Mick Jagger foresaw it decades ago
Paint it black!
337 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2015
And see how many bother to install it and keep it beyond a 5' trial. Is M$ afraid to be deceived by how little interest this piece of code raises and realize users would rather see it spend time on fixing Windows bugs? Alas, just fixing code is less fun than writing new stuff, even if it's useless.
Well, on Android, Firefox would definitely be faster if I could turn off tab offloading. But that requires accessing the about: config parameters, an ability lost many versions ago. And it would also be better if I could run extensions I want (like LanguageTool or CookieAutoDelete) outside the ridiculously small set of approved ones.
My car dates back from 2003, so driving assist or Internet connection are not to be worried about. When I replace it, I expect to favor another older used car over fighting against unavoidable assistance. But Tesla aside, do recent cars really require an Internet connection to operate, or is it just to enable non essential options?
I connect to FB to get news from a few (5-6) cycling or caving-related groups. Of course, I'd prefer them to just run a plain website, but I understand FB is much easier to setup. I don't care about sponsored content, suggestions from algorithms or this whole friend/follower craze, so my friend-free profile is empty and I access FB through its website with Firefox and the FB Purity plugin installed. I just get what I clicked for and nothing else.
In 2002, I started developing on PalmOS what became the first mobile app for cave surveying (Auriga), used by hundreds of cavers worldwide. Even a 16 MHz Palm IIIxe could execute the myriad of trigonometric operations necessary to render the cave map on screen. At the last PalmSource conference, in 2004, out of 900 participants, I was the only freeware writer. 20 years later, the app still has some hardcore users who enjoy its GPS tracking (on surface), KML maps, Bluetooth link to instruments, vector sketching, loop closure, import/export from/to various data formats, etc. for a 1.3 Mb executable, the size of a flashlight app on Android. Most people run it on a PDA, but others use their Android phone or tablet with the StyleTap emulator.
If this deal gets cancelled and Bing numbers don't rise, Google will realize it was spending too much money for nothing while Microsoft will learn its engine is simply ignored because it's inferior. Apple will lose good money and might decide to spend more on its own engine. Interesting times.