Intel has been pinging me a few times a day for months about a driver update for my Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. As both work fine, I’ve ignored it. But then you hit that final nag, and you say:
I know how shitty this was going to be; this is why I chose to delay; I can’t take this anymore.
I could have fucking installed KDE Neon on a new partition table in the time this took. And, of course, a goddamned fucking driver update needs a EULA for each, and would I like to install it in the same directory as before (which clues you in than you’re not, in fact, installing a driver update if the EULA didn’t), and would I like to use the same settings as before, and now I need to confirm that “yes, just leave everything else the fuck alone and update my driver.”
And then close out with another button. Interestingly, the Wi-Fi updater UI is XP/Vista era, while BT is Win95. You seriously can’t do better than this in 2026?
And, of course, in both cases, I was interrupted by Windows itself to confirm I wanted to let Intel access Intel drivers.
I like having control over my machines, but there’s got to be a better way.
And if they tucked rights to a firstborn into the EULA update, joke’s on them: I’m fixed.
Interestingly, the Wi-Fi updater UI is XP/Vista era, while BT is Win95. You seriously can’t do better than this in 2026?
My hot take is I couldn’t be happier to see that. It means they didn’t try to replace a known working solution with some post-modern vibe-coded garbage. Not everything needs to be an Electron app, not everything needs to be styled with Tailwind. Sometimes less is more.
Can I add to your vent that everything is way over complicated and annoying than it needs to be or should be?
The new MacOS has no easy way to delete apps. You used to simply drag them to the trash and boom, gone. It’ it would show a dust cloud animation and make fun noise.
Then it was you had to hold alt and open the app launchpad then click the little X icon. That wasn’t so bad, but not intuitive.
Now the apps are owned by App Store and need admin permissions to delete, so you can’t drag them to the trash.
Then the new updates, to push Siri AI, redesigned the app launcher so now there’s no like X to click and you can’t drag to trash. So how do you delete them?
Once you install an app, to delete it you have to go open App Store, click your profile icon, go to Downloaded Apps, click the Mac OS toggle, scroll to the unsorted non-searchable list of every app you EVER installed on any Mac you’ve ever owned until you find it, click an ellipse menu, click Delete App, then approve the confirmation pop up.
What the fuck?! It’s an 8 step process to delete an app. It’s stupid.
Wow, when did Apple fuck up app uninstall? That was such a big deal to be able to just trash an app.
One of the very, very first things I do when receiving a new PC for work is to turn off every single fucking “utility” that wants to auto start and lurk in the system tray.
No, I don’t need “Intel Wireless Utility”.
No, I don’t need “Intel integrated graphics utility”.
No, I don’t need “Synaptic touchpad utility”.
No, I don’t need “Dell system monitor”.
No, I don’t need “Adobe EasyStart™”.
No, I don’t need Edge to preload itself.
No, I don’t need “HP Printer Utility”.
No, I don’t need Microsoft Teams.
No, I don’t need OneDrive.
No, I don’t want the Chrome update utility.
I will keep an eye on things myself, thanks.
I also disable automatic updates (Windows).
If you have a work PC and can adjust this stuff, your company’s IT is really dropping the ball. Updates in a company need to be managed to prevent random downtime.
Edit: Checkout Startup Delayer. I’ve used it for years, it’s a little more intuitive than MSConfig and gives you some good controls.
My company manages all driver and system updates via Intune (or whatever in-house Windows Update is called these days).
These apps all still lurk in the system tray and - because updates are centrally managed - only offer some options to tinker with some minor device settings directly that I don’t really need to tinker with. So I’d really like that RAM back that they’re parked on
