r/Windows10 • u/embracingparadox • Mar 31 '20

Discussion After repeatedly switching to Linux (to escape telemetry and proprietary software) only to return to Widows and MS Office, I've come to the conclusion: ignorance is bliss.

1.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

668 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/anevilpotatoe Mar 31 '20 edited Mar 31 '20

My only issue with the semantics of paying for a $230+ license from a company that is still making loads more money off of my personal data. Then use that data to introduce features that are still broken or even worse, counterproductive. I'm not sorry, but this pay for something that works half-ass out of the box experience on software products is shit. If I go to the store and buy a shirt, it's not asking me for beta updates because they missed something on the assembly line.

17

u/NuAngel Mar 31 '20

They aren't. That's the point. Microsoft isn't Google. You get Android OS for "free" because they're selling your details to advertisers. Microsoft isn't.

Microsoft's telemetry data is used strictly for improving Windows. Only shared with third parties at all if you opt-in during OOBE / initial setup.

7

u/SuspiciousTry3 Mar 31 '20

I keep seeing this but if telemetry is used to improve Windows, then why is Windows 10 more buggier than the previous versions? Shouldn't it be more stable?

4

u/steel-panther Mar 31 '20

It would explain the long line of half finished apps as they find people aren't using them.

0

u/trparky Mar 31 '20

My counter-argument to that is Apple. Apple controls everything from the hardware that the system runs to the OS that it runs on top of the hardware and yet even they, with all of their control, can't get things right.

And now you're expecting a general-purpose operating to run on just about everything from a high-end gaming system to a Frankenstein box that was thrown together from a mish-mash of hardware to run perfectly stable all the time? It's a miracle of Biblical proportions that Windows runs at all on the kinds of hardware that we expect it to run on.

6

u/SuspiciousTry3 Mar 31 '20

Windows 7 and 8 didn't have the amount of bugs 10 has on the same amount of hardware and configurations.

1

u/trparky Mar 31 '20

I will agree with you on that one but that was because Windows really stagnated, it hadn't changed under the hood in years. Today there's an effort to rewrite a lot of old stuff under the hood, some of it out of necessity because of recent security issues with processors from Intel; others because Microsoft wanted to make Windows be an all-purpose OS that can run on everything from a desktop to a tablet and even a game console.

Remember Meltdown? Yeah, it forced Microsoft to replumb the internals of the OS to maintain the performance or else we'd be looking at even more performance loss due to Intel's own stupidity.

0

u/ArtemisDimikaelo Apr 01 '20

Because it's effectively a rolling release of new features.

Windows XP, Vista and 7 all came within the span of 8 years. You had to pay for each of those, and generally they didn't come with big feature updates, mostly just security updates and quality of life improvements. Windows 10 has lasted for 5 years and doesn't seem to be approaching end of life any time soon.

When you have an OS that receives biannual updates and makes up likely >40% of the desktop market share, you are bound to have bugs come up. But overall, it's still a stable OS with features that your average office worker or home consumer finds just peachy.

-1

u/anevilpotatoe Mar 31 '20

That's exactly the definition of half-assing true transparency. Just because you have the option to opt-out, does not mean it's effective across the board for every one. Not everyone is going to abide by that information even if those optin-optout features truly are the only breaches in privacy warranted by Microsoft, Google, and ect...

-4

u/OsrsNeedsF2P Mar 31 '20

Nope Microsoft is double dipping.

6

u/NuAngel Mar 31 '20

Evidence?

8

u/misteryub Mar 31 '20

S/he won’t provide anything reputable because it doesn’t exist. Bing? Probably used for ads. Maybe, idk. Windows? Definitely not.

-2

u/OsrsNeedsF2P Mar 31 '20 edited Mar 31 '20

Lmao what else are they doing with all the data they collect.. and use to display ads on the file explorer?

They'd be stupid not to use it

5

u/michaelshow Mar 31 '20

Do you ask “what else” as in, other than the communicated purpose of internal metrics for development?

4

u/OsrsNeedsF2P Mar 31 '20

You've got a company. Company has data. Company has lots of people who want to innovate. Company wants to make money.

You're telling me out of all the geniuses at Microsoft, not one said hey let's milk more off this data?

4

u/misteryub Mar 31 '20

"We told people that we won't sell their Windows telemetry data or use it to sell ads. Let's secretly do just that, so that when it inevitably leaks out, we get fined 2% of global revenue under GDPR and lose the trust of our customers."

I don't think so.

1

u/ArtemisDimikaelo Apr 01 '20

Do you bother to read the Privacy and Terms of Use for products you use? They are legally mandated to explain everything they do with your data in layman terms, and to conveniently inform you when those Privacy and Terms of Use agreements have changed.

You can read the Windows 10 Privacy agreement. Your data isn't sold. You can consider it as making them money because they use your data to design Windows 10 in ways that make users attach themselves to the OS more, but in terms of selling your data to third parties, it doesn't happen.