when commercial OSes insist on putting the weather on the lock screen whether we ask for it or not, that is the company advertising its own services to us, that is the company clamoring for our attention and telling us we need to be thinking about the weather rather than just quietly existing

people who are used to putting up with that one don't even recognize it as an intrusion, and when we call it an "advertisement" without explanation, people are confused. that's fair enough, but from outside, from a baseline position of not giving up any of our internal calm and quiet to external corporate demands for it, it stands out, it's obvious

similarly, we are also highly skeptical of using things that change their layout completely every six months because somebody needed to justify their promotion so they did a redesign. that is not respectful of our time, and it is not worth it. none of the things that programs like that can do for us, are worth devoting part of our brain to understanding how they work only to have the rug pulled out from us just when we're starting to get it.

we prefer software that stays where we put it, that only changes when we ask it to change. we also prefer software that doesn't demand attention, that waits until we choose to pay attention to it and then only tells us the answers to the things we asked rather than trying to tell us lots of other stuff for its own ends.