Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/crypt ... 26136.html

No such thing as a free lunch, I guess. Just thought you should be informed before installing a freemium OS.

All of those settings can be turned off, of course. And all of them are also standard practice on iOS, as an example. For the average consumer, the convenience of being able to restore backups after a phone loss or wipe outweighs handing over the security data to Microsoft or Apple, I guess. And for business all of that will just be turned off as a matter of course.

I'm strangely fine with all of this. I'm going to get served with adverts anyway, no matter what I do... I'd rather they be relevant to my interests then not.

The ad-tracking stuff is US only, so you won't get relevant ads

Bugger...

Where have you read this?

In the actual article linked from your weird news group post.

Actually, I queried the person on Twitter who was adamant they couldn't be switched off as I did a bit of digging and couldn't find anything to back that up myself. They have climbed down a bit now.

Still, I prefer to be on the side of skepticism when it comes to companies providing 'free' services and work backwards from there.

Wi-Fi (Non)Sense looks stupid until they have controls for limiting who can potentially use your wifi though.

This is a better article. Still some potentially worrying clauses but if most of it is opt-out (should be opt-in IMO) then that's better.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/

Well, yeah. So all the same kind of stuff that other browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) do and mobile OSs do. It's bog standard backup functionality that other companies have been doing for years because people want it; it's arguably only odd that it's taken MS this long to implement it.



As the article itself acknowledges, Cortana can only work if it collects this data so it's a functional necessity, not some kind of conspiracy theory or a 'freemium' feature or whatever. Also, again, it's what Google Now and Siri already do.



This does seems a bit weird. I understand browsers doing it in response to website creating cookies but to bake it into the OS itself does seem unnecessary. I assume though in practise it's little different from the cookie collection you're going to accrue as soon as you hit the internet on a new browser so I don't know that I'm that bothered.

Had most of that on the windows phone for a while now..

Did iOS, Windows Phone and others add all this stuff in an update, or were they there from day one?

Windows phone did this in the 8.1 update, so I would imagine it is on all Windows 8.1 phones.

Updates. When iCloud backups were introduced for iPhone, that's when they started backing up your device encryption keys (in fact, the whole keychain), and when Siri was introduced it had in it initially the functionality of sending all your requests back to Apple. The latest Siri updates that mimic Google Now add in the automatic analysing of your browsing and mail data.

CRASH CUT TO MYP'S HOUSE:

Nah, I've disabled it along with the spotlight stuff that sends local device searches back to Apple.

Of course the difference is anyway that Apple charge money for their products and have stated they only want to use your data in relation to the products. Obviously trusting any large corporation with your data is iffy, but with Google, Facebook and now Microsoft it seems, their entire revenue stream is targeted ads and selling user data because they don't charge for their products.

Don't make me screenshot the "Free upgrade" label on the Yosemite icon.

Yes, but you need a Mac to run it on. Which you have to pay money to Apple to. Same with iPhones/iPads. You don't need to pay Google for a device with Android on or MS for a computer running Windows.

So does Sky, The Guardian, and the London Underground, but they're all still full of adverts. Just like Apple News is, in fact.

Google and Microsoft both have numerous revenue streams that have nothing to do with ads. For Google, Play, Cloud Platform, and Apps For Work and Education are just a few examples.

Microsoft's big revenue stream is office - makes perfect sense to give away the platform to maximise software sales on top of that platform.

Microsoft's grip on the software sector is pretty shaky these days, isn't it? Plus I don't think the Xbox One has been a roaring financial success as of yet. Also I'm aware that Google have fingers in other pies, but most revenue still comes from ads doesn't it? Search, Gmail, YouTube ads etc.

I was under the impression Office 365 (saas) was released to counteract the increasingly poor sales of traditional Office software.

Not even a little bit. Office365 exists because consumers don't upgrade, so better to charge a subscription.

Also worth noting: MS are only giving Win10 away for free to existing 7/8 customers and they're only doing it for a year; after which they'll switch to charging. So if you're an existing Win7/8 customer who's let the year grace period lapse or anyone else then you're paying £100 to £170 (depending on edition) just the same as always. This is a temporary strategic move to consolidate their user base and not some permanent switch to a 'freemium' model as you keep trying to make out.

So if consumers don't upgrade then new versions of Office sell less well. I'm not seeing the difference here.

Or are you playing devil's advocate as usual?

This is a fair point.

I'd say it wasn't to address increasingly poor sales, it was to monetise consumer spending patterns that meant you weren't getting a regular upgrade return. It wasn't like their sales were going down, just that newer technology allows them to get a better return by running a SaaS.

..........................................

Why do you think that is odd?

Update is coming "November."

Hang about, is this the right thread. Ah well.

This is the Windows 10 thread.