Despite reports to the contrary, Microsoft has stated that Recall will not be uninstallable after all. The feature did show up in the Windows Features dialog, but apparently, that was a bug.
“We are aware of an issue where Recall is incorrectly listed as an option under the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ dialog in Control Panel,” says Windows senior product manager Brandon LeBlanc in a statement to The Verge. “This will be fixed in an upcoming update.”
↫ Tom Warren at The Verge
The company is not committing to saying it will not ever be uninstallable, probably because the European Union might have something to say about that. At the very least you’ll be able to turn Recall off, but it seems actually removing it might not be possible for a while.
To be honest, with operating system installations consuming upwards of 10GB of disk space nowadays, I don’t care much if it’s uninstallable or disable-able, as long as it gets out of my face and doesn’t consume CPU resources (which is a scarce resource, since CPU cycles are basically battery mAhs), I am good.
kurkosdr,
I keep turning stuff off only for microsoft to keep adding unwanted features/settings. I wish this would stop. After updating windows they were once again spamming my start menu with bing results and ads…I had to use regedit to create a new registry key because MS doesn’t offer a toggle for it. But damn, microsoft know that many users will want to disable this type of spam in windows. They know because we’re complaining in the support forums. It just speaks to microsoft’s intentions that they won’t listen and continue down this path without respecting owners.
And I know it’s not just microsoft. Consumers keep loosing control for the benefit of the technology giants. This is everything wrong with the cloudification of technology.
The Win32 API is a monopoly owned by Microsoft, the MacOS API is a monopoly owned by Apple, monopolies can do whatever they want to their customers because those customers have no choice.
This is why all the talk about the “desktop experience” and “being ready for the desktop” was always the wrong question: You can have the best-looking and best-UX OS in the market (Rhapsody/MacOS X Server 1.0 comes to mind), but if it doesn’t have any native apps (like the ones Carbon enabled), it’s worthless to users. The whole talk about the “desktop experience” and “being ready for the desktop” was a red herring Microsoft invented to keep the anti-monopoly regulators away, and the FOSS people swallowed it whole.
You can see it in action right now: Microsoft is destroying the Windows UI and UX to push various unwanted junk, but people keep buying Windows licenses and Windows PCs. Why? Because they want to run their frickin’ win32 apps, that’s why. And yes, I know Wine exists, but people want win32 compatibility, not something that sometimes opens your win32 apps but sometimes falls flat on its face.
kurkosdr,
To be fair though, most of us FOSS users were not mislead into using linux. We use it because it’s genuinely useful to us and many of us are more productive on linux than windows. As for pushing linux on people who expect the windows experience, well that’s not my thing. Most windows users who aren’t interested in learning about other operating systems are probably better off sticking with windows… at least until the point when they become sufficiently annoyed by what the platform has becoming to take an interest in learning other operating systems.
Its a bit like the duckling running after the dog when this has been the first one it saw after hatching.
If children would see an OpenSuse or Linux Mint first at school, nobody would even talk about Windows.
No, you don’t get it, I am not saying anyone was “misled” into using Linux. My point is that the whole “Is Desktop Linux ready for the desktop?” question was always the wrong question, a red herring thrown by Microsoft and Apple to distract from the fact OS wars were and are primarily a game of app ecosystems. This distraction allowed Microsoft and Apple to build their app ecosystem monopolies in relative peace from anti-trust watchdogs, and it also led the Linux community to spend untold amounts of time building elaborate DEs and elaborate compositors (Compiz anyone?) when this time/donation capital could have been better spent in making sure Wine works properly, which should’ve been (and should be) a bigger priority than the desktop experience.
I mean, look at Windows 2000, this OS shipped with a desktop experience from 1995 and a completely un-composited desktop, and most people were willing to use it over MacOS X 1.0 or Desktop Linux, because it offered access to the app ecosystem people had their apps in (and that despite the fact MacOS X 1.0 had an ecosystem on its own, much better than Desktop Linux’s).
tl;dr: The desktop experience is a nice-to-have, app ecosystems are a must. Which is why when I see articles such as “Is whatever ready for the desktop?” like the following:
https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/
I cringe.
OS wars are never decided by the desktop experience.
kurkosdr,
The same can be said of “the year of the linux desktop”., which I never hear from actual linux users, only those who want to start flame wars. To those of us using linux for pragmatic reasons, we don’t really care about that. We use it because it’s best for us and not because what anyone else believes, including microsoft. Even if the majority of windows users aren’t ready to switch, it’s largely irrelevant to those of us who have made the switch.
You are assuming that running windows software is a high priority, but for many of us it isn’t. I’ll grant you that for games, native linux software has been chronically lacking and for that wine/proton/steam have been invaluable additions. But otherwise most of what I do doesn’t need windows or windows software at all. I do have some windows clients, but aside from that windows is genuinely in the rear-view mirror. For many developers windows isn’t even a target begin considered (other than as a thin client for linux services).. WSL only exists to curtail the exodus of developers to linux. Microsoft developed it precicely because linux became the defacto standard for internet development. “Need to work on linux software? Now you can on windows!” It’s the opposite of wine.
I liked win2k alot. More than linux/unix environments of the same period. However linux has improved and in some ways windows has regressed. Maybe not everyone feels this way, but it doesn’t really matter, nobody needs to justify their preferences.
It’s highly subjective and not the only factor. Everyone gets to make up their own mind. I would not advice someone who was comfortable with windows to use linux. It’s fair to say many who try linux will be disappointed, but these aren’t the users who were attracted to linux in the first place. Ideally they’d want a well supported windows of yesteryear….but they can’t have it. Their cherished platform becomes worse each generation. This puts them in a tough spot: choose a new platform that’s not supported as well and breaks a lot of existing software, or stay on on the platform that is the poster child for modern enshitification. Frankly for someone in this position, neither choice is great.
Many people will stick with what they know, even though it’s getting worse. Some portion of them will have had enough though. I had a similar choice over a decade ago.
Sure, but the “many” of you are 3% of the market, much like those Windows Phone users who didn’t need to run any iOS or Android apps.
And this is the power of app ecosystems.
kurkosdr,
I do get that, but so what? Stat counter puts it at 4%, it bounces around.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops/
I understand it would have better support from mainstream vendors with a larger market share. And I regularly mention on osnews that it isn’t for everyone. But most linux users have already factored this into our decision and we still chose linux.
Besides, the marketshare is much higher in CS and technical circles. Microsoft are loosing in the server space. I try to make decisions based on what works better for me, and I have to respect that others have their own opinions about what’s best for them.
I was once a 100% windows user: OS/software/everything. I gradually changed because I didn’t like what microsoft were doing. Assuming I were still in the microsoft camp, I’d honestly be pissed at the direction microsoft is taking today, auto installing software on my computer to deliver their ads…yuck.
Believe me I understand. I had to face this personally as I made the jump. I don’t regret having done it though. It’s not for everyone and I get that. Users who are happy with windows: don’t switch. It’s more those who unhappy with where the windows platform is going who have a tough choice to make. I’ve been there.
I really have zero interest in windows other to run the smallest possible image in a VM for those shitty VPN clients.
I wished the EU would focus on forcing VPN and Security Providers to implement standard interfaces/access for at least Windows, BSD, MacOS and Linux using protocols in public domain.
“If children would see an OpenSuse or Linux Mint first at school, nobody would even talk about Windows.”
Current day US schools don’t use Windows or Mac/ios, the vast majority are all on Chrome OS, due to the ease in administration. So, yea? I don’t know what this means for the future viability of Windows/Mac, but being exposed to a variety of operating systems is a good thing, I’m also not sure why someone using Mint/Suse would not want Windows.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
Windows is available in an education edition that is managed and locked down similarly to chromebooks.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/education/windows/windows-11-se-overview
I’ve criticized the use of these restrictions against public consumers, but for school districts it does make more sense. That said, our school district went with chromebooks, and I think the main factor was simply price. With microsoft I think both licensing and hardware costs are higher. With chromebooks you can get away with lower specs.
That’s a good question. The schools ehre do have some windows computers, but I don’t see apple anywhere in the education system here, not with macos nor ipads. In the past apple made a strong push to expose students to apple computers. I don’t know why they stopped? Maybe they didn’t want to compete on price for schools that don’t have the money? Long term ceding the market to google may be a risky play as those students go on to buy google products? Then again many are buying iphones of their own accord and it’s considered a status symbol with owners of alternatives being shamed in life.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/14/sorry-android-users-these-iphone-snobs-wont-date-you/
Can anyone speak to this happening in the rest of the world or is it just an american thing?
As superficial as it is, the fact that it opens more opportunities in one’s sex life is probably one of the reasons apple is dominant. If apple did this on purpose, it was a brilliant marketing move.
How could it be considered a bug that the user can uninstall unnecessary components?!
You misunderstand, it’s considered a bug for Microsoft because it was a feature for users. If we lab rats could just uninstall all the unwanted, unneeded spyware built into Windows, how would Microsoft make their next billion dollars? They need all that telemetry and profiling to enrich themselves. They have already sold the idea of livestreaming your entire digital life to all the scummy data brokers, they can’t have a loophole for you to get out of their commitment to their actual customers.
Windows is the most anti-user operating system today, and the only sane way to use it is by using an Enterprise version where you have some semblance of control over it. Naturally, the only two ways to run Enterprise are to shell out even more money to Microsoft for Enterprise licensing, or else “pirate” it.
Minuous,
My guess is that Microsoft are anticipating an antitrust case (likely from the EU). But it wasn’t their intention to give everyone an uninstall option and they’re pulling it from the UI until such time they’re ordered give users the uninstall option.
I’m afraid only us Europeans will get that uninstall option if Europe put its foot down…
I wonder though, when will the pain of learning a new system and giving up on some known staples be overshadowed by the pain of constantly battling your daily OS to not use you as a blood-bag to drain?
I do wonder if there will be some kind of trick akin to “disable TPM in your UEFI to stop the Windows 11 nags” available to people who didn’t do their research and bought a NoPrivacy+ laptop.
Give it some time and Microsoft will remove Recall. Give it a bit more time and the same will happen to copilot. This are niche products and that won’t change regardless on how much Microsoft forces them.
We really need Linux to be more viable. It’s _so close_. Just need that HDR and color profile support in Wayland.