Microsoft's ongoing struggles with QA and Edge

After a terrible month of QA issues with Windows 10's 1809 update, and following revelations that those issues aren't actually over yet, even after 1809's re-release, comes news that Microsoft's other flagship product has similar issues. As reported by betanews:

Microsoft's update procedure for Windows 10 has been a little, er, wobbly of late. The Windows 10 October 2018 Update proved so problematic that it had to pulled, and even the re-released version is far from perfect.

Now it seems the cancer is spreading to Office. Having released a series of updates for Office 2010, 2013 and 2016 as part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has now pulled two of them and advised sysadmins to uninstall the updates if they have already been installed.

In both instances -- KB4461522 and KB2863821 -- Microsoft says that the problematic updates can lead to application crashes. While this is not as serious a problem as, say, data loss, it does little to quieten the fears that have been voiced about the quality control Microsoft has over its updates.

So, the bad news is that Microsoft's attempts to reassure consumers and Enterprise customers that their quality assurance procedures really are up to the challenge of delivering software-as-a-service seem to be failing. What's the good news?

Apparently, the good news is that Edge has failed so hard that Microsoft is now collaborating with Google and Qualcomm to bring the Chrome browser to Windows 10's ARM version. Yes, really.

Windows 10 runs terribly on ARM

I hope Microsoft wasn't banking too heavily on Windows 10 on ARM competing with cheaper Chromebooks, because it's probably not in the cards. The performance simply isn't there, according to this article on SlashGear:

When it announced its Windows 10 on ARM, specifically on Snapdragon 835, thrust late last year, Microsoft emphasized power efficiency as the primary selling point. What it might not have disclosed is that those savings in battery life might come at the cost of a significant hit in performance. [...] Sadly, this Windows 10 on ARM sighting might be the worst we’ve seen so far.

This isn’t a case of Windows 10 on ARM vs Windows 10 on x86. It is, after, arguable that a quad-core Intel Core i7, even a fanless one, could outperform an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 under certain condition. No, this is a case of Windows 10 on ARM versus, say, Android on ARM, running on the exact same chipset and closely similar hardware.

An Android device running on a Snapdragon 835 averages 2,200 on single-core and 7,700 on multi-core tests on Geekbench. Last week’s mysterious “Qualcomm CLS” device 1,202 and 4,263 on those same scores. This ASUSTeK TP370QL, in comparison, yields an embarrassing 889 in single-core performance and 3,174 in multi-core at its highest.

[...]

At this point, it isn’t clear where Microsoft wants to take Windows 10 on ARM anyway. It has all but lost interest in the mobile market, as far as pushing Windows 10 itself goes, and might be eyeing a very niche market for Windows 10 on Snapdragon-powered tablets, possibly for industry use. But with benchmark scores like that, it might be dead on arrival.

Ouch.

Intel wasn't at all happy about Windows 10 on ARM, which they saw as infringement of their x86 patents, but if these benchmarks are anything to go by, Intel needn't worry too much, since nobody will be buying ARM-based Windows 10 machines anytime soon. Whether they start buying x86-based Windows 10 machines again is still anyone's guess (although I still guess that they won't, because Moore's Law isn't a thing anymore).