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Some highlights: Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising the free upgrade to Windows 10. Not satisfied, the company eventually mad

by 0xmohit 10y ago

Some highlights: Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising the free upgrade to Windows 10. Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a recommended update so users receiving critical security updates were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto their machines without their knowledge. This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Windows, but we'll trick you into installing Windows 10. Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download Windows 10. The previous trick didn't work on all of you, so we'll go on to change the default behavior of our dialog boxes in order to trick you into installing Windows 10. By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft, and the company claims most of it is to “personalize” the software by feeding it to the OS assistant called Cortana. And while users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft’s servers. This probably explains it all. -- Microsoft appears to have learnt a lot from LinkedIn [0]. [0] https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617 https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617

makomk 10y ago
I think this slightly understates just how sleazy Microsoft were about it, if anything. Before the dialog that interpreted closing it with the X in the corner as agreement to install Windows 10, they rolled out a similar-looking dialog where that was the only way to avoid install Windows 10 - clicking on any of the buttons in the dialog would cause it to be installed.
- wangchow 10y ago
  Over the past year I've noticed a lot of things mysteriously getting installed, things moving around, etc. I don't mind automatic updates so long as there's a separation from the new features and bug fixes. There should be a base core of apps that are necessary and a set of opt-in add-on features. It's time to move to Linux on laptop/desktop/tablet I think. While I love my surface pro 3 and the Windows 10 experience is overall a good one, I don't like them changing undisclosed stuff on me.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    On the flip side, I run Ubuntu on my htpc, and have for several years now... there have been a couple times where the updates broke audio, and the fix took on average 2 days, though I can imagine some people having worse experiences... Getting an MCE remote (arguably the most common PC remote type) working with Kodi (formerly xbmc and very popular full screen media player) took some cumbersome steps. On average one app breaks every 6 months or so after updating. By comparison, omitting the privacy issues, MS has a much better track record with updates.
    - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
      Both are subpar (and osx or whatever Apple call their offering is no better). I've been stuck in an update hell with windows where security updates simply would not install the only solution I could find was a full re-install. I've been in a similar situation with Ubuntu and was able to fix it - but only because I understood it - otherwise I would have had to do a re-install. The key with Ubuntu updates is to stick to LTS versions and to do a clean re-install (keeping /home as a separate partition makes this painless). Both have rubbish audio systems. Windows breaks on my laptop every few suspend resumes (fixed by restart). Ubuntu every few months (fixed by restart). At this point I'm disappointed by every system I use.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        That reminds me of another one... (Ubuntu htpc) I can "shut-down" and the remote startup works, but if it actually goes into suspend, I have to hit the actual power button in the cabinet. And more often than not the audio is broken on resume from suspend and I have to completely shut down to fix it (reboot doesn't work)... this is with a core i3-5010u, which is a relatively common intel audio chipset. I agree there are aspects of every OS that I don't like... I just wouldn't single out Windows (again other than privacy) as particularly bad on updates... updating my mbp to el capitan took a wipe as the upgrade broke half way through. TIP: Never update when you're tethered to your phone on vacation, always update a week before leaving for vacation by the way. lol
- GFischer 10y ago
  My freaking cat installed Windows 10 on my laptop - he pressed enter on one of those dialogs with his paw and Windows started updating. I was more or less resigned to do so anyways, so he didn't do anything I wasn't going to do eventually, he just hastened it. I wonder if EULA's accepted by a cat have any validity though :) PD: I googled that and Slashdot has a story on a hardware to have cats accept EULAs :) https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/dont-like-eulas-get-your-cat-to-agree-to-them https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/dont-li... But no, it's not a good anti-lawyer method, a comment says, regarding children and cats "The child is an instrument of your will. Note - they are not acting as your agent, as a child cannot be an agent. Instead, they are your instrument, much like a pen signing your name or a cat clicking a button for you is an instrument. "
  - bisby 10y ago
    That seems to imply that you pick up your cat and have him press the button so you can say "it wasnt me!"... whereas in your case, you did not coerce the cat to press the button for you, so was it truly your instrument, or random occurence.
    - nightski 10y ago
      I feel like you would be responsible for any key presses on your laptop, regardless if made by the cat or not. Maybe someone can give an expert opinion.
      - waqf 10y ago
        I don't think that's entirely true. If an acquaintance used your laptop in front of you to hack into a bank, you might be responsible. But if Microsoft automatically downloaded BankHacker 3.11 to your machine and set it to pop up a dialogue box so that hacking into a bank was so simple your cat could do it — and if then your cat "used your laptop to hack into a bank", then common sense says that Microsoft would be responsible.
  - mark-r 10y ago
    Intent figures greatly in legal circumstances. If you intended for your cat to accept a EULA by installing special hardware to enable it, you're almost certainly responsible. If the cat did it accidentally, maybe not - the hard part would be proving it was the cat and not yourself.
sotojuan 10y ago
So all the talk about the "new" Microsoft has been for nothing.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  THIS is the new "new" Microsoft.
  - talmand 10y ago
    Nope, there have been multiple Microsoft's that have been in conflict with each other for years.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      That's probably true on some level, but from the outside, M$ now is M$ then.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        I think DevDiv (Developer Division) is much more in line with Open-Source as a movement, with the business eye towards making Azure the prefered PaaS/IaaS option with their tools. Windows, and a lot of other bits are more consumer space, and moving closer to Google/Facebook model of customers being the product. I don't necessarily think it's entirely a bad proposition. From a web application developer standpoint, old windows versions, tied to old IE versions have held things back over and over again. Even given some of the privacy concerns, I'd rather most people were on a frequently updated operating system with a frequently updated browser. That's not to say I think it needs to be windows. Also, if privacy is a concern, one can upgrade to the pro version, or use enterprise skus in offices to disable those bits. All of that said, I upgraded pretty early (tech preview) and use Pro, so didn't see a lot of the restrictions, or very sleazy upgrade push. My parents/grandparents are mostly on Chromebook devices, and one Grandmother has an Ubuntu desktop. My sister and her family have all bought into the Apple ecosystem... so I'm the most heavy windows user in the bunch and I spend more time on my macbook, ubuntu htpc or in a Linux ssh shell from windows than using windows exclusive software.
kyberias 10y ago
> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the > user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right > hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download > Windows 10. So what? I clicked that X multiple times and it didn't _install_. It may have _downloaded_, I'm not sure, but did not install.
- dspillett 10y ago
  > It may have _downloaded_, Was it bright enough to reliably detect metered connections (did it even try at all?). If not then just this could have cost people money. And consuming a couple of Gb of space could be a noticeable inconvenience on a small system (say one of the many tables and laptops with nothing more than a 64 or 32gb solid state drive).
  - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
    If you marked your connection as metered, I believe it respected that and wouldn't download it.
    - iotku 10y ago
      >If you marked your connection as metered, I believe it respected that and wouldn't download it. I don't recall windows 7 having any way to explicitly mark your connection as metered. As for Windows 8 (I believe it's the same as Windows 10), you can't mark a wired connection (ethernet) as metered if I recall correctly, even though you might be on a satellite internet connection for instance which most definitely is heavily metered.
      - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
        I can't speak for Windows 7, but I believe you could mark an ethernet as metered in Win 8, but you definitely can't in Win 10. Edit: I take it back, I was wrong. No ethernet metering. You can do it via regedit, but no way to do it from the UI.
- 10y ago
xjay 10y ago
Microsoft announced a free upgrade to Windows 10, saying users can opt-in now to prepare their systems for the upgrade. IT professionals wanted control over this upgrade. Microsoft responds by providing registry settings to block the upgrade process, which Microsoft later chose to ignore. As I observed on my system, Microsoft had also pushed out some preparation updates that reset some telemetry settings I had opted out of at one time, like the customer improvement program. Microsoft obviously has their head in the clouds now.
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  So this is what they meant with cloud-first...
plantocorp 10y ago
As a Microsoft employee, this W10 force upgrade things is the single thing that pisses me off the most by far... It goes against everything that we are trying to promote/change. Sometimes I'm really wondering if we work for the same company (I'm not in the Windows division). I feel like all the effort we put in investing in open source, being more open, and just generally a more empathic company is totally destroyed by this w10 fiasco.
- deleted 10y ago
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- mitm2mitm 10y ago
  http://i.giphy.com/3o7TKy8FveNIcy8t6U.gif http://i.giphy.com/3o7TKy8FveNIcy8t6U.gif
- hendersoon 10y ago
  I believe this famous comic said it best: http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ For all Satya's promises, nothing _really_ changed.
  - thomasjudge 10y ago
    off topic, but on the Oracle one, "legal" should be "sales"
    - hendersoon 10y ago
      Assuming engineering was size X, sales would be 10X and legal 40X. Oracle licensing and legal are unbelievable snakes.
  - 10y ago
ben_jones 10y ago
And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users don't really give a fuck. They'll throw a hissy fit, they'll make all sorts of blog posts, but at the end of the day the majority are still staring at a windows 10 installation screen and dealing with it.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Once you stop playing games (it happens eventually for many of us), your need to have Windows around will drop considerably. Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?
  - legodt 10y ago
    Design software, rendering suites, and CAD mostly
    - ben_jones 10y ago
      I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
      - bitmapbrother 10y ago
        Unity and Unreal are all cross platform. As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
        bluesilver07 10y ago
        While they support building for Linux, the editors themselves are only alpha quality on Linux.
        10y ago
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download Windows 10. Ah, that brings back memories. Back in the DOS days, when you ran "format", it replied something like "Ready to format disk X. Press any key to continue:" (with X being the drive letter). And it really meant press any key to continue. Escape would continue. Control-C would continue. Even control-alt-delete would continue. The only way to not continue was to turn power off.
- wosos 10y ago
  Holy cow, really true to their word!
Esau 10y ago
I feel bad about what Windows has become. I really thought that Microsoft had turned a corner with Windows 7, which I really liked, but every release since has been disappointing.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Changing the default behavior of the dialog boxes to trick people into installing their software was pure malware level tactics. They knowingly crossed the line with that stunt. These unethical tactics are the kind you consult psychologists for with the intent of confusing people into thinking one thing and doing the other.
MR4D 10y ago
Interesting thought... If Microsoft forces a new version on your computer, and you refuse the EULA, what happens? Second thought - if you can't undo the install upon refusing the EULA, has Microsoft committed a crime of computer vandalism by (in effect) bricking your computer? Something tells me that some smart lawyers are going to blast some holes in this. Especially from a trade secret perspective where some smart hacker gets his computer bricked (just go with me for a second :) ) and then has to reverse engineer something to access his data, but because he didn't accept the EULA, and MSFT took over his computer without explicit permission, he can't be sued for violating the EULA. Now obviously IANAL, but you can see where this could go.
- Senji 10y ago
  >what happens? It reverts as if noting happened.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  you may have to revoke your agreement in writing within 72 hours in order to be fully safe. Click-through licenses are binding otherwise.

by 0xmohit 10y ago

makomk 10y ago

I think this slightly understates just how sleazy Microsoft were about it, if anything. Before the dialog that interpreted closing it with the X in the corner as agreement to install Windows 10, they rolled out a similar-looking dialog where that was the only way to avoid install Windows 10 - clicking on any of the buttons in the dialog would cause it to be installed.

wangchow 10y ago
Over the past year I've noticed a lot of things mysteriously getting installed, things moving around, etc. I don't mind automatic updates so long as there's a separation from the new features and bug fixes. There should be a base core of apps that are necessary and a set of opt-in add-on features. It's time to move to Linux on laptop/desktop/tablet I think. While I love my surface pro 3 and the Windows 10 experience is overall a good one, I don't like them changing undisclosed stuff on me.
- tracker1 10y ago
  On the flip side, I run Ubuntu on my htpc, and have for several years now... there have been a couple times where the updates broke audio, and the fix took on average 2 days, though I can imagine some people having worse experiences... Getting an MCE remote (arguably the most common PC remote type) working with Kodi (formerly xbmc and very popular full screen media player) took some cumbersome steps. On average one app breaks every 6 months or so after updating. By comparison, omitting the privacy issues, MS has a much better track record with updates.
  - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
    Both are subpar (and osx or whatever Apple call their offering is no better). I've been stuck in an update hell with windows where security updates simply would not install the only solution I could find was a full re-install. I've been in a similar situation with Ubuntu and was able to fix it - but only because I understood it - otherwise I would have had to do a re-install. The key with Ubuntu updates is to stick to LTS versions and to do a clean re-install (keeping /home as a separate partition makes this painless). Both have rubbish audio systems. Windows breaks on my laptop every few suspend resumes (fixed by restart). Ubuntu every few months (fixed by restart). At this point I'm disappointed by every system I use.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      That reminds me of another one... (Ubuntu htpc) I can "shut-down" and the remote startup works, but if it actually goes into suspend, I have to hit the actual power button in the cabinet. And more often than not the audio is broken on resume from suspend and I have to completely shut down to fix it (reboot doesn't work)... this is with a core i3-5010u, which is a relatively common intel audio chipset. I agree there are aspects of every OS that I don't like... I just wouldn't single out Windows (again other than privacy) as particularly bad on updates... updating my mbp to el capitan took a wipe as the upgrade broke half way through. TIP: Never update when you're tethered to your phone on vacation, always update a week before leaving for vacation by the way. lol
GFischer 10y ago
My freaking cat installed Windows 10 on my laptop - he pressed enter on one of those dialogs with his paw and Windows started updating. I was more or less resigned to do so anyways, so he didn't do anything I wasn't going to do eventually, he just hastened it. I wonder if EULA's accepted by a cat have any validity though :) PD: I googled that and Slashdot has a story on a hardware to have cats accept EULAs :) https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/dont-like-eulas-get-your-cat-to-agree-to-them https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/dont-li... But no, it's not a good anti-lawyer method, a comment says, regarding children and cats "The child is an instrument of your will. Note - they are not acting as your agent, as a child cannot be an agent. Instead, they are your instrument, much like a pen signing your name or a cat clicking a button for you is an instrument. "
- bisby 10y ago
  That seems to imply that you pick up your cat and have him press the button so you can say "it wasnt me!"... whereas in your case, you did not coerce the cat to press the button for you, so was it truly your instrument, or random occurence.
  - nightski 10y ago
    I feel like you would be responsible for any key presses on your laptop, regardless if made by the cat or not. Maybe someone can give an expert opinion.
    - waqf 10y ago
      I don't think that's entirely true. If an acquaintance used your laptop in front of you to hack into a bank, you might be responsible. But if Microsoft automatically downloaded BankHacker 3.11 to your machine and set it to pop up a dialogue box so that hacking into a bank was so simple your cat could do it — and if then your cat "used your laptop to hack into a bank", then common sense says that Microsoft would be responsible.
- mark-r 10y ago
  Intent figures greatly in legal circumstances. If you intended for your cat to accept a EULA by installing special hardware to enable it, you're almost certainly responsible. If the cat did it accidentally, maybe not - the hard part would be proving it was the cat and not yourself.

sotojuan 10y ago

So all the talk about the "new" Microsoft has been for nothing.

0xmohit 10y ago
THIS is the new "new" Microsoft.
- talmand 10y ago
  Nope, there have been multiple Microsoft's that have been in conflict with each other for years.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    That's probably true on some level, but from the outside, M$ now is M$ then.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      I think DevDiv (Developer Division) is much more in line with Open-Source as a movement, with the business eye towards making Azure the prefered PaaS/IaaS option with their tools. Windows, and a lot of other bits are more consumer space, and moving closer to Google/Facebook model of customers being the product. I don't necessarily think it's entirely a bad proposition. From a web application developer standpoint, old windows versions, tied to old IE versions have held things back over and over again. Even given some of the privacy concerns, I'd rather most people were on a frequently updated operating system with a frequently updated browser. That's not to say I think it needs to be windows. Also, if privacy is a concern, one can upgrade to the pro version, or use enterprise skus in offices to disable those bits. All of that said, I upgraded pretty early (tech preview) and use Pro, so didn't see a lot of the restrictions, or very sleazy upgrade push. My parents/grandparents are mostly on Chromebook devices, and one Grandmother has an Ubuntu desktop. My sister and her family have all bought into the Apple ecosystem... so I'm the most heavy windows user in the bunch and I spend more time on my macbook, ubuntu htpc or in a Linux ssh shell from windows than using windows exclusive software.

kyberias 10y ago

> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the > user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right > hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download > Windows 10. So what? I clicked that X multiple times and it didn't _install_. It may have _downloaded_, I'm not sure, but did not install.

dspillett 10y ago
> It may have _downloaded_, Was it bright enough to reliably detect metered connections (did it even try at all?). If not then just this could have cost people money. And consuming a couple of Gb of space could be a noticeable inconvenience on a small system (say one of the many tables and laptops with nothing more than a 64 or 32gb solid state drive).
- AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
  If you marked your connection as metered, I believe it respected that and wouldn't download it.
  - iotku 10y ago
    >If you marked your connection as metered, I believe it respected that and wouldn't download it. I don't recall windows 7 having any way to explicitly mark your connection as metered. As for Windows 8 (I believe it's the same as Windows 10), you can't mark a wired connection (ethernet) as metered if I recall correctly, even though you might be on a satellite internet connection for instance which most definitely is heavily metered.
    - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
      I can't speak for Windows 7, but I believe you could mark an ethernet as metered in Win 8, but you definitely can't in Win 10. Edit: I take it back, I was wrong. No ethernet metering. You can do it via regedit, but no way to do it from the UI.
10y ago

xjay 10y ago

Microsoft announced a free upgrade to Windows 10, saying users can opt-in now to prepare their systems for the upgrade. IT professionals wanted control over this upgrade. Microsoft responds by providing registry settings to block the upgrade process, which Microsoft later chose to ignore. As I observed on my system, Microsoft had also pushed out some preparation updates that reset some telemetry settings I had opted out of at one time, like the customer improvement program. Microsoft obviously has their head in the clouds now.

Aldo_MX 10y ago
So this is what they meant with cloud-first...

plantocorp 10y ago

As a Microsoft employee, this W10 force upgrade things is the single thing that pisses me off the most by far... It goes against everything that we are trying to promote/change. Sometimes I'm really wondering if we work for the same company (I'm not in the Windows division). I feel like all the effort we put in investing in open source, being more open, and just generally a more empathic company is totally destroyed by this w10 fiasco.

deleted 10y ago
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mitm2mitm 10y ago
http://i.giphy.com/3o7TKy8FveNIcy8t6U.gif http://i.giphy.com/3o7TKy8FveNIcy8t6U.gif
hendersoon 10y ago
I believe this famous comic said it best: http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ For all Satya's promises, nothing _really_ changed.
- thomasjudge 10y ago
  off topic, but on the Oracle one, "legal" should be "sales"
  - hendersoon 10y ago
    Assuming engineering was size X, sales would be 10X and legal 40X. Oracle licensing and legal are unbelievable snakes.
- 10y ago

ben_jones 10y ago

And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users don't really give a fuck. They'll throw a hissy fit, they'll make all sorts of blog posts, but at the end of the day the majority are still staring at a windows 10 installation screen and dealing with it.

r00fus 10y ago
Once you stop playing games (it happens eventually for many of us), your need to have Windows around will drop considerably. Are there any killer apps other than games to have Windows around @home?
- legodt 10y ago
  Design software, rendering suites, and CAD mostly
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
    - bitmapbrother 10y ago
      Unity and Unreal are all cross platform. As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
      - bluesilver07 10y ago
        While they support building for Linux, the editors themselves are only alpha quality on Linux.
        10y ago

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download Windows 10. Ah, that brings back memories. Back in the DOS days, when you ran "format", it replied something like "Ready to format disk X. Press any key to continue:" (with X being the drive letter). And it really meant press any key to continue. Escape would continue. Control-C would continue. Even control-alt-delete would continue. The only way to not continue was to turn power off.

wosos 10y ago
Holy cow, really true to their word!

Esau 10y ago

I feel bad about what Windows has become. I really thought that Microsoft had turned a corner with Windows 7, which I really liked, but every release since has been disappointing.

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Changing the default behavior of the dialog boxes to trick people into installing their software was pure malware level tactics. They knowingly crossed the line with that stunt. These unethical tactics are the kind you consult psychologists for with the intent of confusing people into thinking one thing and doing the other.

MR4D 10y ago

Interesting thought... If Microsoft forces a new version on your computer, and you refuse the EULA, what happens? Second thought - if you can't undo the install upon refusing the EULA, has Microsoft committed a crime of computer vandalism by (in effect) bricking your computer? Something tells me that some smart lawyers are going to blast some holes in this. Especially from a trade secret perspective where some smart hacker gets his computer bricked (just go with me for a second :) ) and then has to reverse engineer something to access his data, but because he didn't accept the EULA, and MSFT took over his computer without explicit permission, he can't be sued for violating the EULA. Now obviously IANAL, but you can see where this could go.

Senji 10y ago
>what happens? It reverts as if noting happened.
anonbanker 10y ago
you may have to revoke your agreement in writing within 72 hours in order to be fully safe. Click-through licenses are binding otherwise.