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Future Holds Large Updates Instead of Stand-Alone Windows Releases
jones_supa writes: Jerry Nixon, a Microsoft developer evangelist, said at the Ignite conference in Chicago that Windows 10 "is the last version of Windows, so we're always working on Windows 10." Saying that is only half true. In fact, Microsoft will start working on large updates instead of stand-alone Windows releases, so the company would switch from a model that previously brought us new versions of Windows every three years, to a simpler one that's likely to bring big updates every two months. The company will also change the naming system for Windows, so instead of Windows $(version), the new operating system would be simply called Windows.
For consumers this is likely a great thing. But given enterprise customers and their traditionally fickle software, how are they going to keep up with major Windows changes every few months?
Even service packs break things, and those still aren't as complex as these proposed updates in some ways. Enterprise customers pretty much count on Windows not changing/ And even if Microsoft goes the LTS route, will they support one of these branches for 10+ years like Windows Server 2012 will be?
People don't like constantly updating their software nor seemingly random software changes. Businesses aren't going to stand for it either as there's way too much at state for them to have their OS fail all across the company.
Why are software companies so good at moving backwards? Does everything in our industry have to run in cycles? Why wasn't that an onion link.
In case you need to convey which one of the large updates you downloaded last, you can simply say when you downloaded it. I like it!
you mean apple. they're the ones that stopped at the magic version number 10 (osx).
Will this mean a move to a "subscription" model, where you have to pay to receive updates? I find it hard to believe that they will contunue to update everyone forever without a fee for the "new windows".
Microsoft has a long history of releasing badly designed products- MSDOS 4,Windows Me, Vista, 8.0- and with the shift to updates, the public will lose their ability to vote with their wallets. Microsoft will do whatever it likes, and you will accept it or be unpatched. Microsoft has succeeded in ensuring that the customer has no power or voice.
And everyone here is cheering it on...
You mean you'll be able to do "apt-get dist-upgrade" in Windows?
No... there will be differences. We're talking Microsoft, so there's gotta be a revenue stream in there somewhere. They're planning to pretend version numbers don't exist, so that when there's compatibility issues no one will know which version the program was compatible with nor which version they're running now. And there certainly won't be a package manager to deal with all the dependencies, so any incompatibility will be dealt with on a program by program basis.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I've personally never explicitly bought a single Microsoft license. They either come with my laptop or I get them via my university MSDN subscription or a BizSpark MSDN (MS program to give free licenses to startups). It's one thing I hate about the new Adobe Creative Cloud concept. I don't want to have to "subscribe" to use my software. I should only have to pay for it once. Period.
In the old days I'd run both Photoshop 3 and 4 on my system as I gradually transitioned to learn how to do everything in the new version (or gave up and went back to 3 to do something in a feature that had seemed to disappear).
Um...I actually like the FF/Chrome versioing. I was really hoping either IE or Safari would adopt it as well. If IE (or Spartan or whatever it's called now) goes to it, we'll finally see an end to a lot of corporate internal shit apps and technical debt. It will be painful at first, but once all the major browsers are on rolling updates, web app developers will be forced to make stuff that works correctly. Big shit companies that can't keep up will have to adapt or die.
Someday in the future Windows will decide that none of your software is compatible with an update, uninstall it all, be unable to update it due to circular dependencies and then spend 30 hours of your netbook's time and all of its batteries recompiling the Kernel.
Yeah, right. We've also heard that from Adobe about their Creative Suite switching over the Creative Cloud. All we've gotten instead is more and more new bugs in each release, and without failure, new DRM failures with each and every release. How are we supposed to trust Microsoft with the same thing, when they already royally fucked up Windows 8? How can we trust them to not simply pull an Adobe, and spend all their time developing new DRM that constantly fucks up, instead of new actual features and functionality for end users?
This is exactly right. Microsoft is sick and tired of customers resisting their latest shiny upgrade, especially when they do so successfully, as with Vista and 8. Keeping the actual version a secret might cause enough confusion to blunt dissent (and damn the negative side effects).
Remember when Mozilla tried to remove FF's version number from the About Box as a prelude the wacky wapid release schedule?
Commit to a major release for 3 years, then 2 years sunset support. After that its fully functional but doesn't get MS support.
1 service pack every year, bundles all the updates together + some trinkets.
Or... Windows gets supported for the life of the device it is installed on, with a limited number of hardware changes...
Yes, I see the issues, some people actually do change their hardware often... edge cases are a pain to plan for, but something could be done...
Get a new device, the hardware company pays MS, all is well...
On another plane, Steve Jobs was heard to groan appreciatively.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As long as one of those 'big updates' put the Windows 7 UI back in place and disposes of all that new Metro or whatever it's called these days junk then I'll be happy.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Now we know why they skipped Windows 9: it's so that when they call future versions Windows 10.1, Windows 10.2, etc., it won't sound like they're so far behind Apple.
They tried to force people to update by not releasing IE and directx on older versions of windows. I could see them doing the same for directx - if your windows is not up to patch xxxx it wont install. It would be pretty annoying if you just bought a new game and you can't play it until you ponied up for ms's subscription model.
I think ms would like to get rid of legacy desktop programs if they could. Window's compatibilty with old programs keeps people using windows but if windows can get rid of it they could lock down the os with all apps going through their app store that they can collect 30% on. It wont be our os to do what we like with anymore. and everything will be drm drm drm.
From what I've seen, every time you reboot Windows, a "large update" seems to be applied.
Updating 5 of 27. Please do not turn off your computer.
Windows X with point releases? Wow, that sounds original.
Maybe they'll give the point releases the names of animals or something to distinguish them from each other.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
"Ah, here's your problem. This program won't run on Windows; you'll need to upgrade to Windows."
The power balance has shifted a lot, The Personal Computer is morphing into Corporate Computer. People buying with their own money are now going towards smartphones, tablets, chromebook like light platforms. Even corporations are using tablets in a big way. The servers have gone to Linux. Windows is being forced to inter-operate with other devices without having the advantage of being the de-facto monopoly.
When corporations are the only customers, they are able to extract better deals from Windows. They might think going to this continuous update and subscription model will bring more money. But it will only drive personal buyers away and make Microsoft more dependent on corporate customers than ever.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Come to think of it I have not had much to complain about m$ for years now. Admittedly mostly because I got used to their ways but also because their software got much better than it was originally. Then I say this while still on updated win7 so I guess the big blood pressure spike others had out of win8 was spared on me.
They care about what you are willing to pay for not what you like. Under the current model, you not upgrading means you not buying. If they can move you over to a service model instead of say $30 every 4 years you could be at $5/mo. Even if they lose 10,20,30,+ percent it is still worth it.
For most companies and individuals, Windows 7 is probably the end of the line. Even WinXP is plenty good for most people, and the need to upgrade because of hardware obsolescence vanished some 5 years ago already. Lucky for Microsoft they can extort money from Android vendors, because Windows is not going to be a huge cash cow going forward.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
So how much space are all of these updates going to take? Are they going to magically be 5x as big as the download once installed. It bugs me that Win7 needs 30gig of my SSD.
I though the idea of Dynamic linked libraries was shared code to save space, I get the impression that over 90% of code is not used and there are multiple copies of multiple versions of each DLL. The system doesn't work, you might aw well just compile the code you need and scrap DLLs.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Dear Microsoft...
What the letter above said is that he "doesn't like the Firefox (or Chrome) model for updates". I personally have no trouble with it. He seems to want to leave you all behind, anyway.
Sure, I have a love-hate relationship with you, but it's better than the pure irritation and hatred that seems to ooze from the above letter. He must be a system administrator or something broken like that to hate you so much.
I wouldn't pay much attention to him.
That is all.
As a web developer, I like the Firefox/Chrome updating system also. It means that the vast majority of FireFox and Chrome users will be running the latest version of the browser. Contrast this with IE where there are 4 or 5 major versions that I need to support - each of which has wildly different compatibility with the latest web technologies. Want to use border-radius or box-shadow? Sorry, too many people are still on IE8 which doesn't support it. Want to use placeholder text in an input element or ranged input elements? IE8 and 9 don't support that. I can still use those newer technologies, but need to do double work to make sure the sites are still usable to someone on older browsers. If IE auto-updated to the newest version, it would be so much easier for web developers.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why would you shoot the damsel?
They will just providing updates until it becomes Windows XP again.
Since it is always Windows 10 from here on out, then please come up with a way to differentiate versions:
* Windows OS X Mountn' Lyin
* WIndows OS X Leo Pard
* Windows OS X Snowl E'pard
etc
This will not only help differentiate versions, but will demonstrate Microsoft's Leadership and Originality.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Every software vendor has dreamed of a subscription based model and how with the internet and DRM they can start to realize those goals.
Didn't MS buy windows365 or some domains like that last year?
You know they will never give it away for free; they will charge you for your habit. (not ruling out their past behavior of giving free or massive discounts to get people addicted.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I've been using a rolling release of Linux for years. The whole concept of having to start over when a new version comes out seems so antiquated.
On the other hand.. I don't see how this can work for a closed, comercial product unless they can sell people on the subscription model. I'd say that would be a tough sell but then again.. people buy crappy hardware that needs replaced in a year or two. People subscribe to access libraries of movies and music rather than permanently buy recordings. Maybe it's only a tough sell to me.
This was a DISASTER for Apple. Every update breaks half the software on the system. Then there's Firefox. That was arguable even worse when they switched to monthly releases that broke half the plugins and flash every other time. Then there's the fact that 1 in 3 people couldn't install Windows 8.1 for some reason. I can't wait to manage this as head IT manager. Sounds like fun.
So apt-get dist-upgrade (credit card number) ?
Microsoft Windows OS X! Then they can have versions 10.1, 10.2, et cetera. Maybe name the releases after animals!
Actually with the FF37 breaking corporate access for me keeps me in a holding pattern at FF36.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Generally I try to save the heroine and not shoot her. Although nowadays, she doesn't want saving.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
While your complaint about the subscription model is valid (although lots of people would disagree with you), at least Adobe does allow you to use an unlimited number of previous versions. When you think about it, this is critically important to Adobe's preferred clientele - large professional companies with numerous licenses - since you don't dare change a major version in the middle of a project and a professional graphics company are always doing multiple projects.
You can end up with a hard drive full of various versions of everything if you're not careful.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think you've figured out why they're doing this.
While IE (and now Edge) "aren't" part of the OS, they are tightly integrated. A Windows rolling release is the only way they could think of to make browser releases more often than annually and closer to every 5ms like everyone else.
FF on my laptop is still on 29 because every time I upgrade it another theme or add-on I rely on breaks.
Do none of these folks care about certifications? It's already hard enough to get Windows reasonably secure yet still have software work on it. When you get X certified, you certify it to work in Y situation. The stupid rolling release crap makes that impossible. "Fast" versus "slow?" How about "give me security updates to product X which is certified" versus "give me features and major backend changes in the same stream as the security updates." Yes, it makes it cheaper for the company to wrap everything up together - means they only maintain a single branch. Yay Mozilla for unleashing that laziness upon the world.
No, more like apt-get dist-upgrade --CCN=(credit card number) --SSN=(social security number) --MMN=(Mother's maiden name)
Did they run out of enough real jobs that they had to invent "developer evangelist"?
What's in a name?
So a lot of great comments here, I too do not look forward to a forced-march subscription model that's being floated here. I can't imagine what that means for our enterprise, quarterly patches for servers are already a day of pain. Now we'll get constant rolling updates of servers AND workstations? Great.
But the name: Oh Microsoft, why do you have to make the naming *WORSE*? It's not like the path was convoluted enough...
(Windows 3.1, 95, NT, 2000, XP, 7, 8.1, 10)
But now the new version is simply called "Windows", making it considerably more difficult for techies to discuss which version they are running.
Now when someone asks "What systems are you running?" it will require /more/ exchanges to discern that you are just running the "Windows" version of Windows. "Windows 'Windows'" perhaps. ... WinSquared.
It's not like they could have chosen "Windows Infinity", or "Windows Silver", or "Windows Rolling Update", or "Window Terminal", or "Windows FuckYou We Own Your Ass Now", or "Windows Sprawl", or "Windows Sauron" or something *specific* with which we could actually refer to it. They have to call it the one sole word that is common to ALL Windows releases since 1993... thereby forcing techies to have a longer conversation about which fucking version they are talking about. No more shorthand ("W2008"), now always ever more will you have to have a a multi-lined conversation as you try to discern /exactly/ which version you are running.
Thanks Microsoft. You autistic jerks.
In 2020, installing Windows will include having to download 500GB of patches requiring several reboots. Windows 8.1 currently requires downloading tons of patches, and there is still no service pack for Windows 7, the most widely used version of Windows.
I can write a program that does a lot of things horribly wrong but works on Windows XP because it tolerated a lot of bad behaviors, which won't work at all on a more modern system. Is that Microsoft's fault that I wrote it wrong?
One might argue that it's Microsoft's fault for not giving developers useful tools to determine that they are in fact holding it wrong. If developers and beta testers could flip a switch in Windows and have it log API calls that invoke unspecified or undefined behavior, that would have been an improvement.
Want to use border-radius or box-shadow? Sorry, too many people are still on IE8 which doesn't support it.
Are "too many people" running Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista or 7, or on Windows XP? If the former, then every PC administrator running IE 8 on a genuine supported desktop Windows operating system has the opportunity to upgrade to a newer IE. If the latter, then unsupported operating systems are far more likely to already be compromised by a keylogger installed through a zero-day security hole, which destroys the confidentiality of any passwords or PII that the user enters into the browser.
If IE auto-updated to the newest version, it would be so much easier for web developers.
Edge (IE 12) will automatically update like Chrome.
You shoot her with a camera so you can share photographic proof that she doesn't want saving.
I think ms would like to get rid of legacy desktop programs if they could.
I'll believe that when Visual Studio itself becomes a "modern UI" app.