alt Hacker News> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge.
Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.
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This is how you can tell that they just don't get it.
Microsoft, your users include developers and power users. We are not all someone's tech illiterate relative who needs constant reminding to check that backups are on, nor do we want to use OneDrive.
If we turn it off, it means off. Updates off = they stay off until turned back on, don't worry, we'll remember. Backup off = it stays off. Edge off = it stays off. Ads off = I don't want ads.
The battle they are fighting is that by using Google, tech illiterate people have found buttons like the ability to disable updates, but don't understand what they're doing, and then leave them off and now their OS becomes part of a botnet in a few months. So Microsoft believes that they are doing a greater good by not offering a real option to actually turn certain things off. But this babysitting behavior is annoying as shit when you want to leave something running that is going to take 6 days. Sure yes put it on a cloud vm. But if I was still using Windows as my OS, why should I have to? Just because your OS can't handle a developer doing something else than using Outlook and OneDrive to store pictures of aunties family get-together?
Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night.
Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what I was waiting for was aborted... So fucking tiresome to use shit like this.
Avast does this well. It has "do this" options for now, in an hour, in a day, and "next century".
Yeah this seems to be a trend over the last few years.
Google does this too. I don't have photos backed up to my Google account on a Pixel and every few days if I open the photos app it prompts me to backup to the cloud and I always have to click "maybe later", "not now" or whatever they decide to name it.
It's messed up because if I were to accidentally ever click yes to that it would fill up my Google storage and I would no longer be able to receive email since I'd have 0% storage. I don't get how something so dangerous can be shoved in front of you so frequently. I know it's marketing / advertising to constantly remind you of something even if you don't want it, but I would have thought customer happiness would outweigh that.