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Regular Windows 10 Users Who Manually Look For Updates May End Up Downloading Beta Code, Microsoft Says (techspot.com)
In addition to relying on Windows Insiders, employees, and willing participants for testing updates, Microsoft is pushing patches before they are known to be stable to regular users too if they opt to click the "check for updates" button on their own, the company said. From a report: In a blog post by Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President for Windows, it is made clear that home users are intentionally being given updates that are not necessarily ready for deployment. Many power users are familiar with Patch Tuesday. On the second Tuesday of each month, Microsoft pushes out a batch of updates at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on this day containing security fixes, bug patches, and other non-security fixes. Updates pushed out as part of Patch Tuesday are known as "B" release since it happens during the second week of the month.
During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code.
During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code.
How pathetic. Give it up and switch to Linux.
I hard refresh dat button
They've always used their customers as beta testers. That shit started at least as early as the MS-DOS days.
James Kelly from Microsoft here. If you read the Microsoft(R) End-User License Agreement, you will see that we have full rights to your computer the moment you install Windows 10. If you don't tinker with it, we'll let you use features before everyone else can by enrolling you in the Windows 10 Insider Program automatically! If you do tinker with it, we'll delete your files like with the 1809 update.
water is wet. Stay tuned to know how wet is it.
That is totally not cool.
Is this the set of "preview updates" that you see every month? If so...that's hardly new.
I see them show up all the time on my local WSUS machine, and have a script that automatically declines them. They've never reached any of my systems.
...to go away. There is no other explanation.
Microsoft's updates are like a box of chocolates...
Now, you don't even have to sign up for it!
Excuse me, but if you are using Windows 10 because it is production level code which means no surprises - shouldn't you always get production level code?
And my dad asks why I don't trust Windows 10.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I think most Windows 10 users are doing everything they can to disable any and all updates of any kind considering Microsoft's track record recently.
Yeah, undermining people's trust in your OS's security update mechanism is great idea. I really hope someone got a raise for this.
F*uking hell. What kind of drugs would any semi-self-respecting developer have to be on to suggest this, and gets it ok'd by multiple managers.
Can we bring public stoning back.
... users ... may end up downloading beta code ...
Microsoft really is trying to be more like Google. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have a laptop I infrequently use that has Windows 10 (non-Pro) installed on. I boot it up once a month to install updates (so I don't need to wait for update installs when I need to use it for other things) and I always use the "check for updates" button to make sure there aren't any more updates to install. I absolutely do not want beta updates installed on this machine nor would it be good for beta testing them since I hardly use it. This is just giving me more incentive to finally get around to wiping it and putting Linux on it.
What if this signature were clever?
"B", "C", "D"? Heck, I'd give them an "F".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Yeah. M$. No more update for Windows 10 until you actually finish them. Tested them. Tested again. Tested a third time. Sent to the insiders to let them test it.
Repeat this process at least 3 times before releasing to the general public.
I am pretty sure people are getting tired of being your beta testers. Especially when don't listen and release a service pack that delete user data.
You can't comp out with the "Good, fast, cheap, pick 2" excuse. You have the money so you can make a good fast product if you wanted.
Which apparently you don't.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Note to everyone, stop manually checking for updates. If you really want to roll the dice, then become a Insider.
Considering not only big things like the whole data deletion thing (which was shipped despite people flagging it in the Windows Insider reporting app) but little things like Notepad defaulting to creating UTF-8 files with a Byte-Order Mark with its new UTF-8 handling (to be fixed in the next release apparently), it seems Microsoft's internal setup is basically unable to see any issues until after they're shipped. So why not ship things to some normal customers earlier, then? It's a classic Microsoftian workaround!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
You are not a customer. You have no rights nor expectation of working product. You are a slave, expect to be exploited as one until such time as you grow a clue and stop using Windows.
We are all Microsoft Beta testers
Windows 10 Enterprise is the product; along with Office 365 they lock in business users and bring in revenue for Microsoft. The other versions of W10 are various levels of unpaid alpha testing (Insiders) and unpaid beta testing (Home/Pro). Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is a red-headed step child that Microsoft begrudgingly has around because it has to.
How about you give user's back the ability to fully control their update cycle and clearly liable those updates as beta or release? You literally did that for who knows how many years until M$ decided to take away user choice and started burning users with bad updates often enough that they started to look for ways around the new update cycle.
For beta users.
Does this apply to server 2016 too?
Since it's very similar to windows 10 in how they treat updating and arbitrarily rebooting for updates.
The official updates are Beta...
So make a new year resolution and switch to Linux or Mac, depending on your budget.
Mac OS is not too bad.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Seriously.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
This is a consequence of many things, among which I think is the âoeget it done I need my check mark on my evaluation and bonus âoe that many companies use. The quality is not important, time to market and delivery is. The dev managers do not care about quality, it is not part of their success criteria.
I have worked at a couple large companies where they would kill a managerâ(TM)s career by sending him/her to support or help desk roles. The poor manager has no impact on quality, but is responsible for the production product. No bonus, no salary increases, no advancement for you!
I have heard a senior VP say that quality is not important. It just have to be good enough for him to claim a successful delivery. It will be fixed later, customers are locked in anyway. This at a company with competitors where clients can go if they are frustrated with the service. It guess what, those companies are the same or worst. It is becoming an industry standard to ship low quality, untested products.
Employees are more and more cynical and do not care. If the VP does not care, why should we? Executives and high managers are there for a couple years to get their options and bonuses. Long term decisions and projects are not good for them as they do not generate $$ fast. Push the issues forward to the next suckers. After a couple cycles of this, the company is in the shits.
. :-)
In the film/play The Producers some theatrical producers set out to make a flop in order to make money, only to have the play end up being successful.
The more I see of Microsoft's actions, I can't help but wonder if something similar has happened with Microsoft. Somewhere along the line Microsoft wanted DOS or Windows to fail, and instead it sold too well. So they set out to make it fail. Release an OS that is an inferior copy of OSes already out there, with the minimum requirements set so low that it would barely run, erase user data, have spyware running all the time, etc, etc.
And now somebody is starting to get tired of the whole thing and they're forced to come out with even more brazen attempts to drive off customers?
In the last month I've build two machines for my family & loaded up two notebooks for friends. One new gaming desktop which seemed to patch fine & reloaded Win 7 on the older one. The notebooks were from friends who wanted me to cleanup, patch, Windows & load, activate, & patch Office.
So of course I "check for updates" over & over until all updates are loaded. Does this mean I possibly loaded beta patches? That last notebook was really a POS, some cheap HP from wallymart sub $300. It took forever to patch & I was seeing weird errors & had to retry many times. I blamed on HP but maybe it was MS.
So what does one do with a new machine? Turn it on & hope for the best? That worked so well in the past.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
"Editor’s note: Edited on 12/14 to clarify that the “C” and “D” monthly releases are validated, production-quality optional releases."