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Microsoft Exec Admits They 'Went Too Far' With Aggressive Windows 10 Updates (softpedia.com)
It's no secret that Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Windows 10 to users. Over the past year and a half, we have seen users complain about Windows 10 automatically getting downloaded to their computer, and in some cases, getting installed on its own as well. The automatic download irked many users who were on limited or slow data plans, or didn't want to spend gigabytes of data on Windows 10. A company executive has admitted for the first time that they may have went overboard with Windows 10 updates. From a report on Softpedia: Chris Capossela, Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, said in the latest edition of the Windows Weekly that this was the moment when the company indeed went too far, pointing out that the two weeks between the moment when users started complaining about the unexpected behavior and the one when a patch was released were "very painful." "We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective, but finding the right balance where you're not stepping over the line of being too aggressive is something we tried and for a lot of the year I think we got it right, but there was one particular moment in particular where, you know, the red X in the dialog box which typically means you cancel didn't mean cancel," he said. "And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have we knew that we had gone too far and then, of course, it takes some time to roll out the update that changes that behavior. And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously."
And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have we knew that we had gone too far
Did those "listening systems" include computers with freshly installed without permission Windows 10 sending home recordings of their owners going "What the hell is this shit? I didn't agree to this!"?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Better to ask for forgiveness than permission I guess
Translation: We want everyone to be running Windows 10 from a we-now-control-every-aspect-of-your-(our)-computer perspective. We can't actually force updates on other versions, but we'll do our level best to force the version on you that we can do that with. We regret the negative publicity that the lengths we went to to make this happen caused.
This is not about pushing out a security update that cripples a system. This about Microsoft forcing people to use a new operating system which they did not agree to by circumventing standard UI behavior. Don't do it again or you will face more lawsuits.
"And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously."
Yeah, if only you guys had had some kind of organizational history to draw upon that could have provided some insight into the effects of releasing monolithic patches touching all parts of the operating system, without testing, and without machine owner approval.
"We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective"
Correction: "We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a data collection perspective"
This guy doesn't regret pushing the updates -- what he regrets is causing a tidal wave of tech support issues.
I am running El Capitan on my Macbook pro, yet sitting in the Applications folder is a 4.78 GB installer for macOS Sierra that I never authorized to download.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The problem is contained in his statement: "We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective..."
To be successful a company should NEVER let 'what they want' get in the way of 'what the customer wants'. It is pretty simple but when a company gets way too powerful in their position this sort of crap happens.
The dialog was always misleading. The presence in the system tray was always annoying to users.
When the Marketing Team is louder than the engineers, mostly.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Even if all the major bugs get worked out of Win10 (say, SP2-3 or so), I really don't expect Win10 to EVER lose the taint that Microsoft's deployment of it, in the eyes of all too many of its' customers.
I mean, you KNOW it's bad, when your non-techie wife asks about Linux, after an uncommanded Win10 install (and rollback) left her gaming--and-graphics box messed up until I could restore it from the image file I had made a month prior. . .
These actions are first sanctioned at the highest level. Then, long after it's been executed, and harm done, mere apologies are issued.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
They got close to a billion users to upgrade and have their computing environment be monetized with marginal cost to the company and they acted too quickly for the FTC or whomever to do anything about it.
They did this just right. If you're Microsoft, of course.
The 2% of people who switched to Mac and and 0.5% of people who switched to FLOSS desktops are totally acceptable costs.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Fuck off you liars.
They still go too far. I have no problem the default behavior being that updates are applied automatically but what goes too far is that 1. this isn't disable-able, 2. their "Active Hours" can't be longer than 12 hours so I can assume my machine won't reboot for only 12 hours out of the day (morning OR night but can't have both), and 3. I should be able to decide what my machine does if I so choose; not Microsoft.
I really like Windows 10 aside from their automatic updates, data collection, and ads in my start menu. They all get disabled in the end but it's kind of a pain in the ass because Microsoft doesn't want me to do so. At least they can't stop my router from denying access to network services ^_^
-SaNo
To get itself installed then maybe the software is lacking in merit.
When I cloned my HDD to an SSD on a USB adapter, Win10 marked the SSD as a "portable OS" in the registry and that later prevented the anniversary update from installing on a USB drive (never mind that the SSD booted from SATA). I actually had to open regedit.exe to edit the "portable OS" key from "1" to "0" for the anniversary update to install properly.
Just yesterday, My gaming machine, the only windows install left in the house, came in with an ominous warning as I was playing a game: It said it had downloaded an update, and that it would restart in 20 minutes, whether I wanted it or not. No installing at night, or tomorrow, or anything. Imagine if instead of playing a game, I was giving a talk.
This is the kind of shit that makes people not use windows for work.
Dear Chris,
This Christmas, would you please send me and all of us Windows 10 users the gift of NOT AUTOMATICALLY RESTARTING MY FUCKING COMPUTER WHEN YOU UPDATE BECAUSE I WALKED AWAY FROM IT FOR TWO MINUTES AFTER "WORKING HOURS"? I have lost my open browser tabs and other work so many times now that you are destroying the user experience of millions of people, including me. And no, work hours for people like myself who consult are completely random and I'm not about to change them manually every time I need to change my hours or they extend beyond a limit you assume is mine.
Best Regards,
StandardCell
it looked and worked the same as Windows 7. No weird splash pop-ups. No Cortana, no bin of broken-dependency plugins which somehow cause the whole system to be unstable. After months of fighting with Windows 10 (common refrain in my house "Oh my gawd, why is this taking so LONG!"), and some of my forum-sourced tweaks at trying to speed things up (to just even a reasonable speed, I had given up hoping it would be as fast and reliable as Ubuntu), the thing was so broken I had to re-install ... Windows 7.
It was like stepping out into a clear day from the fog. Everything works (sorta, after figuring out the initial Get Updates Functional and Started fiasco, which requires a separate download, since their original update manager doesn't play with the current update server). Programs load. The Start menu works, and just has Start menu stuff in it, no weather, no news, no ads. Seriously, who came up with the brilliant idea of putting ads in my Start bar. STOP IT! I should have to install some seriously advanced viruses to get that s**t. But now they come with a fresh install, directly from Microsoft.
And now they're un-supporting Windows7 entirely, no new updates. Don't see why, as far as I can tell, most of the base operating system is the same, except for Windows 10 built in spyware. None-the-less, I will stick with Windows 7 until it becomes unusable, and then I think my family will just have to figure out Mint or Ubuntu or something. I'm done with Microsoft.
I actually consider Windows 10 to be completely flawed due to its forced and frequent update scheme.
I often only boot up my Windows PC every week or two. Invariably, there will be updates to process. What this means is that just about every boot takes multiple minutes to complete.
I consider an operating system that takes many minutes to start up in the year 2016 when using a fast SSD drive, to be fundamentally flawed.
Additionally, there have been times when I have left a long-running boot up and had the operating system force-reboot my system for updates while I was in the middle of actively using it.
That is 100% unacceptable. Even if by design, I consider it to be intrinsically flawed as an operating system.
These issues are so onerous to me that they lead me to hate Windows 10 with a white-hot passion. The only reason I am using it is because I have to for my VR PC ...
The whole "we knew we'd gone too far with that specific incident" mea culpa is bullshit anyway, designed to frame things as if that was solely why people remembered being pissed off at MS- and having apologised for that alone, everyone would think "oh, it wasn't that big, they messed up once but now it's okay and aren't MS mostly great really?"
In reality, they'd been aggressively pushing Windows 10 for months on end by that point (from late 2015 until the "offer" ended in mid-2016) repeatedly trying to override users' explicit wishes against that, to the extent of using techniques that even bland, MOR IT publications were comparing to malware.
Now they're trying to minimise peoples' memories of the incident to the maliciously-designed "close button" semantics? Not even close. That was merely the peak of the obnoxiousness. They repeatedly and consistently maintained this behaviour for several months- they knew exactly what they were doing.
And they know exactly what they're doing with this self-serving, PR-approved "apology" that doesn't begin to cover what actually happened.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
How can an entire team of engineers be so foolish?
When will we stop blaming management decisions on engineers? Do you really think engineers are in charge at Microsoft?
Up the ass. With a big stick. With lots of thorns.
In the Trump Era you don't admit to mistakes.
Table-ized A.I.
No, he meant what he said by "...want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective".
But although he implied that he meant "from the end user's computer security perspective", actually he means "from a Microsoft's future financial security perspective".
Which does include data harvesting, as you point out. But also Win10 is the path to the OS on a subscription model.
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imo, Microsoft knew exactly what they were doing all along with the forced march to Windows 10, up to and including execs blogging about how sorry they are.
"Yes means no and no means yes. Do you want me to hit you?"
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
"They will never learn when the CORRUPT CEO IS STILL RUNNING THE COMPANY." Under Gates and Ballmer, MS may have screwed over potential competitors, but with Satya Nadella, they are screwing over the customers. Forcing a spyware loaded, system breaking, auto update "upgrade" on unsuspecting customers is straight up evil and they should be prosecuted for false advertising (abuse of common knowledge of what an update is and/or systems that were reviewed and labeled Windows 10 ready when they werent) and or vandalism (damaging/modifying another's property without their consent; you could have a street artist paint a beautiful mural on the front of your building, but it is still vandalism if he didn't have your permission). And don't give me that BS about giving windows update permission: users gave windows update permission to update their OS, not replace it with a new, different OS that behaved differently, had a different set of utilities and much lower level of privacy and control. MS customers want Nadella gone as a first step in the right direction.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Everyone is responsible for their job. Those engineers can refuse to do unethical things, but they choose not to because they value the money that management waves in front of them more than the wellbeing of their fellow man.
Easy, engineers are morons. They don't think about what PEOPLE need or want
You obviously aren't an engineer. Nor do you know many. Most engineers don't decide the features and performance requirements of the product. Either management or the customer does.
So the people writing the specs are morons. If someone gives you a recipe for a turd sandwich, you're going to make them a turd sandwich---or else you'll get fired for not doing your job.
Maybe you can ask them if they want lettuce or tomato on their turd sandwich. Maybe you can tell them that they have to choose between toasted and untoasted bread (because it's impossible to have both). But, in the end, if the spec is a turd sandwich then that's what you deliver.
I'm sure any programmer with an ounce of sense realized the implications of automatic updates and always-on telemetry. And most of them would never put that crap into the spec if they had any say in the matter. But they don't get a say. So enjoy your turd sandwich.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The only 'obvious' thing here is that you shouldn't lie to, trick, and deceive your customers. Why you had to 'learn' this is not obvious at all; in fact, it would be a total fucking mystery if not for the fact that Microsoft has demonstrably corrupt and psychopathic leadership. This 'we learned our lesson' shit just doesn't fly - all you've learned is that you need to be less heavy-handed if you want to continue to screw people over without suffering a massive backlash from your customers and getting bitch-slapped in the tech press.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Oh please stop with the "source equals security" bullshit which is trivially proven false, ready? You have the source, kindly list for us the vulnerabilities in the Linux networking stack...what, you can't? How about any lousy code in the audio stacks? What you HAVE vetted the code, yes?
The "source equals security" fallacy is a fallacy of assumption, you assume because the code is there someone has done the work for you and vetted these millions of lines of code with zero actual evidence that it has actually occurred and in fact vulnerabilities like Heartbleed, Bash weaknesses that have sat there for years and the plethora of Linux targeted malware including commercial attacks give plenty of evidence that the opposite is true and the majority of code isn't looked at beyond whomever is actually working on the thing.
I think Windows 10 is a giant POS where the only thing that runs reliably is its baked in spyware (which makes it similar to Android so if Nutella is trying to copy Google? Mission accomplished.) but I also hate OS flag waving bullshit when it has no evidence to back it up, from "OSX doesn't get malware" which Macheads simply changed the definition of what malware was until that statement could still prove true and in the same vein with Linux based Android beating Windows several years in a row when it comes to malware growth and major Linux exploits coming out of the woodwork claiming source equals security is no different than claiming Santa Claus protects your OS, you have the same level of evidence for both statements.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Again you have ZERO EVIDENCE that the bazillion coders that make up the hodge podge of software that is stuck together to form a Linux OS hasn't fucked you just as hard because nobody has vetted the entire stack and in fact unlike Windows vetting a Linux OS would be impossible as unlike Windows where one version is supported for a decade before you even got the vetting done the pieces would have had 3 or 4 revisions!
So I'm sorry but the only fool is you. I have provided links showing that source equals security is a complete fallacy yet you hang onto this bullshit belief like a flat earther coming up with ever more insane logical hoops to try to justify your insanity. Source isn't magic wands, code doesn't vet itself, and you sir are no different than any other FOSSSie who doesn't understand basic concepts like the is ought fallacy which your entire belief system is based upon.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.