So, that sure didn't take very long...

It wasn't even two weeks ago that Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 (for all except their biggest, richest Win7 customers, that is), claiming that we would never receive another update ever again. There was even a full-screen nag screen, because of fucking course there was. Blogs and tech news sites were full of nothing except doom and gloom for Win7 users, telling us all that the sky was falling, and only Windows 10 offered any shelter.

And so, naturally, Microsoft have already announced that they'll be issuing another patch for Windows 7 in February. Huzzah!

Reminder: Windows 7 really is the new XP

Back during the darkest days of Microsoft's GWX campaign, when they'd abandoned all pretense of believing in the quality of the product and offering Windows users a free upgrade, and instead started switching users' systems to Windows 10 no matter how many times they'd refused previously, it was already becoming clear that Microsoft had done lasting harm to their own brand, and to the relationship of trust and goodwill that they'd previously enjoyed with users of Windows 7.

I wasn't alone in referring to Microsoft's GWX fiasco as "upgrade-gate," or to point out the consequences with which Microsoft would have to deal for the next several years; pieces like this one, from Makeof.com, were pretty easily found at the time:

Steve Jobs famously said “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Microsoft must think this is true for Windows 10. And so its developers keep finding new ways to trick Windows 7 and 8 users into upgrading because surely they will like Windows 10 once the see it. Or they’ll just surrender.

Personally, I do like Windows 10, but I also appreciate the reasons of those who oppose the upgrade. And I think what Microsoft has been doing is deeply disturbing and unethical. Microsoft acts as if its goal for 1 billion Windows 10 users supersedes the company’s responsibility for its existing Windows customers.

This reckless battle has unintended consequences, which not only hurt Microsoft’s customers, but also its business.

From loss of trust in the Windows; to users simply turning off Windows Update to avoid the hated GWX payloads; to actual monetary costs in the form of lost time, bandwidth, and productivity; reasons abounded why Microsoft's overly-aggressive GWX push was a bad idea. And while the worst of these for Microsoft, "Home Users Will Abandon Windows," hasn't yet come to pass, there's still no sign that consumers have forgiven Microsoft for the liberties, excesses, and borderline (or actual) abuses of GWX.

Microsoft's GWX push was of a piece with Terry Myerson's Windows-centric strategy, which Microsoft has since abandoned. Two years after GWX's failure, Myerson is no longer at Microsoft; his Windows and Devices Group no longer exists, its various teams having been redistributed across other business units which, according to Microsoft, are actually the future of the company. And Windows 10 is still not as popular as Windows 7... depending on who you ask, of course.

The fallout from GWX still hasn't stopped falling, either. Every month, Microsoft delivers updates for Windows 7, and every month, the description of those updates includes the same disclaimer: "does not include windows 10 upgrade functionality." That's still necessary, more than two years after GWX; that is truly epic levels of fail.

But it actually gets worse for Microsoft.

Creativity is officially dead and so is VR

I must have gone to bathroom, or something, when this bit popped up during Sony's E3 event last week:

It's a very pretty video, with very pretty music, and it takes just over two minutes (2:10, to be precise) before actually fading into any gameplay from the game itself. And yes, it's Tetris. Like, literally, just Tetris but with Tron's aesthetics.

According to the game's Wikipedia entry, Tetris Effect has been in development for 6 years. It took them 6 years to add Tron's glowy graphic style to the now-34-years-young Tetris. Oh, and a pause button, or "an all-new Zone mechanic that allows players to stop time," as it's gushingly called by UploadVR.

Available soon on Windows, PS4, and PSVR, Tetris Effect should be all the proof you need that creativity is dead. They spent six years making a VR version of Tetris, in an environment where you can't turn around and spit without hitting a free version of Tetris, and thirty four years after Tetris was first released. In thirty-four years, nobody has succeeded in adding anything of worth or note to the gameplay of Tetris, and I don't expect that Tetris Effect will succeed where everyone else has failed.

The fact that this utter failure of creativity features prominently on UploadVR's list of E3's Biggest VR Announcements should tell you everything you need to know about the state of VR, right now.

Valve finally kills the Steam Machine

Was it only a year ago that I was writing about how Valve might not be done with SteamOS? Well, that was then, and this is now, and it turns out that Valve had only disappointment in store for me on the SteamOS front. From PC Gamer Magazine:

Remember Steam Machines? Valve seems to be trying to forget its bid to get everyone playing games on expensive little boxes from Alienware, Asus and the like, as it’s removed the Steam Machines section from Steam. It’s been a while since anyone really talked about the living room PCs, but this looks like the final nail in the coffin.

Steam Machines never really got their big moment. Valve envisioned a new ecosystem following on from Big Picture mode, where people would play PC games in their living room using a Steam Machine, Steam Controller and SteamOS, but the big launch at the end of 2015 only saw a handful of the boxes appear, and none of them exactly tempted people away from their desktops or consoles.

[...]

The Steam Machine launch wasn’t helped by Valve’s second bid for domination of the living room. While their Steam Machine partners were designing their first boxes, Valve was busy making their own device: the Steam Link. It essentially did the same thing: allowing people to play Steam games on their TV, but instead of being a desktop surrogate, the Steam Link was a streaming device. And it was much, much cheaper.

As someone who bought a Steam Link, I guess I shouldn't really be surprised by this, but it's still something of a disappointment. There was a moment in time, during the darkest days of Windows 8 & 10, when it really did look like consumers generally, and gamers in particular, might be needing a viable alternative to Windows, and I was hoping that Valve might put some actual weight behind SteamOS in order to help make that happen. It turns out that Valve really is too busy with SteamVR to care about SteamOS, though, and thus the end arrives.

Of course, we now know that Microsoft's Windows strategy is changing, and the first steps of that new direction are looking remarkably pro-consumer, so the death of Valve's SteamOS initiative isn't likely to have much of a real-world impact. It's not like anybody was using it, after all. Still, even though its time is past, and its purpose might no longer be relevant, it's a little sad to see that the dream of a viable Linux-like gaming environment won't be coming to fruition... in spite of PS4/Orbis having proved that it really can work. C'est la vie.

Farewell, SteamOS. We hardly knew thee.

Editorializing

Offered for your consideration, two different headlines about the same story.

Start with this headline from the normally quite sober WCCFTech:

Microsoft Promises, Microsoft Delivers! Windows Installation Time Reduced to 30 Minutes

compare it to Gizmodo UK's headline about the same announcement:

Windows Has a Plan to Make Its Update System a Little Less Garbage

and marvel at the power of editorial direction. The same phenomenon can be seen at work in the articles themselves.

Microsoft's Edge-ey move garners predictable responses

I'd already written about this development last week, but it looks like the rest of the tech media world has also caught on to Microsoft's latest move to force Edge on Windows 10 users, and the results are about what you'd expect.

Por ejemplo, Mashable:

Sorry Microsoft, but this isn't the way to get people to use your Edge browser

or diGit:

Microsoft could soon force Mail users to use Edge for email links in Windows 10

In the latest Preview Build, Microsoft is testing opening all Windows Mail links in Edge, even if the user's default browser is set to Chrome or Firefox.

or Übergizmo:

Windows 10 Mail Users Will Be Forced To Use Edge For Email Links

The Reg:

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn’t default browser

Grab some popcorn: Redmond’s asked for feedback on the idea

The Inquirer:

Microsoft is trying to bolster Edge in Windows 10 by overriding browser defaults

Firm has learned nothing about anti-competitive strong-arming 

Express.co.uk:

Windows 10 could FORCE you to use Microsoft Edge, even if Chrome is your default browser

MICROSOFT could soon force Windows 10 users to open links in Edge, regardless of users’ default web browser.

These are just the headlines, of course, but the story that they'e reporting hasn't changed since Friday, and the headlines show pretty clearly how badly Microsoft have failed at pitching their terrible idea. Almost every headline uses the word "force" to describe what MS are doing; none of them are even potentially positive. The Inquirer talks about "anti-competitive strong-arming" in their headline; The Reg is grabbing their popcorn as they watch this fireworks show kicking into high gear. It's difficult to say what reaction Microsoft were hoping for, here, but none of these reactions are good news for Redmond.

None of them are particularly insightful or informative, though. For those things, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Paul Thurrott.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So goes the famous quote by George Santayana. It would seem that Microsoft are determined to prove the truth of this bit of wisdom, by setting themselves up for yet another antitrust action of the type that they've already lost before... twice.

From The Verge:

Microsoft wants to force Windows 10 Mail users to use Edge for email links

A desperate move to grab browser share

Yes, I'd say that "desperate" is definitely the right choice of adjective, there.

Microsoft is testing a new change to its future version of Windows 10 which will probably annoy anyone using the operating system. The software giant revealed today that “we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” The change means if you have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser in Windows 10, Microsoft will simply ignore that and force you into Edge when you click a link within the Mail app.

It’s a ridiculous change, that’s similar to Microsoft forcing Cortana users to use Bing search and open results in the Microsoft Edge browser instead of other browsers that are set as default. [...] I’m sure Microsoft will receive a lot of feedback over this unnecessary change, and we can only hope the company doesn’t ignore it.

1) I don't believe that Microsoft listen to their Windows user community... at all, really, and 2) I hope they don't listen this time, either, because the their typical oblivious arrogance could well end up landing them in some richly-deserved hot water of the antitrust variety. Again.

Because you're not imagining it: Microsoft have done this before, back in the day when they were abusing their position as the platform's gatekeepers to drive Netscape out of business. Over-riding the users' clearly established preferences and using Edge as a default browser is not OK, even if it's only happening in Microsoft's own Mail app. Because this shit won't stay in "just" that app, if they're allowed to get away with this; it will find its way into every Microsoft app. It's just the first dick move in a clearly-telegraphed dick game with only one possible goal, i.e. a complete monopoly.

Which is, as I've said before, the whole point.

Not only are Microsoft failing (or maybe just refusing) to remember their own history, they're shooing themselves in the foot by doing so. Because this change won't force users towards Edge; it will just drive them away from Mail... assuming that any significant number of them were using Mail in the first place, which seems unlikely. Coming at a time when Microsoft is still struggling to convince users, and businesses, to switch to Windows 10, these shenanigans are unlikely to help MS's cause there, either, and may actually hurt. 

And all that bad is on top of the very real legal jeopardy that comes with such obviously anti-competitive and anti-consumer antics. It's moronic. Who signed off on this?

Whatever. Who cares. I just hope that they stay the course, this time, and pay the apparently inevitable price for doing so. With Democrats riding a building electoral wave that could see them take control of both houses of Congress, and Trump's impeachment all but certain if they do so, the impunity with which the Microsofts of the world continue to flout U.S. antitrust laws could end rather sooner than the monopolists are planning on, which can only be a good thing.

So, go for it, Microsoft! Keep right on trying to make "fetch" happen. Keep doing you, no matter how much damage you do to your own cause in the process. When the end comes, I will be there watching. With popcorn. And maybe beer.

No, Microsoft, it won't. It really, really won't.

From Simon Sharwood at The Reg:

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'
Which is just-about an admission Win 10 is a mess

No, Microsoft, it won't.

I mean, we've known for a while that Microsoft would really, really like for S mode, and thus their digital storefront, to be the way that a majority of users experience Windows; this has always been the plan, so it's no surprise that MS see this as the best possible outcome... for them. The only surprise is that they're finally speaking openly about their desire to make this happen, in spite of the fact that consumers' rejection of this vision of personal computing has been pretty much total, up to this point.

Consumers have made it very plain that they do not want this. So much so, in fact, that Microsoft's latest aborted attempt to push it on them anyway has now been walked back. But don't expect MS to stop trying. Forcing every PC user on Earth into their walled-garden Microsoft Store ecosystem is, very plainly, MS's entire plan for Windows, and they will try again.

The Reg's reporting doesn't include anything much that Thurrott.com didn't already cover yesterday, apart from this bit of editorializing:

"We expect the majority of customers to enjoy the benefits of Windows 10 in S mode," Belfiore wrote. Which is hardly a ringing endorsement of Windows 10 in its dominant configuration!

Which is completely accurate - after all, MS wouldn't be having to push WX so hard if it were good enough to sell itself on the product's merits. That isn't, however, the point. The point is that MS want "S mode" to supplant a Windows in which consumers retain control over their PCs, and the software that gets installed on them, and instead relies on Microsoft to serve up everything. The point is raw, naked greed; it's MS wanting to be Apple, with their own iOS-style App Store.

The fact that MS want it to happen, however, doesn't mean that it will happen. Because for all its issues, Windows 10 is still better than its "S mode" counterpart, which is why Windows 10 S flopped in the first place. Making S mode an option for all WX users doesn't do anything to make it more attractive to those users, or alter the fact that the "Universal Windows Platform" has utterly failed to be a thing. The "benefits" of S mode are non-existent; the experience of using S mode is shit, and there's nothing happening which will alter that in any way at all.

Sorry, Joe.

MS tiptoes back from the "S Mode" edge

Well, colour me surprised if Microsoft didn't hear peoples' howls of outrage and walk back a terrible decision before it had even gone live.

From Thurrott.com:

Microsoft now says that it will no longer charge customers who wish to upgrade from Windows 10 in S mode. The revelation comes after a bizarre tweet in which Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore confirmed Thurrott.com’s exclusive story that it would kill Windows 10 S and provide S mode in all mainstream Windows 10 versions.

Now, Belfiore is providing more information and is doing so via a more traditional means: A Microsoft corporate blog.

“We’ve received feedback that the [Windows 10 S] naming was a bit confusing for both customers and partners,” he writes. “Based on that feedback, we are simplifying the experience for our customers. Starting with the next update to Windows 10, coming soon, customers can choose to buy a new Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro PC with S mode enabled, and commercial customers will be able to deploy Windows 10 Enterprise with S mode enabled.”

[...]

Best of all, however, Belfiore now says that Microsoft will no longer try to charge customers to upgrade from S mode. (Today, the upgrade from Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro costs $50.) So you can upgrade from the hobbled S mode in Windows 10 Home, Pro, or Enterprise to the “full” version of whichever OS product edition for free going forward. This is absolutely the correct thing to do.

Microsoft's previous ruminations on their upcoming S Mode, its costs, and its lawsuit-avoidance carve-out for the antivirus software industry, were indeed bullshit, and S Mode is still bullshit, but at least Microsoft won't be charging gamers extra for wanting to install games on their new PCs anymore. So, yes, absolutely the correct thing to do, and it's only taken them three tries to produce an S Mode strategy that the market might actually accept.

Of course, this latest change also makes it even easier to ignore S Mode entirely, now that it's not being rammed down users' throats anymore, so it won't do anything to make S Mode relevant to consumers. Which means that S Mode is still a failure; Microsoft is just finally admitting failure, is all, rather than insisting on charging consumers extra to help cover their failure's costs.

It's tough to give Microsoft much credit, though, for belatedly doing something the less-shitty thing on their 3rd attempt, and only after the outcry made it clear that their anti-consumer bullshit would not fly. It's tough to even call this a win for consumers; Microsoft may have backed away from the edge this time, but there will be a next time, and a next one after that, so have we really won anything other than a temporary reprieve? Because it sure doesn't feel like a win.

I doubt that the overall goal, i.e. forcing consumers onto the Windows Microsoft Store to buy all of their PC software, has changed, however. With UWP failing, and Progressive Web Apps being a Google-led trend that Microsoft can't monopolize, it's tough to see how they'll be able to force the ecosystem issue, but mark my words: they will try again. Whether on some other ground, or on this same ground once it's swept clean, they will try again.

For now, though, saner heads appear to have prevailed. It's not much, but I'll still take it.

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

Do you remember when Microsoft's vision for Windows 10 involved blocking normal program installation by default? When they had to make a big deal of the ability for users to enable "side loading," as if it was some sort of fucking gift that Microsoft were giving us out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than because Windows Store was a wasteland of shit that consumers wanted no part of?

They didn't stay backed down for long, though. It was only six months later that they were announcing Windows 10 S, a gimped version of the OS which didn't even allow the option of turning side-loading on unless you paid to upgrade from WX S to WX Pro. They ended up making upgrades free for the rest of 2017, because the Windows (later Microsoft) Store was still a wasteland of shit that consumers wanted no part of. Oh, and WX S was also unusably bad, because there were no apps for fucking thing.

Well, it turns out Microsoft still isn't done trying to force Windows users onto their horrible, horrible digital storefront for fucking everything, because they're trying yet again to do exactly that. Just, you know, not with people who've already switched over. No, it's only new WX users who'll get fucked.

From Tech Republic:

Windows 10: Get ready for more PCs that only run Microsoft Store apps by default

Microsoft is planning to update all versions of Windows 10 to incorporate S Mode, which will limit the machine to only installing apps from the Microsoft Store, according to a leaked roadmap.

Because of course they are. This has always been the plan.

English & Windows 10 gain some Steam

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey for January is out, and it would seem that the Steam community has finally stopped bucking the overall OS market trend: WX's share of Steam users is up, and substantially, from last month, even as Windows' overall share of Steam declined in favour of MacOS:

Interestingly, W7's losses to WX track pretty closely with another trend that Steam Survey watchers have been keeping an eye on in recent months: the rise (and now fall) of Simplified Chinese as Steam users' language of choice:

The last few months' surge in Steam market share of both W7 and Chinese had been attributed to the surging popularity of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) in China.

PUBG is still the top-selling game on Steam, a position that it's now held for nearly a year, and it's unlikely that we'd have heard anything about declining PUBG concurrency numbers, since attention tends to be paid only when concurrency records are being broken, but it's possible that PUBG's popularity has finally cooled the slightest little bit, allowing market norms to reassert among Steam's users. Keep an eye peeled in the coming weeks for stories about PUBG "dying," though, since the other thing that media outlets of all types love is a good "falling from grace"narrative.

Still, it looks like WX is finally starting to climb back towards parity with W7 among Steam users, even as Windows overall loses users to OS X, which is exactly what we see in the broader OS market, too. For a change. This is just one month's data, though, and you know what they say about once being a freak occurrence; I'll want to see three months' of consecutive WX gains in the Steam Software Survey before I'll call this a real trend.

There's no denying that these numbers fit with the overall trend, though. We'll just have to wait and see if the trend continues into next month, or if WX starts to eat into W7's overall market share more in coming months than it's done to date.

Do you remember when WX was supposedly on pace to surpass W7 by November?

NMS's end-of-January numbers are out, and once again, WX has managed modest gains at the expense of Windows XP, while W7 and W8.1 remain mostly unchanged. And, no, WX still hasn't caught up to its nine-year-old rival.

WX gained, of course, from 32.93% to 34.29% (+1.36); W7 ticked down, from 43.08% to 42.39% (-0.69); W8.1 ticked down slightly, from 5.71% to 5.56% (-0.15); and XP slid the most, from 5.18% to 4.05% (-1.13). Except for W8.1's, all of these results are above the ±0.5% "noise threshold," but WX's gains are not enough to encompass the losses of W7, W8.1, and XP. Some of those former Windows users are going elsewhere.

Where are they going, you ask? By the looks of it, Apple. Windows' overall market share slid from 88.51% to 87.79% (-0.72), while MacOS grew its overall market share from 9.02% to 9.95% (+0.93), propelled by MacOS X 10.13 (from 3.53% to 4.46%, +0.93). An overall decline in Windows' user base probably isn't something that Microsoft want to see; yes, WX gained more than a percentage point to start the year, but the fact that those gains are mostly coming at the expense of the 16½ year old XP, rather than the market-leading W7, can't be good news, either.

Reminder: Windows 10 is malware

Was it only two days ago that I was writing that WX still had quite a way to go, in spite of its brand-new Diagnostic Data Viewer? How nice of monopolist Microsoft to provide me with a timely demonstration of exactly what sort of issues WX still suffers from, as reported by WindowsReport:

Many Opera users recently complained on Reddit about Windows 10’s pushy behavior when it comes to using the Edge browser.

More specifically, users reported that the OS opens a new tab on Opera aimed at advertising Edge. Using the browser of choice of many Windows 10 users simply to promote Edge is indeed a bit strange.

After unlocking my Windows 10 computer, I discover that Windows has decided to open a tab in my Opera browser solely to advertise Edge browser to me.

This unexpected Edge ad made many users angry. They asked Microsoft to stop telling them what browser to use.

MSFT need to stop this nonsense, no one should be forced to use edge period.

Yep... that is some bullshit.

Windows 10 can still be had for free, weeks after they claimed to have closed the last free-WX loophole

BTW, I've just decided to start abbreviating Windows 10 to "WX," which is both shorter and consistent with GWX branding already used by Microsoft. For brevity and consistency, I'll also be using "W#" for earlier versions (i.e. W7, W8, W8.1), and simply adding the appropriate suffixes for other flavours of WX when needed for clarity (WX-Home, WX-Pro, WX-Core, WX-S, etc.).

It took Microsoft until two full weeks after their Dec. 31st deadline, and change, to finally close the Assistive Technologies loophole, which allowed users to upgrade to WX for free if they were willing to say that they used any kind of Assistive Technology... up to, and including, hot keys. You might thing that the end of the last of the Microsoft's officially free WX offerings would mean the end of stories about how you can still get WX for free.

Well, you would be wrong. Check out the "most relevant" result that Google News returns for "Windows 10."

Yes, that's Forbes, with yet another piece on how WX can still be had for free, now two weeks after the last free WX window was allegedly closed.

Windows 10 was free for a year after launch for anyone who had an older version of Windows. For those who missed this transition period it was possible to get an upgrade right up until the end of 2017, a loophole Microsoft has now closed - although it wasn't much of a loophole, as the company knew all about it.

However there are other ways to upgrade to Windows 10 that don't involve getting the upgrade assistant from the official site.

Yes, apparently this has always worked... meaning that this also isn't much of a loophole, since Microsoft clearly also knows all about it, i.e. working as intended.

It's unclear as to why this works, but if you have a product code for an old version of Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 you should be able to enter this into a copy of Windows 10 and get an activation. You will be given access to the version of Windows 10 that matches the original product key. So Windows 8 Pro will get Windows 10 Pro, while Windows 8 Home will get, you guessed it, Windows 10 Home.

Hmmm.... so it's possible to upgrade from W7-Pro to WX-Pro? It's a shame the GWX app didn't work the same way; I might have been tempted to switch.

Right about now, you might be wondering why Microsoft would still have a WX upgrade left open that's large enough for an auto-truck to drive through? Well, Microsoft themselves are pretty quiet on the issue, but Forbes' Ian Morris has some ideas:

As I pointed out in my article about the closing of the accessibility loophole, I don't think Microsoft really cares about end users getting free upgrades. It makes more money from OEM sales of Windows 10 on new laptops and revenue from corporate users than the slender pickings of home users. Indeed, Microsoft makes more money - and more margin - on selling cloud offerings these days.

Windows isn't a cash cow when it comes to home users, so I suspect there's a lot of give built into the system.

Which makes a lot of sense, actually. It's just a shame that Microsoft are being so disingenuous about it all. I mean, they could easily partner with PC-OEMs to promote new PC sales ("Get the most out of Windows 10 with the latest AMD/Ryzen hardware!"), while also continuing to let tech-savvier users upgrade for free if they still want to... and without the fucking hard sell, this time. Because, honestly, the hard sell of the GWX campaign was a big part of the continued appeal of W7, which culminated in Microsoft simply switching over users who didn't take active steps to avoid the unwanted "upgrade," even after they'd repeatedly refused Microsoft's malware-laden Home version of WX.

Hell, Microsoft even have a better product to give away than they did a few years ago, with more features and (crucially) better privacy protections, and even better privacy tools due to be added to the platform in a couple of months. And if I can also use my W7 Professional license to upgrade to WX-Pro, rather than the gimped Home version, to gain even more features and even better privacy tools... when, that becomes one hell of a sales pitch, doesn't it?

So, what's the problem?

Microsoft makes it official

It looks like the "Diagnostic data viewer" is, indeed, going to be a thing, as Microsoft have announced on their own blog:

To kick off the new year ahead of Data Privacy Day we are giving our Windows Insiders an early preview of the Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer coming in our next release of Windows. Our commitment is to be fully transparent on the diagnostic data collected from your Windows devices, how it is used, and to provide you with increased control over that data. This is all part of our commitment to increase your trust and confidence in our products and services.

This brand new commitment of full transparency is, of course, new - up to now, Microsoft have acted in the privacy interests of Windows 10 users only when threatened with regulatory action, and have consistently done just enough to keep regulators at bay, while continuing to harvest users' data. So, call me cynical, but I have to wonder what regulatory action was in the offing here, that we don't yet know about, and which Microsoft is trying to mitigate by bolstering Windows 10's privacy regime.

Windows 10's "Redstone 4" update (actual name TBA, but hopefully better than Creators Update) should be rolling out in March or April, if Microsoft stay on schedule, and these new changes are supposed to be part of it, so Windows 10 users should get the DDV at the same time that they get Timeline... which was supposed to roll out two updates ago. Moderate those expectations, folks!

That said... this is an improvement, and a long overdue one, so I'm going to go ahead and call it a win for consumers. Now they just need to restore Cortana's off switch...

In a long overdue move, Microsoft might finally tell you what data they're collecting, and let you delete it, in Windows 10

File this one under "It's about fucking time, Microsoft." As reported by TechRadar:

In a move that will certainly please privacy-conscious users, it seems that Microsoft is about to introduce the ability to view and delete the telemetry data that Windows 10 collects, according to new options that have popped up in the operating system’s latest preview builds.

[...]

Last April, after taking what seemed like endless heat on the issue, Microsoft clarified what personal data Windows 10 collects on a basic level (the minimum amount of telemetry data you can elect to send).

But as Ghacks spotted, the most recent preview builds of Windows 10 (released this month and last month) have a pair of new options at the bottom of the Diagnostics & Feedback screen: ‘Diagnostic data viewer’ and ‘Delete diagnostic data’.

At the moment, these are merely placeholders which don’t function or do anything when clicked, but hopefully they will be live for those testing Windows 10 soon enough.

As a result, it’s not clear exactly what their function is at this point, but it seems obvious enough: the former should allow the user to fully view all the diagnostic data being collected on their system, and the latter should facilitate its deletion.

It's important to note that Microsoft haven't announced anything about this themselves, yet, and nobody's seen this feature in action, either, so there's a lot of assumptions in this report. In particular, there's no indication yet whether this functionality would be available to all Windows 10 users, or whether Microsoft might end up restricting it to high-priced SKUs of the OS, as they've previously done with tools like the Group Policy Editor, or the ability to turn off the "Microsoft Consumer Experience."

Still, assuming that Windows 10 Home users get access to these tools, too, it could be a long-overdue addition to the privacy and personal information management tools that the OS should always have included. Honestly, giving users a greater degree of control over Windows 10's telemetry bullshit is the kind of thing that might have convinced me to switch, had they done it back when switching was still a free upgrade.

Now, of course, upgrading will cost extra, which means that I still won't be switching until the time comes to buy a new PC... which won't happen for me until AMD releases new, Spectre-free CPU designs, which is about the only "feature" that I'd really consider switching PCs to obtain (and, no, I'm not even considering switching to Intel). In the meantime, regardless of which version of Windows you're running, you should still be running an anti-telemetry application like SpyBot's Anti-Beacon as well. Don't forget, Microsoft's telemetry bullshit isn't restricted to Windows 10 anymore.

Still alive...

Months after announcing that they would tighten requirements on the Assistive Technologies upgrade path for Windows 10 on Dec. 31st, effectively closing the free upgrade path for people who didn't use a very limited set of accessibility devices, it appears that Microsoft has now missed that deadline. Yes, the morally challenged among you who still want to upgrade to Windows 10 for free can still do so, a situation about which Microsoft apparently give zero fucks, as reported by TechRadar:

Microsoft’s offer to upgrade Windows 7 or Windows 8 to Windows 10 for free for users who need assistive technologies was supposed to run out at the end of 2017, but according to reports the method is still valid right now.

The assistive technologies upgrade page is indeed still live, and allows you to download the Windows 10 upgrade executable, despite the page stating that the offer expires on December 31, 2017.

According to Ghacks, and other sources including readers who tipped MS Power User, you can fire up that file and still upgrade, so you haven’t missed the boat yet.

The caveat is that you may run into an error message during the upgrade process, but this is easily fixed as discussed by Ghacks (essentially, you have to copy a specific DLL file across).

[...]

It seems that the other route of upgrading to Windows 10 – using an existing Windows 7/8.1 product key to activate the installation of the new OS – also still works as we’ve headed into 2018.

Ultimately, Microsoft probably isn’t too fussed about closing these loopholes because pumping up the numbers of Windows 10 users is obviously not a bad thing for the company.

At this point, I would add only that I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Of course the loophole is still open. Of course Microsoft are taking their own sweet time about closing it, now two and a half years after Windows 10 was released, and counting. By some projections, Windows 10 adoption may not surpass Windows 7 until November, even with this free upgrade path, and Windows 7 may well retain at least a 39% user share when its extended support window finally closes in 2020. With those numbers staring them in the face, the only thing which is at all surprising about Microsoft's indifference to "abuse" of the Assistive Technologies loophole, is that anyone is at all surprised by it.

If Microsoft want my advice (which they don't, but I'm going to give it anyway), not only should they continue to allow free Windows 10 upgrades indefinitely for all users, but they should allow free upgrades to Windows 10 Professional for users who have Professional licences of Windows 7 and 8/8.1 tight up until Windows 8.1's end-of-life date in 2023. No more cute games and sly winks; just do it, already. MS should either admit that they're still giving it away, or close the loopholes, in exactly the way they said they would, and clearly have no intention of doing. Because there's really no excuse for not having tightened up this policy loophole after a year and and a half of watching people abuse it; at this point, we have to assume that continued abuse is the desired result.

Of course, all of this assumes that there are Windows 7 and 8.1 users who (a) want to "upgrade" to Windows 10, and (b) haven't already done so, neither of which appears to be the case. I expect to keep reading about this on Windows-friendly tech blogs and media sites for months to come, though, which is something of a disappointment; I really was hoping that the high-pressure Windows 10 sales pitch would finally be over, but apparently, that glorious day (may it soon come) is still months away.

Le sigh.

UPDATED JAN. 4th:

It looks like Microsoft have finally, officially, extended the deadline on the loophole to their loophole, as reported by Winbuzzer:

We’ve been advising assistive technology users to grab a free Windows 10 for several months. It was due to end on December 31, but the new year came and the offer remained. A new update to the webpage reveals that Microsoft has extended the offer to January 16, 2018.

“If you use assistive technologies, you can upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost as Microsoft continues our efforts to improve the Windows 10 experience for people who use these technologies. Please take advantage of this offer before it expires on January 16, 2018,” says the webpage.

You can upgrade from versions of Windows 7 and 8.1, avoiding the regular $120. The only requirement is the use of some form of accessibility tech, but Microsoft doesn’t check. As a result, anyone with the earlier OSes can upgrade for free.

Winbuzzer end their piece with this knee-slapper:

It seems unlikely that the company will extend the deadline again, so make you take advantage of it.  

Really? Because, from where I'm sitting, Microsoft have done nothing but extend the deadline on their free Windows 10 giveaway, every chance they've had. Why would anyone believe that they really, really, double-pinkie-swear mean it, this time?

Le sigh.

Is Windows 7 the new Windows XP?

Or is the situation actually much, much worse than that for Microsoft?

Well, according to this piece at Computerworld, it's looking like the latter:

In April 2014, when Microsoft rescinded Windows XP support, that version accounted for about 29% of all copies of Windows worldwide. Currently, the best-guess for Windows 7 at its end-of-support is a full 10 percentage points higher.

But that's not even the half of it.

In 2012, two years before XP shuffled off the support scene, Computerworld, using the same 12-month trend that produced a 39% user share for Windows 7 in January 2020, figured that XP would have a mere 17% in user share at retirement. The fact that Computerworld's back-of-the-envelope forecast for XP was off by 12 percentage points does not make for much confidence in the 39% mark for Windows 7 in 24 months.

In other words, today's calculation may be significantly lower than the reality of 2020.

Microsoft has at times resorted to some of the same name calling it used in 2012 for Windows XP when it has talked about the venerable Windows 7, which remains the stock enterprise OS. A year ago, for example, the head of Microsoft Germany said Windows 7 was "long outdated" and argued that the operating system did not meet "the high security requirements of IT departments."

Expect Microsoft to ramp up that line of attack as Jan. 14 [2020] approaches, when Microsoft is almost certain to remind customers that the Windows 7 drop-dead date is two years away and closing fast.

Worse yet, comparisons with Windows XP seem to be ignoring another important trend in personal computing: the  end of Moore's Law as personal computing's driving principle. When Windows 7 was released in 2009, Moore's Law was still driving the tech industry, with shrinking dies resulting in the shrinking size and increasing power of, e.g., smartphones, even as the PC power growth curve was already levelling off. Now, though, even smartphones' computing power has plateaued, and PC and laptop sales have been decreasing year-over-year for six years and counting.

All of which means that new PC sales will not drive Windows 10 adoption with individual consumers, in the way that it did for Windows 7. Even if large corporations and institutions adopt Windows 10 in a yooge way this year (something which isn't at all certain, IMHO), Windows 7 is clearly set up to hold its user base much, much longer than Windows XP did, with a dug-in user base that distrusts Microsoft's every utterance just on principle. Trash talk from Redmond is unlikely to yield any more positive results in two years' time than it's yielding now.

It's unclear what, if anything, Microsoft can do to earn back the trust and goodwill of those Windows 7 die-hards. GWX damaged that relationship pretty thoroughly, and their ongoing efforts to push Bing, Cortana, Edge, and other Microsoft products on consumers that simply aren't interested are probably not helping. Two years is a long time, but the clock is ticking; if Microsoft really want to win over Win7 users, then they need to start work now on some positive messaging that will appeal to these consumers, rather than continuing to rely on the same tired negative messaging which has clearly not been working, up to now.

Given Microsoft's track record (going all the way back to 2012, remember), I'd say that it's unlikely, but the Redmond team have managed to surprise me once or twice over the last couple of years, so I guess we'll see. Either way, though, I think that Microsoft's master plan to take over the computing world with Windows 10 is in something of a shambles, and people are clearly starting to notice.

Steam's software survey continues to confuse

Steam's software survey has a long history of bucking the trend when it comes to OS market share numbers. When Windows 10 was struggling month to month, and often losing market share to older Windows versions, the Steam community were racing to 50% adoption. And when Windows 10 was actually growing, albeit slowly, the Steam survey showed surging popularity for Windows 7.

Some speculated that this was being driven by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' popularity in China, a market where Windows 10 isn't even available and Windows 7 is still king. So, does this month's Steam survey, which shows almost every OS version except Windows 7 gaining market share at Win7's expense, mean that PUBG's Chinese bubble has burst?

Betanews has this take on things:

Depending on which analyst firm you believe, Windows 10 is either a whisker away from overtaking Windows 7 as the most popular desktop operating system, or still quite a distance off.

Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows usage share from the gamers’ perspective, paints an entirely different picture however. It has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until recently, when Windows 7 roared into the top spot.

At the same time that Windows 7 gained in popularity, so did the growth of Chinese gamers on the service, which was clearly not a coincidence. If you want future [sic] proof of a link between the two, December’s updated stats help prove it.

In the last month of 2017, Windows 7 had a share of 56.45 percent (made up of 54.79 percent for the 64-bit build, and 1.66 percent for the 32-bit version). In November, its share was a whopping 71.3 percent, meaning it fell 14.85 percentage points in a month.

Also in December, Simplified Chinese -- currently the most popular language on Steam -- fell 15.31 percentage points to 49.04 percent. (Second placed English grew 6.40 percentage points and now sits on 23.42 percent.)

I've been waiting for the PUBG bubble to burst for a while now, as the game's buggy, unpolished reality caught up with the breathless hype of its gaming media coverage, so it should be interesting to see just how closely PUBG's fortunes track with Windows 7's fortunes on Steam over the coming months.

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

Windows 10 gains market share, while Windows 7's share continues to remain the same.

There's both good news and bad news for Microsoft in NetMarketShare's latest market share statistics. On the up side, Windows 10 has gained nearly a full percentage point, moving from 31.95% to 32.93%. On the down side, those gains seem to be coming almost entirely at the expense of Windows 8.1, which dropped 5.97% to 5.71%; and Windows XP, which dropped from 5.73% to 5.18%. And Windows 7 stayed pretty much stable, dipping from 43.12% to 43.08%, a change which drops below my ±0.5% "noise threshold."

So, Windows 10 is still growing slowly, mostly at the expense of the and the least-popular Windows versions, while the most-popular Windows version, 7, continues its run as the new XP. With the new numbers being such an arguably mixed bag, it was really anyone's guess whether tech media sites would continue trumpeting Windows 10's modest gains as if they were some sort of triumph, or recognize that Windows 10 has failed to close the gap for yet another year, in spite of being freely available for the entirety of that year.

You can colour me slightly surprised, then, that MS Power User are taking the latter route, first out of the gate:

Around the middle of last year, we predicted, based on the then trend, that Windows 10 will overtake Windows 7 worldwide by the end of 2017.

Now the latest Netmarketshare numbers are in, and at least by their numbers, it appears that date may be pretty far off still.

It appears in the last quarter of 2017 the decline in Windows 7 numbers stabilized, while Windows 10 lost some momentum.

[...]

Last month Microsoft revealed there were 600 million active Windows 10 users, and we expect it would take around 800 million Windows 10 users to overtake Windows 7, something which may be achievable by the end of next year as enterprise users switch over in increasing numbers to Windows 10.

The change in tone, here, from confidently predicting that Windows 10 would overtake Windows 7 in 2017, to describing that same feat as something that "may be achievable," but isn't certain, in 2018, speaks rather eloquently to how much momentum Windows 10 lost as the year went along. Again, it's good news/bad news: Microsoft (mostly) stopped stepping on the self-laid rakes in their own yard as the year went along, but with no bad news to report, people also (mostly) stopped talking about Windows 10 entirely.

Windows 10 isn't new anymore. It isn't interesting, or exciting; consumers (and tech writers) seem to have tired of the relentless updating cycle, and now greed new feature announcements with a collective shrug, and the resigned knowledge that it means another round of problems while Microsoft tries to manage yet another updating cycle, even before the last one is complete. At least this time they'll at least be half-way there, which beats the Spring Creators Update's 33.7%, but still.

I've still got two more months to go before I can call it, but I'm still feeling pretty good about my Windows 10 prognostication.

UPDATE:

It looks like StatCounter's numbers show basically the same trend, according to Betanews:

While NetMarketShare’s monthly usage share figures show there to still be a fairly significant gap between Windows 7 and Windows 10 (in the older OS’s favor), rival analyst firm StatCounter has long reported the battle for the top spot to be much, much tighter.

So close is the race in fact, that in October it looked as if Windows 10 would easily pass Windows 7 at some point in the following month. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen, although the gap did narrow. It seemed all but guaranteed that Windows 10 would claim pole position in December, but incredibly it didn’t.

Unlike NMS, StatCounter show Windows 8.1 gaining market share over the past month, to 9.16%, which is exactly the opposite of NMS's result, leading me to suspect that something is up with StatCounter's methodology. Considering that NMS recently revamped their entire product offering to filter out bots and botnets, which were skewing their results, one has to wonder if StatCounter has done the same, or if there's some other reason for Windows 8.1's popularity in their data sets.