It's funny, if you asked Jobs or even Ballmer where they would stand on in-desktop advertising 20 years ago, they probably would have laughed and explained the benefits of paying for a desktop operating system. Flash-forward to today, and both companies are exhuming their UIs to stuff in more-and-more promotional content.
Perhaps it's horribly ironic that the only OSes that don't advertise to you are the ones you can use Freely.
I dont see any ads is MacOS
I also don't see any ads in my own Windows 11 installation start menu, just pinned apps and the latest files I have accessed [1]. Also, the start menu search functionality works flawlessly for me, always showing me the app or file I want. Hell, it even shows you power-user stuff really intuitively. Previously if you wanted to go into the windows registry editor, you had to know the right incantation, but now, all you have to do is hit the Windows/Meta key and type 'reg' and the registry editor already pups up as the first suggestion and hit enter. Lovely.
A lot of these blog posts (like many comments in this thread sadly) are low effort hate/FUD for farming clickbait/karma rather than objective analysis.
It took the interns at Microsoft, what, nearly 10 years to fix the whole search function fiasco? Not impressive, and a working search function can not be considered a feature.
> Previously if you wanted to go into the windows registry editor, you had to know the right incantation, but now, all you have to do is hit the Windows/Meta key and type 'reg'
The same search, but on Windows 10 with Open Shell [0]: https://i.imgur.com/YyxIzcO.png
And in my opinion, the start menu is much better looking: https://i.imgur.com/NeXwFlM.png
> it even shows you power-user stuff really intuitively.
Examples?
In my circles I can't think of a single developer and/or power-user that use, or plan on using Windows 11 (except in a virtual machine for quick compatibility-testing). We're all on micropatched W7's or Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC - otherwise Linux. W11 has sort of become one of the topics we joke about during lunch.
Power-users do not care about a cool and stylish UI, new icons or a simple working search function.
> A lot of these blog posts (like many comments in this thread sadly) are low effort hate/FUD for farming clickbait/karma rather than objective analysis.
ghacks has been covering Windows for many years. It's also not clickbait and MS are turning the operating system into an ad platform, unfortunately.