With the Fall Creators Update less than three weeks away, over a quarter of Windows 10 customers don't have Spring's CU yet.

I'd already blogged about Microsoft's claims about the Creators Update's reliability, but Wayne Williams at betanews has a pretty good take, too.

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is set to begin its rollout in a matter of weeks, yet over a quarter (27.5 percent) of Windows 10 users still haven’t received the Creators Update.

According to the latest figures from AdDuplex, while the Creators Update found its way on to another 7.5 percent of computers this month to give it a 72.5 percent share, it’s still well short of the 91.2 percent that the Anniversary Update reached before the Creators Update was released. AdDuplex warns that as a result of slow rollouts like this, fragmentation will only increase in the future.

[...]

A week ago, Microsoft proudly announced that the Creators Update is much more reliable than the Anniversary Update, with a "39 percent total reduction in operating system and driver stability issues" and the number of support calls diminishing "significantly." But as I pointed out at the time, a large portion of that improvement can be attributed to the fact that many Windows 10 users simply don't have it.

And this is the point where I remind you that the Fall Creators Update, a.k.a. version 1709, is launching a full month late. With over a full month of extra time in which they were rolling out the Creators Update, they're still nowhere near where they should be, or need to be. 

Can someone remind me again why Windows-As-A-Service was supposed to be such a great way to receive Microsoft Windows from the Gods of OS? Because I don't see it.

Windows 10 migration makes security harder for Enterprises

Remember Adaptiva? The firm that does Windows 10 migrations, and which was talking about how everybody was migrating to Windows 10? It turned out to be not so much the case, of course, for a variety of reasons, but Adaptiva themselves seemed to still be pretty bullish on the Windows 10 migrations that they're in the business of facilitating.

Or they were, until about five minutes ago, according to Business Wire:

Adaptiva, the market leader in smart scaling systems management, today announced the results of its 2017 Enterprise Endpoint Security Survey, which indicates that companies are experiencing significant challenges in their attempts to keep their endpoints secure. Maintaining Windows 10 security topped the list of challenges with over half of respondents indicating it can take a month or more for IT teams to execute Windows OS updates, which ultimately leaves systems vulnerable.

The survey revealed that most companies are unable to maintain endpoint security with consistency for a number of reasons, such as:

• The pace and volume of new Windows OS security fixes.
• The complexity associated with tracking what updates need to be applied to which endpoints from thousands of third-party software vendors.
• The difficulties caused by rapidly changing security policies.
• The limitations of resources in terms of available staff and their respective skill sets.

“Breaches are occurring unnecessarily, teams are overwhelmed, and it’s been nearly impossible for enterprises to keep up with changes in security policies,” said Jim Souders, chief executive officer at Adaptiva. “With the Windows 10 migration, the situation becomes even more serious. If companies can’t find ways to successfully automate security for Windows 10 and other third-party applications, they’re putting their systems at risk.”

Wow. It sounds like Adaptiva's having trouble actually migrating businesses to Windows 10. Which sucks for them, since they're in the business of migrating businesses to Windows 10. 

It does go a long way to explaining why Windows 10 migration has stalled, though. I mean, if you had a business, and Windows 10 migration was this much of a mess, would you switch? Or, as Wayne Williams puts it, at betanews:

When Windows 10 was still (officially) free, and Microsoft was forcing it onto systems against user wishes, the operating system’s market share growth was impressive. In no time at all it shot past Windows XP and Windows 8.x.

But since then, the new OS has plateaued. NetMarketShare’s usage share figures show that Windows 10 grew by a mere 5 percent from July 2016 to July 2017, and in August it posted an increase of just 0.36 percentage points. Microsoft, for its part, claimed back in December that Windows 10 was more popular than Windows 7, but of course it isn’t. Not even close.

Microsoft’s own Windows and Store Trends page was a good place to see how Windows 10 was doing in terms of market share, even if the figures were more than a little iffy. However, after February’s update showed Windows 10 to be losing market share, Microsoft stopped updating the page.

Once again, we're sitting at the mid-month mark, and I'm going to go out on the limb again with my OS Market Share prediction for month end: I hereby predict that Windows 10 will still be flat at 27%, Windows 7 will still own over 48% of the market, and Windows 10's share of the Steam customer base will have contracted again as gamers flee the bug-ridden mess of the Creators Update.

Reaping what they've sown

Well, that sure didn't take long.

Just hours after news broke that Microsoft's would stop providing Windows 10 updates to users of older hardware, pieces railing against Microsoft have started popping up like a bad rash.Like this one, from Tech Republic: "Windows 10: Five reasons to avoid Microsoft's flagship OS."

In many ways, Windows has never been less important.

As Windows 10 approaches its second anniversary, PC users are spoilt for choice when it comes to the operating systems and software they can use.

With Microsoft's sometimes capricious and occasionally obnoxious treatment of Windows users, perhaps it's time to skip its flagship OS.

Here are five reasons you might want to drop Windows 10 or give it a miss.

Top of the list? "Uncertainty over support for older PCs."

In 2015, Microsoft pledged that Windows 10 PCs would "evolve and get even better over time".

That evolution recently skidded to a halt for millions of PCs, after owners of Intel Atom Clover Trail-based laptops discovered their PCs would no longer be updated with new features.

The decision to cast these PCs adrift from future feature updates stemmed from the chipset no longer being supported by Intel.

However, the decision throws a cloud of uncertainty over people using Windows 10 on older PCs. How long before other laptops that use unsupported hardware find themselves similarly stranded, without access to the latest features?

As highlighted by ZDNet's Steve Ranger, Microsoft's decision introduces a level of uncertainty that wasn't present with earlier versions of Windows, with their fixed deadlines for the end of mainstream and extended support.

This anti-Windows 10 argument did not exist two weeks ago. It's an absolutely unforced error; Microsoft have brought this on themselves.

"Removal of your favorite features" (Paint, anyone?), is next on the list, followed by "Windows 10 tries to railroad you" (Microsoft's bullshit with Edge, Bing, Cortana, and OneDrive have not gone unnoticed, either, it would seem), "There's no need to use Windows" (Linux, anybody?), and finally "Better to stick with what you know."

More people still use Windows 7 than any other version of Windows.

Despite repeated messages from Microsoft about the dangers of sticking with Windows 7, the OS will continue to be patched against the latest hacks until January 2020.
Those who just want a solid Windows desktop, have no need for the integrated cloud services and regard features like Paint 3D as frivolous, will likely be just as happy with Windows 7.

They'll also bypass the additional hassle that comes with Windows 10, the badgering to sign into a Microsoft account and the major updates that in the past have broken swathes of systems.

Interestingly, while intrusive adverts get a mention, there's no mention of privacy issues or data collection in this piece; apparently there are now plenty of other cons for Windows 10 without continuing to beat those particular drums. But with members of the tech media now (finally) recommending Linux as not only a viable alternative to Microsoft's bullshit, but maybe a better one, and openly advocating staying on Windows 7 rather than switching to a "new" OS that might not be supported on your system for any length of time at all...

Well, let's just say that there are reasons why I'm not expecting Windows 10 to suddenly take flight this year, especially after Microsoft's latest blunder.

Today in Windows 10...

We're definitely into the summer doldrums, with very little of anything happening, but here are two tidbits that caught my eye today.

First up, from Mike Wheatley at siliconANGLE:

Although Microsoft Corp. probably deserves a ten out of ten for the efforts its made to make Windows 10 more enterprise friendly, it turns out the operating system is only slightly more popular than the aging Windows XP among business users.

That’s the main takeaway from a new survey on Windows 10 adoption by information technology network Spiceworks Inc. The survey found that Windows XP, which is by now most likely riddled with security holes as it no longer receives regular updates, is still being run on 11 percent of business PCs, down from 14 percent in March. That compares to just 13 percent of business PCs running Windows 10.

“Despite the gains in Windows 10 penetration, the absolute share of computers running the OS remains relatively low,” said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks.

Both operating systems remain a long way behind Microsoft’s legendary Windows 7 operating system, which is running on 68 percent of all enterprise PCs, Spiceworks found. However, Windows 10 does at least come second with its 13 percent adoption rate, and its overall share has improved markedly in recent months – back in March, it was only running on nine percent of business computers, Spiceworks said.

Ouch.

Bear in mind that Windows 10 is the future of Microsoft, on which they've basically bet the farm at this point; with general usage languishing at or below the 26% mark for months, Microsoft was counting on business adoption to make their Windows 10 strategy work. If these numbers are to be believe, then that isn't happening yet, at least not in any big way; the fact that Windows 10 is only finally outperforming the nearly sixteen year old Windows XP, after everything that Microsoft has done, must surely speak to some significant underlying issues. I doubt that the recent revelation that older hardware may not be supported by future Windows 10 builds will help, either.

I'll admit, I am looking forward to the end-of-July NetMarketShare stats, but I'm not expecting Microsoft to make any changes to their approach this year. Thousands of annual layoffs and stagnant market growth for their flagship product notwithstanding, the markets seem generally bullish on MSFT these days, which gives Satya Nadella all the cover he needs to keep right on failing.

That's all for tidbit one, though. Tidbit two is getting a lot more coverage, like this piece in The Reg:

Revisionist history

For some reason, the announcement by Microsoft that they won't be adding iOS/OS X's Continuity feature to Windows 10 has become the story of the Windows week. Arstechnica called the delayed Timeline feature "the most exciting promised feature" slated for the coming Fall Creators Update, and Microsoft's decision to push the feature back to Redstone 3 (i.e. next Spring's major feature update) has some people questioning Microsoft's entire update strategy.

From betanews:

Over on Ghacks, Martin Brinkmann posted his thoughts on Microsoft’s Windows 10 feature updates schedule. The software giant is committed to rolling out two major updates to Windows 10 every year. In April we had the Creators Update, and in a few months' time the Fall Creators Update will begin to roll out.

Martin asks if this rapid release schedule is such a wise idea, and he has a good point.

[...]

Microsoft announces cool new features for future versions of Windows 10, but then doesn’t have the time to implement them because it’s committed to producing two major updates each year.

[...]

But that’s only half the problem. The Creators Update roll out has been going on for nearly three months now, yet only a third of Windows 10 users are running it -- either because they haven’t yet been offered it, or because they’ve chosen not to install it.

It’s possible the roll out pace will accelerate from this month -- which will be in keeping with how the Anniversary Update roll out was managed -- but even so there will be people who won’t have the Creators Update, or will have only just received it, by the time the Fall Creators Update is made available.

This lingering stink of repeated failure, with My People failing to make the Creators Update and Continuity/Timeline and Cloud Clipboard failing to make the Fall Creators Update (seriously, Microsoft, please hire someone who knows something about naming things) is looking more and more like the sort of issue that Paul Thurrott was predicting we'd see, as far back as October of last year, well before Microsoft announced their overly-aggressive updating schedule:

Microsoft’s goal with Windows as a Service was pure and well-intentioned. But it may never work. And after the tough past year or so, I’m not sure how Windows will absorb this hit. The only thing worse would be continuing down the current path and pretending that it’s working.

Naturally, the "only thing worse" is exactly what Microsoft is doing, because of course it is. And part of this pretense is to also pretend that Timeline was never actually promised for Fall 2017. And that has not escaped Paul Thurrott's notice, either:

In the wake of Microsoft’s revelation that it will not ship Timeline in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, some are attempting to rewrite history, claiming that Microsoft was vague about when this feature might appear. But Timeline, along with other cross-device features, was explicitly promised for the Fall Creators Update. 

"In our Fall Creators Update, for the first time, Windows PCs will love all your devices,” Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore said during the Build 2017 keynote at which he announced this functionality. (You can find this quote at the 48:44 mark if you’d like to hear it for yourself.) “Fluent design, Files on Demand, Timeline, Cloud-powered Clipboard, these are all ways that we’re going to make our users lives better.” 

This statement seems pretty clear to me. And it stands in sharp contrast to the backpedaling that Belfiore and some Microsoft fanboys are doing now on Twitter.

“From my [point of view,] we described [a] set of features that would come starting with [the Fall Creators Update],” he tweeted. “And I thought we’d communicated uncertainty.” 

[...] 

Is it possible that there is some equivocating or hedging on these features elsewhere in the Build 2017 keynote? Sure. I haven’t rewatched the full presentation. But I’ll just raise two issues here, one that should be obvious to all, and one that will be obvious in retrospect. 

First, that statement above is pretty definitive. If Joe or others on the Windows team were more ambiguous elsewhere, that doesn’t undercut that the fact that he summarized his talk about those new features with the above statement.

Second, a few hundred members of the press and blogosphere were pre-briefed on the Build 2017 day 2 keynote contents the day before the presentation. And looking at my extensive notes from that day, I see that it is broadly about the new world view for Windows, the new strategy that I wrote about at the time. And more specifically, it focused on features that are coming in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Which I also wrote about at the time. No one ever said anything about these features rolling out over time.

[...]

I’m not just being pedantic here. Communication is important, not just the words one uses, but the way in which those words are delivered. I feel it is disingenuous to make promises on a stage to your customers and then backpedal silently, using the limited audience on Twitter to spin a different story. Being honest isn’t always easy, but it’s almost always the right thing to do.

[...]

It’s time for some clarity, Microsoft. What’s really going to be in the Fall Creators Update? Will any other features be dropped?

In other words, is Microsoft's Windows-As-A-Service strategy actually working? Is it actually possible for Redmond to deliver two feature updates each year, on a regular schedule? Or were Microsoft biting off more than they could chew, when they promised they would?

The issues here are broader and more fundamental than the contents of the FCU. It goes to basic issues of reliability, of whether Microsoft is honestly telling us what they can actually deliver, or just hyping their product with a lot of empty promises on which they will continually fail to deliver. In an environment where the success of Windows 10 relies heavily on Microsoft winning over Windows 7 customers who mostly don't trust them anymore, their attempts to retcon the timeline of Timeline couldn't be any more ironic, but one can't help but feel that the irony is lost on Microsoft themselves.

Microsoft seem to be lost in their own hype cycle, arrogantly confident that customers will buy regardless of what they actually deliver. There's a reason why so many are refusing to join the brave new Windows 10 world; until Microsoft dedicate themselves to honesty, and to earning back their customers' trust, I don't expect that to change much.

UPDATE:
Although the furor had died down somewhat by the week-end, coverage continues on the Timeline story,  including this very well-written piece by Michael Allison at mspoweruser:

The first problem I can see here is that Microsoft promised a feature, and it didn’t deliver it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, no one’s really going to use that people bar for more than five minutes anyway. On the other hand, this is a puzzling pattern over promising and under delivering. Microsoft has consistently shown off concepts of beautiful apps, features and updates that are frequently underwhelming when delivered, or delayed until no one cares anymore As normal users really aren’t reading the tech sites to learn what’s new with Windows, the only users who would be affected by those are the techies who spread word of mouth and do pay attention to this stuff. The next time Microsoft announces something, we can’t trust them for multiple reasons. We can’t trust that the images we’re being shown are representative images of what we’ll be seeing. We can’t trust that they’ll arrive in the promised timeline. And now, we can’t trust Microsoft to not pretend that they didn’t announce any timeline of any sort.

[...]

What I hypothesise is that many times, Microsoft is padding its press events with features to make each release more attractive from a marketing perspective. Windows 10 is Microsoft’s only consumer-facing OS at the moment, and so the firm needs all the headlines it can get from sites willing to wring out every bit of news coverage they can from said press event (Yes. I know there’s room for self-reflection there.), hence we get briefings on Pick Up Where You Left off, Timeline, My People etcetera and prepare articles on how Microsoft’s new features will change the way we use your computer. The problem is, half of these features aren’t ready for prime-time by the time Microsoft announces them, so months later, the firm is left with a new problem. It can’t deliver what it’s promised and has to delay it to the next update. Of course, it can’t announce the same features it announced for the previous updates, so it’ll announce a few more features that won’t make the cut, but don’t worry, the next update will get it. And so on.

This is a problem that doesn’t need to exist as far as I can see. There is no legal force that is compelling Microsoft to push out two updates a year, this is an entirely self-imposed deadline. In addition, while these updates often feature packed, many of the features are irrelevant to the vast majority of users.

There's a lot more to it, and the entire thing is well worth a read, and Allison does a very good job of highlighting the problem (i.e. increasing distrust of Microsoft), and proposing a very simple behaviour change that Microsoft could implement which might start to address it (i.e. honesty), but the part I liked best is actually the very last paragraph, which speaks more to the media's failings than to Microsoft's:

In a few months, Microsoft will announce a new version of Windows with the usual fanfare. There’ll be features galore, and they’ll aim to change the way you think about your PC – or so the marketing goes. Despite the critical pieces saturating the web at the moment, the firm need not worry, we’ll still have learned nothing by then.

Clearly, some members of the tech media are aware of how their distractibility is contributing to the problem. Such signs of self-reflection are about as common as hens' teeth; in the spirit of rewarding good behaviour when it happens, please go and give the man some clicks, already.

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?

And this is why Microsoft's Windows 10 update regime is a bad thing...

Spotted on The Reg:

Don't install our buggy Windows 10 Creators Update, begs Microsoft
We'll give it to you when it's ready – and it is not

Aside: Ouch.

Microsoft has urged non-tech-savvy people – or anyone who just wants a stable computer – to not download and install this year's biggest revision to Windows by hand. And that's because it may well bork your machine.

It's been two weeks since Microsoft made its Creators Update available, and we were previously warned it will be a trickle-out rather than a massive rollout. Now, Redmond has urged users to stop manually fetching and installing the code, and instead wait for it to be automatically offered to your computer when it's ready.

The problem is that some systems – particularly older ones – may not be able to handle the Creators Update, Microsoft said. The US giant has been focusing on updating newer kit first, since it feels that hardware is less likely to run into difficulties, and has thus stopped offering the latest Windows 10 upgrade to computers it suspects may suffer from breakdowns.

And here I was, thinking that the Creators Update rollout was going pretty well... at least, when compared to the Anniversary Update. I guess there are more issues than I knew about, though, which is an excellent example of why users want to be able to control whether or not their systems update at all, rather than just how soon they restart afterwards. Oh, and they'd like Microsoft to have properly tested and bug-fixed the fucking things before releasing them, too, rather than using their Home users as a glorified beta-testing pool.

This may be an especially bad time for the Creators Update to have rollout issues, too, since Microsoft was hoping that the CU would inspire Windows 7 holdouts to make the switch to 10. Well, it's been a few weeks since the CU came out, and the end-of-April market share numbers are only days away, so we'll know soon enough to what extent that happened, but this kind of headline can't be helpful.

As a final aside, I'd also like to say that I love The Reg's tag line: "Biting the hand that feeds IT." I don't know how long they've been using that, having just noticed it now, but it's genius. Seriously, don't ever change.

Microsoft re-issues "zombie" patch KB3150513... for the tenth time!

I love InfoWorld's tagline for this article:

It won't die! Microsoft is pushing its 10th refresh of the hated 'upgrade enabling' patch to every version of Windows

That's right, it's baaaack!

Microsoft has issued the KB 3150513 patch 10 times in the past year. Each time it appears without notification or warning: There’s no entry on the Windows Update list or Windows 10 Update list, but it pushed out the Automatic Update chute nonetheless.

It's being pushed onto Windows 7, 8, 8.1, Windows 10 1511, and now 1607 systems. You don’t want it.

[...] I discussed this topic last month, and as best I can tell, nothing has changed. As AskWoody Lounger abbodi86 summarized:

Both KB 2952664 and KB 3150513 are only needed for upgrading to Windows 10; they have nothing useful for current Windows 7 users (well, except providing Microsoft with Appraiser statistics)

If you want to upgrade your current system to Windows 10 Creators Update, you might want to consider installing the patch. If you don’t, there are better ways to waste your time.

Don’t bother hiding it. History has shown that it’ll only appear again. Ignore it and maybe it’ll go away.

They just won't take an effing hint, will they?

Here's the thing; people that haven't switched yet aren't just procrastinating. It's not like we don't know that Windows 10 is available, or that we can still upgrade for free if we want to, or that Microsoft would really, really like us to switch. We've chosen to stay with our existing operating systems; in fact, given how hard Microsoft were pushing Windows 10 during the latter part of the official GWX campaign, most of us had to take active steps to avoid being switched in spite of our clearly and repeatedly expressed preference on the matter.

We don't want Windows 10. We don't care that you're still giving it away; we already know, for a fact, that the shit ain't really free. And every time you "helpfully" re-add an update that we've already refused multiple times to our Update queues, disregarding our clearly and repeatedly expressed choices in the process, it just makes us even less likely to switch... ever. It further erodes the little trust and goodwill that we might still be harbouring; after all, how do you trust somebody, or feel good about somebody, when they clearly refuse to respect anything that you tell them?

Look, I get it. Microsoft's strategic plans don't work unless they can push Windows 10 adoption to a tipping point, a share of the market large enough that the adoption rate inspires others to also adopt their new OS, and inspires developers to develop natively for the Universal Windows Platform as a result. Microsoft need that, badly. I get it. I just don't give a shit.

Allow me to turn the data collection off completely, allow me to turn Cortana off completely, allow me to (simply & easily) turn the advertising off completely, and for fuck's sake, stop pushing me. Start showing some respect, and maybe, maybe, we can talk. Short of that, though, Microsoft are out of luck... until 2020 at the very least, unless my current PC literally melts down in the meantime, something which shows no sign of being anywhere near happening.

In the meantime, I'm leaving Never10 installed, and if you're wanting Microsoft's "helpful" upgrading app to stop pestering you to change operating systems, then so should you.

Don't rush to install the Creators Update

If the disastrous rollout of the Anniversary Update didn't convince you of the need to wait a bit before adopting any brand-new Microsoft OS release, maybe InfoWorld's article will do the trick:

Microsoft says it will begin pushing out the Windows 10 Creators Update, aka version 1703, on Tuesday, April 11, to anyone who has not disabled updates. Windows Insider beta testers on the Fast Ring have had the near-final version, build 10563, since March 23, and if you know where to look (Microsoft’s Update Assistant page or, if you are registered, from the Microsoft Developers Network), you can download Windows 10 Creators Update right now.

Don’t do it.

Given Microsoft’s recent history, chances are good there will be bugs that look like the mashup of the Keystone Kops and “Godzilla 2” that was Windows Anniversary Update build 14393.222, which included freezing and randomly disconnecting hard drives, failure of a widely used webcam, strange installation bugs, and tromped-on settings. Heaven help you if you tried to plug in a Kindle: The whole PC would freeze.

The dirty secret of Microsoft’s “Windows as a service” plan is that the initial public releases are really public beta tests, meant to catch flaws that the Windows Insider beta program did not, where regular users get to experience the thrill of finding Windows bugs in real time. Microsoft officially calls this the Pilot phase of the deployment cycle [...] But it’s also misleadingly identified as Current Branch, which normal people interpret to mean “current safe version.”

That Pilot phase lasts four months. The actual safe version (well, as safe as you can get with a Windows release), is called the Current Branch for Business. [...] If you upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update right now, you’re joining the very beginning of the bug-catching Pilot phase.

"Don't do it" seems like pretty good advice to me when it comes to Windows 10, generally, but you should definitely wait for them to squash the bugs before installing the Creators Update. If you need some pointers on how to do that, InfoWorld's article has more details.

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.

Microsoft to finally start giving users what they want

With Windows 10 stagnant, Windows 7 users digging in deeper while growing in numbers, and even PC gamers apparently abandoning the new OS for the eight-year-old one, it seems that Microsoft have finally decided to acknowledge the obvious, and start giving consumers what they want. Kinda.

From Gordon Kelly at Forbes:

In a new official blog post Microsoft has admitted Windows 10 needs to improve in these areas and that significant changes are on the way:

“Prior to the Creators Update, Windows 10 made most of the decisions for you regarding when updates would be installed and didn’t provide ways to tailor the timing to your specific needs,” explained John Cable, Microsoft Director of Program Management within the Windows Servicing and Delivery (WSD) team. “What we heard back most explicitly was that you want more control over when Windows 10 installs updates. We also heard that unexpected reboots are disruptive if they happen at the wrong time.”

[...]

Cable’s solution? With the Windows 10 Creators Update (coming next month) users will get far more options:

“For example, you can specify exactly when you want an update to occur (including the ability to reschedule an update if your original choice ends up being less convenient than expected), or ‘hit the snooze button.’ The ‘snooze’ capability allows you to pause the update process completely for three days when you need uninterrupted time on your device. In addition, we are widening the ‘Active Hours’ time so Windows doesn’t install an update at times when you want your device to be ready to use.”

[...]

But the Microsoft confessions don’t stop there. In the same blog post Michael Fortin, CVP of Windows and Devices Group Core Quality, also stressed that “new privacy-centric features [are] coming in the Creators Update. This new functionality will make it easier to choose the privacy and diagnostic data collection settings that are best for you.”

Was it just yesterday that I was asking when Microsoft would start correcting course on their Windows 10 bullshit? Apparently these changes will be available to Home users, too, which is another change: previously, this sort of control, however limited, was limited to users with Pro and higher licences.

Kelly notes, and I agree, that this is really just a good first step, and that Microsoft still need to do a lot more, on both fronts, if they want to lure users from Windows 7 to Windows 10. He also asks the obvious question: why now?

Again it’s commendable but this sort of control really should have been in from the start. And what motivated all these about-turns? Cynics will point to the stagnation of Windows 10 adoption since Microsoft began charging for upgrades, but those more forgiving will at least be pleased to see the platform slowly heading in the right direction.

Yes, the high cost of moving to Windows 10 just got a little lower…

Yes, the cost of moving to Windows 10 is ever so slightly lower now. Is it low enough to convince deeply dug in Windows 7 users to make the switch? 

Somehow, I doubt it. 

More than a year and half after launch, over six months after the official end of Windows 10's free giveaway period (although unofficially you can still get Windows 10 for free, if you want to), and after at least a year of unrelentingly bad PR resulting from their own anti-consumer bullshit, I suspect that Microsoft will need to do a lot more than these half-measure to repair the damage done to the relationship with their long-time customers.

So, what do Microsoft need to do?

1. Telemetry needs to be something users can opt out of, completely. After a year and a half of harvesting users' metadata and sharing it with third parties, and without telling us what data they were collecting, why they were collecting that data, specifically, where they were sending it, or who they were sharing it with, there is zero trust on this issue. Ideally, telemetry would be opt-in, and turned off by default, even for Home users.
2. Updates must revert from the current "roll-up" bullshit to the itemized list they used to be, complete with descriptive Knowledge Base articles on each included update item, so that users know what Microsoft is installing on their systems and why. Updates also need to stop reinstalling Microsoft's own bloatware that users had uninstalled, and they need to stop resetting users' privacy and security settings without users' knowledge and explicit consent. Any changes that Microsoft want to make to users' settings as part of an update need to be explained. 
• Also, stop adding the "compatibility" updates (KB 2952664, KB 2976978, KB 2977759, etc.) to Windows 7's update queue. Windows 7 users are using Windows 7 because they do not want to switch to Windows 10, and given how aggressive the GWX campaign was, it's taken no small amount of effort to avoid being switched over. These users aren't just procrastinating, they're actively saying "no!" Take a fucking hint, already, and stop pushing.
3. Cortana must revert to something that users can turn off, if they don't want to use the service. I don't care that Microsoft think this is the big marquee feature of Windows 10. The numbers don't lie; Cortana is not enough to sell Windows 10, and its big-brotherly omnipresence may be keeping users away. 
• Cortana also needs to be able to work with Google and Chrome, rather than being locked to Bing and Edge. Nobody likes Bing, and nobody uses Edge, and it's time to stop trying to make "fetch" happen.
4. Speaking of, which, Microsoft need to stop pushing Edge and Bing on users who have clearly expressed a preference for a competing product, and to stop pushing the Windows Store and the Universal Windows Platform. No more scare-mongering from the start menu or tool bar, and no more pushing Microsoft-branded extensions and add-ons for Chrome from the start menu or tool bar, either.
• It would also help if Microsoft fixed their fucking browser, but that's a secondary issue; more than anything else, Microsoft need to start respecting users' choices, here.
5. The same applies with the Windows 10 Store. Does anybody really believe that Microsoft wanting to lock out Win32 apps and restrict users to the Windows Store is about bloatware? Build a better store, advertise it outside of the OS itself, and maybe the customers will come. But stop trying to push us to your broken storefront. The market has clearly spoken, on this one. Seriously, stop trying to make "fetch" happen.

That's really what all of these points boil down to: respect for Windows' users, respect for their clearly and repeatedly expressed choices and preferences, respect for the fact that PC users clearly intend to go on owning their own machines, and controlling what gets installed on them (and when, from where, and by whom).

Microsoft have been desperate to change the paradigm of Windows from an open, user-controlled one, into a walled garden: a closed ecosystem where control resides exclusively with Microsoft, where the entire PC software marketplace is transmuted into an iPhone-style App Store, and where users will do what Microsoft say, how they say, when they say it. Windows 8 was based around this walled garden approach, and PC users avoided it like the plague. Windows 10 softened the messaging a bit, but its central design philosophy was identical to Windows 8's, and users have clearly rejected it again. 

Microsoft need to recognize that simple reality, and turn Windows 10 into the user-controlled experience that PC users are clearly demanding, and on which they're clearly unwilling to compromise. This latest move looks to be a promising baby step in the right direction, but that's only meaningful if they follow it up with more steps. If this is the only step they're planning to take, if they're just trying to figure out what the absolute minimum is that they can get away with doing, then it's not going to be enough.

Win10's Game Mode fails to improve game performance

Windows 10's latest build of the Creators Update has been released to Insiders, including the recently-announced (and much-hyped) Game Mode, and curious PC gaming Insiders started testing it almost immediately, with results that I consider to be entirely predictable. Only hours after it went live, and in increasing numbers since then, articles started surfacing, all of them saying basically the same thing: Windows 10's new Game Mode does not do much of anything, as far as anyone can tell.

Por ejemplo, take this assessment from Dark Side of Gaming:

Game mode is a feature that a lot of PC gamers were looking forward to. This mode is available in the latest Windows 10 Insiders Build, however it appears that it does not offer any performance improvement at all.

Microsoft claimed that it targets to improve performance via two ways with Game Mode: a) an increase overall framerate or peaks and b) an increase in average framerates or consistency.

A number of PC users got their hands on this build and according to some early tests, Windows 10’s Game mode is a big letdown as it did not actually offer any performance improvement at all.

What follows is details of tests using actual games "in the wild," some with video evidence, showing no performance improvements at all.

A more rigorous test by Laptop showed basically the same result:

To test Game Mode, we put the latest Insider Build on the Asus ROG Strix GL753 with a 2.8-GHz Intel Core i7-770HQ CPU, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GPU with 4GB of VRAM, a 256GB M.2 SSD and a 1TB, 5,400-rpm hard drive. Then, we ran some of our standard benchmark tests with Game Mode enabled.

The results were mixed, at best. While all of the games we tested recognized Game Mode, we only saw one noticeable performance improvement.

The GL753 played Grand Theft Auto V (very high settings) at 31.22 frames per second, just surpassing our 30-fps threshhold to be considered playable and higher than the 28-fps it achieved without Game Mode.

But in Hitman (very high settings) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (configured for a budget setup), we didn't see any noticeable changes. Our benchmarks ran within decimal points of previous scores.

This is not surprising for me; after all, I'd already predicted that Game Mode would have effectively zero impact on actual gamers' experiences. 

For one thing, it really is more about UWP games than about Win32 (i.e. Steam, Origin, GoG, UPlay, etc.) executables, While Microsoft claims that Win32 games will be supported by Game Mode, they are architected differently from UWP applications (that uniformity of architecture is the entire point of UWP, after all), and may need to be grandfathered into Game Mode literally one game at a time. If that's true, then Game Mode support will be like game-specific GPU driver support: nice for games that have it, but useless for almost all other games.

For another thing, the performance enhancements are mostly supposed to come from de-prioritizing non-essential services and applications, but most PC gamers keep very few extraneous programs on while gaming, anyway, and running on at least 6 or 8 processor cores to boot, which means that prioritizing the game doesn't actually mean much, in practice. Only live-streamers have a lot of extra program load to worry about when gaming, and they've mostly invested in beastly rigs that can handle the extra load.

So... as expected, Game Mode is more of a PR stunt than an actual feature. It doesn't break anything, at least, which is more than can be said for some of Microsoft's previous efforts in this direction, but it's not game-changing in any sense at all, at least so far... and, let's face it, if it isn't offering significant performance benefits to at least the 100 or so most popular Win32 games right out of the gate, it probably won't get used later on, even if Microsoft manage to improve it. You only get one chance to make a first impression; the fact that Microsoft is willing to let Game Mode's first impression be so lacklustre says a lot about their current level of desperation. 

It's like Microsoft were hoping that the promise of a performance-enhancing Game Mode will move gamers to Windows 10 before the mode even goes live, and whether or not it provides any actual enhancements to game performance. Honestly, I think they're more likely to gain new Windows 10 "converts" in the PC gaming community just from gamers buying new PCs.

Microsoft switch from sticks to carrots

Having spent most of two weeks attempting to terrify Windows 7 users into switching to Windows 10, Microsoft are now falling back on the one tactic that has actually worked to inspire people to make that switch: they're giving it away again. Sorta.

From eWeek:

Businesses that missed out on Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade offer now have a second chance, provided they subscribe to Windows via the software giant's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner program.

Microsoft announced the impending availability of the Windows 10 operating system as a subscription service during the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto on July 12. In September, the companies and its partners began offering Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses for $7 per user per month.

Now, as an added perk, Microsoft is enabling those customers to upgrade their Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs at no extra cost. The offer extends to users with Windows 10 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions as well as Secure Productive Enterprise E3 and E5 plans.

[...] 

Once older Windows machines are upgraded to Window 10, the OS is theirs to keep, said Nic Fillingham, small business product manager at Microsoft Windows Marketing.

"The Windows 10 upgrade licenses issued as part of this process are perpetual and associated with the device. This means the license will not expire or be revoked if the customer chooses to end their Windows cloud subscription in the CSP program," he wrote in a Jan. 19 blog post.

Microsoft's earlier scaremongering was probably aimed at Enterprise customers, who have (so far, anyway) been in no rush to switch to Windows 10. MS's corporate strategy really needed them to switch, and to pay for the privilege; in the absence of those two things happening, however, MS have apparently decided that they'll settle for one of two.

The problem is MS resorted to scaremongering first, and then attempted to sweeten the deal. Normally, the carrot is dangled in plain view before one begins tactlessly brandishing the stick, but MS have done these things in reverse order, and possibly further undermined trust in Windows products in the process. MS spent years trying to convince us that Win7 was safe as houses, remember, before suddenly announcing that Win7 was critically flawed in ways that they hadn't previously disclosed... and then announcing that they're giving it away again.

Oh, and they're adding more adverts to the OS, too, in the upcoming Creators Update. Gotta make money, somehow, I guess. They're apparently not going to make any by selling copies of Windows 10.

We'll see in upcoming months whether either the scaremongering or this renewed giveaway succeeds in pushing/pulling Enterprise users to Win10, when all previous attempts to appeal to them have failed, but one thing is clear: weak expressions of remorse notwithstanding, Microsoft's ham-handed ways are still very much a thing, and will be for the foreseeable future. This is just who MS are, now, and apparently who they'll continue to be, at least for as long as Satya Nadella is running the show.

Why I don't expect much from Microsoft's new "gaming mode"

I've been seeing reports about this for at least a week, now, and was waiting for Microsoft to confirm its existence before weighing in.

Well, it looks like they've finally confirmed it, according to Softpedia:

Microsoft has officially acknowledged that it’s working on a gaming mode for Windows 10 that would have the operating system prioritize resource allocation for certain processes, while putting less critical ones in standby mode to improve gaming performance.

The recently-released Windows 10 build 15007 came with an early implementation of the so-called Game Mode, but just we told you yesterday, it doesn’t do much at the moment.

After the company remained tight-lipped on its efforts to launch a game mode, a post on the Xbox blog this morning set things straight and officially confirms that such a feature is in the works.

“Our goal is to make Windows 10 the best Windows ever for gaming. With the Creators Update, we’re introducing a new feature called Game Mode,” Microsoft says.

“Windows Insiders will start seeing some of the visual elements for Game Mode this week, with the feature being fully operational in builds shortly thereafter. Our vision is for Game Mode to optimize your Windows 10 PC for increased performance in gaming. This is a big update for Windows; we’re looking forward to Insiders getting their hands on this new feature for further testing, and we’ll have much more to share on what it is and how it works soon, so stayed tuned.”

So, what does this really mean for gamers?

First, you can expect this to affect UWP games only.

Seriously, I'll bet money on this: Game Mode will optimize for UWP only, and not be accessible for normal executables like you get from, e.g., Steam. Since UWP games currently perform worse than their Steam (or Origin, or BNet, or UPlay, or GOG) counterparts pretty much across the board, this won't mean boosted performance for games in Windows 10 so much as long-overdue parity between native UWP games and games bought from other platforms.

You can expect this to make little difference, if any, to how PC gamers buy their games.

It might help sales of Microsoft titles launched on Windows 10, but since it won't affect Steam games at all, don't expect gamers to abandon Steam for the Windows 10 Store for their game purchases. Microsoft dropped the ball when it came to the UWP gaming experience, resulting in bad experiences for most of the native UWP titles released to date, from missing functionality and sub-par performance in games like Quantum Break to miserable sales and resulting non-functional multiplayer in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. That bad taste won't be going away anytime soon.

Since Game Mode isn't going to improve Steam users' gaming experience with the Steam games they already own and play, most of them probably won't even notice the difference. And since most of those same users are already thoroughly turned off the Windows 10 store already after a number of sub-par or outright terrible game purchasing experiences, I'm not expecting them to stampede to the Windows 10 Store in order to buy native UWP games with which to test Windows 10's new Mode.

Don't expect developers to start developing native UWP versions of games.

With gamers reluctant to drop cash on native UWP versions of new games, developers will have little, if any, incentive to spend extra money making and optimizing native UWP ports of their titles. It's much easier and cheaper to use the Centennial Bridge to simply put a UWP wrapper around a Windows 7/8 executable in order to get it on the Windows 10 store front; and since Game Mode isn't going to optimize performance for anything except native UWP games (seriously, count on it), games ported over via the Bridge won't benefit.

This was part of Microsoft's UWP strategy, remember: the extra cost of developing native-UWP software was supposed to combine with the year-long free giveaway of Windows 10 to push developers into developing native UWP games at the expense of Windows 7/8 (i.e. Steam) versions, making the UWP marketplace larger and thus more attractive to developers wanting to maximize profit while minimizing costs. Bur Windows 10 Mobile was a big part of that, and subsequently failed to happen, while GWX turned Windows 7 & 8 users off completely, meaning that UWP only reaches 25% of the PC market, and isn't actually a better bet than just releasing a normal executable.

Add in UWP's gaming-specific issues, and you get a failure to launch in spite of Windows 10's remarkable penetration of the Steam user base (well above its share of the PC market as a whole), and a pretty clear sign of how badly Microsoft have fucked this up. Most Steam users are using Windows 10, but very few of them seem to be using the Windows 10 Store for their gaming purchases, and even those few are only using Microsoft's storefront to buy Microsoft-published games. The only developers who aren't going to Steam, i.e. where the players are, are those who are trying to push players to their own, competing, storefronts; EA is unlikely to promote Microsoft's walled Windows 10 garden over their own Origin service.

Bottom line:

Unless Microsoft make Game Mode optimization available to non-UWP games, don't expect Game Mode to have much of an impact on the games you play, or the way you buy games in future. That makes Game Mode a nothingburger -- a weaksauce feature that Microsoft is bringing to the table a good year and a half too late to make any difference.

UPDATE:

It might be a good thing that nobody took me up on that bet, because Microsoft are now saying that Game Mode will work with both Win32 and UWP games, at least according to Racing Junky:

Microsoft just revealed everything identified with gaming that is expected with the Creators Update. They began with the rumored Windows 10 Game Mode. Mike Ybarra, Head of Platform Engineering for Xbox, affirmed that Game Mode will be accessible for both Win32 and UWP games.

Mike Ybarra likewise said that upgrades to the Windows Store, still disliked by numerous gamers, are accompanying this release and others later on. As per the blog entry, Windows Insiders will begin seeing the principal visual components (likely UI related) of Game Mode in an upgrade coming soon. Furthermore, the element will turn out to be completely operational in consequent forms. It will likely improve execution while gaming. Microsoft didn’t give more subtle hints on how it intends to accomplish that objective. Be that as it may, they said all of it will be talked about soon.

Whether Microsoft can still convince gamers to ditch Steam for the Windows 10 Store remains to be seen (although I think it's unlikely), but the UWP gaming experience certainly needs a lot of work, and if Game Mode improves the experience for Steam &c. gamers as well, then it might have more of an impact than I'm expecting.

Of course, it may just kill non-UWP game streaming at the same time, if it undermines all background applications in favour of the game in the foreground, so I'm still not completely sold, but I'm now a little more interested in what the details will ultimately end up being. Because the devil is in the details, and Microsoft have a long history of failing at the details of PC gaming, going all the way back to Games for Windows Live.

Other reasons not to get too excited about Game Mode being enabled for Win32 games:

1. Win32 might only mean XBox 360 backwards-compatible titles through Play Anywhere, and not 64-bit Windows 7 & 8 titles through Steam; in order to include current-gen Steam titles, Game Mode will also need to apply to Win64;
2. I've been unable to find a 2nd source quoting Mike Ybarra's supposed confirmation of Win32's inclusion in Game Mode;
3. Mike Ybarra is the head of platform engineering for XBox, and not directly responsible for PC;
4. The Game Mode feature is still under development, so many of its details are still To Be Determined.

If Game Mode works for Win32 games, and if it improves performance for, e.g., Steam gamers, without undermining their ability to stream games to the likes of Twitch, then it could be a good thing for gamers. But if it just turns PC gaming into a more restrictive, XBox-like experience, then it could be every bit the nothingburger that I'm currently anticipating.

Your move, Microsoft. You've disappointed me over and over again for the last two years, so my expectations are pretty low, here. Time to impress me, and other users and gamers like me.

Windows 10 will allow you to defer updates... for a price

Because of course there's a price.

From c|net:

The latest Insider Build of Windows 10, the option that allows Windows 10 licence holders to sign up for early builds, is addressing a long-standing problem with the operating system. Namely, it will allow you to put off software updates, effectively putting an end to the controversial decision to force automatic updates on Windows 10 users.

Under the new build, users will be able to pause all updates for up to 35 days, effectively allowing you to schedule when you want your software to update. Users will also now be able to choose whether or not to include driver updates in these Windows 10 updates. Both of these new features will be included in the Education, Enterprise and Professional editions of Windows 10.

So, if you paid for Windows 10, you can have control of your PC back, maybe, when this new build goes live later this year. If you were "upgraded" to Windows 10 against your wishes, though, then... not so much.

"Fuck you, pay me." Nice business model, Microsoft. It sounds familiar, somehow.

UPDATE:

It looks like I'm not the only person to spot this omission from Microsoft's new "feature." Gordon Kelly at Forbes has this take:

Windows 10 Build 15002’s biggest and most eagerly awaited addition: the ability to delay the installation of updates for up to 35 days. This timescale isn’t as long as I and many others would want, but it’s an important first step and restores an element of something long lost in Windows 10: control.

But it comes with a crazy omission.

Microsoft is not giving this feature to Windows 10 Home users. That’s right, by far the largest group of Windows 10 users will not be getting by far the most requested feature. Instead only Professional, Education, and Enterprise versions will qualify.

My initial thought was this makes no sense, but when you think hard there actually is logic here and that logic is even more infuriating. Microsoft is deliberately treating everyday users as guinea pigs so Enterprise and the more expensive Professional and Education customers can wait and learn from any potential update misfortunes they endure.

Microsoft sends down bad drivers? Everyday users will let us know when their PCs crash. Broken bug fix? Everyday users will let us know when a key program in their daily lives won’t start.

Of course we should have seen this coming. After all this attitude has actually been there even before the release of Windows 10. Back in January 2015 Microsoft director of program management Jim Alkove wrote about the operating system in a little read blog post explaining:

“By the time Current branch for Business machines are updated, the changes will have been validated by millions of Insiders, consumers and customers’ internal test processes for several months, allowing updates to be deployed with this increased assurance of validation.”

Yes, this once again goes to show there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If consumers want a free Windows upgrade, they need to accept their role as bug testers for paying businesses. And if you think sticking to Windows 7 or Windows 8 will help you retain control, it won’t.

"Fuck you, pay me." That's Microsoft's message for almost everyone currently using Windows 10, including a lot of people who didn't want to upgrade, and who said no to the upgrade over and over again, only to have Microsoft first ignore them completely, and ultimately use dirty tricks to migrate them to the new OS anyway. GWX really was an offer you couldn't refuse. At least they didn't break anyone's kneecaps.