Microsoft hides option to use Windows 10 with a local account - GDPR violation?

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, yolosnail said:

Am I the only one who prefers signing in to new installs with my Microsoft Account so that everything gets synced over automatically?

 

The way I see it is, Microsoft is going to spy on you whether you sign in with a local account or not, so you might as well reap the benefits of being spied on!

It can be really convenient to use the Microsoft account. The problem here is that you had the choice to do it before, and now a lot of people will think they don't have a choice. 

If Microsoft want people to use online accounts then they should give people compelling reasons to use it. Not force people to use something they don't want by removing the only other option. 

[TempestCatto]

It's almost like Microsoft wants you to switch away!

[DrMacintosh]

If you’re tired of Windows 10, buy a Mac or switch to Linux. Microsoft clearly doesn’t care about what their customers think of Windows 10. And why would they? It’s not like consumers have many options. If you use macOS you have to give up your current hardware, if you switch to Linux you have to give up your favorite programs and games. 
 

This is what happens when you effectively have a monopoly. 

[Murasaki]

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

If you’re tired of Windows 10, buy a Mac or switch to Linux. Microsoft clearly doesn’t care about what their customers think of Windows 10. And why would they? It’s not like consumers have many options. If you use macOS you have to give up your current hardware, if you switch to Linux you have to give up your favorite programs and games. 
 

This is what happens when you effectively have a monopoly. 

Yeah I am not going to bend over to the monopoly. Its TempleOS for me!

[spartaman64]

11 minutes ago, SnowWolf370 said:

On Windows Phone you can only use the Internet Browser App, there are no other browsers really available.

 

Long story short, no one was using Bing as a search engine. So in order to resolve that, Microsoft patched out the setting to select Google as the default setting. So Windows Phone can now only use Bing.

 

Unless you manually go to google.com yourself.

and google is the one always getting hit by antitrust lawsuits in the EU smh

[Crowbar]

1 hour ago, TheVillageIdiot said:

One should always nuke an oem install. Unless you do not know how to grab drivers.

 

Or just nuke it completely and install a non-garbage OS yourself.

 

Literally the only reason windows still has a place in 2019 is due to forced adoption. If they weren't cutting exclusive deals with every major OEM for default installation which is included in the price whether the user wants it or not, other alternatives would have far more exposure to the majority market and therefore a wider user base. In return, more proprietary software which people have learned to use would make it's way over. Until this strategy in attempt to monopolize the market comes to an end or microshaft pisses off enough users with their bullshit to force a switch, this endless cycle will continue to be the sad state of personal computing.

[2DollaKoala]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

In before the usual people who defend this type of behavior from Microsoft just goes "you just have to unplug your computer from the Internet and then create the local account. We should all lick Microsoft's shoes because they are so kind to continue to give us a way to use local accounts!".

How about the defense that you kinda need an MS account to use Windows anyway? Personally, the changes to Windows in terms of licensing has improved dramatically and it's because my keys are linked to my account. I'd be willing to bet that Windows will go the rout of macOS. Can't upgrade to the new version of macOS without an Apple ID. Plus it's super common for people to confuse their online account with their local account. Passwords get forgotten and frustration ensues....

 

Okay I did my bets on that one. This is definitely way worse than just nudging people into a MS account. Though they seem to have been kind enough to be giving away their OS upgrades. I wouldn't be surprised if a future Windows 11 is a free upgrade as well. But to make up the difference they'll probably make the system requirements tighter requiring people buy new computers and licenses. IDK... this is definitely a weird decision to force this kind of user account on people.

[Anomnomnomaly]

3 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

and google is the one always getting hit by antitrust lawsuits in the EU smh

 

Awwwww... look at the young one here. 

 

MS has been raked over the coals by the EU many times in the past... and lost heavily. Google is just the new kid on the block and facebook is the newborn screaming for some attention... It may not like what it gets. 

[Jito463]

Not sure if you're being facetious or not, but I'm going to operate on the assumption that you weren't.

3 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

How about the defense that you kinda need an MS account to use Windows anyway?

Funny, I've used Windows 10 for close to 4 years now, and I have never used a MS account.

3 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

Personally, the changes to Windows in terms of licensing has improved dramatically and it's because my keys are linked to my account.

That only matters if you're using a retail license and want to transfer it to another computer.  OEM licenses - even ones you've bought yourself - are tied to the specific motherboard.  That said, if it's an OEM license that you've purchased, it's entirely possible to transfer that license by activating over the phone (assuming it doesn't just let you reactivate over the internet).

 

Regardless, you don't need a MS account to reactivate Windows 10.  If you need to reinstall, you don't even need to type in your license key, as Windows will detect the hardware (specifically: motherboard) in your system and reactivate itself automatically, even when using a local login.

3 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

I'd be willing to bet that Windows will go the rout of macOS. Can't upgrade to the new version of macOS without an Apple ID.

Unless you're talking about the next version that hasn't been released yet, it's certainly not necessary to use an Apple ID to upgrade the MacOS version.  I've upgraded several laptops to Mojave without an Apple ID.

3 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

Plus it's super common for people to confuse their online account with their local account. Passwords get forgotten and frustration ensues....

Password issues occur, regardless.  I just had an instance where a lady with an iPad got the Apple account locked out, because of not knowing the password.  Didn't help that she had two separate Apple ID accounts on the same iPad - and didn't know either password - along with at least two (maybe three) different e-mail accounts.  Not to mention her Facebook account, which was a whole other password.

[williamcll]

Why would anyone buy Win10 Home these days?

[Delicieuxz]

37 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Why would anyone buy Win10 Home these days?

That's something I've been saying since Windows 10 released. Win 10 Home really is a terrible choice for everybody, no matter what their use case is. A person never knows when they're going to want to stop some annoying Windows or Microsoft behaviour, protecting their data from forced updates being just one possibility, and then there's little or no recourse to do so in Home - unless the Group Policy editor is enabled via a registry hack.

 

Windows 10 LTSC is the only choice for me. It can be bought off of eBay for $5.

 

And if for some reason I couldn't use LTSC, then I'd buy Enterprise on eBay for $5 or so dollars and then remove the bloat. But LTSC is Enterprise without the bloat, without Cortana, and without UWP, and of course without the ads of Win 10 Pro, which makes it the ideal Windows 10 edition. There wasn't much of one before, but since Microsoft have abandoned UWP, there's now really no reason to have a Windows 10 edition that has UWP.

[2DollaKoala]

3 hours ago, Jito463 said:

it's certainly not necessary to use an Apple ID to upgrade the MacOS version.  I've upgraded several laptops to Mojave without an Apple ID.

Well, the way Apple sets things up, you're supposed to use the Apple ID of the user to install macOS as per the EULA. Yes there are other ways to install macOS, but the initial download of that installer needed to have come from the App Store with an Apple ID.

[ckinfos]

in the past they had Int. explorer stack in the Operating system....now they have onedrive and officeonline. I think that is why all these happen. They had propably problems embedding somethign in the cloud sevices and had to update it....things can go wrong though.

[Anomnomnomaly]

7 hours ago, williamcll said:

Why would anyone buy Win10 Home these days?

Specially when you can buy a license for pro for less than £20.

[Denned]

Literally nothing to do with GDPR.

[RejZoR]

58 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Specially when you can buy a license for pro for less than £20.

Because Home license is fine for home laptops.

[spartaman64]

11 hours ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

Awwwww... look at the young one here. 

 

MS has been raked over the coals by the EU many times in the past... and lost heavily. Google is just the new kid on the block and facebook is the newborn screaming for some attention... It may not like what it gets. 

i said it mostly as a meme but ok and i don't remember microsoft getting a lawsuit over this in particular

[Jito463]

7 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

Well, the way Apple sets things up, you're supposed to use the Apple ID of the user to install macOS as per the EULA. Yes there are other ways to install macOS, but the initial download of that installer needed to have come from the App Store with an Apple ID.

Except that I've upgraded laptops from the Apple App Store, without an Apple ID.  Clean install of Sierra, no Apple ID assigned, downloaded Mojave from the App Store and installed it.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, williamcll said:

Why would anyone buy Win10 Home these days?

Because some of us don’t buy grey market keys. Windows home is like $119 and pro is like $199. If your buying it the legal way. Grey market keys can be iffy. I personally wouldn’t trust any of those sites with my credit card data. 

[Sauron]

On 10/3/2019 at 8:39 AM, ckinfos said:

The problem is that although there is the MacOS and linux alternatives, MS is dominating a long time the market and brands stick with it too. The problem is not MS spying activities or disabling some of their options.

The problem is that :

1. Macs are too expensive so alot of people cant buy them so they cant use the MacOS (which it has its flaws too)

2. Linux have so many branches and have YET a non-terminal everyday usage for many tasks (that means the user HAS to do everyday tasks the hard way, even install programs)

3. Game companies dont like LINUX...ING! Even though Steam, Google, lutris and so is trying to change that but still due to the fact 2 there are unpassable problems.

 

So i think we have to live with what the monopoly....goes us too.

 

First of all, monopolies are self perpetuating; most computers run windows, therefore most software is for windows, therefore most computers run windows. This is not a case of the competition just "not being good enough", it's a case of Microsoft actively preventing them from ever becoming competitive from an unfair position of power.

 

Secondly, even if there was no competition or all competition was just as bad that doesn't mean what Microsoft does is acceptable. And most importantly, competition is NOT our only hope of fighting this because we can legislate against it. So no, we don't just have to take what the monopoly gives us.

 

As for the idea that "game companies don't like Linux", that's absurd. Game companies will spend their development time on whatever platform they think will make them money, and that platform by default is Windows due to its omnipresence. Again, the monopoly perpetuates itself.

 

And it's not true that you need to use the command line to do everything or, in fact, anything on a modern Linux distribution. There are even graphical frontends for package management, which by the way is drastically superior to what you need to do on Windows to install (let alone update) something as commonly used as a vlc. The things you absolutely need the command line for are the same things you'd need it for on Windows, except on Linux the command line is actually good.

 

Actually I may have lied, it's true that Macs are overpriced.

[Sauron]

21 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Because some of us don’t buy grey market keys. Windows home is like $119 and pro is like $199. If your buying it the legal way. Grey market keys can be iffy. I personally wouldn’t trust any of those sites with my credit card data. 

Grey market keys are piracy. If you're going to pirate it at least don't pay.

[Tribalinius]

The ISO must have been updated not too long ago, I installed a W10 Home 2 weeks ago and the option was still there. I'm not exactly surprised to see Microsoft go to that extent the way they got out of their way to try to convince you to use a Microsoft account. There's advantages to use a Microsoft account but man did they mess that up.

 

Unless they backpedaled somehow, you can't even create a Microsoft account using a work email that has a domain associated to Azure AD anymore. But you can't sign in with your Office 365 account because Office 365/Microsoft accounts are not associated together. Ugh, that's some 2019 Microsoft right there.

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, Tribalinius said:

The ISO must have been updated not too long ago, I installed a W10 Home 2 weeks ago and the option was still there.

The thing is, even with 1809 on a USB flash drive (made well before this began), we've seen it happen.  I believe it occurs when Windows updates itself, prior to asking you for your login credentials.  In such an event, it makes no difference when the ISO was made, it only matters whether or not you connect to the internet at that phase of the install.

[Donut417]

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

Grey market keys are piracy. If you're going to pirate it at least don't pay.

Exactly. Which is why I buy retail or OEM keys from a reputable retailer. 

[2DollaKoala]

9 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Except that I've upgraded laptops from the Apple App Store, without an Apple ID.  Clean install of Sierra, no Apple ID assigned, downloaded Mojave from the App Store and installed it.

You're absolutely right. I guess it's been a long time since I helped someone without an Apple ID. Sorry about that. macOS wins again!