Need me to belief Home windows 11 once more? Carry again native accounts

After years of pissing me and different Home windows 11 customers off, Microsoft says it’s prepared to show a brand new leaf, fixing errors, making enhancements, and including some long-requested options. I’d wish to imagine that Home windows 11 is headed in the proper course. However given how anti-user Home windows has grow to be, I’m bitter and cynical. There’s a technique Microsoft can show that it’s critical…however I don’t suppose they’ll truly do it. 

Microsoft is aware of we would like native Home windows accounts

I gained’t bury the lead right here: It’s native accounts. If Microsoft desires to make customers really feel like Home windows 11 is tangibly bettering, the best means to do this is so as to add again a function that they know we would like. And so they know we would like native accounts, created at Home windows setup with no connection to a web based Microsoft login. As a result of they’ve spent years deliberately closing each loophole and patching each workaround that permit customers proceed to do it in Home windows 11. 

The upcoming apology tour already contains one of many options I’ve been begging for: a taskbar on the prime of the monitor. I preserve my screens excessive with VESA mounts for ergonomic causes — you need to be wanting straight at your display screen, not down, your again will thank me! — and it simply feels higher to place the taskbar on prime for me. And because the launch of Home windows 11, I’ve wanted a separate, paid instrument, StartAllBack, to perform that. For this very particular, tangible, seen function, Home windows 11 looks like a step backward for me. 

So clearly Microsoft is keen to offer us some huge options we’ve been craving. And it’s eradicating at the least some of what no one requested for. “As a part of this, we’re lowering pointless Copilot entry factors, beginning with apps like Snipping Instrument, Pictures, Widgets, and Notepad,” says Microsoft’s President of Home windows & Gadgets.  

Given how relentlessly Microsoft has pushed, pleaded, and plotted to get extra individuals utilizing (and paying for) Copilot, I can solely think about these phrases coming via a rictus grin. 

In that context, together with lowering annoyances and enhancing efficiency, you may need hope that Microsoft is being real right here. And there’s at the least some indication {that a} native login, with no should be consistently tracked and marketed to through on-line hooks, is on the desk. The identical day that huge apology publish and dedication, one other Microsoft government acknowledged complaints concerning the login requirement on the corpse of Twitter. “Ya I hate that,” mentioned Scott Hanselman. “Engaged on it.” 

Hanselman is the VP of Developer Group. So he is aware of that builders and energy customers need this. I requested him through e-mail if he would elaborate on the remark. Over per week later, I haven’t heard again. 

Why does Microsoft hate native accounts?

Apple’s MacOS, usually thought of “locked down” and rigid in comparison with Home windows, enables you to log in with no related account. So does ChromeOS, shockingly. And if Google of all firms can allow you to use a neighborhood account on a laptop computer in 2026, Microsoft ought to completely provide you with that choice.

Christoph Hoffmann

However with apologies for the pessimism, I don’t suppose Microsoft is bringing again native logins. And never simply because one VP isn’t elaborating on a fast social media remark. No, there’s merely an excessive amount of cash on the desk, an excessive amount of useful information, for Microsoft to offer customers what they actually need. 

You recognize that Microsoft desires to promote you stuff. Principally stuff you don’t need, or might get extra successfully elsewhere — what number of of you might be utilizing free Google Docs as an alternative of Microsoft Workplace, or going to ChatGPT as an alternative of Copilot? However that is about extra than simply attempting to get you to pay for Microsoft merchandise. 

Home windows itself is monetized through person information, similar to nearly every little thing you do on the internet, and an increasing number of issues that you just do in actual life. Your net site visitors and habits, what apps you employ, what units you connect with, your location, even the best way you kind or contact your display screen. All of it’s information that Microsoft collects and, in some circumstances, sells. All of it’s extremely useful to Microsoft and its companions/prospects. 

Michael Crider/IDG

This information is the beating coronary heart of the fashionable Microsoft, or at the least the a part of it pointed at common customers. Microsoft is not an organization that sells working programs to PC house owners, it entices customers onto its platform to monetize them. Common house customers are monetized through promoting information, company customers are monetized through upsells for costly providers. 

It’s potential to show off some of this information assortment…not that Microsoft can’t get at it from different instructions. Right here it’s price noting that though it’s recognized for software program units like Xbox and Floor, Microsoft is likely one of the largest promoting firms on the planet.

I hope I’m fallacious…however I don’t suppose I’m

However eradicating the moment, always-on connection to a Microsoft account would successfully hog-tie the system that makes Home windows useful to Microsoft. They only gained’t do it. 

There’s an argument to be made right here that, given how Microsoft makes use of Home windows as a nexus of person information assortment and an promoting platform, it needs to be free. It ought to, and Microsoft already treats it prefer it’s free more often than not, so I don’t know why we’re out right here pretending a Home windows 11 license actually prices $139. However I digress. 

So sure, name me cynical, and I’m. I’m not the one one on the PCWorld to be skeptical of this reset, nevertheless conciliatory the tone. But when anybody at Microsoft is listening — Scott? — then please preserve it in thoughts: That is the way you win customers again. That is the way you present, fairly than merely inform, that you just’re dedicated to creating Home windows 11 an working system for customers as soon as once more.