Why are you trying to excuse Microsoft's behavior here? Who could have predicted that Microsoft would have actually done what they did and forced the Windows 10 update on everyone?
I turned off Windows Update precisely because it tried to force and trick me into upgrading to Windows 10. This is their fault for making people distrust what Windows Update should be, and whoever made that decisions at Microsoft should get fired.
Microsoft is squarely to blame here. People would leave Windows update on if:
- it would not potentially brick their computer
- it would not install all kinds of spyware
- it would be a net benefit to the user
- it would not be used to further MS's business goals at the expense of the users
Telling people not to turn of Windows Update is putting the horse behind the cart: Tell Microsoft to start respecting their users, then tell people to turn on Windows update.
Forced updates for Windows 10 burned all the credibility Microsoft was slowly regaining. Whatever might be going on in there, they still have enough of the old strongarm bullying monopolist in their collective corporate character that their good works really cannot be trusted over the long term.
That's really not the reasoning. The real reasoning is: "You consented to allow us to automatically install software updates on your computer. Windows 10 is a software update, se we installed it automatically."
Basically, people want to trust Microsoft to install updates it thinks are good and necessary, and then they get mad when they disagree with MS about what's good and necessary.
If Microsoft hadn't burned a decade's worth of "leave auto-updates on to keep your system safe!" public goodwill by force-feeding WIN10 BS to a massive number of people who did not want it, it's highly likely that this update would have been nearly unconditionally applied.
The default attitude of most people I've interacted with regarding technology is apathy. If it works, they're happy and they leave it alone.
Do you really think that a significant number of non-tech people would have gone to the trouble of looking up how to turn off updates to their facebook/email/google machine if Microsoft hadn't caused a massive shitstorm with their forced update BS?
The vendor is entirely at fault for making stupid short-sighted decisions that caused users to lose trust in the update process. No amount of handwaving can change that fact.
With Windows 10 updates, they made everyone a sucker. Updates that can lead to unbootable systems, loss of data, and hardware failure. We've seen it all.
I can't help but think what would've happened if it were Microsoft that would have security problems of this scale all of the time while essentially blocking users from getting the updates to fix it. And then there's the manufacturers abandoning their hardware often directly after release.
The angry mob would probably bury them alive...
Sure, we can blame carriers, manufacturers and hardware suppliers for having their own policies, but this is the same for your average Windows laptop minus the carriers. Bundled themes and crapware from Sony, Lenovo or Dell never stopped Windows from updating.
These are pretty common complaints, servers, signs and many people get updates forced on them. Windows 10 was forced on many, many people. Just because you don't care doesn't mean lots of people haven't been burned.
Edit: After some thinking: Yes, i agree this is a dark pattern and MS needs to be held accountable to it accordingly. My only disagreement with the current direction of discourse is that people are not saying "MS manipulated me into an update", which is the truth, but "Windows updated on its own and there was nothing anyone could do", which isn't.
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They didn't change it, it was always that way. People only realized just now that it does that.
Also, please do take a look at the window people X out of and then are surprised about: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png It states clearly that it is going to happen, and when it is going happen, and how to cancel it. The only way a user would be surprised about that is if they didn't read the message in the first place.
And the reason why people were suggesting to turn off Windows Update was precisely because of malware payloads directly from Microsoft.
"Do you want to upgrade to Windows 10? Press the hidden button to cancel, otherwise upgrade commences." This is how malware works.... But published and pushed by MS's own channels. And his jab at people who say that turning off WU is similar to anti-vaxxers is completely inane and false - we know the damage Microsoft has done to user's computers.
In reality, I'd rather they upgrade to Linux. Those machines wouldn't get bit by this, unless you run the executable with WINE. But I blame MS for being spammy and spyware-y and malware-y, which encouraged users to turn off harassing and onerous updates.
I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy.
Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microsoft's own bone-headed moves in recent years to install bullshit that the user doesn't want.
I still sort of regret installing Windows 10 to this day because of the obnoxious Cortana bar it foisted upon my start menu that I can't get rid of. And yet not installing Windows 10 would've left me less secure with an OS hitting EOL for security updates much sooner.
Microsoft definitely shares some of the blame for this precisely because they have automatically "opted in" their users to stuff they don't want during past updates. Stop the bullshit, Microsoft.
> Please explain how one can permanently or even significantly delay a security update in Windows 10 Home and Professional?
The UI for granular control of updates in Windows 10 has been removed putting more in line with macOS, iOS, Android, etc. The features are still there and configurable in the registry though it's primarily intended for enterprise customers to leverage.
I think the scenario you describe where an individual actively monitors and selectively chooses which updates to install is pretty insignificant. One of the problems with Windows has been that users or software (e.g. AV, AntiMalware, etc) will disable the Windows Update Service or set it to manual and then neglect to update the system. This leaves the user vulnerable. The changes Microsoft has made are to benefit the majority and not to cater to the minority.
In Windows 10 the UI doesn't allow you to disable automatic updates, it only allows you to disable automatic reboots. If you are hell bent on disabling them however you can do it via registry changes or various tools that have been released. That being said it's generally a bad idea to do this.
> As far as privacy and data protection, here are some quotes from a recent article in pcadvisor.com:
None of your quotes are proof of spying, they're reactions to the EULA or default settings. Hell one of your quotes even says "felt". And they use such menacing terms as "data harvesting" to describe pretty routine behavior.
Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising
the free upgrade to Windows 10.
Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a
recommended update so users receiving critical security updates
were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto
their machines without their knowledge.
This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Windows, but we'll trick you into installing Windows 10.
Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the
user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right
hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download
Windows 10.
The previous trick didn't work on all of you, so we'll go on to change the default behavior of our dialog boxes in order to trick you into installing Windows 10.
By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage
data back to Microsoft, and the company claims most of it is to
“personalize” the software by feeding it to the OS assistant
called Cortana.
And while users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is
not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to
Microsoft’s servers.
This probably explains it all.
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Microsoft appears to have learnt a lot from LinkedIn [0].
I guess you missed the fact that this whole thread is about them forcing shit updates onto their users, even though they set their OS to not auto-update. Would you call that user-friendly?
I hope you'll notice the links in my comment, since they are pretty obvious. But then again you didn't notice the fucking article that started this thread, nor what the whole discussion is about.
I don't know why people here primary blame about Windows Update so much. Restart is sometimes pain but please update. Microsoft cares security. There are many other complains about Windows, like Win11 taskbar, ads, pushing Edge, Microsoft account, and so on
But they didn't. The user specifically allowed Microsoft to install software updates, at its discretion, on the user's computer. That's what they did, except this one was a really big update.
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