Windows 10 is incredibly clever, and we're only just starting to see the benefits of all these platforms running the same kernel. We're also starting to see problems.
For a business upgrading to Windows 10 isn't without its concerns. For one thing there's the ongoing issue of Microsoft's telemetry. Now I'm not personally someone who worries about this, and you can turn it off, but it's not entirely business friendly. Then there's the issue of adverts popping up in Windows 10 and the fact that Microsoft thinks it's cool to stuff new installs with Candy Crush. These are not business compatible notions, in my view.
So, the leak suggests that Microsoft will bring in something called "Windows 10 Pro for Workstations" although it might actually be called "Windows Pro for Advanced PCs" which will help Microsoft move away from the stigma of Windows 10.
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So will it help? Probably actually. Windows 10 is great and offers a lot to home users. I can see why businesses might not be so keen. Some of that is perhaps based on things that aren't really a big problem, and some will be legitimate concerns (like employees wasting time on Candy Crush, data security) that Windows for Workstations might address.
Like a lot of things, sometimes the answer is to do a bit of PR on the problem and hope it goes away. Microsoft needs to win over businesses to Windows 10 or it's sitting on a ticking support timebomb, and we have recently seen how older versions of Windows work out in business.There are a couple of things about this article that I found interesting. The first thing that leaped out at me was "the stigma of Windows 10," which is presented as a baseline assumption, unworthy of discussion or debate. Apparently, Microsoft's Windows 10 problems, and the stagnant adoption that has resulted, is no longer something that needs to be explained.
More important, though, is the breathtaking cynicism of those last couple of paragraphs, and their assumption that Windows 10's problems are essentially nothing more than a PR matter. In a typical move from the apologist playbook, serious personal privacy and data collection issues are dismissed as being on the same level as "employees wasting time on Candy Crush," before the writer moves on to assert that a simple name change will solve all of Windows 10's issues - the implicit assumption being that Windows 10 has no real issues, only perceived ones.
The problems with that assumption are legion, but let's start with the obvious one: Windows 10 is already a re-brand, an attempt by Microsoft to put as much distance as possible between the current version of the OS and the disastrously unpopular Windows 8, without ditching the Windows name entirely. To have to re-brand their attempt to re-brand Windows just adds another version number to the list of consecutive failed Windows versions, something which is unlikely to make the newest version seem more appealing.
Added to that, Windows 10 already suffers from a certain amount of SKU confusion, with multiple different versions and very little to differentiate between them except price, especially for enterprise customers. Adding several more SKUs to that list, even if they're replacing ones that are already available, does nothing to relieve the confusion.
And then there's the really big problem, namely that the new Pro for Advanced PC verison includes several performance enhancements, but doesn't appear to touch on Windows 10's problematic areas at all: personal privacy, data collection, advertising, and Microsoft-sponsored bloatware (like, yes, Candy Crush) are not on the leaked list of improvements. This makes sense only if you assume that Windows 10 has no real issues, only perceived ones that can be addressed with a name change, but it ignores the reality: Windows 10 has real issues, non-trivial ones that users are prefectly right to be upset about, and changing the name without first addressing any of those problems doesn't move the ball forward in any way at all.
What the Forbes article advocates is basically the same thing that Microsoft already did when re-releasing Windows 8 as Windows 10 with a new browser and some UI upgrades. Sure, Microsoft fixed some superficial things about Windows 8, but they totally ignored the core of the consumer discontent that made Win8 one of their least popular OS releases ever. Yes, people wanted their start menus and desktops back, but what they wanted even more was for Microsoft to quit trying to monitor and monetize their every action. Microsoft, clearly believing that this was more a PR matter than anything else, have already changed the packaging, but not what's in the package, and are now apparently plotting in secret to repeat that same action, while expecting the result to change.
That is why Windows 10 is in the process of failing to launch. Windows 10 doesn't just have PR problems, although Microsoft have had their fair share of those, also. Windows 10 has real issues, areas of reasonable and serious concern that Microsoft's apologists are still refusing to take seriously, in part because Microsoft themselves refuse to properly acknowledge and address them. Giving yet another new name to yet another new version of the same turd doesn't change that, no matter how much polish is applied to the turd.
Also... Windows 10's telemetry can't be turned off. Not without third party software, or a registry edit (and then some). I don't know whether this is a case of genuine ignorance, or one of intentional misinformation, but either way, it's factually wrong. Shame on you, Ian Morris, for not being either better informed about such an important subject, or more honest about it. He does start by saying that he doesn't much care about the issue, but he clearly knew that it was enough of an issue to have spent time contemptuously dismissing it, so that's hardly an adequate excuse.
Also... holy fuck, are Microsoft serious about that name? "Windows Pro for Advanced PCs?" What, Microsoft couldn't come up with something longer, and even more unwieldy? What does its acronym even work out to? WPFAPCs? Even if Windows 10's problems were purely of a PR nature, if Redmond's PR department can't do any better than WPFAPCs, then they're in some serious shit.
#failuretolaunch