MS-DEFCON 2: The crisis has passed, but stay locked down

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Microsoft has fessed up, to some extent, and it appears as if yesterday’s two separate bunged Win10 updates were pulled. To be clear: Many Windows 10
[See the full post at: MS-DEFCON 2: The crisis has passed, but stay locked down]

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Fred, ch100

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I think this has been predicted to happen for a long time.
And I believe it bound to happen again on an even broader scale with the current method of updating.

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HiFlyer, lurks about

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I fully expect an even worse fiasco. The problem is MS is trying to do two things that are cross purposes with W10. First is to run as a semi-rolling release OS. The second is to continually embed new features into the OS. Anyone who has used a rolling/semi-rolling release Linux distro will tell you that problems will occur; hopefully rarely and easily fixable. These Linux distros do not add features to the core OS such as 3-d graphics tools or virtual reality. They leave those as separate applications the user can install at their leisure. Embedding new features adds complexity to the OS requiring testing to make sure they do not cause major problems. Doing both is more like squaring or cubing your risk rather than doubling it.

MS has not studied what others have being doing and have found to work for a rolling release OS. First pare the OS down the minimum and maintain that. Loosely couple other parts of Windows such as the windowing system and GUI so they are effectively independent of each other. Make applications such as Cortana, IE, or Edge true applications that are not part of the OS, windowing system, or GUI so removing them does not break the OS.

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Fred, Elly, Noel Carboni, Charlie, dononline, HiFlyer

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I agree with your points, but I do not think that is the direction Microsoft wants to go. It appears MS has not recovered from its jealousy of the closed off world that is Apple. A twenty year struggle that never made sense to me, coming from the company that made the IBM and Xerox closed world models obsolete making the PC industry possible in the first place.

But taking the biggest wedge of a shared economy is not as seductive as taking everything in a closed model. So goes the monster.

There are good reasons arguing for a fully integrated system against a more modular model. And having both options available would be better than abolishing either one.

Edit by appending rather than changing: Abolish is too strong here, and presupposes government involvement. Maybe read that as rooting for one to eliminate the other through market forces.

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Noel Carboni

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I think what MS is scared of is OSes and applications are mature products for most users do not need replacing when a new version is released. There is serious risk of OSes and applications becoming commodity products. Commodity products have low margins. Mature markets have lower margins. Truthfully, the feature set of W7 and Office 2010 are probably borderline or outright overkill for most users. About the only improvements needed for W7 for most users is updated hardware support for USB3 and the like. These improvements essentially call for a W7a release; not much money there. The situation is worse for Office as many alternatives are available which have approximately the same features as Office 2o1o at much less cost.

Apple supplies both the hardware and software with one price. Even though hardware is also a mature market, Apple is effectively getting several bits at the customer’s wallet for the hardware, OS, and software. But Apple has always been a hardware vendor that supplied the OS and some applications for their products.

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Charlie, Elly, Cascadian

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More thoughts below, for wider margins: https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/ms-defcon-2-the-crisis-has-passed-but-stay-locked-down/#post-119305

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Using the power of the tinhat, I could say that doing these things ‘accidentally’ to Older forms of OS would be a form of crowd control. A herding maneuver to suggest moving up and moving on is good growth. But that doesn’t work here.

PKCano notes this may have been foreseeable, therefore preventable. Having the fallout occur on the leading edge of progress means those affected either have to swallow hard and stay with what broke. Or look elsewhere. That is what makes this bad business. Even the users you retain will remember the bad experience, and trust the product less.

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Elly, HiFlyer

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So I migrated to Windows 10 last month and it’s a little buggy – surprise!. ; ) I have had a series of never-ending problems with Microsoft and associated hardware, regardless of OS. Very frustrating!!! Now Outlook keeps saying trying to connect. Works sometimes when I log out and log back in. Never stops working on my phone and my connection is not dropping. Also, sometimes when I reboot, pinned tabs do not come back. Any suggestions for these issues? I have seriously considered dumping Microsoft and switching to Apple, but am not 100% convinced that would be trouble-free either. I have Win10 Pro, Dell Latitude E5470. thanks. Donna

PS I registered but did not get an email, it is connected right now.

Edit to remove HTML
Please convert HTML to text (.txt) before posting.

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Check your junk mail/spam folder for the conformation e-mail. Sometimes it winds up there.

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woody wrote:

Some Win10 PCs — just regular, everyday Win10 PCs — also received the “rogue” version, called “build 16212,” through Windows Update. According to all reports I’ve seen, any attempt to install that build will fail.

You might think that only beta machines got bit. Not true. Even regular Windows 10 PCs got the bad build, delivered through Windows Update. Fortunately, the bad build wouldn’t install.

If you ever needed a reason to avoid Windows Update, you just saw it in spades.

32-bit only, right? Aren’t users of Windows 10 32-bit rarer than users of Windows 10 Mobile?

So a couple of desktop users saw an update which was not intended for them?

Was that the worst inconvenience suffered by non-Insiders?

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Please stay on topic, which is “MS-DEFCON 2: The crisis has passed, but stay locked down”

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HiFlyer, JDeC

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Aww, poor M$.  After about 40 years of buying up and putting most of their competition out of business, they can’t stand to see Apple’s success.  Brings tears to my eyes big as horse . . .

So, like a child, they throw a temper tantrum known as Windows 10.  It’s also an experiment that goes on and on – at their customers’ frustration and expense.  Grow up M$.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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lurks about, you have more great points on market stagnation and the need to artificially create demand, in order to pay for continuing research and development. When you describe Apple in your last lines, I read that as very much what I had in mind, vertical integration of the complete package. (if horizontal is being the only OS around eliminating all others, then vertical is having competitors across the field, but you have all the other necessary parts, pieces, and modules deliverable as a unit, requiring no other vendor to augment)

And that, I believe, is what Microsoft is drooling over. Either they are still honoring some dusty old promise to never create PC hardware, or they neurotically believe the desktop is dead. They have new gadgetitus with Surface, phones, and such but have only managed inferior products compared to Android and Apple. The only segment MS properly serve is the individual sitting at a desk doing productive work. The device need not be a traditional ‘desktop’ terminal, but it needs to service that level of production. Graduate studies, professional writers including technical publications, accountants, and so on. These productive people do not lounge on the couch with a 7-10″ tablet to crunch 30column spreadsheets covering five years of data, referencing information from three open documents and two separate browsers with multiple tabs open, praying the OS doesn’t demand an update right fri**** now because all your delay times have run out. [catch breath]

Artists are comfortable with the Apple products that cater to that form of creativity. Microsoft needs to remember from whence they came, and who they serve. People who spend 3 hours a day on ‘store’ bought apps, don’t make enough money to support an industry. Stop showing me their advertisements, I have work to do.

Wow, that got away from me a bit. Please consider moving to out of the box if need be.

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lurks about, Elly

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MS needs to determine what their primary markets are. If it business then W10 in its full glory is like a long term disaster. If it is the consumer market, then recognize most consumers only care about the OS as a shorthand for available apps and software. If an OS has sufficient apps and software they are happy. The business market is probably better suited to a well thought out and executed SaaS type model. Businesses want someone to take responsibility for the product and are willing to pay. Not a sexy market, but a large, viable market.

If MS adopts a business first strategy they should abandon separate Windows versions – everyone gets the same version. Second they should treat all consumer sales as found money; extra sales that help the bottom line but are not crucial to their success. This also recognizes the consumer market is much more fickle than the business market (watching cat videos on Youtube or Facebook only really requires a browser and a large enough screen).

The one key all users crave is stability: the OS behaves the same tomorrow as it does today.

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Cascadian

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lurks about, you continue to make points that draw my attention to new areas, thank you. I just wanted to refine my comments as they apply to the individual user not the business fleet overall. Mainframes became personal sized, that’s the root of PC. If MS can satisfy the person at the input device -whatever that looks like- they will simultaneously satisfy the business fleet. And likely cut down on job orders to the IT department. But when they start at the fleet level, users feel squashed like a field mouse under a pachyderm toe.

Your last line on stability is the strongest statement of all. And then it flies in the face of continuing revenue discussed further up. How do you make money, long term, if you sell the perfect product that never needs to be replaced? And around the circle we go, to new features we did not request, and get in our way, reducing productivity again.

I have strong opinions, but my phone doesn’t ring. So I pour forth on comment sections, and hope it is received well.

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@paul & @lurks-about
An interesting discussion, but not exactly on-topic here. You are welcome to create a discussion page on Outside the Box: Rants to continue

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satrow, Cascadian

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