2802

It does.

2803

So this is a pretty severely misunderstood change in the anniversary update.

The biggest difference here is that “Search without enabling Cortana has been renamed to Cortana”. Basically, you can log out of Cortana just as always (or never log-in in the first place), and it’ll work with generic search without knowing any of your personal information. Cortana has just been improved to do more things without requiring a log-in. You can still entirely hide it from the taskbar as always.

2804

This is also an incredibly dumb misunderstanding. All of those options are still freely configurable in settings. I’m on Windows 10 Pro with the final version of the anniversary update and in seconds could either navigate or search for all of those settings:

  • Yes I can disable tips
  • Yes I can disable Store suggestions
  • Yes I can configure telemetry in the exact same way that I could with the original version of Windows 10
  • Obviously I can change the lock screen to display whatever I want to,

Millions of people have been using preview builds of the anniversary update and any of them can confirm as much. I know that Microsoft has to improve their messaging in many ways, but this is not one of them. This is literally something that anyone can validate in 5 seconds flat if they just took the time to check for themselves.

2805

Interesting and thanks for clearing that up! I assumed that the publications would have verified the changes before posting the articles.

Will see what happens in my update on Tuesday since I have those policies disabled in my install today.

Diego

2806

I don’t know, it’s just a factor of nuance getting lost. I don’t work on this stuff, but if I could guess, here’s what actually changed:

Some group policies for personalization settings can no longer be configured by system administrators for a large set of machines, because Pro is and always has been primarily a consumer SKU for personally-owned devices. While sys admins can still control how devices get updated, or how they behave on the network which could affect other devices, sys admins should be deploying Enterprise or Education if they want to configure personal/consumer-style settings.

And then the press confuses group policies with individual device personalization settings.

2807

But nobody was talking about being logged in. When you’re logged out and Cortana is off, you right now have a search button that doesn’t include any results from the web. It doesn’t bing the query. Are you saying this behavior is staying?

2808

Ok, so the criticism isn’t “I can’t turn off Cortana”, it’s “I can’t disable web search”. That part I’m not sure of, I don’t know if there’s a way to disable web search. So if you want to disable that, maybe there’s no way to do it.

I’ve never had a problem with web searches getting prioritized over anything else for me, so using search to find local documents, programs, music, email, etc. is unaffected. But when I do want to do a web search, I like that it’s really easy to do so.

2809

A web search is not exactly hard right now; you just use your web browser. A local search and a web search are so completely and clearly distinct in my mind that having both bound to the same button makes no sense to me.

But just to be clear, this change is a red flag not because of a UI inconvenience (although it is that as well). It’s

a) a privacy concern, because local search queries will now be transmitted to MS without consent
b) an antitrust concern, because the OS provider is tying its web search engine to a major OS component with no way to choose a competing engine

2810

So you can still turn of Cortana? As long as that’s true I think my set-up is still fine.

2811

My understanding is that you can’t disable the lock screen anymore. I didn’t do that personally, but the functionality should not be removed.

If I can’t disable web search I will (as usual, you no doubt snicker to yourself) be offended and outraged by Microsoft. It won’t actually matter though, as I already block searchui.exe in my firewall as even with web search turned off it pinged MS every time I searched my local filesystem.

@Nesrie, the difference (as I understand it) is that local filesystem searches are now called “Cortana”. Also you can now use Cortana’s full functionality without logging in to Windows with a Microsoft account-- you are still abrogating your privacy by associating your Microsoft account with Cortana, but you can login to Windows locally.

@LMN8R - Can we still disable showing suggested Microsoft store apps in the start screen? If so, the media is definitely overreacting on that one.

2812

You can pick and choose how to use Cortana and log in:

  • You can log in with a local account and use Cortana just locally without giving it any info
  • You can log in with a Microsoft account and log-out of Cortana, again not giving it any info
  • You can also do either of the above and log-in to Cortana with a Microsoft account, and then it’ll work full-featured if you’re in a region which supports it. But again though this means local processing of your information without sending all of it to Microsoft, combined with its Notebook where you can choose specific things for Cortana to “forget”.

As for settings, here are screenshots directly from the final version of the anniversary update:

http://imgur.com/NbgjjsA

http://imgur.com/xJonOy1

2813

Not being able to disable the lock screen will make me very annoyed for my HTPC. That’ll require manual intervention whenever it reboots.

2814

Couldn’t you just set it to auto-login, even with the lock screen not technically disabled?

2815

This update is coming tomorrow people, and now I can’t tell if I am supposed to be outraged or not!

2816

Jesus Christ. So Windows refuses to update its native (shitty) Calculator app, nor will it launch it. And you can’t actually program the calculator button on the MS Sculpt Ergo keyboard; it will only ever launch the native calculator app.

As a hilarious bonus “fuck you” to basic sanity, you can’t even select the error code the MS store throws up when failing to update the app.

I love 95% of this hardware, but some of this stuff is just bone-numbingly stupid.

2817

I hate this calculator too. I am not sure why, but I feel sort of relieved I am not the only one.

2818

I wound up downloading the Win7-era calculator online shortly after installing W10. Like Adam noted, built-in shortcuts and stuff are a little hard to modify, but overtime, it’s crept up into my “frequently used programs” list in Start10, and even seems to show up first in Start10’s hacked-together “Run/Find” thing when I start typing “Calc.”

Except about 1 time in 20, when for whatever Godforsaken reason, the Windows built-in one preempts the older version and launches when I mistakenly hit Enter without looking closely enough. . .

God, I hate the Win10 calculator.

2819

MS is rolling it out in waves to keep the servers from dying, so don’t be surprised if you don 't get it tomorrow. Heck, like last year, expect the roll-out to take weeks, if not months.

Word is that Surfaces will get it first, which sort of makes sense, as that’s a fixed platform so there shouldn’t be any surprise, and it is MS’ flagship device.

If you can’t wait, download the Media Creation Tool and create a USB installer to update your machines. (Make sure it’s the newest version; you may download the tool for last November’s update.)

2820

I don’t even know if I hate the Win10 calculator, because it has never successfully executed on my machine.

e: Odds are, though, that as a Modern app, I will hate it with a fury I usually reserve for litterers and driveway weeds.

2821

Yes, it’s a UWP app. You can get the old win32 calculator here.