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0 pointsocdtrekkie7y ago0 comments

I've recently said that Microsoft is the most self-defeating company in history. They often take all of the goodwill they've earned, and then torch it on minor battles that aren't really making them any money. If someone's gotten into the settings screen to change their default, they probably have tried Edge, or at least know what it is and have some reason for switching.

Windows 10 telemetry is a great example: They shot themselves in the foot PR-wise on an otherwise excellent operating system, chasing a pile of metadata that won't really be significantly more useful than what they get from people who voluntarily agree to be Windows Insiders. There isn't a good business case for preventing people from shutting off error reporting, and it's had a huge impact on mitigating all of their other efforts to repair their image.

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TeMPOraL7y ago

I'd say the forced update from 8 to 10, with all the UI dark patterns, was even worse. An OS "collecting telemetry" on you was mostly an abstract problem for non-technical users. An OS trying to annoy and trick you into updating to that scary "telemetry version" - that's another thing, and I know plenty of people who were pissed off about that. Hell, my own mother sticks to 8 and still refuses to entertain the thought of using 10 precisely because of those attempts at forced upgrade.

It's a shame, really, because Windows 10 is a decent OS, and it fixed most of the issues with 8.

pjmlp7y ago

That kind of behaviour is easy to understand when one works at any Fortune 500, specially those whose main business isn't software related.

It doesn't matter how much goodwill a specific department might have, power struggle and department differences always end up impacting it.

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