[Someone1234]

What's frustrating is that Microsoft wins by default because most users will never alter the defaults or even understand they have that choice.

All this nonsense does is upset power users. Power users will be annoyed but not stopped by this stuff, and by annoying them you've created a negative atmosphere around your products that they will share with less technical users.

Same thing as not allowing an "opt out" over analytics. I get that the analytics are useful, but if only 0.1% of your users are willing to opt out, is the negativity/fight really worth influential users spending years shit-talking you?

Microsoft makes some really boneheaded decisions to be honest. Apple is way better at the subtle sleight of hand monopolistic stuff, Microsoft is like a bull in a china shop.

[Daneel_]

Exactly! I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve always said that you need to look after power users’ interests, because even though they’re a small percentage of your user base they’re the ones who influence everyone else. A single power user will likely influence their immediate family, their classmates, work colleagues, friends, relations.. easily a broad spread of people.

Neglect power users at your peril.

[endemic]

> Neglect power users at your peril.

I mean, I like this sentiment, and _want_ it to be true (hey $BIGCO, I matter!). But MS has already weathered a storm of bad PR regarding Win10 telemetry, and hasn't changed anything. What are people going to do, stop using Windows?

[Daneel_]

Disabling telemetry isn't the kind of 'power user' feature I'm talking about though. Power user features are all about providing flexibility in the way you operate the tools, eg, customising layouts, options for workflow customisation, shortcut keys, command-line tools/options, etc. By repeatedly reverting the choice to use a different browser as the default, Microsoft is actively hostile toward power users.

[slim]

Eventually MS figured out it actually those power users because they were developers. So they made visual studio code to lock them down like it's 1995.

[fartcannon]

Your power user status gets debuffed every time you fall for a Microsoft trick.