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That's the Microsoft difference!™

Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?

Microsoft had relatively interesting ideas concerning 3D and VR content, then proceeded to do an extremely mediocre execution, simultaneously dumbing everything down while also making it hard to use, and then proceeded to discontinue their software after almost never touching it again for seven years

I have a Reverb G2 (windows mixed reality headset), it is really a good headset and is still competitive with the Quest 3 in several areas for use on PC. The WMR software itself isn't that bad and I think if it had more care and attention put into it it could genuinely have been great. If they had better home options, user created homes, more customization and the ability to fix things in place so you don't accidentally move them, the ability to add (even just user created) minigames and dynamic objects that stay in the world, and (most importantly) the ability to actually invite other people into the space to play with you and launch into other games. They're Microsoft, they were large enough and early enough that I'm sure they could even have gotten game developers on board with some protocol that automatically brings people you're playing with into a multiplayer session of whatever game you start. I think they were onto something with their home system and could have fleshed the software out into something much better than even the modern competition. Of course it's all discontinued now, the latest version of Windows doesn't even support it, I plan to continue to use the old version until it stops getting security patches in 2026 and then switch to Linux where hopefully the open source people will finally fully support using controllers.

If you think that is pointless, remember that whenever a program closed unexpectedly, Windows would offer to "find a solution online". I have never seen that shit work in my life

I remember so many examples of windows doing stuff like this.

Specifically the most annoying I ever ran in to was Microsoft office click to run, like, as far as I understood it, it was a background service to update Microsoft office, it always ran in the background and would routinely eat up system resources, not a ton but way more than something like that should have been. It kept ignoring my instruction to not start on system start up, and kept getting reinstalling when I resorted to just ripping it out.

Now why, you may be wondering would I want to get rid of a program meant to keep office up to date? BECAUSE, I didn’t use office, I didn’t have a license even, I had uninstalled it in fact, but for some reason click to run was still there like a weed. So many other annoyances with attempting to remove other programs I didn’t want or need but windows would just keep reinstalling.

“eDgE Is A cOrE pArT oF tHe Os” y tho

Anyways, that’s why I replaced windows as the OS on my computer.

Til it's discontinued. I think I opened that program exactly once

I learned how to edit text pixel by pixel in paint 3d.

I had been skipping out on classes and while I was technically still passing my grades weren't high enough for something my family was doing so I just made a few minor edits. I don't even remember what it was for. Probably a ski trip or something.

They never found out lol.

I used my pixel level editing skills to get a few friends outta some things or into some things.

I'm one of the few people who liked paint 3d I guess.

Fucking Windows Store AppxPackages... they dont update right if you're using multiple users (like say, an admin account from tech support that signed in ONCE and never signed in again) and get computers dinged for vulnerabilities.

Windows asked me what app I wanted to open a .jpeg with last week.... Just fucking pick one, it's a jpeg.

Right click the file, go to settings and change the default program for the file. That's a one time change.

That's a hell of an act, what do you call it?

Microsoft!

Big-micro soft-brain move.

It's prob not even the first time they did it.

Installed Windows 8.1. Ran some core updates. Updated drivers. Cleaned and debloated it a bit (it didn't have much). For some reason Windows Update installed Microsoft Edge version 84 and jumpscared me to make it the default browser.

they really wanted me to be an edge user no matter if it was outdated

What's paint 3D?

Link to the original post in Mastodon

Oh man, I remember the days, probably getting close to 20 years ago now, when I also had programs installing themselves into my computer that I didn't authorize myself. I thank the efforts of the Linux inventors, engineers, and the community, for making my life better ever since the switch.