OS Vendors and Online Accounts
Looks like the next version of Windows will require an online account, and while the reason for this could be something else, I’m guessing this would be used to enable file sync, mail account sync, calendar sync, etc.
I think it’s a mistake for OS vendors to assume that people would want to share their sole online identity across different devices. Say that I had a work computer and a home computer, and I’d use the same online account for both. Do I really want my personal files and work files being synced across, or my scheduled meetings to start showing up in my personal calendar?
I guess the response would be to create two online accounts: one for work and one for home. This might be possible: I don’t know how difficult it would be to create multiple Microsoft accounts for the same person. But if I do this1, and there’s software that I’ve purchased with my home account that I’d like to use on my work device, I’d have to repurchase it. I guess if I’m employed full time it should be work purchasing software, but come on, am I really going to go through the whole precurement buracracy to buy something like a $29 image editor?
This could be all theoretical: might be that this wouldn’t be a problem for Windows users. But I know from my limited experience with using MacOS that issues based on the assumption that everything associated with an online account should be shared on every device can crop up. That’s why I don’t open Mail.app on my home computer.
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This is all hypothetical. I’m not a Windows user. ↩︎

Yeah, totally agreed with the points you make here. Also, Microsoft has probably improved since then, but my experience of their “always online” and sync-based experience in 2014 was horrible. Once I lost an entire chapter of my honours thesis because they decided to overwrite the newer version on my computer with the week-old version on their OneDrive server 🤯 If I were going to use Windows again, I’d need a lot of trust built back up first.

@jayeless Ooh, that’s rough. Sorry to hear about your honours thesis. But yeah, nothing specific against Microsoft. I get the feeling that Apple is not fully considering this as well. Just hoping that these OS vendors don’t forget about users who want to use their devices like this.

@jayeless After the debacle that was Vista, I vowed to never, ever run Windows again.

@paulcraig901 I managed to stay until Windows 7, but slowly drifted away to Linux (Xubuntu) and then eventually the Mac. Not sure I want to go back to Windows either.