Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 update, released Tuesday, offers a few small bug and compatibility fixes as well as a lighter taskbar. Oh, and there’s one small, tiny extra detail. A “small” number of Windows 11 users will now see “notifications” encouraging them to use other Microsoft products when clicking on the Windows Start Menu. Many Windows users are already decrying the change as just another way Microsoft is trying to shove more native ads into its operating system.
Asinine.
From a UX standpoint, this seems like a great time to gently suggest a user setup an essential practice for their computer: a backup plan. The “ad” is for an arguably/partially free service, at least for smaller backups. I can see and agree that it’s an annoying place to put this, but it’s not a modal and it’s at a time when the operating system can safely assume the user has completed their tasks and thus isn’t in a hurry to complete another task where such a ‘push’ might be even less welcome.
Comparing to Apple, the main competitor: users are generally automatically setup with iCloud and backups are then entirely automatic and without affirmative consent, and with similar space restrictions on the free tier.
Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft but not on a team related to this feature.
I’m not surprised. They already rolled that out in Windows 10 “Suggested apps”. Had to start from scratch to go through convoluted methods of disabling these. What happened to th edays when a simple registry entry would kill something lik e this?
“Slowly? We been doing that for years!”
But seriously though, they were plastering advertisements on the user’s welcome screen for video games like 8 years ago.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ads-windows-10-lock-screen/
Computers and the Internet were so much better in the 1990s when they were still a geek thing, and the cable TV generation had not yet adopted them. IMO it is only a question of how long before Microsoft starts playing commercials with animation and audio that shout at the user. My Linux machines and I will laugh.