Comment by jeroenhd
3 months ago
The thing is, Microsoft did plenty of user-hostile stuff back then. Games for Windows Live with its weird DRM and making games unplayable after shutting down, for instance. And the push for using all kinds of "Live" services. Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days. .NET framework applications had their own special kinds of installers, Microsoft Silverlight thrived for a short moment, and the introduction of their (initially mediocre) antivirus program also wasn't well-received by the industry.
They just never shoveled their crap into the OS itself. It was always recommended addons, recommended freebies, and recommended optional features that came along with other products.
When MS started unifying everything into Just Windows, all of the crap they pulled with separate software packages merged into one digital blob, Windows 8/8.1/10/11.
With Windows 8, I can at least appreciate the attempt to unify things so they are easier to use for consumers (if only they hadn't bunged up Windows Phone, repeatedly). I wonder what Windows would be like if they hadn't tried to the Windows 8 experiment.
> Something called a .NET Passport also comes to mind during the mid-XP days
That's essentially Microsoft Account nowadays, which went thru few rebrandings on the way. In XP it was promoted via Windows Messenger with popup message which for less experienced people would suggest that in order to access the Internet they need this "passport".
Considering how many sites now offer (still optional) logins with apple/meta/microsoft accounts I wonder if the goal here is to be the provider of identity for sites and services and at the same future-proofing for any digital ID checks govt's may introduce
There was for a few years a South Korean national identity scheme which linked your national ID card to .. an ActiveX control. Making it not only IE-only but effectively tying it to IE6.
Oh yes I remember reading news about that and being dumbfounded how's that actually possible