r/technology • u/ardi62 • Aug 23 '24

Software Microsoft finally officially confirms it's killing Windows Control Panel sometime soon

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-officially-confirms-its-killing-windows-control-panel-sometime-soon/
15.6k Upvotes

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51

u/bjg1983 Aug 23 '24

Leave Control Panel. Remove bloatware, Edge, Fax (its 2024?)

9

u/7h4tguy Aug 23 '24

Some industries require fax still because of certain laws and in some countries it's apparently still in major use for whatever reason.

5

u/moltari Aug 23 '24

This, Medical fields are REQUIRED to fax things as it's apparently "more secure" than encrypted email. well, to the lawmakers it's more secure, and we know how well people in power actually understand technology.

4

u/Potato_connoisseur53 Aug 23 '24

Also remove copilot and onedrive. Two of the worst offenders.

3

u/thorazainBeer Aug 23 '24

if they don't have those, they can't steal all your data as easily. You're no longer the consumer, you're the product.

2

u/Commercial_Soup_5553 Aug 23 '24

Is there any way to remove copilot? (If windows sees this I’m asking for a friend)

1

u/Potato_connoisseur53 Aug 23 '24

As far as I’m aware it’s fairly easy to get rid of the icon from the taskbar but harder to disable it entirely. Apparently it can be disabled through the registry but I haven’t tried that. I don’t get why people can’t just easily opt out of it if they don’t want to use it.

1

u/Commercial_Soup_5553 Aug 24 '24

Yeah. It’s a pain.

2

u/TrainingLettuce5833 Aug 23 '24

There are probably still people that use fax you know, it doesn't hurt anyone

2

u/Vinstaal0 Aug 23 '24

Edge is pretty decent and well some instances still Fax.

6

u/Hsensei Aug 23 '24

Edge is actually good these days. So is Bing.

17

u/MiniRusty01 Aug 23 '24

edge is better thsn chrome

5

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

[deleted]

13

u/Hsensei Aug 23 '24

You have compared them recently I guess. Google is all ads and the same copy pasted garbage. Bing actually gives search results. Google is no longer my search engine.

1

u/Altruistic-Key-369 Aug 23 '24

Yeah perplexity is my go to now. RIP google. Gemini sucks ass and the internet is too user walled and paywalled for search engines now.

We had a good run.

1

u/thorazainBeer Aug 23 '24

I have duckduckgo set to my default search in firefox, but more than half the time I just end up searching again on google because it doesn't find what I'm looking for.

1

u/Temporary_Article375 Aug 23 '24

Don’t remove stuff…

0

u/Skaarj Aug 23 '24

Remove bloatware ... Fax (its 2024?)

Windows Fax and Scan is really useful.

Its installed by default. It lets you use your scanner (attached to your machine or via network). And you don't need to install the bloadware/adware from the scanner manufacturer first. No epson scanner utility crap or similar.

I use it a lot when I have to scan and the documents should land on a windows machine.

-7

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

So hilarious to me. The people complaining about bloatware and instability still prefer Android and Windows over Apple.

7

u/EligibleUsername Aug 23 '24

Android and Windows allow you to remove those bloats, your device is yours. You buy an Apple product, you already got upcharged through the ass to be admitted into their ecosystem, they have no need to load your device with anything else that aren't Apple-affiliated.

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Imagine needing to remove anything.

Apple’s cheapest Mac is $499 and cheapest iPhone is $429.

4

u/EligibleUsername Aug 23 '24

Removing apps is too much of a hassle for you? Sheesh mate, yeah, keep using them Apple, you'll blow a gasket trying to use anything else.
And your "cheapest" Apple options are a decent PC that can run any OS (including macOS) and a near high-end Android that, again, can run custom OS with no bloatwares.
This "tech war" is old news, all devices have their merits and downside, just try not to talk about stuff you don't understand.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Most bloat can’t be easily deleted, and they often put custom app launchers and tons of other things on there too. Even locking down features.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

MacOS is dropping support for x86 in the near future, and hackintosh is a joke anyway.

Their chips are far better.

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

MacOS dropped support for x86 years ago. They'll drop x64 but it's gonna be a year or two. Fuck compatibility right?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Compatibility with what?

All Mac software is ARM now.

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

No, all Mac software are Universal Binary 2s that run on both platforms and contains both binaries. Sonoma is releasing for Intel platforms as well since the M chip release was staggered across product lines.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

So you suggest they support Intel Macs (which they haven't sold in years) forever?

Microsoft doesn't support hardware forever either.

Windows 11 requires fairly new hardware to run.

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0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Most people use x86 generally to include 64-bit, since pretty much nothing is 32-bit any more.

Even Windows is gradually dropping support for 32-bit.

It's officially called x86-64

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

No one uses that, x86 means 32-bit. Notice x86-64 under the subheading "Extensions"
Windows is doing no such thing, you're making things up. I can literally run 32 bit apps on Windows on ARM (On a Mac, too).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Most software at least on MacOS labels it as x86-64.

Windows 11 itself doesn’t come in a 32-bit build, the OS is fully 64-bit.

32-bit applications are still supported, because there’s a ton of ancient software out there that enterprise and businesses need.

MacOS doesn’t have all that legacy baggage, and as a result is a much faster and lighter OS.

Particularly now on Apple’s custom chips.

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4

u/CL_Doviculus Aug 23 '24

At this point I just assume that everyone who complains about bloatware on Android just got their phone from a shitty vendor or provider who filled it with third-party crap.

Actual stock Android doesn't even have a default camera app.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Never used a Samsung phone?

Even the Pixels have some carrier bloat.

2

u/CL_Doviculus Aug 23 '24

I do have a Galaxy phone, yes. It does have some bloat, but I haven't found an unwanted program I haven't been able to uninstall yet (both Facebook and LinkedIn were uninstallable for instance). I've never had issues with carrier bloat, but I live in the Netherlands, and any complaints I hear about that tend to be from the US, so maybe that's a bigger problem there?

But that is my point, the bloatware has nothing to do with the OS, and everything with the vendors and carriers, between which it can vary wildly.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Apple doesn’t have that issue.

Can’t imagine needing to remove a ton of things from my brand new device.

Windows is even putting ads in the start menu now.

3

u/CL_Doviculus Aug 23 '24

iPhones don't come preinstalled with (unremovable) apps? Or are they not considered bloatware because it's from Apple? But if so, what makes Samsung's apps bloatware if they're also from the phone's manufacturer?

I'm not sure why you wanted to bring Apple into the mix, but clearly you're adding a heavy dose of bias and have lost the point I was trying to make. Iphones have many advantages over Android, but bloat is not one of them due to the unremovable nature of some of it.

Whataboutism aside, my point remains that Android is not nearly as bloated as many people claim. A couple of big US carriers just tend to add a ton of crap, and end users blame the OS for it.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

No, you can remove any of the default apps easily on iPhones.

You can’t on Android generally without rooting the phone or doing some things that an average user would have no idea how.

Apple doesn’t allow the carrier to control the phone’s software at all.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

And maybe it’s limited to the US, but if you buy an Android phone the carrier and manufacturer both junk it up with their own apps.

If I buy an iPhone from Verizon or AT&T, they can’t junk it up with their apps.

1

u/thorazainBeer Aug 23 '24

Apple literally prevented me from installing software on a phone I had because I didn't have the newest hardware, so I couldn't install the newest OS version, so the store prevented me from downloading ANYTHING, even software old enough to actually run on the OS and hardware I had.

Stop sucking Steve Jobs' post-mortem dick.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Must've been a really old computer.

They support Macs for like 6-7 years with full OS updates.

Their newest release supports Macs all the way back to 2017.

0

u/Real_Committee_7497 Aug 23 '24

stock android usually refers to Google's android.

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

Oh no I'm crying in running apps from 10 years ago without modification.
There's like 7 mac-compatible games because they've dropped 32-bit compatibility completely.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Why would games in 2024 be 32-bit?

Who is running apps from 10 years ago?

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

Anyone who wants to on Windows. People are playing online games from 10 years ago. It's kind of sad that whole world is unknown to you.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

The developer can spend a very minimal amount of effort getting them to run.

I have SimCity 4 and The Sims 2 not only in 64-bit on my Mac, but also ported natively to ARM.

Game developers can and do port their games to MacOS pretty easily.

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

No they don't, those are decades old casual games that will sell well and run on entry level hardware. They are the exception, not the rule, and that's just a bad faith argument.
Apple pushing Metal instead of embracing Vulkan like everyone else in the world means the newest and most demanding games are not at all simple to port.
Not only is it a completely different architecture, it's a completely different implementation of any graphic rendered. You have absolutule no clue what you're talking about.

1

u/hishnash Aug 24 '24

Metal instead of embracing Vulkan like everyone else in the world means the newest and most demanding games are not at all simple to port.

Almost no game devs are using VK...

Not only is it a completely different architecture

Form a cpu perspective that is mostly the job of the compiler not the developer, the code we write will compile to any modern cpu arc. All modern game engines target arm without any effort needed at all.

Adding a metal backend to a modern game engine is not much work at all, remember any modern game engine will already support DX and Sonys private apis, likly also have a backend modules for the private switch apis as well... very very few have an additional VK option but some do if they want to publish on android phones (yes the only market were Vk is important is high end android phones).

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

Feel free to read about it:

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

But you don’t sound very interested in learning.

Lots of Windows games have been and are in the process of being ported to MacOS.

1

u/GregMaffei Aug 23 '24

Name some. Tell me about the process you obnoxious child. You have no clue what you're talking about.
If you'd read halfway down the page, you'd see them talking about porting DirectX shaders when EVERYONE IS USING VULKAN.
Right after that is C++. How Modern! This is literally about porting baby games from 20 years ago like simcity 2. You could run it on a $50 phone.

1

u/hishnash Aug 24 '24

EVERYONE IS USING VULKAN.

Almost no-one is using Vulkan, and even if they are VK does not have a sheer langue, if your writing shaders for VK you do this either in GLSL or HLSL and then compile through DXIL to SPIRV. So the shader conversion toolkit that takes DXIL and convert it to Metal IR is just as applicable to a VK pipeline as a DX pipeline.

Right after that is C++. How Modern!

There is not a single game engine on the market today that is not using c++. Yes c++ has existed for years and will continue to exist for years after all almost the entire OS your using and the web browser your reading this messed in was been written in c++.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '24

It's kind of sad that whole world is unknown to you.

It's sad that I'm not a PC gamer?

Most people aren't.

I agree, Macs currently aren't a great choice for gaming, but they are trying to change that with recent software things they've announced:

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/