I'm starting to think that Microsoft really burned their OneDrive bridges...

Spotted on MSPowerUser:

Windows 10 users finally have a cloud storage option which offers actual privacy

[...]

Cloud storage is great and increasingly essential, as we move to PCs with small SSD storage and multiple mobile devices with even less.

Unfortunately, these usually come with very stringent terms of service which mean companies are free to snoop on the content of these online drives and explicitly forbid uploading items which may raise copyright or obscenity concerns.

Fortunately for Windows users, there is one company which has always thumbed their nose at both of those community standards, and they have now released a UWP app for Windows 10 users on phone and PC to try out.

Currently, in alpha, the MEGA Privacy app is a secure cloud storage service that gives you 50 GB free storage space. Unlike other cloud storage providers, your data is encrypted and decrypted by your client devices only and never by the company itself, which means they never know what your online archive contains.

Yes, you're reading that correctly: that's Kim Dotcom's MEGA, being touted as a better option than OneDrive, because privacy. That's the same Kim Dotcom who's been fighting extradition from New Zealand to the U.S. for years, and who founded MEGA because his previous cloud storage venture, MegaUpload, is totally frozen on dead servers, preventing data from being accessed by those who legally own it; that's the legal legacy of the man who founded MEGA, which is now being touted as a preferred alternative to OneDrive, because Microsoft has fucked up the privacy file that badly in Windows 10.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Creators Update, which was supposed to help jump-start Windows 10's stalled adoption among consumers and businesses alike, is still garnering headlines exclusively for its bugs and rollout delays, making it only slightly less of a disaster than the Anniversary Update... by which I mean that it took over a week for the issues to become the exclusive public focus of all the coverage, rather than being the focus from day one. All this is happening with only one more day to go before we get to see what sort of an impact the CU is actually having on those aforementioned adoption rates. 

Ouch, again.

Oh, and Microsoft's bid to take over Apple's position as a consumer electronics juggernaut, selling not only the software but also the hardware to consumers who would then become captives to its walled garden Windows 10 ecosystem? That's hit a snag, too, with sales of Surface tablets dropping as better, cheaper alternatives start to take over the marketplace, and Microsoft trying to handwave off dropping sales numbers as the result of "product end-of-lifecycle dynamics." Yes, having neglected the mobile market until after iOS and Android had divvied up all the territory, and having then neglected Windows Phone to death, they're now apparently neglecting their Surface division. The Surface line was the one thing Microsoft had going that looked last year like an unqualified success, but even Surface is now also starting to decline, as nimbler competitors push Microsoft out of the hardware market without selling enough units to really bolster Windows 10's adoption rates, more broadly.

Triple ouch, I guess?

There's no particular mystery about the Windows 10 strategy; it's pretty obvious what Microsoft need to happen, here, for their long-term plans to continue being viable. I do have to wonder, though, if anyone's actually assessing their progress towards those strategic goals, and starting to wonder if maybe their current tactics were unwisely chosen. Because they seem to be all over the fucking place, tactically, unable to maintain any kind of focus or messaging tone for any length of time at all. Every time they take a baby step in a positive direction, they follow it with a month of fuck-ups and missed opportunities, blindly sticking to a play-book that doesn't seem to be working, really. 

Microsoft are big enough, and have a large enough lead in the desktop OS market, that they can afford to absorb the associated costs of these missteps for a while yet, but I have to wonder how much longer they can keep it up before their shareholders start to catch on? It's one thing for Satya Nadella to want to take Microsoft in a bold, new direction, but it's another thing entirely for them to alienate their customers, to the point where Kim fucking Dotcom looks like better option, by insisting on an array of consumer-unfriendly practices that keep coming back to bite them over and over and over again. All of these lingering issues, these unforced errors, seem to be keeping them off-balance, unable to talk and their chew gum simultaneously, while consumers (and, thus far, enterprises) continue using what we know works, rather than becoming part of Windows 10's highly experimental way of doing things.

Is Windows-as-a-Service even viable, given Windows' complexity and the range of hardware that it's already running on? I'm not the only person who's asking that question, and the evidence in favour is far from conclusive. So far, Microsoft has rolled out exactly two major updates to Windows 10, both disastrously, but they're still committed to rolling out two such updates a year, every year, for the rest of time. How is that going to work? And if they can't even deliver on that part of the Window 10 package reliably, how in hell are they planning to win back the hearts and minds of consumers who are choosing MEGA over OneDrive because they don't trust Microsoft anymore?

We're just hours away from NetMarketShare's end-of-April snapshot of the PC OS market place; I'm not expecting Windows 10 to have made any significant gains at all (significant, remember, meaning greater then the margin of error of the report itself, which I've been guesstimating at +/- 0.05%). So, my question is, exactly how long does Windows 10's adoption have to stay flatlined before Mr. Nadella will admit that his chosen strategy, or at least his chosen tactics, were chosen unwisely? Or, failing that, how long can he retain the confidence of Microsoft's shareholders, while the glorious Windows 10 future remains maddenly out of reach?

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.

Windows 10's market share creeps upwards, along with Windows 7's

Happy New Year!

It's not just the first day of 2017, it's also the first day of a whole new month, which means NetMarketShare has posted new OS Market Share numbers for the month just ended.

To recap, the end of November/start of December looked like this:

with Windows 7 & 8 finally losing some market share to Windows 10, after Microsoft ended sales of the older OS versions.

The end of December/start of January, however, looks like this:

Yes, Windows 7 appears to be right back to it's end of October/start of November level, meaning that last month's market share dip was probably just statistical noise. Windows 10 has managed to tick upwards by 0.64%, but that's significantly less than Windows 8's 1.11% drop, meaning that Windows 8's losses didn't all translate into gains for Redmond's new OS.

Oddly, Windows XP also ticked up slightly after ticking downward last month, but since that's been XP's pattern for several months now, it's probably also just statistical noise at this point; Linux also ticked down slightly after ticking up last month, which is also likely to be noise in NetMarketShare's data.

The only OS version showing what looks like a meaningful shift is OS X El Capitan (10.11), which dropped 0.38% while MacOS Sierra (10.12) gained 0.10% -- again, not exactly a shift from 10.11 to 10.12, and 10.12's uptick is in the same sub-1% range as the likely noise that we're seeing for other OS versions.

So, what does it all mean? Here's my take.

With Windows 7 & 8 no longer available for purchase, we're not going to see any significant gains for either OS, but Windows 10 is not rushing in to fill the gap, either. People are just not switching, now that switching isn't free anymore, and they're not buying new PCs, either, and I'm not expecting the upcoming Creator's Update to cause a significant in shift either trend, especially after the bungled Anniversary Update rollout left such a bad taste in so many mouths.

A fresh year might mean fresh budgets for both business and governmental IT departments, but the economy is not so robust (anywhere, really) for IT departments to be planning to buy all new hardware for their users, and that seems to be the only way that new Windows 10 installations are happening. Microsoft had made avoiding GWX nearly impossible for non-technically savvy users, too, meaning that there's no-one using Windows 7 who doesn't know a thing or two about their PCs... which probably also means that a fair few IT professionals are included in their numbers, something which, if true, will complicate Redmond's efforts to push Win10 onto enterprise PCs to no end.

Windows 10 has, by hook and by crook, achieved a significant footprint in the OS marketplace, so it can't be deemed a failure, exactly, but new gains are going to come very slowly from here on out, which spells trouble for a company that went all in on an entirely new way of doing every aspect of their business. Windows 7, meanwhile, is looking to be every bit the new XP that Microsoft clearly feared it would be, steadily and stubbornly occupying a huge chunk of the OS landscape, with users who are simply refusing to abandon a perfectly functional OS unless and until they absolutely must.

It seems inarguable now that Microsoft did a lot of damage to their own brand and reputation with the GWX campaign, and while they're finally starting to acknowledge that simple fact, the damage remains well and truly done; it doesn't look like users are in much of a rush to embrace anything new from Microsoft, regardless of the hype behind it. The hard part, for Redmond, is that gaining consumers' trust is not easy, and regaining it, after pissing it away, is even harder. I'm not saying that it's not possible, but it's going to take a lot more than a mildly self-pitying statement from their CMO to shift hearts and minds that have been hardening against them for more than a year now.

Do they have it in them, to do more? I guess we'll see. We're still awaiting details of the deal that they're doing with CNIL to avoid regulatory penalties in France, which will probably be our first hint of just how much Redmond is willing to change their struggling corporate strategy, but I have a feeling that they'll need to do more than just the legally-required minimum in order to truly turn things around; right now, simple inertia has Windows 10 stalled in its own tracks, and Windows 7 digging in for a long, long stay. If they want to change that narrative, then Satya Nadella's team have a lot of work to do, work with only gets harder, the longer they wait to start doing it.

Windows 7, 8, and 10 all gained market share in October

Last month, tech bloggers were gobsmacked when Windows 10 actually lost market share, while Windows 7 and Linux both gained. Well, NetMarketShare's October stats are out, and the good news for Microsoft is that Windows 10 has managed to tick upwards slightly, as has Windows overall, with Linux & MacOS both ticking downwards, and Windows XP finally falling behind Windows 8.1.

The bad news for Redmond's strategy is that Windows 7 & 8.1 are also up, and both are up by more than Windows 10.

Here are September's stats:

And here are October's: 

Listings of 0.00% or less are not included.

October was the last month when Windows 7 & 8.1 PCs would be available for sale, and Windows PC sales overall have been flat for some time now, so it might not be much of a surprise to some that the older Windows versions had a strong showing this month, but the big takeaway for Microsoft appears to be clear: whatever their Windows 10 strategy might be, it isn't working.

I'll update this post with any reactions to the month's market share stats (as soon as there are some), and I'm also watching for updated Steam Software Survey numbers (Windows 10 lost ground to Windows 7 there last month, too, so it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues), but right now, I'm most interested to see what Microsoft does next. 

Reminder: Windows 10 has serious privacy issues

In addition to being stuffed with a wide range of privacy problems, one of Windows 10's more off-putting "features" was the fact that you couldn't control when it updated itself, and what it installed in the process, and would even reset your privacy settings back to Microsoft's default settings, as demonstrated in videos like this one:

Apparently there are some people who didn't get that memo, though, because I'm still seeing "news" stories like this one, from PC World:

Last night, I finally upgraded my main PC to Windows 10’s major Anniversary Update. I’d been putting it off because of the devastating webcam bug introduced in the Anniversary Update—a deal-breaker for me—but now that a registry hack remedy’s surfaced ahead of an official fix, the allure of Forza Horizon 3 proved too great. So I finally forced the update. Sure, having to practically reinstall your entire OS is a headache, and it rendered my file-packed PC unusable for hours, but the process went smoothly enough.

This morning, I sat down with a fresh cup of coffee, ready to sling words while Forzadownloads in the background. And that’s when I saw it pop up on my screen.

A “Get Office” notification.

What. The. Hell.

It’s no secret that Windows 10’s stuffed with revenue-generating hooks for Microsoft, but I find the idea of a paid-for operating system shoving straight-up ads in my face distasteful, and disabled the Get Office ads and every other ad-related setting months ago. After a bit of poking and prodding, I discovered that beyond reinstalling the Get Office app that surfaces those notifications, the Anniversary Update also re-enabled Start menu and lock screen ads, essentially tossing my explicit choice to disable them out the window. And it did so without consent or even a notice that these changes were happening in the background.

Funnily enough, several other customizations I’d made to the Windows 10—from disabling ad tracking in Windows Store apps to tweaking the BitTorrent-like distribution of updates to my wallpaper—remained intact after the upgrade. As far as I can tell with a quick perusal, these ad-pushing settings are the only ones that changed when I installed the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Not cool, Microsoft. Not cool.

No, Brad Chacos, it's not cool. It's also not new, and it's something that people like you were supposed to be reporting on, during Microsoft's big GWX push.

Seriously, this kind of horseshit is why I refused to switch to Windows 10, even when it was being given away for "free." Of course, Windows 10 Home was never truly free, no matter what Microsoft said at the time. Remember, if you're not paying for it, then you're not the customer -- you're the product being sold.

Bottom line: if you're running Windows, then you should be running Spybot Anti-Beacon. That doesn't just apply for Windows 10, either; Microsoft has added their "telemetry" crap to earlier versions of Windows, too, which is why I recommend Spybot's Anti-Beacon over options like O&O ShutUp10 -- ShutUp10 only runs on Windows 10, while Anti-Beacon runs on Windows 7 & 8, as well. Microsoft has proved, beyond any doubt at all, that they cannot be trusted to respect your privacy, or to respect your clearly-expressed wishes on the subject of privacy, so take the steps to defend yourself.

What to do when you hate Windows 10

I'm seeing more and more stories like this one lately, from PC World:

I usually start this column with “so and so needed something done to their PC,” but if I were to include the names of all the people who have written me about how unhappy they are with their Windows 10 “upgrade” the file would be so large the server that hosts this page would need a new hard drive. I’ve been inundated with unhappy Windows 10 users for the past two months, and my heart goes out to these folks. A lot of them were upgraded unsuspectingly, and Microsoft deserves a ton of scorn for its malware-like Windows 10 upgrade tactics. That said, now that you have Windows 10 on your PC and you’re not happy, here’s what you can do about it.

Their list of things you can do pretty short: 1) keep it but make changes, 2) nuke it and install a different OS, and 3) restore from factory OS partition (for PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.). #4 on their list is literally something you can't do:

4. Isn’t there an easier way to go back to my old OS?

Not anymore, there isn’t. There was a period during the “free upgrade” era when Microsoft allowed people to try Windows 10 for 31 days and go back if they were unhappy, but that window has closed. So for now you’re stuck with it.

Profoundly unhelpful. It took only two comments for one of their readers to chime in with some (potentially) more useful advice:

max999
"Microsoft deserves a ton of scorn for its malware-like Windows 10 upgrade tactics"

You left out:
5. Look into joining the huge lawsuit coming against Microsoft for these forced upgrades to Windows 10.

This isn't an outlier, of course. The headlines have been slowly but surely filling up with variations on this theme for a while now.

Reminder: Windows 10's Anniversary Update is still a mess

From ZDNet:

Microsoft began rolling out the latest version of Windows 10, the Anniversary Update, on August 2. At that time, Microsoft officials said the rollout would be staggered, but didn't get too explicit as to how -- or how long it might take the company to push Windows 10 Anniversary to consumers and business users who are on the so-called Current Branch of Windows 10.

It's worth repeating that those who really want the Anniversary Update immediately have options to proactively go get it. (And yes, the irony is not lost on me: Now that Microsoft isn't force-feeding Windows 7 and 8 users Windows 10, people who aren't being offered the latest Windows 10 update are asking why they don't have it.)

I received a Microsoft blast email just over a week ago that included a footnote that mentioned it might take up to three months for Microsoft to push the Anniversary Update to those set up to get it. That means those currently waiting may still have another month and a half to wait.

Here's the footnote from that email blast:

"The Anniversary Update will download and install via Windows Update. The download is automatically available to you. It will begin rolling out on 2 August 2016 and may take up to 3 months to reach all users. Internet access fees may apply," said the footnote to the email I received on September 1.

Some who've seen headlines about various problems introduced by the Anniversary Update and subsequent cumulative update patches to it may be in no hurry to get the latest feature update to Windows 10. There have been reports of compatibility issues with the Anniversary Update and McAfee security software, webcams, Kindles, PowerShell Desired State Configuration feature and more.

Redmond is of course spinning this like mad, claiming that it's a good thing that it will take them three months to roll out an August, that it allows them to better accommodate all the various hardware configurations that exist on PCs, and that the much-derided telemetry feature (still the subject of regulatory action by CNIL because it violates privacy laws in France) is making all of this work better, but I don't recall a single time that they had to roll out a Windows 7 service pack over a period of months while checking it for bugs.

To me, this just looks like a terrible mess of a consumer experience; consumers who want the features that are in the A.U. are having to manually download the update in order to get them, while people who've got the update installed, whether manually or automatically, are finding that it has more bugs than a bait store. It's not just ironic, it's lose-lose.

Have I mentioned yet just how glad I am, that I didn't "upgrade" to this mess?

"Windows 10 is horrible"

For the better part of a year, now, Microsoft has been been pushing Windows 10... hard. Really, really hard. Way too hard. So hard have Microsoft been pushing Windows 10, that it's actually difficult to find words to truly express just how hard Microsoft has been pushing their new flagship product on consumers who really weren't sure they wanted it... and on consumers who were quite sure they really didn't want it (although some, like the EFF, have tried).

Throughout Microsoft's year of shoving Windows 10 down our throats, the tech press has largely behaved as enablers of this bad behaviour. Even those that criticized their GWX campaign were lauding the OS itself. Windows 10, we were told, really was a great product... we just needed to see past Microsoft's bullshit and try it for ourselves. The only shame was the Microsoft were turning people away that might be willing to try Windows 10 for themselves.

I've long suspected that this was, in fact, bullshit, and as the Anniversary Update's problems have continued to grow, I've been waiting for the cracks to start forming in this base of support. Those cracks have been pretty slow to start, though, with a largely complicit tech press still apparently enabling Microsoft's bad behaviour, reporting on show-stopping problems as if they were relatively minor issues, the sort of thing that any reasonable person would expect to see with an update to their PC's operating system... an update that they can't decline, or even postpone for very long, because of Microsoft's bullshit, but whatever.

Well, today, that finally changed. Today, one of those very same tech writers finally said what millions of consumers have been thinking for some time now.

Today, one of them finally admitted that Microsoft's broken mess of an operating system really isn't a good product. At all.

From Patrick Pilcher at NetGuide NZ:

In the past, I’ve been called a Microsoft fan boy, hell I was even one of the MCs when Microsoft launched Vista in NZ. My home has long been a dominated by Microsoft gear, and I’ve been using Windows 10 since it first became available.

There were many reasons for my early move to Windows 10. It was free; Microsoft had installed a near impossible to remove “upgrade to Windows 10” nagware app on my PC too.

In the end I got curious and installed it.

While Windows 10 was great to use in its early days, long term, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly frustrated.

More recently I've experienced endless problems with Windows 10. Tasks that were a doddle under Windows 7 are a complicated and unintuitive mess with Windows 10.

Windows 10 looks pretty. It has lots of fancy stuff and with regular maintenance runs pretty quick. Eye candy aside, Windows 10 has sadly proven to be horrible to use.

I thought that after the disaster that was Windows 8 and the kiss and make up exercise of Windows 8.1, Microsoft would've applied some serious spit and polish onto Windows 10.

It doesn’t feel that way. Windows 10 ran smoothly for a few months, but problems soon crept in and Windows 10 OS now feels like a bug riddled mess designed by committee, held together with duct tape.

Pilcher goes on to list problems that should never have been problems with a finished product, let alone with the flagship product of a company as big as Microsoft, with so much riding on its success. Even the simplest things simply don't work reliably, like plugging in a USB drive. In Windows 7 plug in a thum drive, and it's accessible automatically, in seconds. In Windows 10, plugging in a USB drive requiring the use of a Storage Management utility. Printers mostly don't work, either, an issue which affects a wide range of brands and models, including recent models -- it's not just a lack of Win10-compatible drivers for older machines.

Even simple things like turning on the PC and logging on are more complicated than they need to be for home users... in an OS labelled as Windows 10 Home. Why?

And, yes, it keeps getting worse:

EFF report on Windows 10's privacy & security flaws finally getting the attention it deserves

After several days of freaking out over the Anniversary Update's webcam bug, Windows 10's more serious issues are finally getting some more attention.

Offered without comment, a sampling of today's coverage of the topic:

The EFF Calls Out Microsoft's Ongoing Bullshit On Windows 10 ...

Techdirt-2 hours ago

While Windows 10 is generally well-liked by reviewers and users, it's relatively clear that it's not the OS to choose if you actually want to control how much ...

Windows 10 lack of user choice, poor privacy slammed

iTWire-3 hours ago

EFF staffer Amul Kalia wrote in a blog post that the tactics employed to get users to upgrade to Windows 10 had ranged from annoying to malicious.

Windows 10 privacy concerns accused by EFF

News4C-8 hours ago

EFF, which stands for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has recently made some accusations that Microsoft is not careful with user privacy and user choice in ...

Microsoft (MSFT) Slammed by the EFF for Privacy Issues

Wall Street Pit-9 hours ago

The EFF released a strong worded editorial, putting Windows 10 on blast for compromising ... The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) slammed Redmond tech ...

Windows 'blatantly' disregard privacy

Bitterwallet-12 hours ago

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says: "The tactics Microsoft employed to get users of earlier versions of Windows to upgrade to Windows 10 went from ...

Microsoft blasted over Windows 10's 'blatant disregard' for user privacy

Computing-14 hours ago

As a result the EFF has called on Microsoft to listen to its customers, of which more than 6,000 signed the online petition, and amend how Windows 10 operates ...

Windows 10: Microsoft slammed by EFF for gathering ...

International Business Times UK-14 hours ago

In a damning editorial published on 17 August, EFF staff member Amul Kalia blasts Microsoft for misguiding users as part of its attempt to push Windows 10 to ...

Microsoft has been 'downright malicious' with Windows 10, blasts ...

Express.co.uk-15 hours ago

WINDOWS 10 has been criticised for its overly aggressive upgrade tactics, ... dubbed EFF – has criticised Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 10.

Microsoft slammed over 'blatant disregard' for user privacy with ...

V3.co.uk-15 hours ago

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has attacked Microsoft for its "blatant disregard" for user privacy in the Windows 10 operating system. The rights group ...

Microsoft is in trouble again over Windows 10 upgrade and privacy ...

SiliconANGLE (blog)-16 hours ago

Relating to User Choice EFF made Microsoft's aggressive Windows 10 upgrade push a big issue, something that took various forms, each not without attendant

Microsoft a utilisé des pratiques malveillantes pour imposer ...

TelerouteNewsAgency-18 hours ago

C'est sur son site que l'EFF a publié un article intitulé "With Windows 10, Microsoft Blatantly Disregards User Choice and Privacy: A Deep Dive " ("Avec Windows ...

Microsoft blasted over Windows 10 privacy concerns

ThaiVisa News-19 hours ago

Microsoft is once again being criticised for the way in which Windows 10 ... of usage data back to Microsoft,” writes Amul Kalia from EFF, who notes that by ...

The EFF calls for Microsoft to address Windows 10 privacy concerns

KitGuru-Aug 22, 2016

In a lengthy editorial, the EFF claims that Windows 10 is sending an “unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft”, and Cortana integration increases ...

EFF condemns Windows 10 data collection

Computerworld-Aug 22, 2016

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is lambasting Microsoft over Windows 10'stelemetry technology, urging it to "come clean" with customers. In a piece ...

Microsoft Slammed for Trampling User Choice and Privacy with ...

WCCFtech-Aug 22, 2016

If we thought all the debate around Windows 10 privacy concerns was over since the ... The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has accused Microsoft of ...

EFF slams Microsoft's 'blatant disregard' for user privacy with ...

Inquirer-Aug 22, 2016

First on EFF's radar is Microsoft's backhanded tactics to get people to upgrade to Windows 10, which we here at the INQUIRER know about all too well.

EFF takes a deep dive into Windows 10's brutal privacy breaches

Boing Boing-Aug 22, 2016

Microsoft's deceptive hard-sell to gets users to "upgrade" to Windows 10 (the most control-freaky OS to ever come out of Redmond) is made all the more awful by ...

EFF blasts Microsoft over Windows 10 privacy concerns

The Verge-Aug 22, 2016

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused Microsoft of disregarding user choice and privacy with Windows 10. In a scathing editorial, EFF employee Amul ...

It looks like quite a few of them are just reblogging from BetaNews, but still... it's progress. Faith in humanity: restored.

Anniversary Update Webcam Bug continues to be the big story

I still think that the webcam bug is the very least of Windows 10's issues, but tech writers continue to be laser focused on it, with speculation now being that this issue could kill Windows 10 for Enterprise before it's even properly launched.

From Forbes:

Windows 10 is in a dangerous moment. It has missed sales expectations, is no longer free and now the troubled ‘Anniversary Update’ – the biggest upgrade Windows 10 has received to date – is causing new problems…

Discovered by Microsoft MSFT +0.00%-centric blog Thurrott, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update has been found to break “millions” of web cameras for upgraders. The bug affects web cameras of all brands and is even breaking Skype – Microsoft’s own audio and video chat service.

As Thurrott writer Brad Sams notes, of particular concern is a Microsoft support thread where it is clear that customers of substantial enterprise clients are being hit hard.

One user writes: “We have a working product running for years and millions of unhappy users that are unable to use it at all after this update” with another explaining: “We have millions of users and we are in situation now where we have to tell them not to update the Windows anymore or switch to Mac OS.”

[...]

Ultimately the whole situation is highly regrettable for Microsoft given the Anniversary Update does also contain some significant upgrades and great secret features.

But as it stands the Anniversary Update is doing more harm than good to the reputation of Windows 10 and it is hard to see how it will convince Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, who declined to upgrade to Windows 10 when it was free, to upgrade now they have to pay.

Then again, this is why Microsoft has a mischievous plan to transform Windows 7 and Windows 8 into Windows 10…

I covered the Monthly Rollup thing yesterday (Microsoft's "mischievous plan to transform Windows 7 and Windows 8 into Windows 10"), but the fact that Windows 10's Anniversary Update has "great secret features" is another ridiculous thing: why are they secret? Considering how much resistance has been developing to Windows 10, why wouldn't Microsoft be advertising all of its great features, in an effort to convince people to switch?

Windows 10 is undeniably failing to catch on with businesses, but is this newly-discovered webcam bug to blame? Somehow, I don't think so. The webcam issue only came to light this week, but the failure of Windows 10 to make business converts has been happening all month. Something more fundamental has to be at the root of Windows 10's popularity problems.

Win10's Anniversary Update has broken millions of tech writers' webcams, and wow, are they ever pissed about it

Windows 10's Anniversary Update is a shit show. As already documented by Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld, Mauro Huculak at Windows Central, and others, the A.U. has reliably been reported to make entire volumes/drives invisible, make the entire Group Policy setting for Configure Automatic Updates useless, make Win10 lock up completely after installing the update, all while also turning off System Restore at the same time, and so on. Several of these reported problems can be "fixed" by rolling back to Win10's pre-update build, but the A.U. also changed the way rollbacks work, reducing the rollback window from 30 days to ten -- unilaterally, of course, and without prior notice to anyone.

All of that, apparently, was deemed to be acceptable growing pains for a new OS by the tech press. They noticed, and they noted how odd it was for an update that followed such a massive testing and refinement process to still roll out with so many debilitating issues, but there wasn't really an outcry about it all.

That is, until now. Because now that Anniversary Update is being installed on their machines by default, rather than being run on a virtual machine (because the tech reporters are all on the Insider fast track, and can all do things like that); and that has forced them to realize that the A.U. also breaks their webcams.

From Thurrot.com:

On August 2nd, Microsoft released the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 and when the bits arrived on computers around the globe, it brought with it new features and also broke webcams for millions of consumers. If your webcam has stopped functioning since the release of the Anniversary update, you are not alone but the good news is a fix is coming, hopefully in September.

Microsoft made a significant change with the release of Windows 10 and support for webcams that is causing serious problems for not only consumers but also the enterprise. The problem is that after installing the update, Windows no longer allows USB webcams to use MJPEG or H264 encoded streams and is only allowing YUY2 encoding.

Why did the company remove these options? The short answer is that with the Anniversary update there are new scenarios for applications to be able to access the webcam and the MJPEG or H264 encoding processes could have resulted in duplication of encoding the stream (poor performance) so the company limited the input methods to stop this from happening.

Because of this change, which Microsoft tried to defend but then realized the scale of the impact this change has caused, means that when a webcam tries to use MJPEG or H264, the device will freeze. If you use Skype and your webcam freezes after about a minute, this is the reason.

People have been complaining about Skype being crap forever, and prominent streamers and YouTubers like Totalbiscuit have already rolled back to Windows 7 because Win10 broke video streaming and conferencing on their machines, but the Tech press didn't take much notice... until it affected them, personally. And make no mistake, that is why this one bug is getting so much attention. 

And, boy, oh boy, it is ever getting a ton of attention.

The EFF investigated Microsoft's GWX tactics after all... and were not not amused

I'd stopped thinking that the Change.org petition of a couple of months back would ever come to anything, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation was apparently just taking their time:

Microsoft had an ambitious goal with the launch of Windows 10: a billion devices running the software by the end of 2018. In its quest to reach that goal, the company aggressively pushed Windows 10 on its users and went so far as to offer free upgrades for a whole year. However, the company’s strategy for user adoption has trampled on essential aspects of modern computing: user choice and privacy. We think that’s wrong.

You don’t need to search long to come across stories of people who are horrified and amazed at just how far Microsoft has gone in order to increase Windows 10’s install base. Sure, there is some misinformation and hyperbole, but there are also some real concerns that current and future users of Windows 10 should be aware of. As the company is currently rolling out its “Anniversary Update” to Windows 10, we think it’s an appropriate time to focus on and examine the company’s strategy behind deploying Windows 10.

The EFF goes on to take Microsoft to task for disregarding user choice:

Time after time, with each update, Microsoft chose to employ questionable tactics to cause users to download a piece of software that many didn’t want. What users actually wanted didn’t seem to matter. In an extreme case, members of a wildlife conservation group in the African jungle felt that the automatic download of Windows 10 on a limited bandwidth connection could have endangered their lives if a forced upgrade had begun during a mission.

And also for disregarding users' privacy:

The trouble with Windows 10 doesn’t end with forcing users to download the operating system. By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft, and the company claims most of it is to “personalize” the software by feeding it to the OS assistant called Cortana. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of data sent back: location data, text input, voice input, touch input, webpages you visit, and telemetry data regarding your general usage of your computer, including which programs you run and for how long.

While we understand that many users find features like Cortana useful, and that such features would be difficult (though not necessarily impossible) to implement in a way that doesn’t send data back to the cloud, the fact remains that many users would much prefer to opt out of these features in exchange for maintaining their privacy.

And while users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft’s servers. A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives. While Microsoft insists that it aggregates and anonymizes this data, it hasn’t explained just how it does so. Microsoft also won’t say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes. Worse yet, unless you’re an enterprise user, no matter what, you have to share at least some of this telemetry data with Microsoft and there’s no way to opt-out of it.

So far, so good, and pretty much in line with every criticism I've seen of Microsoft's behaviour, both during the GWX campaign and continuing with the Anniversary Update -- and, presumably, beyond.

The EFF doesn't stop with criticism, though -- they also have to recommendations for Microsoft, as to how they can repair some of the damage:

Microsoft should come clean with its user community. The company needs to acknowledge its missteps and offer real, meaningful opt-outs to the users who want them, preferably in a single unified screen. It also needs to be straightforward in separating security updates from operating system upgrades going forward, and not try to bypass user choice and privacy expectations.

Otherwise it will face backlash in the form of individual lawsuits, state attorney general investigations, and government investigations.

We at EFF have heard from many users who have asked us to take action, and we urge Microsoft to listen to these concerns and incorporate this feedback into the next release of its operating system. Otherwise, Microsoft may find that it has inadvertently discovered just how far it can push its users before they abandon a once-trusted company for a better, more privacy-protective solution.

Did I mention that Linux's market share has been rising slowly but steadily since April? I think some of those users have already decided to abandon Redmond's ship. It just remains to be seen how much their arrogance costs them -- both in terms of regulatory action and lawsuits, and also in negative publicity. So far, only WinBeta have picked up this story, at least that I've seen; it'll be interesting to see if anyone else still thinks that this is worth reporting.

UPDATE:
It appears that this story definitely does have some legs, with coverage on Trusted Reviews, Telepresence Options, ZDNet, Redmond Magazine, Windows IT Pro, MS Power User, techradar, and Digital Trends. Yes. the GWX PR damage continues. Good job Microsoft. Well done, you.

Confirmed: Windows 10's Anniversary Update is a shit show

Once again, from Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld:

Given the massive testing and repeated refinement that brought us Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you’d think the rollout would proceed with few debilitating problems. But you’d be wrong. From common installation problems to minor irritants to significant data destruction, reports of problems are mounting up.

You should consider dodging the update until Microsoft irons out the worst difficulties.

Everyone who's been paying attention to Windows 10 updates expected installation problems. Microsoft hasn’t yet delivered a Cumulative Update that installs on all machines, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Anniversary Update installs trigger a wide variety of failures, rollbacks, flakey Universal Windows programs, and error codes such as 0x80070020. I talk about all of those errors and more in my May article, 20 fixes for a Windows 10 update meltdown.

Mauro Huculak at Windows Central has a different list of problems that have occurred -- problems connecting to the Microsoft servers, driver incompatibilities, insufficient storage errors, damaged installation files, and more.

The list of credibly reported issues follows:

• that the Anniversary Update is making entire volumes/drives invisible, prompting a reformat;
• that the Anniversary Update makes the entire Group Policy setting for Configure Automatic Updates useless;
• that the Anniversary Update makes Win10 lock up completely after the Anniversary Update;
• that System Restore gets turned off when you install the Anniversary Update;

and so on. Yikes.

But wait! It gets worse!

Cortana borked by Anniversary Update

Considering that it was only recently that news broke of Cortana's off switch being removed in the Anniversary Update, I think we can safely assume that this most recent wrinkle is a simple snafu on Microsoft's part.

From Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld:

A bad patch distributed the day before Windows 10 Anniversary Update’s release has taken out Cortana on many machines. Yesterday, I wrote about the build 14393.10 patch, KB 3176929, which Microsoft distributed to beta testers on the night of Aug. 1. I have no idea why Microsoft patched the Anniversary Update on the night before its long-anticipated general release.

[...]

Many threads I’ve seen on the Microsoft Answers forum and elsewhere are simply incorrect. Users didn’t do anything to bring on the problem. It’s a bug that appears in some copies of one, specific version of Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Unfortunately, that version of Win10 AU was rolled out to a few hundred million people on Aug. 2 -- and it’s still rolling out, even as we speak.

This Cortana bug is different from the language snafu that has disabled Cortana before. It isn’t related to Cortana being pulled from Education editions. It’s directly attributable to build 14393.10. And yes, the bug was introduced the night before the big rollout.

I haven’t seen any fixes that work. If you’re in the Insiders program and roll back to beta builds 14393.0 or 14393.5, Cortana returns. If you’re not in the Insiders program and you have this problem, you can roll back to the Fall Update 1511 (Start > Settings > Update & security > Recovery, Go back to an earlier build), which takes quite a while.

That’s assuming you actually want Cortana, which is by no means a given.

Microsoft’s in an interesting quandary right now. If the ‘Softies release a manual workaround, chances are pretty good somebody will figure out a way to reverse the steps in the workaround and allow anyone to turn off Cortana. That would be something of a Holy Grail in some circles, as Microsoft makes it very difficult to turn off Cortana in the Anniversary Update.

If the ‘Softies release a patch -- perhaps yet another cumulative update for its newly released product -- some will be tempted to simply block the cumulative update and thus retain control over Cortana.

Let’s hear it for last-minute patching.

And people wonder why it's a bad thing that users don't get to control their PCs' updates in Windows 10 Home. Holy shit show, Batman!

Can Windows 10's anniversary update delete other partitions on the same disk?

From OMG! Ubuntu!

It seems that the latest version of Microsoft’s OS has attention issues. Not content with forcing itself on users who didn’t want it, it may be taking even more drastic steps of hosing other operating systems entirely!

A handful of reports surfacing on social media suggest, anecdotally, that the Windows 10 anniversary may interfere with, affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk.

If these claims are accurate —and do keep in mind that various different factors may be at play in these cases — it would be a pretty shocking situation.

Broken boot loaders on an update are one thing (even expected) but losing data, even entire partitions? That’s a whole other kettle of krappé.

[...]

There’s no official word from Microsoft on any of the reported issues and it would be remiss to not point out (again) that these could be isolated incidents or issues affecting certain setups only.

Yes, these could be isolated incidents. Even if they're not, this could simply be the result of incompetence on Microsoft's part, and not anything malicious. All of that could be true. But given how aggressively anti-consumer and anti-choice Microsoft has been this past year, I don't think anyone at Redmond should be surprised to see people reacting poorly to this latest issue.

Microsoft just made Windows 10 Pro less appealing to Pros

By now, I really should be used to Microsoft constantly lowering the Windows 10 bar, but it's somehow still an ugly surprise each and every time when they do something else to make their new OS less appealing. It really shouldn't be possible, but they keep finding new ways to suck.

From ghacks.net:

Professional editions of Windows 10 ship with the Group Policy Editor that enables users and administrators to make changes to the default configuration of the operating system.

Up until now, policy availability was more or less identical for all professional versions of Windows 10. Turns out, this is no longer the case when the Windows 10 Anniversary Update is released.

Some policies contain a note stating that they only apply to certain editions of Windows 10, with Windows 10 Pro not being listed as one of them.

Furthermore, the corresponding Registry keys are not working either anymore which means that Pro users have no option to make changes to features affected by the change.

[...]

The big one is the Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences policy. We have talked about the feature previously. It powers among other things the installation of third-party apps and extra links on Windows 10.

I swear, the moon's orbit is now slightly closer to Earth than it was before Microsoft launched Windows 10.