In reply to a post by jchamier:

Without an MS account is harder on Win11 than Win10, but you’re signed in to Apple account on your Mac, or Google account on Android. I don’t know why people think MS account is any different.

Pretty easy to install Windows 11 without an account, Rufus makes it easy and there are other ways. I only sign in to my Apple ID if I use the store and that is not very often, like the MS account, I have no need to have my computer signed in to an account all the time. What Apple Offers by having my computer signed in to their Apple ID is as useful to me as having my Windows computer signed in to a MS account.
As for why people have a problem with MS account, maybe it is because for so long, there was no need to sign in, and it was not forced until Windows 10 Home and Windows 11. Okay, they did try to force it on Windows 8, but dropped that.

As for Google, if you buy an Android phone then not signing in to a Google account makes it almost useless. Saying that, I do know of someone who does have an Android phone and have not got a Google account on it, they seem to manage, but I think they got the phone because it was given to them.
Myself, if there was a Linux phone available that I could still use the few apps I use, then I would go for it.


As for my Mac, I am not forced into using the Apple ID or Apple account as they want to call it now.

The copilot app is no different on Win10 to Win11, you just unpin it from start menu and ignore it. Or right click and choose Uninstall. The icon in Edge can be easily ignored by using Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or any of the other browsers. Edge doesn’t have much market share, compared to Chrome! I think in Pro you can even turn off the icon.

Just getting rid of it from the start menu, don't mean it is still not working in the background.

i installed Brave onto my Mac, using it now, not bad, got a bit of rubbish like silly rewards and their AI rubbish, but it can be turned off, come to think of it, I am not sure if it is turned off.
There is a setting that says, Show Leo icon in the sidebar, on or off,

I don't use the PC for browsing these days, come to think of it, I don't really use it for anything these days apart from a few games., which is why I am thinking of moving it under the table as I have very little reason to have easy access to it apart from turning it on, and I can sort that out with ease,

At work we centrally disable the free Copilot stuff so our users don’t see the icons, but everyone logs in with an enterprise MS account, gives us more central security configs, and means people can go into Outlook and similar without logging in again.

That is the same in our work, we have a sign in thing to sign in to the handsets and computers to do our job/s, All Microsoft, even the stuff that is not MS, we still have to sign in with the same account. It is not the most reliable system.

Home users often don’t use MS Office, they might use Google docs or even pay for Adobe products, or Serif, and use LibreOffice for home word processing. Home users are quite hard to quantify.

My sister-in-law had office 365, but when she passed, my brother did not bother renewing it. My other brother has a older version of Office.
I have Office 2000 here, still works as well on my Windows 10 machine, also has an old word-perfect here. But you are right, a lot of people may use Google Docs or even Word online,.
I used to use Libre office, but since changing to the mac, I tend to use Pages and numbers. I would not use an online office suite, as i prefer my files to be on my computer, not on someone else.

i am just a bit fed up with being forced to use things, or making so difficult that we have little choice, not just with computers either, in everyday life.

And you are an interested and engaged user, just turn it off.

You aren’t the target audience of users who never change the default settings, instantly dismiss any message asking a question like “Would you like to enable…” and who would end up with a device with lots of useful stuff disabled if every significant new feature had to be explicitly enabled.

If you need software that only runs on an Apple silicon Mac then fair enough. Otherwise it would seem to be a perverse decision to buy an Apple silicon Mac when a large part of the rationale behind them is the AI capabilities incorporated in the processor.

I'm happy with my Intel Macs as I've no need for AI and any software that I run exists for Windows, Linux, or Intel Macs.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Linux don't exist for the paranoid, I know a few people the use Linux, and they are not paranoid, they just prefer not having large companies telling them what they should have on their computer.

Linux on the desktop/laptop has been the "next big thing" for 20 years. Its never broken out of the hobbyist world. Unix class operating systems are deliberately obtuse as back in the 1970s the design was apparently made to keep "wizards" (Unix sysadmins) in a job!

In 2025 thanks to web applications the most common Linux computer anyone uses is Android, followed by Chromebooks. Very popular in education (USA schools etc where computers are heavily used). In companies an operating system that can't run MS, Adobe or Oracle software on the laptop/desktop has been the reason Linux on end user devices didn't happen.

Lots of developers in my company run Linux VMs on Windows or Mac (intel) machines; and pretty much ALL the servers we use are Linux based but servers don't run graphical desktops, they are entirely command line. To be fair to MS the same with Windows servers. (Apple doesn't participate in servers).

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

And you are an interested and engaged user, just turn it off.

You aren’t the target audience of users who never change the default settings, instantly dismiss any message asking a question like “Would you like to enable…” and who would end up with a device with lots of useful stuff disabled if every significant new feature had to be explicitly enabled.

Still be nice to be asked and not assume we want it. It is getting on the bandwagon. Would not be so bad, but Apple Intelligence is still beta.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

If you need software that only runs on an Apple silicon Mac then fair enough. Otherwise it would seem to be a perverse decision to buy an Apple silicon Mac when a large part of the rationale behind them is the AI capabilities incorporated in the processor.

I'm happy with my Intel Macs as I've no need for AI and any software that I run exists for Windows, Linux, or Intel Macs.

I moved to Apple because I wanted a change after using Windows for far too many years, I did not like the place windows was going, forced Ms account and pushing AI the way it is, making it difficult for people to change browser
No forced Apple ID on the mac or telemetry and easy to change default browser, try doing it in Windows 11, I have been told it is a bit easier now than it was.

I had a muck around today with Linux and wine, but the software I use would not work, while four i could get some sort of replacement, the one that is for my Cricut machine is not available on Linux. it used to be web based, but they changed that. It is still very cloudy based, which I am not a great fan of, but, I thought there would be a way to change that, but nope.

As i said, it is just stuff being pushed, and not just in the computer world. Need an account for this, need an account for that, even going shopping these days they push a card onto people otherwise they have to pay extra for their shopping. Just data, data and more data

I know about Linux and how long it has been going and that it is going to be the next big thing.

i also know that Linux is the base for Android and for the majority of TV set and set-top boxes.
macOS is or was based on BSD/Unix

A mate have been using Linux for years, he doesn't have any desktop on his machines, but his wife does on hers, but still use Linux.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I did not like the place windows was going

Then I would have to say that I am verys surprised that you liked the place that Apple was going (though it's clear that you are not so keen on that place now). It's been no secret that Apple were moving further away from classic desktops and more into the AI, everything is a service, world for years.

At least the Intel Macs are not going to suffer the AI imposition, though they will get increasingly obsolete with time. I honestly believe that if you want control over your machine you have to move away from any of the big corporations and opt for a community-developed base. But, like you, I still need to run Windows VMs for some software or a Windows machine for games (but that has precious little of my data on it). At least it's easier to isolate a VM from the rest of your data.

I thought Apple may have been different and to a point they are, at least with their AI, you have to give permission for it to access any other AI services like ChatGPT. I think privacy is better with Apple.
I suppose I should have realised that Apple would get into this AI stuff, and at least it is easy to turn off. It is the last update I was a bit annoyed about with them turning it on at default.

I prefer macOS to Windows, even if there are things that I still get confused about.

i suppose this is the way things are now with Ai being shoved in our face, strange really because when I was younger, the Ai thing fascinated me, and it still does to a certain degree, but we live in a different world now, where companies, corporations and the government want to know what were doing 24/7, where privacy don't seem to be a thing and some people just don;t seem to care.

People will give out their info for a few lousy points and now people are being forced to do that otherwise they have to pay more for their shopping.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

, try doing it in Windows 11, I have been told it is a bit easier now than it was.

I've been using Win11 Pro since it launched; never had a problem setting Firefox as my default browser, on multiple machines. Maybe there is an issue in home, but I've always avoided that edition. None of my friends have complained and they use Chrome. Edge is there, but ignored.

I suspect you may have heard some poor experiences and assumed its everyone impacted.