Windows 10's Anniversary Update is a mess. Microsoft spent months working on the thing, testing a refining it, and still managed to roll it out with a whole slew of debilitating issues, including the webcam issues that tech writers are so exorcised about this week. Worse yet, Windows 10 Home users don't get much a choice in the matter, since they have no control over their update cycle: Microsoft decides what updates will be installed, more or less unilaterally.
This is a problem. It's a big enough problem, in fact, that a huge swathe of Windows 7 users (and even some Windows 8 users) turned down the free upgrade in order to retain more control over their PCs.
Well, if you're one of those users, Microsoft has a simple message for you, and that message is that you can go fuck yourself. You want control over your PCs updates? Too fucking bad. You'll get the updates that Microsoft says you'll get, or you'll get nothing. Those are your options now.
From Microsoft.com, via Slashdot:
From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update. The Monthly Rollup will be published to Windows Update (WU), WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Each month’s rollup will supersede the previous month’s rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current. i.e. a Monthly Rollup in October 2016 will include all updates for October, while November 2016 will include October and November updates, and so on. Devices that have this rollup installed from Windows Update or WSUS will utilize express packages, keeping the monthly download size small.
[...]
Also from October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Security-only update. This update collects all of the security patches for that month into a single update. Unlike the Monthly Rollup, the Security-only update will only include new security patches that are released for that month. Individual patches will no longer be available. The Security-only update will be available to download and deploy from WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Windows Update will publish only the Monthly Rollup – the Security-only update will not be published to Windows Update.
Windows 7 users have been able to avoid Microsoft's "telemetry" (i.e. spyware), and disabled the GWX application primarily because those things came as separate updates -- they could be individually identified, and removed by users that didn't want them. Well, Microsoft has had enough of that, apparently -- now, the spyware will be buried in the Monthly Rollup, and unavoidable if you want to stay current.
Do you want only the security updates, and not a bunch of spyware and other dubious "features?" Turn off Windows Update, then, and start downloading the monthly security patch separately... and, I guess, just hope that Microsoft haven't bundled anything in there that you don't want, either.
The other downside is that updates will only come on a monthly schedule... so if a critical security problem isn't patched in time to make the Monthly Rollup, you'll now be left vulnerable for a whole month until the next one. It's a sharp reduction in the level of service being provided to customers, in addition to being a reduction in the choice and control which they'd clearly opted to retain, and makes a mockery of Microsoft's promise to support Windows 7 until 2020.
This is a huge "fuck you" to everyone who refused to adopt Windows 10, and the anti-consumer philosophy that underpins it. Years of customer loyalty mean nothing to Redmond; if you haven't done anything for them lately, then they don't give a shit about you. We already knew that, of course, but they seem to keep finding ways to prove it to us.
Well, fuck you, too, Microsoft. Fuck you, too.