And yet it needs to be said because even 6 years after this didn’t happen people are still convinced that it did. It’s brought up way too often and I’m beyond tired of it at this point. Hate on Google for things they actually do, not because they moved 3 words to the bottom of a webpage.

The only reason this ever got any attention was to push an agenda.

Technically that wasn’t a sale. CA made a bunch of quizzes with overly broad permission requests and all our friends unknowingly sold us up the river to find out which Star Trek character they were.

And Microsoft keeps enshitifying Windows because they know they can get away with it. So many businesses are backed into a corner and have essential parts of their business that are only compatible with Microsoft’s tech. They can’t switch, they won’t even entertain the idea (much less the time/energy required to test it out). The folks at Microsoft know they’ve won. I won’t be surprised when they make Windows 12’s compatibility even more egregious than 11’s.

Password sharing crackdown, a la Netflix

Exactly this. To normal people the computer in their house is merely a tool; just another appliance that needs to work every time without any fuss.

It’s not invalid yet though. As of right now they’re in violation, and they went so far as to hire away Masimo engineers to make them work on a competing product. If you want the tech that badly why NOT license it?

Or addictive. The first hit’s always free! Get people hooked on Alexa and then tell them it actually costs $10/month to turn your lights off

An alarm could likely help you accomplish the same thing without the wifi-connected washing machine.

This is only true if every load takes exactly the same amount of time. Modern machines have more sensors to adjust things like water level and spin times. Very often now I start my washer and the time will drop from 1 hour depending on how much is in the machine.

Plus, the alarm is easy to dismiss and forget about. An actual notification on my phone isn’t.

And that’s why Windows is dropping support for 3rd party print drivers; they’re shitty and unnecessary

All of that is mentioned in the article. Given how much it cost last time a company tried to convert from COBOL, don’t be surprised when you see more businesses opt for this cheaper path. Even if it only converts half of the codebase, that’s still a huge improvement.

Doing this manually is a tall order…

Converting ancient code to a more modern language seems like a great use for AI, in all honesty. Not a lot of COBOL devs out there but once it’s Java the amount of coders available to fix/improve whatever ChatGPT spits out jumps exponentially!

Enterprises will have to upgrade once security support for 10 is dropped. Microsoft can even charge them extra to extend that maintenance window if they wanna squeeze more life out of the OS but it’s so crazy expensive that Microsoft clearly has the upper hand here.

Through their OEM deals, you’ll have a hard time finding a new computer with anything other than 11, and software developers can only support so many versions of Windows so they’ll have to drop older releases to be sure they can keep up with all those new computers people are forced to buy.

No one wanted to upgrade to 10 either, yet here we are. Microsoft knows exactly what they’re doing and have no qualms about how insidious it all is.

They don’t need any reasons at all anymore. Microsoft won the PC wars a long time ago and has been able to coast ever since. People will upgrade because Windows is the only thing supporting whatever apps they use in the workplace, because Macs are too expensive, and because Microsoft (for all its flaws) still cares about backwards compatibility.

I think I’m at like 20% and yet finished the story with all shrines. Crazy to think how much more the game has!