Really, this is beyond stupid.

Example 1:

Google Chrome? Really? Is it not enough that the entire world knows that IE and Edge are the most execrable browsers around, now you have to block Chrome in Windows 10 every time it launches?

How hard would it be to do something like this?

How screeching hard would it be? Unless someone with a brain the size of a walnut and the ethics of a honey badger sitting in some conference room somewhere said, “No, let’s make it as hard as possible for people to use competing products.” Oh wait, Microsoft would never do something like that.

Microsoft initially tried to eliminate the threat non-Microsoft browsers posed to the applications barrier to entry by attempting to bribe, and later threatening, Netscape into giving up its core Window 95 web-browsing business. Had Netscape accepted Microsoft’s market-division proposal, Microsoft would have succeeded in killing the browser threat in its infancy and likely would have acquired a monopoly over browsers. (US Department of Justice, U.S. v. Microsoft)

The only option is to modify your global security settings, which is generally a crappy option. There are reasons why this security warning is in place, and it can protect your machine from malicious things, so that’s a poor solution.

Example 2:

A popup I get when I try to run older software that used to work well in Win7 (these examples are for msiexec.exe, but the name changes depending on the program selected):

Again, Microsoft: would it have killed you to put something like this in your code?

This solution would be so simple, and yet in its absence, the solution is terribly complex and ultimately unsatisfactory. Microsoft support websites are typically run by people in other countries whose first language is not English, who have poor understanding of the questions asked, and who provide generally useless information.

Given these frustrations with Win10, I find this old gag somehow more relevant than ever.

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ‘Car95’ or ‘CarNT’, and then added more seats.
6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ‘general car default’ warning light.
8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag would say ‘Are you sure?’ before going off.
10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You would press the ‘start’ button to shut off the engine.

Oh yeah, and all the owner manuals would be written in Danish.

Yarg. 

The Old Wolf has spoken.