Friday, April 5th 2019
Microsoft Reconsiders: No More Forced Updates in Windows 10
One of the big no-nos for some users looking to upgrade do Windows 10 was the fact that Microsoft enforced constant, 6-month update cycles independent of whether users wanted them or not. This move was done to streamline the update process and keep all users at parity when it comes to important security and feature updates that Microsoft considered relevant. However, it seems Microsoft is now abandoning this practice, which means that users that like to know exactly what is being changed in their systems - and at a time of their convenience - now have one less reason to not upgrade.
Not only will Windows no longer push updates inadvertently, now home users will also have the ability to not only pause updates, but also remove them. There's a caveat, though - you won't be able to postpone feature updates forever. As it stands, Microsoft has an 18 month "end of life" period for major Windows 10 versions, which means that after your 18 months of postponing updates are up (and all of the kinks have been ironed out), you PC will still update to the latest version. There are some other details, which I will transcribe from the Microsoft blog post for your perusal.
Sources:
Microsoft Blog, Reddit
Not only will Windows no longer push updates inadvertently, now home users will also have the ability to not only pause updates, but also remove them. There's a caveat, though - you won't be able to postpone feature updates forever. As it stands, Microsoft has an 18 month "end of life" period for major Windows 10 versions, which means that after your 18 months of postponing updates are up (and all of the kinks have been ironed out), you PC will still update to the latest version. There are some other details, which I will transcribe from the Microsoft blog post for your perusal.
Download and install now option provides users a separate control to initiate the installation of a feature update on eligible devices with no known key blocking compatibility issues. Users can still "Check for updates" to get monthly quality and security updates. Windows will automatically initiate a new feature update if the version of Windows 10 is nearing end of support. We may notify you when a feature update is available and ready for your machine. All Windows 10 devices with a supported version will continue to automatically receive the monthly updates. This new "download and install" option will also be available for our most popular versions of Windows 10, versions 1803 and 1809, by late May.
Additional improvements to put users more in control of updates that are being introduced with the May 2019 Update include:
- Extended ability to pause updates for both feature and monthly updates. This extension ability is for all editions of Windows 10, including Home. Based on user feedback we know that any update can come at an inconvenient time, such as when a PC is needed for a big presentation. So, we're making it possible for all users to pause both feature and monthly updates for up to 35 days (seven days at a time, up to five times). Once the 35-day pause period is reached, users will need to update their device before pausing again.
- Intelligent active hours to avoid disruptive update restarts. The active hours feature, introduced in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, relies on a manually configured time range to avoid automatically installing updates and rebooting. Many users leave the active hours setting at its 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. default. To further enhance active hours, users will now have the option to let Windows Update intelligently adjust active hours based on their device-specific usage patterns.
- Improved update orchestration to improve system responsiveness. This feature will improve system performance by intelligently coordinating Windows updates and Microsoft Store updates, so they occur when users are away from their devices to minimize disruptions.
149 Comments on Microsoft Reconsiders: No More Forced Updates in Windows 10
It's a lot like a developer putting out a program and then someone telling the developer that it's not working for them. OK sure, it's not working but tell the developer why it's not working. So instead of the user telling the developer why it crashed the user turns around and tells the developer to go screw himself.
You are basically saying exactly that to Microsoft, you are telling them in no uncertain terms to go screw themselves. You are not giving them the data, the crash dumps and stack traces, to fix issues that come up. And then you whine that things don't work right. Duh! You can't fix what you don't know about! Any developer will tell you this, especially with software as complex as an OS.
Mozilla does it, Google does it, Apple does it. Pretty much all software sends back data to the developer so as to improve software quality. Because again, you can't fix what you don't know about. You can have test case after test case after test case but even the most perfectly written code is going to have some strange issue on some person's system due to God knows what. A developer needs data about the issue so as to fix it. Period. Bugs don't get magically fixed, bugs get fixed with proper data from users who have issues.
Even NOW there isn't an actual change - The thread title says "Reconsidering", not that's it's a done deal and even with that I woudn't trust it.
They ain't studying "Fixing" anything except for their ability to snoop.
You willingly bend over for such you deserve what you get.
Take off the tinfoil hats.I also don't think you understand regression testing and what an impossible job it is for the pc platform. When you think of all the hardware and software combinations, they may as well be mapping the stars. I agree with you their QA process sucks but they would be much better off fixing the QA process and keep the forced updates instead of taking off forced updates and still having a shitty QA process.
A bad update is a bad update and will brick your shit whether it is forced or not.
These systems are complex with so many moving pieces, things are bound to go wrong when you poke and prod in some areas. Software isn't ever going to be perfect, as a developer (small time though I may be) I understand this concept very much so.
This tends to be a running theme with people who complain about W10, hell many of the people who claim to love W7 even have features of W7 disabled in the first place and don't even realise it (I.E small icons on the taskbar is a feature added in 7 to make the W7 taskbar look more like Vista).
Win 10 however is SO intrusive in comparison it goes "There" so I don't and will never have it on anything I browse the web with.
As for exactly what is being collected, present something saying/proving what "It" is being collected.
If you can't do that then the previous has no meaning.
And I happen to like my tinfoil hat thank you very much so I'll keep wearing it.My thing is why do they need to force updates in the first place?
There is a purpose for it and no, it's ain't about it being for one's own good. As for bad updates, you hit the nail on the head.
I do understand sometimes things can go wrong but as frequently and as badly as it's been you should have the ability to "Turn it off" if you want and it remain that way, which BTW is no secret an update would force all the crap back on again regardless.
@trparky I'm well over it be it due to life or whatever because I will not use Win 10.
Problem solved. ;)
Could you edit the title to accurately reflect the forced update after 18months ?
I mean I understand where you're coming from but doesn't mean you don't have the right to reduce or minimize it. If you don't then it only gets worse which it will over time anyway.
And just because the others are doing it too doesn't mean I have to like it or do nothing about it on my part.Now..... Who says I'll be running an Intel in the future or that Win 10 will be the only choice I'd have?
Just did an AMD build, Ryzen 2700x in a X470 Tachi Ultimate to be exact and installed Win 7 on it like it was nothing - Doing great and posting with it right now while getting some folding done too.
Not gonna keep going back and forth over it, Microsoft only says they are reconsidering, not that it's stopped nor is there any guarantee it ever will.
Even if they did stop, no promises it woudn't start up again as well.
Imo, it would be better to change the narrative from "telemetry vs no telemetry" to "automatic vs opt-in/out telemetry," the latter which colours a noticeable distinction between Microsoft's (and Google's) approach, and Mozilla's.
p.s: Unless there is some preprocessing I'm not aware of happening to those dumps before they are uploaded, memory dumps are a well knowndata leak vector, so I'm personally pro giving people the choice whether they want to give this data or not. Forcing trust is not the wisest of approaches.Technically, Zen is unsupported on Win7. So I assume you've either hacked your way through the update blockade, which makes the anti-10 arguments moot since you can hack -most of- those as well, or avoided updates completely, which isn't the smartest thing to do, imo.
Nailed it to a "T". :toast:
There is no trust if your trust in them is forced upon you.If you "Know" how the install process goes you can work around it - An extra step or two and that's about it.
Note I said "Install", not update.
No hacking required. ;)
So far the market has clearly vouched for MS and its OS at large. And it still does, despite the alternatives. For business, that is even more strongly the case. Thát is MS's core business. It is not cloud! Cloud is just a means to better serve that core business, and hopefully get some more money out of it. But it is also the very thing that keeps people away from mass adopting (and only adopting) the alternatives. Adoption rate/marketshare is everything - MS missed the boat on that one with a lot of things (mobile for example, but also digital software distribution, search, browser), and they are going to be very careful about their one major bastion: Windows. They didn't give us a free upgrade because it was the right thing to do...
Look at Windows 8 reception. It was horrible enough for MS to push 8.1 with major UI changes. This company listens to 'us'. It won't always be perfect for everyone, but its quite a long way in the right direction. I'd say much more so than for example Google. Another example: security breaches. MS has a pretty damn strong track record in that sense if you consider the scale and number of attack vectors possible. They have a mastery of things x86 very few companies have and in my opinion are pretty good caretakers of it. The company's been accused of many things, but its certainly not pushing a scary new reality on us. There are other tech companies doing that push. MS just follows along, but it does that with services that are actually useful, and not some silly social media or in-home speakers. Even Cortana hasn't had the slightest privacy issue yet. MS is very careful with that.
Saying that something crashed and having no data to back it up isn't at all helpful and won't lead to a bug a fix. It's like making a court case with no evidence, it's not much of a court case.
Case in point... this Firefox bug report (Firefox crashes with error Program received signal SIGPIPE, Broken pipe) There's a full stack trace with all required data to fix said bug. That's what is needed to fix bugs, without that data a developer can't hope to fix bugs.
All these people saying that telemetry is bad is saying that Mozilla shouldn't be getting the stack trace data that's included in that bug report I linked to above. Well if that's the case then how you do expect Mozilla to fix the bug? Oh yeah... you can't expect them because there's no data to see what the program was doing to determine the root cause of the crash.
Telemetry is absolutely necessary to fix bugs, period. A developer cannot know what happened to cause the program to crash without data to determine why.
surprisingly i find W10 closer to my experience with Win7 than what i had with W8.1 (never got into W8 ... 8.1 was fine tho ) aside what i mentioned above (OC break) i experienced less BSOD or other joyful things since i upgraded (sometime a crash from Nv drivers... but that's Nv faults ... which is why i roll video drivers from 6 month back until i see enough hotfix and feedback saying they are alright... which is rare with Nv ... so much for the "driver superiority") luckily W10 doesn't push video drivers, basically: i saw more BSOD during my Win7 time than now ... strange? eh? :oops:
DX12 games are coming to 7 so that was moot point
Mozilla explicitly emphasizes on the users' choice to decline this.