Microsoft Bringing Teams Meeting Reminders To Windows 11 Start Menu (theverge.com) 47
Microsoft is getting ready to place Teams meeting reminders on the Start menu in Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a new build of Windows 11 with Dev Channel testers that includes a Teams meeting reminder in the recommended section of the Start menu. Microsoft is also testing an improved way to instantly access new photos and screenshots from Android devices. [...] The Teams meeting reminders will be displayed alongside the regular recently used and recommended file list on the Start menu, and they won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11.
Great, more crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, has MS completely run out of sane ideas? What about actually improving the OS and removing the insane hardware requirements?
Re:Great, more crap (Score:4, Informative)
It's a fucking PITA to switch context in either outlook or teams in order to go looking for calendar entries for upcoming meetings.
Say what? How difficult is it to click Calendar in Outlook or Teams?
Or maybe you do use windows in which case given how much you complain about it you must be a huge masochist and should be saying "yes Microsoft, give me more, ooooh".
The blurb literally says, in the truest sense of the word, "won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11." Meaning, everyone who uses Windows 11 in their business environment will have this foisted on them whether they want it or not. Meaning, Microsoft is the sadist.
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Say what? How difficult is it to click Calendar in Outlook or Teams?
Re-read. I didn't say it is difficult to switch to either. I said it is a pain to have to switch the current context in that app. I.e. I'm doing something else which I will need to find again. And much of that is driven by MS's continuous assault on multitasking, especially within Teams that only allows one window outside of chat. Clicking calendar means you've lost where you were.
Meaning, Microsoft is the sadist.
I didn't say MS wasn't the sadist, I said gweihir may be a masochist meaning the two are made for each other given how much he c
Re: Great, more crap (Score:2)
I don't see how "won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11" means "will always be displayed for all business users of Windows 11," i.e., there could be an option to remove or alter the behavior, with it simply being a feature that isn't available in consumer editions. However, there is not enough information in TFA to determine anything either way.
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90% of office users who use computers often have learned to avoid the Start menu anyway. Without this feature, I still get TWO meeting reminders. No need for a third reminder. I'd say this is about marketing, but you'd have to have already purchased Teams to get this 'integration' so I really don't see the point.
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A reminder isn't an upcoming todo list. Additionally reminders are entirely within the power of the sender, there are plenty of invites I have that generate no reminders because people sent them out incorrectly.
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90% of Windows machines are office machines.
I wouldn't be so sure of that, most offices I visit have MacBooks, at least in private companies. Government workers are more likely to use desktops, but some governments are switching to custom Linux distros. Maybe I live in a bubble, but at least in my social circles, the main reason for someone to use Windows is gaming. Might change now that gaming on Linux is getting much better.
Someone's going to get sued. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Teams can put reminders on the startmenu, then the DMA will force this to be an open API, at least in Europe. Or MS is going to find itself fined again after Slack complains.
Re: Someone's going to get sued. (Score:1)
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more retarded dribble from the mouth of "thegarbz" bet you thought that was a cool nickname when you were 7
? No man it's my actual name. Blame my parents. I only put a "the" in front of it since it was otherwise taken. But I'm flattered that I have left such a lasting impression on you that you've pulled out insults I haven't heard since grade school. Nostalgic. Yeah your insult is lame, but thanks for the memories anyway.
Tired of interwoven software (Score:2)
While I use Linux, my company foes use SharePoint and Microsoft365, including Outlook and Teams. They are all interwoven, and it's a nuisance. If I want Teams, I'll open it - I don't need it putting stuff in my inbox.
Documents s? Is it an attachment, is it in the cloud, is it in Teams? What is actually the difference? Who knows? Who cares? Chaos reigns...
Re: Tired of interwoven software (Score:1)
Re:Tired of interwoven software (Score:5, Insightful)
The interweaving isn't even that good. Ie, you can see OneNote stuff in Teams, but it's somewhat broken. It's a mess. Their Cloud is a mess, none of the web based Office apps work very well.
It's honestly like nobody at Microsoft knows how real people actually work in a real office.
Re: Tired of interwoven software (Score:3)
Ugh yes. I even have teams open and running and I still get email about chat messages simply because I haven't looked at teams in too long. What an attention whore.
Data point (Score:5, Informative)
There is a problem here, and the Windows 11 useless blob formerly known as the start menu doesn't fix it.
As a long-term Outlook and Teams user I cannot trust Windows not to hide or eat meeting reminder popups. e.g. the Outlook popup will come up on the wrong monitor and get covered by something else. There is an option to force the outlook reminder to stay on top, but it causes outlook to hang. Another failure mode is I fail to click the "leave" button in a meeting in Teams/Webex/Zoom/etc and the auto do-not-disturb will cause Windows to eat the notification. Another failure mode is I'll manually turn on DnD to stop a teams' message storm, and poof the notification is gone again.
To compensate for this, every morning, religiously, I sit down with my calendar and set alarms on Alexa for every meeting in the day. It's significantly improved my success rate at attending meetings.
Re:Data point (Score:4, Interesting)
I have the opposite problem. Incessant notifications of everything under the sun have forced me to switch off more and more notifications because all the blinking and flashing in the periphery of my vision drove me absolutely mad.
Notifications have been subject to enshittification, with the current low point being MS Remote Desktop posting a notification that it has opened a RDP session, as if the giant window in the middle of the screen showing that desktop was not enough.
Greeaaatt (Score:3)
Active tiles in the start menu. app suggestions (ads) in the start menu, Edge promos in the start menu, recently added in the start menu, meeting reminders in the start menu...
What else can we stuff in there?
I remember when the Start menu was quick and easy to use and organize. Now it's a giant list of junk.
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It's even worse than Windows 10 was. Every update removes more and more customization option. I swear, the people who design this stuff must be doing it all on a whiteboard because they clearly don't know how to use a computer.
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Only one question (Score:5, Insightful)
How do I turn it off?
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How do I turn it off?
You don't. It's for business users only. Your company will make this decision for you.
When will they⦠(Score:3)
Admit they got caught flat-footed during COVID and ditched Skype and made this instead, and theyâ(TM)re still a distant second to Zoom? The way to compete with Zoom is to make a better product, not to inundate operating systems with reminders about Teams.
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Teams _might_ be ok, if they took it seriously. Instead it was rushed out far too soon, and then rather than improving Teams they started adding in more and more fluff, apps, and integration.
It would be good to have an app that was team chat and collaboaration, calendar, and online meetings all in one place, but Teams is missing that mark. Like all Microsoft tools they strive to be merely mediocre and often fail to achieve even that.
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Teams _might_ be ok, if they took it seriously. Instead it was rushed out far too soon, and then rather than improving Teams they started adding in more and more fluff, apps, and integration.
Yes, when the fuck will they even make message notification work right? Click into teams and the notification flag on the taskbar icon doesn't go away. Why? Because what that flag does is tell you that you have not joined a group since the last time new messages were posted to it. So to make it go away you have to click into teams, click into A DIFFERENT GROUP, then click the group with the new messages. What the actual fuck? What competent developers would do is keep track of which messages are visible in
Oh God make it stop (Score:5, Insightful)
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If Windows was a car you'd find it changes color every couple of weeks.
The funny thing about your analogy is that if such a car existed I know of countless people who would line up for it, completely ignoring every other "misfeature" in the rest of your post.
More integration, more bloat... for whom? (Score:4, Insightful)
I genuinely wonder if anybody actually *wants* this kind of intrusion in their OS - you know, as in a large enough number of people voicing their desire to have Teams tightly integrated in Windows and Microsoft taking notice, or Microsoft running a poll and determining that this is a desirable feature people would want.
My guess is that it isn't the case. Because honestly, when was the last time you thought "You know what? What I really need is Teams notifications in my start menu when I'm working". Nobody in his right mind would want this: people run Teams in the background, Teams sends normal notifications, people see the notifications. What more do you need?
This is just Microsoft binding stuff tightly together to create a de-facto default chat application in Windows, and therefore a path of least resistance for IT managers and users who already have all the shit they need and don't need to install a third party software from a competitor.
AGAIN...
Remember Windows "requiring" MS-DOS7?
Remember Windows "requiring" Internet Explorer?
The first time, they killed DR-DOS. The second time, they killed Netscape. Microsoft got sued both times, and they got away with it both times by paying a measly settlement. So they're trying it again, because it works for them: there's never any consequences!
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I genuinely wonder if anybody actually *wants* this kind of intrusion in their OS
Oh, hell no. You've got the right idea, this didn't come from customer requests. This came from some suit-weasel's worn out bag of dirty tricks.
Nobody in his right mind would want this
Within seconds of using any Windows newer than Windows 7, I'm immediately accosted and offended by something it's done. It might be an un-dismissable dialog box, a forced shutdown, a repeating message that won't stop popping outta some shitware in the systray, actual real advertisements from total randos, random unidentified shitware shooting the CPU to the moon, a
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Nobody in his right mind would want this: people run Teams in the background, Teams sends normal notifications, people see the notifications. What more do you need?
Spoken like someone who has never used teams. Teams does not send notifications for meetings in your calendar, it only ever notifies you if a meeting has started. Nor does it notify you of meetings outside your current corporation so if you happen to be logged into a contractor's environment you won't get notification if a meeting has started in your own environment. You don't get notifications for meetings you host, so you're only notified if *someone else* joins your meeting first. Oh but that someone els
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Well fuck me if Teams didn't release an update today that allowed you to get notification outside of your current corporation. Okay I'll concede there's one less thing to complain about :-)
MS pushing me towards Linux (Score:1)
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To be fair, somebody always posts this every time any change of any kind is announced by Microsoft.
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And at least some % of them follow through every time... Maybe it's just a small percentage, but it compounds over time. Look at market penetration for OSes... Look where Win is now vs 10 or 15 years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In my household, up to a few years ago, all computers used to run Windows. Right now, only 2 out of 7 are still Windows (they are used exclusively as gaming PC).
MS knows this. They probably consider WIndows a "death" product, and they are just milking the existing user b
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The Wikipedia article you referenced is problematic, as noted by the prominent warnings at the top of the page. Still, what it appears to show is the decline of the PC itself, not so much the decline of Windows on desktop PCs. It certainly does NOT show a migration to Linux.
Here's a graphical display of desktop PC market share. over time: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] If any OS is taking market share from Windows, it's Mac OS, not Linux.
Your household (nor mine) is certainly not representative of the ma
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what it appears to show is the decline of the PC itself, not so much the decline of Windows on desktop PCs
Only if you artificially keep Macs outside of the "Personal Computer" category.
It certainly does NOT show a migration to Linux.
Which I never claimed was the main factor. My comment mentions both Linux and MacOS which both grew over time - obviously MacOS grew much more than Linux and I never claimed otherwise.
I'd say that having a 70% market share isn't really that close to dead.
It used to be over 90%, a 20% loss is a big difference in my book, even though it happened over a long period. And it's the only major OS which is losing ground... even when we include the major mobile OSes in the mix.
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I would not keep Macs outside of the "personal computer" category. Nonetheless, the "personal computer" category has shrunk, from 351 million units sold in 2010, to only 286 million in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It used to be over 90%, a 20% loss is a big difference in my book, even though it happened over a long period. And it's the only major OS which is losing ground
That's true. When your market share is 90%, it's really, really hard to increase that. The only direction your market share can really go, is down. That's a very different thing from saying Windows is "dying."
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My comment mentions both Linux and MacOS which both grew over time
Actually, I just realised that my previous comment did NOT mention OSes... maybe that's where you got confused.
In my household we used to have 7 computers, all on Windows: 4 laptops, 3 desktops
Now, all the 4 laptops are MacBooks (mix of Air and Pro) and of the 3 desktops, one (used for streaming) moved to Linux (due to hardware not being compatible with Win 11), the other two (used for gaming) are still Windows.
I never claimed this is the "year of linux on desktop" LOL re-read my previous comment.
One more t
Or They Could Fix Bluetooth, W11 Interface (Score:3)
Windows notifications don't get attention (Score:2)
That notifications feature has some important problems.
First, it isn't noticeable. It hides in the corner where it's hard to see, especially on a large monitor. I often don't see notifications there for hours or even days.
Second, they aren't visually attached to the apps that generate them.
The bubbles on the app icons on the taskbar are much more noticeable, and they are clearly attached to the apps they belong to. It's a much better user experience IMO than the notifications in the lower-right corner.