Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

[Kilrah]

The one thing I hate about chrome is the software reporting tool/malware scanner. I don't mind on the desktop since it's unnoticeable but on a laptop it's guaranteed that if you've been leaving it sitting for a week, fully charge it before leaving somewhere, turn it on and aren't careful to kill it straight away it'll run, max out your CPU for 15-20min and drain 20% of your battery off the get go. And none of the ways I knew to disable it still work.

[Bombastinator]

Well that sounds really awful.  I read  the reverse was true.  What kind of data matters.  They might have been talking about that.  I’ll be removing edge as well then

[LAwLz]

13 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Well that sounds really awful.  I read  the reverse was true.  What kind of data matters.  They might have been talking about that.  I’ll be removing edge as well then

I think Microsoft intentionally created a lot of confusion in order to "sell" Edge as being good.

For example they talked a lot about blocking things like third party trackers and pushed that as them being more privacy oriented, but they (and the media) neglected to mention all the first part data being collected.

When they were first announcing ChrEdge they were showing graphics with how many Google services they were removing, but most press about it never mentioned that they were adding their own services as well.

 

When it comes to Microsoft (and most companies for that matters) they will take any opportunity they can to get closer to their goal (in this case, making people abandon Chrome and use Edge instead).

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think Microsoft intentionally created a lot of confusion in order to "sell" Edge as being good.

For example they talked a lot about blocking things like third party trackers and pushed that as them being more privacy oriented, but they (and the media) neglected to mention all the first part data being collected.

When they were first announcing ChrEdge they were showing graphics with how many Google services they were removing, but most press about it never mentioned that they were adding their own services as well.

 

When it comes to Microsoft (and most companies for that matters) they will take any opportunity they can to get closer to their goal (in this case, making people abandon Chrome and use Edge instead).

Google is good about that one too though.  They protect their herd. Only they may feed upon the user. Or anyone that wants to feed on the user has to go through them.   Doesn’t stop the feeding though, just modifies who is doing it.  The statement was that Microsoft did less feeding or the stuff they were doing wasn’t as damaging.  If this is not true edge has nothing at all on chrome. This is a prime reason I went apple with my phone.  They did almost no actual feeding.  I get the impression that though this has increased slightly it’s still way below the other option. Might even be near zero except for location and machine function monitoring stuff.  That’s where it was at one point. 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Bombastinator

[TekSupport]

As much as edge has become very close to chrome in usage.

Just as I starting getting used to using edge, Microsoft had to ruin it by having a feature update which cleared the data, from favourites history.

I uninstalled the update and transferred to chrome once again.

Decided it wasn't a good idea to use a browser packaged with a OS.

And before i get replies saying that there are other ways to recover the information, i shouldn't be expected to have to go around searching for ways to recover information.

[suicidalfranco]

On 12/2/2021 at 10:33 PM, Arika S said:

So no "their platform their rules" with this one?

Oh right, microsoft is not an approved company. 

That rule is only applicable if Apple is the subject. Everyone else should go through an antitrust case at every single decision they make

[HanZie82]

FYI there are more options then just Chrome or Edge.

(Many Chromium based browser out there without the shitty reporting back from Google or Microsoft.)

[Mihle]

I don't use Chrome or Edge, I use Vivaldi.

[RejZoR]

On 12/4/2021 at 5:46 AM, Dean0919 said:

They did it on purpose, so user can give up and use Microsoft's default apps instead.

Not only that, for some dumb reason some apps just don't give you option to even manually define them as default, globally or per file. For example, suddenly it decided MPC HC can't be default app anymore. I can right click and "open with" and there just won't be "Always use this app" option. If I go into dumb file type control panel, if I search by extension or per app, for example .MP4 just isn't listed anywhere so I can't even make it f**king default.

 

Whoever designed this at Microsoft is just straight up a moron and should be fired THIS instant. Stupid file extensions and associations worked fine since Windows 9x. We never had issues with "hijacking" of extensions. And now this god damn fuckery. Arrgh. It's like watching EA butcher Need for Speed franchise. It's like they forgot what the F they were doing for almost 30 years and just throw out some garbage. Microsoft is the same this moment. Acting like people working on Windows don't have the slightest idea how Windows worked all these years. I tell you, the way software is designed today is cancerous. They have no thinking process, they just dish out some random shit and stare at telemtry all day long to see if it sticks. I can't think of any other reason why software design is so dumb in last 10 years or so.

[LAwLz]

21 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I can't think of any other reason why software design is so dumb in last 10 years or so.

Not sure about your particular issue with video files, but a lot of times (like with browsers) they aren't dumb. They are doing it intentionally.

They don't get fired for designing for example the system to change browser to be extremely difficult (unless you're changing it to Edge of course). They get rewarded for making it difficult to change from Edge, and easy to switch to Edge.

[Kilrah]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Not sure about your particular issue with video files

The "Movies and TV" app hijacks the extension association for popular file types, the choice of what app to use straight up disappears from the settings panel as long as it's installed. Gotta uninstall completely to be able to use something else. 

 

And yes it's obviously intentional.

[rrats]

Movies and TV requires 10$ extension to play h265

[RejZoR]

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Not sure about your particular issue with video files, but a lot of times (like with browsers) they aren't dumb. They are doing it intentionally.

They don't get fired for designing for example the system to change browser to be extremely difficult (unless you're changing it to Edge of course). They get rewarded for making it difficult to change from Edge, and easy to switch to Edge.

Browsers, whatever. Do it dumb and I'll hate the stupid Edge even more. What's annoying is how I can't set MPC HC to frigging open video files on double click. Or even irfanView for images because broken Photos app causes Shell Infrastructure Host to eat all my CPU on laptop for some dumb reason if I browse folder full of photos for longer period of time. And what's even more idiotic, at one point I could set MPC HC as default and couldn't for IrfanView. Then I reset all the associations and now it's reversed. Can't set it for MPC HC but can for IrfanView. And I can't describe how monumentally dumb it is when in Windows 7 it was super simple. In Windows 8 and 10 it was a bit clumsy, but it also worked and whatever you set it stuck. Windows 11 it's like a garbage alpha design project where results entirely depend on luck and persistence how deeply you're willing to hack the system and spend hours on solving trivial shittery because of asshole design. Dafuck.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Not only that, for some dumb reason some apps just don't give you option to even manually define them as default, globally or per file. For example, suddenly it decided MPC HC can't be default app anymore. I can right click and "open with" and there just won't be "Always use this app" option. If I go into dumb file type control panel, if I search by extension or per app, for example .MP4 just isn't listed anywhere so I can't even make it f**king default.

 

Whoever designed this at Microsoft is just straight up a moron and should be fired THIS instant. Stupid file extensions and associations worked fine since Windows 9x. We never had issues with "hijacking" of extensions. And now this god damn fuckery. Arrgh. It's like watching EA butcher Need for Speed franchise. It's like they forgot what the F they were doing for almost 30 years and just throw out some garbage. Microsoft is the same this moment. Acting like people working on Windows don't have the slightest idea how Windows worked all these years. I tell you, the way software is designed today is cancerous. They have no thinking process, they just dish out some random shit and stare at telemtry all day long to see if it sticks. I can't think of any other reason why software design is so dumb in last 10 years or so.

I always assumed that was on purpose.  A way to give lip service to the law without actually following it.  Wasn’t there a lawsuit about this long ago involving win98?  Them trying to bundle the browser or something?

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

I always assumed that was on purpose.  A way to give lip service to the law without actually following it.  Wasn’t there a lawsuit about this long ago involving win98?  Them trying to bundle the browser or something?

I don't care if they bundle whole OS with the OS. For as long as I can change it the way I could for fucking 30 years before. I didn't even care about the whining about browser changing even in Windows 10 for as long as I can still do it. Their attempts look so desperate and pathetic, but whatever. This now is just plain stupid and infuriating. I want my god damn MP4 files to open in MPC HC and I can't. Like, AT ALL. Digging and editing registry probably. Instead of using perfectly fine interface to manage file associations we had for decades. WTF would they achieve doing this crap on purpose? Just piss everyone off with no actual gain?

 

This is exactly why I refuse to pay extortionist prices for Windows licenses and buy those ridiculous licenses for $1. And block all their data grabbing telemetry. Because they are incompetent assholes.

[AudiTTFan]

When Edge Chromium first came out, I naturally wanted to see if they'd finally managed to make it good, but instead, it was the slowest, most bloated browser I've used since IE6 in the WinXP days. That was 2 years ago. I highly doubt that this has changed, or if it even will anytime soon, considering they're so focused on undesirable and annoying features like offering financing for things from online stores...

[Kilrah]

41 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I want my god damn MP4 files to open in MPC HC and I can't. Like, AT ALL.

As mentioned uninstall the MS movies app, and the extensions will magically appear in the selector again. 

[RejZoR]

Just now, Kilrah said:

As mentioned uninstall the MS movies app, and the extensions will magically appear in the selector again. 

I just did that. Now it works. Sort of. Without thumbnails for some filetypes. Like I said, idiotic asshole design.

[Bombastinator]

42 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I don't care if they bundle whole OS with the OS. For as long as I can change it the way I could for fucking 30 years before. I didn't even care about the whining about browser changing even in Windows 10 for as long as I can still do it. Their attempts look so desperate and pathetic, but whatever. This now is just plain stupid and infuriating. I want my god damn MP4 files to open in MPC HC and I can't. Like, AT ALL. Digging and editing registry probably. Instead of using perfectly fine interface to manage file associations we had for decades. WTF would they achieve doing this crap on purpose? Just piss everyone off with no actual gain?

 

This is exactly why I refuse to pay extortionist prices for Windows licenses and buy those ridiculous licenses for $1. And block all their data grabbing telemetry. Because they are incompetent assholes.

I didn’t think blocking their data collecting telemetry for windows was possible.  I simply abandoned the OS for everything but playing video games.  I won’t even read news on it.

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I didn’t think blocking their data collecting telemetry for windows was possible.  I simply abandoned the OS for everything but playing video games.  I won’t even read news on it.

It's not possible officially, but there are ways to block it.

[RejZoR]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I didn’t think blocking their data collecting telemetry for windows was possible.  I simply abandoned the OS for everything but playing video games.  I won’t even read news on it.

NextDNS. Basically it's like a PiHole, but on DNS level.

[Bombastinator]

23 minutes ago, AudiTTFan said:

When Edge Chromium first came out, I naturally wanted to see if they'd finally managed to make it good, but instead, it was the slowest, most bloated browser I've used since IE6 in the WinXP days. That was 2 years ago. I highly doubt that this has changed, or if it even will anytime soon, considering they're so focused on undesirable and annoying features like offering financing for things from online stores...

It apparently got somewhat better, largely due to such complaints.  Remember google has stupendous amounts of money to throw at development.

[AudiTTFan]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

 I want my god damn MP4 files to open in MPC HC and I can't. Like, AT ALL.

The horrible Movies & TV app as well as the fact that the fullscreen start menu is just perfect for TV remote-based navigation are exactly why I refuse to ditch Windows 8.1 Pro with WMC on my media center PC.

[Quackers101]

see the updates coming out now. from the bigger browsers and microsoft adding stuff in their MS store.

[ADarkBard]

I tend to use Edge more anyway. The only time I use Chrome is when I'm in a Google app so I don't have to get their pop up telling me to download Chrome.