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Microsoft Removes the 'X' From Windows 10 Update Leaving No Way Out (theregister.co.uk)
simpz writes: The Register reports that Microsoft has changed the Windows 10 update dialog and no longer shows the "X" close button. They say once agreed to there is no obvious back-out method and it is now out of step with Microsoft's own documentation on this. They have a screenshot of this. As noted above, the latest move is out of step with Microsoft's Knowledge Base documentation, which says you can re-schedule your upgrade.
The power of inertia is incredible. I can't imagine putting up with a vendor that treats their customers this way.
Technically this is an improvement- it is no longer a dark pattern, there's no more trick. Obviously the sane thing to do is to simply stop forcing this OS change on the users, but each Windows 10 user must generate so much ad revenue that it is worth trying to stomp out each and every one.
Anyway, whatever. Install Linux, that's your only long term fix. You can turn off updates in Windows 7 or 8, or you can get some binary that tries to fight Microsoft on this, or you can do some doodlefuck in the registry. The point is, you're fighting the OS distributor, who is no longer trustworthy. Install Linux, or you must like this shit.
Shill prediction: At some point in the near future, the "free upgrade" goes away. At this point, however, they'll still offer it for free for users of assistive technology: ( https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... ). That's nice of them, but that *probably* means that pretty much anyone will still be able to get it for free, by turning this on. So the shill prediction is: that this becomes a "cool trick" that gets posted on forums and stuff, at some people looking to "pull one over" on Microsoft.
Windows 10 uses you. You're the revenue source, because they sell ads. Of course they are willing to let you be a revenue source at no cost to them!
Microsoft is just digging itself deeper and deeper into a hole, from which it may never be able to extract itself. Enjoy your sprint to the bottom, Microsoft.
The close button (red X) didn't work as users expected. It was a user interface failure, and Microsoft solved the problem. Now the dialog box correctly tells users, as MS intends, that their options are to upgrade now or schedule a time for upgrade. No more users getting surprised and outraged when closing the dialog box results in an unexpected Windows 10 upgrade.
Whether or not you are a fan of MS's upgrade approach, this is a solution to the UI problem. We can still be outraged about forced upgrades, but this isn't a terrible fix.
It seems like a thin line between what MS is doing and what ransom wear does. Both force you to comply with some demand or lose access to your computer.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Seriously, this could all be parody, and at this point, no one would be able to tell.
It's kind of like recent decades of of the political process: Take normal political lying, intersperse it with assurances that "Oh, now we're going to make EVERYTHING better - government is not the solution WE ARE... when we're government, that is."... then they get in, and it's like 10x more cynical rules being passed.
That said, pessimism is misleading too. PLENTY of scummy businessmen have dreamt of pushing these same models, but were rejected soundly by smaller customer bases - it just takes longer for Microsoft to fall the same way IBM and other scummy folks did.
Also, for politics, if you look at the ages of yellow journalism in ages past, the populace was truly more deeply ignorant in the past, and the politics even more cynical, with death as a much more common side effect of that cynicism - things are genuinely better, which actually makes it relatively shocking to see some small degree of backsliding towards a less classically liberal path. Despite the 'overton window' of recent decades and news, we're actually amazingly liberal in terms of actual policies, with no real show of that stopping.
But yeah - this crap with windows quadrupling down on their spyware-like 'upgrade' practices is in the same vein - an amazing throwback to scummy ideas I'd thought the 'marketplace of ideas' rejected to soundly everyone should still remember not to use them.
I guess we have to keep relearning those things.
Ryan Fenton
If you bought something, that doesn't give the vendor the right to later on take it away from you. And don't start with the "license" bullshit. Like any upgrade/downgrade, you should be able to accept or reject it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
False. Refuse all the optional updates, accept all the critical updates. You can easily configure windows update to do this.
I have been running windows 7 like this, and never once seen a peep about windows 10 (except on the MS website, of course).
there is always a choice. there is always a path to escape.
one of many.
http://cdimage.debian.org/debi...
If you think this all stops July 29th, you're delving into some twisted fantasies far stranger than pr0n.
"She obviously wanted it! If she didnt, why was she showing leg under that slutty red and black dress, and wearing whore makup at night like that!"
Because that's what the "You did agree! You had had suggested updates turned on!" really amounts to.
The nerds already set the group policy with NeverTen or with AD.
No. Nerds never used Windows to begin with. They were on Symbolics machines or big-iron Unix back in the 70's, Unix workstations in the 80's and 90's, Linux or one of the BSDs in the aughts through 10's...
Windows has never been for techies. We took one look at it in the 80's with no memory protection, 8.3 filenames, no multi-tasking, inability to address more than a 640K without horrible hacks, and said, "Uh... no thanks."
The 30 years of Windows suckage after that have been brought to you courtesy of PHB's, not by the technically literate, except inasmuch as the PHBs compelled them over their objections.
So you just waste a bunch of gigs of bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited) and time for the install and restore. Then you repeat this when it tries the update again. Plus the chance that the restore might not work properly. I'm not saying that it won't work but that it does have some negatives.
disclaimer: i don't exactly have a dog in the fight, i'm a mac/unix guy.
If you wake up one morning and find YOUR Mac has been upgraded from "El Capitan" to "Death Valley", and some of YOUR apps have completely changed appearance, other apps don't work right anymore, still others (like your favorite media app) are just plain gone and can't be recovered, and YOU have a whole new flat ugly touch-based color scheme on some but not all of your applications, YOUR menu bar has been replaced with a ribbon, some older hardware doesn't have drivers anymore, and a bunch of ads are now rolling through YOUR dock, and the EULA now says Apple reserves the right to send info about YOU back to headquarters whenever it feels like it, my guess is you won't just smile and be happy because Apple's business model is not "insane".
it is insanity in this day and age to have to support multiple substantially different versions of an operating system for general population. its unjustifiably expensive and unsustainable.
You got it backward. Since when does the market (i.e., consumers... us) have to bear the burden for Microsoft's "insanity"? Let's see how YOU feel about the "insanity" when it's YOUR computer that's changed overnight into a platform for promoting tablets and phones that nobody wants to buy. If YOUR dad calls YOU in the middle of the night because he can no longer figure out how to view pictures of his grandkids, are YOU gonna tell him to be silent and act like a man and accept his duty to make sacrifices wherever necessary to support our Dear Corporate Overlords? "Gee, I know it's hard, dad, but think about (Microsoft CEO) Nadella... you and mom are doing it for the good of Microsoft and Nadella."
"Gosh, son, you're right. I guess I don't need those old picture anyhow. Hail Nadella."
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I absolutely agree with you. For an average user it does not matter what is the OS they run, just that it does not get in the way. And that is perfectly fine!
But here is my point: Why be hostile? What is the benefit of the forced upgrade? Why not just allow the user to press "Cancel"? Let them update when they are ready! if they don't: That is fine, just don't support them. If they come to complain: Just tell them the steps to upgrade.
From my past experience supporting such users, they get absolutely horrified of situations they can't back out of or can't abort. Anything unfamiliar on the screen sends them into a state of panic. And here you have the very worst example.
This is a perfect showcase of an OS getting in the way of the user. He/she could be in the middle of their daily email reading when all of a sudden a system dialogue comes up demanding they right there and NOW make a decision about their underlying system. No, you can't close it and come back to it later. At most you can do is schedule a time, but schedule something you don't even understand or indeed want! Your Windows 7 IE is showing your emails fine! Why (As you eloquently put it) do I need to care about the OS?!
Can you imagine what panic this user will go through if they say OK to the update?! All of the sudden your system is rebooting and installation screens are asking you questions and that only thing you know is that it deals with something you know nothing about!