The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature.<p>But by now they&#x27;ve shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out.<p>I got my son a new laptop recently and it has Windows 11. Did you know that Windows 11 has a feature called “widgets”, a popup from the left bottom which has weather, traffic warnings nearby etc? It makes a fair bit of sense, except that it’s filled <i>to the rim</i> with terrible clickbaity news headlines <i>and you can’t turn it off</i>! Someone at Microsoft decided that the entire Windows install base, ie nearly everybody, must really read news about foreign celebrities doing questionable things.<p>The only way to get rid of it is a Powershell incantation that removes the entire Widgets feature. Better than terrible news, but still nuts.<p>Edge has this too. There’s now a Bing button in the toolbar full of “discover” and “suggest” type features that nobody wants.<p>I don’t understand why MS doesn’t get some sort of internal revolt. The core of both Edge and Windows 11 are tastefully designed. You can really see that it’s been built by people who want to ship great software. Why do they allow the Crap And Turds department to piss all over their work? Who at Microsoft benefits from me seeing the latest Taylor Swift gossip when I just want to know when it’ll rain? Don’t they understand that this is what drives people to Macs and Chromebooks (and nerds like me to Linux)?