In Windows 11, Microsoft has changed the way you set default apps. Like Windows 10, there’s a prompt that appears when you install a new browser and open a web link for the first time. It’s the only opportunity to easily switch browsers, though. Unless you tick “always use this app,” the default will never be changed. It’s incredibly easy to forget to toggle the “always use this app” option, and simply launch the browser you want from this prompt and never see this default choice again when you click web links.
[…]Microsoft has changed the way default apps are assigned in Windows 11, which means you now have to set defaults by file or link type instead of a single switch. In the case of Chrome, that means changing the default file type for HTM, HTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT, XHTML, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS.
That’s what you get when you use proprietary operating systems. Windows and macOS are not designed for you; they’re designed for Microsoft and Apple, respectively.
Pretty sure we’ve been down this road before – you’d think MS would be more careful these days. Getting done twice for the same anticompetitive behaviours seems like a bad plan.
The1stImmortal,
Yes, but IMHO it was a slap on the wrist.
Microsoft may be looking at the courts feeling pretty confident because trump was particularly aggressive at packing the courts with judges that are presumably conservative anti-regulation/pro-big business. Look at the Trump column compared to the Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton columns…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_appointment_history_for_United_States_federal_courts#Summary_of_13_circuits_combined
(Never noticed this before, but the last time democrates had >50% judges was 1980).
Also the supreme court is conservative for the foreseeable future and may even go 7-2.
Anyways, I feel regulators do too little too late to meaningfully curb anti-competitive abuses. My impression is that abusive corporations are going to be a permanent staple of the future because of all the power they hold over us. If anyone is going to bring regulatory oversight my feeling is that it’s going to be the EU. Conceivably there may be different versions of windows for the EU like they did in the past. I think I remember Thom once talking about windows browser selection screens and he didn’t realize the US and other jurisdictions never got that,
Indeed – having got away with it once you’d think they’d count their lucky stars and avoid ticking off the judge that might oversee a second offence.
But yeah there’s also a good chance nothing substantive will happen, sadly. My own jurisdiction certainly won’t bother.
Windows and MacOS will (eventually) be defeated by platform agnostic software. To counter this Microsoft is moving to the cloud, introducing subscription services and slowly embracing Linux. Apple. like Android/ChromeOS, is becoming a closed proprietary ecosystem running on ARM powered (iOS) devices.
In 10-20 years time I can imagine a typical PC being little more than a terminal connected to a cloud server via a very fast 5G/6G data service.
Given America pretty much destroyed European alternatives from mainframes to PC’s to the phone industry and IC industry (and we’re supposed to be allies) perhaps the Russians and Chinese have a point about developing their own.
It’s not just a European problem. Big tech is slowly turning American users into serfs.
ReactOS et al no matter how slow in arriving may arrive at the right time.
Is the right time Never? Because that’s when ReactOs will be ready.
If you believe that? I have a bridge you might be interested in, high traffic area!
What will actually happen is MSFT will take a page from the Apple book and lock everything down via Secureboot/TPM and eventually with black box chips just like the cellphone OEMs do now. They will point to Google and Apple as “competition” and your “choice” will be getting locked into one of 3 walled gardens, pick your poison.
Linux will just be another corporate owned product so you will have to use an “approved” corporate version like Red Hat and will have to buy special server or workstation hardware to run it at a huge markup thus making sure that Joe and Jane Average stay in their walled gardens.
I wish it weren’t so but Apple laid the foundation of locked down hardware and mark my words Google and MSFT will follow their model. Why do you think MSFT has gone batshit on the system reqs for Win 11? Its so they can follow the Google model of abandoning hardware after 5 years and move to hardware locking with TPM and Secureboot. Oh sure they will give you the “option” of unlocking it but it will be a 30 step wall of voodoo that anybody who isn’t in IT won’t even attempt so the masses stay put, mark my words its coming.
They’re all on a bit of a jolly lately. It’s not going to end well for someone to be sure.
bassbeast,
This has been my fear for a long while. Every new product generation brings us a little bit closer. The transition has been slow. Take away someone’s freedom too quickly and they’ll cause a PR problem. But take away a few inches of freedom here and there and it goes under most people’s radar. Over time it still adds up though. All the small optional features like secure boot that were originally sold as being there to protect us will eventually become our jails. :-/
They can look at the US all they want… but the EU might not be so lenient.
Microsoft never allowed you to change web browsers in first place. Set-up, for example, Chrome as the default web browser. Go to the desktop and press “Help” hotkey (F1) and you’ll see the stinky Edge showing you a Bing search.
If Microsoft wants to make it more of a hassle, I’m pretty sure the `set as default browser` option isn’t going to vanish from your browser-of-choice in Windows 11. I think there are more worthy things to rally against.
> HTM, HTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT, XHTML, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS.
Do any browsers even support ftp anymore?
And let’s be honest the only thing in the list I would notice if the default app changed is pdf.
This is what happens when people forget about regulation and law. The other thing is over the past month there have been a slew of annouecments from American big tech about dominating industry plus a few power grabs and moves to take advantage. Everything from Intel’s announcement to Apple’s wheeze to Microsoft over Windows 11 and now this browser thing. Also Google excluding the EU from the launch of its latest phone. They’ll also all been “bulking” up their legal departments in anticipation of regulatory action not to mention not skimping on their PR and marketting departments and a very none critical American media and blogosphere.
Personally I think we should tell them to hack off. The lack of a European alternative is making them cocky and abusive,
And Desktop Linux is designed for graybeards wanting to see the gospel of the GPL spread among casual users. Hence all those seemingly inexplicable design decisions in Desktop Linux, such as not having a stable driver interface, or making all apps go through the OS-sanctioned repos (and making loading things outside those repos a PITA).
As I ‘ve said numerous times before, all major OSes suck bigtime in some way or another. But Windows has a big crowd behind it, so there is always someone developing some kind of hack to get around the sucky bits. For example, there is the Classic Shell Start Menu for Windows 8.x, “ESU enablers” for Windows 7, now we’ll get a “browser changer” for Windows 11.
PS: Also, let’s hope the EU takes notice of this.
I think I see this differently, this is Microsoft allowing me to choose my defaults with more granularity. It irritated me so much for chrome to open my PDFs, I want it to be my web browser, not my pdf reader./editor. Same with SVG. I want to choose my default for each type of file and not have chrome power grab it all.
I am pretty sure Chrome and Firefox will be updated to change all these settings when it asks you to be the default browser.