Microsoft to give more than microsecond's thought about your Windows 11 needs Microsoft appears to be heeding the various criticisms of Windows 11's desktop, Start menu, and taskbar, promising to give users and developers more control over what they see and use on the screen. In particular, Microsoft wants to not only ensure folks can decide what is pinned to those various spots, but that they have …
At the moment, there are no APIs for an application to pin itself. It has to be an explicit action by the user.
An application may only inform the system what should happen if the user chooses to pin.
This change will allow the application to demand that it be pinned, and repeatedly, continuously bug the user- with a standard dialog - until they acquiesce to shut the damnable thing up.
On my work issued Win10 PC, I get intermittent solid colored box popups, encouraging me to "try" an assortment of useless (to me) features, like importing photos from Android devices, as I try to use Office or Teams. They block further progress in whatever I'm doing, and won't go away until I click on their "got it" box.
These "tips", or "teaching callouts", or "training tips" are perhaps the most annoying feature, and it appears they can't be turned off globally. Most annoying to me is that this is the first time I have been marketed to while using a top-of-the line volume licensed Enterprise OS. I might expect this foolishness on a "Home Edition", but not on my work system.
I'm told that these popups are intended to help new users explore the many facets of Office and Teams. That may be so, but if I'm not interested, I should be able to turn them off, and they should definitely not affeft my ability to do my work. Sure, you say, you can just click them away, what's the harm? I counter that my company has provided a PC for me to do my work, and has paid handsomely for the hardware and software. I'm not getting full valuemoutisof a tool that interrupts me to advertise features I may be interested in (but, so far, none have held any interest for me).
(I won't comment on how much crapware I had to remove from the Start menu...XBox gaming on a work PC install???)
The ability to set the default browser TOTALLY, without having to micro-manage it, would be a start. Then just Microsoft being honest would be a help. The anti-trust issues with Windows 11 are rampant, especially the nefarious ways that Microsoft blatantly makes it harder to use non-Microsoft apps.
One of my biggest "bug bears" about Windows 11.
The change from a single place to change the default web browser in Windows 10 to God knows how many individual file extension associations you have to change in 11.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft don't want people to change the default browser from something other than Egde.
The trick is to install Windows 10 first, lock it down, set all the privacy controls (they aren't all under privacy, they're also in security settings, to prevent cloud uploads of your data).
Set browser default (anything but Edge), local account etc, then do an in-place upgrade to 11.to keep all Win10 settings intact.
24 hours later, fully updated, multiple reboots, you'll have achieved what you can achieve in 10 minutes under a fresh install of Linux.
(And still, the MS talkie toaster will keep advertising MS Clipchamp on opening Photos, even after clicking the close/remove advert icon).
"you'll have achieved what you can achieve in 10 minutes under a fresh install of Linux"
Hear hear!
And if you're tired of us talking about how good our (free!) BMWs are, try one out on a test drive before you dismiss us as mindless zealots and drive off in your (rather expensive) Pinto.
There's plenty:
Code injection/monitoring when you attempt to download and install Firefox or Google Chrome, for starters.
Forced MS Store installs of MSN Weather, MSN Money, One Drive, Microsoft Teams, Xbox Game Bar.
Rewards, MS Subscriptions page, Windows 11 Widgets that remain, activated with a left sideswipe, even when removed from the task bar. i.e. they are still in memory, collecting advertising data.
You can't actually switch off Widgets in Win11, the settings switch just hides the left taskbar icon.
It has always been "optional". Open powershell with admin rights.
Enter:
(Get-AppxPackage *xbox*).Name
To nuke them all:
Get-AppxPackage *.xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
It may complain that one of them cannot be removed, so you have to select those you can remove. Typically:
Get-AppxPackage *.xbox*overlay* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
Get-AppxPackage *.xbox*ident* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
Get-AppxPackage *.xbox*tcui* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
And while we are at it:
Get-AppxPackage *.zune* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
"Code injection/monitoring when you attempt to download and install Firefox or Google Chrome, for starters."
Code injection and monitoring? Either you don't know what they are or you are just lying.
I downloaded Firefox yesterday to my Windows 11 computer. With Edge. Just go to Mozilla and download + install it. Nothing to it.
Now, the installation of MSN Weather and the other apps - how exactly they make it "harder to use non-Microsoft apps"?
Same with rewards (?), Widgets and whatever you listed - they have ZERO IMPACT on 3rd party software.
Just because you're not seeing the pop-up Windows in the right hand corner with prompts to instead, "continue using Edge 'securely' " (rather than doing what the user requested, i.e. download and install, after clicking download and install), when an attempt is made to download Google Chrome, doesn't mean it's not happening elsewhere in the world, assuming you're based in Finland.
You either work for Microsoft and are gaslighting, i.e. attempting to say it didn't happen or it's the case of A-B testing in different countries by Microsoft.
This is happening / has happened.
Plenty of people including myself, experienced the modified Google Chrome download page using Windows 11 (and this wasn't specific to an insider preview build), with the top half showing a half page reference to Edge Edge modified, aka 'injected' the underlying code into the Google Download page. Using Find (Ctrl+F) on the page, highlighted the text in both the Edge half page reference at the top of the page, as well as the Google part of the page below, as you used Ctrl+G, to tab through, i.e. It was notable that the Edge Find feature saw it as a single (modified) page, in terms of a text search. There are also promoted ads in Bing to use Edge, when searching to download Firefox or Chrome.
The effect is a combination of all three steps, to place doubt/obstacles in the way of the user, regards personal choices, about switching to a different browser from Edge.
Downloading MSN Weather, XBox Game Bar, MSN Money, Microsoft Teams, One Drive to user's machine without the user's permission, and repeatedly in the case of Xbox Game Bar, where these have been explicitly removed by the user, having to do so using Powershell no less, because the normal uninstall options for XBox Game Bar has been removed/greyed out, are examples of Microsoft abusing it's market position, preventing user choice.
And as soon as the regulators start looking into one thing like Edge, Microsoft moves the game on to the next thing, which is now the 'Search pill' or the extended 'Search box', however you want to look at it. We all know the game being played, by now.
Things like Rewards, could in the future have an impact on UK cashback sites like Quidco and Topcashback, again it's an abuse of MIcrosoft's market position because neither company can advertise in that spot within the OS.
"Just because you're not seeing the pop-up Windows in the right hand corner with prompts to instead, "continue using Edge 'securely' " (rather than doing what the user requested, i.e. download and install, after clicking download and install), when an attempt is made to download Google Chrome, doesn't mean it's not happening elsewhere in the world, assuming you're based in Finland."
If I try to download Chrome on Win11 with Edge - Edge show an internal (non-HTML) popup asking me to reconsider.
If I try to download Firefox on Win11 with Edge - no such thing. You wrote that this happens when downloading either. Seems to not be so.
Also, I still see no code injection here. The HTML that Google serves on their Chrome download page is intact as far as I can see.
"Plenty of people including myself, experienced the modified Google Chrome download page using Windows 11 (and this wasn't specific to an insider preview build), with the top half showing a half page reference to Edge Edge modified, aka 'injected' the underlying code into the Google Download page."
That would be quite newsworthy and El Reg here would probably report and investigate.
"Downloading MSN Weather, XBox Game Bar, MSN Money, Microsoft Teams, One Drive to user's machine without the user's permission,"
Those are part of the default Windows installation. Yet none of them block 3rd party software from being downloaded and installed.
Many/most(?) Win11 users will use a MS account which includes free OneDrive space, surely it is in the interest of Win11 users that the Onedrive is already there?
"Things like Rewards, could in the future have an impact on UK cashback sites like Quidco and Topcashback, again it's an abuse of MIcrosoft's market position because neither company can advertise in that spot within the OS."
"could have and impact" does not equal to abuse of market position. More Google Shopping has more impact on those two.
Perhaps it's the OS localizations or my location but there's no Rewards app or any kind of mention of it on my Win11 machines, and the whole rewards concept is something I haven't bothered with.
You earn rewards (Micros~1 Store gift cards?) it you use the Store, Bing, Edge and Xbox? Doesn't look like it will make any dent on those cashback sites you mentioned.
IMHO: all those cashback companies are man-in-the-middle sites who skim from the retailers profits and return *some* of that money to the cashback users. Find a more sympathetic example, please :)
Of course you can switch them off. Open powershell with admin rights.
Get-AppxPackage *WebExperience* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers
(Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online).Where({$_.DisplayName -eq "*WebExperience*"})[0] | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online -AllUsers
And gone! May return with the next upgrade to 22H2 or 23H2, but until then: Gone. Memory saved.
There are a few other useless things you can remove that way.
Please, the Vista shell. Why? Windows 7 added "Full Row Select" as default. You cannot drag and drop a file "between" two directories or "between" two.exe to avoid either end up the the subdirectory you don't want it or to prevent it from being opened with whatever is below the mouse. Windows 7 brought the bug that explorer search "default view as details please" is not remembered.
The day Microsoft make it so you can actually eject drives safely will be the day I believe they're actually listening. Can't believe still so many years on from Windows 98SE and the problem still hasn't been fixed correctly.
Also, who's actually left at microsoft to listen?
We have become the testers and I'm pretty sure that their own forums have been bots for years telling people to Clean boot, Reset or Reinstall windows at the first sign of an issue.
Maybe they should just release an OS called Microsoft Cowboy.
.. they should have given you the option to leave users the UI they finally got to know a bit and not ram Win 11 down their throat (or Teams, but that's a pain already suffered).
Or delete Windows wholesale, of course, but I think that's possibly expecting too much.
:)
"We have taken and will continue to take steps to mitigate unrequested modifications to a user's choices"
Ha, I'll believe that when I see it, seeing as Microsoft is one of the worst offenders given how many times Edge manages to sneakily set itself as the default browser - overriding my choices. Even when I do manage to set my default browser, MS just loves to disregard my choice by forcing OS links etc. to open in Edge regardless...
The whole concept of "pinning" an application to the taskbar is fucking stupid. There needs to be an obvious way to differentiate tasks that are running from tasks that are not.
There needs to be one area (quick launch bar) for programs I use a lot, so I can start them easily when I want them, without having to navigate the through the hell that the start button has become. And another area (taskbar) for programs that are currently running, so that I can switch between them while I am working. Oddly enough that's exactly what we had before "pinning" became a thing.
I actually like "pinning".
The highlight is different to show whether it's running or not, it means those top few applications stay in the same order, and there's the Start+[1-9] (and Shift+Start+[1-9]) shortcut to switch/start them.
Avoids lengthy typing in the search that never finds anything or scrolling for days because subfolders don't exist anymore.
Admittedly, some of that is simply a workaround for how badly they trashed the start menu, and it's only useful for your top five or six applications.
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