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How Microsoft Built, and Is Still Building, Windows 10
An anonymous reader writes with this Venturebeat story about how Windows 10 is different from previous versions because of the way it was designed, including 15 public preview builds, and how much work is still being done. Windows 10 for PCs arrived two weeks ago. Thankfully, we don't need to wait years to say this will be a Microsoft operating system release like no other. The most obvious clue is not the fact that Windows 10 was installed on more than 14 million devices in 24 hours, that you can get it for cheap or upgrade to it for free, nor even that it ships with a digital assistant and a proper browser. No, the big deal here is that Microsoft is turning its OS into a service, and that means as you read these words, it's still being built. For the next few years, we'll be getting not just Windows 10 updates and patches, but new improvments and features. This is possible because Microsoft built this version very differently from all its previous releases.
Except for all the spying added...
And the fact that you aren't allowed to use it how you want...
And the loss of functionality...
This is hilarious. A freelance journalist writes for Venturebeat and probably submits his own story Anonymously to Slashdot to pick up the page views. It's relatively positive about the release of Windows 10 which by all accounts is a pretty good system and certainly is a departure for MS's stuff. The freelance guy could be getting paid to post the story, but his career gets better through pageviews so it's more likely he wrote the story and then is bumping the page views to up his journalistic profile.
But of course that backfires, because he sends it to Slashdot where anything that isn't a scathing, mocking hit piece of Microsoft is derided as "astroturfing" and "Slashvertisement" even though since this is a linked article in Venturebeat there really is no way Slashdot could be paid for this. But that doesn't stop the anti-MS Slashdot crowd from deriding folks as "sheeple"!
When in fact the anti-MS slashdot crowd is it's own set of sheeple, meekly following the herd of MS hate without any thoughtful discourse or look at Windows 10. Not a single comment on this board criticizing the article or Windows 10 has a valid point against the system.
This is just sad, and yet tantalizingly entertaining in it's patheticness.
How many times does it have to be repeated that are no annual fees for Windows 10?
SERVICE != SUBSCRIPTION
Examples:
Steam = Service
Salesforce = Subscription
Figure it out already and quit spouting the nonsense.
The reason for free Windows makes perfect sense. The cost of buying an upgrade has always made upgrades on existing hardware a very low number. So just give it away to end users since it doesn't make any money anyway. It's pretty well known 99% the of income for Windows comes from new PCs and enterprise agreements.
If they try to turn around and start charging annually for Windows after this, piracy will shoot through the roof and patching will go through the floor as people will hack to get it free and stop Windows Update so their hacks won't get blocked. (Remember the Windows Genuine Advantage garbage from XP, that was a lesson learned) This would result in 2 black eyes that Microsoft doesn't want and would lead to increases for Mac, Linux or other alternative. 1st is customer ill will over "pay us or your PC stops" and the 2nd is from getting a reputation about Windows being buggy exploit ridden as a result of people not patching and updating.
It's always been "a service" that's still being built. It's just that the rate of change was slower. If memory serves, NT4 only got good after Service Pack 4, XP after SP1 (or maybe 2), Windows Vista only got good when you upgraded it to Windows 7, and so it goes on. Windows 10 will stick around for a while, but in a year or two, they'll release a 'feature pack' or whatever they'll call it that'll get rolled into the initial install images and will make everything look and behave differently (but it'll still be Windows 10 - because this is the last windows ever - no, no need to worry about upgrades because it's all the same version, honestly).
The only new thing, as you say, is that we'll be pestered to upgrade windows 7/8 forever and we'll end up paying constantly for Windows 10.