It’s no secret that Microsoft has been looking to increase advertising for its products within Windows 11, and investigation by Twitter user Albacore into recent Insider builds has found that the Settings Home page will soon start to present adverts for Microsoft 365 products in the near future. A banner asking users who aren’t subscribed to the platform to “Try Microsoft 365” shows at the top of the Home tab in Settings in the screenshot below.
How much more can Microsoft abuse its users before they break?
The answer to the last question is they are already losing users. I am DONE with Windows. My next computer will most likely be a Mac…or I will just load Linux on my current rig. Steam has made gaming with other platforms a reality for MOST games…and I always have my console if I really want to play a game that won’t work on it….and that was really the last thing tying me to the Windows ecosystem.
The ads are a bridge too far. I PAY for Windows. You can either charge me for an OS, or you can advertise to me…NOT BOTH! I also abhor the lengths users need to go to in order to block all of the data harvesting Windows has enabled by default. DONE on both counts! I thought I was done with Windows 8, but 10 brought me back around…now 11 is here to make me consider ditching MS once again…and I trust them now about as far as I can spit them! “Windows 10 will be the last OS”! Remember that? I do!
Fiznu,
I agree with your sentiments, however presumably microsoft have done some focus groups and market analysis and concluded that most users will tolerate the ads. Keep in mind that we tolerate ads almost everywhere these days, it doesn’t matter so much whether you’re a paying customer or not.
As another example, I hate that movies now cost $21 per ticket AND we’re treated to 20 minutes of bloody ads!!! I don’t go to the the movies anymore, but if I wanted to this is just the new reality. In the 1990s when I was a kid $2-5 tickets were typical IIRC ads then were limited to a couple movie previews rather than the barrage of products and service ads today.
So, my concern is that the new reality for the current generation is ads. Our protests against them my be futile even if we are able to vote with our wallets because while we’ve been protesting ads become increasingly normalized throughout society anyways. Ads are everywhere, add a few more surfaces and generations who’ve grown up in this environment may take them for granted and not bat an eye.
I don’t go to the movies either. Or watch broadcast TV. I watch less Youtube than I used to. I won’t even read OSnews on my phone (which has no ad-blocker and gives me a synchronous popup ad.)
We’re rapidly moving to ubiquitous advertising, and it’s exceeding my tolerance threshold constantly. Fortunately most places where it exists are very discretionary, so it’s easy to avoid.
Personally the thing that’s driving me crazy is advertising in online banking. It’s very hard to not participate in the banking system, but the ratio of users to banks means banks have leverage and no reason to stop adding more ads.
I am 100% positive most of the sheep out there will tolerate it…and I am also 100% sure that you will see more and more ads as MS pushes the absolute boundary of that tolerance. I, however, have found ANY amount of advertising at the OS level to be completely unacceptable and intolerable. It’s bad enough in the web browser, to have it infest my Start menu is a bridge too far. Or the Control Panel…or anywhere else in the OS itself! So, after literally a lifetime of using Windows (1..x runtime with Adobe Pagemaker!) I will be making the transition to Mac or Linux. I will have to relearn how to use the computer…but that’s fine. I would rather suck it up now and make the switch than to give MS a single sale of Windows 11!
Recently Steam decided they’ll stop supporting windows 7 and windows 8 next year, causing people using these “end of lifed” versions of windows (ironically, mostly people who refuse to switch to windows 10 or 11 because they don’t trust Microsoft any more) to worry about being unable to play all the games they paid for.
There’s are more windows 7 and windows 8 users than there are users of all Linux distros combined (according to Steam’s own survey from last month).
In other words; there’s absolutely no guarantee that Steam won’t just tell all Linux users to go fuck themselves on a whim (e.g. when SteamDeck becomes unprofitable, if it ever was profitable).
Brendan,
Those EOL versions of windows have become unusable because microsoft’s current runtimes no longer support them. Additionally visual studio automatically updates software to use the latest runtimes, resulting in most updated/new software experiencing incompatibilities with EOL versions of windows. It’s understandable that this frustrates users, but microsoft deserves the blame for not making runtimes that detect OS capabilities gracefully and making things more complicated for developers to support older versions of windows. For better or worse, microsoft breaks backwards compatibility intentionally to help market their new operating systems. Even if steam kept targeting older unsupported versions of windows, microsoft’s policy ensures that more and more games will not making life more frustrating for EOL holdouts.
I find this extremely unlikely. I’ll grant you that linux is a niche, but it’s a growing one. More importantly though linux is their hedge against windows. Remember that it was Gabe Newell’s mistrust of microsoft that provided the incentive for steam to develop steam deck and proton in the first place. I doubt this has changed and strategically it still seems to be in their best interest to keep linux supported. I don’t see this going away unless MS were to buy them out, which would upset everybody, haha.
Old games will continue to keep running on old computers with old operating systems regardless of what Microsoft does with newer operating systems; partly because there are no updates to break things that previously worked. In the same way, I’ve still got a Commodore64 (and games) around here somewhere, that will still work.
The problem is that Steam’s DRM acts as a gatekeeper; preventing you from using games that will work perfectly on the hardware and software they were designed for, merely because they sold you the game/s.
Brendan,
It’s possible to use an old steam client without updates.
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/242293/is-there-any-way-to-run-an-older-version-of-the-steam-client
I admit this would be very annoying, but if you’re willing to tolerate the inability to update the rest of your software, it’s the same deal with the steam client itself.
I’m right there with you protesting DRM in general. That said though don’t assume all games sold through steam actually use steam DRM. It’s the developers who choose whether to incorporate DRM and which one to use.
https://www.howtogeek.com/813209/psa-not-all-steam-games-have-drm-heres-how-to-tell/
In my experience steam’s DRM is not the worst out there and on the plus side steam’s own client and DRM should run indefinitely even with no internet…
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3006676913246462740/
But I’d agree this needs to be tested more thoroughly. Would this survive a hardware upgrade? I don’t know. Also I have no idea how many games use offline DRM and how many use online DRM that can break existing software at any time. If you do find more specific information about this, please link it since I am curious.
BTW, I did come across these links containing a lot of information about DRM free games on steam:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
There’s a lot of DRM out there that gamers may have to deal with…
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_third-party_DRM_on_Steam
Obviously all DRM is bad for software survivability, though I am curious if there’s an objective reason to say stream DRM is specifically worse than any of the other DRM implementations that developers might choose from?
“In other words; there’s absolutely no guarantee that Steam won’t just tell all Linux users to go *uck themselves on a whim (e.g. when SteamDeck becomes unprofitable, if it ever was profitable).”
Gabe pushed for Linux because he believes it is the future of gaming,
they started pushing that direction well before it was profitable !
ps: the steamdeck is super popular !
https://youtu.be/rCGMiT0CQAI?t=420
good talk about how they didn’t like the direction pc was going
You mean, an overweight 60 year old who is probably going to have a medical issue and retire in the next 12 months is the only thing taht will forever prevent Steam from “caring less” about normal Linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu and not their proprietary console)?
well the video he talks about how all the innovations are on pc, things like mods workshop etc and its all centered around the pc being an open platform, that is what value is pushing for, microsoft on the other hand are trying their hardest to make pc a locked down platform.
part of why they want trusted platform for windows 11 not so your pc is protected so they know you the user don’t have a much control,
anyway for the actual topic, you think someone with that much vision wouldn’t setup a contingency in-case unforeseeable happens suddenly ?
I don’t know what it is personally and googling didn’t show up much but he does respond to (some) emails and seems a nice guy so maybe ask him ?
“break” is an odd choice of words. The reality is there still isn’t a better OS, so they’ll tolerate the ads. Contrary to most people’s beliefs here, a lot of people have tried Linux and didn’t like it, so there really isn’t some other choice for them. Microsoft can keep playing this game until a realistic third choice appears, and they know it.
dark2,
Depends on the individual. Obviously those of us who’ve already moved from windows to linux thought there was a better OS for us even before the ads. I realize that windows is the OS of choice for most people, but still I wanted to point out that “The reality is there still isn’t a better OS” is a subjective reality.
I am constantly saying people should use what’s best for them, and I still stand by this, however it does create a conundrum for windows users when microsoft add anti-features over time.
I wouldn’t have a problem recommend linux for users with modest needs like email, web, even steam for gaming, if not for the fact that the majority of linux users have to build & install their own systems in a completely unsupported fashion. This becomes an impediment for novices, and understandably so. While many linux user groups do provide tech support, normal users are accustomed to going to the store or calling the manufacturer for support, and unfortunately this type of support remains a weakness for linux. IMHO microsoft’s biggest strength is that, as a byproduct of their monopoly, every store and manufacturer supports and promotes windows, often exclusively. Only atypical consumers would really want to leave this comfortable support bubble and go out of the way to try something new.
That’s where Apple comes in. Less flexibility (especially with hardware), but when it breaks, you take it to the local Apple store for support. It’s more expensive…but you don’t have to tolerate ads in your OS either!
Fiznu,
Yeah, I just wish they weren’t so regressive with hardware. On the windows side any vendors that are soldering storage and engineering hardware to not be user serviceable would automatically get disqualified from my consideration. But this is exactly the direction that apple is going in, so I’d have to be a hypocrite and look the other way to buy their hardware. For a long time I’ve felt it would be nice if apple would licensed macos and their m1 cpus to 3rd party OEMs to create more manufacturing competition and choices for end users, but then apple has nothing to gain by loosening their grip. Unfortunately this is the way it goes in many industries: products are engineered to be less serviceable to increase profits.
I still run Windows 10, However I also have a Pop OS partition in anticipation of Windows 10 losing support in a few years. I find myself spending more and more time on the Linux partition and I am getting more used to working there. I don’t want Windows 11 or anything that follows due to advertising and the constant push of Microsoft products.
I would have preferred they just released a paid version with no ads. It’s the same with mobile games and apps, Ads ruin most of them, let me have a paid version without ads.
>I would have preferred they just released a paid version with no ads. It’s the same with mobile games and apps, Ads ruin most of them, let me have a paid version without ads.
This would imply they would release a free version with ads. Much easier and profitable to just annoy the paid users, and perhaps just avoid annoying the “high paying” users (ie. Enterprise users).
I kinda agree with you if there were a second “pay for” premium version of windows, with limited feature creep, didn’t do any of the call home stuff, didn’t ever have ads I would seriously consider it !! but I can’t trust microsoft anymore, a LOT of stuff their OS is doing now was considered malware just 10 years ago!
Agreed, Since my last post I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on my drive too next to POP and Win10, and I was able to get everything I want working (Quite easily too), So I actually don’t need my Windows partition any more, I will keep it around for a while but I feel its days are numbered now.
How is this different from Apple pushing iCloud everywhere in its OS? It’s rather biased to single out MS here when Apple has been doing the same exact shit for years.