Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the Settings app.
This will likely arrive in the July update for Windows 11, or at least it’s almost certain to do so. It was present in the latest preview update Microsoft just released for the OS (and quickly paused due to a bug, but that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the ad has been present in earlier test versions of Windows 11.
Microsoft went too far in 2001 when they included a new online activation feature in Windows XP which spearheaded the future of drm and enshitification. They’ve been one-upping themselves ever since. All the most recent stuff is just more icing on the shit cake.
I’d say that the ‘modern’ era of Microsoft Enshittification started with IE4 as well as Windows 98. The Channel bar put ads on the Windows 95 & 98 desktops. It was easily disabled, but even that far back, Microsoft was starting to work on making their stuff suck just that much more.
Next was Windows ME blocking DOS access, while still running on DOS, making the OS a bit … unstable, followed by your point of Software Activation in XP.
Windows 2000 was amazing, though. Something really inspiring belief in good corporations and bright capitalist future. LOL
I liked Win2K, yes - then Linux :)
Agreed, XP was the turning point - I decided I will never let such an intrusive software on my private computers, so I switched from Win2k to Linux.
People think I’m nuts when I say Win2k was my favorite Windows. I switched to Linux before Vista came out. People say WinXP was good, but really, it was just tolerable.
High five, brother :) I think the XP crowd was just the generation of “one step more tolerant towards privacy intrusions” / not quite computer knowledgeable enough to understand the implications of letting your operating system phone home. In terms of user interface, it was indeed tolerable - you could still configure it to look and behave like Win2K mostly, which is what I had to do for work for quite a long time.
Compared to Win2k, it would just be a resource-hog. :/
Great shit analogy, Bo Bandi.
Thanks, Mr.Layhe
Stallman warned us, we didn’t listen.
I’m glad to see BadVista still up https://badvista.fsf.org/blog/view/?set_language=en