Customers petition to demand changes to Windows 10 update practices

pparks1 said:

@Coke Robot: I take my time with cell phone updates too. I usually wait at least 1 month before installing a big update so I have time to read the blogs and forums first.

My MacBookPro offered the "el capitain" update at start of October, but I haven't opted to install that yet either.

As far as Windows Update goes, I would like the ability to check a box to skip an update and I would really love to see a box that says x number of updates at 1,819MB. Right now, I dont know if its 5MB or 5GB.

At this point using Windows Phone seeing how Microsoft is seemingly trying to avert pulling another Windows Longhorn, I may possibly before loading 10 on my main telephone. I've been burned more times than I can remember on my tester phone and my old 920 trying to install 10 it's frustrating.

Also, Capitan is quite meh. I honestly believe apple took some UI/UX ideas Microsoft sent to the Recycle Bin but they were all like, "No wait! We'll take 'em!" Window snap is tedious at best, clicking a little tiny green button and THEN snapping the window just defeats the purpose for me. There's a very Windows 10-esque window select preview once you do snap it. Why apple decided to make two snapped windows into a virtual desktop is beyond me. Microsoft didn't get away with that in 8 and 8.1 and yet apple is using the EXACT same concept.

I'd like to see details come back to updates. Microsoft's recent stance of no changelog or no info seems sketchy.

Coke Robot said:

As much as I think everyone should mitigate to Windows 10 before the free year is over,

Or at least do a drive image with your favorite backup utility, upgrade it to 10 to get the "digital entitlement" registered for your PC, then go back to your previous version using the Windows option (which often fails, which is why you have the backup). I presume this going-back won't cancel the digital entitlement. I sure hope not.

I can see the writing on the wall, as the end of extended support for 7 looms large, even if it is five years away. If going back does not cancel the digital entitlement, that will give MS five more years to get 10 in shape before I really have to give serious consideration to leaving 7. That's why I am here on this forum-- I want to be aware of the goings-on with 10, because 7 is not going to be supported forever. I want to like 10-- MS just needs to give me a reason.

Although what amuses me is that people will dive head first into a new smartphone OS update on day one, the MOST vital computing device used today,

Not me. I don't have a smart phone. I've never even seen one up close, and I don't plan to.

But when it comes to Windows, lock the doors, shut the windows, disconnect the internet, all hell as broken loose. A free upgrade that has a chockfull of great new features if you're coming from 7,

Just DX12. Nothing else that has changed in 10 strikes me as a great new feature. Native USB 3.0 is nice, but not a big deal; USB 3.0 works great with 7 with the appropriate drivers. I know the kernel is more efficient, so they say, but my PC is quick enough to where I don't even notice a difference. I have no use for Cortana or anything "app," but I do for Windows Media Player, which isn't there. I don't care about touch screen stuff, as I would not even be using it if I had a touch monitor now. I have no use for OneDrive or any "cloud" stuff.

10 may be better than 8 (which I never tried), but It's still a jarring mixture of what I would call native Windows stuff and the ugly Universal stuff... like Microsoft threw "app" versions of OS dialogs in just to prove the point that it was all one, big, happy family now. It's so... ugly, not to mention unnecessary.

(as if Windows is the first platform to use user data without the user's knowledge)

So it is only bad if using the first OS to spy on people? That doesn't make any sense. If it was bad the first time, it's bad every other time too.

and the updates are only automatic in 10 without being able to be changed (as if more than 12 people even change that function, only pirates do).

Really? There seem to be more than 12 people that signed the petition at change.org. Do you think all the people complaining about this are really pirates? I understand granny or grampa just letting MS change their computer at will, but I would have presumed anyone that was tech savvy at all would be approving or rejecting each (non-security) addon manually. To do otherwise would be to trust Microsoft to act in the user's interest rather than their own. The folly of that, if not already evident by now, was certainly illustrated with the unwanted downloads of Windows 10 and the telemetry and "GWX" nag updates.

And then there's the group that "just don't need it." Ok, that's understandable. Your grandparents just got used to 8.1,

If by "grandparents" you mean me, and by "8.1" you mean 7, and by "used to" you mean "finished tweaking to make it as much like Windows 2000 or Windows XP Classic as possible," then yes. I only migrated to 7 less than 2 years ago. It was on a holiday sale at Fry's and I wanted to migrate to 64-bit, so I bit the bullet and did it. Otherwise, I don't think I would have upgraded-- I'd still be on XP, security issues notwithstanding. My older laptop (too old to run something newer, as far as Windows goes) has been running fine with the ReadyPOS updates.

But even still, if those people that don't need it because they just email and browse the interwebs, older software isn't going to cut it down the road.

Only because Microsoft stops updating it. XP would still cut it just fine if they had kept updating it with only the necessary new features and security updates instead of putting new stuff in new Windows versions every few years. Even now, six years out of mainstream support, it still runs nearly everything Windows. Other than the security risk, which is not because of XP being inherently inferior, but because MS has simply stopped offering updates for it, XP is still a very usable OS even today.

We don't need another Windows Xp.

You mean another OS that is so stable, usable, intuitive, and popular that people don't want to give it up, even for something new and shiny? Isn't that exactly what we need?

This is just hilarious, as if they will change it. I am all for the forced updates aside from the drivers. Most of the time its not a bad update its due to the person not restarting their machine in months or they need a chkdsk really bad.

Mansome said:

I am all for the forced updates aside from the drivers.

That's Great, I hope you enjoy things like this latest update. If this one didn't get you yours will come sometime in the future.

I tried W-10 for a full 30 days then dumped it and reverted back to 8.1 where I at least have some control over updates and I will remain with 8.1 till the bitter end, 2023 is a long way off.

Mansome said:

This is just hilarious

I totally agree with that part of your comment. I am having a great time witnessing this Threshold2 update debacle.

Although I really do sympathize with those users who are not very computer literate, they have no idea what they are up against.

The problem with skipping updates is that each new update builds on the total body of preceding updates. Each new update will have been tested on the completely updated code. They simply can't test it on the code minus whatever updates you or Fred Blogs have decided to miss. That's why updates are now Cumulative; they will add the latest update and whatever previous updates are missing.

I realise that this is sad news for those who have made a living out of advising people on what updates to install and what to miss out on, but it's progress for most people. Most people don't understand the minutiae of update details, and, as I said at the top, skipping updates may make a future update fail.

Bob Frost

bobfrost said:

The problem with skipping updates is that each new update builds on the total body of preceding updates. Each new update will have been tested on the completely updated code. They simply can't test it on the code minus whatever updates you or Fred Blogs have decided to miss. That's why updates are now Cumulative; they will add the latest update and whatever previous updates are missing.

Yes, that is certainly true. Even so, we've managed to muddle through for 15 years or more like this; what has suddenly changed to make that paradigm unworkable? Allowing the owners of computers to decide what is done to their own machines is, in fact, the industry standard, is it not? I'm sorry if that makes it harder on Microsoft's QA team, but the bottom line is that these are our computers, not Microsoft's, and Microsoft has already shown they can't be trusted not to abuse the update process (once again referring to "GWX" and unwanted downloads of Windows 10).

To relieve their own burden of more difficult troubleshooting, all Microsoft would have to do for their own tech support team would be to let customers know that their Windows installation has to be fully updated in order for them to make use of Microsoft technical support (unless actually getting those updates is the problem). Their automated troubleshooters could easily require this as a first step.

Beyond that, it's not Microsoft's job to protect people from being what they consider to be stupid. Not installing the latest updates is, of course, far from being the only way to get a PC messed up; I would hazard a guess that people falling for social engineering scams to get them to willingly execute malware probably is the biggest. To take the impulse to reduce user choice in order to promote stability to its logical end would be to make Windows much like iOS, where you can only do a very limited, OS-vendor-approved number of things, in order to keep it "just working." I have no doubt that it is probably pretty hard to get an iOS device truly messed up without jailbreaking it, but if I wanted that level of babysitting to keep me safe, I certainly know where to find it. Of course, iOS is not a desktop OS, and I have not heard any reports that OSX suffer from the "walled garden" effect (I have no first-hand experience with it), but the comparison still stands.

The bottom line is that the kinds of people who would turn off auto updates (tech savvy people who want to have fine-grained control over their own computers) are not going to give up and let MS do as they wish. People know they can simply set the Windows Update service to Disabled, and the auto updates will not happen. That includes the updates they would almost certainly have approved-- the security updates. Is getting none of the updates better than getting just most of them? Or how about keeping people using previous versions that do still give them this choice; is that better than letting them migrate to 10 and continuing to be able to choose? Look how much difficulty MS has had getting people off of XP, and that's when there is another perceived "good" version available for people to migrate to (7, of course). How will it be trying to get people away from 7 and into 10 if there is no perceived "good" version anymore?

I've been screening updates since the first time they were available (the details of when that was escape me, but it was back in the 9x days), and I do end up approving nearly all of the "recommended" updates and a good number of the "optional" ones, and certainly all of the "critical" ones. It's just the telemetry, the "GWX" adware, the unwanted 4GB downloads and that sort of thing that I refuse. I never saw the Windows 10 adware, because I never allowed those updates to install. I scrutinize everything that gets installed on my system; I am a little surprised that there are techie type people who don't do this with updates.

Microsoft abused the users' trust when they used their updating system to send out adware, and I don't doubt they would do that again, especially given that Windows 10 has advertising baked in like no previous version (ironically, the one that comes the closest, as far as I remember, is the beloved Windows XP and its MSN stuff), which kind of shows what Microsoft is thinking. The Action Center greeted me with an offer to buy Microsoft Office right from day one when I tried 10, and the Threshold 2 patch brings advertising to the Start Menu, as I have read. Then there's OneDrive in the navigation pane and systray when I have not even set up a Microsoft account (why not add them if/when I actually sign up for OneDrive, unless they're meant to be constant reminders that it is available, like a billboard by a highway?), and the Xbox app that (as I understand) can't be uninstalled by normal means, even though I will never have an Xbox. Even the integration of mobile "apps" into an OS installed on a desktop (including the bits of the OS that are "universal" instead of regular/native Windows, like the personalization menu, the settings menu [which we've been told will eventually engulf the Control Panel], Groove music, etc.,) are efforts to get people accustomed to/invested in the "ecosystem" so they will later choose to buy Microsoft tablets and (eventually) phones.

Windows 10 seems like the "free" version of software that is advertising supported, only there is usually a paid version that removes the ads (and 10 is not free... it's a free upgrade for some users, with limitations, of course). Can we have a paid upgrade version (which would also be the non-upgrade, full price version) that does away with all of that stuff I mentioned (including all of the hideous Universal bits of the OS on devices that are not convertible to a tablet)? That would make Windows 10 very much more appealing. The ad-supported 10 could then be a lower-cost boxed option (like the starter editions) with the ability to upgrade from within itself. (I say that tongue-in-cheek; I don't expect them to do that, though it would be welcome.)

Perhaps the aftermarket will take care of this, so it will end up being a paid version that doesn't have that stuff... it's just that someone else will get the money. There'd be a huge market for it. A lot of people don't like the "jack of all trades" aspect of 10 (and 8); we'd much rather have an OS that is the "master of one," which would be the one we are using Windows on now.

At least they know that a different approach will be needed for next upgrade. Can't wait. You can actually repair all this without a clean install.