I just got a small Windows laptop for a couple of tasks I can't do well on Linux, and after it updated to the latest Windows stuff it had dozens of notifications enabled. All kinds of ridiculous crap popping up while I'm trying to do things. Like, a constant battery of interruptions, with noise and visual bubbles over in the notifications corner. Sure, they can be disabled, but I had to manually go through and turn them all off. That's not to say Linux or Android are immune, but this was just nuts.
Actually, to be fair, Android may be worse these days, I've had to start turning off all notifications for apps like Facebook, even though I'd like to get some (like timeline events that actually involve me), but they group things I don't care about (like events my friends are going to) with things I do, so it gets turned off completely. But, it's just gotten crazy how insistent everything is about getting my attention constantly. Our devices have become like needy children.
So, cool, I guess? But, I'm a bit mistrustful that anyone has an interest in fixing this problem, since for most companies it isn't a problem but a money-making tactic.
On my phone I receive status-bar notifications a for: new personal e-mail, RSS updates for specific topics, F-droid updates, battery level, storage space critical. The latter two are the only OS notifications I can't seem to suppress.
As you write, I think applications who abuse their permission to interrupt the user lose their credibility and usefulness. It is just the equivalent of having a word processor putting advertisement on a printout. It renders it useless.
1b) Try to always present without mirroring your screen. it's harder to follow with high-res, but that's an argument maybe your res is too high.
2) If using Powerpoint, use presentation mode (and preso-mode for energy settings so you don't accidentally go into lockscreen).
Barring the above, I go offline on both Outlook and Slack during presentation mode.
Either I'm some sort of privacy nut, completely boring or my macOS/iOS combo works out well but I simply get so few alerts that I just use my devices less than a couple of years ago.
Both Apple platforms allow you to essentially go into "silence" mode. Android/Windows seem to be built to spam you (hey you can opt out! but we'll reset those options on updates - for you who FOMO).
The only complaint I have with the Notification settings on macOS is that you have to use a terminal command to alter the length of time a notification is present, which should be a slider in the preference pane as well.
Compared to the current Windows option and Android, it's fairly obnoxious, with notification settings being across different Control Panels (Windows and the Application's own) and the notifications often obscuring parts of the system. Similar to macOS, there isn't a clear way of giving granular control over the time a notification is live (I'm sure it's there, but it's also frustrating this isn't just a slider or a place to enter a value) Too much of the Windows and Android control seems to just be "on/off", with little granularity, and at least with my Android phone, the granularity doesn't seem to work right when you do use it. (Setting up a "Favorites" group of people and adding them to the exceptions for DnD mode doesn't seem to matter for any non-core applications on the phone, even though these applications pull from the same contact list)
The difference for me is just the care and attention on the macOS side of things. Part of me wonders if Apple didn't just watch what Growl did right and then implement it, but regardless some of the design guides are clear: Control over each application, the system's UI space is sacrosanct, respect user privacy in situations where their screen might be exposed, etc.
On Windows, it just seems to be another afterthought to the system.
So, the apps I don't absolutely need to hear from get disabled completely, even though there are notifications I would welcome from those apps. facebook is perhaps the most annoying because I know they have the ability in-house to get this right. They're choosing not to, and they're choosing to ramp up the user-hostile behavior, because having people constantly engaged with facebook is profitable.
- Voice as text entry for any text input, across the OS. (Surprised this has taken so long; the speech recognition libraries have been in .NET since 2014.)
- Ecobee, Honeywell, Nest integration with Cortana.
-Timeline... Tracks your "stuff" (files? online activity? It's unclear) across all Windows devices. It has 30 days of history. I'm interested in knowing how much of my file and URL history is being sent to MS.
- Focus Assist is a notification cache. It will pend notifications during focus time, and give you them all at once when focus time is over.
- Edge browser has a few:
-- When a tab is playing audio, clicking on the speaker icon will mute the tab. (Just what we need, yet another mute button to miss.)
-- Autofill for payment info.
-- Full screen mode for PDFs, books, and reader mode.
-- Grammar Check.
Most browsers cache files on disk; maybe Timeline keeps track of those cached files, instead of sniffing internet packets?
Firefox and Chrome work the same way.
Dictation already was available on Windows 10, although not so streamlined.
In Windows, there are various forms of on-screen keyboards and some of them have this microphone button somewhere right above the top row of the keyboard flushed to the left. When activated, it starts listening you and dictating whatever you say. So, it's not brand new, more like an improvement to the UI, and also to the AI (as far as I know, recognition has also been improved).
Same goes for the Focus Assist, it was available under the same icon, different nane, "Quiet Hours". I keep it always-on on my PCs for several months now, and use it intermittently on my phone. It also got improvements, but allowing some people to bypass is not one of them.
The rest are new. I'm not saying that they are dishonest, they probably just do not mention it over and over everywhere.
While they're working on Cortana, hopefully they fixed the bug where the search/command/Cortana entry box hangs if the internet is down.
The following sequence of events happens predictably every few days:
- Wifi router crashes or for some reasons goes down.
- All my PuTTY sessions freeze.
- I Obviously can't browse, so I might as well open a command prompt to ping the wifi router to see when it's back.
- I click in the Cortana box so I can type "cmd".
- Search box doesn't respond, doesn't show a cursor, doesn't expand with Cortana window, and doesn't respond to any input, mouse or keyboard.
- "Oh yeah. Cortana completely falls on its face without internet access."
Gets me every goddamn time.
If you use Edge it was already able to send browsing history to MS. This is by default, IIRC, it tried to convince me I wanted it last time I setup a win10 box.
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edg...
Meanwhile, some features I think they are still missing the boat on:
1) Driver Updates. I want a tool that will go out and download the latest drivers for all my stuff.
2) Password manager integration; I don't want to have to type or copy paste passwords I just want them all pulled from my password manager.
3) Clipboard history; like Jumpcut or CopyClip.
4) Cloud font sync; like SkyFonts.
5) Better screenshot annotation tools; like Skitch.
6) Better ad block; like Stephen Black's hosts file.
7) Most importantly, better privacy and the option to turn off all tracking by Microsoft.
Apple seems to largely ignore corporate IT and their products feel much better for it.
It really is a shame how abusive Windows 10 is to users because I know there are some extremely talented people doing great things at Microsoft.
And while Mint is a independent-ish distro, they really do not have the manpower to maintain a fully independent desktop stack.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3558495/massive-fps-dro...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/7u9on...
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1004600/geforce-dri...
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/659461-big-per...
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-admits-to-gaming-perfo...
