Comment by tialaramex
21 hours ago
Assuming they don't get a revenue cut, pushing back on Microsoft can in principle be effective here.
Microsoft decides what happens here, and presumably today they just take it on trust that hardware makers know what software to install. New driver? Sure. McSpam installer? OK. Maybe they have a guideline saying "Don't ship unrelated garbage" but today it's not enforced because why would you do that?
If the Microsoft customers (particularly larger corporate customers) tell Microsoft they hate this that policy will get tightened or if there isn't a policy one is introduced, and outfits like LG get told if you do this again we're taking away your update privileges, 'cos our customers hated this. Because (as I said assuming MS don't get a taste) this is all downside for Microsoft.
Pushing back on LG will be less likely to work because you already bought their product, so at most you can insist you'll forgo LG next iteration and they know such pledges evaporate in practice usually. Whereas Microsoft has contract negotiations every day, somewhere a $$$ contract is being renegotiated next week and if "Yeah, these LG popups suck" comes up - even if it's not a corporate system but the VP's niece's video editing suite for her vlog that's strictly unrelated - that Microsoft sales droid reports this was an impediment and it's on the list of things that don't benefit Microsoft.
The issue is that most corps disable Windows Update and only allow whatever goes through the on-prem Windows Update thingy. This can, of course, fire back if they don't think to include all the updates. We had one such issue where they didn't provide an up-to-date Intel driver for the Wi-Fi cards, and the version we had was a bit broken...
But the point is that companies will probably not complain about this because they'll most likely not see it. Also, they're used to Windows being generally crappy.
Ah, the usual take. Want to sign everything before it can run, but take responsibility for nothing. And when in doubt, well, the computer did it.
When do we start calling out this crap?
It's not the computer that did it. Microsoft did it. Microsoft enabled random hardware with random strings in their connection protocol metadata to point to software on the internet that Windows happily downloads and installs.
Strangely, nobody who runs linux has this problem.
Perhaps because windows "drivers" are so bloated with helper apps and other stuff that they can't possibly all be shipped to end users with the core OS.
You'd get better results starting a conspiracy theory about it which took hold within right-wing circles, but it's less work to just not use it.
[dead]
Honestly yeah
MS should get all the flack (which is mostly deserved) of this
Manufacturer does whatever crap they want with "it works" and then MS gets the complaints
A driver should only be that. A driver
> MS should get all the flack (which is mostly deserved) of this
I don't see why we can't blame both here? And I'm a big LG user, I'm writing this comment via a LG monitor, our main TV is LG, dishwasher and clotheswasher is also LG. But still, that Microsofts enables this behavior should rightly put them at the stake for this, and also LG should get flack too, just because something is possible doesn't mean you have to automatically go that route.
well you can plug the same monitor into a mac and not have this issue.
1 reply →
We can
I don't think "should" is the best word here, I mean it more like "They will (eventually)"
But what they should/are aware of (and work against) is shenanigans by the HW vendors
> A driver should only be that. A driver
I still remember the massive amounts of crapware installed with video cards, printers (hello, HP), and just about anything where the manufacturer can squeeze some money from.
This was always one of my biggest pet peeves on Windows. A bunch of junk running in the system tray just for basic hardware functionality.
> A driver should only be that. A driver
What does a monitor even need a driver for? I presume if you plug one of these into a Mac or a Linux box it’s still going to function.