Windows 11's default mail client will show ads starting 2024

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/outlook/mail-amp-calendar-apps-will-be-replaced-with-new-outlook-for/td-p/3850309

by Farbklex • 3 years ago

148 155 3 years ago

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Farbklex4• 3 years ago

"Mail" on Windows notified me that starting with 2024, Outlook will replace it as the new default Mail client on Windows. It also asked me if I want to switch now.

I decided to try it out and during setup of the new free Outlook I got asked how I want to see my ads: As a banner above the mail window or in my inbox.

This took my by surprise since it essentially means, that the default mail client for Windows now will start serving ads.

Tweet for reference: https://twitter.com/Farbklex91/status/1716847430510023000

eschneider• 3 years ago

Note to self: the market for 3rd party windows mail clients is going to grow next year.

roywashere• 3 years ago

I have the idea that most people use browser-based email clients anyway?

firebaze5• 3 years ago

Just switch to Linux already. It's really there. Some compromises required, sure, but they are already far and between.

Keep it for gaming if you need. But give Proton a try first.

My almost 75yo dad switched recently. I swear I'm telling the truth: his main complaint was, after buying a new printer, he couldn't find the matching drivers. I told him just to print, and that was that.

saghm2• 3 years ago

I decided to try it out and during setup of the new free Outlook I got asked how I want to see my ads: As a banner above the mail window or in my inbox

It's absurd of them to even imply that anyone wants to see the ads at all. They clearly know that given the option, pretty much everyone would answer the question "where do you want to see your ads in your mail client" with "nowhere". There are certainly products where I grudgingly recognize that ads are the only way they're able to provide the product at all, but I can't see how they possibly could claim that here when they're literally going out of their way to move people towards using it.

Aardwolf• 3 years ago

I've been out of the loop due to using Linux the last 20 years, but back when I was using Windows XP, the default mail client was also called Outlook (well, Outlook Express).

So apparently I missed some time period where it was called "Mail" instead. But now it'll be Outlook again. Full circle!

pmontra4• 3 years ago

Full circle twice: there was a Microsoft Mail well before Microsoft Outlook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mail

whelp_24• 3 years ago

It would be nice of this sort of thing could be made illegal.

cvccvroomvroom3• 3 years ago

In my view, they're committing a crime by unfairly leveraging a monopoly (Windows) to violate antitrust by pushing Bing, Edge, Office 365, and OneDrive.

MSFT-ActivisionBlizzard also shouldn't happen.

fx1994• 3 years ago

There's Thunderbird, much better solution than mail or outlook.

Farbklex4• 3 years ago

Installed it again today. I use Windows only for gaming and therefore didn't care much about mail on it.

Karellen2• 3 years ago

Also Claws Mail for Windows:

https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/

(The URL is /win32/, but there are 64-bit builds there too)

jwells893• 3 years ago

Thunderbird is alright but I think it's in need of what Firefox was to Mozilla Suite – a lean and mean cross platform IMAP client with a nice UI, and that's it. I don't want an Outlook-style client that's full of things that aren't email (calendar etc).

benhurmarcel• 3 years ago

Recently I've had delivery issues with Thunderbird. That makes me rethink my use of it.

I sent the same email from the same address to the same recipient once with Thunderbird on Windows, once with Apple Mail on iOS. The one with Thunderbird was silently dropped (not even reaching the spam folder), the one sent with Apple Mail reached the inbox without issue. I've had that same issue with 2 different recipient companies.

And yes, my address passes SPF, DKIM, has a strict DMARC, and isn't in any blacklist (uses iCloud+ as host).

nerdjon4• 3 years ago

Microsoft seems determined to make all of the wrong choices for Windows.

I tried the New Outlook after having issues with the default mail app. I was greeted with a message "To add your iCloud account to Outlook, we need to sync your emails, contacts, and events to the Microsoft Cloud."

I'm sorry WHAT?!? You're telling me that to use a local email service I need to sync with Microsoft servers?

Someone here please tell me that this is just because it was in beta and all of the features didn't exist yet? Otherwise what the hell is Microsoft thinking?

For the record I just did not do this and any chance of using Windows for productivity tasks went completely out the Window. Windows was always just primarily for gaming but having email there would have been nice.

lstamour2• 3 years ago

Acompli, the mobile mail app Microsoft bought and rebranded as Outlook, was like Newton and other email apps of its day - it used OAuth and cloud APIs to check messages on its servers and then created a combined inbox by sending push notifications to your phone as it received new emails on your behalf in the cloud.

It sort of sounds like maybe the same infrastructure was borrowed here to set up the iCloud account in the local Outlook app. Presumably the local app is now based on the prior Acompli infrastructure.

That said… it really doesn’t pass the sniff test, it feels like Microsoft wants your contacts the same way LinkedIn (also Microsoft) wants your contacts. Personally, I wish I hadn’t trusted Google, Meta and LinkedIn as much with my contacts as I did in the past. Live and learn, I suppose.

dylan604• 3 years ago

the entire concept of having the users provide their credentials to a third party for them to access their accounts to provide a service is one of those things that should be included in the anti-phishing training. i don't care if the service doesn't provide a proper API for third party access or not ESPECIALLY if it is for a cloud provided service. if it was a locally running app, i might consider it only slightly less egregious.

firebaze5• 3 years ago

I think it's kind of stockholm syndrome what's going on here. Windows users I still know are either so much accustomed to the UX that they see any alternative as bad, even MacOS, or they are clinging to a past which no longer exists.

Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two. That's speaking of my (medium sized) org of >15k Emps worldwide.

Ads, Forced Edge, Bing, Ultra-Slow file system compared to any other OS, Shady "Driver"-Sites, could go on forever. I agree this comment sounds a bit flamey, if it wasn't just describing the reality. Even MS recommends switching to Linux by now as a replacement for the Win 8 -> Win 10 / 11 upgrade.

Marsymars3• 3 years ago

Anyone, and I really mean this, who has the option tho choose between Windows, MacOS and Linux (KDE / Gnome / some custom thing) chooses one of the latter two.

I have the option and ability to use whatever OS I want, and I like and enjoy Windows. I use Windows for gaming and .NET development, macOS as my daily desktop (RDP to my Windows dev box), Android on my phone, iPadOS and ChromeOS around the house, and Debian on my servers.

I detest ads, but the portions of Windows I object to involve only some cleanup on install. I find the unblockable ads in Android/i(Pad)OS/ChromeOS (e.g. the ads in all of their app stores) far more objectionable than the ones I never see in Windows.

scarface_74• 3 years ago

The worse part about Windows is x86 compared to ARM based Mac laptops they are like night and day as far as loud fans, heat, speed, responsiveness and battery life.

icehawk219• 3 years ago

I had this exact same reaction less than a week ago and it prompted me to switch to Thunderbird. For years I've fallen into the "if not for gaming ..." camp of Windows users. But I'm getting closer and closer to just not caring about that any more and switching to Mac or Linux instead just to get away from Windows.

sanitycheck• 3 years ago

I installed Pop on a new PC (intel, nvidia) a couple of months ago. It's been barely more trouble than Windows and gaming so far has been successful (Cyberpunk, BG3).

(Tried Linux on the desktop every year for the previous 20-something, always hit some deal-breaker within a day or so. This time it's looking good.)

Zambyte• 3 years ago

Gaming hasn't been an "excuse" for years. More games run on GNU/Linux than any gaming console, installed as easily as finding the game on Steam / GOG / itch.io etc. and clicking "install".

I actually switched to GNU/Linux in college because I wanted to play video games less. This happened right before Proton was released in 2018. Let's just say that I was very unsuccessful in my goal when switching.

blibble• 3 years ago

how can they train their parasitic AI on your emails if you don't provide it to them?

f233f23• 3 years ago

Probably because the new outlook can only access microsoft servers, so they synchronise icloud to outlook server-side and you only access outlook client-side.

nerdjon4• 3 years ago

Most likely, but that isn't an excuse and it an incredibly stupid way to build an email client.

MAYBE give the option if for some reason I want to do it. But for it to be the default is a stupid idea. You cannot convince me there is a valid reason for this to be a thing.

ljm• 3 years ago

Even on a fully paid license that I upgraded to Windows 11...I get weird adverts for xbox gaming, one drive, teams was pre-installed, and there's some weird cortana replacement called copilot. Every now and then I'll get another disruptive notification trying to sell me on something. I paid a lot of money for that license.

Never mind that every update will try and reset defaults and it shoves Edge down your throat at every possible opportunity, and you can't change the search engine for a lot of things away from Bing. Who exactly owns my hardware, Microsoft?

It feels like windows is being managed by inexperienced MBAs who are desperate to use their heavily entrenched OS as an ad platform.

I stopped using the built-in Mail app though because it was pretty buggy. Search was useless.

AshamedCaptain• 3 years ago

When I tried the beta, it didn't even support IMAP whatsoever. It only supported Outlook, Gmail, and iCloud Mail.

Priorities straight.

daft_pink2• 3 years ago

I never imagined myself using a Linux desktop everyday, but I don't want to pay Apple for 64gb of RAM and an acceptable number of monitors via my docking station, and Microsoft is just becoming terrible.

Going to have to figure out what to switch to... Yikes!

jacquesm6• 3 years ago

I use a $300 second hand W540 maxed out on RAM (32G, I don't think it would take 16G modules but I haven't looked into that, this is sufficient) with two external monitors attached. Uses a tiny bit of power compared to the desktop that it replaced (when I switched the house over to solar power I did a conservation exercise first and my desktop was one of the worst offenders) and everything works as far as I can tell. This box has been up and running for two years non-stop now, the only big change I made to the original is to put a nice fat SSD in it and to remove the battery because it never gets unplugged anyway. As OS I use Ubuntu Studio which makes for a nice development platform for music related software.

runjake4• 3 years ago

What is your general distro of choice? I saw another comment mentioning Debian. If that, which branch?

daft_pink2• 3 years ago

I have a recent XPS 15 with nvidia graphics, 64gb of ram and 2tb ssd. That cost me about $1,500 including upgraded drives myself. But spec out a 14" Macbook Pro this way and it's easily 3,800-4,000. I don't need something second hand cheap, but I don't want to pay $4,000 either.

WolfeReader• 3 years ago

You can put Linux Mint on a bootable USB and try it, to see if it works well with your hardware. Mint is a great first Linux for former Windows users, since its desktop has a similar layout and it comes with a lot of free, good software, and maybe the best GUI software package manager ever.

Other distros have other advantages - I'm a happy NixOS user now - but Mint makes an excellent first Linux.

schwank• 3 years ago

I've been on Mint Cinnamon for probably close to 10 years now after spending the first half of my career developing applications for Windows platform with MS tooling and backend. I saw the direction they were going with Win8 and made the switch and have never looked back.

My main desktop went out of support earlier this year, but it has been so stable I can't be bothered to rebuild it. I have apps for everything I need from photo and video editing and management, to gaming, to productivity and development. My newer laptops have more recent builds and likewise have worked without issue. Really the only speedbump I have are a couple of Windows only things like a Dymo label printer and some automotive tuning software, so I run a dual boot on one XPS 15.

Unfortunately at work I can't run Linux so I use a MBP as it's far better than Windows, however it still infuriates me regularly and I don't use any other Apple products. I've previously contributed to Mint and was recently thinking I need to send some more money, so thanks for the reminder!

bee_rider• 3 years ago

I did puppy linux on a flash drive for a while, then jumped straight to Arch.

Recently I switched to Ubuntu because I’d switched to a laptop, and I thought it would handle things more nicely for me. I regret it. It does too much.

I’d recommend the first two steps I took, though.

Zufriedenheit• 3 years ago

Good that thunderbird just had some big releases recently. Ready to take over the role i guess.

augustk• 3 years ago

Still waiting for Movemail support to be restored though. When using apticron it's nice to get upgrade notifications (and other local mail) in Thunderbird rather than when I invoke a command in xterm (which I find very distracting).

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1802145

Macha• 3 years ago

I guess we can expect the nag notifications when people install Thunderbird, or open gmail.com in Edge soon then

MiddleEndian• 3 years ago

I actually like Windows Mail (more than web gmail at least lol) so I am bummed out about this development. Gonna have to find some other minimal mail client.

xnx• 3 years ago

Seems like a lot of companies are aiming for the trifecta of: subscription payments + increasingly worse product + show ads

cvccvroomvroom3• 3 years ago

It's in the spirit of preloaded crapware, Yahoo, and AOL.

gosub100• 3 years ago

It's coming full circle with NetZero and Juno from 25 years ago! "Hey we'll give you this free thing (then: internet/now: mail, OS, apps) in exchange for ads!

thiht2• 3 years ago

You’re paying, AND you’re the product. Great days to come!

Propelloni• 3 years ago

The linked article says nothing about showing ads in "New Outlook." It certainly is not below MS to do so and I believe the submitter, but the linked article does not say a word about it.

humps• 3 years ago

New Outlook does have ads, and this move replaces Mail with Outlook therefore the default mail client will now have ads because it's Outlook. You can remove them with a 365 subscription. So while the article doesn't mention it, the statement is true.

NotYourLawyer2• 3 years ago

Windows just keeps getting worse. 7 was pretty good, 10 is ok, 11 is trash.

Maybe 2024 will be the year of Linux on my desktop.

thiht2• 3 years ago

7 was great, 8 was trash, 10 was great, now 11 is trash.

Maybe they’ll see the light with Windows 12

NotYourLawyer2• 3 years ago

Ha, I forgot 8 even existed. I never installed it.

init2null2• 3 years ago

There's no doubt that Microsoft is going to stuff ads in every corner of the OS at this point. Ads on the start menu, in Edge, in Solitaire, and now the replacement for Outlook Express. I don't think the good-bad-good cycle will hold for Windows this time. This seems to be a downward spiral.

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

When I switched to Linux in university, it was as an idle curiosity and the pleasure of knowing my OS was FOSS. I knew I was sacrificing a bit of practicality, but like the person that works on their vintage motorcycle in the garage, the hassle was part of the fun.

I would often run Windows on a second machine or at work though, I felt equally productive in both Linux and Windows.

Fast-forward a decade and the Linux desktop situation has improved and the Windows situation has gotten worse, such that switching to Windows 11 is a total non-starter for me.

I dual-boot Windows 10 w/ Ubuntu because of the odd game or two that is beyond Proton's reach, but that happens less and less each day. I'd be willing to bet that I won't need that Windows partition at all soon.

peppercat10• 3 years ago

I'd really like to see Linux desktop become a popular platform for games and game development. Proton is great, but Windows is still too mainstream.

mkasberg• 3 years ago

Same thing happened to me. 10 years ago using Linux on the Desktop was tricky but worth it for me. Now it's almost the opposite, my Linux desktop feels smooth and unobtrusive compared to Windows, and rarely has any problems!

IshKebab• 3 years ago

I'm not sure how much the Linux situation has improved really. I used to use Linux in the early 2000s when I was a student and had time to burn. Quickly switched back to Windows/Mac when I got a job and needed stuff to "just work".

However recently I started working for a company that provides Linux laptops. I was curious how much things had improved in 20 years. My conclusion is: not much.

Here are some of the issues I've had:

* Linux memory management is still really bad. On OOM it kills a completely random process and 90% of the time for me that means it hard-reboots my laptop. Maybe this is partly because they didn't set it up with any swap for some reason, but I'm unsure that would help (in 2003 it didn't; the system would just grind to an unresponsive halt... but we didn't have SSDs then).

* If you set a WiFi network to automatically connect to a VPN, then delete that VPN, it means the WiFi connection will always just instantly fail with no error message. Even dmesg didn't help. You can imagine how fun that was to figure out.

* For some reason half of the network settings are not in the network settings. They're in some third party app you have to run from the console. It isn't even linked via an "advanced" button in the gnome settings.

* Gnome's desktop notifications are hilariously subtle. We're talking dark grey window that disappears if you touch it with the mouse and there's no notification history. I ended up fixing the colour to make it red by hacking some CSS. It was a simple 27 step process. Couldn't fix the other issues though.

* Somewhat hilariously if you click a truncated link in a notification, the URL it takes you to will also be truncated!

* Screen capture doesn't work in Wayland. Not that I regularly need to share my screen with coworkers or anything... Fortunately switching to X was easy and doesn't seem to have any downsides at all.

* I haven't done this but multiple coworkers have accidentally uninstalled Gnome while trying to upgrade Python. HN mentality will be to blame them but that is the unthinking response.

* It takes ages to wake up. I sometimes have to absolutely mash escape for about 10 seconds.

* Battery life is of course hilarious.

Never had issues like this with Mac or Windows (though I haven't used Windows laptops really).

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

I've had many of these things happen to me barring the Gnome and Wayland bugs since I don't use them.

I still would hardly say that not much has changed, nor that the Desktop experience on many popular distros is bad.

It's also important to note that while the UX problems between Windows and Linux aren't the same in number and nature, the root of these problems are relevant imho.

With Linux distros, it's just lack of resources. They can address them with enough man hours.

With Windows, many of the user-hostile aspects of the UX are part of the product map, and I don't anticipate that getting any better.

I'm long on Linux on the desktop, which I know is a punch-line, but it's working for plenty of people of various technical stripes.

surgical_fire• 3 years ago

I can't comment on your experience, but I can describe mine.

Back in 2003 I tried to install a Linux distro on my personal machine (Mandrake if memory serves) and it was an atrocious experience. Couldn't even get my mouse to work.

Sometime around 2015 I decided to give it a second chance. I worked for a company where we could work on Linux machines and I decided to give it ago. Ubuntu this time around. I had a pleasant experience, for development it proved to be a solid option, but I couldn't switch my personal machine to Linux because I would lose access to my gaming library.

Earlier this year I decided to give another go. Replaced Windows with Linux Mint, and couldn't be happier. It's an absolute joy to use, and thanks to Proton, I can play the vast majority of my PC games there. Most work right off the bat through Steam or Lutris. Some required minor tinkering.

I had none the issues you described.

Pannoniae• 3 years ago

Note that most of those are GNOME issues. GNOME is hilariously bad. Most of your issues are simply not a problem in other desktop environments:)

rekabis• 3 years ago

What an excellent reason to rip that app out using Win10Privacy, and run with something more privacy-friendly like Thunderbird.

jwells893• 3 years ago

One of the things I’ve appreciated a lot about macOS and iOS is that the stock Mail app is focused more on being a good generic email client than it is on trying to sell iCloud or be a profit center. It’s served me very well for the handful of IMAP addresses I use, with exception to Gmail (which has a dodgy IMAP implementation).

The Windows Mail client was on its way to becoming a close analogue to Mail.app but I guess those days are over.

hbn2• 3 years ago

I wish I wasn't tied to Gmail because it means I can't really use any other clients if I want instant notifications. And their official app has ads that look like emails.

I assume they must do that on purpose, right? Make their IMAP implementation bad so people will use their clients with ads? I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.

jwells893• 3 years ago

It might not have been on purpose originally but it's certainly convenient and in their best interest to leave their IMAP support in that state.

bananapub3• 3 years ago

I wish I wasn't tied to Gmail because it means I can't really use any other clients if I want instant notifications.

what? it's supported IMAP IDLE for longer than some of the posters in HN have been alive.

I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.

... you chose to use some random company's domain for your email address, that's been an obvious problem for thirty years now.

there's jillions of things to criticise google about, this is absolutely not one of them.

lamontcg• 3 years ago

I'd kinda hope regulators would step in on something like that for a case like Gmail where they're practically the default email provider for most people.

Regulators won't ever save you.

  * buy a domain name on namecheap
  * setup a proton mail account (think you'll wind up paying some for it, but its worth it)
  * link your domain name to your proton mail account and setup an alias
  * forward your gmail to the new alias on the domain name that you control
  * slowly start converting all the references to your old gmail to the new account

(And while nothing is perfect so protonmail/namecheap isn't perfect, any other suggestions will probably trigger people's executive dysfunction and they'll do nothing rather than focus on the fact that this is a portable solution and 2 years later if they find something they like better they can easily switch)

foxandmouse• 3 years ago

The only place you'll find ads in macOS is the App Store, in stark contrast to Microsoft, which seems to seize every opportunity to push ads.

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

At this point in time, Apple should be paying microsoft for bringing new people to the Apple ecosystem.

overgard• 3 years ago

How many people actually use a desktop email app? I use Outlook for work (mostly because the web client is awful), but outside of that I always access my email in a browser.

Weird decision by Microsoft in my opinion. It seems like the only people that'd bother to setup Windows mail in the first place are power users, and that's the last people you want to piss off with annoying ads.

pmontra4• 3 years ago

I do use Thunderbird. My mailbox is a POP3 account. I download mail and move it to folders with per sender filters.

That said, 9,999 other people are about to reply that they use GMail or something like that. Maybe 99,999.

javcasas• 3 years ago

Of course, ¿what did you expect?

(yeah, yeah, knee-jerk reaction, but the trend on Windows becoming user-hostile can be seen at this point from the other side of the Milky Way)

dist-epoch3• 3 years ago

I've already opt-in to the new app and it's already showing the ads.

It's one small text ad, formatted to look like an email message card. I quickly learned to ignore it.

And no one is forcing anyone to use this app. You can use webmail, Thunderbird, etc...

I still prefer this app with the ad to opening gmail in the browser.

hobs• 3 years ago

It's funny because you are saying they are STARTING with an insanely bad dark pattern and you're ok with it - where to next?

dist-epoch3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure whats the dark pattern - that the ad looks like an email? I consider that a good thing since it makes it unobtrusive and invisible. Just like google text ads.

I consider it a small price to pay for a nice app.

Farbklex4• 3 years ago

It would be better without an add. Free Outlook will become the default mail app pre installed with Windows, a commercial product that costs actual money. It is just shouldn't have ads. Just like Apple's Mail app doesn't have ads.

Having ad free software should be the norm.

ktosobcy2• 3 years ago

Team Thunderbird, gladly supporting and donating.

callalex• 3 years ago

I would be hesitant to donate money to Mozilla, almost none of the money goes to software development.

ktosobcy2• 3 years ago

After thunderbird got dumped by mozilla they picked up development on their own and likewise they collect donations as well. please don't spread FUD...

jrockway3• 3 years ago

Why does Microsoft even bother with a desktop OS these days? They have moved on to The Cloud like everyone else, so people can buy Word and not their OS.

All Windows really has is a long tail of legacy apps (many of which are very good, and people don't want to give up) and games, and that has to look like a dying business model. (Unfortunately, games are pretty sticky, because they own a game console, and everyone wants access to the console. So if Microsoft says "if you port your game to Linux, you can't be on Xbox", Windows is on indefinite life support.)

crop_rotation3• 3 years ago

Because it prints money without much effort.

jrockway3• 3 years ago

Only if it remains tolerable, though. I think they're playing around with something pretty risky; they don't integrate with any mobile devices, they don't have a web browser that any sites support, etc. and thus there is not much to keep users from switching away. They're objectively no better than Apple for most use cases, except for games and very niche software. It's a very different world than the late 90s, when they had an OS and a browser monopoly.

(Games might not even be a thing for them for much longer. Mobile games are the most accessible, and again Microsoft is not in any position to get revenue from that trend. People that buy consoles or $1900 graphics cards are not nearly as numerous.)

I am surprised that more corporate IT departments haven't switched to Linux. They can still supply the same $300 laptops, lock them down to the point of unusability, and everyone can use Word in the cloud. I'd be scared if I were Microsoft, and wouldn't want to make switching away look attractive to anyone. No ad revenue from untargeted ads in an email client could possibly be worth losing Windows as the "default" OS.

robotnikman• 3 years ago

if you port your game to Linux, you can't be on Xbox

Thankfully Proton exists, so technically developers don't have to go out of their way to 'port' to linux :)

Its great that Valve started investing in Linux for gaming, as they are nowhere as misguided by greed like Microsoft is.

idonotknowwhy• 3 years ago

Yep, Valve have done so much for Linux gaming!

That said, I know they probably did it because of the threat of the windows store vs steam, but we've really benefited.

ChrisLTD• 3 years ago

I wonder if the eventual plan is to make Windows free for "home" users, and monetize it through ads. In that world, ads in every corner of the OS would be less annoying.

crop_rotation3• 3 years ago

Why would they do that? OEMs already pay for it via agreements and at this point Windows seems to make no effort to do anything if the copy is not activated, so M$FT doesn't care about the few people not paying. Making it free would make no differnece other than killing a revenue source for no benefit. So it is very unlikely to happen.

crop_rotation3• 3 years ago

Microsoft seem to be the worst of all the big companies that is surviving just because of extremely hard to dislodge monopolies. Consumer products come with windows, and enterprises opt for windows due to lock in. Office is so entrenched that most companies have little choice but to buy it. And Windows seems to be adding the shittiest features of almost any modern operating system. I use https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 for disabling windows telemetry and the amount of flags for data tracking is insane.

M$FT have used the Office monopoly to push teams and AD to push Azure, both of which are subpar products. It is hard to find one good product they have made in the last 20 years (and yes VSCode is not it).

dudul2• 3 years ago

I dread the day where my windows 10 machine will automatically upgrade to 11. So far I've been able to decline - even though the "no" button seems to get a bit smaller and better hidden every time. One day I know I'll wake up and it will be windows 11. It will always have been 11. There was no versions before 11.

CyberDildonics• 3 years ago

Part of using windows at this point is learning how to turn off all the bait and switch nonsense and user hostile stuff going on under the hood. There are a lot of programs and scripts out there to turn off telemetry, ads, forced updates and more. Unfortunately it is required to not be at the mercy of your OS updating under you or selling your data behind the scenes.

dudul2• 3 years ago

When I installed my system I literally had to unplug the ethernet to skip the "cloud user" creation.

Maybe I was dumb and missed the "no thank you" button, but it looked like there was no option. Want to create a user, has to be managed online. Thanks and fuck you.

I had to unplug internet, click next, wait 2min for the thing to time out and say "oh well let's create a local user for now we'll try again later". I haven't seen another"try" since but who knows. It probably happened automatically one day as a background task.

Crontab• 3 years ago

Windows needs new management.

delta_p_delta_x• 3 years ago

There are two Microsofts.

The first one is extremely developer-friendly, and regularly pushes out superb, high-quality tools and frameworks—many of which are free of charge and open-source—and gives nice deep dives into tech. They also develop pretty interesting alternatives to the UNIX ecosystem. Some examples:

- the .NET ecosystem and languages (VB.NET, C#, F#);

- PowerShell (technically this is also a .NET language, but it has made Windows scripting so easy that it deserves a mention on its own);

- ASP.NET Core (again, part of the .NET ecosystem, but it is very far ahead of almost all other web backends (in terms of functionality, performance, and ease-of-development) that it also deserves a separate mention)

- TypeScript;

- Visual Studio Code;

- Visual Studio Community, the MSVC C++ STL, and the MSVC compiler, `cl.exe`;

- Direct3D and DirectXMath;

- WSL

- the Windows API, the Windows driver model, and the Windows ACL model.

Many more that I can't recall off the top of my head.

And there's the pain-in-the-arse, bean-counting Microsoft that justifies adding advertisements, crapware, and generally enshittifying what used to be a superb OS, pushing for software-as-a-service, changing the UX of Office programs every version, not being able to settle on and develop one nice unified UI toolkit for Windows, and (probably therefore) pushing laggy Electron apps like the XBox store, Teams, etc over well-programmed native/.NET ones.

I use and develop on Windows because I grew up on it. I don't want 'an OS as an IDE'. I want an IDE that does an IDE's job well, and I haven't found anything better than Visual Studio's debugger and profiler.

I am torn. Linux is still broken for even slightly edge-case use cases (laptop + monitor of very different pixel densities, and hence different scaling ratios; both X and Wayland fail horribly at this whereas Windows eats it up in a heartbeat). I game regularly and am not keen on virtualising or using Wine/Proton (I am convinced there is a performance drop in the general case), and MacOS is a non-starter for me.

baz005• 3 years ago

It'll only show ads if you don't pay for O365. And Google do the same with GMail.

I am paying for O365 family so none of my family get that. And I think I paid £59 for it last time with some voucher scamming. That gives everyone, 6 people in my case, 1TB storage, all the office desktop apps. I don't think that's a bad deal, especially compared to the shafting you get from Apple these days for icloud.

izzydata2• 3 years ago

So they are trying to strong arm people into paying for a subscription by giving them a worse experience with ads until they do. Paying for it at that point is just letting Microsoft know that they were successful and should continue to implement more ads into things.

baz005• 3 years ago

Well I was going to pay for it anyway because I want Excel, Word and OneNote and the storage so shrug.

Stuff isn't free!

cvccvroomvroom3• 3 years ago

Windows 11... now with more AOL!

Dennip• 3 years ago

Is this 'free' outlook different to the version that ships with O365?

alberth• 3 years ago

OS ad revenue?

Can anyone find how much revenue is generated in ads from Windows?

All I can find is revenue for Bing.

I'm curious to know if the revenue Windows ads are generating is even worth the reduction in UX and consumer sentiment.

stalfosknight• 3 years ago

Why do so many Windows users tolerate shit like this while refusing to consider a much better designed platform that is far more respectful of its users like macOS?

pmontra4• 3 years ago

Because you can go to a shop and buy a Windows laptop for 300 dollars. No Mac is as cheap as that.

And subjectively the UI of a Mac is worse than Window's. I liked the menu at the top only on the original Mac with the builtin 9" screen. It started to be a bad choice on the next models with a larger separate monitor. And Windows' UI is worse than the customized Gnome desktop I've been using since 2009.

andrewrust30• 3 years ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm...

glimshe2• 3 years ago

I use Windows as my personal OS (1-2 hours a day) and macOS as my work OS (8 hours a day, M2 Mac). I would never have macOS as my personal OS because exactly it has a poorly designed UI for my use cases. I need to spend a higher cognitive load with the UI and my day-to-day activities require more clicks or UI interaction time. Additionally, I have less screen real estate and some applications simply won't work on a Mac. I like the hardware, though, just not enough.

bananapub3• 3 years ago

it's just bizarre that there isn't more embarrassment about how much worse we've made our industry. you've fucked up the economics of your global business desktop OS monopoly so badly that now you're adding ads to your free, bundled-with-the-OS-to-kill-Eudora mail client? what in shit?

methou• 3 years ago

Before switching to Fastmail, I started seeing ads on Outlook for windows, Mac, and OWA since a while back ago as a paying customer, then there’s them on gmail, while paying for google one.

I mean they don’t even care if you are paying.

glimshe2• 3 years ago

I've used Windows 11 and the new Outlook for a while now, but I've never seen a single ad. Not one. Is it because I have Office 365?

If that's the case, Microsoft's strategy is that one way or another it wants some money from you: either the subscription, or the ad revenue. I'd be concerned if I had to see ads while being a paying customer.

Windows 11's default mail client will show ads starting 2024

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