After spending a few months in complete radio silence about Recall, Microsoft finally emerged with a statement that its controversial feature will make a comeback later this year, in October, to be more precise. In preparation for the release, Microsoft quietly made a big change in Windows 11 version 24H2 on Copilot+ PCs, namely, adding the ability to uninstall Recall (via Deskmodder).
↫ Taras Buria
Recall, a half-baked security nightmare of a feature trying to catch the AI hype train, uninstallable using a Windows 95-era Windows Features dialog, is a better summary of the current state of Windows than anything anyone could put into words. Nobody cares about Windows, least of all Microsoft, and I have the sneaking suspicion that could Microsoft get away with it, they would put the source code to large parts of the Windows platform on GitHub to “outsource” its development to the community and fire even more employees.
Is anyone excited about new Windows releases? Is anyone looking forward to new features? Because it feels like every new releases, every new feature, just causes more dread, more exasperation, more what is it this time? than genuine excitement and happiness. Everything coming out of Microsoft when it comes to Windows ever since the release of Windows 11 is just… Sadness.
I haven’t cared about Windows since I last used it over two decades ago.
Nothing says not caring about Windows like reading and replying to a thread exclusively about Windows…
He uses arch btw
… exclusively about Windows being complete garbage. So the comment is actually completely on-topic, unlike yours.
@andyprough
Wrong, and I’d hope you already know that as opposed to needing your hand held through your comprehension failure.
Look at you caring so deeply about making sure other people care about how little you care!
This feature is uninstallable.
uninstallable, un-installable
Does that mean its not able to be installed, or that once installed, it can be removed. It hurts my poor brain thinking about it. English is hard, lets go shopping.
From what I could gather from the article, one should be able to uninstall the feature using the “Windows Features” window. According to the article:
As Thom alludes to, the Windows Features dialog a relic of the old days and I doubt most people know how to navigate to it, or that it even exists.
Like UltraZelda64 above, I’m just glad I dumped Windows years back.
“Inflammable means flammable?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mD2hsxrhQ
Uninstall makes sense as a verb, but ‘removable’ makes more sense here.
With the proviso that some things coming out of Microsoft since Windows 11’s release are only sadness because they require Windows 11. (eg. the work being done to improve WSL.)
WSL and Windows Terminal on Windows 7 would have been cool. WSL and Windows Terminal on anything newer is a deal-breaker.
Well, some newer Windows things are really good.
PowerShell (or the design concept that a terminal should output a human readable version of structured data that other programs can interact with, rather than outputting plain text) is kinda genius, and the kind of thing that ought to have been baked into terminals since day 1. Same with Snap Assist and windowing Desktop Environments.
Hell, I think Winget is pretty good (but that’s just relative to earlier versions of Windows).
And the seamless running of a completely different OS and it’s apps within itself in the form of WSL.
BSD has had linux mode for ever it would seem.
I love that about powershell, However… I’m not in love with they wordiness, or the security restrictions. Most PC’s do not have the ability to run unsigned powerscript script files, which given the legacy of VBscript viruses, I completely understand, but it also kind of sucks that I can’t write a script for less technical co-workers and just have them run it. Its actually more effective to make a binary executable and give it to them. Which is just wrong.
With WSL, any linux working script I write will work on windows doing the things I typically want scripts to do, and I can reuse them from my linux machines. This is great! I’m aware powershell for Linux is a thing, but its so rarely installed, and the places I write linux scripts, getting something like a whole scripting engine approved for install, is a non starter. Just use bash/python/ruby, or hell even perl.
Haha, I encountered the same thing! Some scripting functionality was blocked, but it was able to execute an executable that wasn’t blocked. This is objectively less secure since nobody knows what the binary is doing, but apparently the way microsoft wants it 🙁
Everyone i have ever talked to on the subject has been fearing “what will be breaking next”
I worked at one of the largest sawmill companies in the world once upon a time. Ever since NT 3.1, the machines kept doing bad stuff with every update.
Yeah some new hires to solve it, more bugs and it is fine for a few years. Then another update that deprecated the previous workarounds and fixes. But another team is hired and they kinda solve it. But yeah it works, and the factory is not on fire…. yet. So it is fine, then came Vista.
That software a different beast. Broke everything previously fixed before, cutters would unalign, saws would overspeed, sprinklers did not work properly in a centralized manner. No proper team could be hired like before, as the talent to fix the problems that Vista caused went to those that could provide infinite capital (mostly banks and governments).
You were lucky to get a single codemaster that could the issue in a medium company that only had a turnover of a billion or so. You had to take what you could get. And what we got was awesome. They just hired all kinds of all neckbeards. The system UI ran on OS/2, the scanners and monitoring on Unix, the management system ran linux and the cutting tools was isolated from the intranet and was communicated to through a ipx gateway with no ipx and kept running windows 2000. (noone targets IPX anyways)
The crown jewel was that the bosses could log into their citix thin client with the power of a potato and had no fans to bother them in their fancy offices and could watch the entire production in real time.
Sorry for the long post. Here is a latvian potat. **img insert of a lovely stone painted to look like a potato**
All that and yet there’s plenty of people who’ve never had problems with Windows. Go figure.
I always wonder whom these mythical people are that didn’t have any problems with operating system XYZ. The last computer I owned that had Windows was over 24 years ago, and the constant BSODs and general flakiness were what made me try and replace Windows ME. It is also worth pointing out that I was not particularly tech savvy at the time. It was the first computer I ever bought and my primary purpose was to work on my college thesis paper on antimicrobial resistance from home. I was constantly saving my work on multiple floppies so I would never lose more than a couple of hours worth of work. Eventually, I got frustrated enough that I ended up replacing the OS with Red Hat 5.2. As someone that simply considered themself an end user, Red Hat had problems also. I had to replace my NIC and I wrongly thought that I needed MS Office, so I had to figure out how to make that run through WINE. I ended up with something much more stable and was capable of finally being productive enough to get my paper written, create some presentations that I had to have printed out on transparencies and graduated. What’s important to note is that both operating systems required some sort of work-around for me to use them.
That has been my experience ever since with every computer I have owned or had to use for work. I have used numerous versions of Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, a variety of operating systems from Apple, and other more obscure items. I can usually find a way to use every system, but they all require workarounds to accommodate all of my needs. Unless you have the person that only wants to surf the web and use some web applications via their Chromebook I think everyone has to eventually come up with a solution to a problem on almost any computer, but their work-around becomes so ingrained in their habits that they don’t notice it and don’t realize the absurdity of what they are putting up with.
@friedchicken ~ Completely unrelated, I love your profile image and was not intending to be disparaging towards you. I just think ALL operating systems have challenges (problems), but maybe some are more fun to play with.
Sometimes the stars align, sometimes they don’t. I’ve primarily used Windows, Linux, and OSX/MacOS and have never had the pleasure of a flawless experience with any of them. But, I’ve also, in most cases, haven’t had anywhere near the problems others describe. Another thing I don’t think gets enough consideration is hardware being the root problem and not the OS or whatever other software people love to immediately blame. A perfect example of this is how many times I’ve come across a crap PSU providing unstable or dirty power, causing system crashes. Once replaced with something better than sewage water quality, the crashing magically disappeared.
At the end of the day, people should use whatever works best for them, whatever that may be. I use different tools/OSes for different tasks and rarely have any problems. If I do, they’re almost always easily fixed. Maybe I’m a unicorn, or maybe I’ve just learned what works best with my hardware and use-cases.
And what does all that nonsense about a random organization, employing bottom of the barrel technical staff that don’t have a clue what they are doing, have to do with the news article at hand?
As someone who’s workstation run on Windows, because of needed proprietary software, I’m really saddened by the state of Windows. I do miss Windows NT 4.0.
Now it’s such a mess even if Win10 is bearable to use. Sadly, support will end next year.
There’s some good stuff happening dev-wise (somebody mentioned Powershell above and I agree) and things like that, but from UI/UX point of view it all went downhill with Windows 8 and it’s getting worse and worse with each release.