision to do something about it has to be made (we are probably somewhere around here), then that decision needs to be implemented step by step by removing all the enshittification... and in the meantime, the reputation as a terminally enshittified product keeps growing.
Even if most of the enshittification is removed, the reputation will stick for a while, just like the product was able to initially keep being successful despite the enshittification.
Windows LTSC gang.
I made sure to have Windows 10 LTSC installed on every PC that I had in the past five years. Will never look back.
Yes and now win 11 ltsc! It's like the difference between browsing the internet with and without unblock origin.
You’ve always been able to install and use without an account (oobe\bypassnro). As long as power users and businesses can avoid it, they have no real incentive to change.
Note on Current Status (2025/2026): Microsoft is actively removing this command in newer Windows 11 updates, especially in 24H2/25H2 and Insider builds. If oobe\bypassnro fails, the command is not recognized, or simply reboots without enabling the option, you must use alternative methods.
hmm MS killing off MS Windows by employing the Google AI and surveillance in everything push....who would have guessed that MS ran out of product ideas!
Maybe Apple will follow suit and won't require an Apple account anymore to be able to use a MacBook.
>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.
Age verification just requires that one be able to provide an age when setting up an account. Like, for example, when you setup an account for your child on the device. This doesn't seem to require any sort of online account requirement as far as I understand it.
microslop
And they have not yelled when they were implementing it years ago?
That sounds more like they were ok with it at the time and now they are seeing how much it actually backfired.
Alternatively, they yelled back then and were dismissed but now have some political ammo to push their case. I mean, if it was actually backfiring enough, they would not have to "fight" for it now, Windows PMs themselves would be scrambling to do it.
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.
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?
With it, can you use your laptop offline?
Great - so even Microsoft is not convinced to force everyone into having a Microslop Account. We need to change Microsoft - its current culture is too evil.
microslop can do anything, but I am not going to use their stupid OS anymore. Even enterprise window is full of bloatware.