The first piece of technology I ever received was a hand me down laptop that ran Windows XP. That and the
Xbox 360 I got a few years later were part of the reason I became interested in technology. I continued to use Windows up until
Windows 10 and Xbox up until the Xbox One, needless to say, I have a lot of expirence with this company.
If you have read my programming language tierlist article you would know I have a strong dislike for anything Microsoft makes. It seems
like the common perception of Microsoft is positive, so in this article I will explain the reason behind my hatred
of the company.
My journey with Windows started with XP, then to Windows 7, 8, 10, and now 11 (minimally). I have heard (from friends/internet articles)
that XP and 7 are widely regarded as the best and I agree. I find this interesting because I am in the unique position where I
witnessed Windows go downhill in real time.
In my opinion, Windows 8 was the start of the end for Windows. Even though I was in elementary school when it came out, I remember feeling frustrated by the changes made from Windows 7 to 8.
Microsoft completely threw out the old UI standard that I and many others were used
to from 95, XP, and 7 in favor for an objectively worse alternative. It felt like it was made for tablets instead of a computer which made
using it very awkward and uncomfortable. If there was an option to chose between the new and old UI I am sure I and many others would like
it more.
Sales wise, Windows 10 did significantly better than 8 (that's not saying much, Vista also sold better) but I can't say I liked it more. I believe some of Windows's worst practices started here.
Telemetry collection was introduced which Microsoft claims to use as a way to improve the user experience, but if turning it off in settings (which they purposefully made hard to do) doesn't completely deactivate it, then I'm not sure
their claims are true. In my opinion, privacy is a fundamental human right so forced telemetry completely goes against my morals. Another thing I hated was ads baked into the Operating System.
What kind of dystopia do we live in to have ads in the Windows control panel? What's next, ads in the sky? Remember what I said about it doing better sales-wise than Windows 8? That is probably because a
lot of people were either nagged into it or had it installed without their consent. I was apart of the ladder group, which is unfortunate since I really wanted to stick with Windows 7 as long as possible. I could go on
and on about how much I hate this OS. The only positive thing I can say about it is I started to experiment with Linux distros because of it.
It seems like Windows 11 somehow was even worse than 10. This is because it kept everything I hated about 10 AND added more bullshit and bloat. Like why the hell does searching in the start menu bring up web results? Genuinely who asked for that?
They do this so it looks like Bing is actually being used, even though no one wants to use their shitty search engine. They also made changing the default browser even harder than in Windows 10. They are doing this on purpose to force users to use
Microsoft Edge. Soon after I used Windows 11 for a few months before I switched to daily driving Arch Linux.
The Chinese government is an oppressive dictatorship that tries everything in their power to limit the rights of the people who they rule over. One of the ways they accomplish this is through internet censorship.
It was recently found that Microsoft is one of the many tech companies (Apple, Google, etc) to work with the Chinese government to do this. This also bled into the American version of the search engine, in 2021 it was
found that searches for the Tiananmen Square Massacre were heavily censored. Microsoft did address the issue, they claimed that it was due to human error. I am not sure how much I believe that.
As I mentioned before, Windows 10 introduced data collection baked into the Operating System. This is partially alarming because it has been confirmed that Microsoft works with the NSA to secretly access data of non-US citizens without a warrant.
Microsoft has denied being apart of this, but since the source of this information is from leaked NSA documents take that with a grain of salt. They have given the US government access to Outlook messages, OneDrive data, and Skype calls.
It's bad enough this is happening to American citizens, but the fact that the NSA is doing this to non-citizens (probably illegally) is very alarming. Since the addition of data collection in Windows, no matter where you are your data is not
safe if you use a Windows operating system.
This article is very negative but I still have fond memories of their products. I first learned how to code on a laptop running Windows 7 and some of the most fun memories of my childhood were spent playing Minecraft and other games on my Xbox 360.
I know other people have similar memories, so I do not fault people who still like Microsoft especially if they are less tech savvy or interested in technology in general. I am so harsh in this article because I know they can do better but they refuse to.
I don't forsee myself ever switching back to Windows as a daily driver or purchasing an Xbox anyway, since I love Arch so much and I game on PC now anyway.
