[ryandrake]

This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to run it and make it really hard or impossible for user to turn it off. As a user, I no longer feel like I'm driving the car--I'm just a passenger. "Where do you want to go today?" has turned into "You're going here today, whether you want to or not!"

[jojobas]

But Apple decides what your computer is doing even before it boots up, Microsoft is not even in the same league.

[eeixlk]

Curious about some examples of this. Consumer windows computers have historically had a lot more preinstalled garbage software. Do you mean app store restrictions or something else?

[legacynl]

Although prebuilts often come with preinstalled garbage, that is software that only runs after the whole OS has started and intialized. Before that there are several pieces of code that run.

When the motherboard first gets power, there's a chip that 'runs some code' that powers all devices connected to the motherboard, and loads the BIOS from another chip on the motherboard. Then once all components of your computer are powered and in a ready state, the BIOS takes over. Once the bios performs its checks, it loads the 'bootloader' from the harddrive. This is the first piece of MS code in a windows pc. The bootloader will locate the installation of the windows installation, and then load and run the actual windows install..

That's what the guy above you meant. Any motherboard can be used in any desktop, because the chip on the motherboard provides a standard way of loading a bios. The bios can be changed out, as long as it uses the same standard of talking to the motherboard, and it is able to load a bootloader, it should be able to function. The bootloader and the OS itself can be changed too. Basically the whole system is designed around standards that allow people to do whatever they want.

Apple on the other hand doesn't do this at all. The write every piece of code themselves, and all their chips are custom built to do whatever apple wants it to do. This is why it's hard to replace certain components, because there's code in some chip on the motherboard that runs way before the OS even starts, that checks if all your components are allowed by apple. And in contrast to whatever Microsoft this is something they build into the hardware, so it can never be disabled by the user.

That's the difference in control that you have between an apple and a (Microsoft) PC. If you install linux on a pc, there is nothing MS related left on your pc. If you install linux on a macbook, you will still have apple code running on your device.

[jojobas]

I mean Activation Lock Server Check.

[brookst]

As someone who had a brand new M1 MBP stolen from a San Jose coworking space. I am 100% in favor of the this having at best some parts and not a working computer.

[legacynl]

I do hope you understand that 'bad thing X happened to me, therefore any measure to prevent X is good' is a logical fallacy?

"As someone who had a brand new mbp stolen from me, I'm personally 100% in favor of the remote-c4 installed in every mbp. Just imagine if he could have accessed my banking information?"

[brookst]

Nice. Now do the same thing with "as someone who lost a loved one to a drunk driver, I think harsh penalties and license revocations are a good policy." You can probably find a similar straw man to apply?

[jojobas]

Yeah let's all surrender what remains of computer ownership to a software-hardware conglomerate, because theft.

[hughw]

You can turn it off.

[cesarb]

> all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. [...] OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs.

As I've said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44923555), in my opinion the starting point of this slide for Microsoft was WGA on Windows XP. It was the first time that they made the operating system treat the computer's administrator as hostile.

[brookst]

Not coincidentally, that was around when Microsoft really internalized that they are an enterprise company, not a consumer company.

In enterprises, the local user IS hostile, or at least some percentage of them are. The ethos of “we can’t trust end users” leaked from enterprise fixation into general Microsoft culture.

[abustamam]

Local user being hostile should be a user group setting in enterprise versions, not a default across all versions of them.

But now that I think of it, I was pretty hostile to my computer when I was ten years old and running windows 2000. I don't think we ever saw so many pop-ups before.

But even so, the admins of the computer system should have control over their computers. I can understand if my mom's user profile might have limitation, but the my admin profile should not.

[TeMPOraL]

Security isn't an unqualified good. You're always secure something from some threat. Keeping the subject and the threat actor implicit is causing confusion in minds of many tech people, and is in part the reason how we land in situations like this.

Windows is not just an operating system on your computer. It is a product (nowadays, a service) of Microsoft. Some security systems in it are meant to protect the PC/system/user from external threats. Others are meant to protect Microsoft, and Windows as a product/service, from the user.

Being specific about what is being protected and from whom, is more important than specifics of the actual security technology. After all, depending on the answers to those two questions, the very same security technology is protecting you from a cyber-criminal installing a rootkit on your PC, protecting Microsoft from you pirating Windows, and protecting copyright interests from you trying to watch a movie in a geographic location they don't want you to watch it in.

[ctoth]

All true, and yet: Windows accessibility actually works. I use a screen reader daily. Linux a11y is complete dogshit — AT-SPI2 is unreliable, Orca is barely maintained, Wayland broke what little existed.

I need something that actually works. When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable?

ADHD-Driven development might be fine if you can see your system. When you can't, being at the whims of some teenager chasing the new shiny is just frustrating.

[roenxi]

> When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable?

In fairness it wasn't just the rewrite that was the problem, but it looks for all the world like there was a large faction in the Linux UI world around Wayland that believes accessibility is insecure and designed the new systems to make it impossible. It has been an interesting if unfortunate situation that seems to be slowly being fixed.

[TeMPOraL]

> but it looks for all the world like there was a large faction in the Linux UI world around Wayland that believes accessibility is insecure and designed the new systems to make it impossible

Agreed.

FWIW, accessibility is insecure, that is a fact, and it's also fine. The problem is that many security-minded people forget to ask the critical question: security for whom, and from what. There is no such thing as "security" in general. There is always a subject being secured from a threat.

With Wayland, like with most modern software development, the user ends up being the thing to secure from, and what is being protected are the interests of the vendor.

[randomNumber7]

Why was gnome pushed so hard? In my eyes it looks horrible and I still prefer xfce...

[robotnikman]

I wonder the same thing. I've been using KDE Plasma and have not looked back.

[LtWorf]

All of this in the name of being able to run proprietary malware like you do on android.

[MrDrMcCoy]

What on earth are you referring to?

[LtWorf]

That the security model on Unix (and Linux) is to trust your applications and mistrust other users of the same machine.

While now the security model is that your applications are closed source and you cannot trust them, which is why you need wayland.

[anthk]

9front tells me otherwise. It's security model with namespaces and rfork it's far more tuned to modern times than the GNU/Linux or BSD one where even wth mitigations and the like a good crafted NES sound file (6502 code in the end, as C64 MOD files) could cause mayhem on some buffer overflow executing x86 code.

rio(1) windows under plan9/9front have their own namespace and OFC you can restrict these per windows making these kind of attacks futile.

[simoncion]

> [T]he security model on Unix (and Linux) is to trust your applications

If that were true, httpd (and all other system daemons) would be run as root and neither the 'nobody' user and group nor the various security-related X11 extensions would exist.

Anyone who has worked in this field for more than a few years (regardless of their era of entry) knows that nontrivial programs are faulty and can happen to or be induced to do things that are harmful in varying degrees to the operation of the computer that runs them.

[LoganDark]

macOS supports VoiceOver even in the boot disk selection screen. That's the real king of accessibility.

[Atlas26]

macOS has some strengths and is certainly ahead of Linux in terms of a11y but my experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.

[legacynl]

> When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite

You're acting as if Linux is a single entity that can just decide to improve this or the other. The phrase "Linux should do X" is as useful as "Society should do X". It's not useful unless you can state what needs to change specifically, or you're talking to the right people.

> When you can't, being at the whims of some teenager chasing the new shiny is just frustrating.

Since most development on linux-related projects is based on volunteering, perhaps you can volunteer and organize for your own 'whims'? Personally I would love it if someone like you would get off their ass and use your knowledge about screenreaders to improve things for everyone.

[lll-o-lll]

Question. In this new weird age of agentic everything. Does running your system from an agent TUI resolve much of the issues you’d otherwise have without a decent screen reader?

[smackeyacky]

What can be done to address this? Which project needs the most help do you think?

[chickensong]

A fundraiser and/or financial grant to a foundation like gnome, or a distro that makes a11y a priority, is probably the best way to approach it. Without the financial investment, many contributors just aren't considering or even aware of issue.

The distributed best-effort approach works ok for some things, but is at a disadvantage for supporting holistic standards across independent apps.

[jorvi]

I mean, why are you even on Windows then? Apple is the accessibility king by far. Both Windows and Android are aeons behind.

[jmspring]

I'm not completely sure I would call Apple the accessibility king. It's UI gets worse with each release. Modal dialogues with no keyboard options to make a choice in the window at times, etc.

[Atlas26]

Eh, no. My experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.

[jorvi]

As far as I know, accessibility has been built into macOS since the early days, and with great care. Which then propagated to application built for macOS, and later on, iOS. iOS is rather magnificent for (visually) impaired people.

In contrast, Windows has had its accessibility features bolted on, and the best ones are third-party which makes it even more bolted-on. And then you have twenty different frameworks to make Windows applications, all with varying (but usually mediocre) levels of accessibility support built in.

[rlpb]

> This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing.

Sure, but Microsoft have to strike a balance, too. If they push too hard in this direction, they'll lose their users to Macs on one side (probably the majority) and Linux on the other (a minority in number, but perhaps significant in expertise and clout). Once an exodus begins, it's much harder to stop. So where we are in that balance, and the state of user mindshare migration, is still interesting to discuss.

[ekianjo]

> Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing.

Nothing new. Microsoft has been exactly like that since its inception. People are asleep at the wheel of they only realize it now.

[hluska]

You’re exaggerating - my computer has never prevented me from doing what I want to do with it. There are some annoyances but that can be said about absolutely every system.

[hn_acc1]

It's more: you want to go to location A? Sure, but we're going to make a quick stop at locations B, C and D first, and the only available car is a known-to-be-dangerous self-driving robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals.

[m_mueller]

... which in the middle of the route decides to instead drive onto a container ship and bring you to a robotic island?

ah no wait, that's the announced next update.