Microsoft is far from the only offender of course (a PlayStation comes to mind, for example) but system designers really need to start using their brains on this.
When I am in a rush to check something online, I don't want to waste 5 minutes updating anything.
By catering to both the masses and the experts, MS is caught between a rock and a hard place. Forced, automatic updates are extremely irritating. But, without them, the vast majority of Windows users would never update anything. Never. Windows would have a much worse reputation for security because tens of millions of users would be getting regularly owned by hacks that were patched 8 years ago.
Obviously people are bitching like mad about this. Some of the most vocal seem to resent every change in Windows since XP SP2.
People are also bitching about telemetry, even though both the success of new upgrades depends on it, and even though all this anonymous data is actually driving Windows 10's development (in the same way that it drives Gmail, Facebook etc).
I guess it's a fact of life that if you have 1.5 billion users, then the odd hundred million or so will find something to bitch about, whatever Microsoft does....
> Indeed, Windows 10 is "Windows as a Service"
Purchasing options include (though are not limited) methods comparable to previous Win versions, and it runs on hardware I own and am sitting in front of. The aaS appellation is often needlessly overloaded, I find.
> which does exactly that: it provides continuous mostly-small
> updates, so there's never another "big bang" update. Also,
> these free updates mean never having to pay for a big one.
Or something like that.
> Some of the most vocal seem to resent every change in
> Windows since XP SP2.
> People are also bitching about telemetry, even though
> both the success of new upgrades depends on it, and
> even though all this anonymous data is actually driving
> Windows 10's development (in the same way that it drives
> Gmail, Facebook etc).
And, really, it should not be funding / driving development the same way some service providers acquire personal data and then market it on your behalf.
The long-term idea is to have Windows delivered as a service like, say, a Chromebook. Or Gmail.
> you mention specifically SP2 - so obviously a part of a previous 'continuous mostly small update' process
Except it wasn't. SP2 involved a massive rewrite and was a significant upgrade. It could almost have been shipped as a new version of the OS, though it would have been somewhat unfair to charge for delivering what XP buyers should have had in the first place.
Anyway, XP SP2 was and still is worse than Vista SP1 or Windows 7 in all sorts of important ways. Sure, people could still use it (some are), but you could say the same about DOS 3.3. It just depends how many years of innovation and improvement you want to do without.
> And if an operating system's success depends on knowing where I am, it's doing something wrong (all my other operating systems, current, and historic, have been successfully used by me without access to these data).
It's one of the things that today's internet-aware mobile operating systems like to know. It's obviously more important when Windows 10 is running on a phone or a small tablet. It's generally not important on a desktop, but almost the whole web is using geolocation and cookies to track your location anyway, whether you like it or not.
> And, really, it should not be funding / driving development the same way some service providers acquire personal data and then market it on your behalf.
Location isn't driving development, but anonymized telemetry is. Indeed, it has done for some time, even if it was just feedback from Windows Update, or the rises/falls of popularity of certain software.
It has nothing to do with "marketing personal data". In fact, unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't even sell ads against the contents of your online emails.
> The long-term idea is to have Windows delivered as a
> service like, say, a Chromebook. Or Gmail.
Okay, I think you're conflating service with rolling updates.
> Except it wasn't. SP2 involved a massive rewrite and was a
> significant upgrade. It could almost have been shipped as a
> new version of the OS, though it would have been somewhat
> unfair to charge for delivering what XP buyers should have
> had in the first place.
I know the improvements exist (I've been sys-admining on/off since the early 1990's) but _for most people_ the functionality they had since, say, XP (or perhaps even earlier) is pretty much what they are using now. Web mostly, some office document manipulation, occasional printing, games.
> Sure, people could still use it [XP] (some are), but you
> could say the same about DOS 3.3. It just depends how
> many years of innovation and improvement you want to do
> without.
On the other hand I know LOTS of people still using XP. Government agencies and large commercials, mostly, but both are typically cited as the more important consumer demographic for Microsoft operating system.
(Plus pretty much every ATM on the planet, IIRC.)
> It's one of the things that today's internet-aware
> mobile operating systems like to know. It's obviously
> more important when Windows 10 is running on a phone
> or a small tablet. It's generally not important on a
> desktop, but almost the whole web is using geolocation
> and cookies to track your location anyway, whether you
> like it or not.
The 'whether I like it or not' ... is also not a good way of convincing someone of the merits of gratuitous change. : )
Or maybe you are? ;-)
> My point is that if you ask someone using Win7 or Win8 today what the advantages of that OS is over, say, Vista or XP, they probably can't provide any. Or, from a different angle, if they can think of anything that they can do on their current platforms that they couldn't do on the previous one.
I don't really see the point of your point. You might as well say that if you only need to drive half a mile to the shops, then a Model T Ford would do the job. True, but not every Windows user is stuck in the past.
Later versions of Windows handle memory and resources better, so they are smoother in operation, don't need frequent reboots etc, and they're also more secure. The time savings alone are more than enough to cover the cost of upgrading.
UEFI machines also boot and resume much quicker, which most people would notice.
There's a whole class of new lightweight sandboxed apps. There's a whole new Windows Store. There's better voice and handwriting recognition. There's massively better stylus support, which is being exploited in things like the Surface Pro.
> Plus pretty much every ATM on the planet, IIRC.
But not the desktop version....
> My desktop, as you observe, is not a mobile operating system.
Sure, but desktops are not exactly at the cutting edge in a world that is going mobile.
The point of Windows 10 is that it's a converged operating system that runs on mobile phones, tablets, and games consoles, with "universal apps" that are adaptable to all three platforms. Windows 10 will also run on everything from USB sticks to high-end workstations.
> And I have been particularly happy with my OS not knowing where I live for a long time
Exactly how does Windows 10 know where you live more than XP knew where you lived?
> the new version has superior capabilities for tracking you isn't compelling (for most people, once you explain it to them).
The tracking isn't any different from what was already in Windows 8/8.1 except for Cortana, which can be turned off. (And is turned off by default.)
It's not something a sensible person would worry about unless they've stopped using a smartphone and already take extensive anti-tracking measures while on the web. Microsoft is only doing a small fraction of the tracking that's done by Google and Google Android.
Oh, you should also stop using bank cards, and loyalty cards, and avoid shops because they have CCTV cameras. And you can't own or drive a car because of numberplate recognition. This is the serious stuff. Even then, you'll probably be tracked by the US government, regardless of whether or not you live in the USA....
>now system startup is delayed half an hour or more to configure a new batch of patches.
The default is that there is no configuration. The OS downloads the patches by default, installs them, then waits for the user to restart the computer to finalize things. The user can simply not restart the computer if they are in a hurry.
A small learning curve of "reset before turning off for the night on Tuesdays" alleviates that problem and I feel Microsoft made that trade off for user security with their general user (read: non-tech savvy people) as the primary users.
Personally I have automatic updates turned off and vet which patches get installed. But I'm more involved than the typical Windows users. I'd use a Linux distro if I could find suitable replacements for certain programs I rely on for my workflow.
> A small learning curve of "reset before turning off for the night on Tuesdays" alleviates that problem...
No. The problem remains. This just time-shifts the problem.
In recent memory, I've had two Patch Tuesdays that sent Windows into a 5+ deep post-boot-but-pre-login reboot loop while Windows tried to figure out how to apply several patches that would just not apply. (Spoiler alert: It never figured out how, but just -eventually- gave up.)
It doesn't matter what technical decisions and constraints lead to this post-boot-but-pre-login configuration process being the way things work, it's still awful.
Every Linux distro I use seems to have figured out how to apply and configure updates before you reboot a system, rather than during the next boot cycle.
The time was the problem in the example, so time-shifting is a legitimate fix to the problem here. "In a rush for work, turn on computer, 30 minutes of updates." was the problem.
>Every Linux distro I use seems to have figured out how to apply and configure updates before you reboot a system, rather than during the next boot cycle.
There are tradeoffs for doing things that way. Such as when everything eats shit and you regret updating.
For example:
pacman -Syu
Bad updates are bad updates, regardless of whether you do the configuration after a reboot (rendering the computer useless while you configure), or while the system is still running.
Not that it matters, but I've had far more bad updates on my Windows systems than I have on any of my Linux systems. :)
> ...time-shifting is a legitimate fix to the problem here.
It's not a fix. It's a band-aid that fails to address the root of the problem.
The trust in MS for being capable and responsible for handling the updates is broken.
Say I just woke up, and I'm in a rush to boot up my computer, print out a paper, and get out the door. But--surprise! Windows Update ran in the background the night before, and now system startup is delayed half an hour or more to configure a new batch of patches.
On the one hand, from a security standpoint, I appreciate that the default is to keep users' systems up-to-date. On the other, it seems that Microsoft pushes this with little regard for their users' time or comfort.