On Wed, 05 Aug 2015 08:17:52 +0100, scott wrote:

>>> More realistically, MS would never take any decision that forced a
>>> significant proportion of its user base to switch away from Windows.
>>
>> Except that with Windows 10, they may well have done that, what with
>> the privacy issues that are starting to surface.
> 
> MS know that it's only a very small proportion of people who will worry
> about that. I'm on several gaming forums and there are plenty of threads
> about upgrading to Win10, privacy issues simply don't come up in the
> discussions, and this is fairly tech savvy people who are upgrading,
> rather than just buying a new PC from a shop. It's all about frame rates
> (which actually seem much better in Win10 for some reason), hardware
> compatibility and how to turn off the automatic updates (particularly
> the automatic restarts).

I think they hope that it's a small proportion.

I have a friend who knows someone at Microsoft involved in this - his 
comment (the friend of a friend) basically was "we disclose pretty much 
exactly what we do in the privacy policy - so I'm not sure what the 
problem is.  How do you provide services like the ones in Cortana 
*without* gathering private information, and how do you disclose that 
without it sounding Orwellian?"  While I'm not a fan of Microsoft, he's 
got a point.  Google and Amazon also do the same thing, but there's no 
significant outcry over what they're doing (though arguably, there is 
some, particularly in Linux communities).

>> The problem is that there's no other platform that's as widely used, so
>> most people will probably just accept those problems.
> 
> Indeed, MS would have to do something *really* wrong to get a
> significant proportion of people to leave Windows.

Yep.  And they have Windows ME to compete with for that.  And Bob.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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