I genuinely like Windows. I was raised on it, and have used every consumer version since 98, and have programmed on it since Windows 7. I believe that from a purely technical, systems programming, and even UI/UX perspective, it is superior to the competition—both commercial and free/libre open-source. I will be very happy to defend this statement as factually and reasonably as possible, because I also program on 'the competition OSs' at work, and every time I do so, I want to go back to a cohesive platform like VS 2022 which, for me, is unparalleled in terms of productivity.
But this sort of tone-deaf move from Microsoft is irritating me. I already dislike Windows 11's UI and UX flow because it is so reminiscent of macOS; this is why I haven't updated to it on my personal main computer yet (which is running Windows 10 Education, courtesy of my alma mater's Azure subscription). I've seen rumours that Microsoft hired a bunch of UI designers who used nothing but macOS and decided it was a good idea to port macOS UI designs to Windows. What a terrible terrible thing. UI responses that are instant even on Windows 10 now have a jelly-like lag to them on Windows 11, for no good reason. Also consider the regression of the right-click context menu, the ads and Copilot everywhere, a preference for unlabelled icons over text, amongst many others.
As another comment says, Windows Recall appears to be an AI evolution of the already-present Windows Timeline feature. The privacy outcomes of this are concerning and I really really wish we didn't have 'AI' and 'Copilot' stuffed down our throats all the time. I would like to opt-in to features I want, rather than have them all pre-enabled. Some of them are very useful, like clipboard history with Windows-Ctrl-V; some less so and are flagrant privacy violations.
I have already disabled almost every tracking, phone-home and auto-update feature possible using group policies; this is just another thing to add to my list of disabled 'help' features.
That being said, if Recall doesn't phone home—which appears to be the case here—I don't buy the argument that 'it's stealing everything you do and hackers can access it if they have physical access'. I believe that the moment a computer's physical access record is compromised, the entire computer is compromised, regardless of security theatre like disk encryption in the form of BitLocker/LUKS, Secure Boot etc. It doesn't matter whether Recall is present or not.
> if Recall doesn't phone home—which appears to be the case here—I don't buy the argument that 'it's stealing everything you do and hackers can access it if they have physical access'
The risk is not physical access, the risk is malware installed on the machine, or a security hole in some browser feature enabling malicious actors to covertly uploading the recall database to a remote server.
> It doesn't matter whether Recall is present or not
Yes it does. Consider getting some malware that is detected a few minutes later and removed. For most people there would be no harm. With recall, you would be instantly screwed.
But this sort of tone-deaf move from Microsoft is irritating me. I already dislike Windows 11's UI and UX flow because it is so reminiscent of macOS; this is why I haven't updated to it on my personal main computer yet (which is running Windows 10 Education, courtesy of my alma mater's Azure subscription). I've seen rumours that Microsoft hired a bunch of UI designers who used nothing but macOS and decided it was a good idea to port macOS UI designs to Windows. What a terrible terrible thing. UI responses that are instant even on Windows 10 now have a jelly-like lag to them on Windows 11, for no good reason. Also consider the regression of the right-click context menu, the ads and Copilot everywhere, a preference for unlabelled icons over text, amongst many others.
As another comment says, Windows Recall appears to be an AI evolution of the already-present Windows Timeline feature. The privacy outcomes of this are concerning and I really really wish we didn't have 'AI' and 'Copilot' stuffed down our throats all the time. I would like to opt-in to features I want, rather than have them all pre-enabled. Some of them are very useful, like clipboard history with Windows-Ctrl-V; some less so and are flagrant privacy violations.
I have already disabled almost every tracking, phone-home and auto-update feature possible using group policies; this is just another thing to add to my list of disabled 'help' features.
That being said, if Recall doesn't phone home—which appears to be the case here—I don't buy the argument that 'it's stealing everything you do and hackers can access it if they have physical access'. I believe that the moment a computer's physical access record is compromised, the entire computer is compromised, regardless of security theatre like disk encryption in the form of BitLocker/LUKS, Secure Boot etc. It doesn't matter whether Recall is present or not.