Discussion

People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop Windows 11's mandatory Microsoft Account requirements during setup

throwa356262: Serious question: why is this not a problem with apple products?

Jare: I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.

kstrauser: How do you mean?

Supermancho: people remember creating an Apple Account login and using it on their laptop, but don't understand that it's connected in fundamentally different ways.The answer is: Because the Apple Login is not calling out for every service, including login.

kstrauser: Microsoft has, by far, the absolute worst sign-on experience of any enterprise vendor I've ever used in any industry for any reason. Try to log in to AWS and you'll either get authed or a clear denial reason. Google Workspace? You're in or you're out. Enterprisey MS service like Outlook or Azure? Well, if you've logged in from that computer before, you might get to log in, but you may also have to hunt around for your organization login. I recently tried to log in to an org but it ended up creating a personal account with an email address at the org's domain, and then I could sign in to the org because that account was already taken, and it took something like a week for the anti-fraud cooldown to let me delete the account and eventually re-register it inside the org.For giggles, I just logged into my charity's Outlook account. I tried to log out, but it's showing my an "Your privacy matters" explaining why my privacy doesn't matter, and the "sign out" menu item stopped working, presumably until I agree to let them hoover my data. (Aside: the "To adjust your optional connected experience, go to Privacy settings." link doesn't take my to my privacy settings. It takes me to a page telling me how to get to my privacy settings.)You cannot convince me that anyone at MS actually uses their public-facing auth system for anything ever. MS gets love for backward compatibility, but I see it as laziness. Instead of making one system that "just works", like Google and Apple and AWS and every other large vendor on the planet has managed, they half-ass support all 537 different auth systems they've ever deployed, driven by what I imagine must look like a giant nested switch/case behind the scenes. "OK, the user didn't have an "@" in their username, so call `legacy_pw_auth_23(form.password)`. It did have an "@", and also a "@minecraft." in it, so call `minecraft_v1_real_pw_authorizerer(form.password)`, unless it also contains `foo@minecraft.`, in which case call `minecraft_migration_2014_null(form.password)`, except in February, which has 28 days most of the time, where we call..." Heaven help you if it guesses wrong and sends you down the wrong twisty passage.I'm far from a Google fanboy. I use their stuff for work, and it's alright, but it does not spark joy in my day. Still, I bet if the Microsoft Account login worked anywhere near as clearly, reliably, and rationally, as Google sign-on, then Windows wouldn't get 1/10th the pushback we're seeing. If I couldn't authenticate to my own desktop any more reliably than I could auth to Outlook, I'd want nothing to do with it, either.

masfuerte: This is so true. When you log in to their website it bounces around through about fifteen different domains before it concludes. I'm nearly sure passport.com is still in there.

lousken: And they have not yelled when they were implementing it years ago?That sounds more like they were ok with it at the time and now they are seeing how much it actually backfired.

keeda: Alternatively, they yelled back then and were dismissed but now have some political ammo to push their case. I mean, if it was actually backfiring enough, they would not have to "fight" for it now, Windows PMs themselves would be scrambling to do it.

grujicd: This "make Windows better" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services.It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how enterprises ended up on Azure and are bringing big money.I'm still a Windows power user, MacBook is a wonderful piece of hardware and I'm typing this on one, but I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.

drewda: FWIW I've been on a OS X for many years now, but I still miss keyboard shortcuts in Windows. So much more consistent across the operating system and applications...

freediddy: I have Windows and Mac PCs/laptops. I've used Windows since Windows 3.0, for 30+ years now. In the early 90s I invested in Windows NT 3.5 as a college student and learned how to use that over Windows 3.1 or OS/2. I attended the Windows 95 celebration in person. I almost went into becoming a Microsoft MCSE because it would have doubled my pay but went the programming route instead because I loved it more.I'm still on Windows 10. Fuck you Microsoft for making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10. The simple fact I can't stop them from updating my Windows 10 machine and it reboots my machine makes me so angry that's one of the main reasons why I will never upgrade. Microsoft Recall is a non-starter for me, even though they made it "better".If they force me to upgrade, I'll move entirely to Mac and install Linux on my current Windows desktop.

ooterness: Too little, too late. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Good riddance, Microsoft.

WarmWash: The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.

user432678: I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.

taeric: Fundamentally, I think you are driving at a legitimate complaint and it should be a concern with Apple products.The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.

pipes: I've done this several times over the last 18 years or so. The most recent was a few months a go. And my steamdeck persuaded me. Unfortunately I ran into the same WiFi networking issue I've never managed to resolve. Even on different hardware. Pings to my default gateway are ridiculously slow compared to windows. I spent countless hours trying to resolve. I gave up and have gone with windows 11 ltsc.

graemep: What is the constant? You have something that is unusual and that has not changed for 18 years. Is it specific to your home network?I have not had any issues I can remember with Linux wifi for as long as I have used wifi.

kstrauser: I also think that's what they meant. Alternatively, the person could've been asking why Apple hasn't made the same boneheaded mistake as MS. I wasn't sure how to interpret their question to know how to answer it.

spandrew: I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in).Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.

bushbaba: The neo is the Chromebook for education revolution. It’s cheap and better than 98%+ of windows laptops. I’d not be surprised to see further Mac penetration to the business sector

TheRoque: 13 inch screen though.. it's really smallAnd with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say

longislandguido: I'm seeing a lot of "8GB ought to be enough for anybody" over the last week....

nubinetwork: The only benefit I've seen to having a Microsoft account is that I don't have to remember a cd key anymore if I have to reinstall... other than that, what was it actually used for?

smithcoin: I posted something similar the other day, but at this point it is too little too late. Using windows feels like actively submitting to a hostile user experience.I look back fondly to the time I had using my Dell XPS when WSL first came out, they had me hooked. I've been using MacBook Pro for about a decade now and I can't even fathom going back to windows. Every time I open the start menu I feel personally attacked.I used to obsess over reading xda developer forums and playing around with my android phone. I would laugh at the "sheeple" using apple products for not being customizable and giving away their freedom.At this point in my life "it just works" is good enough and no longer a point of ironic derision.

dahdum: They use machine id, shouldn’t need the key to reactivate on reinstall.

intrasight: Isn't part of this Microsoft preparing for the requirement to do age verification in the OS?

ubermonkey: The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac.Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.

KaiMagnus: Also people probably have more of a problem with MS accounts because they don’t really have an ecosystem that provides clear value.An Apple account together with an iPhone and MacBook let’s you share clipboard, passwords, notes etc., a no brainer.Windows laptop and iPhone? I guess an Apple account still is more useful here too, actually. So the average user does not really need an MS account, hence the annoyance.

nananana9: I had to make one to download Xcode from the store. I couldn' figure out a way around it, but admittedly I have about 4 hours of macos experience.

cmiller1: I've always found the opposite, do you have any examples where macOS falls short compared to Windows in shortcut consistency?

kstrauser: This may be the first time that sentiment's ever been expressed.

malfist: Why do you say that?A lot of shortcuts are shared between windows and linux and fairly consistent across applications. Mac is the one that takes a decided "we're different" approach to shortcuts. I.e., Alt+L for address bar instead of Alt+D, Command swapping with Control, Q instead of W for closing tabs, Command+Control+Q for locking a computer instead of Super+L, etc

Sohcahtoa82: The big one for me on Mac was refreshing a web page being CMD+R rather than F5.Not to mention the muscle memory for pressing CTRL in the corner of the keyboard rather than CMD where Alt is.Though I will say that having "Copy" (cmd-c) being different from ^C (ctrl-c) was kind of nice. Though Terminal has done a nice thing of making it so if you highlight text, Ctrl-C copies the first time you press it, and sends ^C the second time.

miyoji: The problem with Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS.We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!

wvenable: But you can move your key across devices -- just de-register the old machine and register on the new one.I bought a Windows Pro license a decade ago (maybe for Win7) and I'm still using the same license for Windows 11 on a new PC.

tonymet: I’m a Windows fan, and I could see this being a pain for OEMs and installers / IT guys – but I don’t see why people are making a huge deal . Windows quality is a much bigger issue: latency, reliability issues, inconsistencies in the UI, etc.Windows account login provides decent value: Bitlocker recovery, device management, Onedrive sync (even the free version), simpler RDP & remote RPC authentication.You won’t even defeat telemetry with a local account. Windows TOS grants telemetry consent.Why do you guys care so much about this? It feels like a bikeshed – something easy to complain about with little nuance. What will be won if MS concedes?

999900000999: The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people.I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed.Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such.The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.

jcelerier: 200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops. Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768.This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.

999900000999: Used, on eBay you can find something very capable for 200 to 250.Around 300$ it gets better, specifically if you're open to Dell and other brands.

longislandguido: The Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop.They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."

bombcar: Can you recommend a Windows laptop in the $400 range? I'm interested in a craptop for various Windows things that still pop up from time to time.

wvenable: Apple is a hardware company -- their software exists to support their hardware.Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.

Rapzid: As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS.It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)* Internet search results in the "Home" search* Random popups and product recommendations* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows updateHoly. Hell.

hhlevnjak2: I recently changed my distro to Bazzite expecting it to work well on a laptop since it's supposedly optimized for handhelds. While it "just works" and I had no hardware problems, it still required tweaking to get the battery life anywhere close to what it would be in Windows. "Normal people" would still need someone to support them with the installation to get it to work well for their machine.

john_strinlai: >I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore.i agree with most of what you said, but this is borderline fantasy.the majority of home market share is not guaranteed, sure. with how good gaming is on non-windows machines now, there isnt much for a home user to get locked-in with (except games that require windows-only malware i.e. anticheat)but government, institution (hospitals, universities, etc.) and large non-tech enterprise? that will be windows for at least 20 more years even if they started to change everything now (which they arent). and the number of machines in those places absolutely dwarfs the number of home installs.

sidkshatriya: Decline often happens slowly, gradually and then suddenly. Could anybody imagine Intel where it is now ? This could happen to Microsoft and is probably already happening as we speak.

kstrauser: Conversely, when I use a PC, I have to stop and wonder why alt-R doesn't reload the web page like it's supposed to, and alt-C doesn't copy, and I have to stretch my pinky all the way over to use that shortcut. And what's the mnemonic for "F5 means reload"?Which is to say that neither Windows nor Mac shortcuts are inherently better. It's just what we're used to. IME, the main difference is that once you learn the Mac shortcuts in a handful of apps, they'll pretty much work on the other apps you encounter, too.

kstrauser: Please, by all means do post a link to a comparable new Windows laptop for $400, including a fast GPU, reasonable amount of fast storage (and not counting an SD card or such), a high-DPI monitor, and non-embarassing build quality. I'd love to see this.

chocochunks: The GPU in the Neo isn't particularly fast...nor is the storage. Neo makes loads of compromises to hit $600 with some of it's features. Even for $400 you can get Windows PCs with TWO whole USB 3.0 ports. $400 quickly hits diminishing returns territory.Like here's a $500 PC:https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processo... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic...Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.

kstrauser: They didn't mention cross-OS shortcuts, though. I interpreted "across the operating systems" as meaning "across the various versions of Windows". Yes, Windows is more consistent with their own common shortcuts. But Macs have exceedingly consistent shortcuts across Mac applications, compared to my experience with Windows and especially Linux.I might also point out that Mac had keyboard shortcuts before Windows existed, so it's not really fair to describe them as the "different" one when MS chose their own, different shortcuts for Windows.

larusso: Apple also invented their own key “Apple” now “CMD” for operation like copy / paste to explicitly not have the issue to overload the already know escape sequences. Windows being on a system without a normalized keyboard had to reuse keys that are common to keyboards used back then. Vertical integration played into apples cards even back then.

bombcar: Steam report is a good thing to look at:https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=macFor Mac, 30% are at 8GB, 43% at 16GB.Windows has nearly nobody below 16GB (27%) and the biggest is 32GB (58%)

yourusername: The screen is also much worse. 60% SRGB coverage 1920x1200 300 nits vs 97% 2408x1506 500 nits. I'd pick the macbook neo for $99 extra.

sidkshatriya: I've used macOS for years and still don't understand their windows minimize/restore logic. I'm always hunting for my minimized window. Yes, the fault probably lies with me.OTOH the Windows UI is far better well designed and intuitive. But yeah... I'd rather fumble around in macOS: Windows is always trying to upsell a service that I don't need. If I say no it will helpfully keep reminding me (my answer is never going to change). I have 32GB ram and a recent processor being fed tons of wattage -- it feels so bog slow.Windows needs to fix itself fast.

kstrauser: So for $100 less, you get a markedly lower-DPI screen that's 40% dimmer, a slower CPU, hotter running, and a worse chassis. Almost no one's going to be slapping multiple external monitors on either of these. If they did, they might run into the problem where the Acer is often limited to 640x480: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/733442/have-a-new-a...That is not remotely in the same category as the Neo.

beart: This entire article is based on a one sentence tweet with zero details provided."Ya I hate that. Working on it." - Could mean anything, which I would argue in this case, is equivalent to being meaningless. Does this mean Hanselman has a team with tickets lined up for the next sprint to allow offline accounts as a first-class workflow? Or does it mean he sent an email to the relevant stakeholders asking, "Hey guys, what can we do about this"?I am not encouraged that we will see a change in momentum from Microsoft on this issue.

john_strinlai: >gradually and then suddenly.governments, institutions, and large enterprises (like, thousands of people) do not have the power to do anything "suddenly". they have contracts, and cash flow concerns. you cannot suddenly replaces tens to hundreds of thousands of machines.20-50 years down the road? maybe! they (microsoft) surely arent doing themselves many favors. but they are certainly not in "significant danger" today.

homarp: and then something like COVID happens and they change fast.

john_strinlai: expanding your vpn to support more employees working from home is much easier than replacing hundreds of thousands of machines, all of the windows-only software that runs on those machines, training all of your employees on a new operating system, cancelling all of your existing contracts... you get the point.

jon-wood: You can't suddenly replace them, but in a lot of cases you can find that over an extended period more and more people choose the MacBook option from IT rather than the Windows one.

TheGRS: I've always understood why they do this. Its data collection, its a really weak lock-in to their ecosystem, it gets users embedded into Windows more. Its just not very compelling, just another hoop to jump through. Also I don't really see Microsoft accounts as a major SSO offering on many sites, its usually Google/Apple/Facebook and maybe some other related sites. Seems logical to call this one done and just focus on making a more enjoyable experience in Windows.

philistine: You're proving the point. The computer you found wins on the specs page for sure. But the proof is in the pudding; Apple makes money hand over fist because they focus on reasonable specs, and quality. The thing that kills a modern laptop is not a slow CPU or RAM on the chip; it's a cheap chassis that breaks. That's what makes people change their computer.