“Administered”. I’m not talking about local admin rights, I’m talking about the people in your IT department who administer a fleet of Windows PCs.
It doesn’t normally mean “create offline account”, but domain accounts are not the same as Microsoft accounts, and domain accounts are a normal part of enterprise deployments. So it does normally mean that you can create a non-Microsoft account. Yes, it’s stupid. Not defending it, just trying to explain what “join domain” means.
> They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns.
No, typical end users do not care what “domain join” means. They only care about creating offline accounts. “Domain join” isn’t supposed to mean “create offline account”, it’s supposed to let you join the computer to an AD domain. Or at least, that’s what I’d expect.
Users don't care about "offline account" either. (What does that mean to a user, they can't access the internet any more?) Same with the previous term before that, "local account", had no meaning to most "typical" end users for about the same reason.
Some of this I guess is semi-intentional dark patterns [1], but it's also a complex space where explaining the trade-offs to "typical" end users would involve a ton of wasted space and increasingly local/offline accounts aren't what a "typical" end user wants, because they aren't an IT Admin and don't understand the trade-offs and probably don't care to. Given no one seems to have a good name for them other than "offline accounts" or "local accounts", which would imply "can't connect to the internet" to "typical" end users, it's hard not to feel that it really probably is a Power User feature and it's as much an unintentional dark pattern simply because we don't have a good name for it and no one wants to explain the trade-offs to "typical" end users.
[1] Though I'm more willing than most to ascribe at least some good intentions to it: settings synchronization is more useful to typical end users than local sandboxes and devices that don't roam basic settings. The ability to recover logging into a device when a user forgets a password is also a huge necessary deal in 2019 because passwords are broken and typical end users have far too many of them. Microsoft also wants to kill the password as a thing in lieu of other factors. Getting end users out of daily password input would be good for us an industry.
(Yes, yes, I know the next three commenters will complain that it's all just for telemetry and surveillance, and I understand where y'all are coming from, but you are also not-quite-correct and it's a debate I'm tired of. Windows 10 has been increasingly better at allowing you to explore all of its telemetry collection and better with each update at providing tools for opting out of individual telemetry. Windows 10 and macOS/iOS are at the same levels of telemetry collection and accountability of such today. The telemetry debate is increasingly not productive nor interesting in the comments on HN and elsewhere.)
"Local accounts" is perfectly apt name. "Local accounts" doesn't come close to implying "can't join the internet" either, although "offline accounts" might.
Still none of this really justifies burying the option deep and using vague terminologies to hide this feature. Case in point: I had to google search the procedure to create a local account when I wanted to create an account for guests/others that use my laptop.
The pain point about telemetry is that Windows is a paid product and there shouldn't even be such a thing in a product that people pay for. And although there might (now) be settings to control telemetry, what good are they when Windows updates reset all settings regularly?
> "Local accounts" is perfectly apt name. "Local accounts" doesn't come close to implying "can't join the internet" either, although "offline accounts" might.
You have a higher opinion of the "typical" end user than I do. "Local" invites the question "local to what?" and "as opposed to what?". When the other option is "online account", then yes even "local" leads to "can't use on the internet" to certain types of users.
Burying a power user feature to avoid confusing inexperienced end users is justified. The argument over whether or not "local accounts" or "offline accounts" are a power user feature is a more interesting argument. I do think that if we can't come up for a name for them that isn't confusing to inexperienced end users, than that's at least one indicator that it may be a power user feature.
> The pain point about telemetry is that Windows is a paid product and there shouldn't even be such a thing in a product that people pay for.
People want data-driven improvements in paid products, too. (Would you rather Microsoft just blindly make changes? What are the alternatives? Go back to waterfall and nothing but overly detailed and over-engineered specs of what some PM thought was a good idea because they heard it from some rich Enterprise client at a tech conference three years ago?)
There are tons of paid products with telemetry. It's been highly upvoted advice here on HN, to do things like A/B testing, and metrics-driven development. Lots of paid products have telemetry (including Apple's and Google's).
"Paid products" is another amusing double standard I'm going to add to my list for telemetry complaints. "What's good for the startup goose, is not good for the old tech gander." --HN commenters, probably
> And although there might (now) be settings to control telemetry, what good are they when Windows updates reset all settings regularly?
There were always settings since Windows XP. The only thing Windows 10 did was change them from opt-in to opt-out by default. Microsoft then responded to arguments that the settings weren't granular enough, so now there's dozens more settings with pages of documentation each (and an explorer tool to log and examine collected telemetry data, if you wish).
The resets were bugs in the upgrade process that have generally been fixed since. Microsoft has been taking settings resets seriously, and absolutely considers them bugs. The way in-place upgrades work, migration scripts missing settings is a problem. Microsoft's "Beta" program (Insiders) is sadly not setup to find telemetry reset bugs because they need the telemetry most of all in Beta testing, so I feel it's understandably unfortunate that so many telemetry settings reset bugs have made it into production.
Local means something that is "local" to your computer (the tangible device) as opposed to "online" which is not "local" to your computer. It's a simple word which shouldn't take much effort to parse.
Local accounts aren't a "power user" feature either. I bet every person/household has guests over who might have to use the device (for work or something else). Whose Microsoft/Outlook Account should be used for such use cases? I hope you see the issue with considering local accounts a power user feature.
As far as changes to OS goes, MS should listen to customer feedback first and foremost. A minimal non personally identifying diagnostic information gathering would be fine too but instead you have this with Win 10:
> "This data is transmitted to Microsoft and stored with one or more unique identifiers that can help us recognize an individual user on an individual device" [1]
> It's been highly upvoted advice here on HN, to do things like A/B testing, and metrics-driven development.
Neither A/B testing nor metrics-driven development require overzealous collection of personally identifying data. You would do fine with anonymous data for such testing.
> Microsoft has been taking settings resets seriously
Not seriously enough it seems. The issues have continued throughout lifetime of Win 10 well into 2019 now. If it's a bug, it's easily longest running Win 10 bug now. My own settings were reset after the latest feature update. A google search shows that I'm not alone. I shudder thinking about the poor souls who disabled telemetry and failed to notice how an update reset their settings.
> I bet every person/household has guests over who might have to use the device (for work or something else).
In the era when everyone has a computer already in their pocket? In the era when a Windows 10 laptop can be bought at Wal-Mart for $200 or sometimes less?
We're in an era of single user devices. Statistically the "household computer" is gone, the Desktop/Tower a legacy form factor used mostly just by gamers now, and most "computing" people need is just done on their phones they keep in their pockets. The need to borrow someone else's device today is mostly just to throw YouTube videos on entertainment center screens to share and we've got Chromecast/Apple Cast/Miracast dedicated tools for that today.
Having more than one account, itself, on a device is a power user feature in 2019. Having a distinction between types of accounts and whether or not those accounts are backed by cloud accounts, is probably no less a power user feature than having multiple accounts on a device is in the first place.
> In the era when everyone has a computer already in their pocket? In the era when a Windows 10 laptop can be bought at Wal-Mart for $200 or sometimes less?
Yes. The form factor of a mobile phone is not at all conducive to productivity. You wouldn't buy $200 walmart Win 10 laptop for every guest that would like to work/create a word|excel|powerpoint doc/play games on your computer either.
“Administered”. If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally.
I’m not talking about people who happen to use Windows in a professional setting. I’m talking specifically about people whose main job responsibilities include Windows administration.
If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally.
Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition. They might not have dedicated IT staff, but they still need to be able to administer their systems and in many cases a designated person will still be responsible for doing so. They just need to be able to do that as well as fulfilling whatever obligations they have in their primary role. Issues like privacy and security apply just as much in this context as in a large enterprise deployment with a whole department of dedicated staff to run it, but they need simple, transparent mechanisms for setting up the office network, deploying updates to the OS and installed software, etc.
> Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means?
And the answer is, “IT specialists supporting Windows in corporate environments.” Generally speaking. I honestly cannot understand the motive or purpose for the rest of your comment, which seems to be about the needs of small businesses, which is not germane.
> Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition.
Right, because I am specifically talking about IT specialists, who “administer Windows professionally”. This is the usual definition of “professionally”, that you “profess” to do something. If I talk about people who “write professionally”, this also does not include people who happen to write emails, memos, and other ordinary correspondence at work.
But this doesn’t really exclude small business, since it’s common for small businesses (and medium) to contract IT services.
Ah, sorry, it seems I misinterpreted your original comment. I thought you were defending Microsoft's decision to hide creation of a local account behind the deceptive button name, on the basis that those who were setting these PCs up in a business environment would know what it meant anyway.
