"Android apps, forced Microsoft accounts, telemetry, oh my!"

Given how curmudgeonly my immediate reaction was to this week's Windows 11 announcement, I was beginning to wonder if I'm just being far too cynical about all of this. Nobody else was making that much noise about the six-year-old telemetry and data collection that was bundled into Windows 10 (and later back-ported to Windows 7). The biggest substantive criticism of W11 seemed to revolve around its hardware requirements (especially TPM 2.0); the next-biggest criticism was about the removal of the ability to reposition the taskbar from the bottom of the screen to the one of sides.

Apparently, though, other people just needed a little time to catch up; por ejemplo, Jez Corden, at Windows Central:

In our heavily connected, heavily surveilled world, anxiety about government and big tech overreach is at a fever pitch. And Microsoft has increasingly fallen on the wrong side of this argument.

At the Windows 11 event yesterday, Microsoft had an opportunity to meet some of these concerns, founded or not. Yet, it chose not to. [...]

In Microsoft's Windows 11 blog post, the word "privacy" doesn't appear once in the copy, which doesn't exactly bode well for its messaging. Windows 11 will force users to use a Microsoft Account in its free Home Edition, which already speaks of a business model where your data is the monetization engine. Even if you're using the world's best VPN, it's not exactly going to protect your data from going directly to Microsoft if you're signed in. [...]

Microsoft is also enlisting another doubted tech giant, Amazon, to bring Android apps to Windows 11. Amazon is under heavy scrutiny already for the way it treats its workers among other things, but combining this with Android adds another layer of concern. Android is oft-painted as an insecure, privacy-apathetic platform. True or not, the prospect of an Amazon-fronted Android subsystem in Windows 11 compounds data fears.

Microsoft just revealed their next version of Windows, and I have more questions than answers

So, it's official: contrary to what they'd said previously, Windows 10 will not be the last version of Windows that Microsoft releases. Windows 11 is definitely coming, it's definitely called Windows 11, and today we got a look at some of its sexier features.

First, the good ...

Windows 10 is very pretty. A lot of people, myself included, hated the flat, designed-for-touchscreens Windows 8, and while Windows 10 restored the start menu, it didn't fix the ugly look of the thing. Windows 11 was very clearly designed to mimic the much, much prettier Aero Glass UI of Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it's a huge improvement.

Gone, too, is the ugly "live tile" blue void that takes up space next to W10's start menu. Live tiles still exist, but Microsoft has renamed them to Widgets, and banished them to their own sub-menu; those who are interested can call up the Widget menu using the button on the task bar, and ignore it otherwise.

Windows Updates have apparently been improved as well, with smaller updates loading in the background, rather than shoving themselves to the fore and preventing users from doing anything else while the updates happen. They've also finally found a way to get some Android apps into the Windows Store, too, although it's the much, much smaller subset of Android apps that Amazon have on their app store.

... which brings us to the less-than-good ...

The Math Has Not Changed: XBox Game Pass is still not a good deal for the average consumer

It's been a good while now since I last posted about how, for the average consumer, Game Pass is simply not as cost-effective as just buying the games you're actually interested in. My conclusion, based entirely on the numbers, was that most consumers would be better-served by just buying what they want. 

Well, E3 has happened since then, and Microsoft and Bethesda showed off all the games that will be "coming day one" to game pass... eventually. Naturally, this has caused a lot of people to lose their minds. 

Paul Tassi's take, over at Forbes, is pretty typical:

It’s clear that Microsoft is slamming the accelerator on Game Pass, with or without a console attached to it, and they’re going to try to not just have a large roster of old games, but continue the idea that every new first party game debuts there, and now that includes all future Bethesda games too [...]

Sony, meanwhile, has taken the opposite path. This generation they’re not only sticking with selling individual new releases as they’ve always done, not rolling them up into any sort of subscription, but also increasing the price of their PS5 games from $60 to $70 [...]

It’s not ideal for each game you go to purchase [...] but once you really start digging into this math, the longer this goes on, and the more games are released for both systems, maintaining a roster of games on PS5 is going to be very, very expensive compared to Xbox.

Let’s say you want to play 12 Xbox Series X first party games over three years, and 12 first party PS5 games over three years. 

No normal consumer is going to want to do this. 

E3 2021 is over, and the verdict is "meh"

So... E3, hey? Yeah.... E3.

First, the good.