Microsoft is finally doing it: Even Windows 11 Pro will soon require a MS Acc.

[Ranayna]

I'm surprised at how quick they actually did introduce that requirement now:

Similar to Windows 11 Home edition, Windows 11 Pro edition now requires internet connectivity during the initial device setup (OOBE) only. If you choose to setup device for personal use, MSA will be required for setup as well. You can expect Microsoft Account to be required in subsequent WIP flights.

Currently only in the insider versions, but may go into the main release at the end of this year.

Well, it has been a long time now Windows. It's finally time for something different. This is my red line that i will not cross.

[coromonadalix]

I had win 10 Entreprise before  banging my head on the win 11 variant,  stayed on the entreprise version

Not receving any Ms account creation  advertising / nagging ....

[Ranayna]

The problem is, that as an indiviual, you cannot get a legitimate copy of Windows Enterprise.
I would be willing to pay for Enterprise, with all the cloud and account crap totally optional, but MS is not letting me.

So i am willing to look for alternatives.

[SiliconWizard]

They can just go f* themselves.
 

[MrMobodies]

I have found a few sellers but they are volume license. If any hardware change cause it to activate and your volume licensor disappears then you'd have to find another one willing to sell you a key for the same version/build so better have a disc image backup just incase that happens and undo whatever change.


If they require me to:
Create an account
Sign in
and "install app on your pc"... and the above comment is very fitting.

They can just go f* themselves.

If someone gave me a free copy of Windows 10 I wouldn't even give it away I'd bin it, like the Window 10 Pro on a computer I got down the skip and ended stripping a lot of components out of it to stop it turning on the Windows updater and insulting me with "frightening" scare mongering messages.

Another thing I don't want to require GPT partitions instead of MBR where deleting the crap like above may become next to impossible where I'd have convert it like last time.

[Karel]

The noose slowly tightens...

Step by step, they become like Google & Android and Apple & MacOS. Walled garden and no sideloading.

Personally, I don't care (I use windows rarely and only in Virtualbox).

[nightfire]

Volume licenses work a bit different than the normal variants sold solo as a single box.
With Volume licensing, you whether get a MAK key, which can activate multiple instances of the installation, or you can opt to have an activation server inhouse, which is intended for large companies or installations like server farms.

At work, we are Volume licensing customers, so I have MAK keys that can activate up to 50 times a Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise installation within a certain timeframe- if i need more, I would have to go to M$ and let them reset the counter with some reason why (like mass redeployment etc.)

Therefore the MAK keys are guarded closely as they can deal real damage if they are compomised and gone...

[Marco]

Step by step, they become like Google & Android and Apple & MacOS. Walled garden and no sideloading.

It might turn out that way, but for the moment what's actually happened is that they made sideloading for apps enabled by default (ie. MSIX and UWP) and they have opened up the Microsoft store to classically packaged win32 applications. Also of course Android by default allows sideloading.

Which is to me a mixed blessing, I like the sideloading part but I think Microsoft desperately needs a new security and use model for a core set of applications. UWP was a mess, but they really need something like UWP. Not everything needs the freedom of massively invasive GUI modifying win32 utilities, that freedom is too easily abused.

Windows 11 SE (the education edition) is what the core windows experience should really be for most people. Sandboxed apps with a capability based security model and transparent cloud backup, just log in to your account on any PC and wait for cloud sync to finish and have your desktop. That's what modern computing should be like for most people. Then have a win32 desktop with win32 applications running in VM(s) for the people who want it.

[rdl]

I saw this coming years ago. Fortunately I mostly use Windows only for games. The game development companies have barely begun to migrate toward Windows 10. The vast majority of new games will still run on Windows 7 - which is what I use. I doubt I will live long enough to have to deal with Windows 11.

[Monkeh]

Another thing I don't want to require GPT partitions instead of MBR where deleting the crap like above may become next to impossible where I'd have convert it like last time.

What. Just, what.

[Bud]

just log in to your account on any PC and wait for cloud sync to finish and have your desktop.

This "wait" alone makes me sick.

[SiliconWizard]

I saw this coming years ago. Fortunately I mostly use Windows only for games. The game development companies have barely begun to migrate toward Windows 10. The vast majority of new games will still run on Windows 7 - which is what I use. I doubt I will live long enough to have to deal with Windows 11.

Except MS stuff of course. In particular, MS Flight sim 2020. Which is a shame, because this is the only decent piece of software MS has released in a long time.

[rdl]

Yeah, seems like Microsoft is trying to buy up the games industry. Their recent purchase of ZeniMax Media is a bad omen.

[MrMobodies]

What. Just, what.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/windows-10-update-aggro/

Couldn't delete files where I found had to convert it first but found another MBR copy but that was long ago.

Now I just use a Windows 10 enterprise LTSC 2019 that I have been customizing and working one for two years. Click to download, click to update but can't start automatically until shutting it down where it is offered in the shutdown menu. I removed the UpdateOrchestrator enteries from the task scheduler, register prevented it from using the system accounts to recreate them which also denies the user account access to alter them, set it's startup id from 32 to 16 (10) so the start type can be set and removed Rempl and waasmedic service that turns the updater back on. Also removed telemetry components that were making lots of connections to Microsoft and Azure observing it through the firewall. Not after the changes it is very loyal to me and I confidence in it as it does what I want it to.

When I find an improvement or strip something out that I don't like, I do it one on a template copy and do a disk image and when I want another copy or for my customers, I extract that image to another hard disk, put it in, install the drivers and when it all works I buy a key from a seller.

That way I don't get upset and angry trying to set it up all over again to make it work in the way I want.

I tell my customers and they know there is no app store and it is just to get something working quick without all the aggravation, feature updates and unwanted promotional stuff.

[Monkeh]

What. Just, what.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/windows-10-update-aggro/

Couldn't delete files where I found had to convert it first but found another MBR copy but that was long ago.

That has absolutely nothing to do with GPT.

[Karel]

What. Just, what.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/windows-10-update-aggro/

Couldn't delete files where I found had to convert it first but found another MBR copy but that was long ago.

Now I just use a Windows 10 enterprise LTSC 2019 that I have been customizing and working one for two years. Click to download, click to update but can't start automatically until shutting it down where it is offered in the shutdown menu. I removed the UpdateOrchestrator enteries from the task scheduler, register prevented it from using the system accounts to recreate them which also denies the user account access to alter them, set it's startup id from 32 to 16 (10) so the start type can be set and removed Rempl and waasmedic service that turns the updater back on. Also removed telemetry components that were making lots of connections to Microsoft and Azure observing it through the firewall. Not after the changes it is very loyal to me and I confidence in it as it does what I want it to.

When I find an improvement or strip something out that I don't like, I do it one on a template copy and do a disk image and when I want another copy or for my customers, I extract that image to another hard disk, put it in, install the drivers and when it all works I buy a key from a seller.

That way I don't get upset and angry trying to set it up all over again to make it work in the way I want.

I tell my customers and they know there is no app store and it is just to get something working quick without all the aggravation, feature updates and unwanted promotional stuff.

Much easier to install Linux than this... 

[mansaxel]

If you are so concerned, and still need Windows (which most people don't) just set up a Samba4 AD and join the client. No MSFT account questions, configurable leakage. Control.

[HighVoltage]

There are always ways around such requirements, just install a "lean" version.

[Marco]

This "wait" alone makes me sick.

Compared to a traditional "sync" of your stuff with a new PC, a Chromebook sync is usually a lot faster. It still works fine offline and if you used the account on the same Chromebook last time the sync is instant. Chromebook has other problems, but cloud syncing isn't one.

However you do it, syncing takes time, manual or automatic. Automatic through cloud storage is the future.

[MrMobodies]

That has absolutely nothing to do with GPT.

Please can you explain?

I found I could at the time when I converted it but maybe what I did was coincidental.
I think it might have been EFI.

I am not sure if I have it still but I'll see if I can find the original disk or disk image and have a play around with it.

[Bud]

This "wait" alone makes me sick.

Compared to a traditional "sync" of your stuff with a new PC, a Chromebook sync is usually a lot faster. It still works fine offline and if you used the account on the same Chromebook last time the sync is instant. Chromebook has other problems, but cloud syncing isn't one.

Sorry I do not know why I need a Chromebook 
I use my PC for engineering work. Not sure what that 'sync' stuff is either , I have no use for it.

[Monkeh]

That has absolutely nothing to do with GPT.

Please can you explain?

All GPT does is chop a disk up into partitions. It has absolutely nothing to do with filesystems or permissions.

Just look it up and examine the header and partition table formats - it's self-explanatory.

[SiliconWizard]

GPT is just a partitioning scheme indeed, just a bit more advanced than with MBR.
Not sure how it would cause a problem here.

[MrMobodies]

All GPT does is chop a disk up into partitions. It has absolutely nothing to do with filesystems or permissions.

Just look it up and examine the header and partition table formats - it's self-explanatory.

I thought it had something to do with it but silly me. I found the original disc image copy of it in 2019 before I copied it to a SDD stripped stuff out of it.
I did convert it just now and got the same error message with trying to delete the system files.
I can make folder and copy stuff but not delete certain things.

Obviously it is something else 80070780.
Taking ownership does nothing.

Actually on further looking it is permission protected despite taking ownership, it is has been set for every account except trustedinstaller so basically locked out.
I can't remember what I did to solve that.

I believe I found the issue just now but not what I remember.

I noticed "read only" attribute in c:\windows\ folder
Trying to removing this attribute leads to "THE TARGET OF THE SYMBOLIC LINK DOES NOT EXIST"

https://level400.org/2019/06/18/how-to-deal-with-the-target-of-the-symbolic-link-doesnt-exist/

Luke Edson Posted on June 18, 2019
How to deal with The target of the symbolic link doesn’t exist
The other day I came across a Hyper-V host server where an OS crash had occurred. A new OS install was made on the C: drive. After the rebuild, the D: drive’s VMs (VHDX’s etc.) were visible and appeared to be fully available, but when an attempt was made to import the existing VMs or even access the files, the following error message was displayed:

"The target of the symbolic link doesn't exist"
Trying to access the with Windows Explorer gave an Error 0x80070780: The File cannot be accessed by the system.

Attributes APLI

To disable DeDuplication:
If DeDuplication is disabled, it doesn’t actually undo the work that was done, and if it is disabled, garbage cleanup commands can’t be run.

It’s VERY Important that Deduplication is left enabled, but leave the entire drive Excluded.

Once that’s done, run the following two commands (which will take quite a bit of time depending on how much data there is).

I'll have a go at that later.

Once again sorry about that.

[Marco]

I use my PC for engineering work. Not sure what that 'sync' stuff is either , I have no use for it.

If you've changed PCs you have manually synced your data, you have use for your old data on a new PC. The future for modern software will be to make all that transparent and automated ... not really relevant for engineering software rigged together from codebases 3 decades old, but for a lot more normie software it will be. Having your desktop, application configuration and data tied to an online account which can be trivially synced to a different computer is a convenience which people appreciate. It's a big reason why Chromebooks work so well for education.

Though unlike Microsoft when Apple gets around to implementing cloud syncing properly for MacOS they will drag all the developers who want to use their appstore along kicking and screaming, as they are want to do, engineering software or not. They have less patience with legacy.

[Bud]

I do not believe in a SkyNet type of mothership computer idea, where all accumulated data from the Humanity is stored, all of which can evaporate should a disaster strike.

[mansaxel]

Having your desktop, application configuration and data tied to an online account which can be trivially synced to a different computer is a convenience which people appreciate. It's a big reason why Chromebooks work so well for education.

I store all important data on my network file system. And that is not a commercial product, (well, people have made compatible commercial products, though) and I run it 100% myself, and it's on computers I control.  I expect and achieve the situation that all my computers expose the same home directory, per user, wherever they are.

Not surprisingly, Windows is somewhat complicated to integrate in this; the only thing they got right in that soup is to make AD use Kerberos V.

[MrMobodies]

I wouldn't myself depend on online storage for anything serious, I'd just use it as a temporary convenience knowing it could disappear one day and I keep everything at home and run my own things where I have access to it all the time.

It's nice to have both a bit like security in retain it and many copies across different remote storage not just one "cloud" just incase something happens to one of them and inhouse but then got to read the terms and conditions for it to be private. I'd imagine that would be included by paying for it compared to a free service.

[Marco]

It's nice to have options, but without the option to do it transparently and automatically it's going to create trouble down the line for Microsoft (and with Microsoft also desktop Linux, because consumer windows keeps the PC market alive).

For now only Chromebooks are really user friendly in this regard, which only has a limited danger to Microsoft ... but if Apple joins in and Microsoft is last one out it will be a problem.

[PKTKS]

I use my PC for engineering work. Not sure what that 'sync' stuff is either , I have no use for it.

If you've changed PCs you have manually synced your data, you have use for your old data on a new PC. The future for modern software will be to make all that transparent and automated ...

(...)

This can easily derail in long flaming opinions... 

But let's talk reasonably  serious...

Who really in perfect mental health behind a professional business will  just ditch all his proprietary  project data into MS business as default ...   
(let's just assume a 5y old life cycle project... MS has no patience...hhhhhh  )

Just because their cash need demands deprecating PCs at dozen weeks pace and making a consistent USER PROPERTY DATA a priority is no longer their cash cow?

Cm'on  on any *NIX you save your data under /home with proper partition attrs. and you can just upgrade the whole else system (partitions)  with 100% safety of your data..

I have been doing this since 1990s  and have already files dated with 1993 attributes ...

If i had not such capability I would be out the things. and just extorted by these methods..

For a 5y old kid and his Alphabet  applets it sounds..
Even my nephew can already use a MINT machine for his games..

I really dunno want to see him hostage of such *** buzz... in his life..

GROUND  ZERO is not even thinkable..
Why people accepts such a thing..

Paul

[Marco]

Who really in perfect mental health behind a professional business will  just ditch all his proprietary  project data into MS business as default ...   

Lots of money going into DaaS on Azure (stack), so plenty. Though I think cloud syncing of a desktop is more useful than DaaS, it works when the network is down.

Cm'on  on any *NIX you save your data under /home with proper partition attrs. and you can just upgrade the whole else system (partitions)  with 100% safety of your data..

Which does nothing for the average private user or Windows. For businesses Windows users the sysadmin can take care of it, possibly with some third party solutions like ProfileUnity, but that also does nothing for private users.

Office users are the major money maker for desktop windows, consumers are the secondary money makers, what you call professional business users are an accounting error ... not what should dictate the major design aims for Windows.

[Someone]

It's nice to have options, but without the option to do it transparently and automatically it's going to create trouble down the line for Microsoft (and with Microsoft also desktop Linux, because consumer windows keeps the PC market alive).

For now only Chromebooks are really user friendly in this regard, which only has a limited danger to Microsoft ... but if Apple joins in and Microsoft is last one out it will be a problem.

Consider that the majority of web browsing is now from mobile devices:
https://techjury.net/blog/web-browser-market-share/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/
So a big portion of the computing world is already happening from devices that have some cloud sync/backup.

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

[Cerebus]

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

You're a bit behind the times, one has been able to do this for ages on macOS. You can selectively store all sorts of data automatically synced to iCloud, from the contents of your home directory, browser bookmarks, contacts, passwords, calendar, email, photos etc. through to data from apps with specific iCloud support baked in. Relevant bits are even shared with associated iPhones and iPads automatically. Anything signed in with your apple id has access to it. If you took the fullest set of options you could switch to a new Mac (or a freshly minted local account on someone else's Mac), sync all your stuff from iCloud and have a machine set up exactly like your other(s) in the time it took for the sync to happen.

The erstwhile server version of OS X provided much the same facilities, but not quite so extensive. The principal difference is that the OS X server based version used mostly open interfaces so it was easy to divert some services to platforms other than OS X (i.e. one might choose to store home directories on an NFS server) and there was OKish management tools to allow you to do this. You could even cobble together a set-up that looked to an OS X client as if it was OS X server, but was actually provided entirely on Linux, BSD, Solaris or whatever you chose, even down to the directory service that glued it all together. In fact that was how I previously had home set up - you could take a brand new Mac out of the box, plug it into the network, option click at login, and have it copy all one's settings, home directory and preferences onto the new machine and then keep it all in sync henceforth automatically. iCloud is really just a smoother, more all-encompassing version of that.

Those older interfaces are still mostly there if you know how to use them, but they aren't promoted the way they used to be. Facilities introduced for iCloud since the demise of OS X server are difficult or impossible to divert to infrastructure of one's own choosing which is a pity when compared with the old way of doing it.

Most importantly, you can still choose to use none of this and have your macOS computer sitting in glorious isolation, with no need for an apple id, iCloud or any of that stuff and still be able to make full use of it. The only thing you'd lose is tight automatic integration with iPhones and iPads, but you wouldn't lose all integration with iPhones and iPads, it would just be a bit muted and more manual.

[Someone]

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

You're a bit behind the times, one has been able to do this for ages on macOS. You can selectively store all sorts of data automatically synced to iCloud, from the contents of your home directory, browser bookmarks, contacts, passwords, calendar, email, photos etc. through to data from apps with specific iCloud support baked in.

As I recall all that icloud stuff is per application, and isnt tied/integrated with the login (or system settings etc). Device enrollment of OSX can do some of that but isnt consumer facing.

As a consumer, on iOS with icloud backups you can enter your account credentials (twice?) on a different device and have it sync the whole device. Light years ahead of desktop sync solutions (which I believe was the point Marco was making).

[Marco]

Indeed, but Apple has the advantage of a tighter hold on their developers. They can simply go to the developers and say "be a good citizen with your auto-backup directories and don't put too much stuff in them or else". After that is done they can offer a free tier sync/backup (well low cost any way, it is Apple) with more costly tiers for backing up media and user downloads.

[Cerebus]

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

You're a bit behind the times, one has been able to do this for ages on macOS. You can selectively store all sorts of data automatically synced to iCloud, from the contents of your home directory, browser bookmarks, contacts, passwords, calendar, email, photos etc. through to data from apps with specific iCloud support baked in.

As I recall all that icloud stuff is per application, and isnt tied/integrated with the login (or system settings etc). Device enrollment of OSX can do some of that but isnt consumer facing.

As a consumer, on iOS with icloud backups you can enter your account credentials (twice?) on a different device and have it sync the whole device. Light years ahead of desktop sync solutions (which I believe was the point Marco was making).

No, the desktop sync can do pretty much all the same things as the iDevice sync - go to System Preferences, Apple ID, enter your apple id, maybe change some of the iCloud preference to limit what is synced and off it goes. The only place I'm certain it is different is if you have desktop applications that weren't loaded via the desktop app store, those obviously won't automatically install; whereas ones that are from the desktop app store will as long as you have the "Automatically download apps purchased on other devices" preference selected.

I have just logged in remotely to SWMBO's Mac from mine, entered my Apple ID and everything that I have selected to use iCloud (I have deliberately deselected some things) automagically appeared on her Mac, System Preferences, Contacts, Calendar, all the other stuff are up to date with my Mac. The only significant difference is the contents of my home directory becuase I have deliberately chosen to not store that synced to iCloud. Seamless, and trivial enough to do that I could do it just so as I could say I have just for the purposes of this post.

Edit: Just to drum the point home I'm adding this edit on SWMBO's Mac, where my bookmark for eevblog, and my login credentials, had been magically synced so I can log into eevblog from there/here without any effort.

[Bud]

Steve Jobs was obsessed with the idea of centralizing of personal information management way back to his younger times and there is a video where he talks about it. He called it "the Hub" back then. First it was the individual Mac computer where the users would store their all kind of information (per Job's vision) then the Mac Media center, the iPod, then the iPhone and now ended up with the iCloud.

[Marco]

No, the desktop sync can do pretty much all the same things as the iDevice sync - go to System Preferences, Apple ID, enter your apple id, maybe change some of the iCloud preference to limit what is synced and off it goes.

So when you log onto a fresh macbook it can automatically download all your applications from the appstore, restore system and application settings and backed up directories? All you have to do is logon and sync?

That only furthers my opinion how far behind the curve Microsoft is.

[Someone]

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

You're a bit behind the times, one has been able to do this for ages on macOS. You can selectively store all sorts of data automatically synced to iCloud, from the contents of your home directory, browser bookmarks, contacts, passwords, calendar, email, photos etc. through to data from apps with specific iCloud support baked in.

As I recall all that icloud stuff is per application, and isnt tied/integrated with the login (or system settings etc). Device enrollment of OSX can do some of that but isnt consumer facing.

As a consumer, on iOS with icloud backups you can enter your account credentials (twice?) on a different device and have it sync the whole device. Light years ahead of desktop sync solutions (which I believe was the point Marco was making).

No, the desktop sync can do pretty much all the same things as the iDevice sync - go to System Preferences, Apple ID, enter your apple id, maybe change some of the iCloud preference to limit what is synced and off it goes. The only place I'm certain it is different is if you have desktop applications that weren't loaded via the desktop app store, those obviously won't automatically install; whereas ones that are from the desktop app store will as long as you have the "Automatically download apps purchased on other devices" preference selected.

I have just logged in remotely to SWMBO's Mac from mine, entered my Apple ID and everything that I have selected to use iCloud (I have deliberately deselected some things) automagically appeared on her Mac, System Preferences, Contacts, Calendar, all the other stuff are up to date with my Mac. The only significant difference is the contents of my home directory becuase I have deliberately chosen to not store that synced to iCloud. Seamless, and trivial enough to do that I could do it just so as I could say I have just for the purposes of this post.

Edit: Just to drum the point home I'm adding this edit on SWMBO's Mac, where my bookmark for eevblog, and my login credentials, had been magically synced so I can log into eevblog from there/here without any effort.

Again, you jump to the things that are integrated with apps (from the app store!). Yes, its there. But its nothing like the all encompassing user provisioning that was deployed on OSX in the past.

Right now a home user can do time machine backups to their own storage, and that is a bootable image that can re-image a clean machine with everything just as it was (I've done it a few times myself). But there isnt a corresponding cloud option...  an odd gap in the market.

That is very different to the mechanism that iOS uses to do its "backups", approved apps with their data in their approved storage containers being backed up via icloud. Sure many users wouldn't tell the difference, but you keep talking like its completely the same thing when it isnt. So much user config/content is lost through those, sure blame the app developers, but its still an issue compared to a real backup.

Corporate provisioning and multiuser environments just worked for OSX in the past, seamless login to arbitrary hardware (even across different OS versions) and all your software, settings, and data was right there on the local storage. Some home users would like that sort of setup, and if that can be done by a cheap and well integrated cloud solution I'm sure it will be disruptive (as Marco says).

Back on topic, all this icloud stuff needs you to authenticate your OS and software with your account, apple got there first and has not had massive pushback on it.

[Someone]

No, the desktop sync can do pretty much all the same things as the iDevice sync - go to System Preferences, Apple ID, enter your apple id, maybe change some of the iCloud preference to limit what is synced and off it goes.

So when you log onto a fresh macbook it can automatically download all your applications from the appstore, restore system and application settings and backed up directories? All you have to do is logon and sync?

That only furthers my opinion how far behind the curve Microsoft is.

Backed up directories, Yes. Everything else, Yes*
iCloud+ plans and pricing: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201238

* according to what the apps think they need, which might disagree with what you want

So its not pushed as an official or supported backup solution.

[Cerebus]

So its not pushed as an official or supported backup solution.

That's because it's not a backup solution, it's a mobility solution. It merely looks like a backup solution to the naïve, it's won't help you recover a file you deleted yesterday because it will propagate that deletion to one's other Macs/iDevices via iCloud.

[Someone]

So its not pushed as an official or supported backup solution.

That's because it's not a backup solution, it's a mobility solution. It merely looks like a backup solution to the naïve, it's won't help you recover a file you deleted yesterday because it will propagate that deletion to one's other Macs/iDevices via iCloud.

So you think you are clever:

except....
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud/mmae56ea1ca5/icloud
"Recover deleted files on iCloud.com"
Yeah, sounds like a backup.
Some people have reported it as being a bit glitchy, but the underlying functionality is there and could be turned into full versioning/history like time machine.

[Cerebus]

As you say, Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment (who has or wants a multiuser phone?) and quickly have something disruptive in the education/corporate space. But although they pushed hard on that market with OSX server it never really took off and got buried. Seems like the profit is in consumers and their vanity shiny toys.

You're a bit behind the times, one has been able to do this for ages on macOS. You can selectively store all sorts of data automatically synced to iCloud, from the contents of your home directory, browser bookmarks, contacts, passwords, calendar, email, photos etc. through to data from apps with specific iCloud support baked in.

As I recall all that icloud stuff is per application, and isnt tied/integrated with the login (or system settings etc). Device enrollment of OSX can do some of that but isnt consumer facing.

As a consumer, on iOS with icloud backups you can enter your account credentials (twice?) on a different device and have it sync the whole device. Light years ahead of desktop sync solutions (which I believe was the point Marco was making).

No, the desktop sync can do pretty much all the same things as the iDevice sync - go to System Preferences, Apple ID, enter your apple id, maybe change some of the iCloud preference to limit what is synced and off it goes. The only place I'm certain it is different is if you have desktop applications that weren't loaded via the desktop app store, those obviously won't automatically install; whereas ones that are from the desktop app store will as long as you have the "Automatically download apps purchased on other devices" preference selected.

I have just logged in remotely to SWMBO's Mac from mine, entered my Apple ID and everything that I have selected to use iCloud (I have deliberately deselected some things) automagically appeared on her Mac, System Preferences, Contacts, Calendar, all the other stuff are up to date with my Mac. The only significant difference is the contents of my home directory becuase I have deliberately chosen to not store that synced to iCloud. Seamless, and trivial enough to do that I could do it just so as I could say I have just for the purposes of this post.

Edit: Just to drum the point home I'm adding this edit on SWMBO's Mac, where my bookmark for eevblog, and my login credentials, had been magically synced so I can log into eevblog from there/here without any effort.

Again, you jump to the things that are integrated with apps (from the app store!). Yes, its there. But its nothing like the all encompassing user provisioning that was deployed on OSX in the past.

Right now a home user can do time machine backups to their own storage, and that is a bootable image that can re-image a clean machine with everything just as it was (I've done it a few times myself). But there isnt a corresponding cloud option...  an odd gap in the market.

That is very different to the mechanism that iOS uses to do its "backups", approved apps with their data in their approved storage containers being backed up via icloud. Sure many users wouldn't tell the difference, but you keep talking like its completely the same thing when it isnt. So much user config/content is lost through those, sure blame the app developers, but its still an issue compared to a real backup.

Corporate provisioning and multiuser environments just worked for OSX in the past, seamless login to arbitrary hardware (even across different OS versions) and all your software, settings, and data was right there on the local storage. Some home users would like that sort of setup, and if that can be done by a cheap and well integrated cloud solution I'm sure it will be disruptive (as Marco says).

Back on topic, all this icloud stuff needs you to authenticate your OS and software with your account, apple got there first and has not had massive pushback on it.

You seem to be trying to deliberately muddy the waters. The only apps that have to be iCloud aware are apps that you want to store stuff in iCloud if you don't store your home directory there, if you do keep your home directory in iCloud then any app will sync, whether it came from the app store or outside of it. You are the only person talking about backup, we are talking about a solution that lets one seamlessly move one's working environment around between computers. The only way it resembles backup is that one can recreate one's working environment on another Mac. The same is true for an iPhone or iPad, being able to 'restore' your working environment to a new or freshly wiped iDevice isn't backup, it doesn't let you recover a file you've deleted. It's just mobility between devices that can all coexist. Similarly nobody is pretending it's a corporate provisioning platform, it's not - although Apple have some tools for that in Apple Business Manager, but just not the nice integrated solution that OS X Server had in its day.

[Cerebus]

So its not pushed as an official or supported backup solution.

That's because it's not a backup solution, it's a mobility solution. It merely looks like a backup solution to the naïve, it's won't help you recover a file you deleted yesterday because it will propagate that deletion to one's other Macs/iDevices via iCloud.

So you think you are clever:

except....
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud/mmae56ea1ca5/icloud
"Recover deleted files on iCloud.com"
Yeah, sounds like a backup.
Some people have reported it as being a bit glitchy, but the underlying functionality is there and could be turned into full versioning/history like time machine.

You seem to fail to discern the difference between pedantically correct and actually correct. iCloud is not, repeat, not a backup solution except for the naïve or stupid. I fully encourage you to store something vital in iCloud, delete it, and try and get it back in 31 days. The existence of an incidental emergency recovery system for recently deleted files does not a backup system make, heck my waste bin usually has older deleted files than that in it (Checks: Yup, it does).

Now, before you get all pedantically correct about it, yes, iCloud does act as an emergency backup for a lost phone, but that's a far cry from what we were actually talking about, which is the ability to have seamless iDevice like syncing across apple desktops and your ignorance that it was already here and had been for a long time.

Now TimeMachine is a backup solution and comes free with all Macs, and mine has every change I've made on this machine going back to October 2019 when I first fired it up when this machine was new.

Now forgive me if I stop arguing with you about this, but you just seem to be here for an argument for it's own sake, not a discussion where we all learn something.

[Someone]

You seem to be trying to deliberately muddy the waters. The only apps that have to be iCloud aware are apps that you want to store stuff in iCloud if you don't store your home directory there, if you do keep your home directory in iCloud then any app will sync, whether it came from the app store or outside of it. You are the only person talking about backup, we are talking about a solution that lets one seamlessly move one's working environment around between computers. The only way it resembles backup is that one can recreate one's working environment on another Mac. The same is true for an iPhone or iPad, being able to 'restore' your working environment to a new or freshly wiped iDevice isn't backup, it doesn't let you recover a file you've deleted. It's just mobility between devices that can all coexist. Similarly nobody is pretending it's a corporate provisioning platform, it's not - although Apple have some tools for that in Apple Business Manager, but just not the nice integrated solution that OS X Server had in its day.

Read back through the replies, you are the one sidetracking the thread with your slanty arguments. Why are you bringing in all the minutiae of how icloud sync includes some files/apps and not others? Its not going to give a user all their apps and settings on another device unless they are working inside a restricted situation, it might but its not seamless (or as Marco put it "transparently and automatically") because there are so many ifs/buts/gotchas. You keep coming back saying how its great and works for migrating a user with no problems, except it does have obvious problems and isnt what Marco was talking about:

Having your desktop, application configuration and data tied to an online account which can be trivially synced to a different computer is a convenience which people appreciate. It's a big reason why Chromebooks work so well for education.

So why are you (Cerebus) jumping into the middle of that discussion with some other unstated motivation and disagreeing with my points (while being factually incorrect) ? Its trivial to point out how you are wrong, can you not frame/craft a context to explain yourself?

[Someone]

So its not pushed as an official or supported backup solution.

That's because it's not a backup solution, it's a mobility solution. It merely looks like a backup solution to the naïve, it's won't help you recover a file you deleted yesterday because it will propagate that deletion to one's other Macs/iDevices via iCloud.

So you think you are clever:

except....
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud/mmae56ea1ca5/icloud
"Recover deleted files on iCloud.com"
Yeah, sounds like a backup.
Some people have reported it as being a bit glitchy, but the underlying functionality is there and could be turned into full versioning/history like time machine.

You seem to fail to discern the difference between pedantically correct and actually correct. iCloud is not, repeat, not a backup solution except for the naïve or stupid. I fully encourage you to store something vital in iCloud, delete it, and try and get it back in 31 days

Ah, walking the goalposts. +1 troll point to you sir.

Now, before you get all pedantically correct about it, yes, iCloud does act as an emergency backup for a lost phone, but that's a far cry from what we were actually talking about, which is the ability to have seamless iDevice like syncing across apple desktops and your ignorance that it was already here and had been for a long time.

Except you just keep saying its there, when it is actually incomplete and not able to sync everything. I keep repeating and you keep ignoring:
icloud is a partial solution and probably 90% of the way there for most users
its problems are less obvious on the restricted iOS platform, on OSX it's still very patchy. Good news is that is has been ...slowly.... improving.

[Cerebus]

You seem to be trying to deliberately muddy the waters. The only apps that have to be iCloud aware are apps that you want to store stuff in iCloud if you don't store your home directory there, if you do keep your home directory in iCloud then any app will sync, whether it came from the app store or outside of it. You are the only person talking about backup, we are talking about a solution that lets one seamlessly move one's working environment around between computers. The only way it resembles backup is that one can recreate one's working environment on another Mac. The same is true for an iPhone or iPad, being able to 'restore' your working environment to a new or freshly wiped iDevice isn't backup, it doesn't let you recover a file you've deleted. It's just mobility between devices that can all coexist. Similarly nobody is pretending it's a corporate provisioning platform, it's not - although Apple have some tools for that in Apple Business Manager, but just not the nice integrated solution that OS X Server had in its day.

Read back through the replies, you are the one sidetracking the thread with your slanty arguments. Why are you bringing in all the minutiae of how icloud sync includes some files/apps and not others? Its not going to give a user all their apps and settings on another device unless they are working inside a restricted situation, it might but its not seamless (or as Marco put it "transparently and automatically") because there are so many ifs/buts/gotchas. You keep coming back saying how its great and works for migrating a user with no problems, except it does have obvious problems and isnt what Marco was talking about:

Having your desktop, application configuration and data tied to an online account which can be trivially synced to a different computer is a convenience which people appreciate. It's a big reason why Chromebooks work so well for education.

So why are you (Cerebus) jumping into the middle of that discussion with some other unstated motivation and disagreeing with my points (while being factually incorrect) ? Its trivial to point out how you are wrong, can you not frame/craft a context to explain yourself?

Marco says that, you say "Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment", I effectively say "You're behind the times, they have rolled that out" and you just try to make an argument out of it all, wrongly claiming some underhand motivation, wrongly claiming that I'm factually incorrect when I went and explicitly tested it and it worked "automatically and seamlessly".

Just because I'm careful about qualifying what it can do under different circumstances you seem to want to cast as some sort of equivocation. Let me state simply and plainly "You can seamlessly and automatically sync user environments between desktop Macs via iCloud if you accept the default setting. that Apple suggest you use." - I do not use those default settings, so I have to qualify what I say about my proving it works for me. It works. It will continue to work whatever you say or chose to believe about it.

I really don't get what you think you'll achieve by being so confrontational and argumentative except to convince me, and I suspect others, that you're a bit of dick and not worth the effort. Now, I have to go and add you to my ignore list as clearly "There's no talking to people like that".

[Someone]

You seem to be trying to deliberately muddy the waters. The only apps that have to be iCloud aware are apps that you want to store stuff in iCloud if you don't store your home directory there, if you do keep your home directory in iCloud then any app will sync, whether it came from the app store or outside of it. You are the only person talking about backup, we are talking about a solution that lets one seamlessly move one's working environment around between computers. The only way it resembles backup is that one can recreate one's working environment on another Mac. The same is true for an iPhone or iPad, being able to 'restore' your working environment to a new or freshly wiped iDevice isn't backup, it doesn't let you recover a file you've deleted. It's just mobility between devices that can all coexist. Similarly nobody is pretending it's a corporate provisioning platform, it's not - although Apple have some tools for that in Apple Business Manager, but just not the nice integrated solution that OS X Server had in its day.

Read back through the replies, you are the one sidetracking the thread with your slanty arguments. Why are you bringing in all the minutiae of how icloud sync includes some files/apps and not others? Its not going to give a user all their apps and settings on another device unless they are working inside a restricted situation, it might but its not seamless (or as Marco put it "transparently and automatically") because there are so many ifs/buts/gotchas. You keep coming back saying how its great and works for migrating a user with no problems, except it does have obvious problems and isnt what Marco was talking about:

Having your desktop, application configuration and data tied to an online account which can be trivially synced to a different computer is a convenience which people appreciate. It's a big reason why Chromebooks work so well for education.

So why are you (Cerebus) jumping into the middle of that discussion with some other unstated motivation and disagreeing with my points (while being factually incorrect) ? Its trivial to point out how you are wrong, can you not frame/craft a context to explain yourself?

Marco says that, you say "Apple could roll that to their desktop multiuser environment", I effectively say "You're behind the times, they have rolled that out" and you just try to make an argument out of it all, wrongly claiming some underhand motivation, wrongly claiming that I'm factually incorrect when I went and explicitly tested it and it worked "automatically and seamlessly".

Just because I'm careful about qualifying what it can do under different circumstances you seem to want to cast as some sort of equivocation. Let me state simply and plainly "You can seamlessly and automatically sync user environments between desktop Macs via iCloud if you accept the default setting. that Apple suggest you use." - I do not use those default settings, so I have to qualify what I say about my proving it works for me. It works. It will continue to work whatever you say or chose to believe about it.

I really don't get what you think you'll achieve by being so confrontational and argumentative except to convince me, and I suspect others, that you're a bit of dick and not worth the effort. Now, I have to go and add you to my ignore list as clearly "There's no talking to people like that".

You keep saying it will work for everyone, from the experience it worked for your use case (which is in many ways a corner case). Its not a general solution yet, but you claim its already there again and again. Its like you have turned Falsifiable upside down. You keep talking in generalizations which are falsifiable, and use them as some argument to refute what I am saying. Then come back and dig your heels in when its pointed out you are wrong/misleading.

If you took the fullest set of options you could switch to a new Mac (or a freshly minted local account on someone else's Mac), sync all your stuff from iCloud and have a machine set up exactly like your other(s) in the time it took for the sync to happen.

Which is factually incorrect if the user has any applications not from the app store (and if you want to be pedantic, a bunch of system settings are not synced). I dont get why you are so dismissive of the fact there are many traps and preconditions to the icloud system. When it works it seems like magic, but its opaque and not going to  take an arbitrary desktop setup to another device.

[MrMobodies]

There must be an edition they'd release like LTSC that doesn't require a sign in setup thing.

Joke: I don't think certain businesses and banks would tolerate that say if one of their cash machines were running windows 10 Pro and given the opportunity (if their firewall happened to allow it by mistake) would download stuff like CandyCrush and other promotional things and run frequent updates and monitoring on them in the background as well as the telemetry stuff.

[Halcyon]

There must be an edition they'd release like LTSC that doesn't require a sign in setup thing.

There will always be "offline" options with Windows, just like with Windows 10. In some corporate and government (high security) environments, there is no internet connectivity... ever and that's often mandated by cyber security policies and even legislation at times. There is no way on earth Microsoft will ever turn around to those organisations and say "just temporarily connect your devices/network to the internet". That will not can't happen.

How that will look in Windows 11 and whether or not it will be easily accessible to end-users/regular consumers is yet to be seen.

[gnif]

Now TimeMachine is a backup solution and comes free with all Macs, and mine has every change I've made on this machine going back to October 2019 when I first fired it up when this machine was new.

Just a side point, unless you're making a copy of the data to another machine or storage medium so that two copies exist minimum, this is not a backup solution either. If your hard disk fails, or your computer is stolen, or something/someone malicious destroys the data (including TimeMachine), or your house burns down, your data is gone and you have no backup.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes of course. Any local "backup" is not a real backup. It can still help - main reason, from the very name of the TimeMachine, is to be able to retrieve older versions of a given file, if you happen to need them. Also, having two "copies" of the same data on different regions of a drive *may* help in case of drive failure, as long as the failure is not complete...

But yes, anyone not backing up on at least one separate medium is taking a major risk.

[Someone]

Now TimeMachine is a backup solution and comes free with all Macs, and mine has every change I've made on this machine going back to October 2019 when I first fired it up when this machine was new.

Just a side point, unless you're making a copy of the data to another machine or storage medium so that two copies exist minimum, this is not a backup solution either. If your hard disk fails, or your computer is stolen, or something/someone malicious destroys the data (including TimeMachine), or your house burns down, your data is gone and you have no backup.

To be fair the number of people who have a mac with more than one drive (physical or logical) so they have a local time machine backup is in the vanishing minority. Anyone with that is likely to understand the risks and have other remote/external copies. Having a hard time thinking of any consumer mac that had more than one partition on it!

After the file management change from open/save/save as to open/save/duplicate/move to in 10.7 (2010) versioning became part of the underling system and didn't require time machine, prior to that versioning was through time machine (as I recall it still had some local versions stored so worked even when the remote/external backup disk was not available? no idea if that would function if an external time machine destination had never been setup).

Time Machine is pretty synonymous with setting up a backup solution with a remote/external disk.

[mansaxel]

There must be an edition they'd release like LTSC that doesn't require a sign in setup thing.

There will always be "offline" options with Windows, just like with Windows 10. In some corporate and government (high security) environments, there is no internet connectivity... ever and that's often mandated by cyber security policies and even legislation at times. There is no way on earth Microsoft will ever turn around to those organisations and say "just temporarily connect your devices/network to the internet". That will not can't happen.

How that will look in Windows 11 and whether or not it will be easily accessible to end-users/regular consumers is yet to be seen.

The first step is to put an Active Directory in place, that you control. Microsoft-infested workstations are functional masochists. They crave  whipping by a master computer. Make sure you control that computer.  And, a Samba 4 install is good enough.

My children have W10 boxen, with Professional, (Home was never an option) joined to a Samba 4 directory. No nagging about accounts, what so ever.  As you wrote; this is likely to continue in 11.

[PKTKS]

There must be an edition they'd release like LTSC that doesn't require a sign in setup thing.

There will always be "offline" options with Windows, just like with Windows 10. In some corporate and government (high security) environments, there is no internet connectivity... ever and that's often mandated by cyber security policies and even legislation at times. There is no way on earth Microsoft will ever turn around to those organisations and say "just temporarily connect your devices/network to the internet". That will not can't happen.

How that will look in Windows 11 and whether or not it will be easily accessible to end-users/regular consumers is yet to be seen.

There is no chance on earth they will put the very same crap software they sell to consumer grade customers on govs and MIL hardware deploys ... they will just shoot their own feet if so..

Harboring data was never (and will never be) a profitable business.. who on hell would think that data storage is possibly a profitable cash cow? The cash cow behind that.. is obviously another very very deep and profitable agenda... 

ACCESS to data and most important.. for whom that data belongs..

Obviously  MIL (and gov) institutions would just drop MS head if doing so with their data..
But not mere mortals customers.. in which their agenda is 100% access to whoever data..

Paul

[Halcyon]

There must be an edition they'd release like LTSC that doesn't require a sign in setup thing.

There will always be "offline" options with Windows, just like with Windows 10. In some corporate and government (high security) environments, there is no internet connectivity... ever and that's often mandated by cyber security policies and even legislation at times. There is no way on earth Microsoft will ever turn around to those organisations and say "just temporarily connect your devices/network to the internet". That will not can't happen.

How that will look in Windows 11 and whether or not it will be easily accessible to end-users/regular consumers is yet to be seen.

ACCESS to data and most important.. for whom that data belongs..

Obviously  MIL (and gov) institutions would just drop MS head if doing so with their data..
But not mere mortals customers.. in which their agenda is 100% access to whoever data..

Correct. I deal a lot with Microsoft Azure and Google Workspace. They have the ability to restrict data to certain data centres/countries for big corporate and government clients. If they didn't, they would never make the list for government suppliers. What end-users see in terms of consumer software and free cloud services accounts is very different to the enterprise stuff.

[mansaxel]

Correct. I deal a lot with Microsoft Azure and Google Workspace. They have the ability to restrict data to certain data centres/countries for big corporate and government clients. If they didn't, they would never make the list for government suppliers. What end-users see in terms of consumer software and free cloud services accounts is very different to the enterprise stuff.

Our Tax Authority did read the Schrems trial papers, started a big investigation together with the Social Insurance Agency, and concluded that it probably is incompatible with EU and Swedish law for a public agency or a GDPR data managing entity to use computing bureaux not hosted in-Union. Regardless of service contract type, free or very expensive look-like-local.

The sales droids and the useful idiots from mostly the MSFT camp are all over places like trade rags and LinkedIn and spewing forth their weasel talk about how they, despite the facts on table, can "prove" that mitigations like the ones you mention are "effective".

The harsh reality is that once you have a common legal/technical control plane in the cloud company, the position of data-at rest is irrelevant to the authority in the cloud company country of residence. They just demand what they want anyway.  And there is no way the provider can resist.

[Marco]

I don't think that is fair to Microsoft, they clearly put in a lot of effort to segregate data. If it turns out it's not enough they will fix it. If they have to license Azure to a third party and contract with them that's what they will do.

Meanwhile Apple icloud sits behind a reality distortion field and does nothing. Microsoft will lead the way taking the PR damage the entire way, Apple will quietly follow.

PS. Apple took damage from the scanning mess, but that was self inflicted.

[mansaxel]

I don't think that is fair to Microsoft, they clearly put in a lot of effort to segregate data. If it turns out it's not enough they will fix it. If they have to license Azure to a third party and contract with them that's what they will do.

This is minimum requirement. What they've done so far is not enough. To quote myself: "common control-plane".

Meanwhile Apple icloud sits behind a reality distortion field and does nothing. Microsoft will lead the way taking the PR damage the entire way, Apple will quietly follow.

PS. Apple took damage from the scanning mess, but that was self inflicted.

I am an Apple user,  but make minimal use of iCloud. I can decide that. I can't decide and control what happens to data collected by others and thrown in Azure.

[Marco]

If you email someone how do you know your emails aren't getting stored in iCloud?

[mansaxel]

If you email someone how do you know your emails aren't getting stored in iCloud?

My private email client does not know how to talk to iCloud. What other people do with the information they receive is something I can not control; hence I make certain I do not send everything in email. If I have to use it for sensitive information, I make sure it's encrypted using methods that also protect data at-rest. And encryption I use/trust only to those where I know they have competence and desire to keep things secret. Finally, this is of course not enough for Real Secrets; there one must use approved methods which are in themselves secret.

TBH, Gmail and Outlook are much larger problems here. Their correlation (what SIGINT people call "Traffic Analysis") capabilities surpass most nation-states, turning a distributed problem (survey and tap communication using email) into a neat central sieve/checkpoint.

I would give NSA a real lousy grade on SIGINT if they had not arranged for a constant feed from both with From:, To: and Subject: of all email passed through these providers.

[Halcyon]

If you email someone how do you know your emails aren't getting stored in iCloud?

My private email client does not know how to talk to iCloud. What other people do with the information they receive is something I can not control; hence I make certain I do not send everything in email. If I have to use it for sensitive information, I make sure it's encrypted using methods that also protect data at-rest. And encryption I use/trust only to those where I know they have competence and desire to keep things secret. Finally, this is of course not enough for Real Secrets; there one must use approved methods which are in themselves secret.

TBH, Gmail and Outlook are much larger problems here. Their correlation (what SIGINT people call "Traffic Analysis") capabilities surpass most nation-states, turning a distributed problem (survey and tap communication using email) into a neat central sieve/checkpoint.

I would give NSA a real lousy grade on SIGINT if they had not arranged for a constant feed from both with From:, To: and Subject: of all email passed through these providers.

I've said this before on other threads but it's relevant here too. I think many people don't realise that free Google is an entirely different beast to Google Workspace (formerly Google G Suite). When you sign up to free Google services, part of the terms of use indicate that some of your data will be used for targeted advertising and other purposes. That being said, even Google stopped scanning Gmail messages for use in targeted ads several years ago. If you want better control of your cloud data, pay a few dollars and use the enterprise solution. For under $10/mnth, I get a single user and with that I can have up to 30 email aliases which appear as unique email addresses on my domain.

[50ShadesOfDirt]

It was easy enough to bypass "required account" requirements in Win10 and lower, and it is relatively easy to bypass in Win11 ... not convenient, but easy.

With a tad bit of 'net research, the tips are already out there on how to do it.

[coromonadalix]

Same here 

No MS  account in win 11,  you can bypass it when you install win 11  .... no Onedrive for sure

and i use the ''global'' installation of Ms office, not the ms account connected/locked version, not perfect in any ways  loll

BUT  nothing is really free  loll

EDIT : permanently killed  the Store App   

[SiliconWizard]

It was easy enough to bypass "required account" requirements in Win10 and lower, and it is relatively easy to bypass in Win11 ... not convenient, but easy

For now. Eventually, you won't escape the great surveillance. =)

[50ShadesOfDirt]

It's an "arms race", with one side doing something, and the other defeating it.

I believe they are going after the low-hanging fruit ... this would be the majority of end-users, who think just because the screen says "give us your account info", you must do so. It would be easy to scoop up the majority of users this way.

Research, or get borg'd ...

[Ranayna]

Just to update this from my side of things.

I took action: A week ago i ditched my windows install and am now evaluating Linux. Manjaro with KDE Plasma to be exact.
While this is not running flawlessly, and i had a couple of issues, i am actually very impressed by how gaming on Linux has progressed in the last couple of years.

From the perspective of a "Gamer", there is not much left to do to make Linux a viable alternative to Windows. Valve has Proton seamlessly integrated into the Steam client, and for anything outside of Steam, Lutris seems to be a great way of getting many games to run, though i have not used Lutris yet.

There is only one thing i will miss a tiny bit, and that is Excel.

[gmb42]

And a further update, reinstalled a new Dell laptop (XPS 15 9510) with Windows 11 Pro (it came with Win 10 Pro) using the Dell USB Recovery tool.

I ensured no internet access during the install and was not prompted for, nor did I create, an MS account, a local user account was used. 

The subsequent join to the work domain and switch to a domain account was carried out as usual for Windows since a long time ago (XP??) with the added complication that this was done at home so had to connect the VPN using the local account and then switch user to the domain account while the VPN was still up.

[Ranayna]

For current installations, at least for Pro, the Account is still optional at the moment. Especially when you connect to a domain.

The forced MS Account creation, *if* it really is implemented, will be with at the earliest, on the next major update of Win 11 in fall.

Though, since now Windows 12 is at least rumored, i suspect a change like this will be delayed for that.
A complete new version to introduce such a potential limiting change will keep the lawyers happy i think