Hey y’all, today I experienced another push for Linux from our friend Microsoft.
5 minutes ago, I wanted to use the timer app on Windows, so I could manage my work/break schedule, and this fucker showed up.
Yes, that’s a prompt to sign in with a Microsoft account to use the clock. If you close it, it pops up 30s later. Clicking “Don’t sign in” or closing the process responsible for displaying it is useless, and guess what… IT PAUSES THE TIMER WHEN IT SHOWS UP.
I guess this is another thing added to the super long list of things which will eventually make me switch my main workstation to Linux once win10 is discontinued.
/endrant
Hope y’all are having a great day :3
Why wait. Start switching now.
This. Be proactive. Don’t wait for microsoft
I have moved my laptop over to kubuntu for a while now, but I have too many workflows that rely on windows ) :
Better start soon then to get those workflows going quicker
better to start figuring out your workflow on linux now than waiting for shit to hit the fan and do it in a hurry.
Best to wait until the last second and switch cold turkey. What could possibly go wrong?
What are they?
I ditched Windows roughly 15 years ago and I run a MS Silver partner shop.
I daily drive Kubuntu (was Arch but I need to tick boxes). I used to teach DTP, WP, spreadsheets etc and Libre Office is fine as a replacement for MSO. Email - Exchange and Evolution EWS. I create the most complicated docs in my firm and MSO works with them OK.
I 3D print stuff and use LibreCAD and OpenSCAD. All good. Also note that there are lots of other CAD apps on Linux for free/libre and of course we have
As far as I am aware, games is the only area that Linux might fail and that issue is shrinking rapidly.
8 years or so for me. I miss Ableton and Sibelius. I have Bitwig and Musescore but I still miss them. Musescore is getting better and better (I am planning on moving to lilypond anyway) but Bitwig is too alien for me. It is almost the same bu not really. If it was completely different, it might have been easier to get used to. Also I wish there was a viable open source alternative to Bitwig.
was in the same situation for a while, but I switched a few weeks ago and I’ve never since looked back
then even more reason to start de-windowsifying your workflows now rather than doing it all at once later
This is actually surreal ☠️
the clock app has a built in spotify integration and player.
the calculator sends diagnostic data.The diagnostic app does absolutely nothing.
That’s not true, the placebo effect is very real
I remember my windows ~7 days when j thought pressing a button in windows and watching the bar load and say done actually fixed things 😭
If you close it, it pops up 30s later.
This is by far the most annoying development in software and website design to ever occur. You can’t say no to stuff anymore. If you say no, they nag you again very very soon, and they will continue nagging you until you accidentally click yes. After you’ve clicked yes, they make it damned near impossible to change that selection. Dark patterns were outlawed years ago, yet somehow nagware is legal? Fuck the person who thought this up with a spiked baseball bat.
Minor correction: You can’t say no because they intentionally almost never give you “no” as an option. It generally is “Ask again later” instead, when you clearly never want them to ask again, just like you didn’t want to be asked the first time.
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about.
Oh boy are you going to love-to-hate this then. It’s best viewed on a proper computer, but you’ll get the gist on mobile too.
Ha! Thanks for sharing that. I got a real laugh out of it. It starts off pretty tame and just gets worse and worse until it’s completely unusable. As a former blogger, I’m very familiar with some of the shit that money driven bloggers pulled. I always avoided anything other than non-intrusive ads and still made a living off of it, which really goes to show that usually the webmaster is just an asshole.
That was actually pretty creative, hopefully my Actual Snake Oil™ arrives soon.
I know I’m getting wildly off-topic just three comments deep in this thread, but comedy that warps into existential horror is a genre that I’ve recently discovered I love but probably never would have expected to be my kind of thing. This video is one of my favorites.
There is a carrier app on my phone that cannot be uninstalled without root. I guess all phones have that, even if you don’t have a contract, which I don’t. I disabled roaming, went to another country, and it started to randomly show pop-ups asking me to turn on roaming and activate the international plan. There is an ok and cancel button, and it can pop up right under my fingers while I am typing something. That is pure evil.
I haven’t experienced this with a Pixel nor an iPhone. I buy straight from Google and Apple though, because I don’t want the bloatware that carriers install. Did you buy from the carrier? Is it a Samsung? They do all kinds of crappy things with their TouchUI.
Apparently the app is actually called Sim toolkit and it is built into the Android OS. I didn’t even give it permission to send notifications.
I just got an iPhone yesterday, so I checked the iPhone and my Pixel Pro and I don’t have that app on either OS.
Really interesting. Probably country specific. Thanks for checking.
NP. Good luck.
I did not buy from the carrier. It’s a OnePlus 9 Pro.
In all my phones so far, a carrier app like this is automatically installed after I boot the phone for the first time with a sim card. Going all the way back to my first android phone.
Maybe that’s a country or carrier specific thing? I don’t have that on my phone, not with T-Mobile nor Verizon.
Can you see a system app called “SIM Toolkit”?
Nope.
Nagware has been around since the 80s and it was just as annoying then even without this bloated corporate hellscape we call the internet 🙁
I’m glad that you want to switch to Linux, but I think there’d be open source solutions for Windows too. I daily drive Linux, and I would begin with looking for open source timers if I ever need timers. Why not do the same in Windows too?
Here are a few: https://alternativeto.net/software/free-countdown-timer/?platform=windows&license=opensource
lol, that’s so stupid. why does it pause the timer? did they do that intentionally?
I’d imagine it’s to force me to sign in to use the timer. Shittify the version that can’t track as much, and force the users to use it logged in
Does the timer “jump” to the correct time after you dismiss the window ? It’s also possible that they didn’t bother testing the app when logged out, and that the popup blocks the UI thread while it’s displayed. In short it could be bad coding and QA instead of intentional enshittification.
No it pauses the timer. Once I dismiss the popup I can see that the pause button icon has been replaced with the continue/play icon. Clicking it unpauses the timer until the popup pops up again.
OK so this is most likely by design, impressive.
I can imagine the project lead in the meeting: “Okay guys, we need to make the worst timer app ever, so I can sell my better timer app in the app store. Any ideas?” “You can start the timer, but need to be online and sign in with 2FA to keep the timer running.” “Brad, you’re a genius.”
Epic!
Of course they did. They’re going to make it as intrusive and annoying as possible so that people give up and sign in.
People can just use a different timer, use a batch script or task scheduler. I once even made a multiplatform timer for my tea myself in Java that can go to the systray.
My point is: By making it annoying, they just drive them away to the many alternatives and gain nothing. It seems like some mistake idk.
I think Microsoft is way overconfident
Microsoft had made a product that has for decades been used to run other people’s software. They’ve unintentionally made windows a “monopoly” in the sense that no other os can run windows only software perfectly. Most consumers will probably think Linux " is just a terminal and too advanced", and the others who can install a distro might still be locked into using windows because not all software can run under wine.
So to you they might seem overconfident in that you can switch, but for some they’re shit out of luck in the department of alternatives. Microsoft knows they can exploit their users, and they will do it
They’ve unintentionally made windows a “monopoly”
What? Becoming a monopoly is the most intentional thing they’ve ever done, and the only thing they’ve ever done well.
Then explain Chrome OS. Seriously though a lot of software is web based these days. Windows is not special for most uses.
We are already on Linux man.
ᴵ’ᵐ ˢᵗᶦˡˡ ᵘˢᶦⁿᵍ ʷᶦⁿᵈᵒʷˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐʸ ˢᶜʰᵒᵒˡ
and he’s infiltrating our enemy’s weaknesses
This is supposed to be the most used operating system, recommended for its ease of use. Meanwhile you have to sign in to use a clock app. Such a shame, especially because the focus timers are actually useful.
Obligatory Windows is bloat.
That is disgusting. 'nuff said.
why wait the death of win10 when you can switch now, get that painful first days learning things out of the way now that you have a fallback if absolutely necessary
You cannot use anything without signing up. You can’t use clip champ which should require 0 Internet connectivity.
They want to act as if linking your account is a prerequisite when it’s neither required or helpful
It’s helpful to them, so they can spy on everything you do, and sell that information to anyone who will pay for it.
Because it’s a “free” piece of software so you are the product and therefore they want you to agree that they can harvest and sell your data
Except it’s not a free operating system. An operating system should fulfill the needs of its users without having to pay for basic functionality: see everyone OS ever that is not w11
I was referring to Clipchamp, not the OS
I hate this pop up, I had to re-signin every day into outlook with my private Microsoft email address. EVERYDAY, THEY ARE BOTH MICROSOFT PRODUCTS. HOW CAN YOU FUCK THIS UP SO BADDD?
My parents are in their 80s and this crap will push them to Linux.
I doubt that’s deliberate (it’s probably depending on some other task or shit that you don’t even intend to use), but it’s exactly the kind of bloat that turns people away from Windows.
Windows seems to work alright for my work pc, where I’m constantly logged into their cloud, newer switch users, logged in long enough daily to get all the updates and have IT to roll out stuff, so I hardly ever have issues there.
My personal computer is a different thing. I have several users, use it about once weekly, making it basically unbootable. As soon as I open the lid, Microsoft starts bugging me to do a shit load of things and download gigabytes of crap that Microsoft, and not I, needs me to do before I can even use it. More often than not I simply close the lid again.
It’s not unusual to meet people who don’t even have a pc these days. Most people can solve their daily stuff on any cell phone browser. I find it kinda amusing that Microsoft is pushing people that way.
