Enterprises expected to wait 3-4 years before upgrading to Windows 10

For those keeping track, that's slightly later than the end of Windows 7's extended support period, and right about the end of Windows 8's mainstream support period.

From WindowsReport:

Microsoft’s latest release, Windows 10, has been out for a while now. When first released, it got off to a great start, recording massive installation numbers in a relatively short period of time. This had a lot to do with the fact that the company offered the operating system as a free upgrade to anyone who had previously purchased Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1.

[...]

As far as personal computers and normal users go, studies show that most of them had no problem in quickly making up their minds about which OS version they preferred and wanted to use. Having that information early one allowed them to quickly upgrade. Others might not have wanted to upgrade but were caught in the middle of one anyway. Now, Microsoft is looking at the business sector as the next in line to receive a mass deployment of the OS.

[...]

In the aftermath of extensive research, it was concluded that most companies and enterprises plan on upgrading to Windows 10 somewhere along the lines of three to four years from now. There are also many companies looking to upgrade sooner, as soon as 12 months.

Given how aggressively Microsoft have pushed users to adopt Windows 10, and how bullish their predictions of Enterprise adoption have been for the past several months, I think it's safe to say that this isn't the news that Microsoft was hoping for. With Windows 10's growth stalled for months, and even going backwards in the last couple of months' market share numbers, Microsoft needs for Enterprises to adopt Windows 10 now, not wait until they can't get any updates at all for Windows 7 anymore, but it's pretty clear that Windows 7 users are dug in for the duration, and that would appear to apply to businesses as well as individuals.

I can't wait for the new market share numbers to hit at the start of April. It'll be fascinating to see if any businesses have started to make the switch, or if everyone is waiting for someone else to jump first.

Welcome to the singularity

The Singularity: wherein developments in artificial intelligence reshape our civilization in profound and irreversible ways. It sounds like science fiction, but we live in a world where science fiction becomes science fact every single day, and the singularity isn't some far-future possibility anymore. Increasingly, it's the world we live in right now. And people are starting to notice.

From the NY Times:

Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots.

The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.

The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels. Just as cranes replaced dockworkers but created related jobs for engineers and financiers, the theory goes, new technology has created new jobs for software developers and data analysts.

But that paper was a conceptual exercise. The new one uses real-world data — and suggests a more pessimistic future. The researchers said they were surprised to see very little employment increase in other occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing.

CGP Grey posted an excellent video on this same subject a back in 2014, so this isn't news to everybody, but with former optimists coming around to the more pessimistic realistic view, look for this to become a more common narrative thread going forward. I know that common wisdom in the last U.S. election was that Dems didn't spend enough time talking about how they were going to bring back blue-collar jobs, but reality is what persists in being true, regardless of what you want to believe, and reality is that Obama was right: the economic force that's elminating factory jobs really is automation, and there really isn't much that anyone can do about that now, except prepare for the coming paradigm shift.

Imagine a society where everyone gets a guaranteed minimum income, and hustles on the side for extra cash. And then stop imagining, because it's already happening, with pilot projects in Finland and Ontario. This is our new normal: unemployment statistics are, and have always been, more fiction than fact, "full employment" is something that we'll never see again in our lifetimes, and there may be no other way to ensure that we can continue having an economy, when 40% of workers' jobs have been replaced by automation.

Welcome to the Singularity.

Q: Is it time for Microsoft to rethink Windows 10?

Spoiler alert! The answer is, "Yes." Yes, it is.

Wayne Williams at Betanews has a more detailed answer, though:

It’s easy to understand why Microsoft took the decision to take Windows 8 in a new direction. PC sales were falling, and people were transitioning to iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Microsoft felt it needed to do something radical to remain relevant in this changing world, and an operating system that could run on PCs, tablets, and smartphones seemed like a smart move.

The problem, of course, is the Start menu-less Windows 8 was too radical an approach for PC owners -- the bulk of Windows users -- and the OS itself was simply too half baked. There were too few decent non-PC devices around, and Microsoft had to build a Windows Store from scratch -- not easy.

Fast forward to 2015, and Microsoft brings out Windows 10. On paper, this had everything going for it. It was replacing a disliked predecessor, it offered what seemed like the best features of Windows 8.x combined with the best features of Windows 7, and it was free. What was not to like? Plus, like Windows 8.x, it could run on PCs, tablets and phones.

But Windows 10 hasn’t been the sure fire hit it was expected to be. It will be on 1 billion devices by 2018, Microsoft crowed. But even forcing users to upgrade to it didn’t get the OS any nearer to hitting that magical number. Windows 10 has a market share of around 25 percent now, which isn’t bad, except that’s half of what Windows 7 has, and people have stopped upgrading.

Williams then goes on to discuss why people have stopped upgrading in more detail, basically boiling it down to two main issues.

First, and apparently foremost, is Windows 10's focus on apps:

And here’s the biggest problem with apps -- they’re now universal, and designed to run on any device running Windows -- PCs, tablets, smartphones -- but who has a Windows smartphone these days? Pretty much no one. The whole point of Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps is you can install them on any Windows device you own, but if you only own a PC they why would you want to install an app when you could install a more powerful program, and enjoy greater choice?

Second, mentioned only in passing, is the non-stop advertising:

The main issue people are -- rightly -- hating on in Windows 10 at the moment is the adverts that Microsoft has peppered the OS with. These, for the most part, are to push apps, but I doubt the Windows Store has enjoyed a huge uptick in downloads as a result of them -- it’s just another annoyance Windows 10 users have to put up with.

Weirdly, Williams spends several paragraphs discussing the problem of apps, and only one talking about the adverts. Yes, both the Universal Windows Platform's anti-consumer approach, and the relentless drive by to monetize their Windows user base in any way they possibly can, are problems. But I think they miss the point, somewhat. These things are problematic, in and of themselves, but they're not the root of the problems; they're symptoms of more serious underlying issues.

Microsoft's entire approach to a Windows user base that has thrived on choice and freedom is to limit choices wherever possible, and coerce users when they can into behaving in ways that benefit Microsoft as a corporate entity. Only when the backlash has proved too intense has Microsoft backed off on these two strategic imperatives, and they never back off for long. 

That's why the Creators Update will once again include a setting that allows users to block the installation of Win32 software -- something which has been built into Windows 10 from the beginning, and which was initially turned on by default until the PR backlash forced Microsoft to back down.

That's why the Creators Update will once again be auto-downloading itself, even over metered connections, long after Microsoft apologized for doing that, and appeared to reverse course, after terrible PR forced them to admit that there were problems with the practice they hadn't considered. Apparently, they've reconsidered, and now think the practice is just fine. This, in an update which also allows users to postpone restarting after updates are installed, something else they had to implement because of terrible PR.

The major underlying issues here are trust, and choice. When Microsoft altered the behaviour of the "close window" button to force Windows 10 upgrades, it undermined trust, just as discovering that Windows 10 includes a built-in keylogger, again enabled by default, undermines trust. 

Removing the option to disable Cortana, even though Cortana monitors everything the user does and uses cloud-based services to perform even local hard drive searches, limits choice and undermines trust, as does locking Cortana to Edge and Bing, a combination of software and service that the market has resolutely refused to use when offered the choice.

Pushing ads through the OS, a behaviour that's seen in no other operating system, undermines trust, even as it attempts to influence users' choices.

Every time Microsoft denies security updates to people running Windows 7 on 6th generation SkyLake CPUs, it undermines both choice and trust... choice, because people who've bought and paid for Windows 7 explicitly have the right to run it on any one PC of their choosing, and trust, because Microsoft are now violating that agreement to unilaterally force users onto a new product that those users have repeatedly refused.

This is why people aren't switching to Windows 10 anymore, even though they can still do so for free, something which we're all supposed to pretend is some sort of secret even through everybody already knows who cares to know. They don't trust Microsoft to treat them and their choices with any kind of respect at all; they don't trust Microsoft not to spy on them; they don't trust Microsoft to keep their own given word. Darth Microsoft have altered the deal one too many times, now, going back to bad practices again and again, for anything they say to be believable anymore.

Does Microsoft need to rethink their Windows 10 strategy? Yes. Yes, they do. Desperately. Now would be a good time; in fact, they may already have left it too late. 

They need to change course, here. But will they? Probably not unless and until they're forced to. 

VR locomotion solution is still years away, according to Oculus.

This is something that I've been saying for a while (although I'd been calling it the "traversal" problem), so the fact that this is true is not at all surprising to me. The fact that Oculus are speaking about it with such candour, however, is.

From Upload:

If there’s one problem we’re most desperate for VR to solve right now it’s locomotion. Finding a means of movement that keeps players comfortable but retains immersion is one of the biggest challenges the industry faces. In fact, Oculus thinks an “end all, be all” solution is still “years away”.

Executive Producer David Yee said as much to me in a recent interview at the company’s Media Days event in the UK. [...] Yee said that figuring out the perfect solution was still far off as “we don’t understand how the brain works in terms of what’s comfortable or how people are acclimatizing”, but added that “the industry will decided what that standard is” and not Oculus itself.

“If you think back 15 years ago, like first person shooters, those were uncomfortable for many people playing them even on the TV,” Yee said. “On a 2D set using a controller, people get motion sick because they weren’t used to maneuvering the world with their camera especially when we switched from keyboard and mouse to controller where the thumb stick is not as one to one as a mouse movement is.”

That comparison, Oculus hopes, will follow through to the stage where people did acclimatize to first-person games. “There are standards to be had but no one gets to decide those,” Yee said. “The market gets to decide those.”

The market will, naturally, decide a lot of things about the final shape of VR, and most of the solutions to VR's most pressing problems are still years away, at best. The real question is, will the market be willing to keep investing in VR companies that are now admitting that they expect to lose money for years, all to maybe watch some other company invent the real format-defining standards of the medium. Time will tell, by I somehow doubt it. 

Or, as Upload themselves put it, "Don’t hold your breath if you’re waiting for the magical solution to moving inside VR any time soon." Don't expect consumers to rush out and buy VR headsets anytime soon, either, because most of VR's issues, including the total lack of anything that would pass for an essential application, fall into this "years away, if ever" category.

Microsoft's class action woes aren't over yet.

Class action lawsuits take a long time to really get going, so we can probably expect to see more of these trickling out of courts all over the place for years to come. Because some other folks out there also aren't intending to let Microsoft reap rewards for bad behaviour.

From The Reg:

Three people in Illinois have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that its Windows 10 update destroyed their data and damaged their computers.

The complaint [PDF], filed in Chicago's US District Court on Thursday, charges that Microsoft Windows 10 is a defective product and that its maker failed to provide adequate warning about the potential risks posed by Windows 10 installation – specifically system stability and data loss.

Microsoft "failed to exercise reasonable care in designing, formulating, and manufacturing the Windows 10 upgrade and placing it into the stream of commerce," the complaint claims. "As a result of its failure to exercise reasonable care, [the company] distributed an operating system that was liable to cause loss of data or damage to hardware."

The attorneys representing the trio are seeking to have the case certified as a class action that includes every person in the US who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation. They claim there are hundreds or thousands of affected individuals.

Microsoft have, of course, bundled some changes into the upcoming Creators Update which will allow users to delay restarting after an update, but that doesn't undo the damage they've already done, or make them any less legally liable for it. They're also banging the "Windows 10 was optional" drum as loudly as they can, even though they'd done everything they could to remove all choice from the update process, in ways that even they admitted went too far, an argument that has cost them at least one decision already. 

Yeah.... good luck with that, Microsoft.

It's not like nobody saw this coming, either, and there's probably more of the same on the way, thanks to yet another recent bad decision: auto-downloading updates over metered connections, regardless of what that might cost the user at the other end. As Gordon Kelly at Forbes put it, "if a user finds they face a larger Internet bill because Windows 10 decided their ethernet card driver (or graphics card driver which can be several hundred megabytes) was essential to update on the last day of the month, I expect Microsoft will face a flurry of complaints. Or even a class action lawsuit. And the costs could be dangerously expensive if you’re using your computer abroad on a roaming network."

Microsoft's OneDrive app runs like @$$ on Windows OS rivals.

Have I mentioned yet, that I kinda love The Reg's tech writers? Because I do.

From The Reg's Iain Thomson:

Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn't trickled down to its OneDrive team.

Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system – such as on Linux or ChromeOS – the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes.

Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string – a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself – to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs.

In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough.

"Microsoft has been pulling this stuff for the last 30 years and won't stop any time soon," huffed one penguinista on Tuesday. "If you commit to using their products, expect to be jerked around if you try to do anything other than live in their expensive walled garden."

We asked Microsoft for comment, but the software giant didn't want to talk about it. If we're being charitable to Redmond, we'd say this is a case of Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Yeah, once again, I don't think that Hanlon's Razor applies: Microsoft does this shit so often, and so consistently, that it can't simply be incompetence. Don't get me wrong, a company that large almost certainly employs at least a few idiots, but for this idiocy to keep happening in every aspect of their business, it has to intentional, and it has to be systemic. Once is an accident, and twice is a coincidence, but we're well past the point of this being one or two isolated incidents; this is a well-established Microsoft pattern.

It is cool to know what that malice/stupidity saying is called, though: Hanlon's Razor. Thanks, Iain!

Now, full disclosure: I don't use OneDrive, so this issue isn't affecting me. My objection here is not a personal one. This is a matter of principle. Microsoft have been working very hard to give the impression that they're big on Linux, and gaining some decent PR in the process, but it's bullshit. When Forbes opined that "Microsoft has decided that the operating system is no longer an important battleground, and that it’s more important to gain market share in cloud (Azure and Office 365) than it is to put energy into battling Linux for application market share," they were mistaken. Microsoft is all about forcing users onto Windows 10, right now, to establish the walled garden ecosystem on which they're clearly relying heavily for their future.

Microsoft really have bet the farm on this strategy. They really don't have a plan B. And their mounting desperation is becoming increasingly obvious, too. This is systemic; they really are doing this, and they really don't care how much damage they do to their own brand and reputation in the process, but they really haven't left themselves any other options. They need the ad revenue. They need their cut of Windows 10 Store sales. They've given too much away, at this point, and don't have any way to walk that back. At least, not one that Satya Nadella can see, or one that he'll sign off on.

GG, Satya Nadella. GG.

Windows 10 is invading your privacy in ways that nobody suspected

I had a very busy day, yesterday. That's my story, and I'm standing by it, to excuse the fact that I missed this, when it happened.

From Express.co.uk:

Windows 10 users are expecting the big Creators Update, which is expected to have a release date of April 11.

However, ahead of the big update users of the Microsoft OS may want to have a closer look at their settings - as what they are typing is being TRACKED.

Ever since Windows 10 was first launched in 2015, the software automatically enables a secret keyboard logger.

Microsoft says the feature tracks "your typing and handwriting info to improve typing and writing services".

See? It's yet another "helpful" Windows 10 feature, and not spying on you without your knowledge or consent at all. Honest! 

</sarcasm>

While one should hesitate to ascribe to malice that which can adequately explained by incompetence, Microsoft's track record on  privacy matters in general over the last two years leaves very little option but to assume that this is intentional. Remember, also, that this is part of an OS which comes with a built-in telemetry "feature" which is also uploading data about your system, and what you're doing on it, to a remote site for Microsoft to share with other parties that they refuse to identify. They'd been reticent about talking in detail about what metadata they were gathering, too; I guess we now know why.

Have I mentioned recently how glad I am, to have avoided all of this nonsense?

There is some good news, however. People have already figured out how to turn this new bit of bullshit off.

Also from Express.co.uk:

To turn it off, head to the Privacy area in Windows Settings, then the General menu.

There, you’ll find a number of privacy options which can be changed, altered and enabled.

Microsoft’s key logging can be turned off by deselecting the option that reads, “Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future”.

Great! Assuming that Microsoft don't also revert to resetting your privacy (and other) settings via Windows Update, which is behaviour that we've also seen before in Windows 10.

Seriously, why is this even a thing? Who thinks to drill down into their Windows settings to check for a "keylogger" setting? Even for Microsoft, this is some next-level crap.

People, Windows 10 is malware. If you haven't  switched to Windows 10 yet, I urge you not to. If you've already switched, and can roll back to (or reinstall) Windows 7 or 8, then you should. If you're feeling more adventurous, Linux beckons. Please, please, please, do anything other than reward Microsoft for this awful behaviour. Vote with your feet, by leaving; vote with your wallets, by keeping them closed; send the only message that Microsoft care about, and will listen to, when it comes to your privacy, and your rights as a consumer.

Windows 7 & 8 now blocking older AMD processors, too, not just Ryzen.

Are we really surprised?

From InfoWorld:

I reported earlier this morning that we're seeing "Unsupported hardware" and "Windows could not search for new updates" messages from people who are running Windows 7 and 8.1 on Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Rizen-based computers. It's part of Microsoft's long-threatened ban on Win7 and 8.1 updates for newer seventh-generation processors.

Now there's a report of similar blockages on an older AMD A6-8570 processor. It isn't clear if there's a bug in the detection logic, or if Microsoft's going to block Win7 and 8.1 updates on some older sixth-generation processors.

The report comes from poster The Heretic on [H]ardForum:

Well it isn't just the Ryzen that's going to get whacked. I came into work this AM to look at one of the system's I'd re-imaged with Win7 Pro and started downloading updates to it as I left yesterday. I was greeted with Microsoft's gotcha.

The screen he posts clearly says the block took place on an AMD Pro A6-8570 system.

[...]

AMD's product page for the AMD Pro A6-8570 clearly states that this is an older, sixth-generation chip.

I know that one should always hesitate to ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence, but when you consider just how much anti-consumer bullshit Microsoft has pulled in their efforts to force Windows 7 & 8 users to switch to Windows 10, I honestly think that we can just assume that this is deliberate on Microsoft's part. AMD really did a deal with the devil, when they agreed to let Microsoft lock their silicon to the products of Microsoft's choosing, and they should really be rethinking that decision, if they're not already.

Vulkan will have multi-GPU support on Windows 7 & 8, after all.

This is good news for people interested in the Vulkan API, and in competition generally, at least when it comes to gaming.

From Dark Side Of Gaming:

Last week, we informed you about Vulkan support multiple GPUs only in Windows 10. Well, it appears that won’t be the case as the Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan will also support multi-GPUs in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (as well as in Linux).

As the Khronos Group claimed:

“The good news is that the Vulkan multi-GPU specification is very definitely NOT tied to Windows 10. It is possible to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension on any desktop OS including Windows 7, 8.X and 10 and Linux.”

The Khronos Group has also commented on its GDC 2017 slides that, obviously, mislead us.

“Some of the Khronos GDC presentations mentioned that for Vulkan multi-GPU functionality, Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) must be in Linked Display Adapter (LDA) mode. That was not a very clear statement that has caused some confusion. And so it is worth clarifying that:

1. The use of WDDM is referring to the use of Vulkan multi-GPU functionality on Windows. On other OS, WDDM is not necessary to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension.
2. On Windows, the use of LDA mode can make implementing Vulkan multi-GPU functionality easier, and will probably be used by most implementations, but it is not strictly necessary.
3. If an implementation on Windows does decide to use LDA mode, it is NOT tied to Windows 10. LDA mode has been available on many versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and 8.X.”

I don't know what happened here -- whether Kronos Group's previous communication on this was just unclear, or just so unpopular that they decided to reverse course on this one -- but either way, this is a positive development for Vulkan. And more competition is likely to be a good thing for gamers, too, especially those wanting to game with Linux, or with Linux-like platforms like MacOS/iOS, Orbis/PS4, and Android.

Vulkan takes a step forwards

Kronos Group's new, cross-platform API has had something of an up-and-down week. It was just days ago that they announced that multi-GPU support for Windows would be restricted to Windows 10 only, but not restricted on Linux, MacOS, or other platforms, a decision which had people scratching their heads. Today, though, comes the news that at least one high-profile game has decided to port their game from DirectX to to Vulkan, rather than move to DirectX 12.

From PCGamesN:

In a forum post over on the programming forums for Star Citizen, director of graphics engineering Ali Brown has announced that Star Citizen will now use Khronos’ Vulkan API, rather than switching to the latest edition of DirectX. While the development team had previously stated their desire to support DX12, Vulkan is “a more logical rendering API” which will benefit all users.

One of the main reasons Brown gives for not supporting DX12 is that “it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10” and means that Star Citizen can be developed with “a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux.” As Star Citizen is targeted to be a multiplatform PC title, using Vulkan makes a lot more sense than having to spend a large amount of time reworking the game just to work on Linux.

[...]

According to Brown, DX12 “would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan,” and even then the APIs “aren't that different.” If anything is subject to change, you can be certain the boffins over at Cloud Imperium Games will let their legion of pilots know.

This is pretty much exactly what Kronos Group are hoping for. Game development, generally, has been trending in a cross-platform direction, with an increasing number of new games showing up on every platform, rather than being restricted to just one. A cross-platform API should make that easier, since the entire game doesn't need to be reworked nearly as extensively for each new port. At least, that's the theory.

That was also the theory behind OpenGL, though, and OpenGL never did manage to grow into an effective competitor for DirectX on Windows... which is the same as saying that it never really penetrated the PC gaming space. Even the Unity engine supports both DirectX and OpenGL: DirectX for PC and XBox, and OpenGL for everyone else. In order to really compete in PC Gaming, Vulkan will need to be seen as preferable to DirectX 12 for at least some PC releases.

The list of games with Vulkan support is still quite short, with id's Doom being the highest-profile example so far, so every high-profile new release that adopts the API contributes to its credibility. The Star Citizen announcement is exactly the kind of good PR that Vulkan needs, coming at a time when they can really use it, and their extensive communication throughout the development process should make an excellent showcase for the ease with which the switch to Vulkan is accomplished... or an excellent cautionary tale, if it goes badly. So, you know, no pressure.

It's still very early days for both Vulkan and DirectX 12, and we'll see which one takes flight more quickly. DirectX 12's success is likely to be directly tied to Windows 10's rate of adoption, something which seems to have stalled; it remains to be seen whether Kronos Group can capitalize on that opportunity.

Microsoft's coercion yields predictable response.

It looks like Microsoft's move to block Windows 7 and 8 users from running software they paid for, on the hardware of their choosing, is reaping a predictable harvest of bad PR.

First, Forbes:

Microsoft Admits Forcing More Users Onto Windows 10

Microsoft is blocking Windows 7 and 8 updates on Intel's seventh generation Core i3, i5 and i7 (Kaby Lake), AMD's Ryzen (Bristol Ridge) and Qualcomm's 8996 processors. Devices powered by these processors must update to Windows 10 in order to receive updates from Microsoft.

[...]

Responding to a request on the subject, a spokesperson said "As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon".

[...]

However, there is something going on here I don't like. While it's certainly true that Microsoft will optimise Windows 10 continually, it doesn't need to pull support for Windows Updates on new processors. It is still, however it's spun, trying to get a greater number of people off Windows 7 and 8 and onto Windows 10. I understand the business objective, I'm just not fond of being held hostage over updates.

What's more, the wording is clear that this will be an ongoing thing. Of course Microsoft pledged that it would put an end big numeric updates to Windows. There will be, it says, no Windows 11. But instead users will be updated to new versions of what I expect will become simply "Windows" in the future. But what that does also mean is that if there are additional things added to Windows that you dislike, you won't have any option to use an old version of Windows instead. While there will be user benefits to this strategy, it also means that Microsoft is taking away a measure of control from users.

[...]

So I get where Microsoft is going with this. For many, Windows 10 will be their OS of choice anyway. But for others the whole thing will leave a new sour taste in their mouths. You can read the company's justification in detail on its Windows Experience blog.

So, it's not a bug: this is the intended result of changes that Microsoft is making to Windows 7 & 8. And Forbes is a big enough platform that others are picking this up and running with it, with Gizmodo, Express.co.uk, Financial Express, and Business Standard all reporting the story, and not positively.

Express.co.uk wins the most lurid headline award:

Windows 10 shock - users rage as Microsoft blocks THIS popular software

MICROSOFT criticised for stopping users running preferred software on new Windows PCs.

While Gizmodo offered perhaps the most practical take, with a possible workaround for Microsoft's latest BS:

It's not outside the realms of possibility that someone will cook up a workaround, if you want to persist with a pre-Windows 10 platform. If you can't wait, it should be possible to use a program such as WSUS to grab updates manually.

But it's coverage in the likes of Forbes, Financial Express, and Business Standard that could prove the most problematic for Microsoft, because those are publications that Microsoft's highly-sought-after Enterprise customers could be reading, and paying heed to. Microsoft are already having trouble convincing these customers to adopt Windows 10, and this latest bit of flat-out coercion is unlikely to help. Darth Microsoft altering the deal yet again isn't a good look, when you're trying to convince prospective customers to enter into a long-time deal with them.

Hats off to Microsoft! They started the week by winning some good PR for not-really fixing Windows 10 Updates, and ended it by proving Tim Sweeney right, actually breaking Windows 7 in order for force users to make the OS switch that they're clearly not intending to make, anytime soon. They started by looking like they actually were listening to their customers, and ended up looking rather cartoonishly villainous. Well done, Redmond! GG.

UPDATE:

Like a bad rash, the bad PR continues to spread, including this piece on Hot Hardware:

Microsoft Apparently Ramping Up Heavy-Handed Tactics To Force Windows 10 Migrations

The clock is ticking for users holding out on Windows 7 and 8. For starters, Microsoft is blocking Windows 7 and 8 updates for Intel's seventh generation Core i3, i5 and i7 (Kaby Lake), AMD's Ryzen (Bristol Ridge) and Qualcomm's 8996 processors. The low-level Vulkan API will also not be supporting multiple GPUs on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and users will need to update to Windows 10 in order to support SLI or CrossFire with Vulkan.

Microsoft’s main argument is that this lack of updates will help them to focus on the deep integration between Windows and new silicon generations. Windows 7 was designed nearly a decade ago before the introduction of x86/x64 SOCs. Windows 7 is unable to run on any modern silicon without device drivers and firmware emulating Windows 7’s expectations for interrupt processing, bus support, and power states. According to Microsoft, “redesigning Windows 7 subsystems to embrace new generations of silicon would introduce churn into the Windows 7 code base” and break the company's commitment to security and stability.

This is the first time I've seen anyone connect the Ryzen/Kaby Lake story with the Vulkan story, but it's an obvious connection. As I blogged before, once Microsoft start blocking updates depending on your installed hardware, there's nothing stopping them from doing it for any installed hardware. It would go a long way to explaining why the Kronos Group isn't enabling full functionality for Vulkan on Windows 7 & 8, too -- they may not be able to, if Microsoft is breaking the earlier OS in a bid to force migration to Windows 10.

Vulkan takes a step backwards

Speaking of self-inflicted injuries...

I've blogged before about Vulkan, the promising new cross-platform API which the Kronos Group is pitting against Microsoft's latest iteration of Direct X. Providing the same low-level API benefits as DX12, but usable on every platform, including Linux, MacOS, Android, SteamOS, and PS4/Orbis (all of which are Linux-based or Unix-like environments), Vulkan's portability gave it a critical competitive edge that DX12 couldn't match, with DirectX12 is, naturally, being restricted to Windows 10.

The latest announcement from the Kronos Group, however, is throwing a little cold water on that prospect. It turns out that Vulkan's multi-GPU support might be restricted to Windows 10 and Linux, while being unavailable on the Windows version that half of PC users are actually, you know, using.

From HotHardware.com:

Today we are hearing that the low-level Vulkan API will not support multiple GPUs on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. The Dark Side Of Gaming came across the disappointing bit of news when rummaging through Kronos Group’s slides from GDC 2017. One slide entitled “Vulkan Multi-GPU and Virtual Reality Support” clearly points out that “WDDM must be in ‘linked display adapter’ mode”, with WDDM referring to the Windows Display Driver Model.

Although it might not seem like a big deal from reading that line, the linked display adapter mode is exclusive to WDDM 2.0. And as you are probably coming to realize at this point, WDDM 2.0 is a feature that is only natively supported by Windows 10. In other words, if you want to use NVIDIA SLI or AMD CrossFire natively with Vulkan, you’re going to have to be running Windows 10.

Here’s one more wrinkle in this story; it appears that Linux won’t have the multi-GPU limitation when it comes to Vulkan (and it obviously doesn’t support WDDM) which makes us wonder why exactly Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are being shown the door...

It's more than a little head-scratching. Vulkan competes directly with DirectX 12, and its portability is one of its most attractive features, but limiting parts of its feature set to Windows 10 make it less attractive as an option. After all, if your graphics engine is going to need Windows 10 to take full advantage of all the available graphics options, anyway, then why not build it around the API that comes with Microsoft's latest OS? Especially since many graphics engines are already built around earlier versions of DirectX? Other versions of Vulkan don't have this limitation, so it's not intrinsic to the API. What's the reasoning behind this?

Multi-GPU support isn't needed for Android devices, and it still needs to be supported separately by the game your'e playing, which means that this limitation may not hurt Vulkan's adoption all that much, but still.... it feels like a step away from the true cross-compatibility that's supposed to be Vulkan's reason for being. I just don't understand why the Kronos Group seems to be dissing Windows 7 & 8 this way, either, since users of those Windows versions are still more than half the PC OS market. It's like AMD's inexplicable recently loyalty to Windows 10 with their Ryzen line. Where's the benefit?

Hopefully, this is just a small hiccough, and Kronos Group can make Vulkan into a true competitor to Direct X 12, something which can only benefit consumers, but I have to say, I'm a little less hopeful about that prospect now, than I was a week ago.

The Shilling Continues!Microsoft is now actually pre-loading unwanted apps in Windows 10, not just previewing them.

Not that long ago, Microsoft tried to convince us that blocking installation of Win32 programs was an anti-bloatware feature that they were adding to Windows 10 for users' benefit. That was, quite simply, a lie. Although many Windows users will, over time, end up installing, and then forgetting about, any number of programs, neglecting to uninstall them and thus adversely affecting system performance, that hit to performance doesn't make those programs bloatware. Programs which you choose to install are not bloatware; only software which is installed against the user's wishes can count.

And the simple reality of Windows 10 is that the single biggest source of bloatware isn't Win32 programs of any description. The single biggest source of bloatware in Windows 10 is Microsoft. And, as if to hammer this point home, they're upping the ante on this practice again.

From The Verge:

I’ve sat back and witnessed the development of Windows 10 and appreciated the speed of new feature releases, but it seems there’s a price to pay for this new “Windows as a service” world. Microsoft has gradually been infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads. The first emerged on the lock screen as “tips,” and then there was the bundling of Candy Crush with the OS, and now Microsoft has started blasting notifications into the task bar and File Explorer.

Windows 10 users have been complaining vocally in recent weeks about OneDrive notifications in the File Explorer, encouraging them to pay $6.99 for an Office 365 subscription. The task bar notifications that prompt people to switch to Edge when they use Chrome, or install Microsoft’s Personal Shopping Assistant for Chrome, have been appearing for months. Microsoft even decided to use notifications to warn Chrome users about battery drain. These types of notifications not only spoil the experience of using Windows 10’s built-in features, but they’re an annoying distraction.

Now Microsoft is planning to preload another app in Windows 10: Sling TV. While only US Windows 10 users will get Sling TV preloaded without the necessary subscription, it will sit alongside Candy Crush and Solitaire as other examples of what will soon be described as bloatware. Thankfully, it’s easy to uninstall these unnecessary apps, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t add more to the mix in the future. Microsoft used to blame its OEM partners for bundling lots of useless apps on Windows PCs, but now it has itself to blame for doing the same to Windows 10.

[...]

Microsoft added a notification center to Windows 10 for a reason. If it feels the need to blast its loyal users with irritating prompts then these should be channeled into that notification center, not wedged into the File Explorer or on top of the task bar. You shouldn't have to dig deep into a settings panel to disable these; they shouldn't be there in your File Explorer in the first place. Microsoft already had to walk back its aggressive Windows 10 upgrade prompts last year, so hopefully the company will come to its senses and rethink these annoying ads and bloatware in Windows 10.

Pre-loading apps that a user has expressed no interest in, whatsoever? That's what bloatware looks like, Microsoft. Do you want to know why Windows 7 users are in no hurry to adopt Windows 10? Bullshit like this, is why.

Darth Microsoft alters the deal again

A while back, AMD and Intel made waves when they both annouced that their latest CPU chipsets (Zen and Kaby Lake, respectively) would only receive driver support for Windows 10. At the time, the speculation was that this "official" Win10 exclusivity wouldn't actually matter much, since both chipsets would probably run just fine on Windows 7 or 8.1, anway, and nobody was apparently willing to give much credence to the idea that AMD and Intel would just write off a huge chunk of their potential customer base by actively preventing users of older Windows versions from using their new chips.

People who were thinking that way, however, apparently didn't reckon with Microsoft, or with the amount of anti-consumer bullshit that Microsoft would be willing to build into its products. Because they're now actively blocking users of Windows 7 and 8.1 from using older versions of Windows on new Ryzen and Kaby Lake machines.

From PCGamesN:

It’s only frickin’ March. I find it hard to believe we haven’t even had three months of 2017 yet we’ve already seen entirely new CPU platforms from both AMD and Intel as well as a new ‘fastest graphics card ever.’ But as they announced over a year ago, Microsoft aren’t supporting the latest CPU platforms on their last-gen operating systems, suggesting anyone who wants to keep their PCs all nice and OCD updated should immediately upgrade to Windows 10.

Now that wouldn’t be a massive issue, as older operating systems were obviously not built with the intricacies of whole new chipset and CPU platforms in mind and it’s arguably more important for Microsoft to focus on ensuring good support for them with their most current OS.

All well and good. Except for the fact that reportedly AMD’s Ryzen chips seem to actually perform better on Windows 7 compared with Windows 10.

[...]

Yeah, that’s a mite awkward. But it’s okay ‘cos AMD says everything is fine, move along, nothing to see here. Windows 10 definitely isn’t having any scheduler issues with the Ryzen CCX architecture and any performance differences between the two operating systems “can be more likely attributed to software architecture differences between these OSes.”

Tom's Hardware gives more detail:

Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users with new processors who try to scan or download updates via the Windows Update tool are greeted with one of two messages. The first is straightforward: "Unsupported Hardware [...] Your PC uses a processor that isn’t supported on this version of Windows and you won’t receive updates." The second message isn't quite as clear:

Windows could not search for new updatesAn error occurred while checking for new updates for your computer.Error(s) found:Code 80240037 Windows Update encountered an unknown error.

So the company published a support article to explain that the way its new support policy was implemented means that "Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 devices that have a seventh generation or a later generation processor may no longer be able to scan or download updates through Windows Update or Microsoft Update." The company (naturally) advised users affected by this problem to upgrade from their current operating system to Windows 10.

If you planned to upgrade to Kaby Lake, AMD's Ryzen, or another new processor, then you'll also finally have to move to Windows 10. This might have been implied by Microsoft's previous statements--it has repeatedly said that Windows 10 would be the only operating system to support the new processors--but now it's clear that some people didn't get the message (hence the support article) and that "will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support" really means "you won't even be able to search for updates if you buy a new CPU without moving to Windows 10."

At this point, I just want to emphasize that this new behaviour isn't being added to Windows 10. It's being added to Windows 7 and 8, products whose users bought and paid for the software, and who never agreed to only run the OS on hardware that was approved by Microsoft.

The deal was always simple -- you owned your PC, and could install any hardware in your PC that you liked, as long as you understood that your installed hardware might not all play nicely together, either with your other hardware or with Windows itself. Once again, however, Microsoft have altered the deal, and Windows 7 and 8 users can now only run hardware that Microsoft approves in advance.

Here's a thought: if they can do this with your CPU and motherboard, then what's stopping them from doing this with your GPU, too? Want a better graphics card? Better switch to Windows 10! Any kind of hardware that Windows 7/8 can detect, which is all of it, can now cause you to simply be blocked from future updates of your supposedly-supported-until-2020 operating system, purely by Microsoft's fiat.

That, my friends, is bullshit. It shouldn't be at all surprising, of course, at least to anyone who's been watching Microsoft's behaviour over the last couple of years, but it's still bullshit. That point should not be in question.

The only real question is, "Will it work?"

So far, benchmark comparisons between Intel's new Kaby Lake processors and their older Skylake ships have shown almost identical performance between the two. Some heavily hyper-threaded applications showed significant gains, so if you're a professional videographer or YouTuber who renders hours of video as a business, Kaby Lake might be worth your while, but for all other applications, including games, you may as well stick with the PC you're already using, unless it's older than SkyLake.

AMD's Ryzen benchmarks, by comparison, have been such a hot mess that AMD had to issue disclaimers, asserting that their chips ran just fine with Windows 10, really, and weren't running unusually hot, either, regardless of what your PC's onboard temperature sensors were saying. And while Ryzen benchmarks for some heavily-hyperthreaded applications looked great, most of the benchmarks that gamers and other PC power enthusiasts really care about showed no better performance than Intel's.

This is what the end of Moore's Law looks like. PC performance seems to have plateaued, with brand-new PCs quite simply not being much of an upgrade over chipsets that are years old.

If your PC is pre-dates the Obama administration, and you're needing to upgrade because everything runs terribly, and you're wanting to stay with Windows 7 or 8.1, then you have a tough choice to make. You can buy last-gen tech and get an inexpensive system that will work perfectly well for at least a few years, but which may need replacing again in a few years' time... or you can switch to Windows 10, which you've been avoiding for a number of excellent reasons, in order to get more future-proofing, and just hope and pray that Microsoft eventually pull their heads out of their collective asses. Good luck with that.

If, however, you bought a decently powerful PC relatively recently, then you're probably good. You can stick with what's working, rather than spending money on a new PC that you don't actually need, that won't perform much better than what you're already running, and that you'll have to switch to Windows 10 to use, even though everything about Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy turns you completely off.

"Will it work?" The answer depends on how many Windows 7 and 8.1 users are genuinely happy with their machines, and the extent to which they're determined to avoid Windows 10's bullshit. Given that (a) PC sales have been trending downwards for eight years, while Android has overtaken Windows as the most-used OS on Earth thanks to its utter dominance on mobile devices, and (b) Windows 7 users, in particular have shown no desire whatsoever to switch to Windows 10, I somehow doubt that this will drive Windows 10 adoption. It could, and probably will, hurt sales of Ryzen and Kaby Lake, which makes AMD's and Intel's collusion in this scheme all the more baffling, but I don't see this actually benefitting Microsoft much at all.

So, will it work? I don't think so. In fact, I'm going to stand behind my earlier prediction, and say that Windows 10's market share will continue to tick backwards next month, both in general and among Steam users, while sales of new PCs continue to decline as Microsoft's latest anti-consumer step further depresses demand for new silicon.

Place your bets!

A subtler form of hard sell on Windows 10

If you've been paying attention, at all, then you already know that Windows 10's free upgrade period never ended.

The main GWX campaign may have wrapped up at the end of July, but it's continued to be available for free to anyone who uses "assistive technologies," a term which is so broadly defined that it includes the use of hotkeys -- not programmable keyboards, mind you, but the standard hotkeys which have been part of most Microsoft OS software since MS-DOS. Do you use CTRL+C to copy, and CTRL+V to paste? If so, then Windows 10 is still free for you... if you want it.

And that makes a kind of sense. Microsoft had to end the GWX campaign, because OEM PC vendors were obviously having a harder time selling new PCs when users could simply upgrade the OS on their existing machines. Previously, getting Microsoft's latest OS cost cash up front -- either the price of a new machine, or a couple of hundred dollars for the software by itself -- but the Windows 10 business plan requires rapid, widespread adoption of the platform, and giving it away was (as still is) the fastest way to accomplish that. The Windows 10 giveaway has quietly continued long after the July 29th free-upgrade "deadline" because that adoption hasn't happened yet.

With the Creator's Update imminent release, however, it would seem that Microsoft's stable of friendly tech writers are turning this continuing giveaway of Windows 10 into a subtle pressure tactic, one which will feel familiar to anyone who's ever been on the receiving end of a "hard sell."

A, B, C, goes the hard-sell mantra, "Always Be Closing," and one way that you can pressure people into buying now, rather than waiting for a time when a purchase might make more sense for them, is by convincing them that the deal on offer won't be offered for much longer. "Limited time offer," "Only while quantities last," "Offer ending soon," all these familiar siren calls are meant to increase the buyer's anxiety, pressuring them into buying now, just to make the anxiety stop.

Well, behold the latest version of that -- like this example from 1reddrop.com:

On April 11, 2017, one Windows version will be born while another dies. Windows 10 Creators Update is expected to drop to the general public on April 11; the same day, Microsoft will cease all life support for Windows Vista. If you’re on an older version of Windows 10, that’s how much of a window you have to upgrade to Windows 10.

Fortunately, the free upgrade option for Windows 10 is still available to you

Yup, we’ve been reminding our readers – almost every week, to be honest – that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer is still open, and that Microsoft is well aware of that fact. Though they’ve purportedly kept the porch light on for users of assistive technologies such as screen readers and so on, their secondary intent is to provide an alternative for those who’d rather not pay for Windows 10.

Why Get It Before April 11, 2017?

On April 11, when Windows 10 Creators Update drops to all current devices running Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft could stop the free option forever. From that day, there will no longer be an ethical and moral way to get a Windows 10 upgrade for free – well, not unless you’re a charity organization, anyway.

Yes, get it while it lasts, people! Because Microsoft might choose to end this offer once the Creators Update goes live. Maybe. But probably not. Because this is the thing about the limited-time-offer selling tactic: it's almost always bullshit. Most limited time offers are offered time after time, time and time again, repeated ad naseum until it stops being profitable to offer the deal in question. 

Microsoft will continue to offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade until they achieve wide enough adoption to make their Windows 10 strategy self-sustaining. They have to; their Windows 10 strategy is built on the assumption that they can convince users of older versions of Windows to switch, thus giving Microsoft a captive audience for their built-in advertising, and a large pool of customer for their walled-garden storefront. 

As long as Windows 10 is languishing at 25% market share, this limited time won't expire, because Microsoft can't afford to let is expire. Never forget, though, that Windows 10 is not free. One way or another, you're paying for Windows 10. And if you've refused to switch until now because of its annoying advertising, or its insidious invasions of privacy, then there's nothing magical about this April 11th "deadline." April 11th is no more meaningful than July 29th was, when it comes to Microsoft's Windows 10 giveaway.

If you ever see that Windows 10 has crossed the 50% market share mark, and then start hearing rumblings from Microsoft that they plan to tighten up the "assistive technologies" loophole, then you may want to give some more thought to this purchase decision. But until that day comes, you don't need to worry about it. Free and legal Windows 10 will still be available three months from now, or six months from now, or even a year from now.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Especially in Microsoft's world, where repeating past mistakes that have already caused significant PR damage is just business as usual.

From ONMSFT:

A feature that current builds of Windows 10 have is the ability to prevent system downloads via metered connections. This metered connection setting mostly refers to mobile connections but it can also be customized to include select Wi-Fi signals as well. In theory, this setting is a good idea as it can potentially reduce data fees but not many users are aware of its existence and it doesn’t entirely work properly and often downloads data regardless (as I discovered while using my Surface Pro 4 in Tokyo, Japan last year).

It’s unclear if the metered connections setting is currently faulty or if it’s actually working the way Microsoft intends and is downloading certain system updates that it deems too important not to install ASAP. Regardless, the company will soon officially begin downloading some system updates while on metered connections anyway.

Was it just a week ago, that Microsoft were talking about how they listen to, and make changes based on, user feedback? Well, I call bullshit. Clearly, they are not listening, and have learned nothing.

Microsoft's latest self-inflicted injury comes on the heels of the discovery of yet more advertising in Windows 10, and just before the release of a Creator's Update which is supposed to redeem the OS in the wake of the disastrous rollout of the Anniversary Update last summer. And, make no mistakes, stakes are high for the CU.

Just ask Paul Thurrott:

As I noted yesterday, Windows 10 Insider Preview build 15055 is what Microsoft would have called a Release Candidate in years past. Given recent history, let’s hope they get this one right.

I’ve written about the issues with Windows 10 updating in general, and about the issues with last summer’s Anniversary Update in particular. To its credit, Microsoft is serious about making sure this never happens again. But the issue is simple: In this Windows as a Service (WaaS) world, where Windows 10 is updated monthly at the very least, and often more so, update reliability is key. And the situation is worse with gigantic upgrades like the Creators Update, which Microsoft says it will ship 1-2 times per year.

Well, the biggest Windows 10 upgrade yet is arriving next month: Since last fall, we’ve known that Windows 10 would be upgraded to version 1703 in early 2017, courtesy of what Microsoft calls the Creators Update. This update will be finalized this month—right on schedule—and will start heading out to customers over Windows Update in very early April. Again, right in keeping with the original schedule.

Maintaining a schedule is great, but I have concerns. I believe them to be well-founded.

Those concerns include half-baked features being added at the 11th hour, and clearly inadequate testing, in spite of Windows 10's extensive (and unpopular) telemetry system. And, of course, there's the fact that you have no choice about whether to install the CU, or not:

Making this situation even worse, of course, is that Windows 10 updates and upgrades are compulsory. Sure, you can defer updates for a little while, but those updates/upgrades are coming eventually. You can’t stop them.

Looking beyond the Creators Update, Microsoft promises to be more transparent about what it’s doing, and it is changing Windows 10 to allow users to delay updates and upgrades for longer periods of time, and to prevent unwanted PC reboots. But that won’t help anyone looking to install (or not install) the Creators Update: You won’t get these benefits until you do upgrade.

Good luck with that.

Thurrott goes on to question whether "Windows 10 is perhaps too complex for this WaaS scheme that Microsoft wants so badly," which is an excellent point. With Windows 10 slowly losing market share to Windows 7, and a steady drip feed of bad PR that looks likely to keep that happening, the last thing Microsoft need is to remind users (and potential Enterprise customers) about the most annoying aspects of the GWX campaign, or the disastrous Anniversary Update rollout, yet Microsoft appear poised to repeat both events.

Good luck with that, indeed.

The real strength of Windows, or, the other reason why UWP isn't catching on, and probably won't.

One of my favourite YouTubers is a charming chap named Tom Scott.

Tom Scott has been, among other things, the UK organizer of International Talk Like a Pirate Day (as "Mad Cap'n Tom"), student union president at the University of York (as "Mad Cap'n Tom"), a prospective parliamentary candidate (also as "Mad Cap'n Tom"), and a TV presenter (not as "Mad Cap'n Tom," but alongside Colin Furze, who might just be slightly mad).

It's on YouTube, however, that he's really hit his stride, and my favourite video of his may well be this one, about the time be built an Emoji Keyboard. Yes, really:

At one point in this video, Tom is describing his approach to solving a thorny technical problem which might involve doing a bunch of research and then writing (and thus debugging) his own code, when he stops himself. "No," he says. "I run Windows. Someone will have done this before."

Sure enough, they had, and the resulting adventures in marrying AutoHotKey (a Windows program) with LuaMacros (an obscure scripting language used by hard-core flight simmers) is highly entertaining. It also serves to illustrate the true strength of Windows, and the reason that it's so dominant in the OS marketplace.

Windows has been the operating system, with at least an 85% share of the OS market, and sometimes as much as 95%, for decades. Basically, everybody runs Windows. No matter what you need to do, there's an app for that... or, to be more precise, there's a Win32 executable for any task you need to tackle.

This makes Windows enormously useful, because you can use it for anything. If you can imagine it, someone, somewhere, will have done it already; you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just need to figure out what wheel they used, and then tweak it slightly to fit.

Windows 10's Universal Windows Platform has none of these advantages.

This is, I think, why Microsoft's push to freeze out Win32 applications, and limit Windows 10 users to UWP apps purchased only through the Windows 10 Store, is fundamentally doomed. Windows' legendary backwards-compatibility and enormous catalogue of existing applications is the platform's single biggest strength, and Microsoft is doing their level best to throw it all away, apparently in the hope of monetizing a user base who won't have a compelling reason anymore to run Windows. They're discarding their greatest competitive strength, and replacing it with advertising.

I get that Microsoft want to be Google, or Apple, or both, but their attempts to emulate their competitors aren't just inept -- they're fundamentally wrong-headed. Microsoft clearly have no idea how to be Google or  Apple, and crucially, they're also forgetting how to be Microsoft in the process. The loss of their customers' trust and goodwill is problem enough, but this loss of identity may well prove to be more crippling. Windows without Windows' back-catalogue... just isn't Windows, anymore. Not really. Strip away Windows' huge library of existing applications, and it may as well be Linux.

Which is one reason why I'm seriously considering switching from Windows 7 to Linux, when the time comes. I'm still hoping that I don't have to, and I'm lazy enough to not want to, but I will, if Microsoft succeeds in stripping Windows of everything that makes it worth using. Because, at that point, we all may as well be running Linux.

Here's why Microsoft's fans should stop defending them

Michael Allison is on a tear over at MSPoweruser. His latest op/ed piece, "Microsoft’s ads in Windows 10 are getting out of control," may not have been as polarizing as Mark Wilson's assertion that Windows 10 was more advertising platform than operating system, but a quick perusal of its comment section will show a fair smattering of the usual fallacious counter-arguments.

Allison, however, has clearly given this issue a lot more thought than those commenters, and today he posted another piece, dismantling every single one of their objections, in detail. It's a fantastic read, and not only because he used "Tu Quoque" in a sentence.

This is one of my favourite parts:

“But Apple and Google do it too”

This is what is known in logic as a “Tu Quoque” fallacy or as all people who deal with small children know the “How come he can do it but I can’t” argument. It’s not really an argument so much as it is pointing or that someone else does the same thing, ergo they should be allowed to do the same thing. In most cases, it is a logical fallacy because it a) is an attempt at deflection from the topic at hand and a red herring, and b) the comparison is never really appropriate.

Take this example where Owen Williams compares the uproar over Windows 10’s advertising and notes that Apple’s Mac OS pops up a notification whenever default browsers are changed. I’m sure some people are complaining about it, but it is disingenuous to compare to this to Windows because Microsoft does exactly the same thing in Windows 10 when you deviate from the Microsoft recommended defaults and that is not what people are complaining about.

And there's this point:

“But Windows 10 is free, how do you expect Microsoft to recoup their investment”

This is a terrible argument on several fronts.

Firstly and briefly, unless you’re a Microsoft shareholder or employee, you have no business worrying about Microsoft’s bottom line. Your contribution to Windows revenue begins and ends at the online or in-store checkout where you presumably paid for it with hard-earned money.

Secondly, Windows 10 is not free. It comes pre-installed with PCs in which case it is purchased by OEMs and then the pricing is bundled in with that of your PC, or it can be purchased by users from Microsoft who sells it at a base price of £109.99. One way or another, you’re paying for Windows.

But this may be the most important section:

Finally and more importantly, there’s is an issue of trust and trust being violated there.

Microsoft promised explicitly that Windows 10 would be free, They made great pains to explain that the Windows 10 upgrade was not free with an asterisk or with hidden terms and conditions but genuinely free. While some online pundits and commenters argued that Microsoft giving out Windows 10 for free meant that Windows 10 was being monetized and that Microsoft would slowly take control from the user, they were dismissed as crackpots and spreaders of FUD.

Playing devil’s advocate for a moment here and assuming that this is what Microsoft is actually doing, this implies that Microsoft deliberately lied to their customers when they marketed Windows 10 as free with no strings attached. Much like with the Windows Phone 8.1 upgrade “promise”, OneDrive kerfuffle a while ago, this erodes trust in Microsoft’s word. It implies that Microsoft can promise something explicitly, and then change it once you’re sufficiently locked-in.

Well said. Very well said.

And, finally,  there's this point:

“But you can turn it off”

You could turn Cortana off before too. Simply speaking, would you turn it on if it was off by default? If no, then who does it benefit.

What can I say? I agree completely. In fact, many of these are essentially the same arguments that I've been making for months, if less eloquently (or more pungently). Seriously, the whole thing is great, and if you've been following this issue at all then you should absolutely go read the entirety of it.

(Yes, I've linked to the article five different times in one blog post. What can I say? I'm hoping someone from Microsoft happens on this, and clicks a link.)

Nothing to see here, says AMD

I guess Microsoft and AMD have kissed and made up, because AMD is letting them off the hook for the problems that Ryzen has with Windows 10.

From TechSpot:

AMD has put an official end to the debate surrounding Windows 10's thread scheduler and Ryzen's lower-than-expected 1080p gaming performance. In an official statement posted on the AMD gaming blog, the company says "the Windows® 10 thread scheduler is operating properly for “Zen.”"

The statement continues to say AMD "do not presently believe there is an issue with the scheduler adversely utilizing the logical and physical configurations of the architecture."

As for reported performance deltas between Windows 10 and Windows 7, AMD says that they "do not believe there is an issue with scheduling differences between the two versions of Windows", and that any performance differences are simply attributed to the software architecture differences between 7 and 10.

Problems? What problems?

AMD went on to say that their new SMT technology should have a neutral or positive impact on performance (never mind all those benchmarks to the contrary), and finishes by saying that "some game optimizations for Ryzen may be possible." So, there are no problems, therefore any problems you're seering are strictly your imagination, and they'll be helping patch the non-existent performance problems on a game-by-game basis.... eventually.

Why is this AMD's best option, exactly? Ryzen benchmarks really are something of a hot mess right now, and this latest statement from AMD is basically an admission that their new hotness CPU just doesn't run as well as they were claiming prior to its launch. That's right in line with the Intel's comparative benchmarks, which show only modest gains for Kaby Lake over SkyLake, but considering how much AMD have sunk into development the new Zen architecture, if it's not going to be able to outperform Intel's Kaby Lake, that might spell serious trouble for AMD.

AMD does mention, almost in passing, that Ryzen performs equally well on both Windows 7 and Windows 10, but considering their previous, full-throated endorsement of Windows 10 as the only platform that will see full driver support for Ryzen and all other future AMD products, I don't think that's going to be enough to pull in the Windows 7 die-hards that they're losing by not outright committing to supporting Windows 7 until at least 2020. If this was meant to be some sort of dog-whistle appeal to Windows 7 AMD enthusiasts, I think it's much to quiet for any of those old dogs to really hear, and pitched outside the range of their hearing, anyway.

AMD's previous CPUs were at a significant performance disadvantage compared to Intel's i5, so the fact that Ryzen is on par with i7 is still a significant performance improvement over older AMD processors. AMD's bang-for-buck proposition hasn't changed, either, which has already prompted Intel to cut prices significantly on their line -- competition is generally good for consumers, and anyone buying a new PC can now basically pick the affordably-priced, high-powered CPU of their choice. But PC sales are still down, and neither new CPU is showing enough of a performance boost in independent testing to justify the expense of a new system. So, how does AMD benefit from taking the hit for this?

"Our new CPU really just isn't that great" certainly doesn't help sell Ryzen, and since i7/Kaby Lake isn't really a big step up from i5/Skylake, either, it doesn't look like either new CPU line is likely to boost PC sales anytime soon... which means there's nothing driving new Windows 10 installations for Microsoft, either. I guess Microsoft get the driver issue to stop being comment-worthy, but that doesn't seem like much of a benefit. Who wins here?