No!
I think we, the software industry, are very irresponsible when it comes to __planned obsolescence__ [1]. Computers from 10 years ago are very capable of doing most things common users want to do nowadays. However, many modern operating systems and applications make these computers unusable.
We are forcing users to upgrade software, and because of all the layers of cruft accumulated in this software, they are then forced to upgrade their hardware too. This just adds to a spiral of consumerism that is going to destroy our planet.
Like most of us, I like developing with the latest high level fancy cutting edge stack; but we have to remember that it's not the society's duty to empower the tech industry but the other way around. It is our role to help people solve people's their problems, and in ways that are effective socially and ecologically and does not create waste. This also means, making sure that hardware does not become obsolete because of our carelessness, lazyness or selfabsorpion as software makers.
Also, alternatives do exist.
I know someone in Cordoba (Spain) that recently started a __slow computing__ cooperative, inspired by this article [2]. His goal is to bring tech experts and ordinary people together to build custom solutions adapted to their needs. They have users go to them and do an interview with them. Then, they make a GNU/Linux and libre software installation for them, often reusing old hardware, adapted to their personal needs, and do the teaching necessary. I find this a very interesting approach, that solves the security problem both by installing updated software that does not create hardware obsolescence, and educating users so they regain control of their machines.
There is no valid excuse for Microsoft here. Your argument is the perfect example of how proprietary software puts end users as servants to the interest of owners of the proprietary code that control their machines.
[1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Planned_obsolescence [2] https://newrepublic.com/article/121832/pleasure-do-it-yourse...
Even in a slow computing initiative, outside invention will continue. Take ASLR, DEP, and other memory corruption mitigations. The architects of the legacy, fixed-address systems didn't expect the large amount of vulnerability due to buffer overflows in programs that handle external input. The authors of these programs failed to write tests that exercised some edge cases of malformed input. While long/malformed input unit tests might seem germane today, they weren't then.
Custom software initiatives make sense for people who have a high aptitude and the time to undertake them. This use case doesn't fit the vast majority of people who use computers.
While Microsoft certainly deserved the $10k judgement against them, software authors have the duty to help mitigate past imperfections, errors, and lack of foresight in their software. Authors of free and proprietary software share this responsibility.
The OS being proprietary is an important issue. With libre software, lightweight forks that still work in old hardware can be maintained. Also, the software stack can be customized. Note that it's not security patches what makes software slow, but the zillions of layers of indexers, UI frameworks written in three layers of dynamic languages, etc that are included in a desktop environment. A modern GNU/Linux distribution function decently on old hardware as soon as you swap the desktop environment. With either you upgrade to a 20GB OS with a desktop environment that requrires 2 gigs of ram and so on, or you are stuck with an unsupported Windows XP.
> Custom software initiatives make sense for people who have a high aptitude and the time to undertake them. This use case doesn't fit the vast majority of people who use computers.
The average american watches 4 hours of TV a day [1] and they spends more time on Facebook than taking care of their pets [2] and takes weeks of training in order to get a driving license. I think the average person has the time to spend one or two days, when they upgrade their computer, pairing with a technician to get to understand the software they have and how it works and how to protect themselves. It's a matter of priorities. Sadly, for a lot of the software industry, an empowered userbase is not in their best economic interest.
[1] https://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-23/americans-...
http://tianguis.cordoba.cc/que-hacemos/soberania-tecnologica...
There is no such thing as planned obsolescence when it comes to software. "Throwing away" software creates no pollution and Windows 10 runs on basically anything Windows 7 ran on.
>There is no valid excuse for Microsoft here.
There is no valid blame for Microsoft here. Windows 10 will run just fine on 10 year old hardware, as long as the device drivers are compatible.
If a machine is running, say, windows xp, and it does in a manner that satisfies the owner's need, then it should be able to keep running forever in the same manner, provided that hardware lasts and/or is replaced with adequate spares, not necessarily anything newer.
It's ok if that computer becomes incompatible with newer software because of that.
It's ok if that computer becomes incompatible with newer outside/network services because of that.
It's not ok if that computer stops being able to execute exactly the same process that it could do 10 years ago.
A company I used to work for in 2012 had a Windows 3.11 workstation running some ancient software to support an auxiliary system. Many banks run COBOL on mainframes and haven't changed anything since the 70s.
I'm really confused as to the argument here. If you never update your software and don't expect to browse the Internet, old software works exactly like it did in the past. How do you expect it would change?
This is not acceptable behavior - I can understand automatic upgrades that are fully backwards compatible, e.g. a security patch; but upgrade to windows 10 isn't like that.
Because foo pro-audio, or bar cnc-board didn't want to update their drivers, or for that matter, more often than not, had a weird installer that simply didn't follow proper practices, doesn't work in the new version of Windows isn't MS' fault.
Also, users will not understand this, and will, rightly, blame Microsoft.
If the UI significantly changes, for instance, there will be a time investment needed to re-learn what you need to get work done. (This was a particularly nasty issue for Windows 8, not quite as bad for 10 but there are a few changes for sure.)
If the upgrade fails in any way, there may be significant time spent getting the computer back on-line. Sometimes this takes a very long time.
Software upgrades may actually introduce bugs. In the worst case scenario, some OS software upgrades have actually "bricked" devices (see: Apple iOS 9.3.2). These further impact productivity / take time to work around.
Some very old legacy programs may not work at all. It takes time to implement a new solution for the problem in a new tool. (This isn't a big issue for 7 to 10 from what I've heard, but you do hear this about other upgrades in the past.)
This cost in time is not nothing. If there is no real net benefit, it could end up being a big waste.
Even if people want to upgrade, IMHO the way Microsoft is pushing out the upgrade is quite bad. Usually in the enterprise world, IT departments tend to test new OS releases (and even patch updates) to make sure everything works, before rolling out the updates in the wild. They don't want a patch to break some mission critical software. The cost of that could be huge in some cases.
Even for Windows 7 retail to Windows 10 retail, I could see many people preferring to be cautious. Perhaps they are wanting to wait for a slightly more stable OS (usually the first release of a Windows version is a bit buggy). Some people also might want to test things out first, to make sure there are no problems. Of course there's those that don't want to update because change bad, but I don't think that's all cases.
Furthermore, a fair bit of Windows retail I'm sure is businesses - these tend to be even more cautious than overall consumers. A software update going wrong could cost them money, after all, and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I honestly don't think the "rolling updates" model being pushed works for enterprise... even small ones.
If the machine is on the Internet, it needs security updates
This isn't a proprietary vs. open source thing, this is a "level of effort" thing. Microsoft right now, if they discover a security bug, has to create a patch for:
* Windows XP SP2 (thanks to all those "extended support" buyers; the US Navy has purchased support through June 8, 2017, they are not the only ones)
* Windows Vista (yup; also "extended support" for another year)
* Windows 7
* Windows 8
* Windows 8.1
* Windows 10
Why does that matter?
* It requires (up to) 6 times the development time to develop a fix for the bug
* It requires 6 times the QA time
* It makes Microsoft far less responsive to bug reports because of the time required to come up with a fix
* It makes Microsoft set the bar higher on what bugs are "fixable" because of the cost of coming up with a fix
It makes life difficult for everybody, and it wastes a ton of time Microsoft could instead be spending making their product better instead of constantly digging-around in 17-year-old code.
Let's say you're Ubuntu, you're all open source-y and have that warm fuzzy feeling. You want people to use their 10 year old OS installs, no problem. Let's be generous and only include the long-term support versions, because I want to save on typing:
* Dapper Drake
* Hardy Heron
* Lucid Lynx
* Precise Pangolin
* Trusty Tahr
* Xenial Xerus
That's also six versions you have to update every time a security fix comes in. (Potentially) 6 times the code to create the fix, definitely 6 times the QA time, etc. All the same problems Microsoft has, but this time in your open source dreamland.
That's a huge, huge, waste of effort that could go towards actually making the OS better.
If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines inoperable.
Windows 7 will become the next XP, and Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves.
The Ribbon interface they introduced in Office back in 2007 was a huge improvement over the mess of dialogs, toolbars and menus they had before by every metric. People still bitch about it, almost a decade later. The people who bitch about it benefit as much as everybody else from the increased usability, but that doesn't stop the bitching.
And it's not just Microsoft. People bitched at Firefox when they moved the menu into the tabs. People bitched at Chrome when it removed "http" from the URL bar (I just noticed it seems to have come back at some point), people bitch about everything all the time. Not because they genuinely didn't like it, or because it makes their life more difficult, but because they simply hate change.
The only way to keep these people happy is to change nothing, ever. Is that really what you want? It's not what I want.
You brought up Office's ribbon. Sure, it was a "look&feel benefit", but it also significantly hurt discoverability and reduced the number of features available. Nowadays I can't find the more advanced stuff I know that worked in Excel and Word in the past. Is it just a discoverability problem, or did Microsoft go with that stupid new trend of dumbing down software to the lowest common denominator? I don't know, but the interface doesn't allow me to find out.
People bitched at Chrome because removing "http" was seen as a first step of removing the address bar altogether, dumbing down both the browser and peoples' perception of the Internet. The less you demand from your users, the dumber they get. Sure, it may be good for the quarterly sales report, but it's disastrous for the future of technology.
That is simply not true.
In fact, the major impetus for creating the Ribbon was the Office team dealing with the constant feature requests for features they'd already implemented, but users couldn't find how to activate/use.
> and reduced the number of features available.
Also untrue, unless you're going to say things like "being able to drag a menu off the menu bar and hover around like a toolbar" are a "feature".
Or put another way, it did reduce configurability, but the number of actual useful features was not reduced.
> Is it just a discoverability problem, or did Microsoft go with that stupid new trend of dumbing down software to the lowest common denominator?
You should know I mentally translate the phrase "dumb down" to, "I don't like this because of a knee-jerk but I've never bothered to think about it long enough to express why".
> The less you demand from your users, the dumber they get.
Seriously?
How about: the fewer obstacles you put in front of your users, the more useful work they can get done.
I think that the ribbon design itself actually helped discoverability, at the expense of familiarity for long-term users of the old interface (OTOH, I think that simultaneously with the introduction of the ribbon, they also made it so a lot of options that previously were on the UI required customization to actually have them surfaced at all -- which they also, IIRC, did in some previous versions without changing the UI structure -- and, IIRC again, they reversed some of the most egregious of those in 2010.)
The solution isn't "change nothing". Instead, you involve the people that use the old (current) version in the process, keep them informed, and get some kind of buy-in. Most importantly, you respect that the user has their own schedule and needs with a migration path that allows the user to make the transition at their own pace.
What you don't do is surprise users at random times, revoke any agency they had, and force changes on them without any consideration fo the user's situation.
And everyone frames this upgrade tactic like it's good for the user. In reality, this is good for MS, and it happens to have some benefits for the user. Lets quit acting like MS is being altruistic here.
Can people stop spreading this meme? Worst case, anonymized telemetry is hardly spyware.
> Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user
It is, regular people around me love it.
> and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user.
I (and many) do, if only because it is immensely better than sticking to Win7 whose non-extended support ends next year or something.
> Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves
MS made a couple missteps, but people just love to blow whatever MS does way out of proportion (the same way they do for Apple, only for other points) so instead of having reasonable discourse, all we have is a pile of knee-jerk reactions (not even flamewars!)
We get it, MS is bad, Apple is bad, Google is bad bad bad. Oh nasty corps. Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
EDIT: not even a dozen seconds and downvotes are pouring in. Is it still possible to have some reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
How about stopping the meme that everyone should accept spyware?
> anonymized telemetry is hardly spyware
Without the explicit informed consent - which means opt-IN and an accurate and full manifest of what is included - then "telemetry" is spyware, by definition.
As for making the data "anonymous", have you seen the specifics of how that works? When Google claimed they made the IP addresses in GA anonymous they only masked the lowest 8-bits. Uniqueness (and the ASN) was completely recoverable.
The only way to make "telemetry" anonymous is to cook it so much that it isn't useful anymore. If you doubt this, you don't understand how easily modern methods can find correlations between data sets. But that's only about the data inside the packet. Just logging arrival times of packets that have any kind of common identifier can build a detailed picture of someone's pattern-of-life. Just because think it's ok to spy on users doesn't mean you get to make that decision for everybody else.
> regular people around me love it.
So what? It's a fallacy to extrapolate that opinion onto other people.
> support ends next year
Which means support is still available.
> Oh nasty corps.
Willfully misrepresenting the people that criticize Microsoft (et al) is never a good way to argue.
> Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
Insults like this are why you got downvoted.
> reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
see: stones, glass houses
>We get it, MS is bad, Apple is bad, Google is bad bad bad. Oh nasty corps. Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
>EDIT: not even a dozen seconds and downvotes are pouring in. Is it still possible to have some reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
Haha yeah I wonder why people have a problem with your comment?!???!?!?!?!? You're just so reasonable here!
(I didn't downvote you but I think you are very wrong).
To me the big problem with Windows 10 is that it's simply very buggy.
This is more about taking control away from users than anything else.
If Toyota feels so embarrassed by the fact that you are driving your Corolla that they want to spend some money trying to convince you to replace it, they can certainly make you a trade-in offer. But maybe you like your Corolla, or you don't feel like dealing with all the paperwork; for whatever reason, you decline the offer. Does Toyota get to come haul your car away and give you a new one regardless? Hell fucking no. It's your car.
If Microsoft wants people to stop using XP they have every right to try to tempt those XP users with a better offer, but some people just won't want to, and that is their right. Their computer, their choice.
A better :caranalogy: would be whether, as emissions standards come in, you lose the ability to drive your old car unless you upgrade it. Except even then, Toyota doesn't pay for the new ECU instead of your carburetor, but you expect MS to keep maintaining an outdated seucrity model.
Moreover, if you don't upgrade it you DO get forced off the roads, namely by legislation prohibiting its registration.
Depends on where you live. In Germany TÜV has to regularly check your car for complying with street regulations, and if it doesn't pass, you don't get to drive it.
The only way to keep it is to keep it of the roads, and there's a nice :caranalogy: to keeping your insecure-via-age OS by keeping it offline.
At some point Microsoft has to make breaking changes to Windows XP. Simple service packs won't suffice. Airbags, three point seatbelts, electronic fuel injection, variable valve timing, these are all modern conveniences that people expect in a car these days. Things that are very hard to retrofit into an old car without redesigning the platform at a core level. Sure, a 2016 and a 1992 model are still Corollas but it's hard to argue that Toyota should still be selling the 1992 model retrofitted to include all of our modern needs.
The argument here is "Microsoft should still be patching Windows XP." Should Toyota keep retrofitting modern safety features into their old car?
You'll probably respond by saying that Microsoft is only doing what I authorized them to do on page 34, paragraph 8(c) of the EULA. At which point the only response I can offer is, "Fool me once, shame on me."
I'm not arguing that Microsoft should be selling 1992 Corollas retrofitted with 2016-tech-level features; I'm arguing that it's the owner of the '92 Corolla who gets to decide whether, when, and how it should be upgraded or replaced. Toyota doesn't get to make that choice just because they manufactured the car; the owner of the car gets to make that choice. That's what ownership means.
If I own the computer, I get to decide what software I'm going to install on it, and that means I get to decide whether, when, and how to update it. Neither Microsoft nor any other OS maker gets to make that decision, because they do not own the computer in question.
edit: If they had a recall/replacement on the car because it was unsafe for other drivers on the road, people would probably agree as well.
Microsoft is making an offer that most non-technical users can't refuse. That's not ethical. The ends don't justify the means.
They simply decided that it was time to end support for regular customers and moved on.
They also removed most of the XP patches in the Microsoft Download Center a few months ago. I don't understand why they had all of them there for two years after support ended and suddenly they were gone without notice. Microsoft used to be more friendly, at least you could get their old files from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/. Not anymore. BTW, this helped in my decision to start migration from their ecosystem after 20 years of Registry tweaking.
How does Apple avoid "XP situations" without shoving system updates down users' throats? New versions of iOS typically achieve >80% adoption rates.
People just don't bitch about Apple because Apple is "cool" and Microsoft is "lame". I guess.
And Apple's raking-in of massive amounts of $$$ shows that it's exactly what people want. So it should be absolutely no surprise that Microsoft's following their lead.
We have lost sight of the fact that software, operating systems included, is supposed to serve the consumer. Users choose to upgrade because there is a better version available. Developers demanding that users upgrade because, well, gosh, that's just what you do, is backwards.
Microsoft's decision to not charge for the Win10 update was a step in the right direction, which they promptly reversed by nagging and abrupt, involuntary updates.
Or maybe you were referring to the free updates?
Also, all Windows releases for the indefinite future will be named Windows 10.
I think Microsoft went "too far" but I also agree that we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7. Effectively having 20%+ of the market on a super old OS holding back the industry and less secure.
Microsoft claim they're planning to avoid this in the future by no longer releasing named new OS's, and instead just update Windows 10 for "free" forever. Basically the same as Apple's current model with MacOS.
I guess how you fall on this topic is answered by the question: "Do the ends justify the means?"