Microsoft sucks!

Gomez Adams

Grammar Fascist
Staff member
Dec 1, 2020
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Suwanee, Georgia
exposingwot.com
They do. They truly do. They've taken a very, very simple operation (installing a game) and made it pretty much rocket science.

Today is my autistic son's 9th birthday. He wanted Minecraft. I've just spent the last hour and a half trying to get it installed. Here's why:

I had wanted to create a Microsoft Store account in his name. Then I wanted to use parental controls on it to limit what he could get into. Turns out, you can't do that. So then I had to log in with my account to get the game, which of course opens up with all of my credentials and settings.

When I read the "how to" from Microsoft, nothing I wanted to do - which was simply install a game on my son's computer but limit who could access it when he played it - is simply not possible.

You make a game for ages 7 and up and you can't pull that off? Seriously?

It used to be simple:
  1. You got a disk / file
  2. You installed it
  3. You ran it
And it ran under the permissions of the current user.

Not anymore. Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom has decided that only adults should have accounts and not the kids they make the games for while at the same time limiting the settings abilities of those accounts to where what you set for the app doesn't apply to the user on the system at the time.

Technology was supposed to make things easier. Microsoft has gone the other way and made the easiest of things nigh on impossible.
 
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They do. They truly do. They've taken a very, very simple operation (installing a game) and made it pretty much rocket science.

Today is my autistic son's 9th birthday. He wanted Minecraft. I've just spent the last hour and a half trying to get it installed. Here's why:

I had wanted to create a Microsoft Store account in his name. Then I wanted to use parental controls on it to limit what he could get into. Turns out, you can't do that. So then I had to log in with my account to get the game, which of course opens up with all of my credentials and settings.

When I read the "how to" from Microsoft, nothing I wanted to do - which was simply install a game on my son's computer but limit who could access it when he played it - is simply not possible.

You make a game for ages 7 and up and you can't pull that off? Seriously?

It used to be simple:
  1. You got a disk / file
  2. You installed it
  3. You ran it
And it ran under the permissions of the current user.

Not anymore. Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom has decided that only adults should have accounts and not the kids they make the games for while at the same time limiting the settings abilities of those accounts to where what you set for the app doesn't apply to the user on the system at the time.

Technology was supposed to make things easier. Microsoft has gone the other way and made the easiest of things nigh on impossible.

And actually the MS store/game world has been this way since X-Box accounts. My son had to use my account for certain games as they were consider adult and if you had indicated a birthday which made you a minor (as a sons' friend did) you couldn't use the whole library even if you bought it.

There are two separate versions of Minecraft. An earlier Java version (the original) and the one that runs the rest (so to speak).
The Java one doesn't require a MS account (or didn't) but was a bit more "wild west" in its servers. The other version runs MS/Apple/Nintendo(switch)/Android and they can all play together in the MS store worlds.

My grandson is a perfect example. He can use his own parental controlled Android version. He also has a Nintendo Switch version and his parents have the MS store version on their PC that he can use. Now his switch is really a stand alone version (no nintendo account). tghe tablet/android version is the one he plays on the family world with and he can also us the parents computer to play on the family world. (yes we have a private server which is just me, the three kids and the grandson.
 
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All of that for one game for kids. 🙄

I got him the Windows 10 Edition. He seems to like it so far. I set him up an offline single player world and let him at it.

Actually I 've had a great time playing. I remember when my own son got it when it first came out. It seemed too simple but it can be quite fun.

At the moment I'm gathering items for making a recreation of my ancestors castle in Ireland.

There is also educational worlds available. In particular I downloaded a city world where a "real" city was in action. The NPCs in it would tell
you basic information on their work in that area in the city. There was construciton sites, libraies, schools, city hall, etc. There are also at least one human organ simulator that I know of - its a large eyeball to see what it looks like on the inside.

There's a lot available educational wise.
 
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It took me 20 minutes just to figure out how to start him in a world on his own I didn't have to pay for.

This is one of my resources for game info. There has been quite a few times that I've had it opened beside me on the tablet.


Reddit also has a pretty good community of people in the Minecraft subreddit who like to help.




Also, you may want to look for an option setting called "keep items", so he doesn't lose anything in an eventful situation..
 
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Yes. I bit the bullet on it. It's supposed to ship by the 10th.
My missing bootmgr is because the last freeze needed another hard reset and that apparently changed the boot order. Now the boot order is correct but windows (even without running any programs) freezes after 5-10 mins. The mouse still works and changes as it gets used (i.e. clicks the browser X, shows resize arrows, etc) but nothing happens.
I'm letting it sit for a few hours and see if it will last longer when started from a 'cold' state.
 
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Never played Minecraft. I know a lot of people do. Never understood why the WOT assholes made fun of it.