I tried the New Outlook after having issues with the default mail app. I was greeted with a message "To add your iCloud account to Outlook, we need to sync your emails, contacts, and events to the Microsoft Cloud."
I'm sorry WHAT?!? You're telling me that to use a local email service I need to sync with Microsoft servers?
Someone here please tell me that this is just because it was in beta and all of the features didn't exist yet? Otherwise what the hell is Microsoft thinking?
For the record I just did not do this and any chance of using Windows for productivity tasks went completely out the Window. Windows was always just primarily for gaming but having email there would have been nice.
It sort of sounds like maybe the same infrastructure was borrowed here to set up the iCloud account in the local Outlook app. Presumably the local app is now based on the prior Acompli infrastructure.
That said… it really doesn’t pass the sniff test, it feels like Microsoft wants your contacts the same way LinkedIn (also Microsoft) wants your contacts. Personally, I wish I hadn’t trusted Google, Meta and LinkedIn as much with my contacts as I did in the past. Live and learn, I suppose.
I actually switched to GNU/Linux in college because I wanted to play video games less. This happened right before Proton was released in 2018. Let's just say that I was very unsuccessful in my goal when switching.
(Tried Linux on the desktop every year for the previous 20-something, always hit some deal-breaker within a day or so. This time it's looking good.)
Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two. That's speaking of my (medium sized) org of >15k Emps worldwide.
Ads, Forced Edge, Bing, Ultra-Slow file system compared to any other OS, Shady "Driver"-Sites, could go on forever. I agree this comment sounds a bit flamey, if it wasn't just describing the reality. Even MS recommends switching to Linux by now as a replacement for the Win 8 -> Win 10 / 11 upgrade.
I have the option and ability to use whatever OS I want, and I like and enjoy Windows. I use Windows for gaming and .NET development, macOS as my daily desktop (RDP to my Windows dev box), Android on my phone, iPadOS and ChromeOS around the house, and Debian on my servers.
I detest ads, but the portions of Windows I object to involve only some cleanup on install. I find the unblockable ads in Android/i(Pad)OS/ChromeOS (e.g. the ads in all of their app stores) far more objectionable than the ones I never see in Windows.
Never mind that every update will try and reset defaults and it shoves Edge down your throat at every possible opportunity, and you can't change the search engine for a lot of things away from Bing. Who exactly owns my hardware, Microsoft?
It feels like windows is being managed by inexperienced MBAs who are desperate to use their heavily entrenched OS as an ad platform.
I stopped using the built-in Mail app though because it was pretty buggy. Search was useless.
MAYBE give the option if for some reason I want to do it. But for it to be the default is a stupid idea. You cannot convince me there is a valid reason for this to be a thing.
Priorities straight.
I would often run Windows on a second machine or at work though, I felt equally productive in both Linux and Windows.
Fast-forward a decade and the Linux desktop situation has improved and the Windows situation has gotten worse, such that switching to Windows 11 is a total non-starter for me.
I dual-boot Windows 10 w/ Ubuntu because of the odd game or two that is beyond Proton's reach, but that happens less and less each day. I'd be willing to bet that I won't need that Windows partition at all soon.
However recently I started working for a company that provides Linux laptops. I was curious how much things had improved in 20 years. My conclusion is: not much.
Here are some of the issues I've had:
* Linux memory management is still really bad. On OOM it kills a completely random process and 90% of the time for me that means it hard-reboots my laptop. Maybe this is partly because they didn't set it up with any swap for some reason, but I'm unsure that would help (in 2003 it didn't; the system would just grind to an unresponsive halt... but we didn't have SSDs then).
* If you set a WiFi network to automatically connect to a VPN, then delete that VPN, it means the WiFi connection will always just instantly fail with no error message. Even dmesg didn't help. You can imagine how fun that was to figure out.
* For some reason half of the network settings are not in the network settings. They're in some third party app you have to run from the console. It isn't even linked via an "advanced" button in the gnome settings.
* Gnome's desktop notifications are hilariously subtle. We're talking dark grey window that disappears if you touch it with the mouse and there's no notification history. I ended up fixing the colour to make it red by hacking some CSS. It was a simple 27 step process. Couldn't fix the other issues though.
* Somewhat hilariously if you click a truncated link in a notification, the URL it takes you to will also be truncated!
* Screen capture doesn't work in Wayland. Not that I regularly need to share my screen with coworkers or anything... Fortunately switching to X was easy and doesn't seem to have any downsides at all.
* I haven't done this but multiple coworkers have accidentally uninstalled Gnome while trying to upgrade Python. HN mentality will be to blame them but that is the unthinking response.
* It takes ages to wake up. I sometimes have to absolutely mash escape for about 10 seconds.
* Battery life is of course hilarious.
Never had issues like this with Mac or Windows (though I haven't used Windows laptops really).
I still would hardly say that not much has changed, nor that the Desktop experience on many popular distros is bad.
It's also important to note that while the UX problems between Windows and Linux aren't the same in number and nature, the root of these problems are relevant imho.
With Linux distros, it's just lack of resources. They can address them with enough man hours.
With Windows, many of the user-hostile aspects of the UX are part of the product map, and I don't anticipate that getting any better.
I'm long on Linux on the desktop, which I know is a punch-line, but it's working for plenty of people of various technical stripes.
Back in 2003 I tried to install a Linux distro on my personal machine (Mandrake if memory serves) and it was an atrocious experience. Couldn't even get my mouse to work.
Sometime around 2015 I decided to give it a second chance. I worked for a company where we could work on Linux machines and I decided to give it ago. Ubuntu this time around. I had a pleasant experience, for development it proved to be a solid option, but I couldn't switch my personal machine to Linux because I would lose access to my gaming library.
Earlier this year I decided to give another go. Replaced Windows with Linux Mint, and couldn't be happier. It's an absolute joy to use, and thanks to Proton, I can play the vast majority of my PC games there. Most work right off the bat through Steam or Lutris. Some required minor tinkering.
I had none the issues you described.
I decided to try it out and during setup of the new free Outlook I got asked how I want to see my ads: As a banner above the mail window or in my inbox.
This took my by surprise since it essentially means, that the default mail client for Windows now will start serving ads.
Tweet for reference: https://twitter.com/Farbklex91/status/1716847430510023000
It's absurd of them to even imply that anyone wants to see the ads at all. They clearly know that given the option, pretty much everyone would answer the question "where do you want to see your ads in your mail client" with "nowhere". There are certainly products where I grudgingly recognize that ads are the only way they're able to provide the product at all, but I can't see how they possibly could claim that here when they're literally going out of their way to move people towards using it.
Keep it for gaming if you need. But give Proton a try first.
My almost 75yo dad switched recently. I swear I'm telling the truth: his main complaint was, after buying a new printer, he couldn't find the matching drivers. I told him just to print, and that was that.
So apparently I missed some time period where it was called "Mail" instead. But now it'll be Outlook again. Full circle!
Going to have to figure out what to switch to... Yikes!
Other distros have other advantages - I'm a happy NixOS user now - but Mint makes an excellent first Linux.
My main desktop went out of support earlier this year, but it has been so stable I can't be bothered to rebuild it. I have apps for everything I need from photo and video editing and management, to gaming, to productivity and development. My newer laptops have more recent builds and likewise have worked without issue. Really the only speedbump I have are a couple of Windows only things like a Dymo label printer and some automotive tuning software, so I run a dual boot on one XPS 15.
Unfortunately at work I can't run Linux so I use a MBP as it's far better than Windows, however it still infuriates me regularly and I don't use any other Apple products. I've previously contributed to Mint and was recently thinking I need to send some more money, so thanks for the reminder!
Recently I switched to Ubuntu because I’d switched to a laptop, and I thought it would handle things more nicely for me. I regret it. It does too much.
I’d recommend the first two steps I took, though.
The Windows Mail client was on its way to becoming a close analogue to Mail.app but I guess those days are over.
I assume they must do that on purpose, right? Make their IMAP implementation bad so people will use their clients with ads? I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.
Regulators won't ever save you.
* buy a domain name on namecheap
* setup a proton mail account (think you'll wind up paying some for it, but its worth it)
* link your domain name to your proton mail account and setup an alias
* forward your gmail to the new alias on the domain name that you control
* slowly start converting all the references to your old gmail to the new account
what? it's supported IMAP IDLE for longer than some of the posters in HN have been alive.
> I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.
... you chose to use some random company's domain for your email address, that's been an obvious problem for thirty years now.
there's jillions of things to criticise google about, this is absolutely not one of them.
I sent the same email from the same address to the same recipient once with Thunderbird on Windows, once with Apple Mail on iOS. The one with Thunderbird was silently dropped (not even reaching the spam folder), the one sent with Apple Mail reached the inbox without issue. I've had that same issue with 2 different recipient companies.
And yes, my address passes SPF, DKIM, has a strict DMARC, and isn't in any blacklist (uses iCloud+ as host).
https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/
(The URL is /win32/, but there are 64-bit builds there too)
All Windows really has is a long tail of legacy apps (many of which are very good, and people don't want to give up) and games, and that has to look like a dying business model. (Unfortunately, games are pretty sticky, because they own a game console, and everyone wants access to the console. So if Microsoft says "if you port your game to Linux, you can't be on Xbox", Windows is on indefinite life support.)
Thankfully Proton exists, so technically developers don't have to go out of their way to 'port' to linux :)
Its great that Valve started investing in Linux for gaming, as they are nowhere as misguided by greed like Microsoft is.
That said, I know they probably did it because of the threat of the windows store vs steam, but we've really benefited.
(Games might not even be a thing for them for much longer. Mobile games are the most accessible, and again Microsoft is not in any position to get revenue from that trend. People that buy consoles or $1900 graphics cards are not nearly as numerous.)
I am surprised that more corporate IT departments haven't switched to Linux. They can still supply the same $300 laptops, lock them down to the point of unusability, and everyone can use Word in the cloud. I'd be scared if I were Microsoft, and wouldn't want to make switching away look attractive to anyone. No ad revenue from untargeted ads in an email client could possibly be worth losing Windows as the "default" OS.
Maybe 2024 will be the year of Linux on my desktop.
Maybe they’ll see the light with Windows 12
It's one small text ad, formatted to look like an email message card. I quickly learned to ignore it.
And no one is forcing anyone to use this app. You can use webmail, Thunderbird, etc...
I still prefer this app with the ad to opening gmail in the browser.
I consider it a small price to pay for a nice app.
Having ad free software should be the norm.
And subjectively the UI of a Mac is worse than Window's. I liked the menu at the top only on the original Mac with the builtin 9" screen. It started to be a bad choice on the next models with a larger separate monitor. And Windows' UI is worse than the customized Gnome desktop I've been using since 2009.
I am paying for O365 family so none of my family get that. And I think I paid £59 for it last time with some voucher scamming. That gives everyone, 6 people in my case, 1TB storage, all the office desktop apps. I don't think that's a bad deal, especially compared to the shafting you get from Apple these days for icloud.
Stuff isn't free!
Maybe I was dumb and missed the "no thank you" button, but it looked like there was no option. Want to create a user, has to be managed online. Thanks and fuck you.
I had to unplug internet, click next, wait 2min for the thing to time out and say "oh well let's create a local user for now we'll try again later". I haven't seen another"try" since but who knows. It probably happened automatically one day as a background task.
Weird decision by Microsoft in my opinion. It seems like the only people that'd bother to setup Windows mail in the first place are power users, and that's the last people you want to piss off with annoying ads.
That said, 9,999 other people are about to reply that they use GMail or something like that. Maybe 99,999.
MSFT-ActivisionBlizzard also shouldn't happen.
M$FT have used the Office monopoly to push teams and AD to push Azure, both of which are subpar products. It is hard to find one good product they have made in the last 20 years (and yes VSCode is not it).
(yeah, yeah, knee-jerk reaction, but the trend on Windows becoming user-hostile can be seen at this point from the other side of the Milky Way)
If that's the case, Microsoft's strategy is that one way or another it wants some money from you: either the subscription, or the ad revenue. I'd be concerned if I had to see ads while being a paying customer.
Can anyone find how much revenue is generated in ads from Windows?
All I can find is revenue for Bing.
I'm curious to know if the revenue Windows ads are generating is even worth the reduction in UX and consumer sentiment.
I mean they don’t even care if you are paying.
The first one is extremely developer-friendly, and regularly pushes out superb, high-quality tools and frameworks—many of which are free of charge and open-source—and gives nice deep dives into tech. They also develop pretty interesting alternatives to the UNIX ecosystem. Some examples:
- the .NET ecosystem and languages (VB.NET, C#, F#);
- PowerShell (technically this is also a .NET language, but it has made Windows scripting so easy that it deserves a mention on its own);
- ASP.NET Core (again, part of the .NET ecosystem, but it is very far ahead of almost all other web backends (in terms of functionality, performance, and ease-of-development) that it also deserves a separate mention)
- TypeScript;
- Visual Studio Code;
- Visual Studio Community, the MSVC C++ STL, and the MSVC compiler, `cl.exe`;
- Direct3D and DirectXMath;
- WSL
- the Windows API, the Windows driver model, and the Windows ACL model.
Many more that I can't recall off the top of my head.
And there's the pain-in-the-arse, bean-counting Microsoft that justifies adding advertisements, crapware, and generally enshittifying what used to be a superb OS, pushing for software-as-a-service, changing the UX of Office programs every version, not being able to settle on and develop one nice unified UI toolkit for Windows, and (probably therefore) pushing laggy Electron apps like the XBox store, Teams, etc over well-programmed native/.NET ones.
I use and develop on Windows because I grew up on it. I don't want 'an OS as an IDE'. I want an IDE that does an IDE's job well, and I haven't found anything better than Visual Studio's debugger and profiler.
I am torn. Linux is still broken for even slightly edge-case use cases (laptop + monitor of very different pixel densities, and hence different scaling ratios; both X and Wayland fail horribly at this whereas Windows eats it up in a heartbeat). I game regularly and am not keen on virtualising or using Wine/Proton (I am convinced there is a performance drop in the general case), and MacOS is a non-starter for me.