Which OneDrive? The one in my browser, the one on my desktop, or the wackadoodle half-Sharepoint mongrel I use at work? All of which have decidedly different UIs for the same incredibly simple task, I might add.
Microsoft has been going hard in the direction of making OneDrive intrinsic to Windows, so what even is the "OneDrive experience" in contrast to the Windows 11 experience? Who writes this nonsense?
Are we going the other direction now, divorcing Windows 11 from OneDrive, thereby giving OneDrive a distinct "experience" again? Why wasn't this change in direction announced?
I swear it's like Microsoft is just 30,000 chatbots all bickering with each other in the most sanitized, gramatically faultless English imaginible.
Why Windows Entreprise PCs have 'Images', 'Videos' and 'Music' folders that can't be deleted is beyond me. If I want to store music on my work PC I can create a folder for that, but why force it on me??
To be fair, a lot of programs rely on those standard directories from the "Known Folders" specification - it would be hard to rip them out without breaking a lot of software. Even on linux it's hard to get away from these directories, as virtually every distro ships with xdg-user-dirs. Even if you use Arch, you'll probably install xdg-user-dirs with Gnome or KDE which creates those directories on login.
Agree 100%, though those folders on any Windows install are a train wreck. Anyone attempting to curate anything within them are met with an endless torrent of garbage being thrown into them by Microsoft and any other app that might be installed. Anyone who's PC I oversee, I always beg them to create their own "My Docs" folder and fill it on their own terms. The Windows user experience is such a mess and MS quit caring that it was a long time ago.
1. You can move those folders to other locations. I used to do that in the Windows XP days.
2. They are required because applications can ask Windows "what is the 'music' folder" and get back the path. Most of those applications won't expect a missing folder.
Because it's not about you, it's about grandma. And when Microsoft bakes these locations in as standard, they can't be deleted because applications are allowed to depend on them being there.
This is not the worst enterprise failure Microsoft has pushed from inadequate testing in recent memory. Around 2021, the Defender enterprise second tier plan pushed out under-tested defs that considered most desktop and start menu shortcuts to be "malware", and removed them silently. Users by the 100's/1k's freaked out when it looked like their apps were removed, causing nothing short a help desk sev 1 emergency.
It's crazy to me how MS continue to do stuff like this. Ads in the start menu, anti-user UX, spam apps, etc. Every time I think their behavior will change and I am always disappointed.
So it is genuinely crazy that they are still doing things like this.
Edit: I should also add that a migration away from Windows has a huge network effect so its important for them to stop the bleeding to prevent them hemorrhaging users later.
MS no longer build apps it seems, but instead incubate experiences...What a comms team.
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