Forced updates have destroyed the good feelings I had about Windows 10 and made it likely my next computer won't be Windows. Specifically, it's the unexpected reboot that infuriates me. I was running a long simulation overnight and in the morning my computer had rebooted and greets me with "Hi. We've got some new features to get excited about." Spontaneous reboots are NOT OK.

Or you have a fullscreen program open, say a video game or a movie. And bam. Computer just shuts down without warning. What the heck? Installing Updates. :(

Or a world where a forced update breaks my parents' computer that was working perfectly fine before.

Without them, your parents' computer would just be insecure, instead. Unfortunately, keeping things static doesn't work so well with internet connected devices.

It would be nice if things didn't break with updates, though.

I will backpedal a bit and say though: it is never OK to arbitrarily reboot a system. Never. I'll also say that I would not use windows 10 for anything important.

The idea behind their update system is generally sound, but their execution is not good.

As opposed to a world full of legacy systems with security holes that are part of botnets.

Applying security updates by default would solve that problem just as well. From the user's point of view, there is no good reason to force updates against a user's explicit decision, and there is no good reason to push non-security/stability updates even by default.

The only time forcing all updates in that way makes a difference is when Microsoft wants to override a user's deliberate preference not to have their system changed in that way. This cannot possibly be in the user's interest, only Microsoft's.

Windows 8 was released in late 2012.

What can't be fixed by security updates, as opposed to OS upgrade?

Forced updates of minor versions, sure. Upgrading the OS to a whole new major version, breaking lots of things in the process is on a new level.

I actually really dislike forced updates. In theory they could be fantastic as you will always be up to date on security and any additional features you'd get. However in practice they seem awful as they often break your settings, add additional ads/restrictions, introduce bugs, don't apply correctly, and happen at the worst time.

Forced updates are not acceptable. Whose computer is it, anyway? I don't care how useful you think it would be, if you try to force me to update I'm simply not going to use your software. No. My computer, my choice.

Forced browser updates are one thing, but forced upgrading of the OS?

Yuck.

Yeah doing things without the user's permission is great. I just love it when my computer does a software breaking update for me.

Microsoft: Enjoy the safety (and the ads), because you have no choice.

Yeah, the forced upgrade isn't bad. The low quality of the new version is bad.