So, I have some friends and we have a group chat. It uses RCS encryption. For a while now I've tried to use the Microsoft Phone Link app, but it fails to communicate with the group text. I had assumed this was due to the RCS encryption but wasn't sure. I verified I could text from the phone.

Digging into RCS and Phone Link, it turns out that MS Phone Link only works with Samsung phones. Guess who doesn't use a Samsung phone?

Nice scam/deal you got going there. This is the kinda bullshit that is hostile to end users/consumers in the name of fucking over competition.

OK, so looking up options, I found that you can use messages.google.com to sync to your phone and it supports RCS.

Cool. First part done, I have a working system now and better yet? No more MS bullshit. (Just Google Bullshit :)

Now, there are two things I want to do:

1. Make this into an "app" on the desktop if possible.
2. Uninstall Phone Link.

Regarding (1) - I looked into this and verified it's a PWA (Progressive Web App). Such apps can be "installed" like it's a native app (basically you can make an icon and it will open a separate browser and run like it's a standalone app, not webpage). I mostly want this because I'd like to not clutter up my tabs on the browser.

Cool, I remembered that Firefox had support for something like this, and was one of the first to introduce this as a concept. That was under Aza Raskin's Mozilla project Prism. Looking into how to do this in Firefox, unfortunately it seems that Prism was based on XULRunner, which is deprecated since Firefox decided to move to a more Chrome style UI system. In the same way they started using Chrome's extension format. And more. Just more bullshit from Firefox, where they were once in the LEAD, and now, they are behind. They don't support PWA so easily.

I was able to use Vivaldi to install as an app on the desktop, quite easily! Right click, select "install $APPNAME".

I've never used a PWA before (besides messing with Prism, which was before PWA was a "thing"). Alas, it seems to not supporty minimizing to systray in Win10 that I can find. Not a huge deal, but would still be nice.

OK, so. One more strike against Firefox/Mozilla.

I'm not sure if I posted before, but the only reason I went back to Firefox is because Googles fuckery with Youtube adblocking kept screwing up my streams in Vivaldi. However, FF loaded it just fine. So it seems FF is still superior when it comes to adblocking technology. Even though I despise and loathe what they're turning into. At least they don't use Blink/Webkit, and whatever Google is doing doesn't fuck up the adblocking as much. I am doubtful that FF's attempt to catch up with Manifestv3 is going to help the situation, but for now, it's superior for YT Adblocking, IMO.

OK, back on track: Now that I have the messages working from google itself, issue (2) is still on the table.

Uninstall Phone Link. Add/Remove Programs, and... it's not there? OK, odd. Did I just absentmindedly uninstall in the hubbub? Click Start Menu - NOPE! Still there. OK, Right-Click for Uninstall? Nope! WTF

Turns out MS has some convoluted system for uninstalling apps installed from the store that is different from EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WINDOWS UNINSTALL PATTERN SINCE WIN95.

OK, so I go through this process, and look for Phone Link. I see a bunch of these newer Apps but NO PHONE LINK! OK, now I'm getting annoyed.

HOW DO I GET RID OF THIS PIECE OF SHIT SOFTWARE THAT HAS 3 METHODS OF UNINSTALL THAT DON'T WORK? Well thanks to an actually helpful entry on the "answers" forum from MS that isn't just some dude from India asking "did you try turning it on and off again?" and pretending like they solved it, someone gave the trick.

You have to use Windows Powershell (not the newer universal/cross-platform powershell, mind. WINDOWS Powershell - which is good that I never uninstalled that after updating to the newer one - I kept both on my system, smart move). Running Windows Powershell as Admin, you have to type:

'Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.YourPhone -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage'

And it's uninstalled.

What a fucking nightmare technology has become. I know there's always been issues, and some things were harder to do back in the day, but there is salways some bullshit user-hostile elements everywhere, and some of this is by nature of complexity, and other things are by design. I am not going to say which is which in this case, but my god. Special Contracts with Samsung? Bullshit. Firefox not having PWA support properly? Bullshit. Uninstalling via command line? Bullshit.

I'm competant, but Grandpa out there would be so frustrated. For no reason other than stupid capitalist greed and hatred of end users just so Satya Nadella can make a buck, and FF can seem less threatening to Google and keep the sugar-daddy money flowing, while just using the same shit as Google, and not presenting any REAL alternative, and fucking over end users more and more as time goes on.

Enshittification indeed.