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Microsoft won’t let you close OneDrive on Windows until you explain yourself
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Hey, Lemmy user in this thread: you're likely in the top 0.1% expertise of all computer users worldwide.
This prompt is aimed at my boomer dad, who wouldn't know what that funny icon is but read somewhere to close his apps for better speed. If his OneDrive docs disappear, I'll get a call about it. At the same time, Microsoft probably can't sell anything to my dad ever again, except his Office 365 subscription, so that makes him the product.
Microsoft is usually pretty good at letting tech users disable this kind of stuff with powershell commands or registry keys, which you already know how to do. And of course businesses join windows PCs to domains and disable this stuff centrally too.
Your stuff wouldn't disappear if Microsoft didn't keep stealing it and storing it on their servers, insteads of leaving it on your PC where it belongs.
This isn't for your boomer dad, this is for Microsoft. You pay them for software, they steal your data. They're literally worse than Facebook and Google now.
My parents are 60 years old and use mint daily. When my mom needs onedrive she just uses the web app through the internet browser. At this point its better for your boomer parents to move them to a OS where they aren't a product and the corporate overlords won't be able to fuck with their local files. the 99% of normal users only use their computers to boot into the internet browser, and every piece of software they use from banking to documents has a web-based front end, a FOSS alternative, or can be emulated with wine.
When you do what microsoft wants, they dont punish you. Microsoft have found a way to treat users like employees. Every company knows to punch an employee above the belt (by nesesity of a cruel world or optionally pretend its true), apologise, give them cake and pray they develop a relationship.
For those that whisper "union" to coworker, punch below the belt, look tough and walk away.
this is how Microsoft hates your non cooperation
They wont mess with buisnesses because they have too much power to abandon their product in mass and are generally aligned with Microsoft's productification practices. However, users "dont have any power".Microsoft doesnt want users to turn these settings off, devorcing your computer as much as they will allow makes a "your device is not set up" screen to appear at login. Its a lie (or gross redefinition of "set up"). I would argue that it is designed to trick users into turning those fetures back on.
If you run a program or follow a guide to turn off settings in the registry, they have in the past, changed them back. users often dont check every setting to make sure they havent changed in the night.
Microsoft actively disrespected (and mabe still does) the "open urls/links in this app" menu, they give you their sales pitch on edge when switching the prefrence, they overrode the setting to always be edge or they did the above settings tampering