A lot of people hated XP because of it’s ‘childish’ visual design, but that’s not what enshittification is about.
Enshittificstion is when a service becomes progressively user-hostile by implementing patterns that exploit the user and their data for profit.
I used XP plenty, and I certainly don’t remember it pushing ads in the start menu, or trying to force me to register a Microsoft account, or constantly harassing me to sign up for paid subscriptions.
You may have personally thought it “was shit”, but it certainly wasn’t “enshittified”
Yes it was. Windows XP began the phone home for licensing. It also created a tiered system where things are kept from you unless you paid more, but they were not really clear about it. I remember needing a Corporate license to do some things we needed to do. This is also where they realldy fucked up with Active X and tying windows explorer to the system in such a way that made it harder not to use it. Home users could not actually admin local accounts, and security between then was basically non existant.
And then shortly after launch they began the push to get the users to use their home page, msn services, notifications for explorer to be the default browser. The media player started pushing their online services. Live ID became a thing.
If you complained that they had things you didnt want, like explorer, windows media player, windows messenger, etc: they did say you could run a utility to “remove” them. Except it didn’t. It removed the icons. So they started the flat out lying to the consumer with windows XP.
Edit: Now I remember, among other reasons, we needed corporate to stop forced updates.
Edit: I apologize for all the after post edits but the longer I think about it the more I think of!
What about the new “buy music online” feature? You could ONLY use Explorer to complete the transaction, no matter if you had a different default browser or not.
I’d argue that tiered licensing wasn’t really enshittified as it was still just a one time thing where you bought a license and got a product. Not enshittified but simply unnecessarily confusing. And they somehow made that even worse with Vista.
In a similar manner I’d suggest online activation isn’t enshittified either, as that’s a pretty reasonable behaviour even for an ethical product as it helps prevent piracy. And a key again is that it’s a one-time thing, not something constantly bothering you or interrupting your experience over and over.
Was it?
A lot of people hated XP because of it’s ‘childish’ visual design, but that’s not what enshittification is about.
Enshittificstion is when a service becomes progressively user-hostile by implementing patterns that exploit the user and their data for profit.
I used XP plenty, and I certainly don’t remember it pushing ads in the start menu, or trying to force me to register a Microsoft account, or constantly harassing me to sign up for paid subscriptions.
You may have personally thought it “was shit”, but it certainly wasn’t “enshittified”
Yes it was. Windows XP began the phone home for licensing. It also created a tiered system where things are kept from you unless you paid more, but they were not really clear about it. I remember needing a Corporate license to do some things we needed to do. This is also where they realldy fucked up with Active X and tying windows explorer to the system in such a way that made it harder not to use it. Home users could not actually admin local accounts, and security between then was basically non existant.
And then shortly after launch they began the push to get the users to use their home page, msn services, notifications for explorer to be the default browser. The media player started pushing their online services. Live ID became a thing.
If you complained that they had things you didnt want, like explorer, windows media player, windows messenger, etc: they did say you could run a utility to “remove” them. Except it didn’t. It removed the icons. So they started the flat out lying to the consumer with windows XP.
Edit: Now I remember, among other reasons, we needed corporate to stop forced updates.
Edit: I apologize for all the after post edits but the longer I think about it the more I think of!
What about the new “buy music online” feature? You could ONLY use Explorer to complete the transaction, no matter if you had a different default browser or not.
Fair, some good points there :)
I’d argue that tiered licensing wasn’t really enshittified as it was still just a one time thing where you bought a license and got a product. Not enshittified but simply unnecessarily confusing. And they somehow made that even worse with Vista.
In a similar manner I’d suggest online activation isn’t enshittified either, as that’s a pretty reasonable behaviour even for an ethical product as it helps prevent piracy. And a key again is that it’s a one-time thing, not something constantly bothering you or interrupting your experience over and over.
But the rest of your examples definitely count!