Speaking of Windows’ development process, the company has released another build for Windows Insiders, and it contains a small change I’m quite happy with.
In 19H1, we are adding the ability to uninstall the following (preinstalled) Windows 10 inbox apps via the context menu on the Start menu All Apps list:
- 3D Viewer (previously called Mixed Reality Viewer)
- Calculator
- Calendar
- Groove Music
- Movies & TV
- Paint 3D
- Snip & Sketch
- Sticky Notes
- Voice Recorder
I’d uninstall all of these except for Calculator, Mail, and Groove Music, so this is a great move – and long overdue. Next step (I hope): how about not preinstalling a whole bunch of junkware on vanilla Windows 10 installations? While I wasn’t surprised, it still felt unpleasant to discover that my brand new €1850 Dell XPS 13 had garbage like the Windows Facebook application and some Sugar whatever games installed.
It’s crazy that the applications preinstalled by Dell were all mostly useful and inoffensive, yet Microsoft installs a whole bunch of junk.
How about ditching Windows 10 app store and UWP and returning to Windows 7 Control Panel and UI? And while we are at it, what about proper releases each three years and service packs each year? That would have been a great OS.
Oh, wait, we had all of that prior to Windows 8.
Edited 2018-10-21 09:33 UTC
Back to the 2k/XP Control Panel would be even better!
That’s also the reason why my company will stuck with Windows 7 until it’s extended EOL in 2020 now.
Who want to run business critical production systems with Candy crush installed.
Hard to face the reality that there will be no future windows versions just “Windows 10” forever.
Imagine 20 years from now someone asks you, which version of windows are you running? “Windows 10” is there any other version? the best windows of all times
Maybe ReactOS will be able to catch up…
I really hate it that I have to uninstall every of those fucking apps with every big update. So every six months!
What is MS thinking?
An user friendly approach would be to first verify if the non-core applications are still present. If yes, then install the updated one. If not, then don’t install them again.
Should be easy to implement?
This is a good move for Microsoft. Another good move would be to restore the Win 7 style start menu (this can be done currently with ClassicShell) and the traditional control panel. Let’s face it, Microsoft tried the tablet interface and it didn’t work out.
The sad thing is, it’s not even a good tablet interface. I had a HP Stream 7 tablet for a while, upgraded it to Windows 10, and it became less usable. Windows 8, as bad as it was on traditional PCs, worked very well on a tablet. 10’s tablet mode is horrible, which makes no sense as Windows 10 Mobile on a phone is a pleasure to use.
I uninstall the calculator as well and copy the one from NT4 over as a replacement. It works great, and it suits me better.
The reality check here.
Microsoft is give you means to remove applications it also given Microsoft the means to cease to supply the applications as well.
https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing-apps-…
There has been a problem with Microsoft installing applications from third parties without getting user permission.
Reality here Microsoft has given you the means to uninstall those application while still having the means to reinstall those applications at will by the “Consumer Experience”.
Of course that they are uninstall option who to say Microsoft will not say auto uninstall one of those applications on security grounds.
The feature change could be very much “Indian giver” if they don’t address the Consumer Experience issue at a minimal. What the point as an user deciding to remove applications if Consumer Experience ends up putting them straight back.
Check that list of applications you will find them listed in the Microsoft store for free so Consumer Experience could in theory decide to random-ally pick them.
Lets not really celebrate a feature change until we understand if this is any change at all.
This could be no better than a locked door in the middle of nowhere that everyone can just walk around.
In general I greatly prefer Windows 10 over Windows 7, but Windows 10 has some issues that seem political instead of technical:
1) Forcing the store
2) Update procedure
3) Changing user-made configuration
And Thom hit the nail on the head with this:
It used to be that when you got a pc you had to:
1) Export drivers
2) Clean-install
3) Restore drivers
or let Microsoft do that for you by getting a Signature Edition: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/pcsignatureedition
Nowadays the OEMs have improved, but it is Microsoft that includes junk by default
The calculator works nicely on a touch screen, but really is a dumbed down POS. With very little effort they could turn it into a reasonable scientific calculator, even a good one, but that does not seem to be in their plans.
The email client is a similar dumbed-down POS. It is sad to see how much better Apple’s native client is. In Windows, to use GMail I find nothing other than the web client: too bad if you hate paging through your emails in 50-message spoonfuls. Yeah, there’s Inbox, with its head in the chopping block, and Thunderbird, if you like a Marty McFly sort of experience.
As for Paint3D, I wonder why did they bother at all.
Snip&Sketch is OK, but it should include the nice window-recording feature that is hidden in the XBox interface, and it should be more obvious how to map it to the PrtScr key.
Agreed.
I wonder why they just don’t include some good open source software such as notepad++ instead of notepad, Thunderbird (or anything similar), firefox or anything chromium based instead of internet exploder, GIMP or Paint .NET class software, etc. It would probably be too easy.
Regular Notepad works just fine. Yes, even for coding if you actually know how to code. The problem there with including something else is that people get really picky about their choice of text editor, and it’s a lot simpler to just let everyone install what they want than risk pissing off users.
FIrefox and Thunderbird can’t be reused in Windows (at least, not with their actual names) because of how the MPL is written. Also, Thunderbird doesn’t support the Exchange protocol (it can use Exchange accounts, but it has to use IMAP instead of the exchange protocol), and neither supports some of the questionable design choices in the Windows HTML engine that Microsoft seems to think people want.
GIMP is overkill for most users and not a viable option for many others users (unless they’re actually doing image processing instead of actual graphic design work) and Paint.NET is complicated (licensing-wise, not usability-wise).
The big issue with all of it though is that Microsoft can’t make guarantees about the security of any of it, which is kind of a big deal because Windows is functionally being sold with a warranty in a lot of places.
I guess that really depends on what you consider junk.
Of what they’re adding the ability to remove:
* 3D Viewer should have been optional from the beginning.
* Calculator is obviously not junk for most people.
* Calendar is pretty conditional. If you’re using WIndows 10 on a mobile device, you almost certainly do want this (and that’s part of why they have it at all), and it’s also potentially useful if you’re using an Exchange account for email but not using Outlook.
* Groove Music. I actually know remarkably few people who use this. Most people I know have either switched to just streaming music with things like Spotify, of prefer using some other music player.
* Mail. Same as Groove Music. About 98% of people I know either use Outlook, THunderbird, or some form of web mail interface.
* Movies & TV should have been optional from the start, just like the 3D viewer.
* Paint 3D is literally a paint replacement. Yes, it’s crap, and Paint.NET is better, but they do need to keep shipping something to stand in for Paint.
* Snip & Sketch is the newer name for the old snipping tool, which provides the rather useful functionality of being able to directly take screenshots that don’t include the entire screen. I use this with some regularity myself, and know numerous other people who do too.
* Sticky Notes should probably be optional, but I know enough people who use it that I can understand it being part of the default installation (especially considering that it doesn’t take up much space).
* Voice Recorder has been around since at least XP (and even earlier than that I think, but I’m not 100% certain). Yes, it’s not something almost anybody uses, but it’s not taking up much space either, and therefore there hasn’t been much incentive to remove it (and risk irritating the poor misguided individuals who do use it instead of proper recording software).
In comparison, 95% of the stuff that ends up bundled by OEM’s I never see get used. Even more so now that Windows 10 has native PDF handling (both generating them and viewing them), almost full native ISO 9660 image handling (both burning and accessing as read-only archives), and significantly better diver update integration with OEM’s.
I applaud any advance towards allowing users to uninstall default crapware… Even if they have to uninstall it more than once – it’s better than no option to at all.
Edited 2018-10-23 04:04 UTC